What have you fired people for?

Firing someone is always stressful. You’re taking their livelihood from them. Little do they know about the financial and work burden it puts on you the employer to replace them. Absolutely no one wants to fire someone.

So, having said that what have you eventually fired someone for beyond the normal?

I recall a guy, who was a “journeyman level” that I fired for doing a “G” job during his regular work hours. He also at the same time, bent 30 high end parts during final operation by hitting them with a dead blow to ‘seat’ them in the soft jaws because he was in a hurry to finish as he had pulled this company job from the machining center to do his “G” job!

Most of the time I would talk to and give people a written warning spelling out want they needed to do to make things right in my, the employer's eye. Three warnings on the same issue was usually a reason to fire.

The only guy i personally had to fire, lay off really, was based on attitude. He wanted a significant pay raise, but his skills didnt justify it. We tried giving him other jobs, but they didnt work out either. Finally, he had such a chip on his shoulder every day when he came to work, it was starting to affect his work and the work of people around him.

If you mean, on the spot, angry, get out of my sight, firings. Ive seen a few, but usually it was longstanding disagreements which came to a head. Apparently its a bad career choice to call the boss names in front of the whole shop..who knew

Had a guy who missed a lot of Mondays because he was hung over. Then he lost his license for DUI so I started picking him up in the mornings. One day he was too drunk to come out his front door. Of course he filed for unemployment and charged me with unfair dismissal and I had to go to a hearing to defend having discharged him for cause (wasting half a day). This was years ago, today it wouldn't have progressed beyond the first no-call, no-show.

Then there was the very clever immigrant fellow from a different culture who was quite good at technical BS, until there was a discussion of why his parts were all over the map, at which point a language barrier would magically appear. He had talked himself into being allowed to work at night (thinking about this now, I was really naive about people!) and it became inescapably obvious that his output was ridiculously low. Always there had been some trouble with a machine, which he had supposedly spent most of his shift repairing. One night I staked out the place and observed him come in at around 2 a.m. I stopped in the shop, and he seemed awfully nervous about something. I couldn't figure it out until the next day when my wife was totaling up time cards and noticed he had erased the clock-in stamp and restamped it. Since I had synchronized my watch and all the clocks with the time clock the day before, in preparation for my stakeout, I knew something was up when his clock-in stamp was several minutes earlier than he had actually shown up. I finally figured out that he had been coming in, jimmying the cover off the clock, turning it back a few hours, clocking in, and then resetting it. For months, apparently, although I had no proof of that other than the work not getting done. I went looking for him and his box was already gone, so I had to terminate him over the phone. Several years later I got a call from a shop where he had applied. He had given me as a reference! I told them the story and they didn't hire him, but it was small consolation for having been royally taken advantage of.

If I seem like a cynical SOB, it's because of shit like that. The absolute worst ones are people from disadvantaged backgrounds who show tremendous promise and then fail a drug test after their second paycheck. As in, really, really fail. And then look you in the eye and lie about it. Many ne'er-do-wells are pathological liars who can even persuade themselves that they're not lying. It's a harsh lesson in human nature when you are forced to confront that. Firing people sucks but you better learn to do it.

A tech who we caught *clocking in* at another local business when he was supposedly on the clock here. Staff council said we had to give him time to "amend his timesheets" to reflect the unapproved work. He quickly realized he was screwed, quit, and moved elsewhere. So not a firing, but close.

--Hawk

"He had given me as a reference!"

Ya... The guy I was talking about used me as a reference also... some balls...

That put me in a bad position, so I told them I could only answer as to if I would rehire him or not. They asked "Would you rehire him?"... I said "No". That was that...

In my previous life one kid got fired for pulling his pants up too much... he had to wash his hands each time, which really killed productivity.

I've fired a few, it always sucks and in no way should it be considered a badge of honor. Its really an absolutely horrible thing where you are ripping
somebody's livelihood out from underneath them.

I had to fire "football head". He knew it was coming, poor kid was useless. He had no mechanical skills, and his attention span was shorter than the flute length of a double
ended stubby 3/32 endmill. I told him I would give him a good reference because he didn't cry. He went on to a health club, where one of his duties was to fill the pool at the end of the night,
he put the hose in, and went home, and got fired in the morning.

I fired a few useless people that are less than memorable, and I didn't feel bad about.

We had one lady, we'll call her "Fat Bitch" (and I like chubby girls). I hired her, I had to fire her. Her last 2 days were spent breaking up solids in the bottom of some Mil-P-23377 primer (that yellow
shit that is all over every DOD part), moved her hours, cut her hours and she never showed up again.

I had one guy I fired twice, lying sack of crap, I really wanted to hire him again because firing him the second time was so sweet.

Best firing I ever saw, I was 18, home for the summer from college, slopping food in a nursing home. I got called in to replace the lady getting fired that hadn't
gotten fired yet. Her name was Rosie and she liked me, thank god, she went nuts. Tried to strangle my supervisor, and her daughter, destroyed the lobby, flipped over
all the couches, pulled out all the plants. We were serving lunch, and she flipped a food cart with 20 pureed meals in it. Started tossing the hot plates all over the
kitchen, and I was standing 2 feet away, then the Administrator came in, trying to be all diplomatic, came down to Rosie saying "come on M'f'r hit me, hit me like this"
BAP BAP BAP BAP, broke the guys rolex and fucked him up. Then she went running into the woods out back and it took the cops 3 days to find her. It was funny, I
can still see it in my head like it was yesterday.

I figure if the firing goes better than that, it was a success.

Seeing somebody lose their job should never be fun, but sometimes its funny as hell. They always know its coming.

My goodness....sounds to me like she did not deserve to be fired......did she ? :-D

I fired somebody for not bringing in a note book.


Of coarse it was for more than that.

scadvice said:

Most of the time I would talk to and give people a written warning spelling out want they needed to do to make things right in my, the employer's eye. Three warnings on the same issue was usually a reason to fire.

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As an employer you should be able to give some bosses a written warning
Seriously, did any of you bosses get one

They wanted to give me one once
I told them if I got any they get a lettre back and guess whats in it
Never got one

Peter from holland

Oh man, do I have a few of these:

Sleepy Maintenance Guy
At the huge cast iron foundry that I used to work with, compressed air was obviously important to pretty much every piece of machinery we used. A giant stack of compressors and silos were located behind our shakeout department, mainly it was more noise on top of noise.

One night on third shift, a foreman notices that everything in his area is suffering from a massive loss of air-pressure; rams won't close, tools aren't spinning up to full power, etc. He goes looking for the senior maintenance guy on staff at night, can't find him. Pages him, calls him, everyone's looking and he's nowhere to be found. After a few hours of this, the foreman gives up and calls our maintenance super-intendent, rousing him out of bed at 3 AM. The boss gets there, they look AGAIN for this maintenance guy, thinking he may be lost or hurt. Finally, determined to at least solve the issue at hand and get the compressors up and running...

...seeing that the failsafes had tripped due to unsafe operating temperatures, they went all over this thing. Lo and behold, up top by the air intakes, our maintenance man had made himself a nice bed out of cardboard and rags, but had blocked the flow of air, tripping the alarm.

That was his last day at work.

Forklift to Nowhere

Same foundry, our forklifts and general labor were handled by a group called "The Yard", those guys that handle the thousand odd tasks any factory needs. One guy hired into the Yard and was quickly promoted to forklift operator. Fairly easy job, even if some skill and caution are required. You'd see this guy flitting around all day, moving stuff...

...one day a foreman caught him (in his lift) in one of our giant pattern storage warehouses, and the dude was rubbing one out to porn on his phone. He immediately confessed to doing it every day, and tried to say that his porn addiction kept him from properly doing his job. Turns out he hadn't actually been DOING his job for three weeks. All of those lifts were just him looking busy, carrying random stuff.

Another Sleeping Story
At the Triumph/MG garage that I used to work at would hire guys to sweep, ship, and handle odd jobs. We got a guy in his mid-30's in off the street, handed him a broom, and had him start in the back of the shop and work his way up. I ran out for about 5 minutes, came back, and the guy was nowhere to be found. I looked high and low, before the owner finally found him sleeping in a car!

Gone very quickly.

One guy I fired was in a core, client-contact position within the (non-machining) company. Position would be like a manual machinist with the customer sitting right beside you, discussing/directing what was to be done. So, a combination of client skills and tech skills. This guy had risen thru the ranks as an assistant, where his apparent unflappability and reasonable competence was a benefit. When it was time to move up, his apparent unflappability turned out to be he was just slow-witted. Personable enough, but wasn't firing on all cylinders. He would eventually figure things out, but he did so slowly, and it took all available bandwidth to do it. Nothing left for client interaction, etc. We did a "soft" firing, where we kept him on while he looked for other opportunities. He soon transitioned to a local competitor, who was as happy to get him (based on the reputation of our shop) as we were to be rid of him. He's still out there, 25 years later, slogging away. I've had the opportunity to interact with him in the interim, and he's just as slow now as he was then. I'm not sure the other shop ever figured out why some key clients left to come to us soon after he arrived...

We put a lot of time and effort into the hiring process, so we didn't have many that washed-out.

Chip

303_Enfield said:

Forklift to Nowhere

Same foundry, our forklifts and general labor were handled by a group called "The Yard", those guys that handle the thousand odd tasks any factory needs. One guy hired into the Yard and was quickly promoted to forklift operator. Fairly easy job, even if some skill and caution are required. You'd see this guy flitting around all day, moving stuff...

...one day a foreman caught him (in his lift) in one of our giant pattern storage warehouses, and the dude was rubbing one out to porn on his phone. He immediately confessed to doing it every day, and tried to say that his porn addiction kept him from properly doing his job. Turns out he hadn't actually been DOING his job for three weeks. All of those lifts were just him looking busy, carrying random stuff.

Click to expand...

Todd Shipyards, Houston, early 60's. Noticed a guy walking by with a 4X4 about 5 feet long on his shoulder. Saw him off and on in different places with the 4X4. Several months. After about 6 months a foreman picked up on him and watched for several days. Confronted him and the guy had been walking the plant, carrying the same 4X4 the whole time! The give away was using the same board, it had gotten black where he was holding it for 8 hours a day.

They let him take the board home with him when they fired him.

We seem to have a problem with young employees who can't put their cell phones away. They're so addicted to texting that they get fired over it. We had one guy, who had been written up a couple times, hide in the lunch room, crouching out of sight, so he could text. We found him and out he went. We've had young guys playing games on their phones in the bathroom stalls. How do we know? They're too stupid to turn down the sound!

Dan

I was working on the roof a school one day. I swear i saw a construction guy pick up a shovel, carry it across the jobsite, put it down, pick up another shovel and carry it back, then repeat. What was i doing watching him...not working myself of course I think youre story just confirmed it for me. I dont understand how people could actually do that for any length of time and not get bored as hell.

Ive always wondered about the people who read or play games or smoke in the bathrooms. If youre going to the bathroom, thats one thing, but some people just go there to get away from working, with no intent to actually go to the bathroom. If thats the case...are people really sitting with their pants around their ankles just to play phone games or read the paper...that just seems weird to me.

Its probably for the best I dont understand the mindset of these people

Smrtman5 said:

...I dont understand how people could actually do that for any length of time and not get bored as hell...

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Like they say, fucking off is the hardest job in the world, because you can't knock off and rest.

Yup, it's hard work doing nuthin.

I've never been the fire-r or the fire-ee, but only ever saw three things would get you fired immediately at my old job (with a Fortune 100 company). I worked there for 10 years.

1) Physically Fighting - as in swinging blows
2) Porn on company computer - happened way too often, even in management. Hello, we have an I.S. department downstairs that can pretty much track your every click and keystroke and tell you just logged in to the computer. Idiots.
3) Company Credit Card - for personal expenses. Saw this a couple of times. One of the times was a guy who had a cush job (safety person when nobody cared about safety) and blew it all.

All the other firings were just build ups from past incidents that weren't corrected. And even after they got fired, the fire-ee would be like "but why did I get fired?" Duh, you ain't done anything for six months but keep screwing up.

That's why I love engineering. Helps to limit the people issues.

Bone idleness - would not work.....which got me grief from our Gov't employment service.

Completely useless, - told me a pack of lies as to his abilities. ....which got me more grief from our Gov't employment service.


Screwing my fiancee - ON my !"£$%^&*( time! - caught em red handed. ...... and the f'r took me to an industrial tribunal!!!! and won , because I'd not followed correct procdure.


Employees? ..never ever as in never again.

I've been canned in the past for telling the truth...That is something the front office never wants to hear...

BOSTON said:

I've been canned in the past for telling the truth...That is something the front office never wants to hear...

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You got fired for how you said it, not the content of what you said.