• From excessively quoting a television show to being so sexy you distract your boss¬¬¬¬¬¬,
we count ten of the dumbest reasons people were fired from their jobs!
10 – Coach Fired For Leading Team to Victory, • A sporting coach’s job is to lead their
team to victory.
However, Covenant School basketball coach Micah Grimes discovered that sometimes it’s
possible to win by too much.
• In 2009, Grimes guided his all-girl high school basketball team to a 100-0 victory
over a team from an academy specialising in helping kids with learning differences, like
dyslexia.
• Staff at the Covenant School decided winning by such a huge margin was unchristianly and
an embarrassment to the school.
Grimes refused to apologise, so was kindly shown the door.
9 – Fired For Repeating a Seinfeld Quote, • ‘What’s the deal with getting fired
for stupid reasons?’
That’s what Jerry Seinfeld might say if we heard the story of Cedar Falls native,
John Preston.
• John was fired from his job for doing what many of us have done: annoying his co-workers
with his favourite television quotes.
• While at a work retreat, John joined his co-workers in enacting the legendary Seinfeld
gag of saying ‘You’re so good looking’ rather than ‘bless you’ whenever someone
sneezed.
• Unfortunately, most of these were directed at a female co-worker, so, though he meant
no offence, it was considered sexual harassment and was grounds for his dismissal.
• The funny thing is the whole situation would actually make for a great Seinfeld episode.
8 – Fired For Wearing Orange, • The fashion police strike again!
At a Florida law firm, a group of office workers started a tradition of wearing orange on paydays.
It was a sign of solidarity when they went out for happy hour after work.
• The tradition went on for months without incident – until some new company executives
came aboard.
They saw the unconventional uniform choices and wrongly assumed it was as an insult or
form of protest.
They were so offended that they fired all fourteen employees who dared to blend red
and yellow and gave them no severance pay.
• The company had no policy against wearing orange and, although federal law protects
workers against several forms of discrimination, it doesn’t extend to choice of dress.
• Clearly executive types are threatened by nonconformity, but haven’t they heard
orange is the new black?
7 – Fired For TYPING IN ALL CAPS, • Email etiquette can be tricky.
It can be all too easy for co-workers to read something into an email that the author didn’t
intend.
• Vicki Walker knows all about this.
She was a New Zealand office worker who sent a mass email to her co-workers at ProCare
Health.
To get their attention she made liberal use of bolded text, used a bright red font and
capitalised all the letters.
That was her showing restrain, too; I mean, she managed to hold off from using emoticons.
• Unfortunately, management decided that they could no longer allow this madwoman to
sit behind a keyboard, so dismissed her, claiming that she had caused ‘disharmony in the office’.
• Nicki fought the dismissal and was awarded $17,000.
6 – Fired For Trivial 50-Year-Old Felony, • In 2012, sixty-eight-year-old Richard
Eggers was fired from his bank teller job when it emerged that he had a criminal past.
Sounds fair enough, right?
Maybe, except the crime in question back dated all the way back to 1963.
• Was it something reprehensible like murder?
No, all Richard was guilty of was using a cardboard cut-out of a dime to operate a Laundromat
washing machine.
• His teenage crime surfaced because of new federal banking regulations, which forbade
the employment of anyone convicted of crimes involving ‘dishonesty’ or ‘money laundering’.
• I hope no one finds out about that cookie I stole from the cookie jar at five years
old.
It could spell the end of my accounting career.
5 – Lifeguards Parody Gangnam Style, • In 2012, fourteen Californian lifeguards
were fired after a video surfaced online of them performing a parody of the Psy song ‘Gangnam
Style’.
They called it ‘Lifeguard Style’.
• The problem was that they were wearing city-issued lifeguard uniforms and made the
video at the pool where they worked.
The lifeguards reasoned that everything was filmed while they were off duty, and that
it was only meant to be a bit of fun.
• Eventually common sense prevailed and their jobs were reinstated.
They certainly learned a valuable lesson from the experience: never bring a sense of humour
to work.
4 – Blogger Disgraces Airline, • In 2004, Ellen Simonetti was fired from
Delta Airlines after her employers discovered the diary she’d been keeping on her personal
blog.
• Ellen’s blog was called ‘Diary of a Flight Attendant’ and detailed her experiences
working for the airline.
Nothing on the blog was remotely defamatory; however, the airline did object to some ‘inappropriate’
photos of Ellen in her Delta uniform, showing about half an inch of her bra.
• Times have certainly changed, as showing your bra was once a requirement for getting
work as a flight attendant.
3 – Teacher Asks Fourth-Graders for Dating Advice,
• In 2014, substitute teacher Cassandre Fiering was fired after getting the nine-year-old
students in her class to decide which of two men she should date.
• Rather than ask them outright, Cassandre had the members of her class act out scenarios
where she played her boyfriends, and they played her.
When the kids encouraged her to dump the younger boyfriend, Cassandre joked that they should
toilet paper his house and scare him by dressing up as ‘demons’.
• After consulting with some kid on the playground, Cassandre plans to appeal her
dismissal.
2 – Woman Fired For Being Too Sexy, • Melissa Nelson was a married mother who
worked as a dental assistant for ten years.
She was very good at her job and – according to her boss, James Knight – she was too
sexy to resist.
James’ wife was threatened by her husband’s attraction to his co-worker, so urged him
to terminate her employment contract.
• Naturally, Melissa filed a wrongful termination suit, but the courts upheld the firing, confirming
that she was, in fact, too sexy for her job.
• At trial, James accused Melissa of wearing scrubs that were ‘too tight and revealing’,
and brought up an offhand comment she had made about her lack of a sex life.
He responded to the comment by joking that it was like her husband had ‘a Lamborghini
in the garage but drove it’. 1 – Pilot Lets a Celebrity Fly a Plane,
• In 2015, a Mexican pilot was fired after he let a famous singer don his sacred pilot’s
cap and sit at the control panel of his commercial aircraft.
• Esmeralda Ugalde and her gal pal Samadhi Zendejas were granted special access to the
cockpit of a Boeing jet on a flight to Cancun.
As thanks, they posted pictures of the pilot’s violation on Twitter.
• In a statement, an airline rep for Magnicharters said, ‘We cannot allow people to enter the
cabin, even if they are actors or actresses’, which sounds faintly like common sense
to me.