We were having a staff lunch the other day when stories of the worst reasons for which someone had been fired started being thrown around by ALRA’s Consultants. As either a warning to never do this (please don’t’ ever do these) or as a bit of a laugh, we thought we would share them J.
If you have any pearlers – please share! We would love to hear them.
The Highly Questionable Morals Guy
Years ago, our Director was taking a reference for a candidate which was confusing him. Whilst the referee was saying good things about the candidate’s abilities in his job, he was dropping really snide remarks about the guy’s personality here and there.
When he arrived at the question of why the candidate left this company, the referee started laughing in a disbelieving kind of way. When asked what the problem was the answer was – “I’m not sure what he has told you but he didn’t leave, he was fired.”
Our Director proceeded to ask “why was he fired” to which the rather unexpected reply was…
“Mate, he slept with my wife.”
After a good portion of silence on the phone line from both parties our Director eventually asked, “why on earth has he listed you as a referee?” to which the response was.
“I have no idea.”
The Engineer Who Should Have Settled Accounts
Another story from our Director was about a Sydney based Engineer who accepted a role in Hong Kong (where he was born and had previously worked / run his own company about 20 years earlier).
He signed all the contracts and relocated everything back to HK but a week in, police came and locked him up in jail for tax evasion.
Turns out 20 years ago his company folded before paying outstanding tax bills and the account was never reconciled.
The kicker – his one phone call he made from jail was to our Director saying – “Brett. I’m in Jail. Help me.”
Brett is still not sure why he was the one called.
The Not-So-Festive Spirit Guy
From one of our Consultants this time, who told the story of an Engineer who got fired on Christmas Eve.
Seems like a pretty harsh time to be fired and it is – except perhaps for the following scenario.
The Engineer had a deadline that he had to meet prior to Xmas Eve that hadn’t been achieved. When his Director told him he had to complete the work, he turned around and said to the Director…
“You’ll have to do it; I have holidays booked tomorrow.”
The response didn’t go down well.
The Little Bit Too Much into Their Job Lady.
At the Medical Recruitment Agency one of our Consultant’s used to work at he came across a Candidate that enjoyed her job perhaps just a little too much.
She was an Anaesthetist who was apparently very good at her job (according to all previous references anyway).
So why was she fired?
For recreationally using the anaesthetic. Seems that sort of thing is pretty highly frowned upon. Who knew.
Some Short but “Sweet” Stories?
These were some of our favourites, but others that made the list include:
- The Civil Construction Occupational Health & Safety guy that got absolutely blind drunk, drove the site Ute home and wrote it off. No one was hurt except the guy’s pride and career.
- The employee that thought they were texting their colleague about how much of a jerk their boss was but was actually texting their boss (to be fair, they shared the same first name).
- The employee mouthing off about their boss on Facebook (when they were connected as Facebook friends).
- A company decided they were moving the office overseas and told the ENTIRE staff they’d have to move as well or they were fired (pretty bad form really).