“Showed Up In Pyjamas”: 40 Reasons People Got Fired On Their First Day

Starting a new job can definitely stir up some nerves. With loads of new information to absorb and countless names to remember, it’s natural to feel pressure to maintain a composed exterior, even when your mind feels like a whirlwind of chaos. But don’t let the jitters get the best of you. After all, what’s the worst that could happen on your first day?

#1 Was an unpaid intern at my mom’s campsite for the summer just to get something to do. Mom hires a new guy for a trial period, and as I know practically how everything works, I’m told to shadow him for a few days. (keep in mind this is a small campsite, and a family business first and foremost).

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Conversation starts up, and immediately, new guy zeroes in on a worker just doing his job and starts trash-talking him like crazy, while the worker was only doing his job of trimming the hedges, emptying the trash, that sort of stuff. They hadn’t even been introduced yet.

End of the day I report to my mom, new guy in tow. Snitch that I am, I tell every unsavory detail that spewed from the little rat’s mouth.

The worker he trash-talked all day long for no reason? My dad, mom’s husband.

Mom told him his trial period was over, and to get out of her property and never show his face here again.

#2 First day as a kayak coach for an outdoor adventure place he decided to not only get the number of a 14 year old kid but send her nudes! Not seen someone mess up their life as quickly! The police arrested him, now he’s a registered s*x offender… Amazes me how many of these people just ruin their lives because they wanted to get laid?? Literally 1 IQ idiots thinking with their d***s…

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#3 I worked in a small chain retail pharmacy in high school in the 90s. Kid from another school got hired and spent the first 3 hours of his shift telling literally anyone that would listen he didn’t need the job and only got it to steal cologne and cigarettes. We were a pretty tight knit group, and this kid was an a*****e, so someone told the manager, who performed a “random bag check” on all of us at closing time. He found 6 bottles of Fahrenheit and 3 cartons of Parliaments in his backback. He was fired on the spot. Best part is his mom came in the next day screaming at the manager because the kid told her he got fired because the manager told him he didn’t like Indians.

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#4 Showed up in pyjamas and when walked to the circulation desk, wrinkled her nose and said she thought she wouldn’t have to actually talk to people. The position was titled circulation and customer service…

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#5 Basically young girl on her first shift as waitress. Customers order bottle of champagne. She brings it out whilst shaking it and proceeds to do the F1 celebration shooting it over everyone whilst roaring in celebration. That was the only context she had for champagne so she didn’t know that was just for big celebrations.

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#6 I work in software development. For new hires, the team will take them out and the available directors will join to make it a joyous experience. So we are walking to the local restaurant together and the new hire starts happily bragging how he’s brought us 100% of his former employer’s code. Application, DevOps, and even from their secretive R&D area. Half the faces are surprised and the others flip from happy-casual to grim-serious. The dir of engineering asks where the code is and the dumbass replies “oh I just loaded it onto my local machine. I’ll have it on the network once I know where to share it”. Dir then whispers something to a lead who heads back to the office. So we order burgers and sit down. 30 minutes later, the director takes a phone call, listens, and hangs up. We walk casually back to the office and the new hire is stopped at the door by security. He’s informed he is being terminated and his theft has been reported to the prior employer. IT boxes up everything and puts red seal tape on all of the boxes. We get interviewed one by one. And poof. By the next morning , it’s like he never existed and was a fever dream.

I don’t know if the other company pressed charges.

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#7 We hired an office manager. She was the 20-something college graduate daughter of one of our clients. She was professional in demeanor and seemed a perfect fit. All they had to do was sit at the front desk, greet visitors, order office supplies, and just do random, easy office tasks. It was an essentially a receptionist, but we tried to give her a better title, and opportunity to do other things and maybe grow into a better role. The first half of the first day went great. We found out later that afternoon that she was offering to procure one’s choice of we*d, e**tasy, or m*th to the staff. At the and of the day, we called her in and asked if she was offering d**gs to the staff, and she fully admitted it, and apologized for not being more discrete. She legit thought we were mad about her lack of discretion, rather than the d**g dealing.

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#8 He sexually harassed a female colleague who stepped into the HR office immediately. It was on camera, too. He didn’t even get to unpack his brand new laptop when he was escorted out.

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#9 School bus driver. First day on job after a month of training she was seen talking on her cell phone while driving a bus full of kids.

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#10 New security guard fell asleep in various locations around the school throughout his first day. He was fired around 3pm when the principal found him asleep in the front lobby.

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Edit: A few people have mentioned that maybe he has narcolepsy. Just to correct a misconception the public has about narcolepsy: it is not an excuse to fall asleep all day and then scream discrimination when you get fired. I have narcolepsy. I also get treatment for my narcolepsy and am able to work a full-time job without falling asleep all day. I have also made my disability known to my employer and completed all necessary paperwork to get reasonable accommodations through ADA. So yes, maybe he has narcolepsy. In which case, he needs to go see a doctor.

#11

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Young lad started in a junior marketing role in the office as part of my team, he was sat at a desk directly in front of the IT dept who had a clear view of his monitor. Within 30 minutes of his induction one of the IT guys calls me over and says ‘look at this’ – new lad had opened file explorer and was trying to root around the contents of shared drives and servers on the company network. We pulled him to one side and asked him what he thought he was doing, warned him that trying to pry around the systems on your first day was probably not the ideal start. He apologised and promised not to do it again. After he left the room, IT guy and I went back to IT guy’s desk and, I s**t you not, in front of our very eyes this lad immediately opened the registry and started trying to access security settings. Two minutes between first warning and firing.

#12 They worked in a grocery store and hired a guy to work in the deli. They left him alone for a while, and when they came back, all the rotisserie chickens were missing the skin. The guy said that it looked so good that he ate the skin off of one chicken, and then he pulled it off the rest of them in the hopes that if they all looked the same no one would notice.

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#13 Dude was asked to change a light bulb in the back and ended up taking down three cameras and taking them home.

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#14 Dude I started with during an overnight, locked-in stocking position at Toys R Us went absolutely f*****g mental. He worked about one quarter of the shift, then started talking complete madness, then disappeared entirely. As in, we couldn’t find him anywhere. We’d see evidence he was still in the store, but didn’t see or hear him at all. After a couple hours of this, he would suddenly leap into whatever aisle we were in and just start SHRIEKING. Or laughing manically. Or literally throwing merchandise at us. Bizarrely, he tried to show up the next day, as if he were unaware of what went down.

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The lead guy said that happened A LOT — dudes just couldn’t handle being locked in a silent, empty store all night. “Why’d you think we were hiring three guys at once for a 6-man crew?”.

#15 Trained a guy at a large liquor store, I was a department manager. Nice guy, worked hard, seemed engaged. Sent him home a little early since he was training. Tried to sneak out a handle of vodka on his way out the door, got stopped by security. My only reaction was “really, dude?”.

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#16 New guy was hired as a courier driver. Came in for his first day, and was handed some paperwork to deliver to the nearest city about 20 minutes away. He says “I don’t drive in the city”. That was literally the job, so he was quickly dismissed.

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#17 Working in a sheet metal shop in the 90’s. Standing at one of the work benches going over some blueprints with the owner of the shop while new guy was standing there. New guy had been on the clock for only about 2 hours. A lady comes out of the office and mentions something to the owner and then goes back into the office. New guy says “Holy s**t did you see the [breasts] on her?” Owner says “Yeah… that’s my wife. Here let’s go get your things.” Never saw new guy again.

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#18 Boss hired a new woman for help around the office. Her first day she showed up on time and jumped right into helping out. Seemed like a good hire at first, then the police showed up and arrested her for putting her two year old in a home built cage at home that morning and left the kid alone because she didn’t want to pay for day care.

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#19 Refused to wear proper PPE. The supervisor told him to put it on. He flat out said no, so they fired him. Didn’t even make it to first coffee break. If a guy is that adamant about safety gear on his first day, it isn’t a good sign.

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#2o I was a warehouse supervisor.

Owner brought in a new forklift driver on Monday.

I asked if he was certified and was told “don’t worry about it”.

We start loading deliveries and l put my best spotter and inventory guy with the new hire.

First load he clips a post. I give him a verbal warning (standard) and take his spotter aside. Spotter tells me the driver is ignoring instructions. I take driver aside and tell him He Will Listen to his spotter or l will put him on a dolly.

Less than an hour later, I’m standing by the office door, talking to my scheduler, and l hear “no… no stop… STOP NOOO” and a crunch.

Guy backed into a wall.

I walked over and told him to get off the forklift, handed him a dolly, and put him with a stocking team.

I go into my office to do a damage report and a formal write-up. I hear yelling and a huge bang.

Back out onto the dock l go and there’s the new guy arguing with four people and one of my forklifts on it’s side in the parking lot.

The guy had gotten back on a forklift as soon as my back was turned and had driven it off the dock. (Fortunately at a spot where the dock was only a foot or so off the ground)

I took him to my office and told him to sit his a*s down, called the owner and told him l was firing his new hire with DNR. Owner stated to argue with me until l told him what the damages were going to cost him.

New guy was escorted off the property by two of my semi-pro football players that worked for me.

Never did find out who that clown was related to, there’s no way he was certified or qualified for that job.

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#21 I can win this. Company hired a new CFO to lead the finance function. Day 1 the FBI raided the building. Apparently the guy was a fraud who was going across the country and sweet talking businesses into his services and swindling them out of all their money. No idea if he used a fake name or how it happened in the background check but that was a wild day. Yes, he was fired.

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#22We were in a rut and desperately needed people, so my boss told me to lower my standards (commercial driving job and I had disqualified like four candidates, all warranted imo). I said fine, I’ll try, and he sends me a student from our driving school (first three days are classroom, last 2 days are for driving.

This man shows up. Late. No uniform (we bought him one). I ask him where his uniform is. Left it at home. I say okay, you can have someone bring it on lunch, let me see your driver’s license. He says he also left that at home. I say how do you show up to be a driver on your first day, late, without your uniform and license. He says sorry, he overslept. I fired him on the spot. He cussed me out and walked away.

My boss started to scold me until I told him what happened. He stopped lol.

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#23 Working at a fast food restaurant in my small town and a woman comes in asking for an application. she was well known around not just our town but our whole county and a couple around it for being an addict, but me and the other managers working there at the time decided we’d give her a chance. (two of us are children of addicts and she had kids, so it tugged at a sore spot. we were absolutely not going to judge that woman based on something like that, nor did we think the other businesses were right for not hiring her because of it) she comes in for her first shift and when she showed up, she brought us all food from her other job she worked at another restaurant and we’re all so happy we found such a cool staff member. she’s talkative and kind, you could tell she was definitely just a little off but hey, nobody working a dead end fast food job in a small town is ever all there, right. all is well, until she goes outside to smoke, asks if the smoke breaks are “just for cigarettes”, and then has her son (like mid 20’s) bring her a “goodie bag” so they could sit in her car and smoke. parked right in front of the camera, so we ended up catching her on camera smoking cr*ck with her son, and the real kicker is she didn’t even clock out at all. she sat out there for 20 minutes still clocked in and tried to come back in obviously geeked and didn’t see a problem with that. that was a fun call to make to the store owners to explain why she was being sent home and asked not to come back.

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#24 He made it through the work day fine. Then we had a little welcome party for him after work where he proceeded to get completely wasted, walked up to our CEO and started yelling incoherently at him while poking him in the chest with his finger. CEO gently pushed him back asking him to hit out of his personal space but drunk goy staggers backwards until he hit a wall and passed out. He was terminated before he woke up.

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#25 Archaeologist working on a longhouse site with human remains uncovered and First Nations liaisons present.

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New girl with no field experience somehow thought she was second in command on site and an osteology expert. Started telling everyone that if they found bones to bring them to her. Someone found raccoon bones and she started saying they were actually human fetal bones and that First Nations used to bury babies inside the walls of their longhouses???

She was removed from site before lunch.

#26 I started on the same day as another woman. At one point I started cracking a few bad Dad jokes to break the ice a bit. She then said “Oh I’ve got one” and then proceeded to reel off some of the most racist jokes I’ve ever heard. She went to lunch and never came back.

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#27 Guy came back from lunch high out of his mind and then we found his instagram video shouting out the company and tagging us while he was smoking out of 3 different devices in his car at the gas station a block away within minutes because it popped up in our social media managers feed.

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#28 A while ago now (20 years ish) the person who showed up for work was absolutely not the person who was interviewed. Heard a couple different stories for what had happened (either they sent someone else to interview for them or someone stood in their place because they went awol but both to me are far fetched). Never got to the bottom of it and wasn’t high enough in the company to learn what happened. But it was definitely weird.

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#29 He lasted 1 day, went for drinks with the team and boss. Commented about the boss’s 16 year old daughter then just would not stop. “Is she single” was the last straw. He did not make it to day 2. This guy was 30 and in an $80k/yr Network Admin job (decent money in 2014).

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#30 Stole someone’s phone while in the break room putting her stuff away to start her first shift. Right below a security camera, too.

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#31 I fired someone on their first day in my department (was dept head) employee came in 30 minutes late. Did not call ahead to say there was a problem etc. I asked what happened, why were they 30 min late? Employee shrugged, sipped her travel mug of tea and said “I just couldn’t get out of bed this morning.” ? fired her on the spot.

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#32 Dude started a food fight in the cafeteria on his first break. Custodian found a tuna sandwich stuffed in his locker. Was out before lunch.

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#33 I worked in a hotel where some positions wore an issued uniform and some positions wore their own clothes. The dress code was very strict dressy business attire..everyone had to wear a blazer, men had to wear button down shirts with a tie but the hotel provided free dry cleaning for all of it.

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One day I was walking down the hall to the room where you pick up/drop off dry cleaning and can hear a man yelling. Get near the door and a new hire, who was in a position where you wore your own clothes, was demanding that the attendant issue him a uniform (full suit, dress shirt and tie) because he wasn’t going to ruin his nice clothes. Of course the attendant cannot issue anything without the paperwork from hr and the new hire would have been told that he will be wearing his own clothes.

Walk into the room, see the attendant in tears and this d******d agressively leaning over the desk yelling at her…I was shocked and basically asked what the hell is going on?!?!!? This guy sees another white person, immediately dials it back and gets all chummy and shmoozy and says something like “Pffft, can you believe this? Clearly doesn’t understand English and since you are a manager, tell her to give me a uniform.”. I just said that they would have to speak to hr about a uniform, walked him to the hr office and asked him to wait in the hall. Went in the hr office and gave the hr manager a quick run down, that this guy is a racist piece of s**t and he needs to go. Went back to check on the attendant, gave her a big hug and it was just heartbreaking to see another person cry like that.

Never saw him again and this was a time when it was an employees market but hr said that I was so upset and angry, they just terminated him on the spot without any further discussion and walked him off of the property. Like, who the f**k does or says that to another human being?

#34 Asked the managers daughter if she slept with anyone to get the position she was in and then said how if he was her supervisor he would help her get promoted. I’m sure you could hear a pin drop in that lunch room. We didn’t even know his name. But he never came back from lunch.

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#35 Guy was hired contingent on background/credit check. On day three I got a call from HR saying he wasn’t eligible. The store manager who hired him made me fire him. Took him in the office and said… your checks came back negative and ya can’t work here. He started going on about his record had been sealed and the forgery and theft convictions were supposed to be expunged. And then I said… no man, you got bad credit.

Fast forward 3 months. The company dropped the credit check requirement, so the store manager hired him again. Three weeks later they caught him stealing computers.

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#36 I was working in a new restaurant and it was day one where we were going over the menu/wines and we were supposed to show up at 10 am. So we’re all around a table and a guy walks in and the manager stands up, greets the guy, and to my horror it’s my stalker’s brother. Manager walks him out of the room and comes back and tells us he fired him because he was late. I was so relieved and also a little dumbfounded by how random the world can be. I was so afraid that I was going to have to work with someone who would then tell my stalker where I was (had already changed jobs and moved) and it was solved in an instant. The weirdest feeling to be both scared and relieved at the same time.

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#37 An exec at my company showed up on his first day (not counting orientation) high on opiates and had a ‘concealed’ firearm that he didn’t do a very good job of concealing. Didn’t even make it past 11:00 am.

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#38 Worked at a takeout counter, was training the new guy. Constantly spilled food on his hands and fingers when filling up containers. Decided the best way to clean it off was with his mouth and tongue.. in front of customers.

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#39 We had a new tech admin start. Around noon he was headed out the back door as the police were coming in the front door. Turns out he didn’t have custody of his kids when he took them from Texas. Termination paperwork was done and approved by 12:30.

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#40 He got put on inventory unloading with me and we were getting all sorts of musical equipment in. He started taking all of the drum sticks that we were getting in and sharpening points on them with his knife and then trying to see if he could get one to stick into the wall (it was one of those giant pole barn type warehouses with some sort of plastic lined paper insulation). Eventually someone saw him and walked him out. .

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