Human Resource Staffers Break Down The Wildest Times They Had To Fire Someone

I've lost track of the number of co-workers and bosses I've had where I looked at them and thought... "How do you even have this job?!"

I know I'm not alone in this feeling.

Too many of us know it all too well.

The only thing that makes it bearable is knowing that their exit will be a story for the ages.

The craziest never go quietly.

But it makes you happy to not be the one who has to throw the axe.

Redditor HighElfEsteem wanted everyone who works in the staff management department to speak up, so they asked:

"People who work in HR, what's the wildest thing you've discovered that led to a firing in the course of your career?"

The Dasher

"I heard a story of a guy using an unmarked company car to run Uber Eats and DoorDash all day. He got away with it for a couple of years."

"He finally got caught because he was using his work phone for Uber and his data was astronomically higher than anyone else in the company."

"If he had just used his personal phone, he probably could still be going."

- 40ozT0Freedom

Delivery Dashing GIF by DoorDashGiphy

Federal Issues

"Obligatory not HR, but a contractor for the US federal government (USGS) brought his work laptop into an unauthorized country on personal vacation and then tried to use it. Taking a government-issued laptop across country lines requires a great deal of paperwork, depending on the data security and likelihood of theft in said country."

"This guy brought his laptop into a red-flagged country (worst data security) on a personal vacation. When he logged on his IP was instantly flagged and IT bricked the entire laptop remotely. Obvious instant termination. Don't f**k with federal government property, folks."

- MysteriousPlatform59

Okay Then...

"Years ago, I was covering as both HR and LP Manager for a district in a now-defunct retail chain. The stores carried a variety of adult magazines also now all defunct). Overstock for these lucrative and quick-selling products was in a storeroom. There was a very small (for the time) camera in the room. One day, I was reviewing footage at a store and Zi was idly watching an Asst. Manager restocks after closing. Then something odd happened."

"He was taking one copy of each adult magazine, opening it to a photo spread, and laying it down on the floor. Soon, there were about 15 magazines spread out. He left for a moment... and then returned in view of the cam completely naked. Then he laid down on the magazines and started rolling around and..."

"I met with him the next day and said, 'I need to let you know there's a camera in the magazine storage area.'"

"He stood up, said 'Okay then,' and walked out of the store. I ended up putting him in our system as 'resigned,' and didn't dispute his unemployment claim when he filed."

"I went ahead and told the next person who took over the restocking job that a camera was there before he even touched a single magazine."

- JackiePoon27

Trade-Ins

"Car dealership."

"Co-owner of the company had a used car lot he had registered under a friend's name. The big dealership would take in used cars, he'd pay a technician off-the-books to give it a bad inspection so the car would go to auction. He'd use the other company to purchase the cars for dirt cheap and sell the cars at a huge profit margin. Essentially got our KBB rep fired because she was evaluating trade-ins as being in good condition, but the inspections would all come back bad, so in the company's eyes, she was terrible at her job and paying people way too much for their trade-ins."

"They started to catch on when they realized close to 40% of all the trade-ins were getting poor inspections. So they implemented a system where two technicians each did their own inspections. Suddenly, not so many cars were getting poor inspections. Then it all unraveled when they looked into it deeper and realized every single bad inspection came from one technician. In total, they estimated roughly $400k in profit had been stolen from the company over the past couple of years. It was pretty messy."

- AidynValo

Tools

"One of the salespeople has printed their new offer of employment from a direct competitor from a company laptop, on a company printer and forgot it there. She was not the sharpest tool in the shed. All of her stuff got immediately locked and she had also tried to download the whole client database and sent it as an attachment from her work email to her private one. All this happened in one day.

- Pancovnik

Fly Away

"We had an administrator that was in charge of the program that oversaw the entire operations of the two company jets. She would regularly schedule and fly her kids to visit their grandparents five states away. One of the pilots filed a complaint for misuse of the company jets. Guess who they fired, the pilot, for not keeping his mouth shut."

- wyoflyboy68

Flying Cloud 9 GIF by Samm HenshawGiphy

FRAUD

"Dude requested a letter from HR to provide his insurance company, to state that he was on-shift on a particular day at a particular time - and therefore could not have been the one driving when his car was involved in an accident."

"For similar letters in the past, we provide 1) Their roster for the day, 2) Confirmation of their clock in and out times, and 3) Their scan in and out times of their security ID. (To show someone was rostered on, clocked in, and didn't leave the building before clocking out)."

"Turns out this guy hadn't actually worked that day - and when he realized we would actually check before putting it in writing, tried to use his supervisor-level access to alter historical records to say that he was on shift. He got caught out because the system wouldn't let you alter your own roster."

"When the inevitable 'No, we will not help you commit insurance fraud - turn in your ID' conversations happened and all facts were presented to him, it was the only time I've heard a union rep say words to the effect of entirely siding with HR in a dismissal."

- Timbo2702

Two -Timing

"Not HR, but my coworker went to work for a competitor and never quit her job with us. She traveled for work and was able to work both jobs for months. Lasted until a customer mentioned he heard she left our company and asked who his account rep would be."

- Caspers_Shadow

Kat Graham Christmas GIF by GIF RegistryGiphy

Sticky Fingers

"It came to my attention (after a few times) that a woman would stay in a restroom stall and take all the toilet paper off the rolls by just unraveling it, and she was seen putting what she had rolled up and put it in her locker a few times. She claimed she was too poor for women’s hygiene products, so she was told that they were provided and there was no need for her to use that much toilet paper for that."

"Hoped that was the end of it, it started again and she claimed this time it was for wounds and she couldn’t afford gauze and wound dressings. Ok so we just told her again she could use what was in the first aid kits, management wanted to be gentle. So it starts up again and she confessed she just liked stealing things and this was easy. She was termed after that one."

- No-Celebration3097

Quiet Place

"So, I used to work at a software company and we kept getting complaints about a nap room being cluttered and trash from the nearby breakroom being left around in the mornings, so we asked security to do some late evening walk-bys to see what was going on. One evening, they found a young Asian woman hiding in the nap room. She didn't work there and she didn't speak English. It was super weird."

"It turns out, one of the software engineers who worked in the building had purchased a mail-order bride. But here's the kicker - he was already married. So, unable to bring his new mail-order bride home, he kept her at the office. No idea where she hid during the day, but at night she made good use of our little nap room. Gotta feel bad for that poor woman."

- AnimusFlux

I'm Impressed

"We had an employee who would clock in at the time clock every day and then go home. They’d come back to clock out for lunch and back in after an hour. Then come back at the end of the day. It was impressive how long it took a manager to catch on."

- stitch714

I Like Yes GIF by Doja CatGiphy

Still Together

"My experience I have seen a lot of wild stuff, but people in HR were the wildest."

"HR generalist was pregnant. The father was one of the people on the production floor, but she didn’t know which one. Fist fights broke out among all the potential fathers."

"HR VP was fired after a paid conference he attended was actually just a free vacation for him and his family, and he didn’t even go to the same city as the conference."

"HR director was having an affair with IT director, both married. When they were confronted, they both denied it, so they were both fired. I saw them 7 years later on a plane coming back from Europe. Still together."

- FleetAdmiralCrunch

Wow, it is never a dull day at the office, is it?

It sounds like all the fun is in human resources.

Though they may disagree.