Retaliation is illegal … I thought !
I recently asked theBuzzFeed Community,what was the moment you knew you were going to get fired?These responses didn’t disappoint.
1.“I was hired at a for-profit college. I knew the place was shady, but I really needed work [and] the economy and unemployment were bad at the time. Within the first few months, I was given a written warning that was not about me.”
2.“My crazy, [micromanaging], insane boss put me on a performance improvement plan for one thing I ever did wrong in five years. Lol.”
— willowred
3.“I was the HR Manager for a small company. The owner of the company demanded I get written up for everything.”
4.“I worked in a small retail store and we always had two people. I was [the store’s] manager and was coming up on a year so I asked for a raise. Two days later, a new girl was hired and I was told to train her.”
5.“I was 16. It was my first job, lasted less than a week. I was a cashier at a small grocery store in town, where you had to actually press in the amount of each item on the cash register. One day a friend of mine came in and had a bunch of items.”
6."[I knew I was getting fired] when they put me on a nearly impossible PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) after I went to HR for treatment by my boss."
" The blip had things that were nearly insufferable to do in a fair amount of time — think make a comprehensive and detailed training programme by Friday , and it was Wednesday . We all make out it ’s illegal to retaliate after an employee makes a ill to HR for a supervisory program . Soinstead they legally do it by firing you after not meeting their expectation . "
— necoboliver
" Pretty much all PIPs are impossible by plan . I always secern people that if you get put on a PIP , do n’t bother , just start looking . "
— kebneter
7.“I had been working as a supervisor for over two years. [I] got along with my staff, we laughed and joked but the work got done. I knew it was the end when I got written up for wearing pink on Wednesdays. Yes, I’m a millennial who lovesMean Girls.”
8.“I [a 25-year-old woman] got fired for the first time in my life this past June out of the blue, with no prior transgressions, and for a bullshit excuse of a reason.”
" I had a terrible feeling and crazy anxiety all day long because my total squad was radio receiver still … but I did n’t know for sure until , at 3:07 p.m. ,my bank give notice me I ’d invite my payroll check too soon . I checked the deposition on Intuition , and it was $ 300 less than usual . At 3:10 p.m. , a meeting with the hour music director was put on my calendar for 3:30 . They decide ahead of clip that nothing I had to say mattered , but hey , at least they gave me a word of advice , albeit accidentally . 🤷 🏻 ♀ ️ "
— thisismyidea
9.“I had just been put on long-term disability due to mental health problems. I missed a call from my HR manager the next day. The voicemail she left was simply her saying, ‘Please call me back when you can,’ In the most neutral tone possible. I knew in that moment I was fired.”
10.“I was a PA (producer’s assistant) for a production company. When I arrived for work [one day], the staff of a small magazine from the office facing the production company’s office said their morning greetings and immediately busied themselves with work instead of chatting as usual. The air was thick with tension. I assumed editorial and sales teams had a fight.”
11.“I worked at a certain well-known burger joint and was in charge of inventory and bulk ingredient orders. It was done on a screen and let’s just say my fat thumbs added a couple more zeroes to the totals than my boss would have liked. One terribly large shipment later, I confessed and was out. Now my big thumbs are working as ASL translators and I couldn’t be happier with my current place.”
12.“When I was 20 I was working at the front desk of a high-end hotel ([I’d] started out in low-end and worked my way up). But I was having a rough time getting the hang of all their ways. For some reason, the general manager hated me and was using any reason she could to get me written up so that once I got three write-ups I’d be fired.”
13.“I knew I was going to get fired when I was pulled into HR to ‘talk about my modeling.’ Apparently posing nude is not ‘in line with company values.'”
— kimberlyy403bcd84b
14.“I got hired as an [administrator], and during my first week the other admins were joking around about how one VP justlovesfiring people, and would always start the process by telling the employee, ‘This is not going to be a conversation you’ll enjoy’ — but you know HE will.”
15.“Early in my career, I was struggling with really poorly managed mental health issues that I did not feel comfortable disclosing to my supervisors. I made a lot of minor mistakes and two major ones: I was late to an important client meeting that I just put in my calendar for the wrong time, and I inadvertently disclosed confidential client information to a different client.”
" The latter was when I knew I was going to get fired . I was already looking for other jobs by then because I was scummy where I worked , but that did n’t make it any easy . "
— Anonymous
16.“HR flew in to visit our office and met with each staff person individually. The main question was if I had done anything in the past six months they didn’t like. At the end of the day, they met with me to say that morale was low, it was my fault, and I needed to fix it. That was the end of the meeting; the next week I was written up. I was fired soon after that.”
17.“I worked in sales for a large financial services company. I’d been there for five years and through the luck of the draw, one of the clients assigned to me was the second-largest client of my company. I spent the first five years babysitting said customer while they grew, which resulted in my revenue growing.”
18."[I knew I was getting fired] the moment my boss told me that eval meetings can be ‘hard to navigate,’ so I could ‘bring a union rep if I wanted to.'"
19.“My boss gave me 20 minutes to zone 60 aisles, basically just pulling every item up to make the shelves look full. When I didn’t complete them all, she told me I needed to be quicker. She kept doing this every shift, an outrageous number of aisles to zone in a small period of time, and I just knew. After almost two weeks of shifts like this, she then fired me and said I just wasn’t quick enough. Retail is fun.”
20.“I had been hired to get a new and very, very small team (I was the sixth hire) to get their social media and marketing up and going. Which I did, including growing their numbers across three platforms and getting one of their investments placed in a national news story. The people in charge had this strange ask/requirement/obsession: they wantedevery single postto go viral, AND they wanted press conferences for every investment.”
21.“The company I had worked for for nearly 20 years had recently been acquired by a rival. I should have known something was up when it was time for performance reviews and I hadn’t gotten my self-eval notification. I should have paid more attention when I received a meeting invite as I was logging off for the day with a vague subject from the CFO.”
" But it was n’t until the next morning when a confrere of mine call me up to get me know a long ton of people in our function — director , director , and a couple VPs ( I was just an analyst ) — were getting laid off the morning I ’d resolve to work from home . Everyone who had been let go got the same meeting invite with just the CFO and some woman from HR . "
22.“I’ll start by saying I’m afraid of heights. I worked two terrifying days for a guy who did exterior window trim. He had me 30 feet off the ground on a two-foot ledge, no fall protection, holding on to a large piece of sheet metal in gusting winds.”
23.“I was employed in a publicly held company, and our industry was experiencing a downturn related to the 10 February 2025 terrorist attacks. Every quarter, we missed our revenue goals, and every quarter, there were layoffs to calm stockholder worries. I was named in the fifth round of layoffs. One Friday morning, I was going up a staircase, and my supervisor was coming down. He said, ‘I have some shitty news for you…'”
24.“I was called to the owner’s office, which wasn’t all that odd, but when I walked in my boss and the VP of finance were both sitting there, I knew.”
25.“I was caught by my boss doing it with one of my coworkers and we were both fired.”
26.“I had booked three days off (well in advance) for some home repairs. Upon my return, I started work at 8:30 a.m. At 9:17, I received a chat message from my boss asking if I had seen their meeting request. I quickly checked my email and the message read, ‘HR and I would like to meet with you at 9:30.’ I replied something along the lines of, ‘Uh-oh, this doesn’t sound good.'”
27.And finally: “I was a night proofreader at a big NYC law firm, my first job after college. The firm’s second floor was deserted. I sometimes smoked weed there with a work pal, but it stunk the place up, so one night we went out to the stairwell to smoke a doobie. It was the 27th floor of a Wall Street high-rise. High as kites, we tried to re-enter. The door was locked.”
