Mentioning your job – or anything related to your job – on social media is a minefield that’s probably best avoided at all costs, but some people simply refuse to go gently into the world of employment. Those people tend to make decisions that both they and their employers wind up regretting.
It’s not always the employee’s fault in these cases, as you’ll see at the end of this AskReddit list. But some, like #1, are undeniably cases of boneheaded employees being boneheads:
1. Poor For(u)m
Joined a games studio alongside a guy who’d just finished his philosophy degree.
He felt that the game’s official forums were the best place to discuss whether poor people would be, “of as much value as pigs,” after a post-apocalyptic event, and if they should be simply slaughtered and eaten.
All using his company account, of course.
2. People think Comcast has bad customer service?! {<—sarcasm font}
Someone on my timeline posted an article about Comcast customer service.
Someone replied to him saying, “Wow, Comcast actually has customer service? lol!”
Working in customer service myself, I reply, (from a personal account that is in no way connected with my job), with the tweet: “Yup, we do. We complain about management as much as you do.”
Comcast did not like that.
Despite me having zero personal details on Twitter, they somehow still figured out it was me. I realized after that I had GPS auto-locate on for my tweets, so I suppose they could have looked through that data to figure out where I lived.
Anyway, the point is, they fired me for suggesting the employees are anything other than 100% happy all day at work.
Seriously, that’s almost what they said to me when they fired me. The best I can recall it was: “You said the employees aren’t happy. We can’t have people suggesting the employees are in any way unhappy with management, it makes us look bad as a company. Comcast has worked extremely hard to get the reputation it currently has and things like this will make people see Comcast in a negative light, which is unacceptable.”
They also implied, (though did not outright state), they were letting legal look at it to see if they have a libel case against me.
It’s been 5 months, and I haven’t heard a thing from them, so I assume not.
The weirdest part was, the woman firing me seemed completely unaware that the general public hates Comcast.
3. “We Hate ____”
A company I worked for had it written into their 7-page contracts that you were not allowed to even reference said company on social media. Anyone in breach would be fired instantly.
There’s a page on Facebook called “We Hate ____” that’s currently one of the world’s biggest corporate-hate pages.
It all started when someone working in our call centre posted online about how much the customers suck.
Then something of a war began between the staff and customers: customers posting on employees’ walls and vice versa.
The company was/is a major player in its market. (essentially had a monopoly), and there was a noticeable drop in sales that year.
All in all, around 20 people were fired.
4. The Bus
I worked customer support for a mobile game company. I was honest with a disheartened customer, who had complained that recent changes had made the game pay to win.
It had, in truth, been a glitch with an update. I told them as much, assuring them the team would be fixing it in the next update.
But then the game’s profits skyrocketed.
The team kept the glitch, and put out a statement describing the change as an intentional one designed to improve the play experience.
But there was my name, plastered all over the game forums, claiming the opposite.
I technically worked for a separate company that provided support for several studios, but the studio behind this game was our biggest customer.
They approached my bosses, furious I had jeopardized their cash cow, and demanded I be fired.
I promptly became familiar with the underside of the bus, as I was gone within the week.
5. Bad Advice
A prospective employee just passed his interview and was told that all he needs to do is pass a drug test and a physical and he would start on Monday.
The company Facebook guy found the new hire on Facebook, and the guy had just posted 20 minutes after the interview, “Crap! Anyone know how to pass a drug test in 24 hours?!”
6. “Liability”
I got fired from an internship for posting on Reddit.
It was a very small environmental engineering consulting firm. We were doing work on a site that had lead and arsenic contamination on it.
The site was very dusty, and if it didn’t rain for a few days the dust would often kick up and blow onto the street next to the site, which happened to be the main road in this semi-smallish town.
Someone mentioned on Reddit, in a totally unrelated way, that they were from this town. I made a mention of the contamination and told the dude that if he ever saw dust coming off the site that he should contact the engineers living above one of the local bars.
Apparently this guy didn’t really want the site to be redeveloped at all because of the already high congestion in the surrounding roads, and he called and complained and mentioned my post on Reddit.
The company was so small, it was obvious it was me who posted it. I fessed up about what I had said, and immediately deleted the post.
Even though I didn’t do anything illegal, or even remotely immoral, I was fired because I was seen as a liability.
People deserve to know if the dust they’re breathing in could give them cancer. I moved onto a different field (marine biology) and haven’t even remotely looked back.
7. Horrible Parents
Worked at a gaming store until 2010. The store was in a mall and parents would always leave their kids in the store and go do their shopping…
Sometimes the children would cry, sometimes they’d pee themselves, even had one #2.
Parents would get mad at us for not bringing them to the bathroom or start screaming at their kids for not just playing games for a few hours without causing any problems.
I tweeted about how the store wasn’t there to babysit children and never really thought about that tweet again until…
Few months later, same thing:
Parent drops kid off in store, leaves. 20 minutes later, an older looking guy is outside the store, on his flip phone, aiming it at the store.
He’s creeping me out but I continue offering pointless warranties to customers while waiting for my next break and then, I noticed him walk near the entrance of the store and ask that kid where his parents are.
This seemed really fishy and the guy looked beyond suspicious, I was thinking he could be a pedophile, and I was right.
He gets the kid to go with him, I call up mall security so they could check it out, and they caught him before he left the mall.
He was arrested; the kid was crying, asking for his mom… Who mall security could not reach because as it turns out, she went to some stores outside of the mall area and she didn’t actually come back for another 2 hours, at which point she threatened to sue me, the store, the mall,etc.
Security guard lady told her that child services were called; they all walked away. That was the last time I saw them.
Few days later, District Manager (DM) shows up in store and I was fired on the spot, because that lady made a complaint.
DM found my twitter and informed me that my approach to yesterday’s dilemma & my tweet about how this isn’t a babysitting service has made them believe that I don’t have the “store spirit.”
Both the manager and district manager told me I could use them as a reference on my resume though, which was great until they both lost their jobs a few weeks later.
8. “Private”
I was on the job a week at a law firm and had to ride with one of the employees to the UPS store.
She was a terrible driver, and almost wrecked multiple times.
I posted on Facebook, “One week on the job and my coworker is trying to kill me; worst driver ever.”
The next day I was called into my boss’s office with the girl sitting there with an expressionless look on her face, and there was a printout of my post.
It was awkward, and they fired me on the spot.
All of my account information was also set to private, so they figured a way to check my activity.
9. Ah, youth…
I was younger and an idiot.
I posted something on Facebook about wanting to go home and play The Sims, so I could create [telecommunications store I worked for] on it and then slowly kill off all the customers.
I was working a late-night shift in a mall and forgot our new co-worker had added me on Facebook days before.
10. “Homosexual Misconduct”
I posted a blog post on MySpace in 2005 that got me discharged from the Army.
I indicated I had romantic feelings for a female and that I had acted on those feelings.
I am also female.
My sergeant suspected I was involved with this woman so she looked me up on MySpace, saw the blog post, and 3 months later, I was discharged for “homosexual conduct”.
The “openly admitting and engaging in homosexual conduct” was the blog post where I said that I kissed her.
I’m not angry at the military for this. I knew what the policy was…
11. Fake
I was working as a bartender and server for a place. The assistant manager was a petty tyrant and treated the staff like crap.
I had made several complaints about him to the general manager and the owner with some of the other staff, but they refused to do anything about it.
So, I was done with this place, and was currently looking for a new job, when one day I was bartending, and a very young looking girl came.
She hands me her out-of-state ID, and I can tell that it is fake.
I politely tell her that I can’t serve her alcohol, and explain that in this state we don’t legally have to accept out of state IDs, blah blah blah. She was actually very understanding and there was no scene or issue.
Her other friends arrive, and they move to a table, and I informed their server about the fake ID.
It is around this time that the assistant manager who had been drinking bloody Mary’s at the bar next door all morning and then napping in the office came over.
He then starts telling me that I don’t know what a fake ID looks like, and I don’t have the right to refuse service and how stupid I am.
He then tells me I have to serve the girl. I inform him that I have the legal right to refuse service, and he cannot force me to.
Anyway, I go home and post on the Facebook about my day, and then include a photo of when I was managing a liquor store holding a shield made out of all the fake IDs we had confiscated in one year. Also a crown.
The next day I was called in and let go for refusing to cooperate with management and what have you.
12. My Redneck Coach
Kid on my college baseball team got kicked off for tweeting song lyrics.
My redneck coach read it out loud to the team and yelled that if the kid was dating his daughter, and he saw the kid tweet stuff like that, he would take him into the Ocala National Forest and bury him where nobody would ever find him.
Then we had to run.
13. Tag! You’re Fired!
I posted my Facebook status about how big of jerk my boss is…. and accidentally tagged him…