How Hard Is It To Grasp The Concept Of “Lunch Break”?

I worked with an eighteen-year-old eight years ago. About two months after he was hired, he was assigned to work with me on the overnight shift. It wasn’t a stock night, so I was the senior employee onsite. We each had an hour for lunch, and we weren’t supposed to leave the premises.

Kid: “I’m going to go grab my lunch.”

Me: “Okay, no worries.”

I didn’t think anything of it.

An hour later, I checked upstairs in the break room so I could give [Kid] the next task, and I found that wasn’t there. For some reason, I didn’t think anything of that, either, and I got back to work. I noticed the doors unlocked and assumed he had forgotten to lock them after coming back in from smoking.

An hour and a half AFTER THAT, the store phone rang.

Kid: “Hey, the doors are locked. Let me back in.”

The idiot had walked about eight kilometres (about five miles) to a twenty-four-hour fast food chain and then walked back.

Of course, I mentioned it to our manager. That — plus the recordings of him swiping people’s food from the fridge — led to immediate dismissal.