The One Mistake That Ended Peoples' Careers

A Scam Order

"While working at a builders’ merchant's, a customer called to place an order over the phone (not unusual) and wanted to give me the card details, there and then (red flag)."

"I initially refused, but another member of staff vouched for them as they were regulars. I put the order through, knowing that whoever came to collect would need to come into the office for their paperwork before loading, so we would have them on CCTV if it did turn out to be suspect…"

"Except the yard crew didn’t follow the process. When a van turned up for the goods, they loaded it all up and sent them away without asking for any kind of ID or manifest."

"The payment card was later reported as stolen, and the staff member who vouched for the customer denied even being in that day, which was a f**king lie as she never took time off. I got fired and everyone else got to keep their jobs."

- Shas_Erra

"That sounds like a setup. They should’ve been easily able to verify whether the person that vouched for them was working that day (check her clock in/out times, CCTV, etc)."

"At the very least, someone on the yard crew should’ve gotten fired too because they didn’t follow procedure either (and it’s even worse because if they had, it could’ve been stopped dead in the tracks)."

"I’m sorry, man."

- princessleyley

Lifting Wrong

"I lifted wrong. 14 years of arboriculture coming to an end now, and I'm not sure of the next job."

- Spaghettitrees

"14 years might be enough to move into a supervisory/managerial role if one exists in the field. It would allow you to still utilize your experience to some degree."

- srentiln

A Screaming Match

"I worked retail pharmacy for 10(ish) years. One day in the drive-thru, we had a belligerent patient. The guy's doctor sent his script to our other chain about 1.5 miles down the road. We were on the same street, and addresses get mixed up all the time. No biggie, give me 10 minutes and I'll have it ready..."

"But the dude just starts laying into me for no reason. Calls me an id**t. Calls me incompetent. Says he knows where his doctor sent it and I'm a lazy, lying piece of s**t. Etc, etc."

"After a few MINUTES going back and forth, with this guy yelling loud enough in my drive-thru that other staff inside the store can hear him, I tell him he needs to leave and find a new pharmacy."

"The guy lays into me again. Refuses to leave. I tell him, 'F**k off or I'm calling the police.'"

"Apparently, that was over the line for my company. No interview with HR. No discipline. No suspension. They just straight up fired my a** about three weeks later after an 'internal investigation.'"

- frithjofr

Physical Space

"One of the Directors wasn't happy with some work I'd done and started poking me hard with his finger to punctuate his comments."

"I punctuated back considerably more forcefully."

- jonnymars

The Angel of Death

"I called the HR lady the 'Angel of Death' to a coworker on chat. (HR was in a different state, so any time they came to town we all knew it was most likely to lay off people.)"

"The Angel of death came to get me shortly after, lol (laughing out loud)."

- michaudra2

"I once worked in a company as the help desk tech that would come collect tech while people were in with HR getting fired. I got the nickname Grim Reaper, because if I showed up with my cart and nobody in that department called, then one of their colleagues wouldn't be coming back from their meeting with HR."

- Houseplantkiller123

Home Sweet Home

"I built a castle out of Christmas chocolate biscuit boxes in the warehouse of a major retailer on a night shift and proceeded to fall asleep in it for a few hours."

- masontraining

The Wrong Recipient

"I sent a scathing email about my boss directly to my boss. It wasn't meant for him."

"To this day, I still have no idea what possessed me to put his name in the address bar. I noticed his name the exact moment I hit send."

"You have never felt that much panic."

- Happy1327

A Brand New Car

"I was a part-time intern making $9 an hour (USD) and my boss asked if I had any plans for the weekend."

"I had said I was going to buy a new car (very much old and used as that's what I could afford) and he asked if I was buying a brand new car. My response was that my budget isn't big enough for a new car."

"A couple of weeks later during my one-year review, my manager said they didn't have the work for me and that I was disrespectful for telling the boss I didn't make enough money."

"At the time I was living comfortably as a college student who just needed different transportation. I tried not to be disrespectful but apparently I was."

- Kulee43

Fired in Retaliation

"I got security responsibilities added to my duties as a sysadmin at a small university. I was asked by my boss' boss, the IT director, to do a security audit. He asked me to report on the audit at a department meeting."

"I asked if I could present my results to him privately instead and have him present at the meeting, but he insisted I could take care of it."

"My report showed major security holes, demonstrations of tests of said holes, and recommendations for patching said holes. Many of the patches were at the level of 'change the administrator password from 'password' to something less obvious.'"

"As my political acumen was near zero at the time, I didn't realize how the report on major security problems made the IT Director look completely incompetent in front of the entire department. He had built and configured the campus computer system pretty much on his own, at least in his mind, and was quite proud of his accomplishment."

"He suspended me on the spot, demoted me, and tried to convince the university to fire me and try to bring me up on criminal charges for hacking into the university's computer systems."

- firelock_ny

A Terrible Accident

"I had a workplace accident, a fall from an extreme height. I didn't get fired but broke enough bones that I'll never work in that industry again."

- Malromen

Out of Context

​"I was opening my packages in the mailroom, using a pocket knife to slice open the packing tape. The secretary came in and chatted. We’re both Italian so we gesture a lot while talking."

"Sometime after the conversation, the Ops manager came down from his office and escorted me out of the building. I had forgotten the knife was in my hand while talking with the secretary, and she made an accusation that I had threatened her with it during our conversation."

"I was fired three days later."

"I had worked with this woman for almost a decade. I helped her children with their homework, etc."

"Years later, I learned corporate wanted to take down my boss and started the process by going after his biggest supporters. I was the third domino to fall. After I was railroaded, almost 40% of the branch’s staff left the company. I guess the secretary was in on it and leaped at any excuse to take me out."

"Shame. Really loved that job. And got fired when my first child was due in only four weeks. It was very demoralizing for quite a while."

- Bokuden101

Stolen Cigarettes

"This isn't about me, but a guy I worked with was caught stealing two cigarettes from a colleague's bag. He was on a six-figure salary. Not anymore!"

- Rude-Scholar-469

"How can anybody be so dumb? Especially as a smoker, he should be aware how other smokers are very likely to share their cigarettes with you if you just ask them."

- SherifGames

The Stolen Lunch

"This didn't happen to me, but I remember a coworker of mine getting fired because he put laxatives in his own lunch bag. Some d*ckhead kept stealing parts of our lunches. Turned out, it was our supervisor."

"I'm not too keen on the specifics since that coworker and I weren't exactly friends or anything. I just kind of had simple conversations during lunch and whatnot."

"Apparently, it is illegal to poison food with malicious intent. And some of my friends who worked there said he got into some legal trouble because of it. Nothing came of it from what I heard. But that's about all I know."

- DeicideandDivide

A Slanderous Date

"I went on a first date with a girl who turned out to be a horrible person 20 minutes in."

"I did what I could to get out of it because she was telling stories about crazy things she’d done and was proud of. I didn’t pull anything to get out of it, just dodged land mines and asked a ton of questions about her so I could get out of it sooner."

"Then I said I wasn’t feeling the connection and I wanted to be honest so we didn’t waste each other's time."

"I found out a week later that she contacted my previous employers, because she found my LinkedIn, told them all stories about how I talked a ton of s**t about them all. And now I can’t get a reference from my previous three jobs… and people I was on good terms with."

"All because I went on a date with a psychopath."

- FirstFlight

Taking Sides

"I sided with the peeps under me as their manager."

- ThunderClap449

"It's more important to have the back of the people you represent. In my experience, you get better production out of people who know you go to bat for them. Then your numbers and team performance look good and they figure, well, he must be doing something right."

- A_Vile_Person

While it is always terrible to lose a job, these stories make it clear that sometimes we lose jobs for reasons that really should be no fault of our own. From fraud to accidents to false charges, people have been fired for things they certainly shouldn't have been.

And for those who were fired for reasons that wholly were their fault, well, at least that was a learning experience.