What’s the craziest or most outrageous (maybe even NSFW) incident that led to someone being fired from your workplace?

I was the manager overseeing this facility at the time. We had just hired this guy a few weeks ago and he kept coming in late by about 15-20 minutes. His supervisor came to me to talk about it and ask what we should do. I knew that he rode the train to come in so I wanted to have some leniency on him and not just kick him to the curb right off the bat.

So I told his supervisor to push back his shift by 30 minutes. That should give him enough time to make it in on time.

He accepted the new time shift. But the very first day of him starting this new schedule, he was 15 minutes late again. I wanted to have some compassion and give him another chance. For the next two days, he did the same of coming in 15-20 minutes late.

He was still on probation at this point, so we didn’t really have anything to keep him here or any con of letting him go. It seemed obvious that we had to let him go. This was my first time terminating someone.

They handed me the exit papers for him to sign and also for me to deliver the news to him so I did. While he was signing the papers, he asked me if he could have another chance. To be truthful, I thought about it in my head for a very quick millisecond but said that we couldn’t. He was pretty cool about the whole thing though. I wished him luck in his next position and he left not making much of a scene.

Bonus story and definitely more crazy; sorry, just remembered it after typing the first story.

At the same facility, there was a janitor who had been there for probably 20+ years and he did a pretty good job and was friendly.

Though one day, his supervisor and my assistant approached me to have a meeting about him about something that happened.

Apparently he had made a really inappropriate sexual comment and gesture to one of the women who also worked there, though no actual physical touch was made. I was pretty upset about it and had him suspended for the rest of the day while I tried to figure out what we should do. I knew this was something that could get out of hand and needed to get HR and my boss, the owner of the company, involved.

I remember also meeting with the woman involved and asking her how she felt I should deal with the situation. Not really asking her to make the decision, just wanted to know what she felt would be fair as the victim in the situation. She said she didn’t want to be near him anymore and I completely understood and agreed.

Quite honestly, I wanted him gone. I don’t feel we should tolerate that kind of behavior. Though, my boss didn’t agree with me that he should be terminated. I can’t remember the reason why, or if he even gave me a reason, but I felt really disgusted over it. But he did suggest we suspend him without pay for 1 full week which we did.

But I couldn’t override his decision to terminate the guy, I did my best to keep him separated from any women who worked there. Sure, boss says I can’t fire you, but I won’t allow you to victimize anyone else while you’re here. We’ll schedule you to work away from others and only in areas when they’re vacant now. Thankfully everyone rotated so it was common for areas to be vacant for periods of time that he could clean without interacting with anyone anymore.

Though, things actually got worse with him. Someone went into one of the bathrooms after he had cleaned there and found an open can of beer on the floor. His supervisor said he smelled of alcohol but when I met with him, I didn’t smell anything and denied drinking on the job. He might have cleaned up before coming to see me, but I didn’t have much proof except hearsay. We also didn’t have direct proof it was his beer on the floor. Just very coincidental suspicions. I remember going behind the building one day and I found a pile of bricks stacked up on each other like 7 bricks high. Inside of the bricks was full of crushed beer cans. This was an area only he really ventured in so I knew it had to be him. Though I couldn’t exactly prove it so nothing I could do about it at that moment.

But coincidentally, around the time this was all happening, something Trump had done recently had tightened immigration so much so that we were required to have all employees provide proof on an official government document of their legal status in the country. Whether that be a state ID, passport, or green card.

Wouldn’t you know that this same janitor was illegally in the country and couldn’t provide any documents? I don’t remember the full story, except whatever document he had was now expired and has been for some time and wasn’t exactly easy to just get renewed. I didn’t call up any agency to come take him away, but I did take full advantage of the situation to finally get him out of my building. I met with him in private and was very apologetic that it was out of our hands, that we had to let him go since he couldn’t prove his legal status in the country and the government was forcing us to not allow him to remain in employment with us :( so sowwy.

Honestly…the whole manager position was an experience and I’m glad to have had it so I can safely say I do not ever want to be a manager ever again in my life. I dealt with a lot of bullshit and was starting to feel suicidal over some of the bullshit I was dealing with. I was so glad when I had a new job lined up and the company was folding at the same time I was leaving.