We Asked People About the First Time They Got Fired

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

If every generation thinks that the one after it mostly consists of overgrown babies with soft hands and shorter attention spans, the grafting kids of the 1700s would rip the piss out of all of us today. Before the whole idea of the eight-hour work day was ushered into law in the UK in the 1880s, only children aged nine to 13 were expected to work for less than 12 hours a day.

While we try to claw our way out of the recession's hole, people can resort to taking on eight-hour shifts that they're ultimately not cut out for. And when you're terrible at your job, you tend to get fired. We hunted down some stories of people getting fired—and found out that a proper night's sleep and an aversion to throwing produce at people are generally good places to start for meaningful lengths of employment.

One Sunday night I got the call from my temp agency saying they had a job for me on the Monday—so I went out drinking to celebrate. The next morning I got into the office, and for about an hour they were telling me all the rules and procedures of being a court clerk, about doing all the admin stuff. But about 15 minutes in I was spacing out; I wasn't hearing anything. I had a triple-shot coffee and we went to sit in court, with me clutching my notepad, for a custody case.

So I was writing the name and the date, and suddenly just fell asleep, nodded right off for about 30 seconds. No one noticed, so I carried on listening intently for another five minutes before my head just hit the table. A few people noticed. I tried to stay awake for another ten minutes, but when one of the parents was talking about how they deserved more custody for their children I was apparently snoring. For a good seven or eight minutes.

When I woke up, everyone was looking at me so I went out for some fresh air and I managed to make myself scarce until the end of the case. At the end of the day the agency called me and informed me I wouldn't be welcome back, as I'd fallen asleep in court. On the bright side, they did pay me.

I was desperately poor and unemployed on an accidental gap year, waiting to start uni. I'd been lined up with a seemingly simple, any-idiot-could-do-it packing job, starting on my 19th birthday. I woke up at about 4AM and rode the bus to a depressing-looking business estate where I was supposed to pack and shift boxes. But as I rolled up to the building it became quite clear that that wasn't the case—the guy had a bloody forklift, with all these drills and saws lying about. I stood there, about to run off and do my arts degree, thinking, Oh shit.

It started off alright: cup of tea, biscuits, cliched natter. I moved a load of heavy stuff and before I knew it I was knackered out of my mind. Then my boss said, "You need to saw this wood," and I thought, This wasn't in the brochure. I got through a few planks, kind of nodding off while standing there—it was about 7:30AM at this point. I was hacking away, and then the sound changed and I looked down and I was just sawing into my own thumb. There was blood everywhere.

I was like: "Oh shit!" and went up to the guy who clearly thought I was an absolute bellend. I told him I thought I was moving cardboard boxes, and that we'd both been given a bum deal. So he let me go. But he didn't give me any first aid and I just sort of staggered back to the bus dripping blood on the floor, and ended up having a Wimpy burger at 9AM on my birthday.

I got fired for being a complete wreck head. I turned up one Friday two hours late, buzzing on coke after having not slept a wink. I ploughed through the double shift drinking the whole way, and then nearly crashed halfway through the day from my comedown. I messaged my man and he delivered me some more stuff to keep me going until close. Then I went out again with colleagues and ended up staying up for a second night… and yeah, I turned up on Saturday morning for my second double shift on zero hours sleep, still coked up. Disgraceful.

I got sent home for looking "unfit to work." At the time my colleague kind of mentioned how the previous day I was "in and out of the toilet" or whatever. The following Tuesday I turned up for work and my manager took me outside for a "chat" and axed me. He was a hypocritical cunt 'cos he's coked up weekly at least.

I was 16, working one of my first proper jobs at at supermarket around Christmas time. Other than watching a sort of morale-boosting video centered on the shop ethos, they hadn't really told us how to work the tills. I'm not an idiot so I figured it out—scan, take money, press button, fairly self-explanatory. But certain things, like limes or whatever, just had a code, and they're not on the till. You had to memorize it. So if you got in trouble, you could hammer the panic button under your till to call over whoever was supervising.

On my second day and a customer wanted to buy a frozen turkey, but it didn't have a barcode on it. So obviously I couldn't scan it or enter the ISBN, so I said: "I'm sorry sir, but I can't scan the turkey. Can you go and get another?" and he just kicked off and started yelling at me, "but I want this turkey!" I'm trying to explain to him that I just need another turkey to scan, all the while hammering the panic button willing my supervisor to come over, and the customer kept getting more and more irate.

He was shouting, swearing—"you must be a fucking idiot then, you don't know how to scan a turkey, just fucking give it me then"—and I just snapped. I threw the turkey at him. He looked so shocked that he just shut up completely. But what was really annoying was that my supervisor saw the exact moment I threw the turkey, since I'd been calling him in on the panic button. I mean, I didn't throw it at his face, I'm not a monster. It was more of a basketball chest pass. Anyway, after my supervisor sorted it out he asked me to come with him to his office and he said: "Well, I… I'm gonna have to fire you. You threw a turkey at a customer." Which was fair enough.

This place was the kind of bar where it would turn into a lock-in at 1AM all the time, with free drinks for everyone. The coke would come out, people would start dancing on bar tops—it didn't matter who the people were. One night it was someone's birthday and there were a lot of people in the bar, and there was an incident between one of the managers and a different bartender so we couldn't get any more free drinks.

At this point I completely blacked out because I'd been drinking quite a lot, and I woke up the next morning with more than one other person in my bed, realizing I'd left my bag at work. So I went in that day and for the whole shift the management staff and everyone were acting really weird around me, I kind of felt like I'd done something wrong but I was also quite hungover so I just thought maybe I had The Fear or something. A day after my manager took me upstairs and explained to me that I'd basically taken beers out of the fridge and put them into my bag, and then left my bag inside the pub outside his office.

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