Bernadette, like the majority of waitressing at the Cheesecake Factory to pay her fees.
A few seasons later, she was studying for her Ph.D. and working for a big pharmaceutical company called Zangen. While she was dedicated to her job, there were a few times when she was hardly a stellar employee and probably should have been fired; both while she was a waitress and as a Microbiologist.
Giving A Customer The Wrong Order Intentionally
At one point in the show, Leonard and Penny broke up and he started dating Priya. Despite the obvious awkwardness of Leonard taking his new girlfriend to eat at a place where his ex-girlfriend worked, he and his friends kept up their tradition of visiting the Cheesecake Factory and he took Priya along.
In season 4's "The Engagement Reaction," Penny asked Bernadette if she could serve Leonard's table so she wouldn't have to. To her friend, Bernadette offered to spill soup on Priya and when Penny called her out on that, she offered to give her a full-fat version if she ordered something low-fat. Priya ordered a diet root beer and it seems Bernadette gave her the opposite. Going against a customer's wishes like she did is a definite no-no in a restaurant.
Giving Out Drugs Still In Development
Whenever her friends were sick, Bernadette brought them a care package with medications from work. That wouldn't be such a bad thing, except that sometimes she brought medication that was likely to do more harm than good.
In the season 6 episode "The Fish Guts Displacement," Amy was sick with the flu and Sheldon was taking care of her. Enjoying his company and attention, she stretched out her illness even though she'd already recovered. Bernadette dropped by with some drugs from work, which she openly itted were being worked on and tested in their lab. There's probably some code that she violated by doing this.
Ditching Work To Go To Disneyland
While Bernadette, Amy, and Penny were hanging out in Penny's apartment in season 6 episode "The Contractual Obligation," they came up with the idea to visit Disneyland. Since Disneyland was normally crowded during the weekends, Penny suggested playing hooky so they could go during the week.
Bernadette and Amy happily obliged with this idea and spent the day in Disneyland. Dropping work to go and have fun was rather irresponsible of them and if either of their bosses had found out, they might not have let her get away with it.
The Raccoon Virus Accident
The sixth episode of season 7, "The Romance Resonance," was the anniversary of Howard and Bernadette's first date and he planned a special surprise celebration for her. Before that, Bernadette bragged about a new virus crossing the species barrier and being able to infect humans, stating that it meant more money for the pharmaceutical industry.
Later, she and her workmates ended up in quarantine because of an accident at the labs. Turns out instead of making two trips to move some vials of the raccoon virus, they did one. Safety protocols in any lab would not excuse such a careless maneuver and she and her labmates might have gotten fired for it.
She Was "The Mean Kid"
When Penny interviewed for her job in season 8's "The Locomotion Interruption," she and Bernadette's boss bonded over their shared fear of Bernadette. Later, it was revealed that everyone at work was scared of Bernadette to the point that they couldn't even tell her she was working on research for a drug that was no longer being funded.
She also hogged a bathroom at work, meaning the entire floor could not access it, which inconvenienced a lot of her colleagues. Creating such a toxic work environment for others would certainly be grounds for disciplinary action or even dismissal in the real world.
Unethical Experiments
When Amy shared details of work she was doing to test whether deficiency of a certain enzyme would stimulate the fear cells in monkeys, Bernadette told her it probably would if they were anything like humans.
Of course, Amy asked if she'd done the experiment before and Bernadette vaguely itted that it was done on death-row inmates with nothing to lose, which she also its would be unethical. If this news got out, she would likely get fired.
Wasting Money
In "The Retraction Reaction," Bernadette and Amy decided to brag to each other about their accomplishments from work since the guys got upset if they did. Both of them had the advantage of getting a lot of funding for their research and work so they could afford new equipment whenever they needed it.
Bernadette told Amy that pharmaceuticals had so much money, they didn't even bother washing test tubes and instead threw them out and bought new ones. Even though the pharmaceutical business is a lucrative one, wasting money like this would not be acceptable.
Playing Video Games At Work
Whenever Bernadette got competitive, she got obsessed with winning, to the point of playing dirty. Her competitive streak came out in "The Citation Negation," where she found Howard and Raj playing Fortnite and tried it out of interest. She was barely a minute into the game when Howard killed her character.
To get back at him, she began obsessing over learning the game and beating him, to the point that she was playing the game at work instead of doing her actual work. Penny had to take her to lunch to get her back on track.
The Many Times She Broke Confidentiality
On several occasions, Bernadette told her friends about the drugs her company was working on, side effects, and some not-so-ethical practices she vaguely itted to being engaged in. These practices went all the way back to when she was still studying for her Microbiology degree. For example in "The Desperation Emanation," she mentioned that she and her labmates once crossed Ebola with the common cold and made a pact to keep it secret when a vial of the genetically modified super virus they created went missing.
As an employee of a pharmaceutical company, she was bound by employee laws regarding confidential information. This meant she shouldn't have been telling people about drugs still in development and whatever else she did at work, even though they were her closest friends.