What happens what the manager can’t manage themselves? As these Redditors can attest, even bosses aren’t immune from a good firing. From the harassing department heads to the leaders in thievery, seniority offers little protection to un-super supervisors. With delicious luck, some of these employees had a direct hand in pushing their boss over the edge. Sharpen that resume to these 42 delicious stories about workers who got their bosses fired.
1. Fight You in the Unemployment Line
He grabbed the back of my neck and said, "If you ever say I'm wrong in front of a customer again I will beat you up." I went to the GM and told him, and my supervisor was relieved of his duties about 5 minutes later.
2. Cash for the Camera
I took a cell phone video of her taking money from the safe and putting it in her wallet. I knew she was doing it, and I also knew that the moment it came out that money was missing she'd blame it on me. She was so stupid that she didn't realize she should stop doing that while I was standing ten feet away with my phone out and facing her.
3. Should Have Focused on Your Own To-Do List
man standing beside wall
Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash
The CEO publicly praised me for completing a task that my boss had struggled with, so my boss retaliated by forwarding all of his tasks to me in an effort to overwhelm me with work. I actually found his job pretty manageable, which the CEO also noticed and fired him, giving me his job and office.
4. Headcase at the Head of It
I was working maintenance at an ice rink. The rule for anyone who knows how an ice rink works is if the Zamboni doors open, you get the heck off the ice. Some jerk decided to ignore the fact that they were open, and that I was standing in the doorway, and decided to rip off one last slapshot. The puck bounced off the glass and hit me in the head. I was okay, but reported it to my boss, because we have to fill out an incident report for things like that.
The boss asked, "Are you okay?" I said I feel okay, then he responded with "Well, we don't really have to report it then do we?" I reminded him of the protocol, but it was clear he didn't want to do it. Since he wouldn't do it, I sent a descriptive email of the incident up to the administration, because I felt there should be some sort of documentation/paper trail, in case, god-forbid, I ended up having a brain hemorrhage or something a few days later. The boss was fired by my next shift.
5. Uhh, What?
When I was being fired, I told management the manager had said he wanted to off his ex-wife and her new boyfriend to orphan their child. He was fired shortly after and the authorities showed up to take him out of the building.
6. The Fall of a Drama Queen
a woman wearing glasses
Photo by Centre for Ageing Better on Unsplash
A tenured faculty member was controlling of the personal lives of members on her "drama team," She made them simulate lewd acts onstage and filmed it. I told the Dean. She was terminated. Saw her around town the other day and safe to say...11 years later...she still HATES me.
7. Dishonorable Discharge
My (former) immediate supervisor in the Armed Forces was a misogynistic jerk who just so happened to also enjoy occasionally harassing me for fun. He would discreetly touch me in front of everyone to see if I dared say anything back, so he could then berate me for "giving him attitude.” The breaking point was when he grabbed my hand and forced me to touch him during a pat-down. Moved on to a new unit, reported him. Turns out there were 7 other women with similar experiences—as there always are. He gone.
8. Not Moved by His Excuse
Our executive director was moving and took my practicum student and a low-level employee to his house to help him move furniture. I told him that was unacceptable, both from a respect and a liability perspective. His response to me was, “You know since I hired you, I can fire you, right?” I told him to go ahead and try it, then promptly called our board, who dismissed him that week.
9. Bad Grief
man in green shirt and blue knit cap sitting on floor
Photo by Mulyadi on Unsplash
I phoned him to tell him I won't be at work for the rest of the week as my mum is terminally ill in hospital. The next day (about an hour after she passed), he phoned and asked why I wasn't at work. I just hung up on him so I wouldn't say anything that would get me in trouble.
The next day I sent the area-manager a WhatsApp message explaining what he'd be done and attached a video of him breaking the freezer door while having a tantrum which cost the store nearly £5000 in lost stock and the repair costs (which he'd told the AM had broke on its own). He got fired that day and I got two weeks off with full pay.
10. My Boss is a Heartbreaker
I had a doctor that constantly ignored patients in serious pain. He thought all of them were faking it to get pain killers. After a senior director at Microsoft had a heart attack in our ER that he refused to do an EKG on, and the guy didn't make it, I went to management and told them what I had seen.
11. Take a Mile in My Shoes
I was fired because I "abandoned my job" while on short-term disability, even though I was on approved leave. They made a date for me to return, never informed me (by their own admission), and when I obviously didn't return to work...I was fired. The locker I had at work had my work boots in it that the company pays $90 a year towards.
However, there isn't a pair under $100 available. So, you always end up having some come out of your paycheck. At that point, they are yours regardless of the company line. They disagreed and said they were thrown out, I reported them stolen, and the HR director responsible for getting me fired was fired.
12. Higher Learning for Somebody
two men sitting in front of a laptop computer
Photo by Flipsnack on Unsplash
About 15 years ago, I worked at a major university in the IT department. After I was hired, it took me a couple of months to realize my boss was a sociopath, as was his #2 guy. Once I realized what I was dealing with, I just tried to keep my head down because I didn't want to job hop so soon after leaving my last job. But they made that impossible.
We had a database administrator and I was interested in becoming a DBA so I talked to him a lot about what I should do to transition from a programmer to a DBA. The VP of IT, my boss’s boss, would stop by and talk to me and ask me about my aspirations, so I told her about wanting to be a DBA and that I was actually taking night classes so I could.
This was a woman who my boss referred to as "she who must be obeyed" in a totally disrespectful manner. As the months went on, I saw more and more egregious behavior by my boss and his #2 toady. We had a large corporation consulting on transition to their database. This included a young guy who was doing the database install including ordering the right equipment and migrating the data.
We also had student workers in our department. They were students who worked part-time hours. One of these was a young woman. The big corp young guy and the young woman started going to lunch together. Apparently, this was offensive to my boss, who threatened both of them with termination for "fraternization.” The university had no such rule, my boss was just making it up as he went.
About six months after I was hired, the DBA quit. I went into our weekly staff meeting and at the end, my boss announces that I'd been promoted to DBA. My spidey-senses were tingling because of his tone of voice and because this was the first, I was hearing about it. After the meeting, I went to his office to thank him and tell him I really appreciated the chance.
He was very angry. Apparently, his boss had made him promote me. I had no idea. The next thing I know, I'm being called into my boss's #2 guy's office. He tells me that performance reviews were coming up and I would have to be reviewed on job description of DBA rather than the job description of my old position. That is, unless I turned down the DBA position.
Yep, he was threatening me to get me to turn down the promotion. I asked him to see the written description of my old position as well as the one for DBA. He couldn't give them to me because they didn't exist. Now, I can be a pretty stubborn gal, and this really made me mad. I didn't do anything wrong and now my job was being threatened.
Part of my job duties during the six months of my employment involved working with the head of every department of the university, including the law department. I had a good working relationship with every head of every department. So, I made an appointment with the university's head counsel. I explained the situation to him including my boss's boss making him promote me and my boss threatening me with my performance review.
I told him that, although I was studying to be a DBA, I was really not qualified to be one without some hard work and if the university didn't want me to take the position, I would absolutely turn it down. I also mentioned my boss's nickname for his boss, and the issue with the student worker and the big corp guy. Apparently, the student worker had already filed a harassment complaint, so the head counsel knew about it.
He told me I had been promoted by someone (boss's boss) who had every right to promote me and I should not worry about anything. He said if my boss gave me any more trouble that I should let him know. A week later, my boss and his #2 toady were fired. My boss ended up working at a small city college and is there to this day. I pity his employees. I left the university about two years later and had a successful career as a DBA.
13. Not Tickled to Work With You
In college, I worked in a take-out restaurant just off campus, and we were all employed by the school. I was 17-18 years old (back in 2007/2008) and my boss, the manager, was a 40-something creeper. Hitting on me, touching me inappropriately (trying to massage my shoulders, tickling me, putting his hands on/around my waist) despite me asking him to stop.
Then he friended me on Facebook, I declined, and suddenly my work schedule was changed. I was on shift during hours when I had class, and when I explained that problem, I got taken off the schedule altogether. I told the assistant manager what was going on (which I was explicitly told by the manager not to talk to the assistant) and he reported what was going on to upper management—boom, the manager was fired. I worried for a while if he was going to come after me for that.
14. Big Boss is Watching You…for Now
My manager wanted to prove I was slacking off so he could write me up. So, he watched CCTV footage then wrote, printed out, and SIGNED a detailed 17-page Word document what I did in the past two days. With timestamps (like, 07:59 arriving, 08:01 speaking with co-worker A and B, 08:07 sitting down to my desk, etc.). He told me that he's not happy with my work ethics, and if I won't improve my efficiency, I'm fired.
I took the papers and showed to his boss and told her that I'm not happy with my manager’s work ethics and his efficiency might be better if he wouldn't watch 17 hours of CCTV footage to spy on an employee. She was terrified (it would've been a rock-solid lawsuit for me, but I love my job) and we had to search for a new manager. Also, I got a raise.
15. A Matter of Life and Employment
white and black microscope on white surface
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
I worked at a facility that manufactured medical devices, mainly catheters. One day, a work order came in and my manager came into the clean room to hand me the work order and to enter in the order specs (things like dip speed, dwell time, extraction speed and cure time) for the production run. Entering in the specs is literally the one thing I wasn't allowed to do.
That had to be done by a supervisor or the manager. After he leaves, just for the heck of it, I double check the specs before I start the test run. The specs were off. Like, WAY off. I call the manager who literally just entered them in and asked him if he knew something I didn't and if he wanted me to correct them. He vehemently told me to leave the specs as is and run the machine as per his specs.
I ask for his reasoning (something I don't normally do, but I had a funny feeling) and all he said was, "They won't know the difference." Now, considering these catheters go INSIDE of people and can cause serious injury if they are faulty, I call up the production manager and tell him what’s going down. He's on the phone for less than ten seconds, and all he tells me is to stop production and to hang out.
Cool, I hadn't even started so I left the clean room and took a break. Not even five minutes later I hear some yelling, a door slam, and the production manager goes into the clean room to enter the specs into the machine and has me verify the specs right in front of him. He turns to me and says, "If this ever happens again, with anyone, let me know. Personally."
They put him on suspension and sent him home. They started an investigation, (there's a ton of paperwork and lots of paper trails when it comes to medical devices) and it turns out he had been fudging the numbers for a solid month and not with just this customer. The company that had been ordering the products threw a fit, and said they would find another manufacturing company if you don't fire the guy (my boss) immediately.
It was a multimillion-dollar contract at risk, so he was gone after the week-long investigation. All I got was a measly handshake and thanks from the owner of the company. In short: the boss was knowingly fudging the specs on medical device manufacturing. I found out, told his boss, he got fired.
16. Freelancer’s Choice
I took a phone call on my cell when at my desk. Middle manager came up and screamed at me. Yelling about how I was not allowed to take calls for clients while at that office. I was a contractor and made it perfectly clear that I did work for multiple clients prior to doing work for this company. The CTO’s office was 10 feet from mine. He came out and stood in his doorway listening to the rant.
When the middle manager was done, I just looked over at the CTO and said: “it’s him or me and at the moment I don’t give a hoot which you pick.” CTO walked the middle manager out right then. Funny thing: I didn’t hang up throughout the incident. And it was my wife on the other end. I was spending about 70 hours a week at their site digging their staff out of a hole they had dug themselves in.
17. In Bed With The Enemy
I’ve told this story a few times before, so I’ll keep it short. I didn’t get my boss fired, but she blames me. Boss and I didn’t get along, but she didn’t have the authority to fire me. But she promised her boyfriend my job. So, she hires her boyfriend in another position, with the plan they’ll drive me to quit, and then she can just promote him to my job. This lasted for about a month.
She fired him when they broke up. He confessed their scheme to me on his way out (we’d actually become friends at this point), and I tell him he should really tell HR. HR does their investigation, she’s fired because “sleep with me and I’ll give you a job” is textbook harassment. And she tells anyone who’ll listen that it’s all my fault because I didn’t quit like I was supposed to.
18. Skimming Off the Top
person holding a white and brown cake
Photo by LikeMeat on Unsplash
Not me, but my GF at the time. We were both working at a small burrito chain, she was front of house manager and I was kitchen manager. Above us was one senior manager and then the owner. We did tip pooling based on hours, and the senior manager always told my GF not to count the tips every night, as he divided it up at the end of the week.
Well. Of course, she counted them every night. Turns out the senior manager was stealing almost $500 a week from employees in tips, and because his previous FOH manager never questioned him it had likely been going on for years. She told the owners and he was gone the next day. A week later his wife left him.
19. The Fall of an Empire
Public agency hires someone out of the private industry at the vice president level. She immediately begins hiring all her cronies and butt-kissers from her old job at very nice salaries for jobs that didn't previously exist. That's the sort of corruption we're used to in North Carolina, so no biggie so far. But she runs out of slots she can just create with a little paperwork so she starts to harass people in order to get them to quit so she can fill their jobs with her friends.
One job was that of an executive assistant, and she was pretty harsh on the woman who had that job. I witnessed some of this and told the assistant to take it to HR—which she did, and HR just told her to document everything. So, she did and one day the VP caught her recording a yell-fest on her phone. The VP wanted to know what was up, so the exec assistant told her that HR wanted documentation and that I had told her how to record conversations on a cell phone (which was OK, BTW, I checked).
So, she yells at the exec assistant, yells at me, and then gets on the phone to HR, yelling at them that they were a bunch of incompetent fools, and that she wanted to know what kinda Mickey Mouse outfit she was working for if she couldn't fire whoever the heck she wanted to fire. Sure enough, HR initiates an investigation that took 300 hours (!!) of interviews with everyone in the department and a board of inquiry headed up by a Senior VP.
She was called to the Senior VP’s office at 4:30 in the afternoon and when we came to work at 8 the next morning, her office was cleared out. Most of the cronies she hired were gone with a couple of months; no one wanted to work with them so with no projects on their docket, they knew the writing was on the wall. When the last of the cronies left, her job was eliminated, and her staff transferred elsewhere. It was like the evil VP and her mob never existed.
20. Don’t Wake Sleeping Beauty
It was the night shift, and for years this freaking guy had been either locking himself in the office and playing video games all night, or going home and freaking sleeping on the clock…and no, I'm not making that up. Finally, one night, the regional manager showed up for a surprise visit at like 3AM...it was a group effort, the night crew took great pleasure in telling the RM exactly where his night manager was.
21. They Don’t Teach Manners in Management School
man sitting on couch while smiling
Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash
He'd show up every day and tell us a tale of his bedroom exploits. Whether true or not, none of us wanted to hear it. If an attractive looking female came in, he drops what he's doing and stares at her, drooling like a dog in a dog treat factory. After she leaves, he had to say a comment about her appearance. After talking on the phone with a certain manager, he always comments on how nice her bum is.
He'd be so awful to us employees and other managers. Called us bitches a lot despite us getting onto him for it. My female coworkers reported him. We all had a phone meeting with our district manager and HR. He was suspended until the investigation was over and they ruled to terminate him. Surprisingly HR worked for us that day.
22. PowerPoint or Power Don’t?
He was presenting a PowerPoint that I had put together to all the managers in the building. There was something he wanted to add at the last minute that he had never told me about, and when it wasn't there, he screamed at me for like 5 minutes straight. Yelling, name-calling, telling me to prove to him that I had a college degree and wasn't just making it up.
I was a contractor, so I was afraid to complain to HR because I assumed, they'd just fire me, but a lot of other people in the room did. After the meeting, I went into the share drive folder to find the presentation notes where the extra information was supposedly located. I watched the last changed time change from a day ago to the current time, then he immediately called and said it was right there in the notes file. He was fired the next day for unprofessional behavior.
23. Falling Down the Ladder
Not fired but demoted. I got fired and explained in my exit interview how the reason I wasn’t making progress on my project is that I had no idea what I was doing. I was never trained, my work-from-home boss in another location took off for 4 hours a day to run errands and go to the gym, etc. etc. They checked my story out and ended up demoting my boss, taking her off the project, and taking away all her direct reports.
24. Deep Fried and Fired
a square metal container filled with onion rings
Photo by Tal Molcho on Unsplash
I had a very old, by-the-book manager when I worked fast food. She would always criticize people for not doing their jobs 100% correctly and she often insulted employees. One time while I was on fry duty, I purposefully pulled the fries out a few seconds early and made sure a second manager was watching. She came up to me and said: "I told you before, take the fries out AS SOON AS THEY ARE DONE!! Next time, I'll dip your head in the fryer." The other manager saw, and more people commented on her behavior and she was gone the next day.
25. Not Too Old to Avoiding a Schooling
My wife and I worked at a level-four elderly facility on a part-time basis for four years. It was easy, we loved the clients, very low stress, etc. What we didn't know was the administrator was in a time card scam involving herself and several other people there. Other than some minor theft, she was a fantastic boss. They brought in this mousy little number cruncher as her replacement.
Soon after, the place went bad. The woman had no clue how to run a human services job and we all know we'd be out and fast. Soon enough, I got called in on a random day off to have a "meeting" and I knew I was going in to get canned. Taking the lead from a Dirty Harry movie, I stuffed a bunch of papers into a large envelope and was on my way.
She's waiting for me with the town board behind her, all ready to send my puny butt home...but it didn't go that way. I told the board president that I had personally witnessed and documented enough misdoings at the place that her not being busted for elder abuse would be a miracle. Not to mention she was having an affair with the cook. The woman turned the color of old parchment as I listed the places I was going with this information. I was let go, she was too, about a week later and the entire staff was replaced.
26. Bad Teamwork Dies Hard…With a Vengeance
About 13-14 years ago, I was working as a web designer for a dot-com. In our immediate group were a creative director, a creative manager, and two of us who were designers. We were all part of the marketing department. The creative director was a joke. He was brought in by the previous VP of Marketing, who he was friends with.
He hardly did any work himself, and just played online poker waiting on us to send him things for approval. And he'd never stick around late when the rest of us needed to stay late to hit a deadline or deal with a crisis, etc. The creative manager, who'd been in charge for a couple of years before the creative director's hiring, still ran the day-to-day.
So, the creative manager gave his notice that he'd accepted a new job, and when I met with the current VP of marketing to discuss transition, I mentioned that the creative director would need to step up and pull his weight. I guess a similar message was expressed by a number of people, and less than a week after the creative manager's last day the creative director was fired!
This kind of sucked because we went down from 4 to 2 people in our group. I was appointed acting creative manager, and we eventually did hire one more designer. I left the company a couple of months later, too, after the latest VP of Marketing was let go and there was going to be a 10th different person overseeing marketing in my 5 years there. And the jerk creative director?
He'd reached out at some point (looking for files for his portfolio, I think?), and it happened to be in the two-week window where I'd accepted my next job but hadn't yet started so I mentioned my new position. Well, he fires off a copy of his resume to the company president and tried to poach my new job out from under me! On my first day at the new job, the president mentioned that somebody else from that same company also applied for the job and forwarded me the application email to see if I knew him... saw that the date was after he and I had last communicated!
27. Who Protects Us from the Protectors?
boy doing karate routines during golden hour
Photo by Thao LEE on Unsplash
So, this boss wasn't terrible until we found out what he was doing. I actually used to like him a lot more than my main boss. In high school, I worked as a martial arts instructor. A lot of my friends went to this martial arts school and not actually my high school, so I was very close to them. One of my friends happen to be 3 years older than me so when I was 16, she was 19.
One of our bosses (not the owner of the school but second in command) was an older man who was a retired law enforcement officer. Typically, my friend who was 19 would work the desk after teaching and close up the school at the end of the night (mop, vacuum, etc.) Typically that late, the only people there was our male boss and her.
Obviously, you can see where this is going...bottom line a few of us helped her get proof he was harassing her to get him fired because our main boss (older woman) didn't believe her and accused her of starting trouble. Well, it turns out he had actually done this to many other people who had never reported it and went off to college/quit, but he only ever did it to people who were legally of age (17+).
He was fired and banned from the property, but that was the extent of his punishment. He actually opened his own martial arts school a few years later, so I'm sure nothing has changed. Honestly, this whole situation made me really sad and kinda ruined my whole view of my school but unfortunately my area has a lot of small tight-knit communities, so I know many teachers (regular school) who did inappropriate things (slept with student, struck a child, etc.) never got in trouble and were just asked to resign quietly.
Not even fired. Most of these teachers went off to other larger schools in the area, got caught but this time got punished.
28. Keep the Mind Games to the Field
Not a boss, but someone I worked with was pretty terrible. At my job, we are not supposed to have relationships with the athletes we treat because of HIPAA, also because our bosses didn't want employees who were there to date athletes and get the cool free gear and travel with the team. We were there to be an athletic trainer, nothing else.
So, this employee was there for all the wrong reasons and decided that she despised me because my boss chose me to travel and not her. Her course of action was then to talk to athletes, ask them to spread rumors about me so it would get back to my bosses and get me fired. Unfortunately for her, most of the athletes respected me, told me what was happening, and I reported her to my boss. Since this wasn't the first time that she had singled someone out like this, she was fired.
29. Telephone Game
Paranoid, sociopath boss wiretapped all internal phone calls and made life miserable for all who worked in that department. After moving over 1200 miles to the job location, called wife frequently to discuss the job and family progress in moving there. During those calls, I spun a story about how all of his top managers were plotting against him, which enraged him, and he took out his anger on them. Eventually they went to the company owner and complained, and he was fired the next day.
30. Not Here to Play Games
white Sony PS4 DualShock controller over person's palm
Photo by Nikita Kachanovsky on Unsplash
I used to work at a video game store (I'm sure you can figure out which one) as an assistant manager. A few months after I was hired, I was moved to a different location. The manager there was the laziest jerk I've ever met. When I got there, the store was a mess. The game cases were supposed to be displayed on the wall alphabetically—none were.
The accessories were supposed to be arranged according to system—everything was mixed together. It was nearly impossible to find anything in that store. And the store itself was tiny. Besides not cleaning and organizing, this guy just did nothing. He would spend his shift in the minuscule back room "organizing". He would take a 1-2 hour lunch break almost every day, then go in and change his time sheet to show that he was only gone for 30 minutes.
Granted, the store was slow as heck, but still. I got tired of his BS after a couple of weeks, so I went to the district manager with my concerns. He and the regional manager had me keep tabs on him for a while (noting when he'd leave for his break and when he'd come back). Then, when they had enough evidence, they fired him. I don't know if there were things going on behind the scenes that I wasn't privy to, but I would guess probably.
31. Not Worth the Sum of His Car Parts
He was stealing $5,000 in parts for his personal cars. He also was turning customers into cash jobs for a discount and then pocketing about half the money. I went to HR asked the proper way to report theft. I followed what HR has said, and then we were both fired. The best thing that ever happened to me.
32. A Hard Lesson in Bad Leadership
My first-grade teacher smacked me across the face for not memorizing hot cross buns. The smack hurt for sure, but having it done in front of a full class hurt more. I told the principal. We had a sub the rest of the year.
33. I’m Not Lovin’ It
a mcdonald's restaurant is lit up at night
Photo by Visual Karsa on Unsplash
Worked at a McDonald's in high school at 17. I was being harassed by a co-worker twice my age. He said some really awful stuff to me that made me afraid to come to work. They refused to switch my shifts. They also were working me too much for being under 18 and tried to get me to sign a consent form saying I knew I'd be working the hours I was, when I constantly asked for different hours.
I called the corporate offices and told them. My parents even got a lawyer involved. I quit and a few weeks later a co-worker I went to school with said two of the shift managers, the supervisor, and the store manager were all fired and barred from working with the company again. They brought in a few temporary people who were high up and ended up sniffing out the other bad employees.
34. Gaydar Has No Place in the Office
She asked me if I was gay, and had apparently started telling people I was. Then she asked why I didn’t hit on her or if I found her attractive. I really didn’t intend to get her fired. I just told her boss it kind of put me in a weird situation as I was new. I really think she just needed some education on that type of thing as it was at a hospital, and there wasn’t much training for management.
35. The Ultimate Strike-Out
Our general manager just quit yesterday before getting fired. We had a bowling party on Sunday, and he came loaded as could be. I feel bad because he is going through a divorce, but he hit on so many of the female employees there. One was 19, and he offered to buy her a car if she went home with him.
36. Sick of the Staff
two men standing beside shelves
Photo by Christian Burri on Unsplash
Me and a friend both worked at a small neighborhood shop. The store was always short-staffed. The manager would call me or my buddy and demand we come in for a shift on days we weren't scheduled. This happened very often. My buddy got diagnosed with leukemia and had to quit. Less than a week later they "forgot" to pay me. When the manager called me into work (a shift I wasn't scheduled for) I said I would only come in if they paid me what I was owed.
The manager said I was being "difficult" and "immature" and fired me over the phone. The owner got so mad at the manager for firing one of their only employees, he fired her. In the span of a week, they lost over half of their workforce. I went into the store the next week to pick up my final pay cheques, the owner (who was forced to work behind the till at this point) offered me my job back with a $0.25/hr raise. I said no.
37. There’s No Secret to Safety
I got handed a complete mess of paperwork that OSHA requires that hadn't been done in years and was told to forge whatever wasn't there. I sent that email to OSHA with a handful of stuff that was missing that they should ask for when they came. He only made it a couple of days after they came in to review the complaint.
38. Exit, Pursued by a Boss
I left my last company due to a jerk of a general manager. Many people were leaving over him causing problems, doing things people could easily sue them for, claiming harassment. The list goes on. Everyone informed HR during their exit interviews. Hell, he even tried to make my exit interview not happen. Though they still weren't doing anything.
I had been at my new job for a couple of months now and was STILL getting complaints from my old team almost daily. So, I made an email account. Sent an email to EVERYONE who had an email account within the company explaining what he did/still did with events spanning from his start to the day prior. They fired him within the week and my old crew thanked me.
39. Didn’t Sign Up for Homework
a camera mounted to the side of a wall
Photo by James Yarema on Unsplash
My boss would show up at my house after work hours to discuss work stuff. When I asked him to stop, he tried to fire me. When at the HR meeting the following day, I explained my story and showed them the video from my door camera. They literally go "John (bosses name), we've talked about this" and asked me to leave. Two hours later he walks out and announces that he's leaving.
40. Out with the Old
My direct supervisor, Linda, was a cantankerous older woman with poor education and even worse people skills. About 3 months after I started, I got her so pissed off, just by doing my job, that she cursed me out, got up from her desk and quit. I don't even remember what I said that set her off. I probably asked her if she was done with her half of something that I needed in order to finish my half, and became exasperated when she wasn't, because she'd been farting around all morning.
It was a common occurrence. After Linda walked out, our boss refused to hire her back when she begged (even though she'd been there something like 15 years), because "her attitude was so terrible, and she'd become such a toxic, pathetic excuse for a human being." I got a pretty solid raise, most of Linda's tasks (our boss was not unkind and took over some things herself, while giving me more practical things that I enjoyed doing), and even though my car was fine, she'd always have me drive her car to go make coffee runs, deposit checks, run errands, etc.
It was a Toyota Solara convertible, and she'd tell me to take the top down and have fun. I liked that job, I learned quite a bit, and if I hadn't found something closer to home, for even more money, I probably would've been there quite a while.
41. Screw Me Twice, Shame on You
Our desks were separated by a 5-foot cubicle wall. He was under the mistaken impression that it totally blocked sound. Thus, I got to hear all his loud phone conversations, primarily his booty calls including those with his boss's fiancé. I figured it was none of my business and tried to ignore it. Well, there was a position in another department that I was interested in and as per procedure, I handed in an application to my talkative boss.
I didn't hear anything further and followed up a couple of days later, only to be told that something must have happened to the application. I filled out another one and handed it in. As I return to my desk, I hear the boss on the phone with a friend laughing about how he had just trashed my application again and how he was never going to let go of me.
I go to my boss's boss and angrily offer my resignation, telling him what I had just overheard, explaining that I was constantly hearing his phone calls like his booty calls like with and and . He got very quiet and told me to go back to my desk and he'll take care of everything. The next day I come in and boss is gone.
The day after, I have an interview with the other department (got the position). I tend to avoid office drama, but really, he should have stuck to screwing his boss's fiancé, and not tried to screw me as well.
42. The Higher They Creep, The Harder They Fall
two bullet surveillance cameras attached on wall
Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash
It was my supervisor. It got to the point that I had decided to quit. I had my resignation letter in my purse but decided to let his boss know why I was quitting. The supervisor would talk about all the people on our team constantly, but only behind their backs. I got so sick of telling him to cut it out. My husband and I happened to work at the same place (different departments) and my supervisor would make comments about threesomes (with him, ewww), what hotel we picked for our afternoon delight, stuff like that.
It was so bloody uncomfortable. Apart from this, he spent most of his supervising time outside taking "breaks." The problem was that the supervisor was "one of the guys" and I was the only girl. Turns out his boss was disgusted, told his boss who lost his mind. They started an investigation which took three days. They interviewed staff—they corroborated what I said.
They checked the security cameras and saw he was spending most of his workday outside. And was fired. When he was told he guessed (wasn't hard!) that I was the person who complained and tried to get to me to "apologize that I took it the wrong way.” The best feeling was my coworkers surrounding me as he was walked out. That was a lovely ending to it all.
When we're intoxicated, or even the slightest bit tipsy from having a little too much to drink, our immediate perspective on things is hazy.
But there's nothing like a bit of alarming news or a jarring incident to snap us out of the fog and focus on the moment.
Sometimes alcohol isn't always to blame for our impairment.
It can be a state of mind, like a perpetual numbness from being complacent in life, and all it takes is one shocking moment to rattle us back to our senses.
Curious to hear from strangers online about this type of scenario, Redditor Known_Challenge_7150 asked:
"What’s one thing that sobered you up real quick?"
These individuals were witness to shocking events that sobered them up right quick.
Bleeding Out
"Got out of a taxi and found a naked man profusely bleeding from his head crawling up the driveway in my condo. Called him an ambulance completely forgot I was absolutely wasted until 45 minutes later when I'd helped him translate and in to an amublance and stepped in my front door."
"Later a few days later learned he'd slipped in the tub and literally crawled out for help. Poor dude. He was fine but I genuinely thought he was going to die there."
– DongLaiCha
Tragic News
"At a bachelor party and we got a phone call that the groom’s father had suddenly passed."
– accountnameredacted
Bottom Of The Barrel
"I went to visit my parents back in July. I was homeless and deep into fentanyl addiction so I lost a lot of weight. My folks could see it. They knew something was up. Anyway, I spent the night and I was getting ready to leave in the morning and I looked at myself in the mirror for a good long time. I finally had enough and told them everything. They took me to detox, from there I went to rehab. Graduated in August and been living with them ever since then. I have 160 days clean and sober."
– Crotch-Monster
A reality check can be enough for some people to snap out of it.
Like Father, Like Son
"Was driving a drunk friend home, he had been on a bender again and was smart enough to call me for a lift rather than try and drive. As I helped in to his house his mother came down the stairs and said 'your as drunk as your father' and went back upstairs. I haven't seen him drunk since then, he still drinks but the thought of turning into his dad scared him out of hard drinking."
– psycospaz
Busted
"Flashing blue lights."
– FiddleOfGold
"This sobered me up just thinking about it."
– redmaple_syrup
Losing Sight
"Woke up to no sight in one eye. I had cataract surgery so just thought one of the lenses had slipped and it was an easy fix. Eye doc says nope, you had a stroke. I loved soy sauce, teriyaki sauce and salty food, which caused high blood pressure, which caused retina damage. Over six months was able to get most of my eyesight back with medication, and all back within a year. Trying to navigate life with one eye was very sobering. Started taking HBP much more seriously."
– MissHibernia
Quitting The Bottle
"Looked up someone I went to highschool with who was an awesome guy. Found out he had been dead for 3 years from alcoholism, at age 33. I made an overnight change. I hadn't started drinking that night yet, 10 months ago. Haven't touched it again since."
– omgtater
These disturbing moments were enough for Redditors to immediately come to their senses.
Unplanned House Guests
"Me and a buddy Woke up in someone’s living room, realized neither one of us knew the people, they were just nice and let 2 drunk guys sleep on their living room floor. We didn’t even say goodbye."
– Oneinsevenbillion75
Serious Health Warning
"Elevated liver enzymes."
"And the knowledge that this sh** was gonna kill me and I just couldn't orphan my family over it."
"So I opted for recovery, instead."
"Clean and sober since June 5, 2009."
– Far_Meal8674
The Joyride
"Grew up in a rural area. The little town hosted dances at the hockey arena, everyone (adults and kids) went and they overserved everyone, regardless of age. I was maybe 16 or 17 and was absolutely sh*tfaced, and jumped in the back of someone's truck with about 8 other people to go back to someone's cottage for after dance drinking. The driver (still don't know who it was) started racing one of his buddies and we whipped around small dirt roads, flying around blind corners on the wrong side of the road, going god knows how fast. It was basically a disaster waiting to happen. It was crazy scary and I was sober and thankful to be alive when we finally arrived."
– foxfood9116
The human psyche is a fascinating thing, isn't it?
How we can automatically focus on something urgent at a crucial time, even after getting buzzed from drinking too much alcohol.
But as we're in the thick of the holidays, it's a good reminder to drink responsibly and stay off the roads if you drive to your celebratory destination.
Cheers. Stay safe. And happy holidays.
We've all complained or vented about something in our lives which, in the grand scheme of things, wasn't exactly a problem, or is very easily solved.
Then there are those who complain about things that others almost hope will happen to them at some point in their lives.
These are known as "first world problems", as they are problems that pretty much only the world's one percent faces.
From having to fly business class instead of first class, or being served Roederer instead of Dom Pérignon, these complaints are often met with amusement, bewilderment, or even anger.
Redditor jennimackenzie was curious to hear the most absurd "first world problems" anyone ever complained about, leading them to ask:
"What’s the most ridiculous 'first world problem' you’ve seen people get worked up over?"
"Tale As Old As Time..."
"I once knew a mom who was legitimately devastated, to the point of tears/grief, because a doctor predicted her 8 year old daughter's final height to be around 5'2","
"Which wasn't tall enough to get cast as Belle at Disney World."
"That was the child's (and her mother's) only dream in life, apparently."
"Didn't appreciate my suggestion that she could be Minnie or Mickey."
"Lol!"
"Only a face character would do!"- TravelLovingMom
"Must Be Funny, In A Rich Man's World..."
"My boss from about a decade ago was this insanely rich dude who always went to the bank to get fresh and crisp currency."
"He'd call the bank in advance to make sure they had some on hand."
"I think he was a germaphobe."
"He had a trash can that he'd throw $1 and $5 bills in that he thought was 'dirty' and regularly just donated it vs spending it."
"I asked him why he did this and he said it was too much trouble and asked if I wanted it."
"I said f*ck yeah dumped it into my bag and when I got home it was close to $400 in singles and fives.
"Another time, he wanted to upgrade all the computers in his studio, so we went to a store and bought 10 PCs."
"They all had $150 mail in rebates and he wasn't bothered to go through the trouble of mailing them in."
"3 weeks later I received $1500 after spending a whole afternoon filling out all those goddamn forms."- azninvasion2000
Money Burn GIF by nog
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Who Wore It Better?
"When I was about 19 years old, I was at my boyfriends family BBQ."
"I was wearing this pretty floral sundress."
"His cousins girlfriend showed up in the same dress and she was SO mad that she went and changed."
"I will never understand being upset when someone is wearing the same thing as you.'
"Did you really think that your shirt you bought off the rack is going to be unique to you?"
"No."- mertsey627
Seeing Red! Or Blue In This Case...
"The blue of the balloons wasn't quite the same as the bridesmaid's sashes."
"Years ago my wife and I attended a wedding."
"It was very low key."
"The dinner was in the dining hall at the university where the couple met, cinder block walls and all."
"It was a Baptist wedding - no booze and very serious."
"The dark blue balloons attempting to liven up the hall were a slightly darker shade of blue than the sashes on the bridesmaid's dresses."
"The bride lost here sh*t and absolutely raved for nearly an hour."
"I can't remember how they finally managed to talk her down."- mechant_papa
south park wedding GIF
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See You In Court!
"Rich neighbors who end up in expensive court battles because they disagree about where a tree can be planted or whether the color of a fence fits in with the street’s 'amenity'."
'These disputes get really heated and rack up huge lawyers’ bills."
"The most pathetic part is after the judgement when they are arguing about who should pay the other party’s costs."
"Lots of affidavits filed citing the 'emotional distress' they had to endure, or painting themselves as brave warriors who were forced to take a stand to fight for 'justice'."
"Also lots of pompous litigants insisting that the judge refer to them by their 'Dr' title."
"An absolutely insane dumpster fire of entitled rich people problems."- ElectrocRaisin
It's Always People With Money Who Don't Want To Pay!
"I work in a public library."
"People will get so so mad if they have to be put on a wait list for a book."
"A popular book that just came out."
"Ok our services are not only free but so are the books."
"You’re welcome, a**holes."- Switchbladekitten
A Warm Butt Is A Happy Butt!
"My own."
"We have a bidet toilet seat (Fabulous! Everyone should have one!) and not only does it wash your bum and blow dry it, but the seat's heated!"
"It's shocking how much a heated toilet seat makes the whole process more agreeable."
"Except: We had a power outage and I went to use the toilet and the seat was cold!"
"Unacceptable!"
"This shall not stand!"
"I was really upset because it didn't feel good."
"Then I stopped and thought: This is the most first-world problem anyone's ever had."
"I was really pissed because my heiny was tepid."
"I got over it."- DeathGrover
homer simpson episode 23 GIF
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Holy Matrimony!
"Weddings are a gold mine for this question."
"People get so hyped up over their 'most important day of their life'."
"They'll destroy friendships, go into debt, and have crazy expectations."
"It's not always the couple who go crazy, either."
"Sometimes, it's the parents or another family member who feels entitled to control the wedding."
"It's just a party."
"Be considerate of guests, have plenty of food and drinks, and enjoy it."- magicrowantree
When Fast Food Isn't Fast Enough...
"Having to pull off to the side to wait for a drive-thru order to be brought out to you because your food isn't ready and there's a line building up behind you."- demanbmore
In Case You Don't Think Customer Service Employees Are Undervalued...
"I was working the return desk at a Target next to a military base so I have so many stories."
"One of my favorites was a lady who had her baby shower before revealing the gender and was livid that she had received floral newborn diapers when she’s having a boy."
"It was a huge box of super expensive, all organic diapers, that we didn’t carry and therefore could not return."
"I cannot accurately express her fury and disgust."
"How dare either suggest her boy could wear feminine diapers."
"I suggested she donate them if she didn’t want to use them and she instead threw away the entire box."
"When she left we pulled it out and threw it in our donate bin."
"There have also been multiple times where mom’s order massive toys and when we bring them out to the car they get furious that they aren’t wrapped."
"We don’t offer wrapping services."
"Here’s the thing, if you don’t want your kids to see the toys you got them for Christmas or their bit to day DON'T BRING THE CHILD WHEN YOU PICK IT UP."
'I’ve had multiple women scream and curse me out that I had ruined their kids Christmas by bringing the toys they ordered out to the car like they requested."- clever-mermaid-mae
Customer Service Waiting GIF by Juno Calypso
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Happiest Place On Earth!
"I used to work for Disney."
"That in itself should tell you everything."
"However for fun I'll give you two specific stories one form our tech department and one from my wife who worked bookings."
"I specifically worked for their call center to help with technical issues with magic band and the website."
"Suddenly got worse huh?"
"A right of passage call everyone has at least one story of is the 'Dome call'."
"Basically there is a subset of Disney Guest (TM) that believes if it rains at Walt Disney world there is someone that will push a button to encapsulate the whole of Disney property in a dome to keep out the rain."
"I'm not kidding."
"If this button is not pushed they call our tech department to angrily ask why."
"My wife worked booking."
"Pretty much everything including Bibbidi Bobbidi boutique and Pirate's league."
"These two things did roughly the same thing difference being price and theme."
"BBB was expensive did more and was focused on princesses, pirates league did a bit less and focused on mermaids and pirates."
"Lady called up my wife, and got pissed about BBB being booked up (It goes FAAAAST)."
"Karen: 'Im going to give the phone to my daughter and I want you to tell her how you are ruining her vacation by not letting her do BBB'."
"Wife proceeds to explain how pirate's league is so much cooler and how she can be a mermaid or pirate and basically gets the kid to start demanding to their parents about how they want to be a mermaid instead of a princess."- trollsong
Disney World GIF
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The horror!
Being booked into a junior suite at Disney World instead of an executive suite!
It's almost as bad as having no money for groceries, or no food to feed you children...
Said absolutely no one.