I recently asked the BuzzFeed Community, what was the moment you knew you were going to get fired? These responses didn’t disappoint.
1.“I was hired at a for-profit college. I knew the place was shady, but I really needed work [and] the economy and unemployment were bad at the time. Within the first few months, I was given a written warning that was not about me.”
“It was nearly word for word the same feedback I’d given my boss’ friend/ coworker for inappropriate behavior. My boss knew it was a lie and tried anyway. I refused to sign it, and we escalated it to the dean of the school where she was proven to be found out.
“Later, I discovered they were registering students who should not be registered for school by recruiting at homeless shelters, addiction centers, and other areas where individuals were extremely vulnerable to being taken advantage of with student debt. I reported this to the state. I was advised by my management to continue to enroll these students as I was given their data. When I refused, I was advised to leave my office door unlocked at night. I refused again. Senior management then fired me.”
—officialtrout242
Sam Edwards / Getty Images
2.“My crazy, [micromanaging], insane boss put me on a performance improvement plan for one thing I ever did wrong in five years. Lol.”
—willowred
3.“I was the HR Manager for a small company. The owner of the company demanded I get written up for everything.”
“Ask to throw away expired batteries? Attempted theft. Ask the company insurance provider how much it would cost for an employee to add her new spouse [to her insurance]? Failure to follow proper procedures. I started getting written up for tasks no one [had] asked me to do.
“I got written up when the town’s sewer was shut off, when fumes from renovations got inside the house, and also for where a tree [had been] planted several years before. When the owner of the company said she couldn’t deal with my ‘mind-blowing stupidity’ (her words), I saw the writing on the wall and quit before she could drag me through any more bullshit..”
—dandelano
Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
4.“I worked in a small retail store and we always had two people. I was [the store’s] manager and was coming up on a year so I asked for a raise. Two days later, a new girl was hired and I was told to train her.”
NBC / Via giphy.com
“I was suspicious because the store never had more than two employees, but I trained her anyway. One day I was working and the new girl came in without warning. I asked what she was doing, [and] she said, ‘Oh the boss asked me to come in last minute for some reason,’ and I instantly knew I was fired.
“I had my key off the ring before the boss got there. He pulled me aside and fired me for ‘taking off too much time for Christmas’ even though I had written proof that the time off was approved. This also happened in April 🤦🏼♀️ so I was fired basically for asking for a raise, lol.”
—savannahm495a68290
5.“I was 16. It was my first job, lasted less than a week. I was a cashier at a small grocery store in town, where you had to actually press in the amount of each item on the cash register. One day a friend of mine came in and had a bunch of items.”
“I picked up each one, looked at them, and rang in the wrong price at a much lower rate for all of her items; she didn’t even know I was doing it. Little did I know, the owner’s friend was in line right behind my friend, saw everything I did, and tattled on me. It was so embarrassing to get pulled off the register and fired on the spot. 40+ years ago; you live and you learn, right?”
—Anonymous
Phil Walter / Getty Images
6.“[I knew I was getting fired] when they put me on a nearly impossible PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) after I went to HR for treatment by my boss.”
“The PIP had things that were nearly impossible to do in a reasonable amount of time — think making a comprehensive and detailed training program by Friday, and it was Wednesday. We all know it’s illegal to retaliate after an employee makes a complaint to HR for a supervisor. So instead they legally do it by firing you after not meeting their expectations.”
—necoboliver
“Pretty much all PIPs are impossible by design. I always tell people that if you get put on a PIP, don’t bother, just start looking.”
—kebneter
7.“I had been working as a supervisor for over two years. [I] got along with my staff, we laughed and joked but the work got done. I knew it was the end when I got written up for wearing pink on Wednesdays. Yes, I’m a millennial who loves Mean Girls.“
“I continued to wear pink the next two Wednesdays and was fired on Monday. Good times.”
—erinm40e01c1e9
Paramount Pictures
8.“I [a 25-year-old woman] got fired for the first time in my life this past June out of the blue, with no prior transgressions, and for a bullshit excuse of a reason.”
“I had a terrible feeling and crazy anxiety all day long because my entire team was radio silent… but I didn’t know for sure until, at 3:07 p.m., my bank notified me I’d received my paycheck early. I checked the deposit on Intuition, and it was $300 less than usual. At 3:10 p.m., a meeting with the HR director was put on my calendar for 3:30. They decided ahead of time that nothing I had to say mattered, but hey, at least they gave me a warning, albeit unintentionally. 🤷🏻♀️”
—thisismyidea
9.“I had just been put on long-term disability due to mental health problems. I missed a call from my HR manager the next day. The voicemail she left was simply her saying, ‘Please call me back when you can,’ In the most neutral tone possible. I knew in that moment I was fired.”
NBC
“Sure enough, I called back and she told me the company decided they didn’t want to have to pay for my health insurance anymore and I was being let go.
“I lost my insurance and my treatments and doctor visits all had to go on hold until I could get insurance through the state. The whole thing set me back on my healing journey by ages.
“I think my favorite part of the whole call was when I referred to their decision as something they ‘had’ to do, she corrected me and emphasized it was something they had ‘chosen’ to do.”
—Anonymous
10.“I was a PA (producer’s assistant) for a production company. When I arrived for work [one day], the staff of a small magazine from the office facing the production company’s office said their morning greetings and immediately busied themselves with work instead of chatting as usual. The air was thick with tension. I assumed editorial and sales teams had a fight.”
“I worked alone in the office until the boss arrived. She asked me to sit with her on the sofa in her office. She then talked about how much she loved me as her PA, how hard I worked and blah blah blah. She clearly struggled to say what she dreaded to say, so I just said, ‘When do you want me to leave?’ She defensively said she thought long and hard about it for weeks. She didn’t want to let me go, but had no choice. Bullshit, but okay.
“Turned out that she was merging her company with another company, which was kept a secret from me and her sales agent. The magazine staff next door knew for weeks, though, which still pisses me off.”
—prolix
Pop TV / CBC Television
11.“I worked at a certain well-known burger joint and was in charge of inventory and bulk ingredient orders. It was done on a screen and let’s just say my fat thumbs added a couple more zeroes to the totals than my boss would have liked. One terribly large shipment later, I confessed and was out. Now my big thumbs are working as ASL translators and I couldn’t be happier with my current place.”
12.“When I was 20 I was working at the front desk of a high-end hotel ([I’d] started out in low-end and worked my way up). But I was having a rough time getting the hang of all their ways. For some reason, the general manager hated me and was using any reason she could to get me written up so that once I got three write-ups I’d be fired.”
“Long story short, we had gotten a new front desk manager and I was in a conundrum with a guest. I was asking him what to do about it and told him that the advice he gave would not be accepted by the [general manager] if she knew I did that, that she [had] it out for me and [would] give me my third write up if I were to do that.
“He didn’t believe me and thought that’d be a ridiculous thing to write someone up for, but said that if she were to try to do that then he would back me up and say I was doing what he told me to do. At that point I was doing whatever I could to not get written up, and be the perfect employee, but I did what he asked. And lo and behold the next day I was fired.”
—sleepingminion78
10’000 Hours / Getty Images
13.“I knew I was going to get fired when I was pulled into HR to ‘talk about my modeling.’ Apparently posing nude is not ‘in line with company values.'”
—kimberlyy403bcd84b
14.“I got hired as an [administrator], and during my first week the other admins were joking around about how one VP just loves firing people, and would always start the process by telling the employee, ‘This is not going to be a conversation you’ll enjoy’ — but you know HE will.”
The CW
“The first week there, my kid got sick and my best friend had a baby (I was her birth coach) so I had to take PTO. Week two I came in early on Monday to catch up. The VP approaches me and introduces himself, then asks me to step into a conference room with him. He started out by saying ‘This is not going to be a conversation you’ll enjoy.’
“It was a blessing. Very soon after that, I landed a job where the VPs weren’t jerks and the work-life balance was much better.”
—mixhelle
15.“Early in my career, I was struggling with really poorly managed mental health issues that I did not feel comfortable disclosing to my supervisors. I made a lot of minor mistakes and two major ones: I was late to an important client meeting that I just put in my calendar for the wrong time, and I inadvertently disclosed confidential client information to a different client.”
“The latter was when I knew I was going to get fired. I was already looking for other jobs by then because I was miserable where I worked, but that didn’t make it any easier.”
—Anonymous
16.“HR flew in to visit our office and met with each staff person individually. The main question was if I had done anything in the past six months they didn’t like. At the end of the day, they met with me to say that morale was low, it was my fault, and I needed to fix it. That was the end of the meeting; the next week I was written up. I was fired soon after that.”
Apple TV
—Anonymous
17.“I worked in sales for a large financial services company. I’d been there for five years and through the luck of the draw, one of the clients assigned to me was the second-largest client of my company. I spent the first five years babysitting said customer while they grew, which resulted in my revenue growing.”
“After the third year, the C-suite was completely changed. New CEO, new COO, and new CFO. All new layers of management came with them. My manager was unceremoniously fired at the end of my fourth year. From that point forward, my rather large customer went largely ignored by the new C-suite.
“The new management was not as amenable to being creative to secure the deal with a client that has BBB+ credit and already spent $200 million a year. Those first five years were so positive and fruitful that the first six months with the new management really stood out as a stark contrast.
“I decided I wanted a creative way out. So I documented some interactions and put together a 16-page document of a complaint I framed as the new COO creating a hostile work environment by unnecessarily interfering with existing relationships. I did it in February and the clock started ticking. I went through several HR interviews with several HR reps as they kept quitting right after talking to me. No kidding. Three people quit rather than deal with what I documented. The fourth HR person I spoke to stated that I did not follow the proper procedure to file such a complaint and was therefore being placed on a PIP.
“The PIP was to last 90 days, which meant it would end at the end of November. My company (and my entire industry) pretty much shuts down for December, so once I made it that far, I knew [being fired] would happen the first week of January. And it did.
“January 4th, I was given a large severance package and my rather large bonus and was ‘voluntarily separated’ from the company. [My compensation] equated to three times my salary and was enough to kick off my retirement. All I wanted was to get paid to leave and the magical phrase ‘hostile work environment’ got me exactly what I wanted.”
—Anonymous
Violetastoimenova / Getty Images
18.“[I knew I was getting fired] the moment my boss told me that eval meetings can be ‘hard to navigate,’ so I could ‘bring a union rep if I wanted to.'”
NBC
—Anonymous
19.“My boss gave me 20 minutes to zone 60 aisles, basically just pulling every item up to make the shelves look full. When I didn’t complete them all, she told me I needed to be quicker. She kept doing this every shift, an outrageous number of aisles to zone in a small period of time, and I just knew. After almost two weeks of shifts like this, she then fired me and said I just wasn’t quick enough. Retail is fun.”
—Anonymous
20.“I had been hired to get a new and very, very small team (I was the sixth hire) to get their social media and marketing up and going. Which I did, including growing their numbers across three platforms and getting one of their investments placed in a national news story. The people in charge had this strange ask/requirement/obsession: they wanted every single post to go viral, AND they wanted press conferences for every investment.”
“I just… I sort of assumed they were joking because surely going viral just isn’t something you can make happen, and they weren’t doing anything remotely viral-worthy.
“Two months in, they screamed at me for not having anything go viral on social, despite my growing their platforms and increasing engagement significantly. A few days later, I found out that they’d had a marketing meeting — without me, the marketing director — at 9:30 at night. It was getting to the point that I was developing daily tension headaches, and told my husband I was going to quit.
“I knew I was going to get fired when I got a message the next day asking me what my availability was for a meeting with this self-important team ‘leader.’ When I asked what it was about, was told ‘Just a check-in.’ Turns out I was right — I was fired a week later for ‘not doing my job.’
“I never understood the reasoning behind this group wanting everything to go viral. They’re a small finance group. I check their socials to this day and nope; nothing viral.”
—Anonymous
Semenovp / Getty Images
21.“The company I had worked for for nearly 20 years had recently been acquired by a rival. I should have known something was up when it was time for performance reviews and I hadn’t gotten my self-eval notification. I should have paid more attention when I received a meeting invite as I was logging off for the day with a vague subject from the CFO.”
“But it wasn’t until the next morning when a colleague of mine called me up to let me know a ton of people in our office — managers, directors, and a couple VPs (I was just an analyst) — were getting laid off the morning I’d decided to work from home. Everyone who had been let go got the same meeting invite with just the CFO and some woman from HR.”
—Anonymous
22.“I’ll start by saying I’m afraid of heights. I worked two terrifying days for a guy who did exterior window trim. He had me 30 feet off the ground on a two-foot ledge, no fall protection, holding on to a large piece of sheet metal in gusting winds.”
“I quickly tacked it in place… it looked terrible, I got down the ladder and got out of there. He didn’t even have to say the words, we made eye contact and it was obvious to both of us this wasn’t the line of work for me.”
—Anonymous
Constantgardener / Getty Images
23.“I was employed in a publicly held company, and our industry was experiencing a downturn related to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Every quarter, we missed our revenue goals, and every quarter, there were layoffs to calm stockholder worries. I was named in the fifth round of layoffs. One Friday morning, I was going up a staircase, and my supervisor was coming down. He said, ‘I have some shitty news for you…'”
“We returned to the first floor and headed towards a conference area, passing through a bunch of cubicles. Amongst the cubicles, I yelled, ‘Hey Mike, is anyone else getting whacked today?’ If you are going out, go out memorably.
“In matters such as these, nothing is about you. Some guy is catching heat and he decides that your number is up so that he may cool the flames some. Work is a heartless place, and that becomes very evident when business is not going well.”
—Anonymous
Apple TV
24.“I was called to the owner’s office, which wasn’t all that odd, but when I walked in my boss and the VP of finance were both sitting there, I knew.”
—Anonymous
25.“I was caught by my boss doing it with one of my coworkers and we were both fired.”
ABC
—Anonymous
26.“I had booked three days off (well in advance) for some home repairs. Upon my return, I started work at 8:30 a.m. At 9:17, I received a chat message from my boss asking if I had seen their meeting request. I quickly checked my email and the message read, ‘HR and I would like to meet with you at 9:30.’ I replied something along the lines of, ‘Uh-oh, this doesn’t sound good.'”
“Fast forward to 9:30 (this is all on my first day back to work), we meet via video, and the first thing out of my mouth was, ‘Am I getting fired?’
“Yep, I was. No reason given. No performance issues, no disciplinary actions against me. Nothing. Boom, you’re done, effective immediately. The whole meeting took seven minutes. Fuckers.”
—Anonymous
Violetastoimenova / Getty Images
27.And finally: “I was a night proofreader at a big NYC law firm, my first job after college. The firm’s second floor was deserted. I sometimes smoked weed there with a work pal, but it stunk the place up, so one night we went out to the stairwell to smoke a doobie. It was the 27th floor of a Wall Street high-rise. High as kites, we tried to re-enter. The door was locked.”
Fox / Via giphy.com
“We walked down to floor 26 where I worked. Nope — locked. We kept descending, trying the door at each level. All were locked. We were wrecked, laughing our asses off. A big adventure.
“At lobby level, the door wasn’t locked! But standing there was a security guard with a revolver in his hand. Instant terror. Turns out we tripped 26 alarms on the way down.
“Luckily, he recognized us. Instead of calling the cops, he called our boss. She said, ‘Send these idiots back up to 26.’ We were freaking out and stinking of weed. The look on her face when the elevator doors opened was terrifying. I waited for the inevitable ‘You’re fired’ — but it didn’t happen. She said, ‘I would love to fire you, but we have too much work. Don’t give me another reason.’ Many years later I’m still embarrassed.”
—Anonymous