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i dare you
u/*ssTasticBooty
asked the wide world of Reddit:
What's your best "Fire me, I f*cking dare you" moment from work?
Here were some of those answers.
Ha Ha, Not So Easy Is It
GiphyWorked for a newspaper, editing and actually putting the paper together. Arranging it all, placing stories and pictures where they need to be. Titling, quoting and sourcing everything. I was a one man team and used an overly complicated system that I figured out how to use really effectively. They treated me like sh*t, set impossible deadlines and berated me for not meeting them.
One day the boss tells me to fully put a paper done by the end of the day, gave me no warning, I had no articles from the journalists and no photos from photographers. It was my job to collect it all from everyone and he wants me to do it in a single day? I told him no, if he wants it done, he has to give me more time. He tells me if I don't have it done by the end of the day I'm fired, I tell him that this paper can't function without me. He tells me I need to "take the day off and cool my temper" and that he'll do my job for me. Get a call an hour after I get home that he needs me to come in and do it and I can have as much time as I need. Promptly quit on that *sshole, f*ck your sh*tty newspaper.
Nice Try
Husband was having his gallbladder taken out and was having complications before surgery. I needed to leave early from work for about two hours and my boss threw a fit stating I couldn't leave. I told her I had 300 hours of sick time I can use for myself and my husband and if she wanted to push I'd take all of it at once... Leaving no one but her to do my job. She said she'd fire me if I tried... I just looked at her and said I have to go ill send you my doctor's note.
I wasn't fired. I was actually awarded that year for job performance.
Nice Work, Tribunal
When I was 17 I worked a summer holiday job at Pizza Hutt - I had transferred to my home town restaurant from my University town restaurant.
I was there for 5 weeks and hadn't been paid yet. The boss claimed it was because I gave him the wrong employee number. I hadn't.
Anyway after 5 weeks of no pay I rang him on New Years' Eve (ie busiest night of the summer) and said I wasn't coming to work because I wasn't a volunteer and I wasn't going to work for free. He told me if I didn't go to work I may as well not come back as I would be fired.
I didn't go to work and had a fun New Years instead.
Then a few days later I called the Employment Tribunal (I'm in New Zealand) and told them what had happened. They called my dickhead boss. He then called me, offered me my job back and was nice as pie for the rest of the summer.
Support For Support
Ha!! I worked at an unspecified telecom a few years ago. I was a senior manager in charge of programming, third level support, and production support. A business unit bullied through code changes (made by the business side through a side deal with a legacy programmer in the data center, circumventing my team, QA and production testing) that just had to get implemented immediately without going through any testing at all. I refused, the CIO overruled me. 72 hours later, phone activations had ground to a halt, customers nationwide were screaming, and the CIO called phone conference after phone conference demanding timelines for when I was going to get this sh*t fixed. He kept screaming to have members of my team to get on the phone and explain themselves to him. I refused.
Finally I snapped and told him that if he wanted me to fix HIS mistake I would need to get off the f*cking phone go work with my teams, and the only reason they hadn't walked out yet was that I was keeping him off their *sses, but we would all happily go together. 24ish hours later QA and my team had the bullsh*t cleaned up and fixed for a clean rollout.
This was all to avoid a 24 hour delay for QA/production testing. I wish I could say that was the only/worst time.
Shoulda Given The Raise
GiphyOver the first year I worked there, I essentially took over most of the tasks in my department which were previously held by other departments and was done badly because of it.
This lead to a massive increase in productivity. I then found out I was paid significantly less than what others were making and others in my position across the industry were making.
So I go to my boss and tell them I had done all this work increasing productivity and I would like to discuss a raise. They said no.
So I work there for another year, asking for a raise every now and again until I was offered a job that paid double. It didn't start for a couple months so I held on to that job until I was set to submit my two weeks. I asked for a raise again, thinking "what the hell why not."
My boss goes off, tells me I wont get a raise and says some.....very colorful things about it.
It culminated with her telling me "if you don't like your pay, maybe we should evaluate your future at this company" to which I replied "Already have, I took another job and this was your last chance to offer me what I deserve. I quit." and walked out of that office.
Friends told me that my sudden departure caused a massive backup of work that ended with my manager being fired for it.
It's Too Late To 'Pologize
Worked a job where I'm the only one who knows how to take apart, clean, fix, and put all the equipment back together and do the weekly and monthly maintenance.
Had a boss tell me one day that I was doing a poor job and not doing enough and that anyone could do it. If I didn't step up I would be fired or else as they had manuals for each piece of equipment.
So that night I took apart all the equipment (weekly and monthly stuff too), cleaned them, and then just left it apart for them to figure out that morning. Then I turned off my phone after getting home for the entire day as I had the day off.
When I turned it back on the next day I saw that I had initially received angry texts ordering me to return and put everything back together. This lasted an hour. Then texts saying I risked being fired. Then texts begging me to return. Then more texts trying to compromise with OT. Then an apology before nothing else for the rest of the day other than that the head boss wanted to see me as soon as I came in the next day.
Came in the next day and over half the stuff was still not put together and what had been put together was put together haphazardly and would need to be taken out again then put back in correctly. Was immediately asked to be seen by my boss and their boss to explain myself the moment I was seen entering.
Once in the office I told them that if they weren't there to apologise then just fire me then and there or drop it and let me put all the stuff back together. They looked at each other and then told me that I could get back to work.
Boss never called me lazy again.
Radioshack Retro Time
Worked for Radioshack and always butted heads with the District Manager. He wanted me to use these ridiculous sales techniques that might work in a big city but were really pushy. The year he became our DM I won a contest for best salesman in the whole company, out of about 14,000 employees, and I did it without being pushy and forcing stuff on people. He still tried to get me to use these ridiculous techniques each month when he would visit, but after I won the contest I stopped sugar coating it and would flat out tell him "that's stupid, I'm not going to do it that way".
The Sick Rules
Put in my two weeks notice at wildly understaffed job. 6 days later got sick. I call around and see if anyone can take my shift. No one is available.
Tried to call out that morning. Sh*tty manager tries to persuade me to come in even though I am barfing everywhere. I non-commitally agree to call in later in the day to see if I am feeling up to coming in anyway.
Call back, say I am still sick and will not be coming in. Manager blows up at me in front of customers, being rude as f*ck. Eventually asks what I expect to do about the shift needing to be covered. I say I have done everything I am required to and it sounds like a management problem to me. Hang up and turn my phone off.
The Law Is Of My Side
For the past few years I've worked at one of the "nicer" restaurants in my small beach town. I'm one of the only servers there who cares about doing a good and I'm the only one who doesn't take a smoke break every 15 minutes.
This past summer a new, very illegal, rule was implemented that if we messed up an order in anyway we would be liable to pay for that messed up food. I usually didn't have a problem with mess ups so I didn't bring up the legality of this matter since I make good money and don't want to start fires in places that don't concern me.
That is, until I rang in a 'Cherry Glazed Burger' instead of a 'Cherry Glazed Steak' (each stylized CGB and CGS in our sh*tty computer system) I fixed this with the kitchen, but not before they had already started the burger. I told my manager and she just gave me a disappointed and told me that the rules are the rules. I then dived into both federal and state workers rights code and told her she would never see me again if I found any money out of my tips at the end of the night. Never had a problem fixing an order again.
Goooooodbye~
GiphyWas working in a restaurant, already knew I was sick but our managers were a--holes and I knew if I called in they'd be extremely pissy. Showed up to work around 8am, by 9am I knew I wasn't gonna last the rest of the day, managers still made me stay.
Around 9:30 I was pre-bussing my tables and just the site of half eaten food pushed me over the edge, managed to hold my vomit until I got to the dishwashing area but puked in a trashcan immediately after putting my plates down.
A coworker saw me and vouched for me when I went to tell my manager I was leaving for the doctor, he said, "Even with a doctors note, if you leave work today you'll be fired." I said, "You have human waste in a kitchen trashcan and haven't even done anything about it, it's on camera, I'm leaving."
Showed up for work a few days later and didn't hear anything about it. Ended up quitting a few weeks later for a job at a couple considerably higher scale restaurant.
Pointing Fingers
Worked at a convenience store. My coworker and I were classmates and were 16-17 at the time. Place was broken into, food and drinks were stolen and I came to work with the owner and his daughter yelling at my coworker.
He was pissed and wanted us two to be liable for the damages.
So he threatened to fire me and my coworker, but my coworker told him that he'll have to clean up with only his daughter, the owner mellowed out, but we quit a week later when we found out it was the daughter that let her friends steal and roughed the place up to make it look like it was a break in.
Place shut down a few years later because of violations.
Frodo Baggings
I used to work at a small, family owned grocery store for a few years. We got our load in on Mondays and Thursdays, and we got passed over one Monday and the distributer said we'd get the missing load in on Thursday. So, what essentially happened was a double load and my two receiving partners were out sick. I was the only person in the warehouse/receiving at the time, and got to take on 15+ pallets of groceries that needed to hit the shelves immediately.
I was specifically told to not go up front, and to do what I could while the front end crew covered the aisles and cash registers. Well, a lot of them were either lazy, untrained, or just putting in their hours so they could pay bills. I put in my earbud, just one, and get to work. I'm halfway through checking in the pallets when I get called up front. So I ignore it and continue. Then I get called again. So I head up there and get yelled at by a new hire with a bad attitude to "do your job and bag for me!" The customer was a regular and we got along very well, and she told me that she was fine and could bag her own groceries.
Between the customer and the fact that I wasn't having it, I walked away. I had 3 years and 2 ranks on her, so I didn't give half of a shit and went back to my pallets. Then I get the newest hotshot manager, who replaced the old hotshot manager, who replaced the beloved manager who trained basically the whole store, in my face about having an earbud in on the clock (which is allowed as long as you have on ear free) and said I could be sent home and not come back if I wanted to listen to music, so I gestured to the pallets and said "go for it, these all need to be checked in and broken down. Have fun."
I got to keep my earbud in.
Split The Difference
Important note: My usual job was 3am-noon and I was sleeping from 5pm-1am. A split shift meant working 4:30am-8am and coming back to 7pm-11:30pm. (If I remember right.)
I had been working a series of split shifts and the wacky sleep schedule was really getting to me. I was told I would only need to do it three days in a row, but then it became four days...and then finally I went to sleep after the 4th shift, got woken up to my boss calling me and telling me I would have to work one more split shift. I told him "No" and that I would come in for my usual schedule. He started to argue with me and asking me why it was a big deal especially since I had worked it almost every day this week, so why not work one more? When I explained I was having issues with sleep and that I wouldn't come in he was like, "But it's your job! I am scheduling you for another split shift." And I just yelled at him, "Then I don't need this job!"
He started apologizing and that he would let me get some sleep. I hung up.
I went to work the next morning for my usual split and everyone there was surprised to see me. My boss had told everyone he thought I might not show up at all and wasn't sure if I had quit. I worked my usual shift, my boss came in at 8am, and began apologizing right away when he saw me. Then he said, "If working a split was so hard on you, you could have told me no!" I just turned and went to lunch.
Raising The Bar
First kitchen I worked in, they told me, the more jobs I learned, the more I'd get paid (came in basically knowing all of it anyway). 6 months later I had learned every job there except 1 spot. They told me if i learned that spot, I'd get a raise, I told them I could find a new kitchen (i was easily one of the best employees there), and that i was told the more i learned the more id get paid, and i still hadn't been given a raise. Head Chef cracked and gave me a raise. I told him 50 cents wasn't enough. He was forced to give me another.
2 weeks after that, they fired the banquet chef's assistant (we had a lot of 300+ people events) and told him to pick his new assistant, he immediately requested me. I told them i needed another raise, I was told no again, again I said I'll find a new job, came in the next day and put my 2 weeks in (yup, found a job that quick) Wound up making more money in that kitchen than anyone beside the banquet chef and the head chef.
That's how i wound up getting 3 raises in a month.
The More You NO
GiphyWorked at a cancer nonprofit.
Hired a lady who knew about us because her kid had cancer.
Boss wanted me to fire her because she had to come in late or leave early to take her kid to chemo.
I refused. Boss said she'd fire me if I didn't. I told her she could go right ahead. Our CEO said no way.
Proof Positive
A "manager" threatened to fire me because I wouldn't make some system changes that would have led the company very open to a cyber attack. I had recorded a phone call between the manager and I where I explained the risk and that we needed someone more senior to sign off on that risk before I would make the change. He swore at me and told me just to fucking do it which was all captured on the recording.
He didn't know I was recording.
At the HR meeting where he was going to effectively fire me, I insisted on bringing representation and at the time the policy said I could bring whoever I wanted. So I chose his boss.
The meeting starts, the "manager" cites insubordination etc and I just sat there. When they eventually said we are giving you formal notice, I just asked "are you sure? " He replied yes. My representative (his boss) at this point had said nothing.
It was at this point I played the recording.
I was asked to leave the room. I was called back 15 mins later , apologized to, given a pay rise and informed that the "manager" will no longer be working on this client site. Or any client site we supported.