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The Quickest Ways Someone's Coworker Ever Got Fired

Reddit user mango-chocolate asked: 'What's the quickest way you saw a co-worker get fired?'

We've all made our fair share of mistakes; it's in our nature, honestly.

Sometimes we mess up so badly, it can ruin other things in our lives, like important relationships or our jobs.

But some people have messed up so badly at work that they lost their jobs in record time.

Ready to hear the tea, Redditor mango-chocolate asked:

"What's the quickest way you saw a coworker get fired?"

Check Your Pride

"In my old law office, a firm-wide email was sent out announcing the arrival of a new employee. We will call him Paul."

"So Paul decided to reply-all to let all of us know that he was aware of our recent legal defeats, that many people should be fired for these failures, and that his hiring was the first good thing our firm had done in years."

"The dude was a legal assistant right out of college with no experience."

"A minute after the email went out, I heard a crazy shout and then watched one of the senior partners run past my office towards HR (Human Resources)."

"And five minutes later Paul walked past with the HR manager and a security escort. He lasted less than 45 minutes."

- Left_Apparently

Lotto Fraud

"I worked at a lotteries company. A guy working in testing got access to production data and printed off some test tickets with some unclaimed winning numbers."

"He only did low amounts, like 500 dollars, and claimed three of them in three completely different locations around town."

"Of course, the company was interested in the story of someone who found a six-month-old lottery ticket and claimed it, but they were even more interested to find it was the same person going to three locations."

"Needless to say, when they realized the guy actually worked in the company, he got pulled into a room with cops a-waiting him."

- ThroughTheHoops

Weird Brag

"I worked at a bank, we were robbed at gunpoint. One of the tellers was quick to tweet out, 'Woooo, got the rest of the day off!! Feel free to visit me at work with a gun and ski mask anytime!'"

"They were fired upon walking in the next morning."

- seastrat

Totally Stopped Production

"An id**t pressed the emergency stop for fun on his second day at work."

"The emergency stop that he hit switches off all drives on the 100-meter-long paper machine. This means there is a loss of production for three to four hours for the entire paper mill."

"He was immediately escorted from the factory premises by two colleagues."

- daHawkGR

No Point Taking That Test

"I had a coworker get picked for a random drug test. She went back to her desk to grab her purse, and just left the building, never to return."

- brytewolf

Yes, That's What We Meant

"The boss sat her down to talk about her recent behavior at work."

"She whipped out her phone and started taking a video, saying that it was her right to record for 'when it goes to court.'"

"The boss said, 'Okay, this is the kind of stuff I’m talking about, you’re fired.'"

"This was at a Domino’s Pizza."

- kenb99

New Definition for "Side Hustle"

"Evidently, they robbed a bank on their lunch break."

"They came back like nothing happened, and then the cops showed up and took him down. It was crazy."

- Bob_the_Brewer

Quite the First Impression

"Pulling into the parking lot on the first day, she ran into a light pole that took out electricity to the whole site."

"She wasn't wearing a seat belt and was thrown into the front window."

"When we went out to see what had happened, she reeked of booze and there were empty liquor bottles in the back of the car."

"She never even made it to the front door, got a guest badge, or started her orientation training."

- LowBudgetViking

Haunting Upcharges

"When I was in high school, I used to do seasonal work at haunted houses which I did for four years."

"A new guy that they hired was supposed to help with parking. Now, in the three years that I worked at this haunted house, they never once charged people for parking (it was a very dark parking lot off of a cliff so had to make sure no one drove off of it trying to park)."

"This cheeky son of b***h started charging people five dollars to park."

"It was only found out after someone complained because they didn't have the money to go in with their friends because they had to pay for parking. I think the guy was only there a couple of hours before he got fired."

- rpgmomma8404

Missed the Training

"They got hired and then fell asleep during a meeting their first day and were asked not to come back."

- Snowstorm-3

"Same here. At a tech company, they hired a new developer, and the owner caught him napping at a desk on day one when he was supposed to be reviewing training materials."

"The owner had a chat with him, and told him whatever the reason, it was really bad form to fall asleep on the job on the first day."

"The new hire apologized, understood, and went back to the training materials. Not 20 minutes later, the owner walks by again and the guy is passed out once again, so he walked over, woke him up, and told him he was fired and to get out."

"I don't even think he made it to his fourth hour of employment."

- badtz-maru

Highly Questionable Explorations

"Early in my career I was an engineer at a refinery in the UK, and I was in charge of the QC lab. By law, we had to have external independent testing on the refinery fuel products to confirm they complied with government regulations."

"It seemed getting a job for the testing company was that you had to be an adult and had a driving license. The lab had a lot of very nasty chemicals either being tested or used in the testing or cleaning of the oil products."

"A new young girl turned up for the testing company and was dipping her finger into a chemical called phenol and stating that 'it makes your hand and arm go numb.' Phenol is a severe muscle relaxant (including your heart) and can kill you at very low concentrations."

"One hour into her employment we had paramedics on the scene monitoring her vitals and was released after eight hours. She didn't last the first hour of the first day and the testing company was fined pretty heavily."

- Nerdymcbutthead

AKA: Paid to Advertise

"A guy got hired in the first firm I ever worked for. He turned up for his first morning at work, and within an hour he had emailed the entire company (6,000 people) about his band and their availability for birthdays, weddings, etc."

"He was dismissed by lunchtime."

- BDATriangle001

"So he got paid half a day's wage to advertise his band to 6,000 people?"

"Man's a freaking genius."

- Oakcamp

Not-So-Quiet Quitting

"One day, Tim announced that he wasn’t paid enough and was going to basically sit at his desk doing nothing until he was paid what he wanted."

"20 minutes later, the boss walked in and asked Tim if he could have a word with him."

"Five minutes later, the boss walked back in and announced that Tim no longer worked there and if there were any questions."

"There were no questions."

- Few_Horse4000

Don't Be That Guy

"Interviewed a guy that was replacing someone who was leaving. Offered the job and was supposed to start the next day."

"Just so happened that we were having a going away party for the leaving dude that night so new guy was invited as a chance to 'get to know the team.'"

"The new guy shows up and proceeds to get absolutely s**t-faced and asked the head of HR if she wanted to go back to his place because he 'got a vibe' during the interview process."

"Next day, the new guy was a no-show so we were thinking bullet dodged. He showed up just before lunch clearly hung over making up some excuse for being late."

"The big boss came out and told the guy to get the f**k out."

- tizod

Optional Hours? Optional Employment.

"I fired someone who decided her second day that she was going to go out to lunch and not come back. The next morning she told everyone all about the shopping she did. She seemed confused about the expectations."

- dunwerking

Some of these stories are absolutely worth shaking our heads over, while others are truly shocking.

It's crazy the lengths people will go to in the workplace, despite the expectations that had already been clearly set.

If you view the rules as optional, your boss might view your employment as optional, too.

People Describe The Dumbest Thing They've Seen A Coworker Do On The Job

Reddit user Adrian0091 asked: 'What‘s the dumbest thing you‘ve seen a coworker do on the job?'

woman in black long sleeve shirt using macbook
Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash

When I was in college, I worked at a restaurant as a hostess. Since I previously only babysat and tutored, a restaurant was a whole knew world to me.

Two of the girls who worked the same days as me were the ones to train me. They were a couple of years older than I was and had been working there for a year already, so they had a lot of experience. They not only taught me how to do the job, but gave me a lot of tips to make some of the more tedious tasks easier.

They both seemed like responsible girls, so when I came in the week after my training was over, I was shocked to hear they were both fired. According to a server I'd become friends with, the girls had snuck in some alcohol on what was supposed to be a slow day (it was a Tuesday, which was always our slowest day) and decided to have a "party at the host stand."

They got completely wasted and basically kept tripping as they led guests to their seats, even as they told the guests to watch their step. When one of the girls accidentally poured a milkshake over one guest and had to call a manager to smooth things over, they were caught and fired on the spot. I was cringing at their stupidity!

Apparently, I'm not the only one who has had to deal with co-workers doing something utterly stupid while they were on the job. Redditors have borne witness to this and are eager to share their stories.

It all started when Redditor Adrian0091 asked:

"What‘s the dumbest thing you‘ve seen a coworker do on the job?"

Such A Pretty Display

"I asked one of the new kids to stack the shoe department."

"Easy if but a bit boring. I showed her, stack by brand then size, big at the bottom, small top yeah?"

"She decided to organise it by the color of the boxes instead because it looked prettier."

"Took me hours to fix that mess."

– Lizzy_Of_Galtar

Oooh, Burn! (Quite Literally)

"In high school, working at a Chinese restaurant, was there basically to take orders and bus tables. Another dude I vaguely knew from high school got hired there. Nice, popular dude, but not much common sense. Within his first two weeks, he went to make himself some food (we were allowed to do that to a certain extent), and he dropped some wontons into the deep fryer. When he decided they were done, and as we were having a conversation, he just REACHED HIS HAND into the oil to retrieve it. I don’t think I even reacted for a moment or two, and then rushed forward. He somehow ALSO didn’t react for a moment or two before pulling his hand out and yelling out a cartoon-style “YEEOUCH!”"

"He went to the hospital, and quit the job."

– CwAbandon

Umm...Huh?

"One dude once photocopied a slice of pizza. We found cheese and stuff inside the machine for weeks. Was pretty funny though."

– LinusMeindl

"Inside? Did the idiot put the pizza into the document feeder or something?"

– MechanicalHorse

"How else would you feed the machine pizza."

– andtheIToldYouSos

Spelling

"I saw a tattooist I worked with tattoo "Laugh now cry Ladder" across a guy's chest..."

"He was let go, and a few years later, a guy came in with "Warior" across his upper back in bold letters, wanting it fixed. Same tattooist lol."

– hurrythisup

"Cry me a ladder."

– Deleted User

"Cry me a liver."

– iqtrm

"Crimea river."

– MagicSPA

Yikes!

"Telling the manager on duty, “I’m not the one eating it, so why should I care?” when the manager was trying to explain to her how to correctly prepare a customer’s food."

– 2gecko1983

"Watched a coworker of mine at a Pizza Hut (1976) clean off the food prep counter with a gross floor broom. The kitchen was open, so people at the tables could see the food being made, and someone saw him and yelled out to the other customers, and people started walking out."

"Cleared it out."

"Once the manager figured out what happened, he fired the guy on the spot."

– big_d_usernametaken

Misstep After Misstep

"Admitted to not having spoken to any of the business stakeholders, but instead "made up their own story.""

"This was at the end of what was supposed to have been a four-week information-gathering phase of the project."

"That afternoon, when one of the managers went to escort her from the premises, they found her by the printer with a stack of confidential documents."

– WitShortage

No Cell Phones At Work

"Worked with a lot of hazardous chemicals. Had a coworker who was notorious for being on his phone. We had to use a pump to put a hazardous chemical into a tank. Problem was you couldn’t look at the destination and pump the pump at the same time. Someone had to pump and someone had to watch. So I specifically asked said coworker to not look at his phone this one time. Tank overflowed and spilt the chemical everywhere because he was staring at his phone. Took hours to clean up."

– BigTiddyOstrogothGF

"A coworker of mine was fired for using his cellphone in an electrically classified area, cell phone wasn't explosion proof, not to mention the fact no cell phones on the floor, they gave him a warning, second time they walked him out."

"Bad part for him was that his wife found out he was talking to his girlfriend."

"Twenty years down the tubes."

"As we liked to say, "He fired himself.""

– big_d_usernametaken

Ewww!

"A guy I worked with sent a spreadsheet round with all the women in the office ranked in a spreadsheet and graded overall based on 1-5."

"He was somehow shocked he didn’t pass his probation."

– downfallndirtydeeds

Thank God He Was Fired

"My best friend, he took his mop bucket and poured it down a water fountain instead of using the closet with a sink that was literally right next to the water fountain. He got fired the next day."

"He told me he was in “f**k it” mode with the job and he didn’t care. We worked at a hospital."

– MrFavorable

""Who cares if sick people get exposed to a little bit of antibiotic-resistant flesh-eating bacteria.""

– Brett42

Get Right Back Up

"There were 2 of us installing an air conditioner. He had a bit of work outside that required him going up a ladder about 3 or 4 feet, not high. I was inside doing wiring."

"I heard a loud thud and scream, so I ran out to see what happened. He fell off the ladder. I've seen gruesome injuries from stupid thing like this before, so I ran outside to help him out. No injuries, he picked himself up and got back at it, I went back inside."

"Five minutes later, same thing. I walked out to check on him again after a small fall. He was ok again, but I told him to chill out and watch what he's doing. I went back inside."

"Heard another thud from outside. He fell again. I just looked out the window the third time and went about my business."

– DrVanNostrand6

*Cringing*

"He opened a Skype window (yes, this was ~10 years ago) and started messaging me to sh*t-talk a person who was in the same call as us."

"Except, he forgot he was sharing his screen."

– zyygh

R.I.P. Press

"After checking the correct lock-out tag-out procedure was followed, I assured an employee that it was safe to change dies on a horizontal press. But he was skeptical so unbeknownst to anyone he put a piece of tooling steel about the size of a coffee can under the die base. Some of you know where this is going. He made the tooling change, forgot his “safety measure”, and cycled the press. We all heard a $400k press eat itself in a fantastic swan-song of a noise that would take Stephen King four pages to describe."

– Idontfeelold-much

The Stupidity Of The Human Race

"Late 90’s, I was a custodian in a NYC public school to pay for college. One of my coworkers accidentally spilled about 15 gallons of gasoline in the school parking lot. He didn’t want to get in trouble for spilling that much gas so he thought the best course of action was to burn off the gasoline. Of course gasoline burns with huge billows of black smoke so he panics and tries to put out the fire BY DRIVING HIS CAR OVER THE GIANT PUDDLE OF BURNING GASOLINE. Fire department shows up within minutes and sees him doing donuts in the giant fire and they spend a whole hour screaming at my coworker about how f**king stupid he was."

"Edit: and in 1997 when this happened, gas was 97¢ a gallon. He could have replaced all the gas for less than $15."

– -Words-Words-Words-

"I'm a veteran of the Internet, and enjoy reading accounts like this. I must have read thousands."

"This is, hats off, quite literally one of the most stupid decisions I ever heard anyone make."

– MagicSPA

I really don't want to believe that last one really happened!

Do you have any great stories? Let us know in the comments below.

We've all had our clumsy moments and ended up with some cuts, bruises, or bumped elbows.

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white police car in wall
Photo by Conor Samuel on Unsplash

Everyone does stupid things, and it's not limited to when you're young either.

When I was 10, my best friend and I snuck out of her house in the middle of the night and hitchhiked to Tukery Hill for ice cream. I can't even count all the ways that could've gone wrong.

Eight years later, my friend and I drove his new car on the sheets of ice on our college campus, trying to see how fast we could go.

The tires skidded on the ice several times, and back then, we thought it was fun.

The stupidity spurred on by impulsivity doesn't ever truly go away.

Redditors can attest to that, as they are sharing what may be the stupidest things they've ever done.

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