A not so goodbye: Boss fires assistant for throwing going away party when she wasn’t leaving

Throwing yourself a goodbye party is one thing, but doing it on the company dime when you’re not actually leaving isn’t the smartest thing to do, as one twentysomething employee recently found out.

A boss recently shared a story on Reddit of the assistant she hired named Lily, who, while the boss was out of town, used the company credit card to throw herself a going away party, telling co-workers she was “leaving to pursue new horizons.”

The boss writes that Lily spent $2,000 on the party, which included a custom cake, decorations and a bartender.

The issue? Not only did Lily not have authorization to spend the money, she wasn’t even leaving the company.

“When I confronted her, she said she was ‘testing’ how much people appreciated her and wanted to see if anyone would ‘convince her to stay,'” the boss writes. “She called it a ‘social experiment.’” 

Needless to say, Lily now has a reason for a goodbye party: the boss says she was fired immediately. But it seems Lily hasn’t really learned her lesson. 

“Now, she’s blowing up on social media, claiming I’m a ‘soulless boss’ who has ‘no respect for mental health and personal exploration,’” the boss writes. “She says I should have appreciated her ‘creative way of bonding with the team.'”