Based on the margin of error I leave myself for clocking in, I’m almost fired every day.

I was almost fired when I worked as a parking lot attendant.

How the process worked is, the lot served a community college and there was only one way in the parking lot. It was a flat rate, so the customer would pay the 2 bucks (or whatever it was) I would hand them a sequentially numbered ticket that they would put on their dash and they would park.

At the end of the shift I would fill out a deposit slip that had a entry for what ticket number I started with and what ticket number I ended with and I put all the cash and that slip in a plastic bag that would seal up and I would deposit it in the bank. Typically the daily deposit amount would be around 350 bucks.

Well one day the boss calls me and says that they can’t find a deposit and I have to come in and explain why. I went in and told them that I made the deposit at the end of yesterday’s shift.

I get suspended.

About a week later the boss calls me and says the bank found the deposit and my suspension is over. I had already found another job so I just told him that I am resigning.

What to know the really fucking up part? Every now and then a driver would give me back the ticket as they left the parking lot. I would just throw it in the trash. Well one day a driver handed me his ticket as he was leaving, and another driver was coming in so, I just reused the ticket.

You see what is coming, don’t you? I started making a point of reusing tickets and keeping the two bucks. I would STEAL the money. I would steal odd amounts, 16 bucks one day, 22 bucks the next day.

I figure I must have stolen at least 1000 bucks from that place when it was all said and done.

Probably lots of times that I wasn’t aware of.

Once I got a disciplinary and six month “probation” for taking a day off that hadn’t been approved. I’m not sure what I expected to happen, but I did it anyway because the a-hole who denied it took such pleasure in the denial that I absolutely had to take the day off anyway just to spite him. Frankly, he’s lucky he was 1) bigger than me and 2) I’m not predisposed to violence. That smirk was an open invitation.

There was also the time I remember the boss of the company I was working for at the time coming into the room I was working in, standing there for a bit and then walking out. I’d thought it was weird at the time, but later heard that he’d been planning to fire me but saw me hard at work and chickened out. He later made me redundant, which I don’t think was a surprise to anyone but me. He’s a millionaire running a large US company now. Funny to think about really.

Sometimes you think you’re introspective until you realise there’s a whole bunch of things you’ve totally been missing or not facing. In my case, mental health. Looking back at the way I worked in all the jobs I had before I had to quit, I can see what I was doing in order to continue to function totally rubbed people the wrong way, even when it wasn’t the overt, angry nonsense I started doing towards the end.

Almost fired? Twice (sort of). Most recently (about seven years ago) the school I worked at as a chaplain hired a new head of school who told me at my first meeting that he had lawyers look at my contract. It was complicated, but I was actually employed by a parish (Iʻm an Episcopal priest) that shared the schoolʻs chapel, contracted to serve as chaplain to the school. New guy basically wanted to clean house and also didnʻt like that he had someone as senior administration that he couldnʻt fire. I wound up being called to a parish in Hawaiʻi not too long after, so it didnʻt really matter.

My other close call came just out of high school. I had been working at a pet store for about two years and helped two classmates get jobs. Turned out they began running a multi-store scam involving stealing from one store, getting a receipt printed for their items at a second store, and then returning those items to a third store for cash. Managment thought I was in on it because I had got them jobs (and had a habit in those days of hanging out with criminals though never really committing crimes myself). I was able to convince management that I had no idea what they were doing.

Oh, wait. There was the other time, when working at EB Games, that I accidentally forgot to ring up a guyʻs Voodoo video card. Basically my remorse and my yearslong friendship with the staff saved my ass that day.

I was actually fired from being an RA in college, but thatʻs a whole other story…

Kinda. There was this guy who was somehow related to the owner of the company. He got a new laptop, and wanted me to install some stuff on it.

At the time, one tech always had to be in the call queue, and that tech was me. I told him, “hey. I’m stuck in queue and I’m on a call. You can either bring me your laptop so I can install it when I’m done, you can wait until I can get out of queue, or you can put in a ticket and maybe someone can remote in and take care of it.”

He went and told my boss’s boss that I wouldn’t install his shit unless he put in a ticket (a thing we were explicitly not allowed to say).

Grand boss calls me in, let’s dude tell his side of the story, then asks if it was true. My vision goes red for the first time since middle school, and I said, “absolutely not,” and recounted what actually happened. He says, thank you, you’re dismissed.

I go outside and smoke half a pack of cigarettes before my boss’s boss comes outside and says, “thanks, man. I was looking for rope to hang that asshole with. You’re good.”

I got fired from my first job. It started at 4am, and I’m a heavy sleeper, I came in too late too many times. But I was also the best at it, and I was unfired by the end of the day.

They had to cut down the company from 15 to 8 employees due to a big client leaving.
I was one of those seven that needed to go. But one of those that got to stay had a year long sabbatical planned and decided to take it earlier. This allowed me to stay, but I only got to hear this about a week or two before I had to go.

I already had some second job interviews planned and attended these anyway for fun. I wasn’t rude, but definitely a lot more casual than your usual applicant :)

I had many situations where bosses were mad at me. Seriously furious sometimes.

But usually they weren’t right, and I never felt real danger of getting fired.

No, I just got regular fired.

I worked in a restaurant. I spat in the trashcan in the kitchen right by the food line. I bummed cigarettes from customers. I also worked my ass off, working doubles or picking up shifts, because combination of 0 money and just my general nature. I practically knocked down a waitress one time just because I was sort of rushing around not looking where I was going. I stole food sometimes. I was a menace. I frequently called out. I was the only white guy who would work busing or dish room without whining about it, and also I would genuinely try to do a good job. The managers were sort of evenly divided with most slightly in favor of me and some with intense bad feelings about me, but in general I was perpetually semi-close to getting fired. Eventually, I quit because too dysfunctional and was moving to another city, and was too generally disorganized to even pick up my last check for some reason.

I also hated waiting tables because of dealing with customers, and would try to avoid it in favor of even other less valued positions when I could afford to.

Does that count?

I’m an all or nothing kind of guy.