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We often hear stories about people messing up at their workplace so much that they get fired. Some of them couldn’t care less about getting fired, some claim it’s the best thing that happened to them, and others, they witnessed their new colleague saying “hasta la vista" on their very first day at work. So, yep, every getting fired story is unique.
But this time, we are turning tables and diving into the seemingly rare instances of bosses getting fired. Ask ‘how?’ and you’ll hear thousands of different reasons why that happens. Today, we selected some of the most interesting and unusual stories that scream ‘sweet justice’ for you to read below.
Also, if you ever had your boss, manager or supervisor go for whatever reason, share your story in the comment section!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
The CEO publicly praised me for completing a task that my boss had struggled with, so my boss retaliated by forwarding all of his tasks to me in an effort to overwhelm me with work. I actually found his job pretty manageable, which the CEO also noticed and fired him, giving me his job and office.
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#2
Worked register at a tour company.
I also had a manager who f***ing HATED me for some reason. She was probably the b***hiest person I've ever met. Constantly yelled at us for no reason, got on to me about answering questions a new hire had (when I was asked, not her), wrote down I was 30 minutes late for a shift when I was 2 minutes late, etc etc.
We had a sneaking suspicion that she was taking money from our tills, as she was always the one who counted down the till when someone got fired for stealing cash. I made it a habit to count down every bill when I gave it back to a customer, because we would get pay docked if we were even $1 off. So if a customer had $23 in change, I'd count twenty, one two three in front of them, so I knew I'd given back the right amount. We also had cameras pouring at the registers.
Well, one day my GM pulls me aside and says $20 was missing from my till and they were going to fire me. I straight up told my boss she could look at the cameras, because I counted out all my bills for customers.
LO AND BEHOLD. Bitchy bitch was the one who counted down my till and got caught on tape pocketing the money. She was gone by my next shift.
#3
I had a boss who refused to make accommodations for a disabled coworker. Refused to keep other staff in line and basically let the disabled worker fall behind and get picked on because she (the boss) felt like she was not required to do anything else. I work for a local government agency and reported it to our HR and upper management. After they did nothing, I contacted them again to let them know I would be filing a suit with the ACLU for ADA violations.
My boss was gone in two weeks and the rest of the staff had mandatory ADA trainings.
#4
Not my story but my mothers, I watched on the side lines as a Teenager. My mothers job was basically a professional fundraiser (I really don't know what else to call it). People came to her for help raise money for nonprofits or other foundations that needed it. This was a long time ago before Social workers were more of a mandatory thing at high schools, my highschool was very poor and did not have one. So my mother took it upon herself to set up a fundraiser to pay the salary of a Social Worker so my highschool could have one.
After Raising all the money she went to talk to the Principal who flat out refused to take any of it and said the position just wasn't necessary. My mother was pretty upset and just decided she would donate the money to supplies or something like that. (I honestly have no idea what she did with it, but it did go to some sort of charity.) After a few months, at a Christmas party the Superintendent of all the public schools in the area was at the same party and he struck up a conversation with my mother, after some small talk my mother said that it was such a shame that Principal didn't take the money for the Social Workers position. The superintendent was dumb struck and then told her that he had ordered Principal to find funding for that position and when Superintendent asked him about it he replied with, "no one is interested in that and we just couldn't get the money for it."
Needless to say he lost his position and whenever we came back from the Holiday break the school was hiring for his position.
#5
I was an intern at a tech company and in a one-on-one/mentorship meeting my boss asked me what skillset I wanted to pursue in the future. I said that I wanted to do backend work (this was a programming internship). He replied and said "Girls aren't smart enough for that type of work, how about we put you on the QA path, you'll do better there". At the time I was so stunned that I just repeated quietly that I wanted to do backend work, the meeting awkwardly ended after that. I always thought that I would be courageous in the face of blatant sexism if it ever happened to me but, instead, I was silent because I was a 23 year-old who really needed that internship to turn into a real job.
Fast forward a couple weeks and I was out to lunch with a few co-workers who brought along a lady who had worked at the company for years. She'd been out on contract for a while so I hadn't met her yet. Everyone was talking about the boss and some of the stuff he had done or said to them, mostly just rude things, so I took a chance and mentioned what happened in that meeting. She said she'd take care of it. Within a few days he was fired by the big boss. I went on my first contract doing backend work about a month later and I loved it :)
As I understand it I was not the first person to have serious complaints about him, just the last person.
#6
My manager at a new job, let’s call him Leo, offered to give me a ride home after a Friday night shift went overly long. Instead of turning into my street, he went to a bar about a mile in the opposite direction so we could ‘get to know each other’. I had one drink and asked to go home, instead he bought me a second drink. I asked to go home again and he tried to assault me. The details aren’t important, let’s just say he was pretty aggressive.
I emailed the owner of the restaurant about what had happened and went to my shift the next day, owner was outside the restaurant firing the manager - all on the word of a brand new employee he’d never even met. I was so impressed, and the rest of the (mostly young, female staff) were very grateful for the change. That restaurant was a great place to work.
Two years later I started my first day at my dream restaurant. Did some training, sat down for preshift with the kitchen and who comes out to present the specials? It’s Leo, of course. He sees me and freezes up. After preshift he tried to talk to me about working together, but I went straight to my new manager and say I have history with a current employee that they need to know about. I tell my story, I show the emails between the owner and myself. They talk to Leo about it. He is fired again.
We worked in a really specialized food style where chefs circulate through all the restaurants. He later applied to work for me when I was the hiring manager and didn’t get a call back, obviously. I am out of the industry now, but I used to dream of getting him fired again. I want to haunt him the rest of his professional life.
Tl;dr: manager tried to take advantage of me, I reported it and got him fired. 2 years later I changed jobs to where he worked, got him fired again. Years later reviewed his application for work, request denied. I do not forgive or forget. F*** Leo.
#7
One summer I volunteered to help a conservation society in East Africa. The aim of the project was to educate the local rural population about poaching and to get them to help us stop it from the ground up.
Anyway, I was staying with the lead ranger and his family and on numerous occasions he served us meat that I'm 100% sure was poached. He tried to tell me that it was pork, but it was dark and gamey with lots of small bones. I think that it was small antelope like dikdik or duiker.
When I returned to Nairobi I mentioned to my grandpa (his boss's boss) that we'd eaten some odd meals. He investigated, and found out that my boss had a poacher friend who was selling him illegal meat. He was fired, I didn't feel guilty. Poaching is awful.
#8
He grabbed the back of my neck and said "If you ever say I'm wrong in front of a customer again I will beat your ass."
I went to the GM and told him and my supervisor was relieved of his duties about 5 minutes later.
#9
My manager wanted to prove I'm slacking off so he could write me up. So he watched CCTV footages then wrote, printed out and SIGNED a detailed 17 pages worth of Word document what did I do in the past two days. With timestamps (like, 07:59 arriving, 08:01 speaking with co-worker A and B, 08:07 sitting down to my desk, etc.). He told me that he's not happy with my work ethics if I won't improve my efficiency, I'm fored. . I took the papers and showed to his boss and told her that I'm not happy with my managers work ethics and his efficiency might be better if he wouldn't watch 17 hours of CCTV footages to spy on an employee. She was terrified (it would've been a rock solid lawsuit for me - but I love my job) and we had to search for a new manager. Also, my salary raised.
#10
I used to be a store manager at sneaker/sporting goods store in the mall. One of my co-managers was f**king one of my teenage (underage) employees in that back stock room after the store closed on a regular basis. This was going on for several months apparently. I found out when said teenager came to me and she said that my co-manager promised her a raise that she never got. I asked her why he said that he would give her a raise. That is when she told me about the sex in the stock room. I had to call the police and corporate about this. We arranged a sting with help of the girl, as she acted out for the police that to meet up with my co-manager after work. Basically "caught him with his pants down" to use the term.
#11
Management was giving an injured worker s**t, not wanting to pay him, accusing him of goldbricking. Worker said, tell you what, do the right thing here or you will be sorry. Management said take your best shot. Worker called the EPA and APCD, told them where to find the logs that showed discrepancies in toxic material storage and usage. Sheriffs deputies showed up and raided the offices. Field supervisors from 10 years ago that had retired got subpeonaed. It was epic. Cost the company massively in fines and remediation. All because you wanted to f**k with one poor bastard.
Edit: since there may be some question around how all of this could happen in the age of electronic reporting, here's the story. It's not all the story of course, the news never does quite get all the story. Since it's in the LA times I'm not worried about privacy. However, it was a state agency that was called, the EPA became involved later and at another site. It's been a few years and the chronology of events gets recalled incorrectly sometimes. Once you appear on a regulator's radar, you better have your s**t tight.
#12
Phoned him to tell him I won't be at work for the rest of the week as my mum is terminally ill in hospital.
The next day (about an hour after she passed away) he phoned and asked why I wasn't at work, I just hung up on him so I wouldn't say anything that would get me in trouble.
The next day I sent the area-manager a Whatsap message explaining what he'd be done and attached a video of him breaking the freezer door while having a tantrum which cost the store nearly £5000 in lost stock and the repair costs (which he'd told the AM it broke on its own). He got fired that day and I got 2 weeks off with full pay
#13
It was my supervisor. It got to the point that I had decided to quit. I had my resignation letter in my purse, but decided to let his boss know why I was quitting. Supervisor would talk about all the people on our team constantly, but only behind their backs. I got so sick of telling him to cut it out. My husband and I happened to work at the same place (different departments) and my Supervisor would make sexual comments about threesomes (with him - ewww), what hotel we picked for our afternoon delight, s**t like that. It was so bloody uncomfortable. Apart from this he spent most of his supervising time outside smoking. Problem was Supervisor was "one of the guys" and I was the only girl.
Turns out his boss was disgusted, told his boss who lost his mind. They started an investigation which took three days. They interviewed staff - they corroborated what I said. They checked the security cameras, saw he was spending most of his work day outside smoking. And was fired.
When he was told he guessed (wasn't hard!) that I was the person who complained and tried to get to me to "apologize that I took it the wrong way". The best feeling was my co workers surrounding me as he was waled out. That was a lovely ending to it all.
#14
I took a phone call on my cell when at my desk. Middle manager came up and screamed at me. Yelling about how I was not allowed to take calls for clients while at that office. I was a contractor and made it perfectly clear that I did work for multiple clients prior to doing work for this company.
The CTO’s office was 10 feet from mine. He came out and stood in his doorway listening to the rant. When the middle manager was done I just looked over at the CTO and said “it’s him or me and at the moment I don’t give a f*** which you pick.” CTO walked the middle manager out right then.
Funny thing: I didn’t hang up throughout the incident. And it was my wife on the other end. I was spending about 70 hours a week at their site digging their staff out of a hole they had dug themselves in.
#15
In college I worked in a take-out restaurant just off campus, and we were all employed by the school. I was 17-18 years old (back in 2007/2008) and my boss, the manager, was a 40-something creeper. Hitting on me, touching me inappropriately (trying to massage my shoulders, tickling me, putting his hands on/around my waist) despite me asking him to stop. Then he friended me on Facebook, I declined, and suddenly my work schedule was changed. I was on shift during hours when I had class, and when I explained that problem, I got taken off the schedule altogether.
I told the assistant manager what was going on (which I was explicitly told by the manager not to talk to the assistant) and he reported what was going on to upper management-- boom, manager was fired. I worried for a while if he was going to come after me for that.
#16
I've told it before...not fired but transfered.
Had a squad leader make us all stand out in the Missouri winter soaking wet until someone volunteered for weekend duty. I told him I had previous cold weather injuries (frostbite) he ignored it. The corporal saw my blue feet when I took off my boots and sent me to the aid station. The Dr. Lost his s**t and that squad leader was in another company the next day.
It's not as justice bonering as getting an a-hole fired but it's the Army that's not gonna happen
#17
I got my boss disbarred. He was an attorney who was a serial sexual abuser of female clients/criminal defendants. He got away with it for over twenty years and preyed upon at least twelve different victims. The Office of Attorney Regulation censured him multiple times for other offenses, like being late to pay his annual bar fees, but even though they knew about at least five of the victims, they wouldn't disbar him.
I discovered that the Office of Attorney Regulation decides whether to "pursue an action" against an attorney based on a cost/benefit analysis. I gathered as much documentation of everything as I could, over a six month period.
#18
Mine is pretty pedestrian, but very satisfying. I was working in a garden center. I'd been there a long time and was woefully overqualified for the job I'd been doing (and was therefore very valuable in that position - think Ops Manager skills at Admin Assistant position and pay).
We lost our Sales Manager one year and corporate hired a new one. Let's call her Flora. She was... a real piece of work. I don't know what her interview looked like but in person she was instantly and constantly rude and strident and mean and curt and dismissive and that attention-seeking brand of lazy where she threw her weight around without cause, talked s**t about anyone not in the room, and collected 75% of the credit for 5% of the work. She had some knowledge, I guess, but it's way easier to teach a competent manager how to grow flowers than it is to teach an a-hole horticulturist how to be a human being.
ANYWAY. For whatever reason, corporate loved her. So she stayed.
What with one thing and another, I got another job. This process was slightly accelerated by Flora, but only a little. I'd been looking for some time, mostly waiting for the right opportunity. When I gave my two weeks notice, I got an email the next day scheduling my exit interview with the head of HR.
Now. My position didn't get exit interviews. Only managers (and sometimes department supervisors) did. And everyone at my store knew why I was leaving, so there was literally *NO* reason for the Store Manager to pull strings to get me one. And he never said anything about it. But I knew: he set it up so I could tell the head of HR (a man I was very friendly with) that I was leaving because of Flora.
And I did. I just just laid into her. I said that Flora was the only reason I was leaving after almost 10 years with the company, during which time I wrote the company's Health and Safety program, trained almost every other person who did my job at other stores, made spreadhsheets that got used company-wide, as well as setting audit records that still stand to this day. And all for a few pennies over minimum wage. I said I was going because she was the worst and I couldn't take it any more.
I found out later she was let go. I was thanked by most of my old workmates. My Manager never said a word about it to me then, or since. He was a real OG.
Vasana Phong 2 years ago
Sometimes I still wonder how people in her position get jobs in their positions that’s not qualified at all, it’s so obvious
#19
I used math to prove to their superior how severely my boss had underestimated turnover 3+ years in a row, costing a ton of money and labor issues. One day earlier the boss had screamed at my team until his face went purple, making a huge spectacle in front of the entire floor. The gist was that we were colluding against the company by (a handful of us) electing not to renew our contracts. Came back with graphs and maths, baby. He was demoted and transferred out a couple weeks later.
Pro-tip: don’t make a grumpy scapegoat out of someone who loves to make excel graphs.
#20
Was working maintenance at an ice rink. The rule for anyone who knows how an ice rink works is if the zamboni doors open, you get the f*** off the ice. Some d**k-head decided to ignore the fact that they were open and that I was standing in the doorway, and decided to rip off one last slap-shot. The puck bounced off the glass and hit me in the head.
I was OK, but reported it to my boss, because we have to fill out an incident report for things like that. The boss asked "Are you OK?" I said I feel OK, then he responded with "Well, we don't really have to report it then do we?" I reminded him of the protocol, but it was clear he didn't want to do it. Since he wouldn't do it, I sent a descriptive email of the incident up to the administration, because I felt there should be some sort of documentation/paper trail in case god-forbid I ended up having a brain hemorrhage or something a few days later.
The boss was fired by my next shift.
#21
Worked at a McDonald's in highschool at 17. I was being sexually harassed by a co-worker twice my age. He said some really awful stuff to me that made me afraid to come to work. They refused to switch my shifts. They also were working me too much for being under 18 and tried to get me to sign a consent form saying I knew I'd be working the hours I was, when I constantly asked for different hours.
I called the corporate offices and told them. My parents even got a lawyer involved. I quit and a few weeks later a coworker I went to school with said two of the shift managers, the supervisor, and the store manager were all terminated and barred from working with the company again. They brought in a few temporary people who were high up and ended up sniffing out the other bad employees.
ThatOneWriter 2 years ago
The creep should have been arrested for sexually harassing a minor too.
#22
I had a job that required my supervisor to be doing evaluations of my cases and charts. She just hadn't, in months. She and my director ordered me and my co-workers to do our own chart audits, fill out the forms, and they would sign off. I was so tired of not having adequate supervision, staff meetings weekly where she yelled at us and invariably someone cried due to the stress and lack of support, and not having been paid enough to do everything I was doing AND their job, I refused. I was told to do it or I would be fired. Nope. So I got fired.
On the way out to my car, I called my former director who had moved to another agency. She set up an interview for the next day and I had a new job within 24 hours. She asked me what had happened at that interview. I spilled all the tea. Her sister-in-law was on the board of the previous agency, so she called her and I told her everything, too. Director was fired and supervisor was reprimanded and put on close monitoring. She had killed any chance of promotion and left shortly afterwards, I heard. I was just happy to have jumped ship from that toxic mess. I should have left months earlier.
#23
I had a boss who was skimming off employee hours at Walmart. I took screenshots of my employees hours on Thursday before the shift started and then screenshots of their hours on Friday that showed that all of them had a couple hours skimmed off their work week. I was a low level manager- he was an upper tier manager.
He got fired.
I believe his motivations was that he wanted to get promoted and wanted to show that he could get more done in less man hours. Probably would have impacted his bonus too.
advice5cents 2 years ago
Just knowing you were underpaid doesn't mean you have always have a practical remedy. Walgreens lost a major lawsuit over this. And apparently shorting hours is an epidemic in the USPS.
#24
I used to work at a title company and witnessed our department manager forge mortgage documents on a fairly regular basis. So when she went to upper management to throw the entire department under the bus for being behind on recording documents, I marched straight to HR to resign and let them know what she was doing.
She was fired and they called me and offered my job back before the week was out.
#25
Our manager spent her whole shift in the office watching us on camera and if we so much as stopped to talk to each other she'd come out and yell at us to get back to work. She was completely immature. One time I left my water bottle at the front counter and my co worker had to stop her from purposefully throwing it away. She would make up rules on the spot if she didn't like something someone did. I could go on. She was a terrible, unfriendly, hypocritical, mean manager.
Honestly, we all just went to the owners and told them everything and how it made us feel. They got HR involved and got her fired and found out she may have been stealing or giving away product. It was such a relief. If you work for a small business, just be honest with the owners if management isn't family.
#26
He was always slacking off; he'd go and do a 15 minute task, and be gone 2 hours. He'd have to 'shoot off early' for a doctors appointment, or a dentist appointment, always with no prior warning and whenever he was obviously bored. This was, mind you, within weeks of the new shop opening & all of us being hired.
I was young and went along with it for a while, my colleague was in her 40s and vaguely knew him anyway, so was not standing for it. She reported him repeatedly to our area manager, who decided to come down to speak to him about it.
AM rung in the morning, told him to stay in the shop today, and send one of us out for anything that needed doing. He said he had something to do, but his boss said nope, need you in the shop. Somehow he didn't get the obvious message and went out anyway, the AM came down and he was gone; my manager wouldn't answer his phone all day, AM was PISSED.
At the end of the day when we were closing up, he walked past, posted his keys through the door, and I never saw him again. Didn't even attempt to argue his case.
Felice Coles 2 years ago
At least the dumbass was clued in enough to see that screaming and crying and arguing wouldn't do any good. Buh-bye!
#27
Was the head chef of a small restaurant that I eventually owned ( before my life collapsed, but thats another story). The owner ( who was rarely there) suspected the general manager of stealing. On quiet nights if she thought she wasn't asking enough on tips ( place was small enough that on slow nights it was just the two of us working) she would go to the computer from the managers screen and delete any tables that were paid in cash, pocketing the money. I got suspicious when my food cost numbers would just never add up to what was being sold. So I got ahold of the software company that ran our computer system, and it turns out they have a backdoor that even the management can't see that logs every single key stroke. Turns out she had ripped off close to $20000 over a 6 month period. She was asked to leave after that but for some reason the owner didn't bother to press charges.
cybermerlin2000 2 years ago
If he had pressed charges, he would have had to reveal the security weakness in the computers systems
#28
By doing so much it started an investigation into what they were actually doing during their day. Officially she was fired for sending nudes through corporate email, but the only reason they were tracking her email was to understand what she was spending her time on. Turns out it was an affair.
#29
I worked in a bar and I caught my supervisor giving her and her friends free drinks and taking bottles home. They reviewed the CCTV and found she was also dealing drugs from behind the bar and she was fired the next day.
Felice Coles 2 years ago
Probably her little side business then turned into her full-time business elsewhere.
#30
Not my manager, but I got a project manager who worked with my team fired when it was obvious he didn't understand the business domain and put no work into understanding it or even breaking down the problems with the team. During a stakeholder meeting, we were asked about the gameplan for tackling the project, he spewed some nonsense, and I asked what the actual plan was in detail. When he tried to come up with BS to explain that the problem is very complex and there is no clear path to building the project, that sealed his fate.
What do you think ?
Demi Zwaan 2 years ago
I worked in IT as a 3rd line support worker and we had a new boss from a country where women were seen as inferior to men and he was sexist as can be. In meetings he wouldn’t let me get a word in, he’d give me the worst jobs possible, put me on 1st line phone duty, etc. He also treated the men like dumb monkeys, telling them what to do to the lowest detail and he basically made everyone’s life hell. We put up with it for months, because the owner/CEO loved him and we didn’t know what to do. It got so bad, when I saw his car in the parking lot when I arrived, I’d get a panic attack. Eventually when he was on holiday the whole department got the nerve to go to the owner and tell him about everything that happened. Surprisingly, he got LIVID, called the boss guy and demanded he return from his holiday for a talk. I think he didn’t actually cut his holiday short, but when he returned, he was fired on the spot. Best feeling ever!
Janet PoCo 2 years ago
My boss called me a d**k headed dyke so my hubby of 30 years went into HR and had her fired as I recorded her slam on my phone as I know she would deny it (I said PARDON? and hit the record button...)
Bob Stuart 2 years ago
I was hired to make composite helicopter parts for a company that had only used metal before. I was well experienced, but the head of the new department was just faking it. I'd have taught him his job if he hadn't yelled at me, but when he was planning to compromise quality, I advised the owner to compare his orders to the industry standard.
Demi Zwaan 2 years ago
I worked in IT as a 3rd line support worker and we had a new boss from a country where women were seen as inferior to men and he was sexist as can be. In meetings he wouldn’t let me get a word in, he’d give me the worst jobs possible, put me on 1st line phone duty, etc. He also treated the men like dumb monkeys, telling them what to do to the lowest detail and he basically made everyone’s life hell. We put up with it for months, because the owner/CEO loved him and we didn’t know what to do. It got so bad, when I saw his car in the parking lot when I arrived, I’d get a panic attack. Eventually when he was on holiday the whole department got the nerve to go to the owner and tell him about everything that happened. Surprisingly, he got LIVID, called the boss guy and demanded he return from his holiday for a talk. I think he didn’t actually cut his holiday short, but when he returned, he was fired on the spot. Best feeling ever!
Janet PoCo 2 years ago
My boss called me a d**k headed dyke so my hubby of 30 years went into HR and had her fired as I recorded her slam on my phone as I know she would deny it (I said PARDON? and hit the record button...)
Bob Stuart 2 years ago
I was hired to make composite helicopter parts for a company that had only used metal before. I was well experienced, but the head of the new department was just faking it. I'd have taught him his job if he hadn't yelled at me, but when he was planning to compromise quality, I advised the owner to compare his orders to the industry standard.
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