FIRED!

[PlanktonSideburns]

I worked for Total Dog Dirt Inc. For a year and never had problems with them. What branch were you in ferris?

[Buelligan]

I'm really sorry you got sacked Lemming but in a way, it's a good thing, cleaning isn't as much fun as many people imagine.

[Ferris]

what the fuck did you do?????????

Very little.

[popcorn]

Sorry to hear of your bum luck, Lemming. Best of luck with the next endeavour.

About two years ago, after a depressing period of unemployment and general personal disaster myself, I started at a tech company. It was my fourth or fifth tech job. I was only the second writer-designer the company had hired and it required me to get on with the existing one. I didn't. She was a fucking nightmare, a relentless control freak, and clearly not used to having someone else around. (Of course, if you'd ask her, she'd say I was a weird negative guy who kept making weird jokes that didn't make sense.)

It was a remote job. The other person used to call me up and just reel off things I'd fucked up. I'd turn my laptop mic and camera off and just go and stand by the window and look at the squirrel going up and down the fence while she ranted. I recorded one of these rants once for posterity. It's 28 minutes long. I didn't say anything during it except "Right" and "I see". It just seemed pointless to argue. At one point she accused me of having lied in the interview, saying I'd claimed to be "highly technical". I'd just spent years in Tokyo working on 3D graphics software, and turned down technical writing jobs because I couldn't face another stint deciphering code - telling someone I was technical was the last fucking thing I wanted to do.

This person also complained that I had never said thank you after she set up my personal login and password. I had some memory of this and found the conversation in the workchat where she'd sent these details over. I'd said "Thanks!", with an emoji and everything. Thought about screenshotting and sending it to her but decided nothing good would come of it.

I definitely wasn't doing a good job - I couldn't. It was obvious I wasn't going to pass the probation period. But, with astonishing fortune, I got offered a job at a better company with a bigger salary. Calling whatsername up to tell her I was leaving was the sweetest victory. The relief in her voice was palpable too. Haven't been fired from the new job yet.

[TheGingerAlien]

What a shitter eh.  At least you got a decent anecdote out of it.  And more time for FPS nightmares?  I think you should be getting paid for doing that do be honest.

I got sacked from directory enquiries for being on the phone to a lonely elderly caller for over an hour.  I just couldn't find it in my heart to shut the conversation down.  The avg call time was supposed to be 10 seconds... Oops.

[greencalx]

NDA

oh.

[monkfromhavana]

The OP's story reminds me of my first day at my first job at the box cleaning factory. I had already been promoted from putting the dirty boxes onto the conveyor belt leading to the box cleaning machine to the other end picking clean boxes off the other end of the machine. They gave me some bullshit about me "not being quick enough" and "holding up the process", but that was just an obvious way of promoting me without getting the backs of my longer-serving co-workers "on the belts" up.

Very quickly there was a veritable pile-up of boxes on the floor of the factory at the end of the conveyor belt, thus holding up the forklifts, but I'm pretty sure It wasn't my fault as the boxes weren't stacking properly and my gloves for some reason weren't fitting correctly.

Didn't get sacked though, and soon was the "King of the Belts" as my co-workers called me. I was sharing a laugh with the forklift driver and rolling my eyes at the newbies.

[Malcy]

What a shitter eh.  At least you got a decent anecdote out of it.  And more time for FPS nightmares?  I think you should be getting paid for doing that do be honest.

I got sacked from directory enquiries for being on the phone to a lonely elderly caller for over an hour.  I just couldn't find it in my heart to shut the conversation down.  The avg call time was supposed to be 10 seconds... Oops.

Things like that annoy the fuck out of me. I got reprimanded for doing similar in an old job. That call might be the only time in a month they talk to someone but it's frowned upon. Yet these companies talk about how they are there for people.

Just left a job today for many many reasons and one was how this kind of thing is frowned upon and instead to push them to get a smart meter installed. Fuck. That.

[TheGingerAlien]

Just left a job today for many many reasons and one was how this kind of thing is frowned upon and instead to push them to get a smart meter installed. Fuck. That.

Aye, fuck em! Don't look back!

[All Surrogate]

Lemming, whatever you do next, please don't get a job fetching yoghurt from the yoghurt bucket - I dread to think what could happen.

[Beagle 2]

I got fired by the Press Association because Edwina Currie made a complaint about me and I got the wrong scorer of a goal (John Terry) in an article which ended up in the News of the World. Beat that.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Once accidently ripped the back door off the works van, not fired tho

Also threw a stone about the size of a paperweight which accidentally caught a Co worker in the face, not fired but had to climb up on the roof and pull the ladder up until poor aled went out of beast mode, or he would have probably bitten my nose off (fair enough) not sacked

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

Sorry you got the sack, if it's any consilation i'm enjoying reading through your star treck rewatch thread.

[Cloud]

Once accidently ripped the back door off the works van, not fired tho

You were only supposed to blow the bloody boss!

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

I got fired by the Press Association because Edwina Currie made a complaint about me and I got the wrong scorer of a goal (John Terry) in an article which ended up in the News of the World. Beat that.

heh that's a class sacking.  Where you actually working for the News of the World then?  I bet you have some intresting tales to share. 

[flotemysost]

Sorry to hear that Lemming, hope you're doing OK. That does sound like quite the entrance/exit, I enjoyed your recounting of it if that's any comfort.

I got asked not to come back after my trial shift at a pub once (I didn't think it actually went too badly, but I did manage to get spectacularly sunburnt at a festival in between handing in my CV and coming in for my shift, so maybe they were concerned that my molten scarlet face might compromise my tip earning capacity).

And then I had three jobs on the trot where I failed to pass probation.

[Icehaven]

When I was about 15 I got fired from a Saturday job I palpably hated because I "wasn't interested in the job". Duh.

[Avril Lavigne]

Sorry about that Lemming, here's hoping you're just destined for better things. I have no firing stories but if it's any consolation I didn't even get a call back when I applied to wash dishes at a building 2 streets away from my house.

[Yussef Dent]

Digressing a bit here but has anyone ever tried to get sacked? The whole story as to why is rather long, but nine years ago I worked for Pizza Express, their recruitment drives see them deliberately take on way too many staff as a fair number of those they take on are students that either sod off after one or two shifts or simply don't bother to turn up at all. If you're planning on sticking it out though (which at the time I had to as I was close to not being able to pay rent) whilst they've clearly got too many on the books, rather than sack you they seem to systematically piss you about until you just give up and leave of your own volition. The trouble then is you can't claim benefits as you've jumped rather than being pushed.

I had an absolute nightmare with them from start to finish, the one meagre shift they had to rota me in for (you got a base payment of six hours a week regardless of whether you worked a shift or not, so they'd just rota you in for five or six hours so you weren't being paid for doing nothing) I told the manager I would cause havoc. Put me on pot wash and I'll just let everything stack up, I'll make every pizza and salad wrong if I'm in the kitchen, if dough's put in the proofer I'll keep turning it off when no-ones looking. You have to actually sack me on this shift.

Thankfully, I had an ally in another manager who had experienced unemployment and struggled to make ends meet in the past, and he took me to one side and he helped engineer my exit by signing a letter I had personally typed out on Pizza Express' behalf saying I'd been let go. That appeased the job centre to a point, but it took a month of constant badgering to get my P45 off them, cocking my application for benefits right up and leaving me to borrow money off friends and family to pay rent. A f***ing horrendous organisation, genuinely one of the lowest points in my whole life.

[Icehaven]

Digressing a bit here but has anyone ever tried to get sacked? The whole story as to why is rather long, but nine years ago I worked for Pizza Express, their recruitment drives see them deliberately take on way too many staff as a fair number of those they take on are students that either sod off after one or two shifts or simply don't bother to turn up at all. If you're planning on sticking it out though (which at the time I had to as I was close to not being able to pay rent) whilst they've clearly got too many on the books, rather than sack you they seem to systematically piss you about until you just give up and leave of your own volition. The trouble then is you can't claim benefits as you've jumped rather than being pushed.

I wonder why they didn't/couldn't just sack people? I mean if they were messing up, not just because they had too many staff. Seems insane that you actually told them you were going to deliberately do a bad job and they still didn't sack you.

[Paul Calf]

Because there are procedures for sacking and if they don't follow them, they can end up in court. They cost time and money.

Of course, constructive dismissal is also illegal but a lot of people don't know that.

[Paul Calf]

It's probably not that difficult to set someone up for a gross misconduct charge but that might have more serious consequences because it's outright fraud.

[Icehaven]

So if as Yussef Dent said, they brazenly said "I'm going to be deliberately incompetent", then did so, the company still can't sack them? How come Lemming got sacked for the same thing (apart from it being unintentional)? Is it just different company different rules or whatever individual managers think they can get away with? I've worked for a council for nearly 20 years so I know how difficult it can be to sack people, and rightly so a lot of the time, but I'd have thought a brand new employee working for a private company wouldn't, for better and worse, have a great deal of employment law on their side.

[Paul Calf]

Bigger companies have found legal ways around these employment laws, yes, just as they find ways to pay sub-minimum wage. But it's easier for franchise owners to just bully staff into leaving because they have to follow all the regs but don't really have any of the legal and commercial might of the company that profits from them.

[Paul Calf]

Disclaimer: I don't work in HR. This is not legal advice :)

It sounds to me like the people employing Lemming were arseholes who couldn't handle a new employee being nervous on their first day. I thought their treatment was very harsh.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Digressing a bit here but has anyone ever tried to get sacked? The whole story as to why is rather long, but nine years ago I worked for Pizza Express, their recruitment drives see them deliberately take on way too many staff as a fair number of those they take on are students that either sod off after one or two shifts or simply don't bother to turn up at all. If you're planning on sticking it out though (which at the time I had to as I was close to not being able to pay rent) whilst they've clearly got too many on the books, rather than sack you they seem to systematically piss you about until you just give up and leave of your own volition. The trouble then is you can't claim benefits as you've jumped rather than being pushed.

I had an absolute nightmare with them from start to finish, the one meagre shift they had to rota me in for (you got a base payment of six hours a week regardless of whether you worked a shift or not, so they'd just rota you in for five or six hours so you weren't being paid for doing nothing) I told the manager I would cause havoc. Put me on pot wash and I'll just let everything stack up, I'll make every pizza and salad wrong if I'm in the kitchen, if dough's put in the proofer I'll keep turning it off when no-ones looking. You have to actually sack me on this shift.

Thankfully, I had an ally in another manager who had experienced unemployment and struggled to make ends meet in the past, and he took me to one side and he helped engineer my exit by signing a letter I had personally typed out on Pizza Express' behalf saying I'd been let go. That appeased the job centre to a point, but it took a month of constant badgering to get my P45 off them, cocking my application for benefits right up and leaving me to borrow money off friends and family to pay rent. A f***ing horrendous organisation, genuinely one of the lowest points in my whole life.

Not exactly but I was so fed up in one job I just stopped working and nobody really seemed to notice that much. The stress of blagging was worse though. They still seemed surprised when I resigned though.

[Beagle 2]

heh that's a class sacking.  Where you actually working for the News of the World then?  I bet you have some intresting tales to share.

I used to take copy over the phone for most of the papers. I actually liked the job, all sorts of people used to call in, reporters in warzones, the weird bloke who produces all those crappy "Sun Spot" stories from his shed, famouses like AA Gill, Roy Hattersley and Jeremy Clarkson, all very nice and personable. Edwina was a rude cow who spoke too quickly and I got flustered and made a bollocks of her column. The sport one was my fault but hey let's pin it on Edwina anyway.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Surely dictating is the worst way to send articles, behind simply emailing a text file and fax. I mean it's understandable in a war zone if you've just got a satellite phone or something, but everyone else should pack it in.

I remember reading some Guardian article from Hunter Davies where he waffles on about his beloved Amstrad PCW and how in 2008 he was still sending manuscripts printed from it to publishers and faxing articles to journos. I just couldn't help thinking of all the extra work he was creating for other people by being a stubborn prick.

[Beagle 2]

Yeah I never understood why they did it. AA Gill was dyslexic so fair enough, and there were blind journos and people hiding behind rubble in the middle of Kabul, but a lot were just lazy I think, literally writing it on the back of a fag packet and phoning it in.

Roy Hattersley's dog going off its tits at the doorbell and his frenzied shouts were a highlight.

[popcorn]

Yeah apparently AA Gill used to dictate all his reviews because of severe dyslexia. He also didn't choose the star ratings - he wrote the review and then an editor had a reckon based on what he wrote. Was that you Beagle? I remember Gill saying "it seems fairer"