Having a job is nothing to take lightly. We all need money to put food on the table, and having access to money should never be taken for granted by anyone.
That being said, there are some jobs that are so awful for a variety of reasons that even money isn’t enough to make them worth enduring. As much as being stuck in a bad job truly sucks, it does have one redeeming quality—when one no longer cares whether they’ll get to keep the job or not in the long term, all the usual restrictions of what can and can’t be said and done in a work setting instantly fly out the window. And that can definitely make for some unique and memorable stories!
Here are 42 such stories about people who got fired from their jobs and regret nothing.
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42. I’ll Take That As a No...
Worked at a big supermarket chain. Did cashier job, placed out products and did some behind the scenes management.
One day I get called to the back. It was the regional manager, who said the deficit after my shifts as cashier is getting out of control—about $10 to $50 every shift. They threatened me with calling the cops, saying that they had surveillance videos showing me stealing the money. I said sure, get the cops here, I'll just wait.
After 30 minutes, the cops arrived. When we started watching the footage there was nothing showing that I stole the money, and the cops said there is no evidence against me and took off. I still got fired on the spot and they even banned me from entering their stores all over the country.
A few weeks later, I get a call from the girl that was working there with me, and who had to cover me for smoke breaks when I was cashier. Teared up and choking from crying, she confesses that it was her stealing the money all the time while I was on my breaks. She got charges pressed against her, she did 120 hours community service and paid a huge fine.
A few days after that, I get a call from the store’s regional manager apologizing for the inconvenience and asking me if I want to return to my old job. I told him to screw off and hung up.
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41. Falling Like Dominoes
I reported a coworker for harassing a minor.
My manager fired me for making the accusation against her friend.
She got fired, and then the district manager got fired when he too was caught in a bathroom with a minor.
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40. You’re On the Air!
I worked at a radio station in the late ‘80s. Part-time.
The way up the ladder was that you got hired part-time, then as the full-time people moved up and out, you were slotted in for promotion based on how long you'd worked there.
I'd worked my way up to the top of the part-time heap. The next full-time slot that opened was mine by virtue of seniority.
But the next job that opened up was the midday show. While I was next on the list, the job was given to someone who'd worked for the station for a grand total of two weeks. She was terrible. It was unfair. And I expressed this in a letter to the program director.
I got fired for having "an attitude."
It was the best career move I ever made. I walked out of that place with my head held high, and within a year was working at a much larger station on my way to a career in major markets. Last I heard, my old boss is still there in charge of that little station.
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39. If You Don’t Have Your Principles, What Do You Have?
Went into a business meeting for the ice cream shop I managed. I was told that the girl who was seven months pregnant needed to be written up as much as possible so they could have a legal reason to fire her. I told them it wasn’t going to happen and they suggested that I put in my two weeks and find other work. So I did.
Then I was told that I was going to be gone in two weeks and might as well just fire her. There was no way in hell I would do that. I walked into that meeting with a 50 hour a week, decent paying job, and left with nothing but my integrity. I then proceeded to drive to my store, pull the girl aside and let her know what was going on. Last I checked I believe she manages the store now.
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38. Guilty by Association
I worked at a computer and computer parts store. I got fired 30 minutes after the store closed as soon as the "investigation" ended.
Someone stole a laptop. They blamed me. Not for stealing it, but for "aiding" the thief.
This was false. I gave the laptop to the cashier and told her it was for that guy. The guy slipped out of line and said: "I forgot one other thing." Came back with a monitor box and placed it beside the laptop to hide it away from the cashier's POV.
While she was cashing other people out, he swiped the laptop, and walked up to the greeter at the door and said: "This is my laptop, I was just getting it repaired." The greeter let him go and off he went on his merry way.
The store does not have barcode door detectors. The greeter also got fired at the end of the shift, and he was rehired about five months later because he has Down syndrome and was going to sue the store.
Screw that place.
That was my first "infraction" and I was there for two years as a Service Technician. Selling laptops wasn’t even my job, I was doing the salesman a favor. The same thing would have happened to anyone. But because I TOUCHED THE LAPTOP, I was automatically labeled as an aid in the theft.
Unemployment insurance saw through my boss' nonsense reasoning and compensated me for nine months of same-wage pay. Win.
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37. No Bill Like a Clean Bill of Health
I was let go because I unexpectedly spent a ton of time in the hospital just after starting a new job.
I'm not dead though, so I guess it was worth it?
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36. Living Life to the Fullest
I was working as a CNA (Certified Nurses Aide) back in the early ‘90s & I liked to have fun with the residents. One day, my administrator found me in a hall wheelchair racing with several other elderly participants who were intent on kicking my butt! I was fired on the spot, citing safety issues. Phhhfff. Whatever dude.
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35. The Big Sleep
I was working a full-time job and three part-time jobs. I worked every day and on the weekends I would work nights. I rarely slept and this went on for six months.
One of the jobs was for a well-known lotion and scents store. The pay and hours really didn’t make a difference but I enjoyed working there. My manager was going out of town and was leaving a new supervisor in charge who I hadn’t gotten to know all too well, and he did not like me for some reason.
Well, the stars aligned and I got a weekend off, except for a morning shift with them. My manager had offered me the day off before she left, but me knowing it would leave her shorthanded, I declined.
She told me that if I overslept or was late, it was ok, due to how much I’ve been working. So I go home that night and crash out hard. The feeling of my bed was the greatest thing ever. I set my alarms and out I went. I woke up over 30 hours later not realizing I had slept through my shift until I saw the voicemail on my phone.
The new supervisor had “fired” me and put me down as a no call no show, which was rightfully so. I called the store and he refused to talk to me.
So I called the manager and told her what happened. She said it was fine and would take care of it and to come in for my next scheduled shift.
Well, long story short, this little jerk of a supervisor had already submitted my termination files to corporate and classified me as a no rehire. My manager was pissed and fired him shortly afterward. The sleep was the best I had had in years and is still on my top 10 sleeps. Totally worth getting labeled as a no rehire.
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34. A Parting Tip
I was an assistant store manager at a hardware store and decided to go back to school to become a teacher and drop down to an hourly position for three months. I was going to leave the company after that to study full time. The day before the transfer, they fired me—which saved them from paying me half of my saved up vacation time, worth about $300.
As I am being led out of the store my buddy in HR says “You can get unemployment,” and slides me a note with the phone number. I get six months of unemployment at $300 a week, and went on to a much better career in my new field.
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33. Sweet Revenge
I worked at a liquor store for two and a half years, owned by this guy and his family. Got to learn a lot about alcohol, meet lots of people in my neighborhood, and form a great bond with my customers and coworkers alike.
I tell my boss when I begin work that I have lupus and that it means I could end up with a flare sometime in the future. Fast forward two and a half years, I end up with some obscure infection in my esophagus and stomach where I lose roughly 70 or so pounds and have fevers, night sweats, and awful arthritic pain.
My coworkers see this and support me every step of the way, giving me register work instead of lifting boxes and things while I waited for my doc to give me my results. I got called into the hospital to stay a few nights and told my boss that I needed a week to get pumped full of steroids, and then I’d be back to work better than ever.
I get back and they move my schedule from five days a week to one day because I was "unreliable." I throw a fit because I feel pretty betrayed and it was just not at all how our discourse went prior to that. He told me he would have to look for someone new soon. I got the message.
So I helped one of my coworkers look for an accounting position at a nice place while he was getting his accounting degree and my other coworker we helped file and manage to help him do his CDL license application and test (English second language). Both coworkers find fantastic jobs compared to the store and we all call out for the week at the same time and after a freak out from management, we all just quit.
They sold the store shortly afterward and I consulted the new owners who hooked me up with a nice lifetime discount.
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32. Sneaky Tricks
I was the victim of what they call “dynamic tension.” That’s when they intentionally give you ten hours worth of work to do in an eight-hour shift and work you like a dog hoping you'll somehow manage to fit the equivalent of nine hours of work into your eight-hour shift.
They then eventually let you go since you aren’t meeting targets, despite having given them more value than the time they’ve paid you for. It's a messed up model but more common than you think. Glad I don’t work in a place like that anymore…
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31. Show Time!
My ex-manager here at the cinema got fired over "budgetary reasons." In other words, "We don’t like your face because you won’t bend over when we tell you to, wage-slave."
This was also just after he got cancer and had to take days off for treatment. Happened right around Christmas too. While he was working with us, he never really took vacations or days off, and didn’t even claim the extra hours he'd work here, fixing cameras, projectors, computers, databases, etc.
When I see him nowadays, he looks way better, less stressed out and happier. Works with helping old people now in his free time and coaching kids in volleyball. I think losing that job was the best thing that could ever have happened to him.
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30. Dessert Time!
Not me, but someone in my class. He wanted out of his apprenticeship, so he walked into one of the giant coolers the store had, sat down inside, and began to eat a fully finished, fully paid for, expensive wedding cake, waiting for someone else to enter the cooler and discover him.
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29. Got Out Just in Time
I was working in a small accounting firm making less than minimum wage. The boss was exploiting the fact that people like me were desperate to get their foot in the door of accounting, as it is very competitive in Australia.
One day I was stupidly posting on a forum about my situation and looking for advice. The boss found out and fired me on the spot.
Feeling pretty spiteful about the whole thing, I reported my situation to fair work ombudsman Australia. A month later, I got payment for the amount I should have been making at minimum wage for the six months I was there.
About a month after that, I landed a much better role at a large company making almost double what I was making previously.
The icing on the cake is that the firm ended up getting investigated by fair work and I can only assume they received a hefty fine because they are no longer in business.
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28. Your Job or Your Grandma’s Life? You Decide...
I was working at a pizza place at the time, and was probably my second month or so when this occurred.
About an hour before my shift starts, my mom calls and says my grandma fell down the stairs and is at the hospital. They need me to go home right away since she works farther away and I can get to her first. I call work to tell them I can't come in, and my boss said if I don't come in, I'll be fired. I say ok and hang up. A few hours later I get a voicemail saying I've been let go from my job.
Totally worth it to make it to my grandma to check on her.
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27. I’m No Nutritionist, But I Think You May Be Right
I got fired from a department store because I clocked out five minutes early from my shift to take a lunch break. Probably for the best, I wouldn’t be alive if I didn’t get proper time to eat.
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26. Wrong Number
I worked as a telemarketer making local calls to subscribers to a service. Boss was abusive as heck, taking out his frustrations on employees by angrily berating them.
After he did this to a nice girl that worked there, I was fed up and knew I was gonna quit, so I used the company phone to call my mom who was in Japan at the time and had a long casual conversation with until he stormed out of his office and fired me.
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25. Fifteen Seconds of Fame
Not quite a job, but still someone intentionally doing a task wrong and giving up money because they couldn’t resist doing something epic and hilarious instead—so I say it counts.
On an Italian quiz show, a contestant had to fill in the missing words to compose the sentence. The sentence was about Amazons. The correct form was: "Vinsero battaglie grazie alla loro foga", which means: "They won battles thanks to their ardor". He instead changed the last word to something with almost the same exact spelling, but which meant: "They won battles thanks to their genitalia."
Mister Giancarlo will always be remembered by the Italian people as the man who, in place of vile money, preferred everlasting glory.
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24. If You Want to See Something Done Right, You’d Better Do It Yourself
Worked in a government office where it's typical to wring hands, deny responsibility, and shift the burden onto citizens even if it's the state that made the mistake.
I had a county prosecutor calling repeatedly trying to obtain some documents. It was a drunk driver case—the guy was facing down some serious charges so they were trying to build their case and determine the extent of charges against him. Absolutely someone who needed to be put away.
Everything in policy said they were entitled to it, but the person who normally furnishes it was constantly out with all manner of excuses. I finally got sick of putting it off, stalling them, and making excuses for her. I pulled the info myself and sent it. That didn't break any laws or policy, but they decided to sack me for it because I'd overstepped. But I'd do it again.
23. Honesty is the Best Policy
I worked at a local restaurant as a dishwasher. One of the waitresses told our boss that she was going to “Tie him to a chair and burn down his restaurant with him in it.”
She was promptly fired, but apparently was eventually hired back because she came back to tell the tale.
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22. You Had Best Not Buy This Cable
I walked out of my job at a big box store because I was being written up for not promoting a $60 company brand cable that had a 100% fail rate.
Apparently, I got spied on by an undercover member of management and didn't recommend the cable, which got me written up.
During the write-up, I maintained that I knew the cable was faulty and didn't want to ruin my relationship with my regulars by promoting a broken product.
They told me it wasn't my job to decide what was and wasn't a good product, I was just to sell what they told me to sell.
I asked if they wanted me to lie to the customers about the quality of the cable.
They said no, they can't tell me to do that.
So I said, I would be happy to lie for them if that was their instructions.
They said no, that isn't what they are saying, but if I didn't promote what they told me to, i.e. the cable, I would be fired.
I told them that wouldn't be necessary as I quit and I walked out of the discipline meeting and out the door of the store.
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21. Just Trying to Help!
I got written up for "gossiping" after a co-worker raised a harassment concern to me and I passed the concern on to management. Some people…
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20. This Restaurant Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us
While I was backpacking, I got a part-time job at a chain restaurant. I had management experience back home, but I wasn't looking for a management role there. I just wanted to carry food from one place to another place. Maybe drinks as well.
Somehow the current 'restaurant manager' (AKA chief plate carrier) heard that someone with more plate carrying experience was on the scene and was after her job. She made my introductory shift a living hell, and gave me half the floor to run with three staff whose names I didn't even know.
As you can imagine, the entire shift was a mess—not only for me, but also for the poor patrons just trying to eat their dinner.
I ended my shift by ripping off my apron and nametag and throwing it at the manager.
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19. Taking One for the Team
I worked at a tire shop and, just by a fluke of perfect timing, I caught the assistant manager taking an unsolicited picture of a customer who was bent over looking in her trunk for a lug key. I broke his nose.
They fired me for fighting and it was absolutely appropriate to do so, but I don't even feel bad or regret anything about it because they fired him too.
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18. Speaking Your Mind
I had gotten in trouble for being rude to a customer. I worked electronics; a customer asked me a question and I pointed her in the right direction but, because she couldn't find what she was looking for, she said some negative things about me as she left the store.
Naturally, I responded by saying “Goodbye forever!” I was fired, but regret nothing.
17. Bullying the Bullies
A friend got sacked from her student job for complaining to her union about her salary. Despite the company’s best efforts to cover things up by promoting two people in exchange for getting them to make bullying allegations against her, she managed to get the story on the TV news.
That led to her receiving an out-of-court settlement that both tided her over until she got another job and also funded a decent holiday.
It helped a lot that there were witnesses to the “We will promote you for lying about bullying” part.
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16. Failing to Handle Kidney Failure
I was working in dialysis when another competing company came to town and effectively eliminated the monopoly my current company had on treating kidney failure. The company I worked for had already lost their physician group and was so afraid of losing staff and patients to the new company that they gave out huge retention bonuses. After receiving my bonus, I was fired for a manufactured problem beyond my control.
I was subsequently hired by the new company, got a $10,000 signing bonus and took a couple dozen patients with me to the new company. Got my picture in the new company's brochure they mailed out to all the dialysis patients so they knew where I ended up. Just having a new company come to town to provide competition was also amazing for the patients. They got new heated massage chairs and new TVs with more channels and better/more staff to take care of them. The old company didn’t even come close to what this one had to offer its patients.
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15. Happy New Year!
I hated my corporate job and was planning to wait one more week before I turned in my resignation so I could get paid for Christmas and New Year’s.
Finally lost it on my boss though, and told her "If you spent one third of the time actually doing your job that you spent covering up for not doing your job, you could pretty much sit in your office and listen to talk radio for the rest of the day and nobody would have a problem with you."
The CEO was standing on the other side of the door. He was like "I'm real sorry, but..." and off I went. I could tell he didn't disagree with me. I had another job within seven hours to start the New Year with.
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14. If I’m Going Down, You’re All Coming With Me
I used to work at a pizza place and the store I worked at was appalling, dirty, unsanitary, poorly managed, the works. So about a week into the job, my boss added me to a group page on Facebook where employees would swap shifts and the boss could talk to us all.
One day, she posted pictures of the state of the kitchen, telling us to clean it as we had the big boss paying a visit. So I took a screenshot of her post and shared it widely on social media.
My boss found out and promptly fired me, but a few days later I saw that the shop had closed down while it looked for new staff and management. Not only did I get myself fired, but I also got about 15 other teenagers and adults fired. Not too bad if I do say so myself.
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13. His Come to Jesus Moment
My team was given unreasonable sales targets and in the middle of a one on one with my boss, who was asking me how I planned to make up for the deficit, I suggested that she try and "find Jesus."
She responded she'd given it a lot of thought and admitted not being able to think of anything on which I could be doing better, but used the unprofessional tone of the "find Jesus" comment to get me fired.
I am in such a better role now though, not only was the sarcasm worth it, where I am now is too!
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12. How Was I Supposed to Know What Day It Was??
I was working in a warehouse with a woman who was normally very cheerful. One week she was looking a bit down so as a light-hearted joke, I took a box and wrote "CAUTION: HUMAN HEAD" on it, with some red marker for blood drips and such, and put it on her desk. Wasn't a great joke, but thought it'd at least raise a smile. Now from the context, I imagine you're thinking "No, this is a bad idea"—and you'd be right. The woman came in, saw the box, and ran to the toilet crying.
Turned out it was the anniversary of her brother's death. He had been decapitated in a motorcycle accident. Everyone else knew, so they assumed that I did. No amount of arguing would convince them otherwise and it wasn't worth dragging it out, so I left. I have since moved on to bigger and better things as a result.
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11. If Only We Could All Get Fired This Way
The startup I worked for was bought by a gigantic company; the new EvilCorp proceeds to screw over all of my employees. Got all of them (who wanted it) into better places, then stopped working almost entirely with our products.
So I spent 2 years basically milking EvilCorp’s wallet for all it was worth, while doing very little actual work. Eventually, I pissed off my new evil boss enough to get myself in trouble, and then leveraged his desire to get me out of there for a decent “Pay me to quit” package.
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10. Don’t Mess With This Guy
I got transferred to the furniture department at my store, and I didn’t know anything about furniture—so that already annoyed me.
So one day, I'm building some desk or something when I get called to run a register up front. When my shift ended, there was a huge mess back in my department that was made while I was off at the register, but I was in a rush to get somewhere after work and not down at all to clean up someone else’s mess. I got fired, but would do the same thing again if I had to.
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9. I Think They Learned Their Lesson
When working as a teacher, I told a classroom full of bratty freshmen to "Shut the hell up."
One of them told on me and the administrator came to fire me shortly after. It was worth it.
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8. So That’s How You Really Feel?
I worked at a café chain know for soups, sandwiches, and salads throughout high school. I was good friends with exactly three people. Whenever our group got to close the store, it was always a fun time. We ended up messing around a bit with the drive-thru headsets after hours while chatting and cleaning up the store. There was a particularly attractive new manager who had been hired recently and she was a bit of a hot topic between a group of high school guys.
We were unaware that the store mics and cameras ran to an app on the manager’s phone. We all got called in the next day. They didn’t fire us. Oh no, it was much worse.
The manager had a good sense of humor. She made printouts of our conversation and made us repeat it verbatim to the new hot manager, who was in tears laughing at how terrible we felt.
Taught us a good lesson. Good managing right there.
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7. You Can’t Handle the Truth
I told my Muslim customers that the food they were being served was not halal, despite being told by my boss to pretend it was.
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6. You Made a Good Choice, Sir
My wife was due with our first daughter. The company asked me to go on a two-week trip that overlapped with her due date. I told them it wasn't gonna work for me. They then offered a single week trip that still overlapped and told me to choose one or the other. I chose to cut the umbilical cord.
I'm sure they broke the law but it wasn't worth the fight. Had some cash put away and spent the next couple months changing diapers until I was ready to put my skill set back to work. Thank goodness finding subsequent work wasn't that hard.
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5. Setting the Record Straight
My mom worked at a lousy retail place, and when I was 16 she got me a job there. One of the co-workers basically bullied my mom daily—she'd cry often and eventually quit.
A week or so later, the bully's fiancé gets hired and I proceed to talk to him about how nasty of a woman and how ugly she is—pretending I wasn't aware they were engaged.
Got fired that day. Not even mad, that place was a soul sucker.
4. Busted
I worked as an internal audit intern for a local municipality. I was 20 years old and hadn't even taken an audit class yet. After a few weeks, I realized quickly that I was underqualified for the job. However, I still tried to learn and work my tail off.
I noticed there were some issues with the policies and procedures in place. For example, missing money and weak controls. Anytime I brought it up, the manager would sweep it under the rug and ignore it.
Long story short, I had a huge argument with her and she let me go.
Three months later, the FBI show up at my door. They asked me a few questions about my old manager. Turns out she conspired with the mayor to accept donations in exchange for certain actions. Not sure what those actions were. Either way, she got fired and got charged, along with ten other city officials.
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3. Food Fight
I waited tables at a restaurant/bar and this drunk chick tried to chuck a hot fajitas skillet at me with no success. I then threw her drink right back at her and the guy sitting with her in retaliation. This resulted in the termination of my employment. I kinda felt bad because the guy seemed nice, but sometimes there are casualties in war.
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2. Reverse Ambulance Chasers
I worked at a place in Ontario. I was the chef.
The year before I was hired, they'd left the place a mess and violated health code to the point where they had been cited. I was working uphill against that and a crazy owner who would rather act like she was 21 than run her business properly.
On a July evening, someone stuck a hot, dirty, sauté pan into my stack of cool clean pans. I wrapped my hand around it and, man, that was an intense level of pain! I literally had to peel the pan from my hand.
The crazy owner wouldn't let me call an ambulance because it would be bad for business. They insisted I run service from the other side of the line instead.
I took a few days’ medical leave after that, all the while fielding harassing phone calls from the boss about how I was letting them down.
This place was awful and I'd had no staff for weeks because, again, ownership ran them off. I handed in my notice and was promptly escorted off the property.
It was gratifying to watch their reviews sink after that. Food going out cold. Moldy mushroom burgers. That’s karma.
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1. Mic Drop
I worked in a bar with an awful boss. He would always flirt with the young female bar staff and make us all uncomfortable, even though he was 50 years old. We all knew his wife and two young children, but about six months into me working there he began to “date” a 22-year-old customer.
By date, I mean he used to go downstairs to his office and sleep with her—all while he was on shift. No one was allowed to talk about it but we all knew. He knocked her up quite quickly and ended up breaking up with his wife, but he still flirted with his staff relentlessly even when his new baby was born.
He once told a male employee that he liked asking female bar staff to pick up things from low shelves so we would bend over and he could check out our butts.
He always broke health and safety rules if he could get out of doing a task he didn’t want to. He was prolific at asking bar staff to clean human waste—vomit/poop customers had done on the floor—even though legally anyone cleaning that stuff needed to have passed a certain health and safety qualification. I spoke to my assistant manager about this and she confirmed that only management can do it, and I should refuse next time.
One day he demanded I cleaned up vomit in the male toilets, and I refused, repeating what the assistant manager told me. My boss went absolutely mad—he wasn’t used to people standing up to him. He told me to come downstairs to his office to speak about it.
At that moment I knew I wanted to quit, so I told him I won’t be going downstairs with him. He asked me why, and I replied: “The last girl who went down there with you ended up getting pregnant.”
Lost my job instantly but it was totally worth it.
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