...when somebody’s fired for what looks like no good reason, the real reason was personal or political.

In every organization, from the local Wal-mart up through General Motors and over to the United States Army and back down to the town police department and the Methodist Church and the corner drugstore, bosses fire workers for no other reason than they don’t like them.

The fired employees have offended them, scared them, or given them some reason to be viewed with distrust.

Given human nature, it’s often the boss who's really at fault and who also may not even understand her own reason for wanting a particular employee gone.

A female boss fires a female employee just because she’s younger and prettier but the stated reason will be that the employee was late to work too often. And maybe she was, but everyone else has been too.

The same female employee might lose her job because her male boss can’t look at her without getting an erection, but he fires her because she forgot to mail a package on time.

The same employee might never give offense, never inspire jealousy or lust in a childishly-minded boss, be a hard and competent worker, and lose her job for taking a personal call on the job but really because through her diligence and competence she made the boss fear for his or her job.

People get fired because their spouses offended the boss at a party.

They get fired because the boss just wants somebody else to have their job.

They get fired for being too old or too talkative or too loud or too quiet or too witty or too serious for the boss’s taste.

They get fired because they crossed a customer or a client whose business the bosses value far more than they value even the best employee’s good work.

They get fired because long ago they made an enemy who has been waiting and waiting for the chance to take revenge and who has finally landed in a position to take it.

They get fired because in one way or another they have become a threat to the organization or to the bosses.

In every case the “official” reason will be some infraction of company rules.

[via Lance Mannion, emphasis mine]