25 Ridiculous Reasons Why Someone Got Fired On Their First Day

When a new hire walks in you expect to give them some slack as they learn the ropes. After all, the average employee has a learning curve of about 6 months before they are expected to be fully competitive in their role. So during this time, there’s often a lot of leniency for a  new recruit’s mistakes as they adjust to the office culture, processes and expectations.  Recently, one Redditor got folks recalling and sharing stories of what a new worker did that got them immediately fired. Scroll below to read some of the most unbelievable tales of shocking, hurtful or ignorant reasons that came to light that caused management to throw up their hands in frustration and execute such rapid terminations. 

#1

Image source: smartfoodpopcorn69, Andrea Piacquadio Week and a half into the job, big box retail. Guy (about mid 20s) started and immediately started gravitating toward 16 year old female cashiers. Constantly having to be coached to do his job and not stand and talk to the cashiers. I guess a few days in, he stole a manager's daily binder basically, which included the entire schedule and full names. The guy ended up finding and messaging a few of the underage cashiers on social media asking them to smoke with him on the clock by the dumpsters. That isn't what got him fired though! One of the cashiers he messaged, took it upon themselves to search him. Found an article dated less than a year prior that he was charged and admitted to two separate r***s on a college campus (mugshot included so it was absolutely him). She brought that to HR and threatened to sue the company for creating a hostile work environment because of their lack of thorough background checks. Turns out they only do a BG check in the county the store is located, the guy's charges were a county over. By far the smartest 16 year old I've encountered. He was gone and she got herself a raise so she'd stay quiet on social media about it.

#2 1.5 days into the job, she was watching netflix on her phone with her airpods while she was receiving training from the manager. When we approached her about this, she said “is this not okay?”

Image source: dubstylers, Grant Davies

#3

Image source: TheStarcraftPro, Javier Haro Bank of America new guy decided to look up the balance of NBA stars including Kobe about 15 years ago. He got fired but not after learning Kobe kept $2mm in cash in some random savings account for a rainy day. For those that don’t know - this is wildly illegal and against bank policies. You never have the right to look up anyone’s account unless they explicitly give you permission verbally and in writing. Let alone for a celebrity. Instant fire and never worked in the industry again. Total idiot.

#4 Drinking a giant watermelon Gatorade non stop and slurring. That Gatorade was half vodka. Employee was 4 years under legal drinking age in a customer facing role swilling vodka all day long

Image source: Mister_Brevity, Tungsten Rising

#5

Image source: theFooMart, Dan Burton One guy punched the supervisor because he didn't like being told what to do. Which is strange because he worked a total of 1.5 hours so he didn't know what to do. I'm not sure how you're supposed to learn something if nobody tells you how to do it... There was the guy that was 45 minutes late his first day. On time the second day. And on the third day, he called and said he might be a little bit late because of traffic, but he'd try to get here on time. Problem was that this was three hours after his shift was supposed to start. This was the only time I've fired someone without talking to my boss or HR first.

#6

Image source: Capzien89, Adhy Savala He was flirting with patients and asking for their number. It was a paediatric hospital. Yes, police were contacted.

#7 As an ice breaker question before a staff meeting he said he’d like to go back to the days when men were cowboys and woman stayed home and churned butter. Our staff is 90% women (not that it would excuse the response if it wasn’t). He didn’t last much longer after that.

Image source: gpRYme, Brett Sayles

#8

Image source: PoignantPoint22, Ravi Sharma Working at a restaurant years ago. 20 something year old new busboy came in for his first day after his training shift. We couldn’t find him after the first 10 minutes of his shift until one of our cooks found him smoking a cigarette… IN THE WALK IN FREEZER… I’ll never forgot our manager’s reaction. He was like, “dude, you could’ve just taken a a quick smoke break outside since it’s not busy; actually go do that now”! (Opens the back door out of the kitchen). Bus boy walks out and our manager slammed the door shut behind him.

#9 White guy made a joke about lynchings at work, was gone by the end of the day. He was 4 days in the job.

Image source: V0l4til3, ANTONI SHKRABA production

#10

Image source: llcucf80, Marten Bjork I used to work at a hotel, worked there for over 15 years. But way back when, even when I was still a relative newbie, we had new hire. Within just a couple days she was telling all our guests about her hardships and was begging them for money. Yeah she didn't last very long. I cringed when I found out what she did, that had to be extremely trashy just to go up to customers and guests that you just met before and do that. There was no shame in her game. No self respect at all

#11

Image source: MikeAppleTree, Alison Marras Ate all the skins off of all the rotisserie chickens in the gourmet section of the supermarket. He couldn’t help himself and ate the skin off of one chicken, “because that’s the best part”. Then to make sure they all “looked the same” he ate the rest of the chicken skins as well. I personally think he won on some level.

#12 As it turns out, offering a**l sex to married men in exchange for weed doesn't get you far at some car dealerships.

Image source: Neon_Azure, Negative Space

#13

Image source: asstyrant, Christin Hume Many years ago, I hired a computer technician to perform on-site repairs for my clients. After sitting down with him in an informal interview, I decided to lob him a softball call to ensure he wasn't a complete f*****t. He gets to said call half an hour late, but s**t happens right? 15 minutes into this event, I field a call from him. Instead of the usual procedural questions or a report on what's transpiring, I listen to him rambling on about how the malware on the client's system is really easy to deal with and that the client is a complete moron. I barely have time to process what the hell is going on when... Seconds later, the other line rings. I place "tech" on hold and answer. It's the client. Absolutely mortified at this sack of s**t I've sent to her and the things she's hearing said about her through her bathroom door. WTF. There's not enough coffee in the world to deal with this. I assure the client that I'll take care of it. Go back to "tech" on line one. Proceed to inquire what in the yellow rubbery f**k he's doing s**t-talking the client to me while phoning from her f*****g bathroom. Instruct him to end his efforts, collect his s**t, and leave the client's property post-haste. Before he left, he apparently gave the client the waterworks about how she's cost him his job, and also left his goddamn resume with her. Fun part? He demanded to be paid for this nonsense. I acquiesce, since frankly I just want him to f**k right off into the wild blue yonder and never darken my door again. Best part? Years later, I put out an ad to replace a retired technician in the same region. Guess who sent in an application? Guess who phoned repeatedly when I didn't respond to this idiocy? If the "technician" is reading this... I still stand beside my last remarks to you: *you're a f*****g twit*.

#14 New college hire fed ghost pepper to co worker. Co worker reacted badly. Ambulance called. New hire fired.

Image source: my_random_name, Moon Bhuyan

#15

Image source: uncertainty_critical, Alexey Demidov Hired three new laborers to help shovel out some trenches that were already excavated. Only job was to shovel some loose dirt out from the bottom of the hole. The guys hired were in great shape, had experience and could talk the talk. The job was described as a rush and high paced, pay was substantial. The first day all they did was chat amongst themselves and literally lean on their shovels. They were fired before lunch.

#16

Image source: Eponarose, cottonbro studio Showed up 2 hours late, hungover, in a dirty t-shirt, cutt-offs and dirty sneakers and obviously un bathed. He looked GREAT 3 days ago at his interview... The walked into the office and the manager met him halfway across the floor. New Guy: "Oh, hey! I had kind of a wild weekend." Boss : "Go home. Do not come back. You don't work here."

#17

Image source: PreviousObject1312, Brett Jordan He wouldn't get off reddit. I'm serious. He was on his phone all throughout training. Once he got a workstation, not only was there always something non-work related on his computer every time I walked by his desk, his bookmark bar was 100% sites like reddit and digg, 0% work related links like our bug tracker and wiki. And the thing was, this was a work environment where it was totally okay to spend company time on sites like that, almost everyone did. You just had to also get your work done at some point. He also would take regular breaks to just walk around the office and ask people what they were working on. Not just a quick "hey, what project are you on" but like, an extended interview of stupid questions. Highschoolers visiting for job shadow opportunities had better questions than this guy who went to a top CS school. He was assigned to my project, so I got to see the little work that he actually completed. Usually for the first few tasks, the lead programmer would assign the newbie some ridiculously easy tasks to get them oriented to our workflow. The very first thing this guy was assigned to do was to copy/paste a few lines of code into a specific file. The second task was exactly the same, except he had to write the two lines of code himself. It was still a ridiculously easy task that should have taken 5 minutes. An hour later, he complained to the lead that it was too hard and he didn't understand why he, a person who was hired to write code after going to college to learn how to code, was being asked to write code.

#18

Within the first week he loudly announced to a group of about 10 employees that he’d like to take the receptionist and bend her over her desk and f**k her hard. Let’s just say the boss wasn’t 100% in-love with the dude’s ambitions. Image source: blinkysmurf

#19 Hired this young guy to work reception in a fancy office. He showed up looking pretty rough one morning, maybe his second week on the job, and I noticed him staring intently at the desk in front of him. He glances up at me and just says "Spiders. I think they're coming from my hair."

Image source: Brilliant_Yam_9312, MART PRODUCTION

#20

Image source: offspring515, Alexander Grey Worked at a facility that processed mail for the post office. There was a specialized sorting machine used only by our postal inspector in the back corner of the factory. We were all told when hired, and constantly after, this machine was stupid expensive, and the one rule was DO NOT USE THE ELECTRIC PALLET JACKS NEAR IT. There were signs posted, yellow lines painted on the floor as a no go zone. Even cement posts surrounding the area. Mail DID have to be moved there so you could fit between the posts with the normal, non powered jack. New floor lead is hired, he's come from a similar company and has years of experience. His first night our shift opens with a team meeting with our manager. On the other side of the floor the new lead is moving pallets of mail around. Suddenly we hear a crash. He has driven the electric jack directly into the expensive machine. Destroyed the computer, two monitors, the loading belt, the cabinet that held a lot of the innards of the machinery. Just smashed it to smithereens. He was gone the next night.

#21

Image source: Active-Strawberry-37, Solen Feyissa Used to work for a private company that did a lot of work for the government. That’s all I’m saying about it. This guy decided to post a blow by blow account of his 1st day on his Facebook page. Names of employees, government departments that we worked with, systems we used and what work we did. Even posted the fact that the 1st thing he had to do was sign an NDA. His pass didn’t work the next morning so he got fired in the building reception instead.

#22 Hired a guy in our IT department to work the night shift. He watched p**n and chatted with cam girls all night. Didn’t even try and hide it. He sat next to two other people one of which was female. She turned him in and we checked his history. Then he was history.

Image source: Gr1ml0ck, cottonbro studio

#23

Image source: dma1965, Pablo Padilla I hired a guy once that was no call no show for 3 days after he just started. I terminated his employment and he said he was in jail because his girlfriend called the cops on him. He then filed a complaint with the labor board and I had to go for a hearing. I explained why he was fired to the judge and she asked him for an explanation. His response was “I was in jail for assault but I didn’t do it”. She asked him if he was convicted and he said “Yeah, but I didn’t do it.” The judge dismissed the case.

#24

Image source: RedditBecameTheEvil, Brent Schmidt Ages ago at a warehouse job. One guy got fired for s******g in the cardboard disposal chutes. The other one I remember had just finished training. We used safety knives to cut open boxes, you extended the blade and then when it finished the cut the blade snapped back into the handle. This genius saw a cute girl who started with him acting really nervous with the knife, so to bolster her confidence he extended his blade and said "See? They can't cut you!" Then he ran the blade up his forearm. The company was as efficient their two day shipping would suggest, he got his final paycheck right before the ambulance doors closed.

#25

Image source: Jackaloop, Lisa Fotios My kid got fired the first day. They have a 30 minute lunch break. He went home and it took longer than 30 minutes, so he showed up when he was done...like over an hour later. He's better now.