People Are Sharing The Exact Moment They Realized They Were Going To Get Fired, And Oh My God, It's Worse Than You Think

I recently asked the BuzzFeed Community , what was the moment you knew you were going to get fired? These responses didn't disappoint.

1. "I was hired at a for-profit college. I knew the place was shady, but I really needed work [and] the economy and unemployment were bad at the time. Within the first few months, I was given a written warning that was not about me."

2. "My crazy, [micromanaging], insane boss put me on a performance improvement plan for one thing I ever did wrong in five years. Lol."

— willowred

3. "I was the HR Manager for a small company. The owner of the company demanded I get written up for everything."

4. "I worked in a small retail store and we always had two people. I was [the store's] manager and was coming up on a year so I asked for a raise. Two days later, a new girl was hired and I was told to train her."

NBC / Via giphy.com

"I was suspicious because the store never had more than two employees, but I trained her anyway. One day I was working and the new girl came in without warning. I asked what she was doing, [and] she said, 'Oh the boss asked me to come in last minute for some reason,' and I instantly knew I was fired.

"I had my key off the ring before the boss got there. He pulled me aside and fired me for 'taking off too much time for Christmas' even though I had written proof that the time off was approved. This also happened in April 🤦🏼‍♀️ so I was fired basically for asking for a raise, lol."

— savannahm495a68290

5. "I was 16. It was my first job, lasted less than a week. I was a cashier at a small grocery store in town, where you had to actually press in the amount of each item on the cash register. One day a friend of mine came in and had a bunch of items."

6. "[I knew I was getting fired] when they put me on a nearly impossible PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) after I went to HR for treatment by my boss."

"The PIP had things that were nearly impossible to do in a reasonable amount of time — think making a comprehensive and detailed training program by Friday, and it was Wednesday. We all know it's illegal to retaliate after an employee makes a complaint to HR for a supervisor. So instead they legally do it by firing you after not meeting their expectations."

— necoboliver

"Pretty much all PIPs are impossible by design. I always tell people that if you get put on a PIP, don’t bother, just start looking."

— kebneter

7. "I had been working as a supervisor for over two years. [I] got along with my staff, we laughed and joked but the work got done. I knew it was the end when I got written up for wearing pink on Wednesdays. Yes, I'm a millennial who loves Mean Girls. "

8. "I [a 25-year-old woman] got fired for the first time in my life this past June out of the blue, with no prior transgressions, and for a bullshit excuse of a reason."

"I had a terrible feeling and crazy anxiety all day long because my entire team was radio silent… but I didn’t know for sure until, at 3:07 p.m., my bank notified me I’d received my paycheck early. I checked the deposit on Intuition, and it was $300 less than usual. At 3:10 p.m., a meeting with the HR director was put on my calendar for 3:30. They decided ahead of time that nothing I had to say mattered, but hey, at least they gave me a warning, albeit unintentionally. 🤷🏻‍♀️"

— thisismyidea

9. "I had just been put on long-term disability due to mental health problems. I missed a call from my HR manager the next day. The voicemail she left was simply her saying, 'Please call me back when you can,' In the most neutral tone possible. I knew in that moment I was fired."

NBC

"Sure enough, I called back and she told me the company decided they didn’t want to have to pay for my health insurance anymore and I was being let go.

"I lost my insurance and my treatments and doctor visits all had to go on hold until I could get insurance through the state. The whole thing set me back on my healing journey by ages.

"I think my favorite part of the whole call was when I referred to their decision as something they 'had' to do, she corrected me and emphasized it was something they had 'chosen' to do."

—Anonymous

10. "I was a PA (producer's assistant) for a production company. When I arrived for work [one day], the staff of a small magazine from the office facing the production company's office said their morning greetings and immediately busied themselves with work instead of chatting as usual. The air was thick with tension. I assumed editorial and sales teams had a fight."

11. "I worked at a certain well-known burger joint and was in charge of inventory and bulk ingredient orders. It was done on a screen and let’s just say my fat thumbs added a couple more zeroes to the totals than my boss would have liked. One terribly large shipment later, I confessed and was out. Now my big thumbs are working as ASL translators and I couldn’t be happier with my current place."

12. "When I was 20 I was working at the front desk of a high-end hotel ([I'd] started out in low-end and worked my way up). But I was having a rough time getting the hang of all their ways. For some reason, the general manager hated me and was using any reason she could to get me written up so that once I got three write-ups I'd be fired."

13. "I knew I was going to get fired when I was pulled into HR to 'talk about my modeling.' Apparently posing nude is not 'in line with company values.'"

— kimberlyy403bcd84b

14. "I got hired as an [administrator], and during my first week the other admins were joking around about how one VP just loves firing people, and would always start the process by telling the employee, 'This is not going to be a conversation you’ll enjoy' — but you know HE will."

The CW

"The first week there, my kid got sick and my best friend had a baby (I was her birth coach) so I had to take PTO. Week two I came in early on Monday to catch up. The VP approaches me and introduces himself, then asks me to step into a conference room with him. He started out by saying 'This is not going to be a conversation you’ll enjoy.'

"It was a blessing. Very soon after that, I landed a job where the VPs weren’t jerks and the work-life balance was much better."

— mixhelle

15. "Early in my career, I was struggling with really poorly managed mental health issues that I did not feel comfortable disclosing to my supervisors. I made a lot of minor mistakes and two major ones: I was late to an important client meeting that I just put in my calendar for the wrong time, and I inadvertently disclosed confidential client information to a different client."

"The latter was when I knew I was going to get fired. I was already looking for other jobs by then because I was miserable where I worked, but that didn’t make it any easier."

—Anonymous

16. "HR flew in to visit our office and met with each staff person individually. The main question was if I had done anything in the past six months they didn’t like. At the end of the day, they met with me to say that morale was low, it was my fault, and I needed to fix it. That was the end of the meeting; the next week I was written up. I was fired soon after that."

Apple TV

—Anonymous

17. "I worked in sales for a large financial services company. I'd been there for five years and through the luck of the draw, one of the clients assigned to me was the second-largest client of my company. I spent the first five years babysitting said customer while they grew, which resulted in my revenue growing."

18. "[I knew I was getting fired] the moment my boss told me that eval meetings can be 'hard to navigate,' so I could 'bring a union rep if I wanted to.'"

NBC

—Anonymous

19. "My boss gave me 20 minutes to zone 60 aisles, basically just pulling every item up to make the shelves look full. When I didn’t complete them all, she told me I needed to be quicker. She kept doing this every shift, an outrageous number of aisles to zone in a small period of time, and I just knew. After almost two weeks of shifts like this, she then fired me and said I just wasn’t quick enough. Retail is fun."

—Anonymous

20. "I had been hired to get a new and very, very small team (I was the sixth hire) to get their social media and marketing up and going. Which I did, including growing their numbers across three platforms and getting one of their investments placed in a national news story. The people in charge had this strange ask/requirement/obsession: they wanted every single post to go viral, AND they wanted press conferences for every investment."

21. "The company I had worked for for nearly 20 years had recently been acquired by a rival. I should have known something was up when it was time for performance reviews and I hadn't gotten my self-eval notification. I should have paid more attention when I received a meeting invite as I was logging off for the day with a vague subject from the CFO."

"But it wasn't until the next morning when a colleague of mine called me up to let me know a ton of people in our office — managers, directors, and a couple VPs (I was just an analyst) — were getting laid off the morning I'd decided to work from home. Everyone who had been let go got the same meeting invite with just the CFO and some woman from HR."

—Anonymous

22. "I’ll start by saying I’m afraid of heights. I worked two terrifying days for a guy who did exterior window trim. He had me 30 feet off the ground on a two-foot ledge, no fall protection, holding on to a large piece of sheet metal in gusting winds."

23. "I was employed in a publicly held company, and our industry was experiencing a downturn related to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Every quarter, we missed our revenue goals, and every quarter, there were layoffs to calm stockholder worries. I was named in the fifth round of layoffs. One Friday morning, I was going up a staircase, and my supervisor was coming down. He said, 'I have some shitty news for you...'"

24. "I was called to the owner's office, which wasn't all that odd, but when I walked in my boss and the VP of finance were both sitting there, I knew."

—Anonymous

25. "I was caught by my boss doing it with one of my coworkers and we were both fired."

ABC

—Anonymous

26. "I had booked three days off (well in advance) for some home repairs. Upon my return, I started work at 8:30 a.m. At 9:17, I received a chat message from my boss asking if I had seen their meeting request. I quickly checked my email and the message read, 'HR and I would like to meet with you at 9:30.' I replied something along the lines of, 'Uh-oh, this doesn’t sound good.'"

27. And finally: "I was a night proofreader at a big NYC law firm, my first job after college. The firm's second floor was deserted. I sometimes smoked weed there with a work pal, but it stunk the place up, so one night we went out to the stairwell to smoke a doobie. It was the 27th floor of a Wall Street high-rise. High as kites, we tried to re-enter. The door was locked."

Fox / Via giphy.com

"We walked down to floor 26 where I worked. Nope — locked. We kept descending, trying the door at each level. All were locked. We were wrecked, laughing our asses off. A big adventure.

"At lobby level, the door wasn't locked! But standing there was a security guard with a revolver in his hand. Instant terror. Turns out we tripped 26 alarms on the way down.

"Luckily, he recognized us. Instead of calling the cops, he called our boss. She said, 'Send these idiots back up to 26.' We were freaking out and stinking of weed. The look on her face when the elevator doors opened was terrifying. I waited for the inevitable 'You're fired' — but it didn't happen. She said, 'I would love to fire you, but we have too much work. Don't give me another reason.' Many years later I'm still embarrassed."

—Anonymous