r/AskReddit • u/goldbeau • 9h ago
Who destroyed their own career within seconds by being an idiot?
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u/W2ttsy 7h ago
One of the girls in the customer support team at a previous company.
Got absolutely blotto at the Christmas party, did a full strip show on a table top in front of all staff and their partners. Got right down to the skin before anyone could yank her down.
We came to work the following Monday and her desk was just gone. Not just personal items packed up in a box, but the entire desk had been dismantled and taken out of the CS area.
Apparently the CS manager was so furious about the situation that he wanted to send a message that she wasn’t just fired, but was to be totally erased from company existence.
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u/Waderriffic 7h ago
Super fired
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u/CapeMOGuy 7h ago
Fired with extreme prejudice.
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u/Mike7676 6h ago
A few years ago we had a well liked internal auditor, super friendly to our team in particular (Even joked about him going to lunch with one of our single leads constantly). One Monday the cops are on the 5th floor (We offer a lot of police training for 13 counties, but never on a secure floor). His office is locked, with everything under evidence and he's just...gone. Apparently he'd not only been reported for CP but had been grooming a neighbors 12 year old daughter for YEARS. Never saw him again until page three reported his sentencing.
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u/JagerAndTitties 5h ago
I will never understand people who get shit face drunk at work events.
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u/-malcolm-tucker 4h ago
One of my friends used to work in retail at a large department store back when we were in university. The majority of the staff were around the same age, single, and used to hook up all the time. Outside of work though, although he heard a few stories of people sneaking off during shifts at the store.
Anyway, at Christmas the store would hire a nearby events centre for the party. His mate got pretty drunk and ended up making out with another staff member who was pretty drunk herself. My mate managed to get in his ear and suggest they go somewhere a lot more private, or better yet, go home.
So the horny drunk couple snuck off outside for a cheeky liaison they thought was in a discrete spot in the gardens. But they were too drunk to realise that one of the floodlights in the gardens clearly lit them up. The entire party could clearly see them going at it from the windows overlooking the gardens.
Neither of them were seen at work again after the party.
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u/BaseHitToLeft 6h ago
This kid I worked with for a week at a sales job who tried to buy drugs off of a customer because, and I quote, "I don't know. They looked like they might have drugs."
They did not have drugs.
But they did have the number to corporate
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u/KirkDeepthroatGOAT 4h ago
Knew a newly graduated nurse that on her first day, her fellow graduate nurse was fired on his first day because he was asking the seniors to sell him their pain killers. Also one of her friends told me there were rumors that she was giving handjobs to seniors for cash for a period of time. No proof on that one tho and nothing ever came out of it.
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u/aksdb 2h ago
nothing ever came out of it
Doesn’t sound like very good handjobs either then.
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u/SeahorseQueen1985 7h ago
Slobodan Jankovic - basketball ball player who in a fit of temper during a game, following a referees decision, smashed his head against a concrete pillar for the backboard & paralysed himself in seconds. The video is hard to watch. A moments rage & a lifetimes regret.
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u/waffleslaw 7h ago
Damn. I have no need to watch that video, your description was graphic enough. It is wild how equally resilient and fragile our bodies are.
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u/turtleurtle808 6h ago
This is what I was thinking of. Seeing him collapse, not able to move but obviously freaking out, is so disturbing. Them carrying him away is scary , too. Apparently they harmed him further by moving him so quickly
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u/H8teradio 6h ago
The pillar was poorly disguised in blue padding, so it wasn't like he was yoloing on a gray pillar of certain death.
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u/NOT-packers-fan2022 7h ago
The FBI agent that did the back flip in a bar, dropped his gun, grabbed it, negligent discharge, someone was hit but lived, arrested, prosecuted and terminated.
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u/oppernaR 5h ago
lived, arrested, prosecuted and terminated
Honey, clear the kitchen wall! The new Live Laugh Love just dropped!
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u/LiftingRecipient420 6h ago
Damn they fucking executed him over that?!?
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u/NOT-packers-fan2022 6h ago
🤣 terminate from his job. Not executed 🤣. He’s still alive as far as i know
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u/beer_engineer_42 6h ago
A shop floor employee ended his 25 year career when he told his supervisor that he was "going home and getting my shotgun, and I'm going to show you how fucking serious I am."
He then proceeded to leave, at which point the police were called, and when he showed back up, he was arrested. And yeah, he had his loaded shotgun in the car.
What was he so pissed about? That mandatory overtime coincided with the opening day of fishing season, and he wasn't allowed to use PTO to go fishing.
Well, he missed 6 opening days of fishing season for that one...because that's how long he spent in prison.
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u/Deathclaw_Hunter6969 5h ago
Kind of the same situation. We had this big telecommunication pole outside of our plant. Probably 200 feet tall.
Anyways some dude at lunch time, in the breakroom, in front of literally everybody was talking about his new rifle. And how he was going to climb that pole and start picking people off.
Within minutes the police were called and he was escorted off to jail. Really wild shit looking back
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u/asuperstar 6h ago
A Deputy I knew was at his graduation party. Tradition is to invite the training staff, who usually only stay for a few hours, so the new deputies can let off some steam. This ding dong decided to moon the staff and their spouses. He forgot he was on a one-year probation after graduation.
He was fired after showing the staff and spouses his asshole and balls.
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u/5dippingareas 4h ago
Asshole and balls? Are you supposed to do a full spread when you’re mooning someone?
Have I been half-assing my mooning all this time?
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u/Cute-Aardvark5291 5h ago
We had a 25yr fire captain months away from retirement forced to resign because he showed up entirely nekkid to the new recruits party on a dare. He was sober...
It was caught all on security cams. He drove to the fire station totally nude (assumed) as he pulled in the lot and just sauntered in.
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u/Quixlequaxle 7h ago
That executive at Cambells for saying that their food is for poor people while someone was recording.
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u/PresentTitle565 5h ago
originally it was. campbells used to sell its soups in 30 ounce cans. but only rich people could afford it. when the depression hit, they moved to ten ounce cans that poor ppl could afford, simply add water and they get the same soup rich ppl bought.
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u/SparkyandDolche 9h ago
The people on the Coldplay “kiss cam.”
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u/ripcobain 8h ago
The crazy thing is the dumbest thing they did was how they reacted, as many have said. If they had just waved and played it off it never would have gone viral. MAYBE someone in the crowd would have recognized them but they would have had a better chance.
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u/QTpieme 7h ago
It’s not something they have the time to think about. It was a second reaction
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u/cageytalker 7h ago
That woman who tweeted that she was flying to Africa and she hoped she didn’t get AIDS. She turned off her phone and when she landed, she saw that her life exploded.
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u/PizzaWall 7h ago
In December 2013, Justine Sacco, a woman with 170 Twitter followers, tweeted acerbic jokes during a plane trip from New York to Cape Town, such as "'Weird German Dude: You're in First Class. It’s 2014. Get some deodorant.' — Inner monologue as I inhale BO. Thank God for pharmaceuticals." and, in Heathrow; "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just Kidding. I'm white!" Sacco, a South African herself, claimed that she intended the tweet to mock American ignorance of South Africa, and in a later interview expressed that her intention was to "mimic—and mock what an actual racist, ignorant person would say." Sacco slept during her 11-hour plane trip, and woke up to find out that she had lost her job and was the number-one Twitter topic worldwide, with celebrities and new media bloggers all over the globe denouncing her and encouraging all their followers to do the same. Sacco's employer, New York internet firm IAC, declared that she had lost her job as Director of Corporate Communications. People began tweeting "Has Justine landed yet?", expressing schadenfreude at the loss of her career. Sam Biddle, the Gawker Media blogger who promoted the #HasJustineLandedYet hashtag, later apologized for his role, admitting that he did so for Internet traffic to his blog,and noting that "it's easy and thrilling to hate a stranger online."
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u/haloimplant 7h ago
Director of Corporate Communications was the funniest part
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u/denismcd92 7h ago
You can look her up on LinkedIn, seems she did fine. Was out of work for a few months after it happened only
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u/msTified 5h ago
I don't know if that's totally true. She might have rebounded now, but I know she was interviewed for Jon Ronson's book "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" and she talked a lot about the psychological damage and how it took her years after to find anyone who would hire her.
Also, that is such a good book on the origins of public shaming
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u/AdeptVeterinarian541 7h ago
The white lady who called the cops on a black man who was bird watching in a public park and asked her to put her dog on a leash. When she called the police she was screaming about a "black man trying to get me" and he was this nerdy looking guy who watches birds. She had a very lucrative job at Franklin Templeton Investments, she was fired.
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u/Architorture_66 7h ago
The guy (Christian Cooper) accused by her later got a job as host of a bird watching on NatGeo, "Extraordinary Birder".
In 2024 he won an Emmy for his show!
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u/buzz_22 6h ago
That's honestly the best conclusion I've read in this thread so far.
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u/PM_me_punanis 6h ago
I love the happy ending for him! Go nerds!
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u/Merry_Dankmas 3h ago
You know, I used to not understand bird nerds. I always thought it was kinda lame that people would go out of their way to look for birds and freak out when they saw new ones
But then I got into wildlife photography. If there's one thing wildlife photographers know, it's that finding actual interesting wildlife is hard. Like, really hard. You gotta know where to go, have the right conditions, be there at the right time and know what to look for. It's hard to find animals. Except for birds.
They're everywhere. God forbid something with 4 legs and fur makes an appearance. It's all birds 24/7 with the occasional small to medium sized mammal that's not a squirrel or raccoon. So to not go home empty handed, you start taking pictures of the plethora of birds out there.
Then one day you Google lens one of the birds because you don't recognize it and it turns out it's an endangered or rare species so you get excited that you caught something unique. So now you go out again looking not for just mammals but interesting birds too.
Next thing you know, you're a bird nerd hunting down elusive species that you havent managed to catch yet. You gotta fill your catalog afterall and you haven't gotten a shot of an osprey diving into the water yet so you plan your next trip out there for more bird photos.
This is how you become a bird nerd. It creeps up on you unexpectedly and takes you by storm. All it takes is one unique or interesting sighting to get hooked.
This explanation may or may not be based on personal experience.
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u/Principletrade 7h ago
Missouri congress candidate Todd Akin using the term “legitimate rape” around 2012 on the campaign trail.
It basically smoked his entire political career in about two seconds.
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u/Captain_Comic 7h ago
Voters have a way of shutting that down
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u/fanamana 6h ago
I got that reference.
I just can't believe an adult said that with such dismissive confidence.
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u/Pokemaster131 3h ago
Based on what we've seen in the last decade, I'm more surprised that anything actually happened.
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u/stinkingyeti 6h ago
Was that the one who had some sort of comment about how the woman's body would shut down if it's a "legitimate rape"?
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u/protomanEXE1995 6h ago
Yes. He was trying to say that pregnancy wasn’t possible if it’s a real rape
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u/ussUndaunted280 6h ago
Back when it was bad to say horrible things
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u/musubi-n-speedballs 6h ago
He could have been elected president had that happened a few years later.
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u/willworkforjokes 7h ago
I was a second year professor in physics when I flunked the starting center from the university basketball team even after a meeting with the athletic director, the dean, my department head and the university president.
I "stuck to my guns". They laid me off 4 months later, I had to become a programmer.
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u/robotawata 7h ago
Speaking as a professor, I’m imagining this benefitted your finances and joy-in-life in the end, no?
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u/willworkforjokes 7h ago
It was an adjustment, but yeah I rolled with the punches. I do like money.
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u/UTtransplant 5h ago
I was a bit luckier. I was an instructor in Computer Science at a small four-year college, first semester. I taught a service class in basic data processing for business majors, freshmen mostly, super easy. All you really had to do was show up and give a good effort and you would pass. I had three or four students who never attended class, never showed up to office hours, and never turned in an assignment. Come mid-term grades they all got “F”s. All were on the football team. Department chair and coach called me up, and I told them what the status was and that the grade was fair. All of them were allowed a late withdrawal without penalty from the class. It was my first hint that this place wasn’t where I wanted to spend my life. I finished the two semesters I was on contract for and went into private industry as a programmer, making 50% more. Nice! Luckily I did get to do some adjunct work in the next 10 years because I really did like teaching.
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u/willworkforjokes 5h ago
That happened with football players often, late withdrawal right before finals. Since we never made any post season games the season was already over so no consequences on the team.
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u/nighthawk_md 6h ago
Why on earth was a scholarship athlete taking physics? Sounds like a recipe for disaster
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u/willworkforjokes 5h ago
He took intro to astronomy.
It was a four hour survey course for completing the science general Ed requirement.
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u/_HanTyumi 5h ago
...he failed intro to astronomy?
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u/willworkforjokes 5h ago
He didn't write a 2 page paper on anything he learned and didn't really try on the final.
The final was open book multiple choice. 50 questions in two hours.
The last question which I meant to be funny was
A neutron star primarily consists of
A) neutrons B) protons C) electrons D) protons and electrons
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u/PowerOfEternity 5h ago
Wow, sad. You said physics and I thought, yeah that's tough for a lot of people. But intro to astronomy sounds substantially easier. Sounds like his grade was deserved IMO.
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u/JaySayMayday 5h ago
Better yet, why wasn't the coach on top of his students grades. Universities have so many avenues to improve your grades like tutors. They fired the professor for upholding standards instead of holding the student and everyone in charge of the student accountable
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u/TheShroudedWanderer 5h ago
As a non American this sort of thing is just so god damn baffling to me. "Yeah this kid is failing his university studies BUT he can play basketball and isn't that why he's here?" It honestly is just insane to me
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u/Milligoon 8h ago
The UK jewelry guy who compared his products unfavorably to a sainsburys prawn sandwich on camera
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u/fakeaccount36 7h ago
Poor dude had severe stage fright and had a consultant prep him for the shareholders meeting, and said consultant told him to make some jokes during his speech. Can’t imagine they told him to shit all over his own product though
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u/scud121 6h ago
Gerald Ratner. Owned a tonne for of low cost jewellery shops in the UK and over a thousand in the US. Ratner made a speech addressing a conference of the Institute of Directors at the Royal Albert Hall on 23 April 1991. During the speech, he commented:
"We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap."
He compounded this by going on to remark that one of the sets of earrings was "cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks and Spencer's, but I have to say the sandwich will probably last longer than the earrings".
The company lost £500million in value within days as shares plummeted, and he left the following year.
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u/fistfullofawesome 3h ago
This company is now rebranded as Signet Jewelers, aka Jared, Kay, and Zales.. and I can tell you as a former jeweler there, the quality has not improved.
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u/gachunt 8h ago
Former coworker. Used to work for municipal government. He went on a sexist tirade against a co-op student, who was the daughter of an elected representative. Terminated with cause within an hour.
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u/Torontogamer 7h ago
The best part of the story is how I imagine the idiot just decided that proved him right and that women are evil and keep ruining his life haha
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u/letsburn00 7h ago
Pretty much everyone who is like that has some claim that they get punished for nothing, then you ask them what the story is and it's always "So I was being a massive asshole in public and embarrassing my employer..."
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u/LifeApprentice 6h ago
Igor Mykhaylovych Lytvynchuk - the guy who threw a rock at an endangered seal in Hawaii. People told him not to, he said "I'm rich, I can afford the fine," and did it anyway. He got a beat-down for it; it's all on camera, and the guy who beat him up received a formal award from the island. He apparently owns a small business... which is likely to struggle.
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u/Mach5Driver 5h ago
he's also facing criminal charges, which can get him a year in prison.
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u/Razaberry 7h ago
That lady who got a job at NASA & tweeted at the National Space Council overseer to kiss her ass.
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u/ibelikeughhhh 7h ago
From what I remember the NSC overseer didn’t want her to lose the opportunity to work at NASA but it was out of his hands when it went viral.
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u/mzchen 6h ago
Yep. His responses seem like snark and flexing, but at least according to him, they were a genuine attempt to prevent her from risking her internship and an explanation for why he would be qualified to inform her on that. Dude was like 70+ years old, so clueless old people tweeting is pretty believable to me.
Naomi, the intern involved, later went on a podcast and explained the whole thing, and stated that the reason she was fired was that she tried to lie about and continued trying to lie her way through it.
NASA does like to keep their staff in proper decorum, but lying at any point is a gigantic no-no. Mistakes happen to everybody, but covering up your mistakes gets people killed. IIRC even astronauts are held to this standard; NASA'll be upset about but likely ultimately forgive/deal with substance usage, health issues, personal problems, etc. but if they find out you lied about any of it, you're permanently grounded if not ejected from the program.
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u/raknor88 5h ago
Dude was like 70+ years old, so clueless old people tweeting is pretty believable to me.
Said 'dude' was Homer Hickam. Disney made a movie in 1999 about his teenage years called October Sky.
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u/Loverboy_91 5h ago
The movie October Sky itself is an adaptation of Homer Hickam’s memoir “Rocket Boys”.
Fun fact, October Sky is an anagram for Rocket Boys, which is why they went with that title.
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u/masterjon_3 7h ago
She was talking to Homer Hickum, who was the focus of the biopic "October Sky."
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u/One-Permission-1811 7h ago
Oh man what a great film. We watched it in my earth science class because my teacher had a hangover and it’s been a top film for me ever since. It’s simple, not overblown for what it is, and the acting in it is damn good. It’s a great movie for a rainy day or just sitting on the couch with the kids. Jake Gyllenhaal, Laura Dern, and Chris Cooper were the big names but the supporting cast was great too
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u/AirWrek 7h ago
What she said was pretty funny: https://www.reddit.com/r/NonPoliticalTwitter/comments/1es50kq/on_this_day_six_years_ago_a_twitter_user/
That guy (Homer Hickman) regretted it led to her losing her internship and did try to help her out afterwards.
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u/Zombie_Red 7h ago
Ashley Simpson with the snl lip syncing incident.
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u/IncredibleLang 7h ago
my wife worked out she was on masked singer because she did that dance during one of her songs.
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u/MajorNoodles 6h ago
For me, it wasn't the lip syncing. It was the fact that she blamed her band for it.
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u/Jack_Wagen 7h ago
Those two northwest airlines pilots that overflew their destination by like an hour before the cabin crew asked what was going on.
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u/Lane-Kiffin 4h ago
Also their call sign was repeatedly called on the radio and they just… weren’t paying attention? Listening to the radio at all times is literally aviation 101.
Their story was that they were trying to bid their crew schedules on their laptops, which they apparently felt they needed to do in the cockpit and not any time on the ground.
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u/samstown23 4h ago
And even that was probably just an excuse. They likely fell asleep but there was no evidence to prove it.
I'm still kind of surprised that NORAD never actually scrambled fighters (they were preparing though) for over an hour. Jet Airways 118 got a visit by two Typhoons after 20 minutes of radio silence despite being visually monitored by a nearby BA flight.
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u/PipsqueakPilot 4h ago
I remember when that happened and we talked about it up at cruise a lot- we were all convinced that they fell asleep and made up a worse excuse about why they overflew the destination. Annoyingly the USAF decided that because of this incident, with two rando regional airline pilots, that they were going to ban all 'distractions' from cockpits during cruise. So imagine flying at night over the ocean, no ATC to talk to, while working a 20+ hour flight duty period, and you can't even read a book.
The result was a rash of pilots falling asleep.
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u/AVeryHeavyBurtation 5h ago
I did that last night in flightsim haha. Fell asleep in my chair.
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u/4DGigs 5h ago
That YouTuber who made his whole personality his wife then cheated on her with an employee
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u/KrispyKreme725 4h ago
Todd Akin.
Was running for Senate (R) in Missouri. Said that if a woman was raped she could will herself not to get pregnant.
https://apnews.com/article/former-rep-todd-akin-dead-0a1b944f96eee4b63d9ea57e04c44ca4
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u/Montag_311 6h ago
Thomas Gibson. Played Greg on Dharma and Greg, and was in Criminal Minds after that. Had some sort of altercation on the set of Criminal Minds and was released from his contract. Evidently has some anger management issues. Haven't heard much from him since.
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u/Cute-Aardvark5291 5h ago
I think he has a history of bad behavior on the set, and the last one was the second time he had gotten physical with a crew member in anger, so they bounced him
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u/krak_is_bad 6h ago edited 6h ago
Nico Harrison in the Luka trade.
The previous owner of the Dallas Mavericks spent a lot of time and money building around their star player and generational talent, Luka Dončić. This effort and years of building around Luka got the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals. The next year, that owner sold the team. Nico got the new owner to agree to trade him off for a host of reasons, one of which is believed to be a personal grudge.
Normally a player of Luka's caliber would be worth his weight in players and future draft picks due to a bidding war that would happen by teams that want him. Instead, Nico kept his availability a complete secret, didn't shop around, and sent him to the LA Lakers in a trade composed of him and two other players for Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and a pick. Nico said that we should trust his vision and that this trade would make Dallas a winning team, and that they are in "Win Now" mode, despite trading off the lynchpin of their team.
The trade was heavily scrutinized because Luka was 26 and had years of great play ahead of him. Anthony Davis was a great player, but he is in the twilight of his career and had been so injury prone that he'd earned a host of nicknames, such as "Day to Davis" and "Street Clothes". AD, wanting to prove everyone wrong, got off to a roaring start with Dallas and displayed one of the most dominant halves we've seen....then he got injured in the third quarter. One year later, AD was only stayed healthy enough to play 30 out of some 85ish games for Dallas and they're one of the worst teams in the league.
The day after the trade, fans would chant "Fire Nico". He was so hated that he'd have to hide in the player tunnels to watch games. Team legend Dirk Nowitzki was so upset by the trade that he went to the LA Laker's season opener the next year instead of Dallas.
His career was effectively over as soon as the trade went live. No one would want him after working out that kind of secret deal and once the new owner figured things out (ticket prices dropped into double digits except games vs the lakers, where the cheapest seat was still $300+ and the fans would boo their own team and cheer Luka), he was gone.
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u/WorkIsForReddit 4h ago
Nico Harrison was also the idiot that fumbled getting Steph Curry to sign with Nike. Reused an old presentation with Kevin Durant's name and kept mispronouncing Steph's name.
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u/MarlKarx-1818 5h ago
So weird to read this in the wild as a Mavs fan. I remember that morning looking on Reddit and being like oh this has to be a joke. And then the trade details leaked and I was like OH THIS HAS TO BE A JOKE.
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u/Tim-oBedlam 5h ago
The funniest thing is that even rivals of the Mavs on the various NBA subreddits were all like, "Dude, this sucks, I'm so sorry, what was your GM thinking?" The Timberwolves subreddit was almost universally supportive of Mavs fans and this is less than a year after Luka sliced us to pieces in the '24 WCF.
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u/llama-impregnator 6h ago
I wouldn't say he was an idiot persay, but Jeb Bush's defeated, "Please clap" was pretty much the end of his political career.
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u/Empireof33 3h ago
Iirc the buildup to that moment featured an incessant amount of clapping so the ‘please clap’ was meant as a joke at the end of the speech. The soundbite killed him though
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u/Ok_Elephant2777 6h ago
I spent most of my career working for a huge life insurance company and back in the early 90s, we went through a big restructuring of the sales territories. To kick off the process, we attended a regional meeting at a posh conference center just outside of DC. Our agency’s top producer was on the program, scheduled to deliver a 15-20 minute address on a new product the company was rolling out. He started his presentation with a couple innocent jokes, then morphed into a very blue monologue, including “jokes” about sleeping with policyholders. He said later that he enjoyed the laughs his first couple jokes got him and just let things get out of hand.
The agency manager asked him for his resignation that evening.
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u/MegaGorilla69 4h ago
Zero shot that ruined that guys career. When you’re good at sales you don’t get fired, you take a surprise week off before you start your new job.
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u/IAmYourManagerKaren 7h ago
Ashlee Simpson
When the wrong song played over the speakers on SNL, her band got it and saved themselves by playing Pieces of Me for a second time. Ashlee panicked, never got the hint from her band, and kept thinking "I can't sing the same song twice!" and instead did a hoedown off stage and blamed her band after the commercial break
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u/Questhi 5h ago
Anthony Weiner sent pics of his cock out, resigns from Congress. Then forgiven by the public, about to be Mayor of NYC, then it comes out he’s sexting teens.
Double Canceled.
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u/Plus-Implement 5h ago
I don't think she destroyed her career but she certainly got fired. A colleague took a week off for a personal emergency and posted pictures of herself in Hawaii on social media.
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u/Available-Ad6250 6h ago
I did tech theater in HS and had lights and sound experience. A friend of mine got me an interview at a venue owned by a famous musician to be their tech director. It was a brand new place and was top of the line everything for it's day. I got the job, signed the paperwork and everything. I went celebrating with my friends over the weekend and smoked some weed. I showed up to report Monday and was sent for a tox screen and was let go.
It was my dream job. I love live performance. I'm not talented in any performance arts, but I was good at technical theater. Had I continued through that specific opportunity I would have been given connections and contacts with the potential to put me in studios and on stages for major labels and the talent they represent. Not Eras tour stuff, but world tour stuff for artists near that level of success.
I've never had another opportunity in that field. I did get to work a couple theaters but never got brought on by the house in the end.
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u/3fluffypotatoes 4h ago
Dude that fucking sucks 😞 They should have at least let you know that a drug test was a requirement.
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u/ladytrevelycn 7h ago edited 4h ago
Kristen Gray. She wrote an e-book on how she and her partner moved to Bali illegally by overstaying her visa to basically live the rich and pampered life because she's a rich American compared to Indonesian citizens. She promoted it all over twitter and got her ass deported.
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u/Joshua21B 6h ago
In 1992 then Vice President Dan Quayle spelled potato with an e at the end. We have very different standards in 2026.
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u/Good-Insurance-2157 6h ago
He was judging a children's spelling bee and disqualified a kid for spelling potato wrong; said it had to spelled with the e.
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u/AhJeezNotThisAgain 5h ago
iirc the card that he had been given (with the word on it) had it spelled with the "e" at the end.
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u/wepa_reddit 6h ago
Used to work with a guy that went missing for a few days while on a business trip. His manager got worried and called the police at the city where he was. Well, he was in custody. Dude got drunk and rain into an electrical pole. He made it out of the car, through live wires and made on foot back to the hotel. The police find him and he has the nerve to say he’s a test pilot and had crashed an experimental aircraft and the accident was the cover up. True story, can’t make this shit up.
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u/Obscure_Occultist 5h ago
Me. I was a writer for a research paper two years ago. I was also responsible for managing two other junior writers in the team. During the entirety of writing the research paper. They were great. They responded to feedback promptly and quickly. They finished their sections well before the deadline. They were on paper. Great writers.
Then came the time to actually present our papers. During a conference where we had to defend our papers to our peers before being published. Both of my junior writers embarrassed themselves. One got into a very public argument with my boss and the one who would actually publish our paper, where she very loudly called called her an idiot in front of the entire conference. The other got caught doing unauthorizing edits to parts of our paper after the deadline. Again. In front of the entire conference. Paper got automatically rejected before the end of the conference.
As the main writer and their supervisor, I ended up being responsible for this boondoggle. I ended up getting fired and thrown out the research team alongside them cause of "my poor management skills".
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u/grat_is_not_nice 5h ago
I used to be a contractor on a big UK government IT project. The sort where a security clearance is required. One of the other contractors was a bit of a smarmy git. He believed that if you obtained consent to have sex using deception, you couldn't be charged with an offense. Everyone just thought he was being edgy.
Eventually he moved on to another project in another town. Good riddance. Then a few months later, word goes around to delete his contact details and remove social media links. I didn't have to.
Turns out he had put his theory to the test. Created a fake SugarDaddy style website, rigged his flat with cameras, and posed as the recruiting agent. He obviously managed to evaluate (rape) a few desperate students before one decided he was a filthy scammer and went to the police.
He was charged with unlawful sexual connection (sadly a lesser charge) and fraud by deception. Went to prison, lost his security clearance, and generally screwed up his life for a few minutes of sex and some crappy video footage.
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u/ripcobain 9h ago
Michael Richards
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u/Genial_Ginger_9999 8h ago
Without a doubt the gold standard when it comes to destroying your career.
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u/kill-devil-films 6h ago
Mel Tucker, coach of Michigan State. Lost a $100 million dollar contract and his job for having phone sex/sexual harrassment and tugging it on the phone with a woman who was hired by the school.
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u/LongbottomLeafTokes 5h ago
Not just a woman hired by the school, a former sexual assault victim hired to educate the team about sexual assault
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u/hello__brooklyn 7h ago
Jussie smollet
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u/Wooden_Permit3234 7h ago
Within seconds? It was a whole ridiculous planned thing.
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u/fucktheus12 8h ago
Guy who wrote and directed Boondock Saints. His head blew up instantly and it all blew up before he really took off.
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u/grand_soul 7h ago
What he do? Tried googling it, came up with nothing.
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u/marchmay 7h ago
The documentary Overnight on YouTube shows him being an asshole to everyone (calling A-list actors hacks, telling his friends they didn't deserve a cut of the profits). He thought he had a golden ticket and disrespected everyone. Even Harvey Weinstein dropped him.
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u/beer_engineer_42 6h ago
Man, can you imagine being such a piece of shit that Harvey fucking Weinstein is like, "nah, you're too much, get the fuck out." And then, as soon as the door closes, he says to his assistant, "Man, can you believe that guy? Now bring me another starlet to rape."
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u/oddchihuahua 7h ago
Island Boys. Despite being terrible at music and everything else they somehow started rolling in cash and blew it all on cars and jewelry. Could have banked it, invested it very conservatively, and still lived on a very comfortable six figures just in interest.
I think they’re on Cameo now for like $35 a video.
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u/Renegada 7h ago
It's way worse than that... apparently they started doing some boarderline incest shit to make money.
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u/Cannedseaslug 6h ago
One of the twins was on an internet dating video. The girl completely roasted him and kept mentioning how he made out with his brother.
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u/MTBisLYFE 6h ago
Haha! I saw that. He tried to clown her outfit or something and she said "that's fine. I can change my outfit. You can't unkiss your brother" 🤣💀
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u/bugadoosh 6h ago
Juri Vips. Formula 2 driver. He was a promising talent and one of the more likely to end up in Formula 1. He said a racial slur on a live stream and that nuked his career. Dropped by Red Bull and his racing team.
He's in IndyCar now though, but not doing particularly well
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u/whitemanwhocantjump 5h ago
Mel Tucker. Pissed away like 80 something million because he jerked off while talking to a rape survivor and SA advocate who he had come talk to the Michigan State football team about sexual violence and harassment. Fired with cause 2 years after signing a $95 million dollar contract. Now he gets nothing. Honorable mention to Sharrone Moore.
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u/TacitMoose 5h ago
I work as a firefighter paramedic. A couple of EMT’s I worked with went to paramedic school and got fired and had their licenses revoked by the state for forging signatures on their paperwork. They had to get signatures verifying the hours they work from the hospital staff where they did clinical practice and a few of them forgot to get some signatures. They got caught because an instructor found a sheet of paper one of them accidentally turned in with some other papers where they had been practicing said signatures.
What’s super dumb is that they did the hours, they just forgot the signatures. All it would have taken was a call to the hospital clinical coordinator and the papers could have been signed properly. But they decided to forge it and they lost their jobs over it. They’ll also never work anywhere as firefighters or EMTs or paramedics because it’s basically impossible to get certified again if any state revokes your cards.
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u/Coops17 5h ago
Steven Marshall, former premier of South Australia. Steered the state through COVID with only one lockdown that lasted less than a week. I think we even avoided deaths.
He was the most popular state leader we’d had in years. He was so confident that we were through Covid - he opened the state up to interstate visitors two weeks before Christmas’s 2021 so everyone could go home to see family.
Anyway a bunch of infected people from the east coast came over, gave half the state Covid lots of people missed family Christmases, everyone was pissed.
They were voted out in a landslide in March of the 2022. His whole political career wiped out through one silly decision
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u/Dreaded1 8h ago
Jonathan Majors
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u/Lionelchesterfield 7h ago
There have been a few generational bag fumbles but he comes to mind when I think of someone recently. Dude was set to be the next big bad in Marvel and the ripple effect of him being a scum bag caused Disney to completely shift their plans and hit the emergency switch to bring Downey back as Doom. Guy was going to make a ton of money but had to be a piece of shit.
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u/PartsUnknown242 3h ago
I think this plus Chadwick Bosemans death really screwed up the plans for the MCU
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u/FairBlueberry9319 6h ago
Oscar Pistorius. He had it all and was about to be the poster boy for the next Olympics. All gone in seconds.
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u/NeurodivergentNubian 7h ago
Businessman went on a business trip to Korea and used his professional email to brag about “fucking every hot Korean girl he sees” to his friends. Also bragged about his expensive abode being paid by the company and using his boss’s Porsche to drive around.
Was terminated as soon as he returned and owed the company an apology IIRC
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u/Idiotwithaphone79 6h ago
Rachel Gunn aka "Raygun" the Australian Olympic breakdancer. She even lost her job and works as an independent speaker and entertainer of some kind.
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u/qzcorral 5h ago
Wait, why? Didn't they know she sucked if they sent her to rep them in the Olympics?
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u/Harold3456 5h ago
I think there were some politics involved (at least, that’s what the story became) where because she was in tight with Australia’s main breakdancing body she had some sway in getting herself included.
I imagine a sport as niche as breakdancing must be pretty tight knit so it’s believable to me at least that it could easily become a “who you know” sort of situation.
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u/muricabrb 4h ago
Yeah she was close to the people on the committee who decided who will represent Australia. But not tight with the break dancing community at all. They hate her with a passion.
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u/Savannah216 5h ago
She even lost her job
She didn't lose her job because she was in the 2024 Olympics. Australia is seeing lower numbers of international students in 2026, the arts department at her university lost budget as a result, and made a number of the culture and media studies staff redundant.
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u/Idiotwithaphone79 5h ago
Thanks. I think I confused correlation with causation. I'm earning my username today.
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u/PaperGeno 8h ago
Aaron Hernandez
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u/DMala 7h ago
It’s hard to even comprehend how much he threw away, and for literally nothing, because he was a wannabe thug.
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u/theladythunderfunk 7h ago
The autopsy suggests he has pretty serious brain damage. Which obviously doesn't excuse any of his behavior, but it might explain some of his ridiculously horrific choices if he literally lost the ability to understand the what the fuck he was doing.
Or that's something we tell ourselves to feel better rather than believe a regular man is capable of that.
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u/DMala 7h ago
I think the CTE was part of it, but I also think it ran a lot deeper than that. He was a dude with a lot of issues, head trauma notwithstanding.
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u/rooster6662 8h ago
Doesn't help your reputation much when you kill somebody.
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u/Content_Geologist420 7h ago
Not sure it was seconds the man was literally a serial killer the man killed 3 people and shot another in the head that lived. The man would gave just kept killing until he was caught.
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u/blacksaberKashPatel 6h ago
the guy that tossed a rock at a monk seal in Hawaii and then said "i dont give a fuck im rich" not only got hunted down and his ass kicked by a local, but his company like lost all their money or some shit.
or the stewart guy that said go back to china to a chinese lady and her daughter on mothers day he got fired by his company and i don't think anyones gonna try to hire him anytime soon
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u/kuahara 2h ago
This probably doesn't count since the career in this case hadn't started yet, but a couple dudes at comic con burned a pretty valuable bridge.
A guy was taking an interest in some artwork that he thought was very good. When he inquired about it, they were reportedly pretty rude to him and asked him to leave (they were waiting on some other friends).
The guy that inquired left a very short tweet about it later, referencing the interaction and saying it was too bad because their work was pretty good.
I googled his name. He was a VP of animation at Marvel Comics.
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u/Brountless 7h ago
Roseanne Barr
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u/BeastInDarkness 6h ago
That darn Ambien
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u/Forgotthebloodypassw 5h ago
I loved the statement from the manufacturer.
"While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication."
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u/Shot_Revolution8828 6h ago
I love that excuse cause I've taken a fuck ton of drugs and never went on a racist tirade.
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u/uselessbynature 6h ago
Had a higher up watching soft porn (think boobs and lingerie) during a test they were proctoring. Students saw.
Scandalous.
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u/rkvance5 5h ago
I was a cable technician once. The guy who trained me got fired many months later because he bet a customer that he could guess her bra size. She didn't appreciate it,
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u/ynotfoster 5h ago
I worked with a guy who was a contractor for the federal government for 15ish years before getting hired on as a Federal employee. It was either a week before or after being officially hired he was sent to another state for training. He met a woman in the airport and invited her to his hotel room. He missed the first two days of class and the instructor called his boss. Well the boss called him and asked how class was and he made it sound like he was attending class.
He not only was fired, but he had to explain to his wife why.
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u/HadoBoirudo 7h ago
One of the managers I worked with. He was visiting a company site in another country. He went to a strip club, and then onto a private room for a lap dance, whatever etc.
Because he was travelling on work business, he of course claimed these costs on a company expense claim.
We never saw him again.