I am currently an undergrad (not in my penultimate year). The HRs fired me 8 weeks into my current technology internship (with 2 weeks remaining) b/c I took food from the cafe without paying, and my reasoning was I was unaware of the company’s policies on free food towards tech interns (because interns get a lot of free stuff and I was wrong to assume cafe food was one of them).
They told me that they would not report me to the police or put it on my criminal record, but HOW can I verify this and make sure they don’t tell future employers that I was fired due to theft (which technically isn’t entirely true but it was wrong of me to assume the food was free).
They let my manager know that I had been fired, right when the manager had assigned me some very important work after I had successfully completed previous assignments. Before this, my manager, who is also a young and pretty laid back like me, had a relatively positive view of me and my CS skills and working capabilities, and so do some co-workers whom I worked with throughout the internship, just not the HRs. I tried following up with my manager after being fired, but he has not yet responded, neither has the HR, so I am very worried.
I know HRs supposedly have a crucial say when the company is contacted by prospective employers for references, and it is obviously recommended to leave this internship off the resume since I had been fired. But I had contributed a lot of things, participated in meetings and planning for projects, and had a relatively good work ethic in the eyes of my co-workers and managers.
I haven’t seen my manager or anyone at my company since being dismissed immediately, but for future jobs, I still want to ask ONE of them (not the HRs obviously) for reference (since I have other references) because of the amount of work I contributed. BUT I don’t want future employers finding I got fired for a reason (if told to an extent) will most likely prevent me from getting the job.
What should I do? Should I ask a co-worker who I worked with on an earlier project in the internship and might not know that I was fired? Should I still ask one of them (not the HRs) to be my references?
Really… everybody else was paying. This doesn’t seem like an honest mistake. Don’t ask for any references. Put down the actual dates you worked on your resume and other applications. Probably they won’t check anyway.
If they really thought it was an honest mistake they would not have fired you. I’m sure the manager was well aware of the firing, as HR never makes decisions in a vacuum. Sounds like they didn’t like you based on your “relatively positive view of me” use in your descriptions. All your other posts are about how you try and cheat the system at UVA. Consider yourself lucky they are not pressing charges and forget about this internship. Stealing, cheating and lying are all really bad traits that you should purge from your life and perhaps this firing will be a lesson ? Unfortunately, I think it won’t since you’ve been at the cheating/cutting corners methodology for several years according to your posts. Remember the UVA honor code? Maybe you should study that this summer.
I worked with someone for three years who was subsequently fired for stealing. If that person used me as a reference, I would absolutely tell the people checking references about the stealing. I liked the guy just fine before the stealing, we had lots of inside jokes but finding out he stole while working changed my opinion of him as a worker.
As far as your resume and job references go, you need to pretend like this internship never happened. It’s a couple months in your life. Easy to just right it off. It’s not like it is a multi-year job experience.
You really need to be honest with yourself and look at your role in this incident and the outcome and learn from it. Even if it did go down like you said, it was a bit presumptuous to assume you could take food for free. Did you not see others paying? I think you are kidding yourself. Use this as a wake up call and change your behavior and sense of entitlement.
To be frank, you can have a perfectly fine life by continuing on the path you are on. The old idiom “Cheaters never prosper” is patently untrue.
Your prosperity, however, will come at a cost. You will frequently find yourself burning a bridge and standing at the lonely end of it. The price of dishonesty is most often paid in the coin of reputation.
If you continue on this course, you proclaim to the community of trust which binds and strengthens a civil society that you have no wish to be a member of it. Pause and reflect before you commit to that path.
For now, the cost is paid, and I would not expect any positive references from the internship, no matter how stellar your work or how convivial your relationships there.
This was a little different situation, but a similar idea. DH and I worked as engineers at the same company. A co-worker, an older engineer, fell upon hard times and asked us for a loan. We weren’t rolling in money ourselves since we hadn’t been out of school for long, but we gave him $600. We asked more than once for him to pay us back, but he never did. He had left for a different company by this point.
We liked him a lot before this incident, but if we had ever been contacted as a reference, it would not have been pretty. Stealing is stealing.
Of course, we learned an important lesson and never "lent’ money to anyone after that.
Didn’t you learn about Honor codes at your school?
Didn’t you learn how to behave as an intern? Maybe you need a course in professionalism.
The rules for us were always:
Go in early, stay late without complaint.
Smell clean/ dress professionally.
Use appropriate language. Do not take anything that isn’t offered to you that includes:
-office supplies (pens, white out, post its, paper),
personal lunches in the shared fridges,
-drinks
Offer to be available to do grunt work when finished with current tasks.
If the boss is casual, she can be casual she’s an employee; you can’t mimic a supervisor’s behavior, you’re an intern and can be fired. Wait, that did happen, didn’t it?
They will keep a record of your behavior; they didn’t call the cops because they were concerned for their other employees and interns who they didn’t want to embarrass by association.
I think a lot of people are being rough on you. You made a mistake, should have asked. As far as what you should do now, I would either call the manager to see where they stand on you or just leave it and move on
I would not list the company because any interested future employer is then going to call the HR office and the question will be ‘Is he eligible for rehire?’ and the answer is going to be ‘No.’ They won’t provide any additional information. If you list the company thinking the future employer is only going to contact your manager friend, well, what if he’s left the company? What if he tells them?
Not worth it. Move on. However, it a future employer requires you to list all employers in the last 5 years, you are rather stuck and have to list it, then you may want to list your manager friend and his direct phone number, and hope for the best.