People Are Revealing "The Incident" That Got Their Bosses Fired, And Honestly, It's Riveting
We recently asked the members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the wild reasons their bosses got fired. Here are their best stories:
1."The owner found out our office manager took all the toilet paper out of the bathroom and was giving each employee one roll of toilet paper the first working day of each month. Once it was gone, you could not have any more unless you brought your own. My coworkers begged me not to quit until after the first day of the month so I could 'gift' them that month's roll."
—Anonymous
2."When I was 17, I used to work at a local burger joint, and the assistant manager and manager used to snort coke off the menus. They got fired."
3."Our general manager got caught with his girlfriend while they were out of town together. Doesn't sound like a big deal, right? Except his girlfriend was the wife of one of our managers. The person who caught him was HIS boss — the owner and CEO of the whole huge (four-figure employee count, nine-figure annual revenue) company. He brought her to a WORK CONFERENCE where they got busted, and they were immediately sent home in shame."
"Until then, the other manager had no idea her wife was cheating. He was called in to HR and given the option to either quietly resign or be terminated. He chose the former, and the two of them ran off together. Her wife never came back to work either."
—Anonymous
4."I had a boss at Walmart get switched to the overnight shift, and she got fired for having sex with an employee in his car while they were supposed to be working. Her job was to direct the overnight crew on what to work on first, and they couldn't find her anywhere in the store!!!"
5."The general manager of a sporting goods store I worked for was fired for having an employee on the clock when she wasn't there. The employee would get a full day's pay for days she called out, she would get a full day's pay for days she left early, she would get extended lunch breaks but would be put back on the clock for when her lunch should have been over, and she would get a full day's pay for never actually hitting the sales floor. She would just be hanging out with the manager in the basement."
"I'm assuming he thought no one would ever notice, but we all noticed because he wasn't shy about it and she had a big mouth. I guess it never occurred to him that his favorite line, 'You're easily replaceable,' also referred to him."
6."My project supervisor was known for shouting at and berating me in meetings and emails, making it obvious that she had a problem with me. One Wednesday morning, I was alerted by the building security guard that someone reported my car as a suspicious vehicle and requested that it be towed from the lot. My project supervisor knew this was my car, and so did the lot security guard."
"The guard informed me that my supervisor was the one who made the report, and he also let me know that I would have had to pay a hefty fine to retrieve my car if he had followed through with her report. I saved all of her emails and reported this instance to human resources, and she was fired for harassment and discrimination. I also no longer work for this company due to the treatment I received."
7."My previous boss was horrible. He always yelled at us, smoked and drank during work hours, and used the printer to download pornographic images, followed by him locking himself in the bathroom, but it was the only job in town for someone with no experience. When we found out he was fired, we took bets on what the reason was. The plot twist? He was fired because he threw up at the party of someone who donated money to the company."
—Anonymous
8."There were two reasons my boss was fired. First, he insisted that I work every weekend and extra hours during the week because I was unmarried at the time. When I confronted him about this inequity, he said that 'we own you.' When I reported this to HR, he was unfazed. Bad as that was, the worst thing he did was to my coworker. She was going through a difficult pregnancy with fibroids and was frequently out for medical treatment. It looked as if this was going to be the only baby she could have. My boss was unhappy with her medical absence and told her to get an abortion and get back to work. It took a while, but he was ultimately removed."
—Anonymous
9."My boss had a wife and kids, and he asked me to sign him up for dating websites and to use my own personal debit card. He said he would pay me back, of course. I told his boss what he said to me, but he didn't get fired. He got fired because he spent almost $300,000 for an in-person event that flopped."
—Anonymous
10."My boss was the CEO of a small, failing company. The place was a revolving door, and the company couldn't keep employees because the CEO was so vile. He would try to cheat customers and not pay suppliers, and litigation was his first move. We had a customer appreciation event where nobody showed up. It wasn't the falling stock price or lack of EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) that got him canned. Employees started complaining about him on Glassdoor. He forced HR and others to write fake reviews to say it wasn't that bad a place to work. The board felt that a CEO who would try to get someone to write fake reviews instead of fixing the problems probably didn't have leadership qualities that they wanted."
—Anonymous
11."My boss was fired from his former job at Disney for stealing things from the promotional swag room. These are branded marketing items like T-shirts, hats, and mugs. Imagine losing a six-figure job with Disney over a mug. He was a douche who went on to stay in the industry. Guess I should have stolen stuff to get promoted."
—Anonymous
12."For five years of my life, I worked in an average supermarket. There were several sections, but I worked in the prepared-food section. One day, we were told that my boss was fired. The reason? The store owner came home one night earlier and saw his daughter having anal sex with my ex-boss. Since then, at that job whenever someone ruined something, we said, 'Wow, that was anal.'"
—Anonymous
13."I was teaching at an elementary school with a horrendous principal. You never knew which version of him you were going to get. One day, he was saying the Pledge of Allegiance during the morning announcements, and it was obvious that he was slurring his words. Office staff realized he was drunk, and he was escorted off the premises immediately. Needless to say, he was fired."
—Anonymous
14."I worked for a national family law firm, and my boss got busted for fraudulently billing clients. She would bill the client for 'going to court' when she was actually going shopping. She was the worst."
—Anonymous
15."My boss was fired for keeping the bonuses for the managers in the facility all for himself."
—Anonymous
16."I used to work at the telephone company. The VP of my department showed up at my desk one afternoon and asked if I had seen my boss around. Having had a long day of customer anger thrown at me, I said casually, 'Did you look under her desk? She is in the Winnie the Pooh sleeping bag, where she is daily at this time.' Needless to say, we had a new boss that next week."
—Anonymous
17.And lastly, "My boss was fired because she was caught stealing from the foster kids' donated Christmas presents. She got six months in Martha Stewart’s prison."
—Anonymous
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
