I worked at a games shop until 2010. The store was in a mall and parents would always leave their kids in our store and go do their shopping.
Sometimes the children would cry, sometimes they’d pee, or even crap, themselves. And then these parents would get mad at us for not bringing their child to the bathroom or start screaming at their kids for not just playing games for a few hours without causing any problems.
I tweeted about how the store wasn’t there to babysit children and never really thought about that tweet again.
Until a few months later, when a parent drops his kid off in store, just like everyday, and leaves. 20 minutes later, an older looking guy is outside the store, on his flip phone, aiming it at the store. He’s creeping me out but I continue offering pointless warranties to customers while waiting for my next break. I suddenly notice the old guy walk near the entrance of the store and ask that kid where his parents are. This seemed really fishy and the guy looked beyond suspicious. I was thinking he could be a pedophile or a kidnapper, and I was right. He gets the kid to go with him, I call up mall security and tell them what I saw, and they catch him before he can even leave the mall.
He was arrested, the kid was crying, asking for his mom. The mall security could not reach her because she was in some stores outside of the mall area. She came back after another 2 hours and on reaching the point she threatened to sue me, the game stop, the mall and everyone on that floor.
Security guard lady told her that child services were called, and they all walked away. That was the last time I saw them.
Few days later, District Manager(DM) shows up in store and I am fired on the spot because that lady made a big complaint. The the DM opened my twitter and informed me that my approach to yesterday’s dilemma & my tweet about how the company is more of a babysitting service than a games shop has made them believe that I don’t have the “company spirit”.
Rebelled
I used to work for Geek Squad in college and a coworker was fired when a famous actor came in and she posted everything, including a lot of their personal information, on Facebook.
Her post ran like ‘Actor’s full name tagged’ came into our store along with ‘full names of people he came with’ and bought this computer and this accessory. The actor had this and this stuff on his computer and finally used a black ‘his bank name’ card to pay.
She could get into journalism for sure.
showtunesaboutbacon
I was working as a bartender and server for a place. The assistant manager was a petty tyrant and treated the staff like crap. I had made several complaints about him to the general manager and to the owner with some of the other staff, but they refused to do anything about it. So I was done with this place, and looking for a new job when this happened.
A very young looking girl came. She hands me her out of state ID, and I can tell that it is fake. I politely tell her that I can’t serve her alcohol, and explain that in this state we don’t legally have to accept out of state IDs. She was actually very understanding and there was no scene or issue. Her other friends arrive and they take a table together. I informed their server about the fake ID.
It is around this time that the assistant manager who had been drinking bloody marry’s at the bar next door all morning and then napping in the office came over. He then tells me that I don’t know what a fake ID looks like and I don’t have the right to refuse service to people like that. He then tells me I have to serve the girl. I inform him that I have the legal right to refuse service, and he cannot force me to.
Anyway, I go home and post about my day. I tell how this manager made me serve this young girl and then included a photo of me holding a display made out of all the fake IDs we had confiscated in one year. And also a crown.
The next day I was called in and let go.
eyesick
In the company I work for a prospective employee just passed his interview, and was told that all he needs to do is pass a drug test and a physical, and then he could start on Monday.
The company’s social media marketing guy found this new hire’s Facebook account and saw the guy had posted this, just 20 minutes after the interview, “Crap! Anyone know how to pass a drug test in 24 hours?!”
Bigblockchevy
I worked in the customer support for a mobile game company and was honest with a disheartened customer, who had complained that recent changes had made the game pay to win.
It had, in truth, been a glitch with an update. I assured them the team would be fixing it in the next update. But then the games profits skyrocketed. The team kept the glitch, and put out a statement describing the change as an intentional one designed to improve the play experience.
But there was my name, plastered all over the game forums, claiming the opposite. I technically worked for a separate company that provided support for several studios, but the studio behind this game was our biggest client. They approached my bosses, furious that I jeopardized their cash cow, and demanded I be fired. And I was gone within the week. Tough times.
C1ank
A former colleague of mine, while on a sick leave, posted about how he was going to use up all his sick leaves and then quit.
He posted it at 9am, and at 11 was told he had no job anymore.
stumpyoftheshire
I was young and idiot that time.
I was working a late night shift and I posted something on Facebook about wanting to go home and play the sims so I could create [telecommunications store I worked for] on it and then slowly kill off all the customers.
I completely forgot about all the coworkers who had added me on Facebook days before.
Whaabz
I had a friend who tweeted “So getting head while delivering pizzas is pretty sweet” one night while he was working. The pizza place he worked for was a reputed international franchise, they fired him the next day.
The next morning he tweeted “Get lost ‘pizza place’s name here’ I don’t need you or your stupid job anyway” or something to that effect.
I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.
brholmes_
I joined a games studio and was working alongside a guy who’d just finished his philosophy degree.
He felt that the official gaming forums were the best place to discuss whether disabled people would be “of as much value as pigs” after a post-apocalyptic event, and if they should be simply slaughtered and eaten.
To top it all, he did this using his company account.
badguysenator
A girl on my Facebook worked for the postal service in my town. She posted on Facebook how she wanted to slit her boss’ throat and went into some gory details.
Then, about 5 hours later, she posted another status saying one of her coworkers had shown the post to her boss and that she was now fired.
allycat503
I was let go from the nations third largest insurance company for what were called “offensive tweets” that weren’t even mine.
Apparently someone with similar name as mine was tweeting vulgar things to comedy accounts and the management brought me to the HR and terminated me.
Yes I sued them for wrongful termination, so I could finish getting my MBA.
HyenaPVM
I work in a hospital. So there was a police shooting in my area a couple of years ago and multiple officers were brought into our ER.
One officer was still being operated upon, fighting between death and being alive, and a number of idiot hospital employees posted condolences on their Facebook pages with the name of the officer before the family was officially informed about the demise.
I think 7 or 8 employees were rightfully fired for that one.
LilyMe
I had to fire an employee for a tweet he wrote about a customer. He tweeted “(customer’s full name) would be a great name for a gay porn star.”
I found out about it when the customer’s lawyer called me the next day with a threatening warning. Turns out this customer worked for the local newspaper and obsessively searched his name on all social media channels regularly.
The guy had really funny and unique name though.
sharkwithlaser
I was once passed over for a job because I barely use Facebook.
They said I am outdated as my last post was 2 years old and then straight up told me that they couldn’t trust me because of how little info was on my page.
warboy3
A girl I know was a nurse at a hospital and got fired for posting things on Facebook. One of her post was –
“Soooooo sleepy here in the ICU. Will someone please call and give me something exciting to do? #isthatbad?”
The best part about it was that she was TAGGING the hospital she worked at in her posts. lol
ngibson
A company I worked for had it written into their 7-page contracts that you were not allowed to even reference the company on social media. Anyone in breach would be fired instantly. How this clause came into existance is a funny story.
There’s a page on Facebook called “We Hate ____” that’s currently one of the world’s biggest corporate-hate pages.
It started when someone working in our call centre posted online about how stupid our customers were. This began something of a war between the staff and customers – customers posting on employees’ walls and vice versa.
The company is a major player in it’s market and suffered a noticeable drop in sales that year.
All in all, around 20 people were fired.
NewRandomHero
I had to fire a volunteer firefighter.
In his 2nd week o joining he left for a call which I allowed. Fifteen minutes later someone showed me his 5 minute old post of him riding quads saying something along the lines of “sometimes you just need to F off from work”. That put him on a final warning.
A couple of weeks later he left because his “house was on fire!” then half an hour later his wife tagged him in a photo of him sitting in a kiddie pool in front of his house. Fired.
The funny thing is, in both cases, if he had simply asked to leave early I probably would have said yes.
Shylocv
A co-worker of mine was fired recently because he got caught sneaking off work to smoke weed and drink by Facebook.
The guy would post photos of him smoking and drinking on Facebook, during office hours, from the parking or something. The boss found out and predictably fired him on the spot. The best part, this guy was almost 30 years old, and not some immature teenager.
BubbaCrosbyGOAT
My mom’s ex boyfriend was a waiter at a very elite restaurant and normally received extravagant tips. One day however, some guy left him a $5 tip for an over $200 bill. He got pissed and posted the customer’s information on Facebook.
He got fired the next day.
Anonymous
I got fired from an internship for posting on Reddit before.
It was a very small environmental engineering consulting firm. We were doing work on a site that had lead and arsenic contamination on it. The site was very dusty, and if it didn’t rain for a few days the dust would often kick up and blow onto the street next to the site, which happened to be the main road in this semi-smallish town.
Someone mentioned on Reddit, in a totally unrelated way, that they were from this town. I made a mention of the contamination, and told the dude that if he ever saw dust coming off the site that he should contact the engineers which were housed above one of the local bars. Apparently this guy didn’t really want the site to be redeveloped at all because of the already high congestion in the surrounding roads, and he called and complained, mentioning my post on Reddit.
The company was so small it was obvious it was me who posted it, and I confessed about what I had said, and immediately deleted the post. Even though I didn’t do anything illegal, or even remotely immoral, I was fired because I was seen as a liability.
I still think people deserve to know if the dust they’re breathing in could give them cancer. I moved onto a different field, marine biology, after that.
yo_maaaan
This happened to me some years ago!
I was on the job a week at a law firm, and had to ride with one of the female employees to a printing store to get some extra copies made of a document.
She was a terrible driver, and almost wrecked multiple times. I posted on Facebook, “One week on the job and my coworker is trying to kill me; worst driver ever.”
The next day I was called into my bosses office, the girl was sitting there with an expressionless look on her face, and there was a printout of my post.
It was awkward and they fired me on the spot. All of my account information was also set to private, I don’t know how they figured a way to check my activity.
About40Llamas
My female friend was direct messaged through twitter by the news presenter of our city. He was 37 and she was just 18.
He commented on her beach pictures and messaged she is really pretty and how they need to get together. She ended up telling him that it’s pretty ridiculous that he’s trying to get with her using his weather channels twitter account.
He lost his job later that week.
wowhowfun
I posted a blog post on MySpace in 2005 that got me discharged from the Army.
I indicated I had romantic feelings for a female and that I had acted on those feelings, I am also female. My sergeant suspected I was involved with this woman so she looked me up on MySpace, saw the blog post, and 3 months later I was discharged for “homosexual conduct”.
I am not even bi to be honest. I did what i did out of curiosity, and it was long time back. Well, no doors ever close on the internet I guess.
RooSong
My company fired me for a tweet I made. Here’s what happened:
Someone on my timeline posted an article about our company’s customer service. Someone replied to him saying, “wow, ‘this company’ actually has customer service? lol!” Working in customer service myself, I reply, from a personal account that is in no way connected with my job, with the tweet, “Yup, we do. We complain about management as much as you do.”
My company did not like that. Despite me having zero personal details on Twitter, they somehow still figured out it was me. I realized later that I had GPS auto locate on for my tweets, so I suppose they could have looked through that data to figure out where I lived.
Anyway, the point is, they linked the account back to me and fired me for suggesting the employees are anything other than 100% happy all day at work. Seriously, that’s almost what they said to me when they fired me. The best I can recall is “You said the employees aren’t happy. We can’t have people suggesting the employees are in any way unhappy with management, it makes us look bad as a company. ‘The company’ has worked extremely hard to get the reputation it currently has and things like this will make people see us in a negative light, which is unacceptable.”
They also implied they’re letting legal look at it to see if they have a libel case against me. It’s been 5 months and I haven’t heard anything from them, so I assume not. The weirdest part was, the woman firing me seemed completely unaware the general public hates ‘The company’ and it’s services in general.
Joetato
A young teacher in my province got fired for posting vacation pictures to Facebook; She was wearing a bikini, holding margarita in one hand and just chilling by some beach actually.
A parent reported it, as any uptight group of PTA mothers would want to defend young eyes from that. I think parents forget that teachers also have a life outside there kid’s classroom.
Venom349
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