Has anyone ever tried to get fired from their job?

[daveblackeye15]

I think there was a topic like this once but I'll ask anyway. I was just watching Office Space yesterday and for anyone who hasn't seen it, it has a character that is sick of his job and eventually he says he doesn't care anymore (how he stops caring I don't feel like explaining) and he wants to see how long it takes for him to get fired. I've only done some volounter work, I haven't been employed to do any job yet but I have to ask if there's anybody on this board that got SO sick of their job and figured that the risk of being unemployed would be better than spending another week that they just tried to get fired.

Since I've never been employed (yet) I guess I'll just say what I'd do if I did have a job that I hated. 1) If the boss talked like the boss from Office Space (example:Yeaaah, hi, listennn ,ummm, we're gonna need you to come in on...uh..saturday, at uhh..let's say 8:30, M'kay? Yeahhh that'd be great) If my boss always talked like that I'd always talk like that back at him (Yeahh,,so..uh...yeah you want me to come in on...uh..uh...Saturday at...er...8:30..yeahhh, could you go F*** yourself? M'kay that'd be greaaat.) Okay maybe I'd do it without the swearing insults but if it went completely over his head then I'd start playing video games and if my boss would come over ask to talk to me I'd say "Sorry sir I'm too busy now. I'm fighting the Zek-tole Death King on the final level and my White Mage is dead while my Fighter is petrifed". Or I'd start danceing in the hallways/ crawling on the floor/sliding on the floor for several hours while looking at the floor. If anybody asked me what I was doing I'd say  "I'm looking for a contact lens". And last but not least: If my boss was hairy I'd put up a picture of him with a caption that said "Please donate to the shave *Bosses Name Here* Foundation. Actually my brother wanted to do that just as a joke but one of his friends convinced him not to.

So I'm asking 1) has anybody tried to get fired from their job on purpose? 2)What would you do if you wanted to?



Post Edited (06-16-04 02:14)

[Conrad]

Never tried it deliberately, but my falling asleep in front of the manager of our 200-person company while he was giving a speech was, in retrospect, *not* a good idea!

[ulthar]

If you don't like it that much, and are willing to risk unemployment, just leave.  Why go through the machinations of 'trying to get fired'?

[AndyC]

Depending on the job, and how long you've done it, there could be a severance package involved.

I've been with the same company for over 15 years. If I were to make a career change at some point, I'd stand to benefit more from getting the boot than I would from simply resigning. Kind of ironic, when you think about it. Of course, in that situation, there would probably not be enough time to engineer something like that. There might only be a couple of weeks from getting the new job to starting it, and most companies will try to work out the problem before axing a long-time employee.

While I can understand the need for severance packages, they do sometimes baffle me. Not too long ago, a top bureaucrat in my city was one of several people who screwed up in arranging the financing for a new sports facility. It cost the city tens of millions more, and was a huge scandal. The guy's gone, but he took a few hundred thousand of the taxpayers' dollars with him.

[daveblackeye15]

ulthar:

Good question. Well, first off I'm a teenage (16) and you know how we ask dumb questions ALL the time. 2) I don't really break the rules that often and I don't want to, but I'm sure that if I got a job I hated I'd go on the WILD SIDE and try and get fired. You know, go out with a bang plus I'd try and get revenge on my evil souless boss. Acutally I think the only reason I'd try to get fire would be to GET back at my boss while if my boss was tolerable I'd just quit. Hey this was a topic thought up by a teenage's phantasy of getting revenge what'd you expect?

[George]

Get another job and quit.

If you really want to get fired, sexual harassment is an easy way to do it.  Just hit on a couple of young ladies (or gentlemen if that's your bag) and, boom, you're gone.  Further, you can drop a few "racially" or "religiously" questionable jokes.  Those tend to get you booted as well.

My ideal would be to get caught "pranking" the boss.  Time when he/she may be coming into the office.  Get into his/her office and drop your pants over his/her desk drawer.  Wait for him/her to arrive and, as he/she comes up, grunt as though it were your job to doog in the drawer.  Do not, I repeat, DO NOT actually doog because this is a crime in many states.  The capture along should get you booted.

Good luck, slacker.

[daveblackeye15]

I'm gonna add this topic to my permnatment "I've Made a Ass of Myself" folder.

George:< If you really want to get fired, sexual harassment is an easy way to do it. Just hit on a couple of young ladies (or gentlemen if that's your bag) and, boom, you're gone. Further, you can drop a few "racially" or "religiously" questionable jokes. Those tend to get you booted as well.>

Hey now, I may be a slacker but I'm not a low life sexist,racist scumbag.



Thanks, but I was hoping no one would take this seriously but we all have those topics that we wished we didn't post and this is one of mine. There needs to be a button where I delete the topic and everybody forgets about the topic. This is one of my worst.

[frannie]

not trying to get booted but i am definitely in the "work only hard enough to not get fired" phase around here

[Deej]

daveblackeye15 wrote:

> I'm gonna add this topic to my permnatment "I've Made a Ass of
> Myself" folder.

It's not a bad topic Dave. Relax......slacker. Anyways, I like my job and my bosses have always been pretty cool, so, no, I'd never try to get fired. Also, in my field, getting fired from a department is pretty much guaranteeing you'll never work again.

Kind of off topic, but when I was in the Marines, I knew a fellow MP who hated our Gunny alot, not sure why. So, everyday, as he came on shift, before Gunny got there, he'd go into Gunny's office and rub his naughty bits around the rim of Gunny's coffee cup. Every day, for at least a year. Passive/aggresive? Yeah, I guess. But, apparently it gave him some kind of validation. Everyone knew about it and as far as I know, noone ever told the Gunny.

[Eirik]

...to make people laugh and p**s off a manager you do not like.  I have done this, but when I was working a summer job during college.  Basically, my friend got me a four week job that started in mid-July that was outside and fairly easy.  I made up my mind to leave my warehouse job which was indoors, hot, dusty and the boss was a major prick... That way, I'd finish out the summer in the inevitably better job and then go back to school.  It was a week before the new job was to start when I started screwing up all the time on purpose.  I'd send down the wrong part for an order (it was an auto parts warehouse) and he'd call up and demand the right one.  I'd send down a totally different one.  He'd call back and I'd only speak Spanish on the phone (a sore point for him since he didn't speak Spanish and half of the employees spoke ONLY Spanish).  When I came down at the end of the day (he NEVER came up because it was hot upstairs) he'd try to talk to me about my attitude and I'd get allannoyed and say "Yeah, yeah, yeah!!" and storm out.   The amazing thing was that it took him three days to finally say the magic words (that was after I told him to get bent in front of about 20 other people).  It was fun because he was such an assface and frankly because a great way to get out your anger and frustration is to transfer it to someone you don't like.  Malice is human and to never give it an outlet is unhealthy.

Now dave, I recommend that if you want to do this, do so in a s**tty summer job before you graduate because once you're out in the real world, you have to worry about your next job and any prospective employer will very likely want to talk to your old boss.  Also - only do it if your boss is a jerk.  Businesses often depend on summer help and screwing over someone who's cool is not a good thing to do.  

Office Space is one of my favorite movies.  Everyone who's worked a desk job knows a Lumberg, a Michael Bolton, and an annoying receptionist who uses a squeaky voice when answering her phone.

[Eirik]

Damn - good thing Gunny never had to explain genital warts on his lips.

[daveblackeye15]

Eirik:

I apreciate the advice but I'm not gonna make this a hobby or something. I was just aksing if you ever had a job that you hated and if you were finacial save to be unemployed for a while, did you ever try and get fired on purpose, or what would you do if you REALLY wanted to. Hell, I'd think it would be pretty stupid for me to get a job and just be p**s off just to get fired, espcially since there's a shortage of avaibable jobs at the moment. The only way I'd be a jerk off to my boss if he/she really truelly absaloutly, positvily 100 percenterly deserved it (+ I was finiacly save for the time being, + I hated my job SO SUPER MUCH) But if I need money and I have a job that I hate I'll tough it out because I need the money, plus eventually I know I'll become the next Stan Lee for comic books. MWA HA HA HA HA!

[ulthar]

the concept of this goes a little against my work ethic.  I'm not saying that I am 100% ALL the time (no one's perfect, of course), but I do try to give an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.  To slack off intentionally would only reflect poorly on my own character.

In the situation you described, who you are really hurting is the business owner, and possibly indirectly the other employees.  It may have been fun to mess with the boss, but it is likely that he is not the only one to 'pay' for such shenanigans.

As for severence packages (replying to two posts at once), that's a good point, but would they often not contain some 'willful misconduct' clause that would nullify it?  I've never understood them anyway, if someone has done something worth firing them over, they CERTAINLY don't deserve extra stuff as reward.

[Neon Noodle]

One guy at my job (inside sales) got fired recently. He was terrified to talk on the phone, terrified of rejection, etc. Now some people might swallow their pride and say to their supervisor: "This isn't the job for me, maybe I should try something else" or something like that to save a little face, you know?

What did this nimrod do?

He dialed disconnected numbers for 8 hours a day and didn't talk to a soul.

2 days later the floor supervisor found out and fired him.

I guess some people out there try extra hard to get fired and don't even know it...

[Eirik]

"In the situation you described, who you are really hurting is the business owner, and possibly indirectly the other employees. It may have been fun to mess with the boss, but it is likely that he is not the only one to 'pay' for such shenanigans."

As an adult I agree...  but as a teenager I would have told you to lighten up.  It was a s**tty summer job at a place that took advantage of cheap immigrant labor 365 a year.