People Share The Worst Thing They Saw A Coworker Do At Work And Not Get Fired

We all make mistakes, that’s part of being human. Sometimes we also do wrong things on purpose, believing in a greater end result, worth the means necessary to obtain it. We do these things in our personal lives, and sometimes we even do them when we are doing our work, pursuing our careers. Sometimes, we make mistakes and nobody notices, the results are small enough to slip under everyone’s radar. Other mistakes, even if they seem small, can explode with unexpected consequences. When such things happen at work, those consequences can include losing a job, a primary means of making ends meet. No-one usually wants that, and so we try not to make mistakes worth getting fired for.

The stories that make up this list are of times when they witnessed someone working do something horrible, whether on purpose or by accident. The mistake or intentionally improper actions wasn’t the most surprising thing about the event, however. No, far more surprising was the fact that the worker didn’t get fired for what they did! The consequences, or potential consequences, of what these people did was certainly worth losing their job over, but for whatever reason (lenient boss, favoritism, new on the job), they kept their employment… at least for a little longer.

Hopefully, none of our readers ever find themselves on the bad end of doing something worth losing a job over.
42. Bleached Fishpocalypse

“I worked at a pet store for a long time. We had a Cyanobacteria outbreak and were bleaching individual tanks (once separated from main sump) and then dechlorinating the tanks and testing them before putting them back in with the main sump system.

We had been undergoing the process for about a week at that point, but apparently one of our older coworkers, ‘Ole Red’ hadn’t been paying attention at all during that time period.

She reattached a tank half-full of bleach to the main tank system.

As I walked into the store (it was my day off; I was just there for lizard food), I just see the majority of the fish moving around listlessly. Then they started death-spiralling. I point this out to my coworkers and they start freaking out. One of them starts dumping bottles of dechlorinator into the system.

Meanwhile, Ole Red fishes out her favorite fish, ***** parrot cichlids, and starts blowing into their gills, trying to do some s***ty approximation of CPR. She ends up throwing them into the separate sick tank in hopes of saving them.

Anyway, she killed 99% of the fish and I had to help shovel out their corpses while crying the entire time.

She didn’t get fired and never took responsibility for the event.

tldr: Fishpocalypse 2012 caused by an idiot with a jug of bleach.” nerdhappyjq

41. Lied About Deleting A Customer’s Data And The Company Backed Him Up

“I worked at a webhosting tech support company and a coworker accidentally deleted another customer’s website. This was on a Unix system, so it wasn’t possible to undo the delete. He deleted the command history to cover his mistake and then told the customer that the website was lost due to a hard drive failure. The customer hadn’t been keeping backups and said that he lost his entire livelihood.

The employee told management about the situation and they ran with it to avoid getting sued. They told the customer that hardware issues sometimes happen and because he hadn’t opted into our managed backup services, the data loss was on him. They offered the customer several months of free webhosting as compensation and the problem went away. A week after seeing this play out, I put in my two-weeks notice.” trs4ece

40. Throwing Dangerous Things In The Deep Fryer

“He liked throwing ice cubes into the deep fryer. He’d stand far enough away that he wouldn’t get splashed, which made it a complete surprise to the person working the fryer.

If you’ve never done this, it kind of causes a mini-explosion of bubbles in molten grease, which splashes everywhere and, at the very least, makes a mess.

When this got too boring, he started stealing kids’ meal toys and chucking them into the fryer. It took longer for them to start melting, and if he couldn’t get them out, we had to turn the thing off for the rest of the day because it takes hours for it to cool off long enough to retrieve something, and then at least another hour to heat back up. I can’t remember what it was that he threw, but it caught on fire and he ended up pulling it out with a pair of metal tongs and threw it in the sink.

Then he turned on the water and made (to his surprise!) a BIGGER FIRE. Did he get burned? Yes. Did he get fired? No. Did he do it again? Sort of. I think he went back to ice cubes after that.” NeedsMoreTuba

39. Programmer Forgot A Single Line Of Code

“Something an old buddy of mine did 15+ years ago.

He worked for a really big gaming company that was just about to ship a major title. Like, MAJOR. Because of beta testing, there was code in the game that would disable the beta copies the day after the game officially dropped. His job was to make sure that code was removed before they burned all of the official CDs for the game’s release.

Guess who forgot to remove the code? The company had already burned tens of thousands (maybe more) of game discs and boxed them up for shipment before my buddy realized his mistake and came clean to his boss. They had to re-burn, replace, and re-box every copy of the game and do it in time to meet the launch date. Cost a lot of people a lot of extra time and grief but, ultimately, my buddy got to keep his job.

For those interested: The company was Bethesda Softworks and I believe the game was Morrowind. Their offices were in Rockville MD at the time and I used to go meet my friend over there for lunch every couple of weeks.

If I recall correctly he was in charge of coding the sky effects for the game… well, that and removing the code that would brick the game after release :-)” PaperClipsAreEvil

38. Boss’s Hands Assured Her Job

“I worked with a young lady that was hired above her capabilities and continued to perform below expectations on a daily basis. We were a professional consulting firm, yet she’d arrive to work in in sweat pants and a top that would freely expose her midriff. For months she completely stood out as under-dressed, under-qualified, and with no upside for the future. At the first Christmas party she went to, the married CEO/owner ended up dancing with her and spent an inordinate amount of time grabbing her butt on the dance floor while of us drones looked on.

She was the talk of the office for weeks. A few months later she pulled a real dips**t move that would cost the company tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars AND p*ss off the client (a mega-large multinational) to no end. This was type of f**k up that would inevitably result in a firing or resignation. I asked her if she felt her job was in jeopardy. Her reply: “They can’t fire me, the boss grabbed my a** at the Christmas party.”

A couple years later she was made a project manager. Yikes.” Hell_Yes_Im_Biased

37. Only Working For Half The Billed Time

“He was GM, owner was his college roomie, and he was only at work a maximum of 40 hrs out of 80 in the two-week pay period.

He would leave in the mornings and go do his other job, leaving me (production manager) to run the place, and then come back towards the end of the day. He still billed the owner 80 hours per two-week pay period. He did this for at least 6 months.

I told the owner when I left the company.

They had a long chat.

He still works there.

His name is Chad.” Srslywhyumadbro

36. Nurse Acted The Part Of The Patient To Frighten The New Worker

“So I work on a therapeutic campus and I run a unit that specializes in patients with severe learning difficulties, psychosis, paranoid schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses.

Some of our patients are known for being quite aggressive and extremely dangerous when they are unsettled.

We found out one shift that we will be having a new nurse with us on shift who isn’t familiar with the patients/staff at all. How the shift works is that each staff gets given a patient that they stick with for a few hours before everyone rotates to different patients.

My coworker had just got his patient into the bath, so in the meantime, he was cleaning that patient’s room. That’s when the new nurse came into the room with that patient’s morning medication, having not seen the patients or the staff before, she thought that the staff member cleaning the room was the patient she was supposed to be giving meds to.

My coworker quickly realized that she was confused and started playing along, answering all of her questions and trying to imitate the patient’s behavior. When she approaches my coworker to give him the patients meds, he put his arms up in the air and screamed ‘GET AWAY FROM ME’ and started to run at her (which is something this patient use to do all the time). She instantly screams and drops the medication, she turns around and runs down the corridor screaming whilst my coworker was still chasing her.

After management had heard about all of this, he just had to apologize and luckily she saw the funny side of it.

But holy s**ft, places of care are usually super strict with that kind of thing so I’m surprised I’m still working with him to this day hahah!” BlokWorld

35. Dough Boy Practically Begs To Be Fired

“Pizza place, it was a busy night and a couple Togo orders took too long, and the owner comes in raising **** with the guy rolling dough about ticket times. The situation escalated quickly and the guy started cursing back and forth with the owner.

Guy screams something like ‘F**king fire me if you think I’m doing such a s**t job, old man!’

Owner: ‘Are you f**king with me?’

Guy: ‘No, f**king fire me, do it! I f**king hate this job, hate my life, and I hate this f**king restaurant! Fire me!’

Owner apologized later.” nomattawut

34. Caught Napping And Made Fun Of, But Not Fired

“Teenage coworker was told to go check and pull any expired or near expiration date canned pet food.

Said coworker was not heard from for hours. Manager goes to check and teenager is sleeping, propped up against the food racks, while kind of half sitting in a carriage. I mean sound asleep! Manager gathers all other employees to come and look, we all laugh and make noise and he never wakes. Finally manager shakes him and he falls off cart. Manager tells him to go nap in his car. Teenager naps in his car for another hour, all while still punched in.” Icewaterforall
33. Clueless Manager’s Uncoordination Costs Company Millions

“Was on a big project where Clueless Manager (CM) was required to coordinate delivery of cement to a remote site.

The remote site had its own deep water jetty but otherwise all of the equipment required to pump the cement off the ship needed to be in place so that the cement could be received.

Ship shows up. Trucks, crews, pumps and storage containers either not ready, still in transit or sitting around on site not ready for unloading.

Tempus fugits. Ship captain is having a f**king fit and they’re charging $25,000/day for demurrage on the cargo.

11 days pass. Owner of shipping line calls our Project Director, screams at him a bit and threatens to pump the cement out and dump it off the ship if the unloading doesn’t start within 36 hours.

Several plane flights of equipment and crew later, unloading commences within 36 hours.

Total cost to the project was over $1,000,000.

The same or similar event happened 3 more times. Final settlement went to lawyers & mediation for over $4,000,000.

CM was never sacked.” Klarok

32. Almost Never Shows Up, Still Keeps Her Job

“We have a girl who calls out for almost every single one of her shifts. When she doesn’t call out she begs everyone to take her shifts. Out of every 10 shifts she is given she only ever actually shows up for one or two. Whenever she does show up she almost always asks to leave early anyway for any of the many excuses she has up her sleeve.

She has received seven serious write-ups for her attendance/reliability. Most people are sacked after three serious write-ups. Somehow she keeps sneaking on by. Every time she gets another one I think ‘Okay this will be the one’ but she still somehow works here. She was actually fired once in the past for these very same patterns but for some reason they let her come back only for her to pull the same s**t all over again.

Anyway, right in the middle of our busy season this most recent summer she asked for three weeks off. She was told that they would give her one week but anything more than that would be considered her resignation.

So she took the three weeks off anyway, and during that time all of her scheduled shifts were left uncovered. That’s at least 15+ no call no shows and we were always left understaffed and screwed because of it.

Yet after her little vacation she resumed working with no repercussions. Nothing was ever said about it. We’ve had to let people go for far, far less. I don’t understand it. I like her as a person and when she is here she is a great worker but that’s the problem, she’s never actually here.” ***************

31. Bad-Mouthing Boss’s Decision To His Face

“I worked in a really small department (4 people), was the youngest by 30 years and also the newest employee…but I picked up fast, which wasn’t hard as 2 out of 3 of my coworkers could barely run a computer.

So about 6 months in my manager goes on a 2-week vacation, and during that time my boss has a sit-down talk with me and the other 2 guys. I had to leave about 6 times to answer the phone/counter and every time I walked back in things were more tense.

I finally pieced together that the meeting was my boss telling these two guys 3xs my age and with seniority to me that I was in charge of them, even when the manager came back.

Jay was grumbling and cursing and my boss called him out on it, Jay told him he didn’t want me in charge and if he and Ralph were such failures to just fire him because he was not going to get any better and he certainly wasn’t going to listen to me.

I could see the words about to come out of my boss’s mouth, but he refrained and didn’t fire Jay. Jay did get fired for being incompetent a few months down the road though.” [deleted]

30. Coworker Forgets To Tell Client When To Stop Using A Chemical

“My coworker had to substitute for me to do some technical services at a petrochemical plant. He instructed the customer to pump some chemical into the system to boost the pH. He however never told them to stop and they ended up pumping the entire 14,000-gallon container of chemicals into the unit which stopped production for 2 days, and they had to dump the solution in the process, which costs like $75000 or so to make.

Customer was p*ssed and refused to pay for his visit. I am glad they didn’t sue us. Meanwhile, that coworker continues to sit in his office and f**k up everything he touches.” ooo-ooo-oooyea
29. Teachers Leave Child Behind In Emergency

“I work in child care. One day we had a fire emergency during nap where all the rooms started smelling like gas. We wake up the kids in our room, get them outside and wait for the all-clear. Five minutes pass and the firefighters are carrying out a preschooler that had been left asleep on her cot and completely forgotten about by not one, but two teachers.

Everyone was sure they were going to get fired, you know, for endangering a child’s life in a fire emergency? But no. Just got ‘retrained’ and moved from that room.” fuzzy-maraca
28. Drunk Driver Gets Punished By Coworkers

“I use to work for a company that did inventory audits and we frequently travelled all over the state to do audits. There was that guy EVERYBODY hated because he was a giant ************** who I will call JD(Jumbo ******). Well one night we had an audit in a city around 3 hours away in the evening so once we got done it was around 1am-2am so pretty much everyone was tired, and only certain people are allowed to drive the company vehicles we take to out of town audits.

Well all the other people who were approved to drive were too tired to so JD said he would, after about half an hour on the road and everyone in the van fell asleep. Around this time JD thought it would be the perfect time to pull out the bottle of vodka be bought when he was filling up on gas and start lining up shots on the passenger seat. Fast forward an hour and everyone in the van get woken up by JD swerving back and forth on the road and nearly hitting the guard rail ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD.

Well as predicted everyone in the van calmly and politely asked JD to pull over, then 2 guys politely pulled JD out of the van and attempted to calmly kick his head in. When we got back to the office no one wasted time to call our District Manager and try to get JD fired/arrested, only everyone in the van was telling different stories with each person exaggerating the events more than the pervious person in the attempt to make his punishment worse. Well since the stories were so different our DM couldn’t use this as grounds for termination.” JakexDx
27. Coworker Hired By Her Friend, So Never Gets Fired For Doing Everything Wrong

“I work with this woman who should have been fired over a year ago, based on the company’s policies.

She was hired by her friend (surprise) and quickly figured out she doesn’t have to do s**t because of it. We work in express restaurant, so lots of rules for good reason.

Just in the past 6 months she has caused multiple customers to complain about her specifically on surveys, caused other customers to call corporate to complain about her rudeness, broke a fryer, two thermometers, a sink, and 4 knives, opened the store with no paper towels or sanitizer (huge no no, we could have been shut down if the inspector came), oh and left the safe wide open and the doors unlocked for the entire night.

This all when she was actually working and not hiding in the back texting or talking on the phone. No one knows how she isn’t fired let alone demoted.

Another coworker and I were ‘promoted’ to her spot with the promise that we would take her place when she was fired. We happily took on the responsibilities and waited for the actual promotion so we could have the titles and matching pay. Yeah she’s still f**king here, haven’t gotten that raise or any of the others promised, and still technically ranked under her. I just saw I have to work with her tomorrow and I’m p*ssed.” Queenofthebowls

26. Radio Guy Forgot To Delete His Curses

“Worked at a small radio station.

Guy who was on air before me would record the local news for me to play at 6pm. It was recorded so if he messed up he would just start over and edit that part out. Well one day he forgets that he messed up so he doesn’t edit it. I play the news on-air at 6 and in the middle I hear “GOD ****** NOW I HAVE TO DO THIS F**KING THING AGAIN…(then in his pleasant radio voice) Hi I’m Jim Thomas with your 6 o’clock news update’. Not sure why he didn’t get fired.” paulvs88
25. Ron The Chatterbox

“I had a coworker named Ron (name changed).

Ron was a laid-back guy and you could tell that right away when talking with him. He was a very likeable guy and to this day I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason he was able to stick around. Anyway, Ron loved to talk. Like, non-stop. It was all or nothing for him: either he sat there quietly or he just kept on going until somebody stopped him. Well, our manager was the micromanagement type and would constantly get irritated with Ron not only for talking but for distracting the rest of us. She would yell at any of us for talking but she always let Ron get away with it a little bit more.

One day, Ron was feeling especially chatty. He loudly admitted that he was high on Percocets. After a few of us laughed, he told us that he gets high on Percocet every single morning before work. He told us that we had never seen him sober.

Cue my manager walking over.

She tells us to keep it down and get back to work, making no mention of Ron’s comments.

But Ron just keeps on talking. About superhero movies, Netflix docs, Michael Jordan. Basically just a bunch of s**t that had no relation to our work.

Manager comes back over, tells him to be quiet again.

This happened three more times before lunchtime finally rolled around.

Ron gathered his things and went to lunch. After 30 minutes, he hadn’t come back. After an hour, he still hadn’t come back. In fact, he still hadn’t come back by the time I was ready to leave. After clocking out and walking downstairs, I see Ron passed out on one of the tables in the cafeteria. Showed up to work the next day and my manager never said a word, and everything went back to normal.

I no longer work that job but just before I left, Ron had been promoted. My mind was f**king blown.” ************

24. Supervisor Blows Company Money At The Casino

“My supervisor at a company that does contact work inside plants, we’ll call him “M.” M is notoriously bad with money, not malicious, just sometimes he really doesn’t realize what he’s doing.

Anyways, he ‘borrowed’ $500 from the company to treat our clients to a nice meal while he was on an out of town trip, ended up getting drunk and blowing it all at a casino. Company found out. All they made him do was pay it back. He still works there, and this was not his only f**k up.” mjsusko
23. Took The Day Off With The Company Car, Cash, And Card

“Coworker left for a delivery that should have taken an hour and fifteen tops. After a couple hours we started to get worried so we gave him a call, no answer.

We even checked traffic accident reports we were so concerned. Then called the dispensary he delivered to and they said he made it and had left long ago…Ok so he’s not answering his phone, he has $14,000 something in cash and the company debit card. He better have a great excuse or (hopefully) this jacka** will finally get fired. 5 hours later he calls our boss back and says that he had some personal things to work out so he took off for the day. Like it was no big deal. They decide that’s worth writing up, but decide not to fire him since he dropped off the cash and card at like 8 at night in their home mailbox.” Lovingmyusername
22. Abused Children Yelled At By Aide

“I worked at a school for kids who need emotional support.

We had a classroom aide who would scream at kids until they cried and then actively mock them for crying. These kids were 7 and came from horrifically abusive houses. It sucked to work in a place that allowed abusive behavior to continue. She was close family friends with the principal. It’s very hard to help a child when they learn from a young age that adults aren’t able to make things better and adults are capable of incredibly mean things.” InfiniteSandwich

21. Fred Cleans Well Enough To Be Forgiven Threats

“At a previous job, we had an “employee” that was called in to clean on an as-needed basis.

The employee, who we will call Fred, owed a lot of child support. After a unusually long break of not working, we called Fred in to clean the work place. I think he expected to be paid under the table, because when he was given a paycheck, it was **** near zero because of all the back-due child support he owed that we were forced to take from his paycheck. He literally started screaming, swearing, calling the boss every name you can think of, punching walls and threatened to shoot up the place. The boss still calls him back to work as needed to clean because he ‘is really good at cleaning’…..” Plainas_Tay
20. Manager Kept Padding His Hours

“Store manager got caught adding hours he didn’t work to his time card.

He got a reprimand and they removed the ability for managers to edit their own hours.

About a month later he gets caught using another manager’s login to add more hours he didn’t work. Another slap on the wrist and is still working at the same place.” dtee3

19. Coworker With A Job But No Actual Work

“I worked with a guy who literally had no job. He was the ‘studio supervisor’ but there was no activity in the studio to supervise because the studio had effectively become non-operational. He coasted for a full 8 years at this job. He would come in the morning, open his email, get coffee, gossip and complain about the industry for an hour, leave for an hour, come back for lunch, leave for another 3 hours, come back, send a few emails and then officially leave for the day.

It was infuriating and majestic.” PedanticPuppy
18. Boss Forges Signature And Gets Promotion

“My boss forged my name on a number of documents, because she didn’t have the required certifications to sign the documents herself and I had refused to sign them. I know this, because after things went horribly south they tried to claim I had been the one to screw up, and showed me my/her signature. She got promoted again instead of fired, that way I didn’t have to quit. You will never guess whose mother owned the company.” [deleted]

17. Coworker Takes Unannounced Vacation To Thailand

“Our department went for a team-building overnight stay abroad.

The next day when we were supposed to meet at the airport he was nowhere to be found, his phone was off, bosses rang the hospitals, missing persons report, you name it, a week later the bosses went back to the country to find him again….nothing, wife and child had t heard anything….. week later he turns up for work like nothing happened, he had decided to jump on a earlier flight to Thailand for a weeks holiday without telling a soul. Couple of meetings with the bosses, never mentioned again, guess his wife made him feel it at home but that was never disclosed.” lancal62
16. Applebees Server Simply Walks Out And Comes Back The Next Day

“Worked at Applebees and this one server had decided she had enough of the bulls**t.

She walked out in the middle of her shift, while she still had tables. Showed up the next day like nothing happened, and nothing did happen. She didn’t get fired. She didn’t get written up. She didn’t get warned. She left everyone, including customers, high and dry as to where she was.

I eventually grew to get along very well with her. That s**t blew my mind though.” ltrain228

15. Chef’s Band-Aid Ended Up In Customer’s Mouth

“Wisconsin – Pretty nice hotel – Our room service Chef

I get in for the night, and my co-worker is fielding a call of a VERY LOUD guest.

I can tell it is going bad….VERY BAD. He hangs up, looks down in sadness for a bit, gets up and slowly walks to the kitchen. His next words were burnt into my head…

‘cooks name….can I see your hand….’

Cook looks down and notices his band-aid is missing, and made its way into a pizza that went up to a customer. He said his wife had it in her mouth.

No…..not fired.” XmagnumoperaX

14. Using Jack’s Mistakes For Write-Offs

“A guy I’ll call Jack drove an oversized company vehicle into a garage too short for it. Peeled back the roof like a sardine can. He’d driven this vehicle before.

He even parked it beside the other oversized company vehicles right outside the parking garage.

Jack just got transferred to another department. When he goofed up something in the new department, he got transferred again. He never got fired, yet had no connections or any sort of protected status.

I’m guessing the company kept Jack around because they needed his stupidity for write-offs when he destroyed things.” norejectfries

13. Breaks The Door And His Head

“The car dealership I worked at had an automated garage door that opened REALLY fast and closed REALLY fast, because the shop had AC and heat so they didn’t want to waste either.

Two mechanics go up to the door. One of them stands under the door and proceeds to instruct the other one to push the manual override close button so that it would close on his head. He wanted to see what it would feel like. He ended up breaking the motor and costing the shop $15,000 plus whatever his medical bills he may have procured (I’m not really sure). Not fired” Green_trout

12. Skipped Out On New Year’s Eve

“Co-worker pulled a no-call, no-show on New Year’s Eve. This left the manager-on-duty and me to run the store completely on our own from 2 p.m.

until we closed at 7. You wouldn’t think that a pet store would be super busy on New Year’s, but we were. And it seemed like every other person who came in needed a fish or some kind of assistance–I had so many customers get mad at me because they needed help in one department and it took forever for someone to come over, because there were literally TWO employees in the entire store and one of them (me) couldn’t leave the register.

At one point, a customer’s dog p*ssed in the middle of an aisle and she didn’t clean up after it.

All MOD and I could do for about an hour was set up a ‘wet floor’ sign up next to the puddle, because neither of us had a spare few minutes to mop and disinfect the floor.

This same co-worker had already pulled a no-call, no-show in the past and had gotten sent home once or twice for copping an attitude with the managers. I thought for SURE that this last incident would be the final straw, but no. I had the next couple days off, and the next time I came in, the jacka** was standing behind the register, reading a magazine because there was nobody waiting to check out in that moment and God forbid he find SOMETHING constructive to do.

He ended up quitting a week later, not bothering to give two weeks notice. MOD and I were happy to see him go.” christinequizmachine

11. Forgiven For Flipping A Golf Cart

“I work at a golf course and a coworker of mine flipped a brand new golf cart onto its side. It was raining out the asphalt was slippery and he was driving it down a slope. He hit the brakes and tried to drift but just put the cart on its side. My boss who was out golfing came in to see the damage (not extensive but a bit more than a scratch), and my boss didn’t even raise his voice at my coworker, just told him to be more careful next time.

We all thought for sure that this coworker was going to get canned on the spot.” [deleted]

10. Camp Counsellor Didn’t Have The Basic Medicine Training

“During the first week of camp while we were still in counselor training mode, one of the counselors was injured with a particularly hard hip thrust during a game of footy. Cue my co-nurse running off to find her a Claritin (allergy med) for the swelling.

My other coworkers and counselors all exchanged confused, worried, glances, wondering if she was joking. She honestly believed that it would work to “reduce the swelling,” despite me explaining the difference between pathogen-related swelling and blunt trauma.

She was furious with me for ‘over ruling’ her when I said no and instead grabbed an ice pack.

Due to bureaucratic reasons we weren’t allowed to fire/switch her out and instead my co-workers and I had to keep a close eye on her for the rest of the summer terrified that she would poison someone.” ironmaven

9. Randomly Laid Off Essential Employees

“Our HR dept had to cut so many employees for a layoff, and the person in charge of making sure they weren’t laying off essential personnel (or at least leave one person who could support a system) just picked names at random from a list based on pay.

She ‘accidentally’ laid off myself and the only other person in the company that supported the system we lovingly call ‘the core product.’ When we told them it had to be a mistake, they just took it as us begging for our jobs and disregarded our warnings.

This resulted in the company having to request emergency training services from the vendors, who were more than happy to fly across the country and charge roughly double our yearly salaries to do a two week seminar. Turns out, however, that you can’t learn everything you need to know about a system so complex in two weeks, especially if you haven’t ever used it before, and they ended up rehiring both myself and the other person into positions where we earn more money and have less overall responsibility.

I found out specifically who made the mistake after being rehired, and despite costing the company about 400k, she did not get herself terminated.

I am currently enjoying my new job, but I’m definitely more than a little shaken in terms of company loyalty.” chronocaptive

8. Dump Truck Driver Waits Out Getting Caught

“Guy took a city dump truck through the drive thru — with the bed up. Ripped everything up and drove off.

He drove back to the office and told his superior he was going home sick. He was long gone by the time any of us heard what happened. In the event of a crash, it’s city policy that the driver has to take a drug test.

By going home, he avoided that.

Over the next few weeks, he burned up all of his paid time off which allowed him to postpone the drug test. He just didn’t show up for a few more weeks after the vacation time was expended …and then one day, decides he’s gonna pee into a cup. Passed. Cleared for work.” ndill84

7. Rich Boy Kevin Drains Hearts And Spills Candy

“I worked at a Target during my later years of High School and had a lovely coworker named Kevin. His parents were rich and essentially forced him to apply for a job to get a sense for the service industry since he would never have to work a day in his life.

The whole ‘mommy and daddy are rich and I can sue you’ cliche is true *with this **********.

It was a regular day in the store, but at one point our manager asked Kevin to help stock the shelves for Valentine’s Day. Apparently, Kevin bought some ***** with his parent’s money and decided to go to work as high as Snoop Dogg’s bedroom. Kevin and I were stocking the shelves when I looked over at him, and there he was, breaking open the Valentine’s heart-shaped chocolate things and slurping out the cream filling. By the time I saw him doing this, it was too late.

He slurped at least twenty hearts dry.

At this point I am pretty p*ssed, so we get the manager over to knock some sense into him. Kevin is still high, but now decides to actually try to stock the shelves, since the manager was here. Kevin is a short little s**t nugget, so we needed a ladder for stocking the top layers. In Kevin’s intoxicated waltz, he knocked a bag of candy off the top shelf and went down to get it before tumbling on his a** right off the ladder.

The manager never filed a drug report to corporate for some reason, although I highly suspect it was because his family was rich and influential in the area.

Needless to say, I quit that day.” PM-ME-YOUR-DANK-MEME

6. Three-Hour Nap Only Got A Warning

“Sleep for three hours. I was brand new on the job (corporate thing), and my new coworker came up to me on a weekend shift and said, “I was up really late last night, I’m gonna go lay down for a few minutes.” Three hours later, he woke up and came out to work again, without any measure of apology. In the interim, one of the people we worked for found him asleep, and told my boss. He got a warning.” PM_Skunk

5. Big T Flips Boss’s Desk And Gets A Second Chance

“A coworker I’ll call T, in addition to working at the company also owned a failing restaurant with his wife (it’s legit, company knows about it and is cool with it) unfortunately for a while it was totally consuming him and his performance was failing.

They decided they had to let T go. When T’s supervisor, who was about 5’7″ and weighed 150lbs tried to fire T, 6’4″ and 300 lbs. T says, ‘welp, I guess I have nothing left to lose’ and then proceeded to flip boss’s desk 1 handed and literally pick boss up and pinned him to the wall before the rest of the guys in the office could pull him off. For some reason they decided to give T a second chance. He still works there.” [deleted]

4. Telling Grandma To Hurry Up

“So, I got my buddy CJ a job at my gas station and it’s his first day.

He was working a register and was doing pretty good. My manager was messing with the cigarettes or something behind us.
I hear CJ say from his register, ‘C’mon, Grandma, hurry up. You’ve used a debit card before.’
My manager looked like a deer in headlights. Both of us just look at him. I’m f**king FURIOUS that he just f**ked up the job that I vouched for him to get. He looks confused for a second, then starts to chuckle.
It was his actual grandmother.
We all had a good laugh and it was a good day.” Childflayer

3. Hot Hotel Employee Steals Hundreds Of Dollars

“At one hotel I worked at one girl got caught dropping empty drop envelopes into the safe and taking the cash.

I’m talking about hundreds of dollars per shift for multiple shifts.

She was hot though. I think the owner liked staring at her.

By the time i quit, she was still there.” michikade

2. Ran Over A Dementia Patient With A Company Car

“Phone call from employee with company car starts with: ‘So I just ran over this dude…’

Turns out dude had dementia or something, not the first time he’s dashed out into traffic. Family did nothing. No insurance claim, no lawsuit, no nothing. His daughter came outside, yelled at the guy (her dad), and called an ambulance. Cops were involved. No idea how we ended up with no liability.” gwana

1. Chemo-Suffering Teacher Punches Student

“Back when I was doing my student teaching, a teacher punched a student in the face and did not get fired.

In his defense, the kid was 17 and thought it would be funny to rip the wig off of a female teacher who was going through chemo. The teacher who did the punching was right there and it was pretty much an immediate reaction. Not a single person in that school blamed that teacher for what he did.” partofbreakfast