by Maria C Collins

Created on: February 05, 2010   Last Updated: October 25, 2010

Losing a job can be surprisingly easy in difficult times, when companies are seeking to reduce staff. There are many actions that will lead to you losing your job some are obvious, others are less apparent.

Losing your temper and hitting a customer, your boss, a contractor or another employee will lead to instant dismissal and possibly criminal prosecution.

Stealing from your employer, is another serious matter. Many people do not realize that stealing not only includes taking money from the cash register or petty cash, but also fiddling your expenses or overtime, taking office stationary, pens and pencils home, using the company telephone for personal calls and dealing with personal matters during work time, e.g. such as nipping out to do your shopping when you are being paid for running a work errand. Any of these actions can lead to you being fired and, depending on the severity of the theft, criminal prosecution.

If you Breach the Health and Safety regulations, you could also be dismissed. Depending on the industry in which you work, such breaches can occasion instant dismissal e.g. if people’s lives depend on you or you, as a manager, order staff to break Health and Safety law. In any industry if you constantly break health and safety law, or your company’s health and safety policies, you will get fired. Refusal to use safety equipment can also get you fired, you might think a hard hat and reflective jacket looks silly, but you will look even sillier, standing in the queue at the job centre.

Lying or bending the truth on your curriculum vitae will get you the sack. However efficiently you do the job, a lie on your C.V. breaks the trust between employer and employee and makes you look untrustworthy.

Most workplaces have rules about drinking alcohol during working hours. You may think that your lunch hour is your own time, and what you do during that time is your own business. However, if you drink so much that you come back to work incapable of doing your job, or you are rude or aggressive to customers or others, it could earn you the sack. If you are in such a devil may care mood that you breach Health and Safety regulations that too could get you fired.

Drug taking is illegal and if you take, or carry, drugs on your employer’s premises you are exposing him or her to prosecution. Under English law having drugs on your premises is a strict liability offense, that means that even if the owner has no idea that there are drug related activities

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