Yahoo Lifestyle 22 People Confessed The Ridiculous Things They've Done At Work That Should've Gotten Them Fired But Didn't, And I Can't Stop Laughing
We recently asked people in the BuzzFeed Community to confess the outrageous things they've done at work that should've gotten them fired but didn't. The responses we received ranged from heartwarming to unhinged, so let's get into it:
1.There's the hardware store employee who would see how many random items they could slip into rich customers' carts:
"I worked in a hardware store in a wealthy section of town. The well-off customers would walk in and hand us their list, expecting us to do their shopping. We would, and the name of the game was to see how much other random stuff we could add to their cart. Congratulations on your new 20-inch chainsaw chain and diamond reciprocating saw blade, along with your bird seed."—Anonymous
2.There's the fast food worker who wouldn't ring up orders on the register so they could pocket the money:
"When I was 16, I worked for a small fast food chain. I was always stuck on drive-thru and the managers never wore a headset because they couldn't be bothered with it. I started memorizing prices for simple orders. Instead of ringing up the orders I would tell the customer the total and make the order myself. The order never hit the system. I'd pocket the cash. I would track any change I'd have to give the customers from the drawer and I'd make sure to cover it so my drawer would be even every night. I'd walk out with $100-$200 each night. I worked there until I graduated high school. For two years, my scam went completely unnoticed by management. I still feel guilty about it but then again, maybe the managers should've managed."—Anonymous
3.There's the two coworkers who pretended to be each other's supervisors to avoid getting reported:
"I was close with a coworker, and maybe people called our office to speak with our supervisor and submit a complaint about one of us. We placed them on hold, gave one another a heads-up, and transferred them to one another. Maybe we pretended to be our supervisor telephonically and defended each other to complainants. Maybe they never spoke to a supervisor after all."—Anonymous
4.There's the airline employee who acted as Robin Hood for a day:
"I was an airline employee (ground staff), and one day, an elderly lady who spoke no English was dropped off at my terminal for a flight. It turned out she had come a day early, misreading the time/date on the ticket. As it turned out, I was the only person on shift who spoke her language. She went on to explain to me that she had been babysitting her nephew's three kids after their mom had passed away, and who lived 3 hours drive from the airport. She had taken the bus all the way, and it would have been nearly impossible for her to go back there, spend the night, and return to the airport the next day. Unfortunately, the flight that she was scheduled for didn't operate every day, so there was no way to switch her to an earlier flight. I felt so bad for this poor woman, whose only option was basically to spend 24 hours in an airport before boarding a 9-hour flight back to her country. I couldn't bear the thought of it and kept picturing my own grandma stuck somewhere and forced to break her body, roaming an airport all night. So I sweet-talked one of our ticketing agents into getting her a voucher for a hotel on the airline dime (which is only ever done in case of a canceled flight) and then drove her to the airport hotel so she didn't have to try and navigate by herself at night in a strange city. Now, were my co-worker and I basically stealing from the company? Yes, probably, technically we were. And it probably could have gotten us fired. But I'll be honest, even if they did fire me for that, my conscience would be OK with it."—Anonymous
5.There's the fast food employee with unfortunate aim:
"I threw a shaved ice at a coworker, missed, and hit an elderly woman in the face at her table."—Anonymous
6.There's the unfocused nurse:
"I dropped a side of sour cream on a patient’s bald head."—Anonymous
7.There's the teacher who was doing drugs on campus:
"Doing cocaine off my desk during my prep periods to stay awake after drinking/pulling all-nighters during my first year of teaching middle school. Definitely not the proudest moments of my career."—Anonymous
8.There's the concession attendant who scammed the PGA US Open:
"The PGA US Open was being held at a country club in my town, and I worked the concession tent off the first tee. The first few days consisted of pouring beer into cups (drinking plenty of my own) and eating ice cream inside a portable ice freezer during a heat wave. Sold my parking pass, stuffed a few cans in my pockets, and walked home at the end of the day. The last few days I worked the register. LOL. Any purchase that was an even denomination of $20 went right into my pocket. I'd literally take bathroom breaks to sort out all the crumpled bills in my pockets. At the end of the tournament, they had no check for me/lost my paperwork. Would I mind being paid cash for max hours (and a full day I didn't work)? No, sir, that will be fine. What a great week."—Anonymous
9.There's the intern who was getting their beauty sleep on the office sofa:
"I had an internship at a company with only a few people in the office. When they left for client meetings, I would nap on the sofa. I'm talking full, deep sleep naps. I worked extremely hard otherwise, and it was an unpaid, no-credit internship, so I didn't feel too bad. Definitely risky, though."—Anonymous
10.There's the couple who got caught hooking up during their night shifts:
"I worked at a fast food place in high school and my first two years of college. Over those four years I met the woman who I'm now married to. We worked nights and would have sex in the back right before we closed. We did this three to four nights a week for at least a year and a half. Then, after we cleaned the store and closed it, we would smoke a couple of bowls, turn the AC on, and leave. On my last day my boss called me to the office to let me know he knew everything we did pretty much the entire time. He didn't say anything because in the 15 years he's owned his Subway, we were the only ones who could handle a night shift by ourselves every night without calling him. He said he got to live his life and actually be with his family in the evening, so he 'kept his mouth zipped.' I still have never told my wife, and she may never know."—Anonymous
11.There's the teenage caterer that was stealing alcohol from every wedding party:
"I took on a second job working catering events when I was 16. It was at a local hotel that had a restaurant/bar attached. I lived in a dry county, so we didn't have many bars. This hotel regularly hosted weddings since it had one of a few liquor licenses in the county. My job was to assist with wedding setup, serving dinner, bussing dinner, and wedding tear down. Towards the end of the night, most guests were plastered and paid little attention to the teens cleaning up after them. This allowed us to remove full bottles of wine from tables and stash them for after work. We worked together to target the drunkest tables so we could all leave work with free booze. The restaurant didn't have locks on their taps, so we would steal pitchers of beer if we weren't able to steal booze from the wedding party."—Anonymous
12.There's the office employee who posted a photo of their MIA boss on a milk carton and left it in the breakroom:
"The coworker who had the office next door was constantly abusing his salaried position status by leaving all the time. Older people will remember the missing kids on milk cartons, so I made one with his photo and told him to call his boss if I saw him. Left it in the breakroom for all to see. The boss came by my office later in the day and just said nothing like that should happen again. Never accused me; I just threw the carton out."—Anonymous
13.There's the video store manager that sold special deals to teachers and pocketed the cash:
"I was a manager at a local Hollywood video store, and I would sell 'Teacher cards' that got the user 3 free rentals every day for 'educational purposes.' I sold them for $50 each and made quite a bit of money. The manager would always ask me, 'Do they seem like a teacher to you?'"—Anonymous
14.There's the employee who unfortunately didn't realize they were sharing their screen:
"I typed that my company's Vice President was an idiot and didn’t realize I was sharing my screen during a presentation."—Anonymous
15.There's the radio host who accidentally recorded themselves trash talking a co-worker while on-air:
"I worked for an iHeart station in Miami. I had to prerecord my show because I had a doctor’s appointment. I was having a conversation while I was uploading my show into the system and accidentally recorded that into the system as well. It's not great, but it's not the end of the world, except that I was talking about a co-worker whom I called a 'fucking bitch.' Cursing while on the air HUGE NO NO. Luckily enough, none of the higher-ups heard it. Unluckily, the woman I was talking about did."—Anonymous
16.There's the hotel employee who almost started a fire while making their breakfast:
"I was working the front desk of a hotel. One early Saturday morning, the fire alarm started going off, and the lobby had a little smoke in it. I was panicking because we were always trained to get the manager for things, except it was 7 a.m. on a Saturday, and I was the only employee there besides the breakfast gal. Guests were coming down in their pajamas very upset. The manager got there around the time the fire department did. Come to find out, there wasn't a fire, but the smoke was from a faulty toaster, which I was using in the back to toast my bagel that I forgot about. I thought for sure I'd get fired, but nope. Not even a write-up."
17.There's the federal employee who accidentally faxed an NSFW poster to another government department:
"A couple of decades ago, I was working as an admin officer for the federal government. The guys working down in the supply depot were really raunchy, and they loved dirty jokes. As I was walking to work one day, I saw a poster on a telephone poll that someone had taped up wanting to protest the United States's dependence on Middle Eastern oil. The crude poster showed a hand-cropped photo of George Bush 'being loved from behind' by a well-known Middle Eastern leader. I thought the guys would find this poster funny, so I took it down and used our work fax machine to send it to them. I followed up with them as soon as I sent it (because it was definitely NSFW), and they never received it. I became alarmed and I checked the fax history. As it turned out, I accidentally sent it speed-dialed to another government department. OOPS. No investigation was launched, I never heard anything further, and somehow I didn't get fired."
18.There's the amusement park operator who was doing drugs on the job:
"Smoked crack in a Porta-potty while building a timber bridge at the amusement park I worked at."
19.There's the pizza worker who punched a special event clown for scaring them:
"When I was younger, I worked at a pizza buffet place with a game room. One day, they hired a clown for a special event. I am absolutely, positively TERRIFIED of clowns, so I asked my boss to keep it in the game room. The clown thought this was funny and kept trying to talk to me. The first time, I politely asked it to leave me alone and explained why. The second time, I warned it not to come up to me a third time. The third time, I punched the clown in front of EVERYONE. She was completely unconscious. I took off my apron and left, assuming that I was fired. The next day, I was looking for a job when my manager called and asked why I wasn't at work. I worked there another 2 years after that."—Anonymous
20.There's the assistant manager who lost power and hooked up with their boyfriend on the job:
"I was assistant manager and the only manager on. We lost power, but I had to stay for the rest of the day, 'in case,' because we could not accept cash sales. My bf (now ex) at the time had brought me something (I don't remember what now), so I decided to lock the front door and have sex in the office."
21.There's the bank teller who took a secret tip from a customer after work hours:
"I used to work for a bank that was inside of a grocery store. One day it was just me and my coworker in the branch, with no manager. A guy came in asking us to count and strap his cash. Because he did not have an account, I told him we couldn't do it per policy. Trying to convince me to make an exception, he offered to tip us, which was also very much against the rules. We were not supposed to accept gifts or cash at all, even at Christmas when our regulars tried to give us presents or cards. However, my coworker agreed to it because he didn't care. When we were done (like 20 minutes later because it was a LOT of cash), my coworker told the guy, 'We can't be on camera accepting anything, so let me walk out with you.' My coworker held onto the tip until we both clocked out and closed up. He handed me my half when we were in the parking lot. The guy gave us each $100 just for counting and strapping it. We absolutely both would have been fired if our manager had ever known."
And finally...
22.There's the restaurant employee who used the exit door that set off an alarm in the entire restaurant:
"It was my first day as a server for a restaurant chain. It was only a three-hour shift that was essentially a tour of the back of the house and a mini orientation before the full training shifts began. On our kitchen tour, the manager points to an exit door at the back and says, 'Under no circumstances do you exit out of that door unless it's a life-threatening emergency because it sets an alarm off in the entire restaurant. Leaving out that door is grounds for immediate termination.' Cut to two and a half hours later, when I just finished up my side work in the kitchen, and I head out of that one exit. I promise I'm actually fairly intelligent; I just totally wasn't paying attention and went for the nearest exit. Thankfully, they really liked me, and I was appropriately embarrassed and apologetic, so they kept me. It was a great job for what it was, and I left on really good terms when I did eventually move on. Even got a glowing letter of recommendation from that same manager."
If you have a work story where you should've been fired but weren't, share it with us in the comments below or via this anonymous Google form.
Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
