Kinda. There was this guy who was somehow related to the owner of the company. He got a new laptop, and wanted me to install some stuff on it.

At the time, one tech always had to be in the call queue, and that tech was me. I told him, “hey. I’m stuck in queue and I’m on a call. You can either bring me your laptop so I can install it when I’m done, you can wait until I can get out of queue, or you can put in a ticket and maybe someone can remote in and take care of it.”

He went and told my boss’s boss that I wouldn’t install his shit unless he put in a ticket (a thing we were explicitly not allowed to say).

Grand boss calls me in, let’s dude tell his side of the story, then asks if it was true. My vision goes red for the first time since middle school, and I said, “absolutely not,” and recounted what actually happened. He says, thank you, you’re dismissed.

I go outside and smoke half a pack of cigarettes before my boss’s boss comes outside and says, “thanks, man. I was looking for rope to hang that asshole with. You’re good.”

I was almost fired when I worked as a parking lot attendant.

How the process worked is, the lot served a community college and there was only one way in the parking lot. It was a flat rate, so the customer would pay the 2 bucks (or whatever it was) I would hand them a sequentially numbered ticket that they would put on their dash and they would park.

At the end of the shift I would fill out a deposit slip that had a entry for what ticket number I started with and what ticket number I ended with and I put all the cash and that slip in a plastic bag that would seal up and I would deposit it in the bank. Typically the daily deposit amount would be around 350 bucks.

Well one day the boss calls me and says that they can’t find a deposit and I have to come in and explain why. I went in and told them that I made the deposit at the end of yesterday’s shift.

I get suspended.

About a week later the boss calls me and says the bank found the deposit and my suspension is over. I had already found another job so I just told him that I am resigning.

What to know the really fucking up part? Every now and then a driver would give me back the ticket as they left the parking lot. I would just throw it in the trash. Well one day a driver handed me his ticket as he was leaving, and another driver was coming in so, I just reused the ticket.

You see what is coming, don’t you? I started making a point of reusing tickets and keeping the two bucks. I would STEAL the money. I would steal odd amounts, 16 bucks one day, 22 bucks the next day.

I figure I must have stolen at least 1000 bucks from that place when it was all said and done.

They had to cut down the company from 15 to 8 employees due to a big client leaving.
I was one of those seven that needed to go. But one of those that got to stay had a year long sabbatical planned and decided to take it earlier. This allowed me to stay, but I only got to hear this about a week or two before I had to go.

I already had some second job interviews planned and attended these anyway for fun. I wasn’t rude, but definitely a lot more casual than your usual applicant :)

No, I just got regular fired.

I got fired from my first job. It started at 4am, and I’m a heavy sleeper, I came in too late too many times. But I was also the best at it, and I was unfired by the end of the day.

Probably lots of times that I wasn’t aware of.

Once I got a disciplinary and six month “probation” for taking a day off that hadn’t been approved. I’m not sure what I expected to happen, but I did it anyway because the a-hole who denied it took such pleasure in the denial that I absolutely had to take the day off anyway just to spite him. Frankly, he’s lucky he was 1) bigger than me and 2) I’m not predisposed to violence. That smirk was an open invitation.

There was also the time I remember the boss of the company I was working for at the time coming into the room I was working in, standing there for a bit and then walking out. I’d thought it was weird at the time, but later heard that he’d been planning to fire me but saw me hard at work and chickened out. He later made me redundant, which I don’t think was a surprise to anyone but me. He’s a millionaire running a large US company now. Funny to think about really.

Sometimes you think you’re introspective until you realise there’s a whole bunch of things you’ve totally been missing or not facing. In my case, mental health. Looking back at the way I worked in all the jobs I had before I had to quit, I can see what I was doing in order to continue to function totally rubbed people the wrong way, even when it wasn’t the overt, angry nonsense I started doing towards the end.

I had many situations where bosses were mad at me. Seriously furious sometimes.

But usually they weren’t right, and I never felt real danger of getting fired.

Based on the margin of error I leave myself for clocking in, I’m almost fired every day.

I was working at Payless shoes over a decade ago when this happened. I was brought in from a different store because turn over was so high at our downtown location. Everything was ok for a month or two then my till was short. That had never happened to me before, but apparently I had “miscounted” the coins at close. Never happened to me before but we are all human, maybe I made a mistake.

Next day I close and again my till was short according to the manager. There was 1 problem, just to show that it wasn’t me slaking I had sent pictures in of my count and the log sheets to the district manager just to cover my ass. Manager wouldn’t hear me out and took me off the schedule for the week.

I used what would have been my shift to hand out résumés. I was immediately hired next door at a different retail store. I walk 1 door down and tell manager I quit.

Now the fun bit comes in. Turns out I wasn’t short on my till. The manager was running a scam to keep his store numbers up and to skim some off the top as well. He would “buy” small items on his credit card and then reverse the charge on the credit card machine. So it looked like he was selling things, but he wasn’t. Even worse he would return these on later dates so he would get the refund money.

He would cover it up by claiming he had an employee theft problem/employee incompetence problem. If an employee stayed to long/annoyed him/got to close to figuring him out he would make them short on till on their shift like he did with me/something similar just to get them fired. He was caught partially because I sent in photo proof that something weird was happening.

Once as a teen I forgot I had an extra Sunday opening shift I had volunteered for at a pizza shop I worked part time at. I was passed out at a LAN party after playing Quake 3/SWAT 4 into the early AM hours with the boys when I got an upset voice mail from my boss who said not to show up if i was more than 2 hours late. I asked my dad what to do, and he just told me to show up anyways and try to apologize. tbf I hadn’t no-showed before and I guess boss felt like he had over reacted. I got a 25 cents per hour raise that day.

Other time was layoffs at my 11 year long career now, I had been there for 4 years at the time. Union dictated layoffs went by seniority. I was above 1 other person before the hire date cut off. Phew. We’re doing better these days and a lot of people got hired back eventually.

I’m an all or nothing kind of guy.