Thread: Tell Us How You Got Fired...

Most folks in the West have had numerous jobs, from high school jobs after school to professional jobs upon completion of college. Many, if not most, of us have been fired at one time or another.

I've had more than 30 jobs since I was about 10 years old. I've been fired three times. Twice from jobs selling shoes during high school. Once from a professional gig at a PR agency when I was a year out of university.

That last one was a crusher even though I hated the job. I thought I loved it at the time, but it was a real nightmare job looking back. I was living in Beverly Hills and working in West LA. It was a magical time that just wasn't gong to last.

I guess I deserved it, although I had some success at the company. My problem, however, was that I was a bit sloppy in my work. Might have been the drugs. In public relations type work proof reading is everything. Well, one day I sent out a media advisory without a proof read. I had misspelled our clients name to read "dodo" instead of the Italian "doso." The full name was something like Mandoso. I can't remember exactly.

Well, old 'doso' was embroiled in a legal fight with some homeowners who were pissed that water was seeping into their foundations creating puddles in their homes. It seems 'doso' had built the homes over a swamp. Our company was running media interference and doing our best to communicate with homeowners.

The media advisory went out with the 'Mandodo' name on it to the local media and the homeowner groups. We were planning a press conference. Members of the homeowner groups decided to protest and used my great idea to call the client who had caused the problem 'dodo' bird. It was Man-'dodo' on all the signs. One guy came dressed as a chicken. It was a real fiasco.

The client gets faxes of all our communication and it was later determined that the groups could have possibly gotten the idea to use the 'dodo' bird label from the media advisory I had written.

Sometimes 4:30pm on a Friday comes quickly in the life of a young professional. I had lasted a good seven months.

I like it!
When i left school i had this idea that i wanted to be a car mechanic just like my grand pappie. I started on a youth training program which was very popular in the 80s, they paid a massive 28 pounds a week, but you went to collage for a day a week also. I got a placement in a VW garage which was ok. All i did was make tea and clean the bogs. My dad's mate worked as management in another garage for BMW, he said he would get me a placement there but he would be sticking his neck out and it was a serious job because the cars are or were expensive. I told him not to worry and i wouldn't let him down.

The job started and I got put with an old timer who was going to train me up, i thought it was great because i was doing some real work and not just making the tea. The first old timer was a real strict guy, he got shot of me for messing his snap on tool box up, i think i lost his prize spanner. The next guy was a bit younger and a bit more in touch, he tried to be cool with me but he got shot of me because i cross threaded a spark plug on a first full service 7 series, i didn't take it out like you're supposed to, i forced the thing in, the car had to stay in a week longer and they had to re-tap the port.

After this the guys knew my connection with the management was a bit shaky and it was open season on the kid, they did all manner of cruel things to me. They tied me up to a car ramp one time and raised it so i was dangling in the air, they then put plastic ties round the bottom of my overalls and filled my pants with grease from a pump, that was pretty uncomfortable.
TBH i didn't really care too much after that, but they tried one more guy. I was with that old buzzard for about a week before i did the "cross thread" trick again, this time it was with a wheel nut. That was the last straw they fired my ass.

I got placed in a scrap yard by the training program after that as punishment, i lasted about a month there before i got fired, i started a fire by accident. I gave up on the dream, of being a grease monkey after that.
Only been fired from one other job but that was more of a mutual agreement.

I was never fired, but I fired quite a few bosses.

Originally Posted by ben

Jeez, that's a big job to repair, you have to strip the head from the engine, retap the port and then put a helicoil inside so you can use the same spark plugs, and a brand new car, too.

I didn't see any of that, for some reason they wouldn't let me help fix it, even though i pleaded with them. I wasn't allowed near engines after that either, just wheels and breaks, but like i said that didn't last long. I suck at mechanics but I'm good with anything related to building.
I've always thought it's weird how people seem to be pre-programed with different skill sets.

Originally Posted by Classic-Chassis

I didn't see any of that, for some reason they wouldn't let me help fix it, even though i pleaded with them. I wasn't allowed near engines after that either, just wheels and breaks, but like i said that didn't last long. I suck at mechanics but I'm good with anything related to building.
I've always thought it's weird how people seem to be pre-programed with different skill sets.

It's a learning curve dude, everybody fucks up, just so happens you jumped straight from the VW garage to a BMW garage before learning mechanical basics such as never forcing things on, forcing things off however is an altogether different deal, it's pretty much all physics anyway with a bit of math and a lot of dirt and grease to go with it.

I learned the hard way, using shite tools and doing all my own repairs without any manuals, I stripped my gearbox on my car to replace clutch discs, need not have done it just didn't realise at the time how to disengage the shaft from the gear box, all it needed was a wooden mallet but had taken off the entire gearbox by the time I had learnt that!

Countless hours too, bleeding brakes when just a few minutes with a vacuum bleeder would have sufficed.

One volkswagen car I was helping my friend with, just finished at the office and volunteered to help my friend change the brake pads on his car, should have been straightforward but again no manual and no experience working on this particular make of car, they have threads on the pistons that go into the calipers so you're supposed to turn them to compress them, I was using the method I use with all my bikes and just used a g clamp, of course it was working, had to give up because had spent 3 hours trying to work it out, next day, bright and early got into the garage to finish it and realised that the handbrake mechanism is incorporated into the disc brake system and when you apply the handbrake it turns the piston to compress the brakes, dohhhhh!

But yeah learning curve, like I said

I think that's why they put me on wheels but i still couldn't hack it. I'm really bad with anything mechanical, really!

Never had the experience but in retrospect it probably would have been a good idea on at least a couple of occassions.

I've been on the other side of the desk on a few occassions and the experience isn't fun. Particularly if you've got a strong union involved.

Fair enough, not meant to be then

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

Never had the experience but in retrospect it probably would have been a good idea on at least a couple of occassions.

I've been on the other side of the desk on a few occassions and the experience isn't fun. Particularly if you've got a strong union involved.

I can imagine, my dad fired our engineer the other day, got 5 cops to go to his room and him and 2 others were in the middle of a yabba sesh, anyway the dude's dad came here a few days later after he had been let out of jail and begged for his job back, and my dad took him back.

I am foreseeing (though I'm no pshychic) that it's going to be a bad decision.

I worked at a gas station/minimart in university wherethe boss/owner constantly stuck me with asshole co-workers who would get drunk and pass out in the back or simply come in drunk/hungover and just sleep it off in the back.

He also forbid sitting down on the job, at any time (customers or no customers present), and gave us employees no breaks, whatsoever-no matter how long the shift. He told the us that our "breaks" were when we weren't serving customers. And this was in a high-crime and drug area, and mostly working graveyard...

So when I had enough of that, I ate and drank whatever was in the shop, at will, read all the magazines, let people run off without paying, napped in the back, and fed the homeless...with store inventory. That lasted a good few days.

I've never felt so alive!

IA

I was fired once. I was working in a school a few years back and one day I actually started to teach the kids something useful. You can imagine I didn't make it through the day.

got fired from a dairy factory.
suffered a back injury and was put on light duties.
at the time i was also coaching a football team.
it was a development squad playing in the northern nsw 1st division.
16 and 17 year old kids.
played coffs harbour, the run away leaders at the top
because of exams, only 11 players could show up
put myself on the bench....injury to a player
i went on. 15 minutes later nbn channel 3 tv turned up
5 minutes before halftime, playing as a solitary striker, i scored a howler

lead story on nbn's local sport report. we drew 1/1
next day to work.....in the door and out the door with my paycheck in hand
started work in a new job a week later.social services
was just the butt kick i needed

never been fired.

I've been fired 4 times; but I engineered 3 of them. The last one was here in Thailand working for an American company as a design and production engineer. When my American boss was gone I was the only farang in a factory of 120 employees. A very long story short; the owner was an asshole. Put pregnant women on the glue line; wouldn't get respirators (1800 baht) for those working with solvents; fired employees just short of 1 year so he din't have to pay severance and on and on and on...I did what I could but his office bitch was also his spy. He and I finally had a show down and I told him if he could find somebody better than me do it! That was in late December; on April 1st I got an e-mail terminating my employment.