Are you fed up at work? Can’t quite summon up the courage to hand your notice in? Why not try and get yourself fired? It’s surprisingly more difficult than you might think….
With the ever-increasing employment legislation protecting the rights of workers in the UK, employees are better protected than ever before. Whilst most employees are grateful for this, for those people who want to get sacked, it’s a veritable nightmare. With layers of disciplinary stages ranging from verbal warnings to written warnings and suspension to rafts of employment legislation, it actually takes surprising skill to get yourself sacked. So, if you want to get out of the door quickly without serving your notice or going through a heap of tribunals, below we look at some ways to get yourself instantly dismissed…
1. The classic ‘hand in the till’
The all-time favourite and most efficient way of getting sacked is the traditional stealing of company property. It’s a time-served, no questions asked of finding yourself immediately unemployed. There are several ways to do it depending upon where you work. Stealing a bit of office paper or post it notes isn’t going to cut it, so it needs to be something a bit bigger. Try wheeling out the company flat screen TV or driving off with the Chief Executive’s Mercedes Benz. A word of caution though: It might be the quickest way of ensuring you putting your feet up at home, but it’s also the quickest way to find yourself banged up with a criminal record. Proceed with caution!
2. Hit your boss
You’d think that punching your boss on the nose would result in instant dismissal. But, surprisingly, in this day and age it isn’t. Whilst you may find yourself escorted off the premises, you would still have to go through a hearing, and some companies might even offer you anger management counselling and rehabilitation.
The danger with this attempt at getting sacked is that you can seriously put yourself at risk of a criminal record, thus hampering your chances of another job. The other danger is, of course, that your boss is harder than you and hits you back. Harder.
3. Offend everyone
Harassing your colleagues and generally being offensive is a pretty efficient method of getting the sack. But you’re going to have to put the work in if you want to be gone pretty sharpish. Being horrible to colleagues can be classed as bullying, and you’d think that would be frowned upon. But in these litigious days we live in, many companies may even look sympathetically on you, and put it down to you being under too much pressure, and offer you counselling and reduce your workload. Not good if you want to be gone quickly. Best way is to use email. Inappropriate emails, sharing pornographic pictures and just generally offensive emails leave a nice electronic audit trail for bosses to assess and make a bold decision to sack you.
4. Be rubbish
Surprisingly, it is really difficult to get sacked for being rubbish. Even the most blindingly incompetent individual will be given chance after chance to improve, as companies dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ to ensure they’re not sued for unfair dismissal. It is possible, but it is a slow method unless you’re in a company who are loath to spend time and money on underperforming employees. It’s been known that rather than sack someone, companies like this have made a generous cash offer to prompt someone into resigning. Something to think about!
5. Watch porn in the office
Even watching porn in the office isn’t guaranteed to get you your marching orders. Tribunals have ruled that viewing Internet porn whilst at work doesn’t necessarily amount to gross misconduct. This wasn’t always the case, especially in the early days of the Internet, with Orange, Jaguar and the Department of Health dismissing a large number of people for this very offence. However, these days, if you really want to be sacked for watching porn at work, you’re going to have to (ahem) be a bit more actively involved in it. That is definitely going to get you your marching orders. A bit difficult to explain to your wife or girlfriend though!
6. Set up your own rival business… during work time
This takes some balls, but it is a pretty good way of getting dismissed. Simply stop doing any work that you are actually paid to do and start working on your own rival business. Starting your own business and get paid for it! Simply preparing to start your own company won’t be enough to warrant instant dismissal though; you’re going to need to start trading first. You can then safely assume you’ll be clearing your desk imminently.
7. The best way?
All companies are different, and have different views upon what they class as gross misconduct. So, what’s the best way to get fired? Well, most companies have some form of staff handbook in which they will outline their disciplinary procedures, and what they consider to be gross misconduct. If you want to be fired, this is basically a ‘how-to’ guide. So simply find out what they classes as gross misconduct and do it!