So this happened before I discovered the wonders of Reddit and learned of this specific subreddit and I figured this story fits the bill so here we go. This is a lengthy one.
About 4-5 years ago after dropping out of college my mom helped me pick up an under the table job as a cook at my local bar in town. I knew the owners as I’ve been lifelong best friends with their son and they offered me a pretty sweet deal of $10 an hour paid out in cash every night I worked. Might not be great by today’s standards but at the time for a 19 year old with no bills to pay it seemed like a winning lottery ticket. If only I knew just how wrong I was about to be.
Things started great. I expected a bit of stress as that just comes in the line of food and bev work but my manager was a good guy and I got along very well with all the bartenders that worked there as well as all the regulars. Show up, make food, watch football at the bar during my downtime. Super easy stuff.
I worked there for about a year and a half and suddenly the whole mood around everything changed. Everything seemed much more hostile and toxic but I just did my best to ignore it as I wasn’t involved in it. Well one day I ended up involved in it and this is where the curveball comes in. One day I have an epiphany that I A.) Want out of my hometown and B.) didn’t want to be a bar cook for the rest of my life. At this point I felt like the manager and I were good friends so I sat down with him and informed him I was thinking about going off to the army to kinda hit the reset button on my life and do things a little differently, it was at this point his entire attitude and demeanor towards me did a 180. Over the next week he was increasingly hostile towards me and just had a bad attitude overall.
All this eventually came to a boiling point as one day I came in early before the bar opened like I normally do whenever I have to clean the fryers. I was taking my time with it as again we weren’t open so there was no rush for anything and I didn’t start getting paid until the bar opened. Manager comes to the back with a bad attitude telling me I need to “hurry the fuck up and stop slacking” to which I responded with that the job would be done before opening and to relax. Cut to bar opening about three hours into the shift he comes back there and tells me to take my pay and go home because he “won’t be disrespected in such a manner” I shrug it off and walk out. As I’m driving home he texts me and tells me not to worry about coming back into work anymore and that was that.
I left for the army a few months later, served my time, met my now soon to be wife, picked up a nice easy job that pays the bills, and am about to enroll back into college. As for the bar and my old manager the last thing I heard while I was still in the service was that the bar had gone completely belly up and shutdown due to poor ownership and management.
TL;DR: Got fired with no warning mid shift for “disrespect”. Got my life back on track while the people who fired me lost their business