My second college internship led me to a small content creation company. It was so small that the two editors were the only paid employees. Everyone else was an intern.
I was excited to start so I could add more to my portfolio only to realize that one of the editors replaced my name with hers every time she edited one of my articles. Not much of the content was changed, but I was too shy to question it.
I eventually found out that she did this to all the interns, and most of the interns had learned to private message their draft articles to the other editor, who did not take the bylines.
I asked one of my fellow interns if the founder of the company knew the editor took bylines. Turns out, the founder knew, but for some reason no one else could figure out, the editor never got fired.
It turns out this story isn't unique. There are lots of instances when someone does something at work that should get them fired, but they manage to hold on to their job. Redditors have plenty of stories like that and are eager to share.
It all started when Redditor Shelendrea asked:
"Have you ever witnessed something that should've gotten someone fired at work? If so, what happened?"
Needs More Than A Demotion
"Coworker jokingly threw a box at my chest and knocked the wind out of me and I collapsed. He begged me not to tell anyone and I didn't. The guy was a weirdo. He'd talk about how he'd burn insects and starts fires. Weird sh*t. He ended up getting in more trouble later on for some reason or another...crass jokes, sexual comments....either way, he eventually transferred stores and I never saw him again. This all happened back in 2013-14."
"Fast forward to earlier this year 2023, my store was getting a major remodel, and he was one of the managers that came from afar with a team of workers to do the remodel. I was surprised he was still with the company, let alone in a leadership position. I said hi to him a time or two, but he was busy with the remodel project on the other side of the store so I eventually stopped seeing him."
"This whole time things were tense between the remodel crew and our store crew. Pallet Jack's getting stolen, supplies going missing, etc. Both sides hated each other."
"I hadn't seen (we'll call him John) in a few weeks and noticed there was a new manager on the remodel crew. Either way, things were finally cooling down between us."
"Out of curiosity I asked one of the remodel crew what had happened to John, and they told me, "Oh you didn't hear? He got demoted for trying to start problems between our teams. He'd tell us to steal your pallet Jack's and tried getting a few people to fight.""
"Unreal."
– AdamR91
Got Milk?
"I worked in a milk factory. I was working with a man that was a bit off. We had to take the milk cartons on a conveyor belt and place them on a pallet. While we were working he said "time for a break" and slammed a blade used to open boxes into the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt got absolutely destroyed and the machine was in maintenance of two days after that."
– LyricalJerrycal
"Hey, when it's time for a break, it's time for a break."
– MyOpinyunIsRight
"How dairy?!"
– StrongestAvenger2211
Money, Money, Money
"The supervisor left the safe open."
"At this job, he should have absolutely gotten fired but his blunder got overshadowed because one of the douchier employees stole 50k and went on the run for over half a day."
– BW_Bird
"...doesn't that just highlight why the supervisor should keep the safe shut?"
– akaioi
"You'd think."
"Honestly, I wasn't too upset. Sups was a nice guy."
– BW_Bird
A DQ Thing
"When I was in high school, I worked at Dairy Queen. I was on the opening crew one Saturday and the assistant manager unlocks the doors, lets us in, and tells us "Guys, I'm really hungover right now so I'm gonna sleep in the back. Wake me up if you need me." She goes back and curls up on top of the laundry machines (we washed all the uniforms on site because they get covered in ice cream). It was a slow day so and she was the cool manager, so we all let her sleep and never told the owner."
"Another night, one of our cook's buddies parked their car in our lot and he just hung out there with them smoking weed for a couple hours. If someone ordered food, we'd go out and get him. He'd come back inside, cook it, and go right back out. The rest of us had the decency to smoke after work, but nobody ratted him out either."
– SeveralAngryBears
"Must be a Dairy Queen thing. When I was seventeen I was the grill cook at Dairy Queen and the employees had a pact with each other that if one of us came in after 4 pm when we weren’t working and made food and walked out with it, nobody would see the person doing it. We only had a shift leader, no managers after 4pm. So, my friends and I would smoke weed, drive to Dairy Queen, and I would walk back to the kitchen and cook a bunch of fried food and burgers, then take it out to my stoner friends waiting in the car. As you can imagine, I was pretty popular with my weed smoking friends."
– Horror-School-6713
Going, Going, Gone
"At my last job we had this guy who seemed normal, I knew he did some club drugs outside of work but I don’t have a problem with that. Anyways, he shows up to work one day COMPLETELY f*cking blasted. Like couldn’t walk right, couldn’t talk. This motherf*cker gets mad at me when I send him home, the next day I get to work and our boss is like "hey man what did you say to Tyler last night? He said you’re a huge a**hole and he’s never working with you again”. I told him and my boss goes “oh. Okay. Well I think he quit, he said if I don’t fire you he’s done here""
"Bold f*cking move to make after showing up in a k hole during your third week of work at our company lmfao"
– _clydebruckman
A New Kind Of Sneeze Burgers
"Was working at McDonald’s. Watched a female crew member sneeze into her hands, and proceed to make a wrap and sent it out. I threw it in the bin before front staff got it."
"Edit* I should mention - I was genuinely shocked to see it happen. McDonald’s are extremely strict on hygiene. I reported her to a manager, but she denied it and said she sneezed into her arm. We were too busy for anyone to check cameras."
– RewardNew5810
Nepotism At Its Finest
"Work in a residential setting for teens with behavioral issues. There’s 1 staff in particular who should not be working with kids and it was clear on my 2nd day. He’s almost 50 and behaves like a 15-year-old. He’s always going back and forth and gets mad about everything with them."
"One day, things got heated between him and a kid for the 100th time and he ends up choking the kid. The kid was actually being more mature about it and he wanted to continue to fight the kid. We separated them and I was holding the staff back when he started to get mad at me for not letting him beat up a 14 year old."
"I’ve only been at this job for 3 months and was told by other staff that this has happened multiple times now with different kids."
"He still has a job because he’s best friends with the 2 bosses."
– i-piss-excellence32
Wrong Accountability
"I worked at a special needs day program many years ago. Wednesdays were classic film day at the local theater and we’d take the clients. I was a 1:1 meaning I had only one client. My direct superior had 3, and a substitute had 4. The substitute lost one of her guys and didn’t realize it until after the film when we were counting clients."
"Long story short, I got fired & the superior got fired. But the one whose responsibility it was to watch him kept her job. The client was fine, though, he was found a mile down the road asking for a police officer to help him find his way home."
– iateacakeonce
It Is The Night Shift
"I work overnights at a hotel. They hired a guy to be the security/valet and in the first two weeks he was found sleeping on the job. The first time he was found by a third coworker. We told the manager and nothing happened. The second time the manager found him sleeping in the bell closet in a wheelchair. He got sent home but didn’t get fired."
– aolewahine808
"I'm overnight too, sometimes it feels like they just want a living body and don't care about much else."
"One of the guys I've had over the years would fall asleep constantly and sounded like he was drowning he snored so horribly, no consequence."
– wickedblight
Santa is Real!
"I worked at a small map company. Our first task when we started was to add rivers and lakes over satellite imagery/topographic maps. It was a summer job when I was in college. Both me and the guy who worked next to me were 19-20ish. It was very dry, repetitive, tedious work. We weren’t really allowed to talk while working so for the most part just plugged away at our own computer stations. Occasionally we would write notes to each other. Towards the end of the summer when he was about to go back to school my coworker went off the deep end. He just started drawing line art with the GIS software and naming them things. He drew Santa and his reindeer. Made up like half a dozen lakes with a bunch of whacky names like “Lake Milk Was a Poor Choice.” I didn’t tell anyone what he did and I wonder what the quality control people thought of it. He definitely would have been fired had they known."
– JMaple
Just One More Zero
"Yep."
"Few weeks ago one of my sales rep comes in to drop off paperwork for a sale he had just completed."
"The whole time he's bragging about how the customer couldn't believe his great deal even though he was paying MSRP."
"I take the paperwork, and start looking through it to verify the same amount to put the commission in for payroll."
"I come up on the price, and in the box it says: $2,100. I look at him in complete disbelief. I show him where he put the price, and his face went white as a ghost."
"$2,100 when it should've been $21,000. By misplacing the comma, and not adding an extra 0, the dumb S.O.B let a BRAND NEW UTV GO FOR $18.9K BELOW MSRP!!!!!!!"
"I had to tell the owner who told sales rep that 1% of the price would come out of all future paychecks until the price was paid back."
– amethyst_haired_emo
Yikes!
"I worked in a pizza restaurant from age 15 to 23. My answer is almost everything. Just a tip, when people say be kind to your servers, this is for your own benefit, not theirs."
– Silver-B-NotGold
I used to be a server. This is very true!