Did you ever lose a job for a stupid reason?

[keniakittykat]

Yeah, just like a lot of people these days I got fired for a shitty reason.
I worked a crappy job at an electronica webshop's customer service.
I don't have a car. I can't even afford a licence. So to get to work I used to ride a bike from home to the train station, take the train and there take another bike to ride 20 minutes to the office.

But on Monday I found out that the bike I kept at the station got stolen. I called and arrived 40 minutes late.. So for the rest of the week I had to take my bike on the train and got declined entry because according to the train conductors (or whatever they're called in English) won't let me ride the train with my bike during work hours (From 6AM to 9:30AM). And so I couldn't make it to work in time for the entire week (I was about 5 to 15 minutes late every day) And I even bought a replacement bike, and on friday when I was on the train with my new bike and on time for once, I got called by my supervisor telling me I shouldn't bother coming in anymore. Because "if we can't trust you to come in on time, we can't use you".

Now keep in mind, I worked there for three months and always came in at least 15 minutes early. But no one really liked me, and even got into trouble for wearing gaudy clothes in a no-dresscode office! I think they were just waiting for a reason to get rid of me.

Any relatable stories?

 

[Queen Michael]

Never had an honest job in my life, so I'll have to say no.

 

[JoJo]

I've never been fired from a job but a co-worker of mine got fired for flicking a nine year old kid on the ear as a punishment, which sucked since he was otherwise great at his job.

 

[tippy2k2]

I was a temp at a bank for a year or so. When I was relieved of my duties, the temp agency told me that it was because, and I quote: "You asked if you were allowed to dress up for Halloween".

In the end, I realized that that was just a bullshit reason. I was terrible at my job there; that was not an atmosphere that I could thrive in (think "Office Space"; work is super serious! type of place). I had no clue I was terrible at my job, I only found out later when I talked with a few of my buddies who worked there to find out their numbers versus mine. Instead of someone talking to me and telling me what I was doing wrong, I was bounced department to department to department until eventually, they finally just cut me.

With that said, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I now work at US Bank, which has a MUCH better atmosphere for an employee like me (unlike the previous job, you will not be shot for smiling ). I am much happier at this job with an incredibly helpful manager (who helped me when I was struggling and is now helping me look internally for a promotion, even if it's in a different department) than I ever was at the old bank that shall not be named...

 

[Saelune]

I got fired from my first and so far only job cause I was the only one working. Well, that is my specific job, which was mostly folding clothes and keeping everything tidy. Everyone else in the same position made it a skill of goofing off, so all the bosses saw was me alone doing not so great and no one ever doing bad (or good). The whole job was bad though, they told me nothing and kept forcing me to switch to new areas, and gave me no information, which made customers annoying to deal with.

I did not know how to react when it happened. I regret not ratting out the others.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Well there was this temp job a month or so ago where through some line of my mother knowing someone who knows someone else I got a temp job that was literally me sitting in the corner of an office ringing people to ask for information. Just a huge spreadsheet of endless phone numbers. That is ALL I had to work with. I was quietly informed that the last person who did this was fired for skipping numbers and making shit up and I cannot blame her at all.

No offense to Scottish people but it didn't help that every one of them had an incredibly thick Scottish accent. There's only so many times you can ask people to repeat themselves before you have to take a guess on what the words were.

It was one step up from cold calling people since it was a legit internal survey but I still felt mildly uncomfortable. I had a paragraph of a script to work from and any extra questions from them threw me completely. I suppose it's a bit unprofessional to just say "look mate, i'm just a temp worker staring at a spreadsheet so I know nothing of the details" when they get a bit aggressive but fuck it, I don't care.

I was randomly dropped with zero notice a few weeks in because they found a replacement and i'm still waiting for them to fucking give me my pay. I know i'm going to have to passive-aggressively nag them to death with several emails until they pay up. How very English of me.

Don't ask me why, but I have a feeling I will never hold a permanent standard 9-5 office job in my life. My intuition is pretty solid on it. I'm counting on having any idea on what the hell i'm doing to do once I hit Uni. I can probably drop phone tech support from the list too.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Because I asked for the day off for my High School graduation 1 week in advance. I kid you not.

 

[michael87cn]

OP, I feel for you, but since you knew you had no bike - you probably should have left for work with ample time to get there. I also don't have a car, and when I've been forced to walk (sometimes 90+ minutes to, and then from work) you gotta do what you gotta do. After the first or second day, you should have been able to arrive on time.

Sorry. That's the truth of it.

As for me, I've never been fired, though I have been blamed for things that were not my fault.

Also, if you don't have a car, it's usually a bad idea to have a job so far away from home. Personal experience talking...

 

[likalaruku]

Kinda. I worked for a car company called Huling Brothers (a company that involved a ton of paperwork & red tape to fire anyone for anything) that went belly up, with 8 buildings worth of employees laid off, all because our egotistical sales manager (who was cheating on his pregnant wife) & a few of his buddies thought it would be real funny to steal from a bum. Gee Automotive was nice enough to buy the company & hire us all back, but the scandal of the previous owners had tainted the entire West Seattle car industry, & Gee shut down less than 2 years latter.

 

[Aeonknight]

OP, I feel for you, but since you knew you had no bike - you probably should have left for work with ample time to get there. I also don't have a car, and when I've been forced to walk (sometimes 90+ minutes to, and then from work) you gotta do what you gotta do. After the first or second day, you should have been able to arrive on time.

Sorry. That's the truth of it.

As for me, I've never been fired, though I have been blamed for things that were not my fault.

Also, if you don't have a car, it's usually a bad idea to have a job so far away from home. Personal experience talking...

While I see your point, I would counter with the point that any management staff that intentionally blinds themselves to circumstances are probably not worth working for in the first place. Yes they have demands they have to meet by their boss and blah blah, but life is going to happen regardless. If they refuse to accept this, to hell with them.

 

[Kinitawowi]

Looking up "fuck" on Wikipedia. (They'd already decided they were getting rid of me and wanted an excuse - yeah, I might have made it easier, but it's quite a stretch to cite somebody for accessing offensive content on freakin' Wikipedia...)

 

[Tono Makt]

I almost lost a job once for doing too much work.

Yes, you read that correctly. I was almost fired for doing too much work.

The place was on a university campus, had a paid membership and the members could vote on how things were run... up to and including the prices for meals. The board had consistently voted to keep the prices low to the point where the business was basically a non-profit. BUT there was a clause in their contract with the university that said if certain financial situations were to occur (the exact details I was never made aware of) the university could step in and make changes to the business to ensure that the "Space was optimized". NOT that the business was made more profitable.

So this place was woefully understaffed. Me, being a young ambitious go-getter, worked far too hard to make sure things worked properly and I (along with two others who worked there, so it wasn't entirely about me) was literally keeping the business in business. So the new manager - drunk out of her mind at the time from booze from the bar - sat me down and told me that if I kept on "doing other peoples jobs for them" I would be fired. Which was a laugh because we all knew that I wasn't doing anyone elses job for them, I was doing work that wasn't going to be done by anyone because there was no one hired to do the work in the first place.

Ahh... my introduction to the real world.

 

[BeerTent]

I admit, I made a lot of mistakes, and I was slow and learning the ropes in a high speed and high pressure area. I worked at Staples as a tech. (For the record, the staples where I worked, we only had 1 A+ certified technician, and he was doing sales. If you take your computer to Staples for work, ask to see the cert.)

I informed my manager that I had gotten a work term from collage, and I "Wanted to make sure I had a job when I came back." He agreed that I would be moved to Sales, and I said that I was okay with this.

Three weeks later in my real job, my mother on the other side of the province received my ROI (Record of Employment) I had been fired. YEAH STAPLES!

Needs was also fun, Although I was a bit of a prick here too. As a good ol' convenience store, we've got dirty nudie magazines in the back near the office door. I trained the manager's idiot cousin who asked. "Can we read magazines during slow times?" Assuming the guy meant something like men's health or some other bullshit cosmo variant or tabloid, I said "I don't imagine there'd be an issue with this."

As week later, the manager (Who not only looks like it, but is a wife-beating scumbag. But that's another story.) brings me in back and shows me a bunch of nude mags, out of the plastic cover. "I can't sell these like this. Did you do it?" I said no, that I was a techie, I could bring up better shit than those on my phone. A week later, I roll into work and the doors are locked, my key doesn't work, and looking past the foggy glass the place was cleaned out. Called the manger and there was no answer. I'll assume that I was sacked. Furthermore, this was my second job. I was paid under the table. YEAH SOBEYS!

 

[Candidus]

Haven't really worked a day in the last decade (that is, since I got out of college), so like your first response I'd have to say I've never been fired for a stupid reason.

However I have been refused a job for a stupid reason. In 2004, I applied to work at a supermarket. I got an interview appointment - the first and only one I've ever had - and off I went to it.

Things were going so-so until they asked me whether I'd be prepared to change my "messy" hair and shave my beard.

Now they weren't wrong, my hair *is* messy. One because I cut my own hair and always have. Two because I fucking like it that way so get stuffed. As for my beard, it's a short goatee- a bit longer than a shadow, that's it.

Naturally I said no(t a chance in hell what's wrong with you). They said something that I chose to hear as "you aren't 1950's-white-picket-fences enough for us". That was basically the end of that.

 

[Something Amyss]

I once pissed off a girl who got revenge by claiming I slammed her head into the register counter.

Thing is, I'm pretty big. And I was hauling 30+ inch TVs all day back in the CRT days when this happened. If I had done what she claimed, she'd be huuuuuurt. She didn't have so much as a bruise.

Because I didn't do it.

Pretty stupid reason.

She later used our photo lab for nude pictures and got one of the operators fired, then got busted stealing a couple grand in video game consoles.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Never did get fired. Got threatened multiple times by a manager who obviously didn't understand our job, but she was demoted within a couple weeks to her old position, so I'm assuming everyone else realized how unfit she was for management at the time. She was a nice person, but a bad manager. To be fair, though, a lot of the people that worked my particular job at the time had a reputation for being somewhat lazy, and I was a new employee. That created a very bad combination where my ignorance and inability to do the job 100% passed as laziness due to the stereotype. Unfortunately, she never worked one of the shifts were I worked myself to the point where the managers forced me to take a break, so she never had a chance to know that I didn't fit the stereotype.

Also, I did have a friend who got fired for "marketing to the wrong people". Of course, in that situation, "marketing to the wrong people" meant "marketing to minorities".

 

[Vausch]

Came close once.

Store manager said that if I went over my part-time hours I'd get fired, then on multiple days I was scheduled to work late shifts without someone being scheduled to take over when I was done. Each time took an extra hour to resolve itself and I went past the hours.

One appeal later from my department manager and it was resolved, but it was one of those reasons I try to avoid shopping at wal-mart now.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I got sick while working a seasonal job at Hot Topic (I know I know... it was a job and I was good at it), and it was around Fall/Winter in California. I was going to go into work that day, had every intention of going when it began to rain at 40 degrees. I didn't own a car (didn't need one in the SF Bay area) and it was about a 2 mile walk to the bus stop. Even with an umbrella I would have gotten soaked and being already sick with a 99 degree temperature, I felt it was a hazardous even dangerous proposition to risk it. So I called in and told my manager the situation, her response was "You can't call in. If you don't come in you're fired."
Despite the fact that I worked my ass off every day and put some of the long-time employees to shame with my ethic, also chased down a shoplifter and saved the store a decent amount of loss at one point also was always on-time and stayed later than my scheduled shift many times. None of that mattered to them, including my own health. So they fired me on the spot for calling in sick.
Still it wasn't a huge deal to me at the time because I had a decent amount of savings from other odd-jobs I did. But really of all things to get fired for, being sick and caring about my health during inclement weather is just stupid to me.
Another job I had right before Y2k was web-development for a shady douchebag lawyer in Miami. I basically would update the site daily with new content and whatnot. Every now and again the dude would walk into my office and spout random web-jargon like "Javascript! I want it!" and leave the office, which left me with no clue what he wanted me to do with it. But the kicker was when he basically ordered me to sift the web for e-mail addresses to spam his business... which is not legal. He'd already been banned from one ISP for doing that and I explained to him that you can't just troll the web for e-mails and mass-spam them with his BS. Well he didn't like the idea of that so I got my walking papers the next day. Trying to save him from legal action got me fired... well he later did get banned from every ISP in the Miami area for it so I was right and when he called me to come back in, I said "Sure, but I want a flat salary, no hourly bullshit." Didn't get a call back after that and I was satisfied.