When we put in the effort to meet our employer’s professional expectations, it can be very frustrating and demotivating to see other coworkers completely ignore those standards. For many, the internet is the best place to vent and share their stories of employees who probably should have been fired for their misconduct but weren’t.
As funny or shocking as many of these stories might be, some of them may reveal serious underlying problems at their workplaces. Here are a few reasons why bad employees might be held on to by a business:
There are others as well, but even if the reason is understandable, preferential and unfair treatment can still have a negative impact on other employees at the company.
#1
Back when I was doing my student teaching, a teacher punched a student in the face and did not get fired.
In his defense, the kid was 17 and thought it would be funny to rip the wig off of a female teacher who was going through chemo. The teacher who did the punching was right there and it was pretty much an immediate reaction. Not a single person in that school blamed that teacher for what he did.
Image source: partofbreakfast, Quinn Buffing
#2
Wow, a question that I have a really relevant story for:
So, I got my buddy CJ a job at my gas station and it’s his first day. He was working a register and was doing pretty good. My manager was messing with the cigarettes or something behind us.
I hear CJ say from his register, “C’mon, Grandma, hurry up. You’ve used a debit card before.”
My manager looked like a deer in headlights. Both of us just look at him. I’m f*****g FURIOUS that he just f****d up the job that I vouched for him to get. He looks confused for a second, then starts to chuckle.
It was his actual grandmother.
We all had a good laugh and it was a good day.
Image source: Childflayer, Keagan Henman
#3
It was actually me, i still have no idea what i was thinking.
The owners of the company all showed up for a company meeting, and gave this 30minute long speech about how much they value our work and they wanted to reward us. They started handing out checks, i open it up and see $2,000. Now, I dont make a ton of money and I was having health issues and been to the ER a few times in the last few months. So this money would literally save me.
Everyones is all excited and very surprised our management who were known to be penny pinches that didnt care at all about employees would do this.
Then I see it.
The checks were all dated for for 2 years from now. They said if we stayed with the company with no write ups and never miss a day of work we could cash those checks in 2 years.
I just lost it… I walked up the front of the presentation, held my check up, ripped it into shreds, and said “This is some serious b******t.” and threw the shreds at the owners.
Surprisingly I wasnt fired. Probably because I am the highest producing employee in the company. or maybe they realized toying with people like that really wasnt a good idea. Who knows.
Image source: Jesta23, Campaign Creators
#4
Accidentally emailed the salaries of about 1,000 employees to those employees, so everyone got to see how much more money the new guy who was worse than them made.
Cost a lot of money to level all those salaries.
Image source: HighOnGoofballs, Maxim Ilyahov
#5
I worked at a pizza place 4 or 5 days a week after school, and everyone else that worked there was a boy; not a single female but me. The boys that I worked with acted as you would expect, picking on me and always making me the butt of their jokes. I wasn’t too bothered, i can handle a joke pretty well. One boy, named Tyler, took it really far and threatened to rape me several times, and would grab my chest after i repeatedly told him not to. I told the manager about it, and instead of the reaction i had hoped for, my manager laughed in my face. I quit the next day.
Image source: haether, Benu Marinescu
#6
A guy I work with has been caught with a prostitute in his work truck on company time.
Twice.
One of them was underage.
I don’t know how he still has a job.
Image source: Adddicus, Toa Heftiba
#7
Worked at a small radio station. Guy who was on air before me would record the local news for me to play at 6pm. It was recorded so if he messed up he would just start over and edit that part out. Well one day he forgets that he messed up so he doesn’t edit it. I play the news on-air at 6 and in the middle I hear “GOD DAMNIT NOW I HAVE TO DO THIS F*****G THING AGAIN…(then in his pleasant radio voice) Hi I’m Jim Thomas with your 6 o’clock news update”. Not sure why he didn’t get fired.
Image source: paulvs88, ConvertKit
#8
I worked at a pet store for a long time. We had a Cyanobacteria outbreak and were bleaching individual tanks (once separated from main sump) and then dechlorinating the tanks and testing them before putting them back in with the main sump system.
We had been undergoing the process for about a week at that point, but apparently Ole Red hadn’t been paying attention at all during that time period.
She reattached a tank half-full of bleach to the main tank system. As I walked into the store (it was my day off; I was just there for lizard food), I just see the majority of the fish moving around listlessly. Then they started death-spiralling. I point this out to my coworkers and they start freaking out. One of them starts dumping bottles of dechlorinator into the system.
Meanwhile, Ole Red fishes out her favorite fish, blood parrot cichlids, and starts blowing into their gills, trying to do some s****y approximation of CPR. She ends up throwing them into the separate sick tank in hopes of saving them.
Anyway, she killed 99% of the fish and I had to help shovel out their corpses while crying the entire time.
She didn’t get fired and never took responsibility for the event.
tldr: Fishpocalypse 2012 caused by an idiot with a jug of bleach.
Image source: nerdhappyjq, Huy Phan
#9
Had a tantrum, screamed at me (for catching her falsifying reports to the government), smashed her keyboard on her desk (snapped it in two), was openly sexist, racist…
I got fired
Image source: PM_ME_BEEF_CURTAINS, engin akyurt
#10
Facilities maintenance company I worked for got taken over by a new company. The new company was s**t to work for. One of the guys was getting really stressed out and since his wife made big bucks she told him to quit. Instead of quitting he decided to just come and go as he pleased, stole whatever he wanted, used the shop area and company supplies to work on personal projects for his house. This went on for over a year. They promoted him out of his position into management.
Image source: A_H0RRIBLE_PERSON, Annie Gray
#11
New guy in office. We introduce ourselves. He then goes to the boss (which is a woman). Slaps her a*s from behind and when she turns around he kisses her on the lips grabbing said a*s.
Turns out they are married
EDIT: spelling
EDIT: they are married **to each other** since people asked ahah
Image source: wesrdctfvygbhunjimko, Jose Castillo
#12
I was at a strip club in vegas with an ad exec who charged THIRTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS on his corporate card over the course of a very long night. Not a damn thing happened to him at work.
Image source: Begbie3, Karina lago
#13
At one hotel I worked at one girl got caught dropping empty drop envelopes into the safe and taking the cash. I’m talking about hundreds of dollars per shift for multiple shifts.
She was hot though. I think the owner liked staring at her.
By the time i quit, she was still there.
Image source: michikade, Helena Lopes
#14
Co-worker would read erotic Harry Potter fan fiction on her workstation for at least 6 hours a day at 40+pt font size.
Image source: Qysses, Annie Spratt
#15
not sure which one is better. I work on exotic cars for clarification….
old dealership I worked for, car sales manager got caught taking a Lamborghini (without company permission) to pick up a date for a baseball game and ended up rear ending someone (he still works there)….
subsequent dealership I worked for, guy went to move an exotic race car… thought the big red button on the dash was to start the car. that was the mobile fire extinguisher button, filled the entire car up with fire extinguisher fluid (he quit 6 months after this).
Image source: twinturbochris, Severin Demchuk
#16
He was GM, owner was his college roomie, and he was only at work a maximum of 40 hrs out of 80 in the two-week pay period. He would leave in the mornings and go do his other job, leaving me (production manager) to run the place, and then come back towards the end of the day. He still billed the owner 80 hours per two-week pay period. He did this for at least 6 months.
I told the owner when I left the company.
They had a long chat.
He still works there.
His name is Chad.
Image source: Srslywhyumadbro, Csaba Balazs
#17
She came in still drunk from the night before. Her partner calls the director, who shows up and tells her to get a shower and sleep it off. I work for a 911 ems service.
Image source: Mephestos_halatosis, Stacey Koenitz Rozells
#18
I used to work at a fast food chain restaurant as a cook. One Sunday it was extra busy around lunch time and one of the cashiers kept messing up orders. My assistant general manager, who at the time was cooking with me, got so frustrated with the cashier that he took all the food that was on the grills and fryers and threw it against a wall.
Image source: Christopher_Ocean, Marcel Heil
#19
I work with this woman who should have been fired over a year ago, based on the company’s policies. She was hired by her friend (surprise) and quickly figured out she doesn’t have to do s**t because of it. We work in express restaurant, so lots of rules for good reason.
Just in the past 6 months she has caused multiple customers to complain about her specifically on surveys, caused other customers to call corporate to complain about her rudeness, broke a fryer, two thermometers, a sink, and 4 knives, opened the store with no paper towels or sanitizer (huge no no, we could have been shut down if the inspector came), oh and left the safe wide open and the doors unlocked for the entire night. This all when she was actually working and not hiding in the back texting or talking on the phone. No one knows how she isn’t fired let alone demoted.
Another coworker and I were “promoted” to her spot with the promise that we would take her place when she was fired. We happily took on the responsibilities and waited for the actual promotion so we could have the titles and matching pay. Yeah she’s still f*****g here, haven’t gotten that raise or any of the others promised, and still technically ranked under her. I just saw I have to work with her tomorrow and I’m pissed.
Image source: Queenofthebowls, Irina
#20
Phone call from employee with company car starts with: “So I just ran over this dude…”
Turns out dude had dementia or something, not the first time he’s dashed out into traffic. Family did nothing. No insurance claim, no lawsuit, no nothing. His daughter came outside, yelled at the guy (her dad), and called an ambulance. Cops were involved. No idea how we ended up with no liability.
Image source: gwana, Alexandre Boucher
#21
So I work on a therapeutic campus and I run a unit that specialises in patients with severe learning difficulties, psychosis, paranoid schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Some of our patients are known for being quite aggressive and extremely dangerous when they are unsettled.
We found out one shift that we will be having a new nurse with us on shift who isn’t familiar with the patients/staff at all. How the shift works is that each staff gets given a patient that they stick with for a few hours before everyone rotates to different patients.
My coworker had just got his patient into the bath, so in the meantime he was cleaning that patients room. That’s when the new nurse came into the room with that patients morning medication, having not seen the patients or the staff before, she thought that the staff member cleaning the room was the patient she was suppose to be giving meds to.
My coworker quickly realised that she was confused and started playing along, answering all of her questions and trying to imitate the patients behaviour. When she approaches my coworker to give him the patients meds, he put his arms up in the air and screamed “GET AWAY FROM ME” and started to run at her (which is something this patient use to do all the time). She instantly screams and drops the medication, she turns around and runs down the corridor screaming whilst my coworker was still chasing her.
After management had heard about all of this, he just had to apologise and luckily she saw the funny side of it. But holy s**t, places of care are usually super strict with that kind of thing so I’m surprised I’m still working with him to this day hahah!
Image source: BlokWorld, Vladimir Fedotov
#22
Came in drunk, high, and she kept popping Xanax like candy. The manager just sent her home. She was 18.
#23
Coming in to work very high very often. They were very obviously high on horse tranqs recently
Image source: Veg_n, Alexander Grey
#24
Teenage coworker was told to go check and pull any expired or near expiration date canned pet food. Said coworker was not heard from for hours. Manager goes to check and teenager is sleeping, propped up against the food racks, while kind of half sitting in a carriage. I mean sound asleep! Manager gathers all other employees to come and look, we all laugh and make noise and he never wakes. Finally manager shakes him and he falls off cart. Manager tells him to go nap in his car. Teenager naps in his car for another hour, all while still punched in.
Image source: Icewaterforall, Quinton Coetzee
#25
When I was a barista we would get weekly Mark outs where we could take home a bag of coffee or tea for free. Just one though.
My coworker was this fat, evil, compulsive lying b***h that everyone hated. One day she got caught trying to steal one of our other coworker’s weekly mark out at one of our stores in another town. Fat b***h was white; awesome coworker she was trying to steal from was Asian so when her name popped up in the system after fat b***h gave them “her” employee numbers they knew she wasn’t who she said she was.
She threw a huge hissy fit and one of the workers there took video of it. We only found out about it when the GM of that store came to our store and showed our GM the video.
Still wasn’t fired.
Image source: AlexanderHouse, Simon Hrozian
#26
IT-guy deleted all bills of the last five days. The accountant came in and yelled at him for 40 min straight, went home and couldn’t speak for nearly three days. Our CEO didn’t fire the IT-guy because he was one of his friends. Other coworkers and I had to call about 200 other companies to ask them, if they have received a bill from us. At the end, somebody got the glorious idea to ask the mailman where the post sent those bills and saved our asses. If the taxman had found out about this incident… damn…
Image source: asdlpg, Wes Hicks
#27
A guy I worked with got a dui in a company owned car with used car dealer plates on it, doing 75 in a 35 with 5 people in the car. He’s is now the used car manager.
#28
She got onto the library board, and when she was pushy before, she suddenly became super entitled.
* She reported me and another employee to our boss for “ignoring and mistreating an employee” even though we were just joking around with the patron while we were helping her, and she was playing along.
* She gave one employee an anxiety attack because she berated him every time she saw him for “not doing his job properly,” even though he was a perfectly good employee.
* She kept asking pretty much everyone on the staff to give out other patrons’ information, even though that’s strictly against confidentiality policy.
And she was just generally a mean, miserly old witch hiding behind a thin veneer of sweet old lady. So I got excited when I didn’t see her for a while and I thought they finally got her off the board. But then she came back from an illness and it turns out all of the staff’s legitimate complaints can’t unseat age, especially with a scarcity of other people wanting to be on the board.
Image source: waterwaytogo, Tima Miroshnichenko
#29
My company is so Topsy turvy. We are forever losing people and never can keep any new hires. One of my coworkers was sexually harassed and propositioned for “company” by a disgusting old f**k we work with. I was sure he was going to be fired for it. He wasn’t. He was spoken to and that was that.
Image source: Wackydetective, Charles Forerunner
#30
Morbidly Obese, obnoxious, b****y coworker: “why don’t you quite smoking, you know that’s gonna kill you”
Other good coworker: “trying to tell me to quit smoking is like trying to tell you to quit eating, both would do wonders for our health but are not likely to ever happen.”
I thought for sure he would get the sack for some kind of harassment but never did, crazy
Image source: Hav3_Y0u_M3t_T3d, Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona
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