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Somehow I've never been fired from a job.

I currently have a 9-5 job, and I rarely get to the office before lunch if I go in at all.

I've been doing this for about a year now, so I guess it's OK.

Marsupialized wrote:None of this is funny, you just sound like an asshole

He was in high school, of course he was an asshole.

YOU'RE FIRED

I've never been fired either, but I guess this one is pretty close.

I was probably 18 or so and worked at Papa John's for about a year. Every second after the first six months was torture. Domino's was pretty laid back, but those Papa John's people take their shitty pizza pretty seriously. Papa John's would almost never fire anybody. They'd cut your hours, and eventually you'd figure it out. We'd call it "the Tuesday 5-7." Anyway, some company put in quarter machines in the back of the store so the employees could get crappy candy. I think it was plain and peanut M&Ms, gumballs, and whatever the hell Boston Baked Beans are. One of my favorite things to do was sticking pretty much anything in the oven to see what would happen. Gumballs melted down pretty interestingly. One day I sent the Boston Baked Beans through and got a nice fake cat vomit looking thing that came out. I put it on top of the quarter machine, it fell off, and then it stained the floor. Many stupider things were done at pizza places, so I didn't think much of it. The next day I go in and the shift leader guy says I have to clean the Boston Baked Beans stain off the floor, and to call our manager. My hours have been dropped from 40 to 6. I call and get no answer. Shift Leader says Manager says these spread out two hour shifts are to clean crap. Day one of cleaning is to pick cigarrette butts off the driveway, and out of a bunch of gravely rocks in front. I make it about 15 minutes, and then tell Shift Leader, "I think I quit." I never go back.

Shift Leader, he is okay guy. Last I heard, manager got arrested for breaking into apartments.

I will get into some of mine later but I saw a dude get fired for attempting to murder a coworker at a pizza place I worked at in high school.

The dude was not getting along with another dude who worked there. One was a satanist death metal dude from some country in South America I had never heard of and one was a previously death metal drummer recently born again Christian now rejecting death metal. The Satanist was a real cool dude. Didn't speak a word of English but a real nice guy and easy to hang out with nonetheless. Could wail on some death metal guitar.
The drummer was always a doof, even before he became a Christian. Damn good drummer though.

Now the Satanist lived and breathed his death metal. He made a death metal zine that was really kind of a big deal in that scene for awhile. I'd go with him to drop them off at record stores and whatnot, people would be waiting for him to show up to get one. He'd get recognized and celebrated at every show we went to. He was a seriously ugly fucked up looking dude who couldn't speak the langauge yet was always banging hot metal chicks. As you can imagine, he loved his death metal.

The Christian had been a member of a local death metal band that the Satanist really loved. Then he had some sort of nervous breakdown and decided he loved Jesus now and he broke up that band and started a Christian lite prog power metal band. Just horrible. The name of the new Christian band was simply 'Christian' I shit you now, look it up. They named the band 'Christian'

Anyhow, we all worked in this pizza place together. The Satanist worked on the grill, I was making pizzas with the Christian and a few other dudes who were in my hardcore band at the time. Me and my bandmates all got along with the Satanist, he didn't understand why we didn't go the extra step and make it a grindcore band instead of a regular hardcore band but he accepted it as valid because there were enough heavy sabbath riffs and some of the songs were fast enough to keep it at least listenable for him.

The new Christian band had him absolutely fuming. This dude broke up a superb death metal band that he personally had spent a lot of time writing about and promoting. He was now shit talking the whole death metal scene loudly every day. It was only a matter of time till it all boiled over.
One day the Christian was loudly talking about how he's so glad he's not playing that 'kid stuff' anymore and now he feels like his music has meaning, he is saving people from a life of sin.

The Satanist had it I guess, because he comes out from behind the grill with a giant heavy iron pan in his hand and just bashes the Christian as hard as he can in the head. WHUMP! The Christian goes down, holding his head. It's bleeding. The Satanist rears back up and WHUMP! Brings it down on the top of his head again. WHUMP! and again. The Christian is out cold, bleeding pretty bad from the head.
The Satanist puts the pan on the counter and grabs a long knife we'd use to cut peppers and shit. At that point the owner, who was a gangster and used to such things steps in front of him and says 'that's enough, he's had enough' and tells the Satanist he's gonna have to call the cops and he better run and hide out somewhere if he dosen't want to go to jail tonight. The Satanist asks 'Am I fired?' and the owner says 'Don't come back'

He takes off running. The Christian went to the hospital, nobody would tell the cops anything. 'I didn't see it happen'
The Christian never pressed the issue I guess.

I didn't see the Satanist again for years. When I did he was working at Crow's Nest, stocking classical CD's. He was still a real nice dude, we went out for a beer and talked and that was that. Haven't seen him again.

Wow. That's a great/horrifying story.

My story of getting fired from Zellers for sleeping in the bedding isle is very pathetic, especially compared to captain frying pan.

During summers in Iowa City, I graded the written portions of standardized tests at this place called NCS. For each group of tests, we'd first be presented with a set of criteria, and we'd spend anywhere from a day to a week getting "calibrated," so that everyone more or less graded the tests according to the same standard. (Some tests were graded by two people independently, to verify calibration.) Obviously, this process is pretty subjective, but we managed to make it work well enough. Everything was graded on a scale of 1 to 6. Sometimes the grade reflected the entire essay, and sometimes we graded various aspects of the essay (grammar, structure, tone, etc.) individually.

On my last summer there, they had a big project that required ~150 graders, broken up into smaller groups of 8 or 10. I needed money for an impending move to Europe, so I signed on. I show up on the first morning, and my group leader is . . . a woman I sexed up the previous summer and had fully expected to never see again. Well, that's just lovely. At least we got along well, and she had no input on whether I was hired or fired. It was awkward but okay.

We spend the week learning the grading criteria, and we all take tests to ensure that we've mastered it. Somehow, among the 160 or 170 applicants, I'm one of the guys who fails. What did me in? Tone. I couldn't fucking manage to assess the essay's tone as well as my peers. I was pretty full of myself at the time, puffed up over the fact that I had an MFA from a terrific program. If there's one thing I understood, it was tone. What I didn't understand--or refused to accept--was that the secret was to award 6 points for tone to essays that had received 6 points for everything else. The person in charge of teaching the criteria didn't tell us to do this, but her real advice was totally meaningless.

"So what kind of tone deserves a six? It just has that six-ish quality to it!" She would say, clearly relishing the awesome delight of encountering a student essay with bona fide six-ness.

"Oh, yes!" The others would nod and smile. It was like attending a cult meeting. "Yes, a six! Definitely!"

So yeah, I didn't get this right. Too bad for me. How do I know I've been shit-canned from the project? In a room with 160, 170 people, they call out the names of everyone who failed and asked us to leave the room. The woman I sexed up frowns, clearly sympathetic to my humiliation.

People who passed included a 50-ish guy who sat to my left. This guy tucked his shirt into his ratty underwear, such that everyone could see his grungy tighty-whities every time he leaned forward. Another guy who remained would eat his candy bars by opening the wrapper, spreading the wrapper out in a perfectly flat square, and setting the bar in the middle; he also used to run across the street at any and every intersection, terrified of traffic (even if there wasn't any). The worst was a greasy-faced 30-year-old former teacher who drew pictures of Darth Maul on his notes and moaned and groaned nonstop.

Shortly thereafter, I pleaded my case to another manager, a somewhat hot woman who drove a BMW every morning to the shitty NCS Quonset hut. I mention my degree, my previous work for the company, my good marks everywhere else. I mention that the managers on previous assignments had liked me, etc. She gets a frowny face and says, "Sometimes it's hard for people who know a lot about English to do well in situations like this." She says this in the most patronizing manner possible. She must have assumed that I wouldn't recognize her patronizing for what it was. After all, I fucked up on tone. All that was missing was a pat on the head.

Ah well, whatever. I moved to Europe and later to Chicago, got a job in publishing, and am now in business school. I like to think that Darth Maul guy is still moaning nonstop, complaining about how "this kid doesn't get it" re: the essay, at his shitty dead-end job in Iowa City.

You get a 6 for tone.

givemenoughrope wrote:You get a 6 for tone.

Finally!

I actually sometimes still feel bitter about that experience, even though my life since then has been rewarding in every manner imaginable.

As a college freshman I had a job at the "Food Zoo", which was the main cafeteria at U of Montana. My job consisted of pushing loaded carts of plates from one end of the room to the other.
One day in the late spring, it was very sunny and about 70 degrees, I was scheduled to work the afternoon/evening shift. After a dozen bong hits I decided that I would rather go to the park with my girlfriend than work my shift, so I just didn't show. The next day I came in to work and was called to the managers office. The supervisor was a younger woman who had an IQ of approx. 62. She said that I was fired, for 2 reasons, first, she said I was not showing enough enthusiasm while performing my "duties", and second I had been a no call/no show. At this point I had some savings from student loan refunds and shrugged my shoulders and walked out.
I was working at the drum shop at "The Trading Musician" in Seattle about 2001, most of the employees were paid under the table and the place was owned by a husband and wife "team". The wife was a total bitch and the man was such a huge stoner that he would just wander around and ramble on to people about gear all day, funny thing was that they both hated each other, were legally divorced, but continued to run the place together. I was fired one day because "I didn't sell enough stuff". heh