Busted!: A look at some of the things people have done to get fired.

Some inappropriate workplace behaviors may be more common than you'd expect. In an informal survey of 100 employers in Toronto, the #4 reason for firing an employee was "sleeping at their desk on a daily basis" (our italics) and the number #10 reason was "drinking alcoholic beverages on the job." But here are some truly outrageous examples of bad behavior on the job.

• While performing a gallbladder surgery in December 2007, a resident noticed that his patient's penis was tattooed with the words "Hot Rod," and napped a photo of the organ and showed it to colleagues. The resident was placed on leave, and may face disciplinary action and a lawsuit from the patient.

• Another gross violation of patient dignity occurred in the UK. A nurse cut two eyeholes in a brown paper bag, asked an assistant to place the bag over the head of an elderly patient with dementia, then took the patient's picture and showed it to her colleagues. The nurse was fired and banned from the nursing profession for a minimum of five years.

• Hospital staff members have also been terminated for taking photos of patients' x-rays. To combat these privacy violations, some hospitals have created regulations that prohibit photography, or have banned camera phones from certain areas of the hospital.

• In June 2007, a doctor in Montana was terminated after bringing a concealed handgun to the hospital.

• A Swedish doctor was fired twice for inappropriately using anal massage to treat pain. The doctor first lost his job in Sweden after the Sweden Medical Responsibility Board gave him three warnings for treating an elderly woman's headaches and back pain with anal massage. Later, he lost a job in Norway for similar reasons.

• In a case that reads like the plot of a soap opera, seven Czech hospital staff members were fired for swapping two baby girls at birth. The mix-up occurred at a hospital in Trebic, Czech Republic, on December 9, 2006, and the mistake was discovered in October 2007 after one of the fathers ordered a paternity test. A police investigation uncovered no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, and Radio Praha announced at the end of October that a nurse and doctor who had been dismissed would be reinstated.

• Those who play hooky should not post the evidence on Facebook! That's the lesson learned by an intern who had emailed his manager to say that he couldn't be at work due to a family emergency, and attended a Halloween party instead. In his reply, the manager wished him well, attached a Facebook photo of the intern in full costume, and forwarded the message to the rest of the office. The intern not only lost his job, but became a laughingstock when his story and photo were circulated over the internet.

• Following the 2001 anthrax bioterrorism scares in the US, employees who thought anthrax scares were a laughing matter risked dismissal and criminal prosecution. A few examples of employees who were fired for carrying out anthrax hoaxes at work include a TV reporter, two GM plant workers, and a county prosecutor!

For more examples of bad behavior on the job, check out the articles in our License Losers series.

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Sheng Wang

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