The first day on a new job is never easy, but it’s also pretty difficult to screw up so badly you get canned…or so you would think. On AskReddit, we found a number of stories of what NOT to do if you want to be asked back for a second day on the job.
1. Not The Best Place To Find A Dealer
“He tried to buy weed off a customer just because the customer looked like someone who might have weed. He didn’t.”
2. Asshole Parents Make Asshole Kids
“I worked at a popular teen/college kid clothing store. I wasn’t the manager, but I trained new hires. This one girl shopped at the store a lot and we were excited to hire her.
She was let go because she was late, was caught trying on clothes instead of greeting, and apparently laughed when anyone asked for a size larger than a medium.
Her family showed up at the end of her shift, and tried to buy $2k-$3k worth of clothes with her employee discount. Corporate policy sucks, so they got a good portion of it. Her mom tried to bring it all back years later (completely worn/destroyed) and threw a fit saying she should get full price because the girl had died. Guess who we could all see sitting in her mom’s car?”
3. Nepotism
I got to fire my co-manager’s sister who called 5 minutes before her first shift and said she’d be there in an hour because she just sat down to dinner with friends.
“What do you mean you just sat down for dinner? Your first shift is in 5 minutes?”
“Yeah I know. But we were out and decided to go for dinner. I’ll still be there, just a little late.”
“An hour isn’t a ‘little’ late. Be here in 5 minutes or don’t bother coming in at all.”
“But <co-manager> is my sister! She gave me the job!”
“Yes she did. See you in 5, or not at all”
But <co-manager> is my sister!””
4. Worst. Teacher. Ever.
“I’m a teacher.
I was on a committee to hire a new 5th grade teacher.
I was showing her the ropes and monitoring her in class behavior. I watched this bonehead tell a student, “I don’t like you very much. Figure it out yourself.”
The next thing I showed her was the door.
In the exit interview (had it on the walk to the door) I demanded an explanation and she said of the student she ‘didn’t like,’ “He was wearing designer jeans. You know his life is all peaches and cream, taking from us little guys.” I say “Did he make an inappropriate comment to you about money?” She says “No. But I know their kind.””
5. Work Isn’t Where You Should Try To Unload Your Stash, Dude
“My chef hired a guy who was less than a week out of prison for dealing. He was just going to wash dishes. Seemed like an OK guy, just looking for some work because he had just done 5+ years. So, day one, he goes to head chef and asks, “Hey man, you know anybody here who wants to buy heroin?”
Out the door 2 hours into his first job out of the joint.”
6. If You’re Gonna BS Your Resume, At Least Know The Basics
“IT position, supposedly had a BA in computer science with 2 years experience in relevant technical position. I didn’t interview him.
We very quickly discovered that his computer abilities were non existent, started asking questions until he broke down and said he lied on his resume because he wanted to make more money. His previous job was drywall installation.
We gave him a list of software he needed, available via a URL. He didn’t know what to do with a URL, or what a URL was, and then it quickly unravelled. It was about 3 hours because the first 2 were paperwork.”
7. Entitled Little Ass
“The job hours were from 8am to 4:30pm, Monday through Friday. Our new hire showed up about 10 minutes late on the first day. Normally 10 minutes late isn’t that big a deal to me, but it was his first day, and I had pulled 3 other staff members into our 8am meeting so we could discuss the training schedule with our new hire.
So we are already in our meeting when the new guy walks in. He doesn’t apologize for being late – he just sits down as I’m going over the training schedule for the week. After a few minutes of listening to us discuss what he’s going to be doing for the rest of this week, he raises his hand and says, “Can we reschedule the afternoon sessions planned for today and tomorrow? I have to leave at 11 today and 12:30 tomorrow.” This was the first time I was hearing about these plans.
I asked the 3 staff supervisors to give me an opportunity to speak with the new guy alone for a few minutes. They leave the room, so I start talking to the guy about how he can’t just change his schedule without running it by management first. As I’m talking to this guy, he gets a text. He looks down at his phone and puts his hand up, as if he were telling me, “I’ll be with you right after I finish reading this text”.
As soon as he finished reading the text and looked back at me, I said, “This isn’t going to work. Please make sure you take everything you brought with you and do not return. I’ll have HR email you your separation papers.” He seemed pretty shocked and asked what he did wrong so I told him. He tried to explain himself, but I told him that it’s best if he finds somewhere else to work.”
8. Not The Smartest Crook
“I work for a company that takes care of the HR needs of other small companies in my area. New hires often come in to fill out paperwork.
We had this guy who came in, filled out his name and social security number, gave it to us, then proceeded to steal the front desk guy’s wallet and keys. Right in front of the very visible security camera.
Turns out the police knew the guy as we was a repeat offender. He lived right around the corner.”
9. Worth It
“Did a Tarzan swing on a overhead hoist remote cable going some 20 feet before the cable tore out. It only took maintenance 20 minutes to fix, but he was gone by then.”
10. Way To Stay PC
“The most memorable firing I witnessed was this man who got hired as VP of Marketing. He thought the title gave him the right to be late on his first day for an important meeting with our board members, VP and CEO. Though irritating, he was given a pass since he was new and rewarded with a second chance to impress.
This proved to be useless as he was later heard propositioning our new interns for sex in exchange to be in this imaginary marketing campaign that supposedly would come with endless perks and cash. The CEO personally escorted him out and kindly told him to go fuck himself. In the most PC way of course.”
11. Not Suspicious At All
“Know someone who works at a warehouse that stores and ships boxes of pharmaceuticals. There are some understandably pretty tight handling rules so nothing goes missing and everything is stored properly.
One day they had a guy start that asked if they should open the oxy to count them to make sure that there was as many in the bottle as it said there was. He asked multiple people this, was gone shortly after.”
12. Location Location Location
“Caught him snorting some kind of pill. He probably could have gotten away with it, if he wasn’t doing it in my office.”
13. Alcoholic, Maybe?
“Not an employer or manager, but a girl at my job showed up absolutely plastered on her first day of work. Working at a machine shop, I’m sure you can imagine that this was especially a no-no.
I still wonder why anyone would show up drunk on their first day of work. Nerves maybe?”
14. Worthless
“I managed a bookstore that had an auxiliary calendar kiosk at the other end of the shopping center. Hired a woman to man it, did her morning training, left her alone for a bit. Went back to check on her and found half the calendars stolen and her asleep behind the curtains we used to hide back stock. I’ve never been so angry.”
15. Caught Ya
“I’m not a manager, but I had a potential co-worker who called in sick. I guess he didn’t know that the manager didn’t have to work through the evening and bumped into him at the movies. My boss told us this as he fired him the next day.”
16. Fired On Facebook
“I manage a coffee shop lunch place. Young girl came in fresh out of culinary school and had previous coffee shop experience. What could go wrong, right? The first day I had her shadow the other employees just to get a hang of the POS system and general flow of the store. Nope, customers overwhelmed her and she liked to hide in the back leaning on the ice machine. Fine. Whatever.
She said she loved baking earlier on so I sent her to the kitchen to make some cookies. I’m super chill, I didn’t even care what kind, as long as they were fucking awesome and delicious she had creative control. She comes out some time later admitting she doesn’t know how to make cookies and needs help. Now I’m getting bloody frustrated.
As we move on into lunch rush a wave of customers flood the front of house and I was needed. I had 40 litres of soup in the back needing a titch more roux and asked her to thicken it a tad before serving. Surely she could handle that, soups and sauces being addressed in the first bloody week of the culinary school she aparently attended (I attended the same program, btw). Nope. She found a box of corn starch and dumped the whole box in. Dry. Soup destroyed. Her shift ended shortly afterwards.
Turns out I forgot to get her contact information at the beginning of the shift so I had to message her on Facebook telling her not to bother ever returning. Classy, I know, but she was just one huge bloody mess I couldn’t even begin to fix.”
17. If You’re Gonna Break The Law, At Least Try To Be Sneaky About It
“My old manager (matron at a psychiatric secure hospital) told me of a guy who was employed as a healthcare assistant, working with people with learning disabilities. Part of his role involved escorting patients into the community to help them with shopping. He took his first charge to a shopping centre and proceeded to spend £250 on their debit card buying electronic goods for himself…which he then brought back to the hospital and asked for them to be stored in the staff room until the end of his shift. He left with the police.”
18. Sounds Like My Kind Of Greeter
“Worked retail management. On Black Friday we had a new guy and his one job was to greet customers. Literally “Hi welcome to ___.” Two older ladies walked in and he says “what the fuck is uuuupppp.” I clocked him out remotely and told him to enjoy his family, because he wouldn’t be shopping with the $4 he made working that half hour.”
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