10 Heinous (and Hilarious) Reasons People Were Fired
10.
Cheering Under the Influence
While Stanford University has had no official mascot since dropping the Indian in 1972,
“The Tree,” which represents El Palo Alto, the Redwood tree that serves as Palo Alto’s
logo, has been personified by a member of Stanford’ marching band as an unofficial
school mascot.
The Tree appears at Stanford sporting events and schoolwide gatherings, engaging and entertaining
the crowd.
The selection process for “The Tree” is a surprisingly extensive annual event known
as Tree Week, during which student members of the marching band seeking to become The
Tree (known as “Saplings”) vie to outdo each other in various competitions and stunts.
However, 2006’s Tree, Erin Lashnits, was axed from her job after being caught drinking
from an apparently poorly-concealed flask nestled inside her costume during a Stanford-Cal
basketball game.
The band, whose spokesman noted that, “the tree’s movement is usually consistent with
that of someone who’s had something to drink,” nonetheless relieved Lashnits of duty in light
of her blood alcohol level of .15, which violated a three year alcohol ban school administrators
had imposed on band activities after a 2003 incident.
9.
Biting a Dunkin’ Donuts worker
While use of force by the police is a topic fraught with controversy, with complaints
from suspects and the public reporting excessive force generally requiring a lengthy evaluation
process, one officer’s excessive brutality in dealing with a member of the public quickly
earned him a pink slip.
Renzo, a 4-year old Belgian Malinois and police K9 officer with the Coconut Creek, Florida
police department, was removed from the force after biting a Dunkin’ Donuts employee in
the calf in February, 2015.
During the incident, Renzo escaped his handler’s grasp and jumped out of a police car.
The doughnut shop worker heard the handler’s shouts and was able to get most of the way
into his own vehicle, but Renzo was able to bite him four times on the leg before being
pried off by his handler.
This wasn’t Renzo’s first biting-related offense; he had also bitten a human police
officer while tracking a home invasion suspect in November of 2014.
Apparently for the police department, though, the attack on the Dunkin’ Donuts worker
was the last straw.
Make your own jokes about police and donuts.
Renzo was stripped of his badge, retired from the force and now lives a civilian life with
his handler.
8.
Singing a Bob Marley Song, Fighting Demons
52-year old Brooklyn resident Nicole Phillips found out the hard way that her rendition
of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff,” was not appreciated by her supervisor at a
call center for New York City’s Financial Information Services Agency.
The agency noted Phillips’ “threatening manner” toward the deputy director and cited
her “loudly singing lyrics to herself about ‘shooting the deputy,’” as part of the
reason they believed that she posed a threat to coworkers, leading to her dismissal.
The agency also noted that Phillips had scattered salt around her desk to “keep the demons”
down.
Phillips, who sued for back pay and the reinstatement of her $73,248-per-year, maintains that she
did nothing to warrant firing, saying the salting of her desk area was misunderstood
and that she’s a Bob Marley fan, not a danger to her colleagues.
She also pointed out that the song’s lyrics are, “I did not shoot the deputy.”
7.
Using the Office Copier…to Make Counterfeit Currency
There were a lot of problems with middle school janitor Terry Chapman’s failed currency
fraud scheme.
For starters, the amateurish counterfeit currency he produced was made by gluing together color
copies of each side of a bill.
Chapman then allowed his car to be repossessed, with several fake bills inside, which were
promptly turned over to local authorities.
Sealing his fate, Chapman then accused a local business owner of paying him with his own
phony currency.
The concerned business owner contacted the police, who were able to match the serial
numbers on the phony bill to the ones found in Chapman’s repossessed car.
Chapman, who was arrested on charges of criminal simulation and confessed to his actions, also
made one more mistake: he used his employer’s copier to make his funny money.
Chapman, who had worked at Lafollette Middle School as a janitor for four years prior to
his arrest, reported that he used the school copier to make his extra cash.
Chapman was promptly fired by the Campbell County school district after his admission,
suggesting that neither “school janitor” nor “criminal mastermind” are careers
that are in his future.
6.
Getting That Twix at Any Cost
It’s easy to understand warehouse worker Robert McKevitt’s frustration.
During a break halfway through his shift, McKevitt decided he wanted some candy and
put a dollar in the vending machine to get a Twix.
Unfortunately for McKevitt, the Twix got caught on the machine’s spirals and refused to
descend, even after McKevitt put in a second dollar.
McKevitt banged the side of the machine and tried to rock it to get the candy he had paid
for (twice), but to no avail.
It’s what McKevitt did next that separates him from a lot of other frustrated would-be
snackers and got him fired.
In a move that feels like it came straight out of the George Costanza playbook, rather
than kicking the vending machine and walking away, McKevitt allegedly got an 8,000 pound
forklift and drove up to the vending machine, lifting it off the floor and dropping it at
least six times, eventually freeing three candy bars from the machine.
McKevitt’s supervisor refused to accept his explanation that he was just trying to
get the candy he had paid for (McKevitt claims that he didn’t drop the vending machine
but was merely moving it back against the wall since he had jostled it while freeing
his candy), and McKevitt was fired days after the Twix incident and denied unemployment
benefits.
McKevitt apparently takes some comfort that his Twix-induced rage has had some lasting
impact, noting, “They fired me, and now I hear they have all new vending machines
there.”
5.
Stomping on the American flag
Illinois high school English teacher Jordan Parmenter inadvertently taught himself a lesson
while trying to make a point to his students about free speech.
The then-26-year old teacher initially used the small American flag in the classroom as
pointer while trying to draw students’ attention to a chart.
After a student called him out for being disrespectful, Parmenter then dropped the flag on the ground
and stepped on it, apparently to demonstrate free speech to his 11th grade students.
Parmenter seemed to realize his lesson had offended more than educated and apologized
to the class and, subsequently, to the school board in a letter.
Parmenter’s written apology read, in part, “I made a spur of the moment decision which
I know was a terrible error in judgment.
I believe that ideas such as the nature of symbolism and freedom of expression are valuable
topics to discuss in the classroom and that surprise can be a useful tool to use when
engaging students, however in this instance I chose a very poor way of addressing this
subject.”
Unfortunately for Mr. Parmenter, he learned that stepping on the flag as a means of instruction
was a bad idea too late to save his job.
After being placed on leave, he was fired by the Martinsville school board in a 6-0
decision.
4.
Stuffing Students in the Trunk for a Snack Run
Heather Cagle, a 10-year veteran teacher in Oklahoma’s Catoosa County public school
district wanted to do “something sweet” for her middle school yearbook students.
Unfortunately for Cagle, she expressed this nice impulse by piling 11 students into her
Honda Accord for a snack run.
During the clown car-style journey to Walmart, which was approximately a mile from the school,
two students split the front seat, seven formed a human pyramid in the back, and two more
students were stuffed in the trunk.
Parking lot footage shows that accomplishing this human Jenga only took the students about
5 minutes.
An additional two students, who were out of the classroom at the time the group of 12
departed, were left at the school.
The trip came to light after one of the students recounted the trip to her grandmother, who
filed a police report.
While fitting 12 people into a Honda is fairly impressive, the Catoosa County school board
was more concerned with the poor judgment Cagle showed in deciding to cram her students
in the car.
It voted 4-1 to terminate Cagle, citing student safety and the fact that she had not obtained
parent permission for an off-campus excursion.
3.
Peeing in an elevator
After repeated complaints about a urine stench in the elevator, parking garage managers in
downtown Orlando installed video cameras to catch the culprit.
When they reviewed the tapes, however, they didn’t see the homeless people they suspected
were using the elevator as a bathroom.
Instead, they witnessed Orange County sheriff’s deputy Carl Brown, easily identifiable in
his official uniform, urinating in the corner of the elevator as soon as the doors closed.
Shortly after, Deputy Brown realized he may have been captured on tape and tried to move
the camera.
After the sheriff’s office investigated, Brown admitted to urinating in the elevator
an estimated five times, claiming a medical condition made it impossible to wait to relieve
himself.
Regardless of the explanation, sheriff’s office internal investigators found this “unbecoming
conduct” sufficient reason to fire Deputy Brown.
2.
Photographing an X-Ray of Failed Sexcapades
Working in the ER gives employees some stories that are too ridiculous not to share.
Two nurses at Mercy Walworth Medical Center in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, encountered just
such a tale when a patient was admitted to the emergency room with an object, which would
turn out to be a sex toy, lodged in his rectum.
Unfortunately, for the nurses, they didn’t stop at merely repeating the story for the
amusement of family and friends.
Instead, they allegedly photographed the patient’s x-rays (or should we say “SEX-rays?), which
clearly showed the embedded sex toy, using their cell phones, with one nurse accused
of posting the photo to her Facebook page.
The nurse later noted that she was careful to ensure that the patient’s name was not
included in the photo.
Nonetheless, an anonymous concerned hospital employee reported the women’s conduct to
the police department, which determined that no state laws had been violated and referred
the case to the FBI for additional investigation.
The nurses’ employer was not amused, firing the two women for violating policy by “inappropriately
disclosing protected patient information and other confidential records.”
1.
Letting a Playboy Model “Earn Her Wings”
Pilots of large passenger planes are generally extremely seasoned, having built their skills
through extensive flight school training, hundreds of hours of practice flights, and
often, military flight experience.
However, Victoria Xipolitakis, a minor celebrity known for her appearances in the Greek version
of Playboy and the Argentine version of Big Brother, didn’t need any of those qualifications
when invited into the cockpit of a small jetliner and given control of the plane’s throttle
on takeoff.
“You sure?”, Xipolitakis asks the pilots before they turn over the controls of the
plane, which had 36 passengers on board at the time.
This scary sequence of events was captured in a series of selfies and videos that were
recorded during the course of the flight.
Not surprisingly, when the men’s employer, Austral Líneas Aéreas (parent company Aerolineas
Argentinas), found out about their employees’ new Playmate “co-pilot,” the two pilots,
Patricio Zocchi Molina and Federico Matias Soaje, were immediately dismissed and Xipolitakis
was banned from the airline for five years.
In a statement, the airline also indicated a desire to bring criminal charges against
the trio for “putting the flight’s safety at risk.”