When enough is enough and the job is never going to get better, it's time to quit. Whether it's a horrible boss, rude customers, or annoying co-workers, there's a moment when every person says, "That's the final straw." And those moments can be incredibly satisfying—just like these stories.
1. Fatal Nepotism
My aunt got me a job as a tech in a chemical plant. As I was young and stupid, I told the guy who was supposed to train me that I got the job through my aunt. I regretted it almost instantly. Since I didn't "earn" my job, he decided to "haze me." After the first shift I already almost decked him as he would handily forget to tell me things and would berate and belittle me all the time. The second shift, it continued and while I was working on a pipe, he didn't close it as he was supposed to do.
If I hadn't been aware of the rumbling and rolled away, I would have been blasted by a jet of boiling steam. I went to the team leader, but he said I was overreacting but he proposed to move me to another shift. I had another idea: I quit immediately. Dude could have ended me. My aunt was pretty upset with me until she heard, through the rumor mill, that the guy indeed had done what I said he did.
2. Health Standards
I was the lead for a fast food restaurant and I moved to another town. I transferred to a restaurant in this town but only went in as a cook since all the lead positions were full. Had this other cook come in for his shift wearing basketball shorts and was literally inside them gripping himself with both hands. I was disgusted, but it got worse. He jumped right on line with me. I was like "Bro, shouldn't wash your hands first?" He just smiled and said, "Nah man, we don't do that here." I walked out immediately.
3. Big Job, Big Attitude
I worked at Wal-Mart as a "stockman" for about a year. After the summer season was over, a supervisor asked me to move the 80-100+ lb. planks that went around bags of soil from the lawn and garden area in the parking lot back to their storage sheds which were probably a good 500 yards away. She told me to do this all myself and to have it done in an hour. It was even worse than I thought.
I went to the planks, and couldn't even pick one up by myself because of how long they were—I'm 6'2" tall and 230 lbs. I got on the walkie-talkie and told her that I couldn't lift one by myself and would need help. She basically told me I was just whining and complaining. Eventually, she did sent help and after she sent another guy to help me, we were an hour deep in moving these things and only about 1/3 the way done with the job.
The supervisor herself and one more person decided to help us at that point. Anyway, it took six people two hours to move what she originally had told me to do within an hour by myself. At lunchtime when it was time to clock out, she decided to wait for me by the time clock so she could discuss my attitude. That was the last straw. I told her there was nothing to discuss and said, "Six people, two hours. Screw you, I quit!" and clocked out and left.
A couple of days later they called me to fill out some quittin' papers and for my reason for leaving I wrote "managerial incompetence and poor worker morale." About a month later I ran into a different supervisor who said the supervisor who did this got demoted because of it. Different supervisor begged me to come back but I found a better job working at a grocery store where no one was like the slave drivers at Wal-Mart after that.
4. Locked Down
I took a job at a residential treatment center as I was desperate for a job. The interviewer said that most of the kids were court-ordered and were a step away from juvie. The interview didn’t go well, so I was honestly surprised when they called and offered me the job. On the morning of training, we went over all of the state and federal laws that governed the place, like resident rights and staff-to-resident ratios.
That afternoon, we went on a tour of the facility, during which it became readily apparent to me that exactly none of the laws we’d just covered were being followed. I left at the end of the day and never came back. I had a feeling something bad was going to happen at that place. A few months later, they were shut down after a night riot, resulting in several serious injuries to both residents and staff.
Glad I wasn’t around for that.
5. Mourning Event Staff
A friend of mine died by suicide nearly a decade ago. When I requested the day off for his funeral, my request was denied. I'll never forget that terrible feeling. I had to go to work after going to the funeral of my 21-year-old friend. I was an event captain, so I had to be the face of the staff for the contact of the event, I tried my hardest to put on a happy face, but I failed. My mood was terrible and the event contact complained to my boss after the event.
The next week I was scheduled as an event server for my whole schedule with less hourly pay, less tip percentage. When I asked my boss, I was told that I had been demoted because of the complaint from the prior event. I quit on the spot, I should not have been forced to work that day, and I should not have been demoted for being in a bad mood after burying one of my closest friends. Screw that place.
6. Gone Forever
When I was 20 or so, I was hired to be a temporary floor member for Forever 21 during the holiday season. My training started a week before Black Friday, so the store was already kind of in chaos. On my first day of training, I walked in and the floor manager gave all the new hires a tour, showing us the facility and layout of the store.
After this, I was assigned to shadow a veteran floor member so I could get an idea of what my job was. As soon as I was assigned, the manager walked away, never to be seen again. An hour and a half into my shift, the manager I was shadowing got an emergency family call and had to take off for a week. That's when everything started going wrong.
When this happened, I found another floor manager, explained the situation, and asked them whom else I should shadow. The manager’s response was startling: “Just do what you can by yourself. You’ll be fine—everyone else is busy.” I figured, okay, I’ll try. I don’t know if any of you have shopped in the women’s section of Forever 21 before, but during seasonal sales, there are multiple articles of clothing that look almost identical to each other.
For example, there was this white cardigan with four buttons that looked the same as another white cardigan with five buttons. These different items were often placed in completely separate parts of the store and it was the job of the dressing room employee to return the unpurchased items to the correct section so that the floor employees could put them back on the shelves.
Well, they were terrible at their jobs. I did not know if some clothes were a part of my section or not, so I’d spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to find where they went before realizing, “Wait, this isn’t even my section, and I’ve checked every rack.” I’d end up putting them back on the sorting rack before moving on to the next item.
More than 50% of the stuff I was told to reshelve was not in my section. I just did as best as I could and I got ready for my next miserable day. The next day, I came in and the store manager pulled me into her office. What she said made me want to scream. She told me how slow I was the day before, and if I want to keep working here I need to be very fast.
I explained my lack of training and unfamiliarity with the store and she told me if I did not know where the clothes were in sections I should come in my free time and memorize where stuff was. I spent the rest of my shift putting clothes in random places then never came back for a third shift. Screw that place and its management.
7. 4’O Clock Shadow
I worked as a stock boy in the back of Hollister. I never really had any interaction with customers but was still forced to buy their clothes to wear to work. They had all these rules about hairstyles, fingernails, and facial hair. One night I came in to start a shift at 2:30 am to do a floor change, which meant the shift would end around the time the store opened up. I had the slightest bit of stubble on my face, like a day and a half's worth of stubble.
My manager, at 4 am, told me she had a problem with my facial hair and that when the mall opened up, I better go buy a razor and shave before anyone saw me like that, or she would have to send me home for the night. My smug response was so satisfying: "Well lucky for me, I was planning on quitting anyway, good luck with the floor change," and walked out. I left, got a biscuit breakfast, went home, and got in bed.
8. Food For Thought
Back when I worked at Taco Bell, I also had another job as a bar back. The bar back job was paying me enough that I didn’t need the Taco Bell job; I only stayed for the extra money. Anyway, I previously never asked for time off at Taco Bell, but I told them at least a month in advance that I needed to be off for the Super Bowl. I reminded them every week leading up.
What they ended up doing got me so heated—they put me on the schedule for that day anyway. I told them I could not work that day and that I would not be there. They wouldn’t budge and left me on the schedule. So on the day of the game, I did not show up to work, but I did go in to order food. They were like, “What are you doing? You’re supposed to be working.” I said, “I quit. Let me get a Mexican pizza combo, and add some sour cream.”
The manager actually made my food and gave it to me. She was not happy, though.
9. Exit Survey
A few years ago, I left my job in the industry that I went to school for, after having worked for ten years at a truly terrible and toxic place. I was there for almost three years. One month into the job, I realized I'd made a horrible mistake. I've never seen a workplace this awful. Sadly, the job was a little specialized and niche. And on top of that, I had moved across the country for the position. So, even though the place was a toxic mess and I knew it, I did not want to just say "screw it" and quit, either.
It took me the better part of three years to find another job, but eventually, I did find an opening in the same industry and in the same city, too. The best part? It was known to be the polar opposite of the place where I was working at the time—a good work environment, a positive place, a butt-kicker in the industry. Basically, I thought I was moving from a nightmare to heaven in my business, and I didn't even have to move anywhere to take the job. But it gets better...
Once I had accepted the new position and was about to give the old place my two weeks’ notice, I was feeling pretty good for the first time in ages. It just so happened that my current job, on top of all of their other nonsense, was going through a "management shake-up" and some departments were answering to new managers across the entire company.
This meant that every employee was having these "sit-downs" with their new department heads to "talk about issues, workflow, etc." And a lot of my co-workers were terrified or hesitant about these meetings. They certainly did not feel comfortable to be open and candid and honest about the real "goings-on" at this miserable place. But, not me.
I could not wait for this opportunity. When my time came, I went into my new "manager’s" office. I should note that most of the managers at this place were a big part of the problem, and this new manager of mine was no exception. I strode in confidently and with purpose. He sat there, initially with this poop-eating grin, and one leg over his knee.
He probably expected more of the same that he had undoubtedly been receiving so far. A lot of good-intentioned but miserable and cautious people had surely just been saying "All is well." His grin subsided once I spent the next hour telling him everything that I truly thought about that place, about the people who worked there, and everything in between.
I was polite but firm. I did not let emotion guide my words and start flipping tables, but I also was very forthright about every single thing I could think of. It probably was not going to make any difference or change anything. But what did I care? I was leaving! I also kept in mind that there were still some good people that worked there and I wanted to say what I didn't think they felt comfortable saying, but needed to be said. Then, the coup de grace.
After literally an hour of me going through everything I could think of, he sat there with his mouth open and a legal pad full of notes. He then asked if there was anything else he needed to know. I stood up, shook his hand, and said, "Actually, yes. I have accepted another position at this other place, so you can consider this my two weeks’ notice." And then I walked out of his office. It felt incredible.
10. Scrubbing This Job
I had two interviews for a housekeeping position at a hospital. I got a call the night of the second interview at around midnight. The guy on the phone told me: "I just wanted to let you know we'll be offering you the job tomorrow." I should have taken that as the first red flag.
I went in for my first day of training and he had printouts of my Facebook and my boyfriend’s. He started asking me how long we had been together and made it clear that he knew everything, so as not to lie to him. It was so uncomfortable. I left his office and did some training. We broke for lunch and he sat with me in the cafeteria, asking me how it was going so far.
Then, he told me he expected to see me at his church on Sunday. I hadn't gone to church in like ten years at that point. We all had a quick meeting in our main room and I stayed back after everyone had left. I put my badge, keys, and walkie-talkie on the desk and walked out. I felt bad, but it was no wonder why they can't keep anyone.
He called me for months afterward asking what had happened, saying he was worried sick and that he deserved answers. I had called the hospital’s HR the day after I had walked out to tell them why I quit. They must have told him. He had no reason to keep contacting me.
11. Starting A Tradition
A co-worker of mine at Subway once quit when I was working during college. It was the lunch shift in one of the busiest shops in the area. The guy got halfway through making a sandwich, then he looked at the customer. He said three simple but effective words: "Till next time, bro." He then just walked out. He never came back, not even to pick up his final paycheck.
When I left the shop to go back to school at the beginning of the next semester, I left 100 sticky notes in random places throughout the store that said: "Till next time." It was the only way I could possibly give my notice after that experience! And something tells me I probably wasn’t the last person at that store to quit in this fashion...
Wikimedia Commons, Corey Coyle
12. Selective Memory
My manager claimed to have called me to change my schedule, but my phone didn't show any missed calls from his number so he was lying. Then the same day, he scheduled me to work a shift that afternoon without confirming that I was free or willing to pick up the extra shift. When I came into my next shift, he asked why I didn't come in for my scheduled shifts showing me my work schedule that he'd printed out.
I told him I hadn't been scheduled for that shift, showed him the screenshot of my original posted schedule from two days after it had been officially posted that showed I hadn't been scheduled for that day. He said it was fine, smiled and nodded, and sent me back to my shift. Next week's schedule comes out, I have no shifts. I ask what's up, and he says that since I missed a shift and didn't call in to say I'd be missing, I had to lose two weeks of hours. I again asked why that would be happening if I had come in for my scheduled hours, reminding him we had talked about it, he had said it was fine.
He pretended that he didn't remember that conversation. He was absolutely shocked when I quit before the two weeks were over. I got a voice mail three days later asking why I didn't show up to my scheduled shifts that week, and when I called him back asking what about "I got a new job and will not be back" was unclear, he claimed that he had never called me or left a voicemail and I must have just been confused!
Yeah, sure, some guy with your voice took your phone, called my number, claimed to be you, and used my name in the voicemail, mentioning my new job and confusion over my new schedule, to benefit who? To accomplish what? That manager got let go a few weeks later. Found out he had been pulling the same thing with other employees. They erased his name from the front of the building and everything.
13. Thinking Inside The Box
This was relayed to me by one of my buddies. Way back when we were still in high school, my friend's coworker was getting fed up with the supermarket they worked in. It was a few towns over in a not-so-nice area and was right off the highway, so that made it super busy and a lot of out-of-town commuters would shop there. This guy was going away to college and hated management.
On his last day, a woman walked up to his line and tried to browbeat him into taking a bunch of expired coupons. He told her he needed to check with his supervisor, but instead, he did something super strange—he slowly pulled out a Jack-in-the-Box toy from under his till and methodically placed it on the scanner. Then, he started cranking the thing while giving her a creepy smile.
When it finally popped, he looked her in the eye and just said: "Yeah, he said no." She flipped out and screamed for a manager while he just cracked up, took off his smock, and walked out.
14. Let’s Not Point Fingers
Back in the '90s, I was working in a warehouse with a guy who had lost his middle finger in a construction accident many years before. So when I knew him, he had a prosthetic middle finger. Our boss was a guy who would look forward to finding any reason to yell at any of my coworkers, even if it was not their job or fault.
So early one morning, the boss asked that fellow to use the big forklift to get some stuff from high up. The guy apologized and said that he couldn't, as he did not have a license to use it. Doing so could make him liable for damages and such. The boss's face immediately turned red. He started screaming at the dude, who in turn just listened for a while with a blank look on his face. Then, once the yelling subsided, he removed his prosthetic and handed it to the boss.
The boss took the prosthetic and asked the guy what the heck he was doing. Without missing a beat, he replied: "I’m giving you the finger," and then he just walked out without another word. And we never saw that legend again.
15. This One’s A Riot
My first internship was at a Brazilian teen detention center. It is akin to a prison, but Brazilian law has some distinctions between adults and teens—teens go through socio-educational measures. I was walking through a courtyard with my supervisor when some doctors came running, flailing their arms and screaming while officers came running from the opposite direction.
I was pulled aside by my supervisor who told me to run back to our office. I was shocked at what she told me had happened. These teens, who were as young as 12 years old, had escaped their block. A few minutes later, an officer came knocking on the doors of the offices, yelling for everyone to run outside because a fire had broken out. Some of the teens had set the mattresses on fire in their cells.
I noped out of there fast.
16. Crafty Move
I used to work at a craft store as a cashier but I quit when I moved. Then, a couple of years later, I ended up going back to make some extra cash...but this time in the framing department. During the interview, I told them I refused to have any full cashier shifts and they swore up and down I would only ever be a backup.
On my first shift after the interview, I was put down for framing, but when I got to the store, I was totally blindsided. They put me on cash and told me that most of my shifts would be on cash since they’d found someone else for framing. I spent the next six hours giving everyone who came to my register 20% off of everything and then never went back.
17. Health Standards
I was the lead for a fast food restaurant and I moved to another town. I transferred to a restaurant in this town but only went in as a cook since all the lead positions were full. Had this other cook come in for his shift wearing basketball shorts and was literally inside them gripping himself with both hands. He jumped right on line with me. I was like "Bro, shouldn't wash your hands first?" He just smiled and said, "Nah man, we don't do that here." I walked out immediately.
18. When the Cat Is Away, the Jerks Will Play
I started work in a bar in town and was told to be at work at 7 pm for my first shift with the manager providing me with a typed timesheet showing my new working hours. I went home and had a cat nap. At 5 pm, my new manager calls me asking where the heck I am and telling me I need to come in now. I referred him to my timesheet which stated I was to be in at 7 pm to which he told me, "the timesheet doesn't matter, you do what I tell you."
Hearing this, I politely told him that I would not be in tonight or ever, good night, and went back to my cat nap.
19. Long Term Goals
Eight years ago, I quit my job during my performance review. It was awesome. I had gotten my license to be a mortgage broker while working for a large automation company for 10 years. I started doing mortgages part-time and had a plan to leave after one year if things were going well for me with this side gig. Five months in, I was starting to find my groove.
I had just had a really good previous month, but I still didn’t have any intention of quitting my day job. Well, during my next performance review, my manager told me I was doing really well, and wanted to know what my aspirations were for the next six months. I don’t know what hit me, but I thought about it for a second...and then I blurted out some rather surprising words: “Well, Frank, I gotta be honest. My goal for the next six months is to not be here anymore.”
He was so confused, so I told him what I was doing on the side, and he was super supportive. I told him I didn’t see things slowing down on that front, and that if I was doing mortgages full time, I probably could have made enough money to have quit already. And he said, “Well, why don’t you?” So I did. I thanked him for being so understanding and supportive.
I told him I would use my remaining vacation to cover my two weeks and emailed him my formal notice the next day. I then shook his hand and left. I called my wife from the parking lot, shaking like a leaf, and surprisingly, she also was super supportive even though I hadn’t run this major decision by her before acting on it.
Shout out to her for being so amazing! Fast forward eight years, and it was the best decision I ever made. I love helping people, I love math, and I love trying to come up with ways to pay the bank as little as possible for my clients. Plus, I have way more financial freedom now, and I get to control my own schedule. Even though my former boss was a nice guy, I know I made the right choice.
20. Breakfast In Bed
I used to work for a terribly cheap software company in the early days of the internet. You’ll recall hearing about all the perks being lavished on dot-com employees back then. This was not that kind of place. We were expected to put in crazy extra hours with the only additional perk being an unspecified bonus payment at the end of the year.
These bonus payments always amounted to getting paid far less than minimum wage for your overtime hours. At some point, management determined that having our weekly status meeting during the workday was hurting our productivity. Their solution was completely uncalled for—they decided to have the weekly meeting on Thursday in the hour before work starts!
We grumbled, but we all showed up on Thursday mornings expecting at least some bagels or donuts. Nothing. After a month of this and feeling generally unappreciated, my coworker had enough. The next Thursday, we showed up for the 8 am meeting and saw a big tent set up in the parking lot, with tables and a catered breakfast buffet.
My coworker was there with a huge smile, telling everyone to grab some food and enjoy themselves. We were all giddy with delight. Management did not join us, but also did not say anything about us all being 30 minutes late for the meeting. After the meeting, this coworker went straight to HR and handed in his two weeks. They asked him to leave the premises immediately.
As he walked out the front door, he yelled a loud Braveheart style “Freedom!” Pretty legendary.
21. Cooking Something Up
It wasn't exactly the first day, but I didn't show up after my second shift. I worked at a rather popular cafe chain in my country and was hired to work in the kitchen as a cook along with another senior cook. It was a nightmare because not only did I have zero cooking knowledge, but the senior cook would also leave the kitchen every five minutes to take a break outside.
So there I'd be, alone in the kitchen, with orders printing quickly. I'd honestly just stand, there not sure what to do. The waitress would then come over and yell at me to cook the dishes on my own. But that's not even the worst part—later on, the senior cook told me they had at least two rats running around the kitchen.
They defecated on a plate and he showed it to me before serving it. I never came back and I'm glad the place got shut down.
22. I Was Floored
I worked a seasonal floor position at Forever 21. The store was always a mess, and it was rearranged every week. No one knew where anything went. I just put things together that looked roughly the same since it was all going to get shuffled again anyway. I quit when I got the flu—they said if I didn't get a doctor's note, it would be a "red mark" in my file.
I said, "Nah, you don't give me health insurance and I'm not in Kindergarten." I quit and got another job at a better store at the same mall a week later.
23. Bottoms Up
I "beer quit" this really horrible desk job at a bank. We had really low cubicle walls. You could basically see the entire room from your seat. So, one day, I came in with a six-pack and sat it on top of my cubicle wall and proceeded to drink. I also offered any who walked by a beer. I managed to comfortably drink four beers while doing some work before two supervisors and a manager started walking towards my desk. Needless to say, I was asked to leave.
24. The Gift of Knowledge
I worked at Spencer’s Gifts for a bit during university. I was working and saw that I was scheduled for an evening shift the day before a morning exam, so I asked the manager if I could switch. She said no, the schedule is already made up. We went back and forth trying to negotiate. She ended with, “You’re going to have to decide what’s more important, the shift or your exam.”
25. That’s Not What I Ordered!
I managed a sandwich shop in college for a terrible owner, but he at least put me in charge of hiring. I hired this guy that was covered in tattoos and had piercings because he was really chill, lived within walking distance, and had experience working at a deli. He checked all the boxes that matter for job performance, so it was an easy decision for me.
But the owner did not feel that way, and he was suspicious of the guy right from the outset. On his very first day on the job, the owner made a horrific accusation—he claimed the new hire had swiped a freaking Gatorade from the refrigerator. He was on lunch and had made himself a sandwich, which we were allowed to do. Nevertheless, the owner confronted him about taking the Gatorade.
So, the guy threw his sandwich down at the owner’s shoes and walks out. He texted me later and said, "You’re a cool guy, but that other dude is a freaking jerk. Don't tell him, but before I left, I stuck my private parts in his gas tank and took a pee." As hilarious as this was, I chose not to tell anyone about that last part...until now.
26. Chain Reaction
I worked for a company that planned a huge annual event. I was asked to take over the role of someone who was retiring. It seemed straightforward enough, but it ended up being a total nightmare. She proceeded to give me a moist, leaking poop bag of mish-mashed instructions and a task list of very unlawful things she was doing because she didn't want to make anyone mad. I got written up for not doing things in a timely manner and asking too many questions.
This then started a waterfall in which I got written up any time anything bad happened in the office. Power goes out during a storm? Write up. Does the building need to be re-mortared? Write up. The pollen count is high? Write up. Noisy road work happening outside the office? Write up. So, I very professionally and calmly explained that this job was not what I had expected.
It was supposed to be an HR position. I calmly expressed that, under the circumstances, I thought it best that we part ways. I gave my two weeks’ notice and wrote up all the notes on all the things I had been doing. I attempted to train everyone on what I was doing, but they all dismissed my efforts because I was clearly an absolute imbecile who couldn't even prevent our admin's allergies from flaring up.
On my last day, I packed up my office, said thank you, went home, and drank a ton. But I would end up having the last laugh. Within the next month, literally, everyone I had been working with rage quit at one point or another, because they couldn't do my work without me. I had been given such convoluted nonsense instructions by my predecessor that no one else could figure out how to untangle things to make the processes work.
I handed over all the handwritten notes I was given, so they knew I wasn't making it harder. It was clear that I had inherited that mess. Then, they all got written up for not doing things in a timely manner. They quickly saw where things were headed for them, decided it was a joke, and left. The owner ended up losing her mind about it and selling the company.
And that's the story of how I indirectly took down an entire business by quitting calmly and professionally.
27. Mutiny
I worked for a computer company that had me train my replacements but told me I was eventually getting my own sales team to train. I was one of their top salespeople for the year way back in 1999-2000. Halfway through the two-week training, I found out they laid off my entire team and that I was going to be laid off after training.
I told my manager he could go screw himself and quit that day, but not before I told all the new hires and many of them quit too.
28. The Whole 9 Yards
The commute was over an hour, but I really enjoyed my job. I interviewed at two closer stores. I was told one store didn't want me. But the other store offered me a promotion and raise right there. I was ecstatic. A week goes by with no calls and no notice of transfer from my GM. I finally mentioned it and was told they turned me down. When I found out why I couldn’t believe it.
I found out my GM didn't want to lose me so she went above the other stores' management and to corporate to shut down my transfers. I spend 50 hours a month in traffic and it wasn't worth it to stay at that location. I really, really loved the company but when I found out the GM went above and beyond to have me turned down for a raise and closer commute, I lost it.
I hopped on the store radio and calmly announced what the GM had done to me and walked out in front of everyone.
29. Just Before The Deadline
I was working for this huge American company that had a lot of trouble making decent plans and keeping promises. I work in IT projects, but due to a vacancy, I was asked to pick up a commercial role. I refused. Then, it turned out it wasn’t a question, it was a demand. I had until Tuesday to give the wanted answer. But there was an important detail that they didn't know—I was already working out contract details with another employer, which luckily got sorted out by that Monday.
Come Tuesday morning, an angry manager called me into his office, stating that I didn’t reply to the request in time and that I was in serious trouble as a result. I then had my Hollywood moment by being able to silently slide my resignation paper towards him as an answer. This only got under his skin even more, but alas…
30. Too Little, Too Late
I once worked for a landscaping company. The owner was cheap, with a bad habit of biting off more than he could chew and trying to run projects with nowhere near enough people. More than once, my boss and I saved him from getting fined for projects not being completed on time. The breaking point was him taking an absolutely massive homeowner’s association on as a new client.
We were barely treading water as it was, and then he dumped that surprise on us. It took all of two weeks in that awful homeowner’s association situation for us to realize that this wasn't worth it. My boss and I quit two days apart from one another, and we both immediately went to work for another company. But the story didn’t end there…
The best part is, a month later, he called us both and begged us to come back, because all of his projects were woefully behind schedule and he was losing clients left and right. We both told him no, and that he should have hired more help like we had told him to do on several occasions. He swore at us and hung up. Screw you, Brad.
31. Nothing Is Concrete
I was 17 and working at a pre-cast concrete company. I refused to use a rusted and unsafe ladder. When I voiced my concerns to the supervisor, his response shocked me. He called me a fairy and got up about seven rungs before his foot went through one of the rungs. I heard his foot snap as he fell. I called an ambulance and walked to my car in the parking lot. Bye!
32. Getting Burned
I burned my hands all night on the hot plates as a food runner. They wouldn't let me use towels to carry them and said I just had to get used to it. Nope.
33. Breaking Bad
On the first day of working at an Amazon warehouse, the manager explained to everyone how 15-minute breaks worked there. Walking to the break room would be two and a half minutes. Then, there'd be 10 minutes of actual break and two and a half minutes of getting back to our stations. It took me two and a half minutes to walk to my car and I took a forever break.
34. Seeing Eye to Eye
I fractured my orbital socket in an industrial accident. Another employee lost focus at the wrong time was supposed to wait for a hand signal and didn't. We had been working over 90 days straight of 13-14 hour shifts and living in a dingy motel a 45-minute drive from our worksite. We were supposed to be on a rotation where we didn't work more than three weeks at a time.
It was a close call and could have been a lot worse. I'm glad I "saw it coming" and had time to at least try and get out of the way. I got sent away after a night in the ER while the rest of that crew continued to work. After spending two or three days at home, the boss called to say that he "needed me in Alaska" in two days and that my flight was already booked. I told him I quit right on the spot.
35. Brushed Off
I worked as a painter for a franchisee of a student painting company and he kept telling me that "he would pay me next week." This went on for about six weeks and the final straw was when I had finished several large projects that would give him ample money to pay me but he decided to hire on another person instead of paying me for all the stuff I had already done, which was like $1,300 worth of work.
Then he tried negotiating down what he thought he should be paying me despite already having agreed in writing what I would be getting paid right from the get-go. I was so mad that I didn't give him notice or even show up for the next day of work because I had bills to pay and needed to make as much money as possible during the summer.
I wrote him off as a lost cause and took him to small claims court for what he owed me and eventually got my money through the court. It was still a pain though, and as far as I know, he still works there full time.
36. This Train Is Bound For Glory
I was severely underpaid and tried for two years to have constructive conversations with management about it. But unfortunately, the problem wasn’t going anywhere and it generally led to a lot of unhappiness from me. When I handed my two months’ notice in, I was asked, “Is there anything we can do to get you to stay?” I was so proud of my response. told my manager that if he had a time machine, then he could go back two years and listen to me then.
The company then tried to claim that I was liable for a large chunk of money because they had paid for training. The amount they were asking was in the thousands, and they were threatening via email to take it from my next two months’ pay. So I verbally agreed until two weeks before leaving, and then asked them in writing for proof of these costs.
They were unable to provide it. The cherry on top occurred during my exit interview—I made the HR manager write down that HR needed to brush up on their training course funding rules.
37. Name-Ception
I work in the field of recruitment, where our job is to find potential employees for companies that are looking to hire. Whenever we make a new placement, we ring the bell and write it up on the whiteboard for a round of applause from the entire office. This one guy on our team filled a job with—get this—himself. Then, what he did next was epic—he then rang the bell, wrote up his own name on the board, and mic dropped the marker as he walked straight out into his new job.
38. I’ll Check My Schedule
I had been asking for a raise for months and kept getting excuses from my bosses. I finally put my two weeks’ notice in, citing the fact that I would need the raise we had been talking about in order to continue my employment there. Two weeks went by and, on one of my last days there, management sent out a company-wide email, making up some fake excuse as to why they were losing me.
I immediately wanted to email back and plead my case to everyone in the email chain, but instead, I devised a better plan of my own. Having my own company email address at the time and understanding how email works in general, I decided to schedule an email to go out from my address a day or so after my last day. This email would explain my real reason for leaving and shed a bit of light on the low-wage issue that ran rampant throughout the company.
Just as I had planned, the email went out and upper management lost their minds. They even went as far as to accuse one of my co-workers of sending the email out on my behalf. It was pretty apparent that they just simply didn't understand how email scheduling works, which I have to admit made me smile a bit. When all was said and done, this little kerfuffle was an incredibly satisfying experience for me.
It also led to them taking a look at and improving the wages of many of the workers there. A win-win situation in my book.
39. You Dig It?
I had a summer job working for a landscape architect. I got to the job site and my boss asked me to dig a hole in some rocky dirt. I asked for a shovel, but he didn't have one. I asked for a hand spade and didn't have one. So I asked him how I was supposed to dig the hole, and his answer made my blood boil. He told me to dig the hole with my bare hands, then he drove off to another site leaving me completely alone. I dug for a little bit before saying "Screw this" and leaving.
Had the job specified that I needed to supply my own tools, I could have, but it didn't. I wasn't going to work for somebody that expected me to dig through hard, rocky soil with my bare hands.
40. On The Road Again
I went into orientation for a new job as a truck driver. I knew I'd be away from home, but this was the worst—I'd be out on the road 30 days at a time, working six out of seven days, not getting paid a good wage, and not being allowed to bring a pet of any type. In essence, I would only be home 18 days a year.
. The no-pets rule was the final straw for me. I will not be out for 30 days alone with no little friend to keep me sane.
41. “The Worst Job I Ever Had”
Forever 21. Legit the worst job I ever had. When I was hired, they explained that we had to wear fashionable clothing. No sneakers or comfortable shoes were permitted. I asked what they expected me to wear on concrete for the 10-hour shifts and the manager's response was so absurd I just had to laugh. "Heels, flats, sandals or boots. Heels preferred." I wore combat boots and flats most days and I still got wicked blisters!
They never taught me which clothes went where, so it was just guesswork based on the tag or if it looked similar to other things on the rack. When I asked if anyone could train me on where things went, I was laughed at. They told me to come back and shop in my free time to learn where everything went. The worst part was it took us hours to close the store.
The mall closed at 9 pm and sometimes I wouldn’t get home until 3 am the next day. If you were done with your section, you had to wait until everyone else in the store was done! I'd be finished my duties, but still, be forced to help the people who goofed off all day. They also made us clock out before midnight and then clock back in at 12:01 so they didn't pay overtime.
I was too stupid to realize that I was being taken advantage of. The last straw was when I found out my mom had a cancer scare and I had to go to the hospital to see her. When I told the manager, she said something so appalling it made my blood boil: "She won't die in the next eight hours, you can deal with her in your own time." Deal with her, as if she was a parasite or something!
I legit told her to screw herself and threw my lanyard at her. I never shopped there again!
42. Quitting Was Set In Stone
Working in precast concrete was by far the worst job I ever had. I was always in intense heat, breathing in cancerous dust and dirt all day long for measly pay...yet they were always pushing us to work harder and harder. They’d boast and say, “this is the best quarter we’ve had in the history of the company,” but there were no raises or bonuses.
We got a “Good job!” and a pat on the back whenever we did something worth praising. Then I'd go home living paycheck to paycheck because my pay was so little, while the owner drove away in a Maserati.
43. Well Done
I worked at a restaurant and was treated like garbage with bad shifts, terrible sections, bullying by managers, the whole lot. I worked hard to win the monthly sales contest to get better shifts and a bonus table on my section. Managers said I must have cheated, which wasn’t possible, and gave the reward to the regular guy who had previously won most months.
That Friday night at 8:30, I rang in 20 well-done filet mignon and sent them to the kitchen from several different waiter's numbers. I waited five minutes, walked to my jerk of a manager with my jacket on, and said to him, “I quit, see ya.” I never even bothered with my last check or asked what happened with the kitchen. The place has since closed down.
44. No Deliverables
Back in college, I delivered food. I worked all the time, picked up shifts, and was highly valued. Corporate wanted to have a front staff meeting and the managers didn’t communicate it to the employees, so literally no one showed. I was working at the time of the meeting so I saw the managers get reamed by corporate. They rescheduled the meeting for the following Saturday morning, which happened to be the day after my birthday and one of the few days I requested off.
I told them I wasn’t going to make the meeting and they got all huffy puffy about how they would have to “do something” if I didn’t come. This happened at the end of my lunch shift and I just said screw it, called a local pizza shop, set up an interview, and didn’t show up for my evening shift. They called and were all, “we can figure something out,” and I said, “nah, I’m good.” I probably could’ve just toughed it out because the managers typically only lasted four months or so, but I had enough of this dude by then.
45. You Had That In The Bag
I went to tell the store manager about my two weeks’ notice and, coincidentally, before I could even get to it, he let me know that they had accidentally been paying me as a cashier instead of as a bag boy for an entire year and they were going to start paying me the correct rate (about a dollar less per hour) as of my next pay period. I was like “Okay, well here’s my two weeks’ notice. Bye!”
46. What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks
One of my friends' first jobs was working the drive-thru at a fast-food place. He wanted to quit with a splash, so he set up an impressive scenario with another friend of ours, who had a car. The friend, posing as a customer, went to the drive-thru, ordered, and drove up to the window. My friend, the employee, started to ask: "You want any ketch-" (voice cracks), "Want any ket-," then he broke down fake sobbing.
The guy in the car then reached out through the window and said, "It's okay, man. It's okay. Just go. Come with me." And my friend literally took off his name tag and headset, climbed through the drive-thru window into his buddy's car, and they drove off. They planned it out down to the last detail, and from what I’m told it went down flawlessly when the time came.
47. A Tough Sell
When I was in college, I answered an ad in the paper for what seemed to be an office job making sales calls. I did a phone interview and was called back for an in-person interview. When I went, I was led into a room with about 50 other people and a small stage at the front of the room.
We were all somewhat confused as to what was going on until finally, a person got up on the stage and informed us of the horrifying truth: we'd been selected for an opportunity to sell Cutco knives. I, along with two-thirds of the rest of the people, stood up and walked out.
48. Not a Minute More
I worked for a boss who micromanaged everything and was just a jerk about everything in general. I came into work at 6:56 AM and the clock in time was at 7:00 AM. Instead of clocking in then going to the bathroom, I went to the bathroom first instead of using company time. I clocked in at 7:01 AM and he went off on me for being one minute late. He saw me sit my stuff down and go to the restroom so he knew I wasn’t truly late.
This wasn’t the first time he yelled about something so small, but that day was the last. I didn’t say, “Screw this, I quit!” I said, “Screw you, I quit!” I reported him to Human Resources two days later for the ridiculous behavior. I come to find out this was not the first time he had been reported for creating a toxic work environment. My friend in that department told me he was fired that next week. It was a happy ending to my “Screw this, I quit!” story.
49. The Power Of Love
On a slightly different note, a female friend of mine had a bit of a romantic thing for her boss, and kind of felt like it was mutual, even though he had never said or done anything to confirm it. They worked together for almost a year, then he handed in his notice. And the day after he’d left and had a goodbye party, he called her and asked her out.
That’s classy. But here's the greatest twist of all—they’re now married. I like to think of this as a different sort of satisfying quitting story because, in a sense, he gave up his job for love. And he seems to be happy with this choice.
50. A Disgusting Discovery
I was working at a restaurant. I swept under my station when we were closing. A giant brown pile came out with the broom from under a fridge. At first, I thought it was just rotted leftover meat or something, but then the scariest thing happened—the pile began to scatter. It was hundreds of roaches. I never returned.
51. Teamwork
I worked at a call center on the same team as my girlfriend. She was fired, but it was for good reason. Rather than have the angry boyfriend on the team, they fired me too without cause. In the evening, they pulled my brother who was a manager there into a room and said they were putting him on a "Performance Improvement Plan," but they had no reason behind it.
He said, "You just fired my brother and his girlfriend, and you're building a paper trail to fire me too. Screw this, I quit." The office was super clique-ish. My brother's girlfriend who was also a manager there made it about three months before they started giving her written warnings for petty things and she quit too. About three months after that the whole place imploded and about 900 people were out of jobs.
52. Not a Dollar to Spare
After one year at my old job, I asked for a small raise of $1 more per hour to add to my current $20 per hour. I was underpaid and we all knew it. When they came back with the counteroffer, I was stunned. They offered me 50 cents. I showed them I was saving them $70-100k/year, they wouldn’t budge. I gave my notice right there.
I got my last check with no yearly bonus. I was owed $1,000. They told me they didn’t have to pay me since I quit. I said that’s cool, I’ll call OSHA later today and cited five big violations they hadn’t addressed. Suddenly I got my bonus.
53. No, For Real!
I really liked my supervisor, but I hated my job. He was the only thing that made it bearable. Eventually, I got a new job and handed him my written two weeks’ notice. Just my luck, it was April 1st, so he didn’t believe me. Every day after that, I’d remind him how many days I had left, yet he never took it seriously. I’m told he was quite surprised when I stopped showing up!
54. Teaching Them A Lesson
I was teaching in a private school. At one point, I got promoted and was given way more responsibility. These new responsibilities included training staff, coordinating assessments, etc. All of this was on top of my regular duties. I asked for a €200 per month pay increase to cover the final 12 months of the contract.
The boss refused to give me this raise, citing budgetary restrictions. Instead, she gave me another offer that basically felt like an egg to my face—€100, which still left me earning less than some of the unqualified teachers who she employed that just so happened to be friendly with her. She wished me luck on my return to my own country. I wished her luck with recruitment, as I knew a standard job search for that position actually cost €2,500.
The most satisfying part was passive-aggressively telling her I hope she can find someone as good as me to work for that little again, knowing full well that she wouldn’t be able to. Not only did they fly three different applicants out, costing the school well over €1,500, but my replacement left after just six months, so they had to recruit all over again.
Meanwhile, I went to work for a different school across town for a significant pay raise and an easier job, too. Thanks, new boss!
55. The Arrogant Chef
A long time ago, not long after getting my papers as a chef, I had an interview at a hotel for a position in the kitchen. The executive chef and I chatted in his office for about 20 mins, and at the time, I remember him coming off as very arrogant. I paid no mind to it as that behavior is quite common in this field. I didn't think much of it at the time as the pay was decent and the shift was what I wanted.
As I was leaving his office, I turned to leave through the dining room (the way I had come in), which was closed at the time as it was another hour or so before service started. He unexpectedly stopped me and said something that immediately ruined my mood: "No, not that way—go through the kitchen, you're not good enough to go through the dining room." I was so surprised by what he said!
I just did what he asked without a word. Later on, after I got home, I phoned him up and said that after having a close look, I decided that his menu wasn't good enough and that I wouldn't be accepting his offer.
56. Throw The Book At ‘Em!
My first ever job was I was 13. I was delivering phone books from the back of a van through people’s letterboxes. I'd be there with the phone books and an older guy would drive slowly while I went back and forth to each of the houses with the books. At one point, the van was getting quite empty, so there was more space for me to move around. We had finished the delivery in the street that we were paid to deliver to, so he drove to another.
While driving there, he drove aggressively and I fell inside the back where the remaining books were. I wasn't sitting in a seat as the van had no seats in the back. As I put my hand out to steady myself, I accidentally laid it across a portable radio that had its antenna extended. It would have been fine...but I was in for quite the surprise. The antenna ended up being broken halfway and razor-sharp.
It sliced the palm of my hand clean open, leaving a gash that was three to four inches big. I can only describe what I saw as gruesome. I told him to pull the van over since I needed help. He saw my hand and just threw me a plastic bag, the kind you'd get at a supermarket, and told me to wrap my hand in it. Then he continued with the deliveries, distributing the remaining books himself.
I should have been taken to a hospital or at least home to my parents. I quit after that and never showed up again. As you can imagine my parents were quite angry at him. I should have sued.
57. Pointed in Error
The building where my job was closed down at 9 PM. Everybody except security had to get out so they could shut everything down. One of my supervisors, I had eight of them, kept scheduling me until 9:30 PM. I repeatedly brought this up at the end of the night and was always told, "No, that's just a mistake, you need to leave."
Fast forward three months, I get called into a disciplinary meeting. The reason? I kept "leaving early." I had like eight attendance points from "leaving early" because one of my idiot bosses who worked in the SAME BUILDING and definitely should have known when it closes couldn't figure out how to schedule. I explain my side, which was pretty obvious, and they say they'll hold off on any disciplinary action while they look into it.
A couple of days later they told me they weren't going to remove those attendance points. I told them to shove it, walked out, and went to a concert with some of my now former coworkers.
58. We All Scream for Ice Cream
I was working as an ice cream vendor at an amusement park. It was the kind of ice cream that comes in tiny little flash-frozen pellets. One time I was selling my tiny overpriced cups of frozen ice cream balls and had a line of a half dozen people. A manager came over and said he saw someone walk by with a cup that hadn't been leveled off. I acknowledge his comment and then continue preparing the ice cream cup for the next customer.
After filling the cup, I use the scoop to scrape across the top of the cup and level off the excess pellets because God forbid people almost get their money's worth. The manager said I didn't level it off well enough and snatched it from my hand, dumped it back into the bin, and made me do it again while standing over me. The customer and I were both now silent and uncomfortable. I filled the cup and leveled it off again the same way because that's the only way to do it. This time he apparently approved and said, "That's how you should have been doing it the whole time. It isn't hard!" Then he stormed away.
Well, the previous day I had worked my entire shift without a break because the manager forgot to send relief to cover my stall while I took lunch, so I was already annoyed at the company. But being yelled at and belittled in front of customers was over the line in my book. So, I hand the customer back his money and then similarly handed out free ice cream to the other people in line.
Then I simply left. I didn't lock the ice cream freezer or empty/power down the register, I didn't let anyone know I was leaving, I didn't stop to turn in my nametag or polo shirt, I just left. And I've never regretted that for a second.
59. Back So Soon?
I briefly worked at a local Burger King back when I was in high school. My manager was extremely rude. He yelled and talked down to staff regularly. On my third day on the job, he started cussing and screaming at me about something extremely petty. I honestly can’t even remember what, it was so insignificant. I told him to go screw himself, then threw my name tag down and quit.
But there was a problem that I didn't foresee—I had gotten a ride to work with my best friend who also worked there. So I had to sit on the curb across the street for hours until my buddy got off of work. The manager stared daggers at me through the window all night, but my homie laughed and clapped through the window when the manager wasn’t looking. 10 times out of 10, I would do that again.
What kind of jerk feels the need to power trip on 15-year-old kids working at a fast food joint?
60. Be Careful What You Wish For
I worked as a product designer in a company that consisted of the owner and a 20-person staff. This was back in 2019, and I was making a total of $42K a year, in New York City. For those who don’t know a lot about New York prices, that is far from enough to live comfortably on these days. So I was barely getting by, but oh well.
I shrugged it off because it was my first job; plus the excitement of moving after college, making new friends, etc. I started going above and beyond to impress everyone, to the point where even during my downtime I would take on the responsibilities from other departments and manage the work of this other guy in addition to my own.
Then, in 2020, the big worldwide shutdown hit, and my boss furloughed everyone for about three or four months. Eventually, we returned to work, but with significantly reduced hours. My salary dropped from 42K to 36K, and that’s before taxes. One day, my boss came around and asked me to take on some extra work because some people didn’t want to return.
Fine, it would be a good experience for me, right? But then, my boss took it even further—he came and asked me to take on the responsibilities of the guy I was taking care of previously, which is purely a machine operating job that takes an entire day at each run. I said I had no official training on a giant industrial machine of that kind and that dealing with this machine would mean that I would have to allocate less time to my actual job duties.
His tone quickly changed to condescending, as he told me that training is expensive and that I should just “press the big red button” if something happens and not make a fuss about it. Well, I refused, because I was not going to risk my fingers for his lack of company financials. Then he proceeded to call me into a meeting room and started saying some nasty stuff.
Stuff like: “You should be grateful to even have a job,” “There are millions of people at my door to replace you,” “You are not a critical thinker, initiator, or really that important to the company in the big picture,” “If you aren’t happy, you can just leave,” basically humiliating and scolding me for not saying “yes” to him, in front of an employee that he is friends with, despite my months and months of effort for helping him out for every one of his stupid requests.
I didn’t argue with him at all, but asked “Do you really mean what you say?” to which he replied “Yeah.” The next morning, I handed my computer and my resignation letter to HR. I then left the company and went home to pack my things. The boss soon starts frantically calling and texting me, non-stop for the next four days.
At first, he asked me to think about it and such. Then, he did the unexpected—eventually, he begged me to reconsider my decision while continuing to say stuff like “Be humble,” “This will be worse for you than it will be for me,” “I won’t write you a recommendation letter for leaving without two weeks’ notice.” What the actual heck dude? Regardless, I never argued.
I just said, “This is my final decision, thank you.” My favorite part of the whole experience was when he learned about my resignation for the first time and called me. That exchange went something like this. Boss: “I just got a call from HR. Are you being serious?” Me: “Yes. You told me to quit if I wasn’t happy, so I did.” Boss: “I didn’t mean it like that. What am I supposed to do without you giving me a two-week notice with all the projects pending?”
Me: “Well, you said that there are a million people trampling each other for a chance to get my job and that I don’t matter that much. So I think you will be fine.” Boss: “I was just trying to teach you some humility.” Well, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. This guy tried to intimidate me into submission, but I knew my worth.
It's now one year later, and I am making twice as much money as I made in that company, at a new job with great benefits and an awesome boss and team. No regrets at all.
61. A Tale Of Two Nopes
One time, I got a telemarketing job but I didn’t know what it entailed. After an hour of working there, I knew it was a terrible fit for me. I was auto-dialing people during their dinners, trying to sell them stuff they didn’t want, reading a horrible script while sitting in a soulless, grey cubicle. I got up, went to the manager, apologized, and said I was quitting. He seemed understanding.
Another time, I attended a “make easy money at this job” seminar and it turned out to be some gig selling knives door to door. I didn’t technically “quit”...I just noped out at the end of it.
62. Money Hungry
I was working as GM in a struggling restaurant—struggling despite excellent business because the owners would do stupid stuff like take trips to Italy to source the “perfect” panini press. They also wouldn't staff properly, I was the only FOH staff open to close, six days a week, on top of ordering, inventory, other managerial duties. I was wildly overworked, but I sucked it up because the base pay was good, plus tips.
However, to fund their lavish “business” trips, costs had to be cut at the store. They decided to do this by bumping me down to minimum wage for tipped employees—effectively cutting my salary to 1/10 of its previous level. They were also too chicken to tell me until I got my new teeny paycheck and questioned the mistake. Their response was to play dumb and said, “Oh yeah haha, forgot to mention that blah blah cost-cutting blah valued team member please work with us through this difficult time.” I had worked for two weeks at this new lower rate without my knowledge. Pretty sure that's against the law, but hey, a lot of bad things go on in the restaurant industry. That's not when I rage quit, though...
A couple of hours later, I'm fuming and have decided I can't work for the lower rate just waiting for the chance to give my notice. They called in a delivery guy who was fired a few weeks before and start talking about hiring him to do our Facebook posts and handing out flyers around town. Whatever. Then they offer him close to my old salary as “Promotions Manager.” What!? I was running the place for $2.13 an hour and you're offering this dude almost $20 an hour to walk up and down the street saying “Eat at (Name)?” And yet, it gets worse.
They bring up our negative Yelp reviews and the flyer guy suggests asking friends to post positive ones. Then jerk boss starts laughing and says, “Hurdur better not ask her (me) to post one, it'll be boohoo don't eat there, I can't pay my rent this month because they cut my pay without telling wahhhh.” I wasn't supposed to hear it I think, but I was five feet away, of course, I did. I RAGED at them, quit, and wished them good luck keeping the place open without me.
They quickly realized I was right, neither of them knew how to do more than pick up the takings once a week, and begged me not to quit. They were so desperate that they allowed me to tell them exactly what giant idiots they were for the half-hour my rage burned and just listened nodding and apologizing. Once I had cursed myself back into calmness, I walked out 30 minutes before dinner rush leaving them with an unstaffed floor and no clue how to even open the register. The store closed down about 18 months later, surprised it made it that long.
63. Official Resignation
I worked for a daycare center for a whole three weeks. I was great with the kids and it was a fun job, but I just couldn't stand my boss. She was awful all the time. She’d make me get her coffee on my lunch break and then get mad when I'm late from said lunch break. Or she would give me a bunch of tasks right after I clocked out then wouldn't let me leave until they were finished without paying me overtime. Against the law, I know.
She was always threatening to fire me because I didn't show up for work on a day that I took off that she approved weeks earlier. Anyway, just got fed up one day and told her calmly and politely, "I will not be coming back from my lunch break. I am clocking out and leaving." She says if I'm going to quit, it needs to be in writing.
I lost it, grabbed a giant Crayola marker out of one of the drawing bins and a sheet of construction paper, wrote "I QUIT" on it, and signed my name then threw it at her.
64. A Hockey Fight
I worked at an NHL arena as a cook and runner for the cashiers. The boss's son was also a cashier, and so he thought he could just harangue you if you didn't prioritize his customers over the other cashiers’. At the second intermission during a Game Seven in the playoffs, he hit me hard after I brought someone else their materials before him.
I did not take well to that. When I felt him hit me, I turned around and punched him right in the face. He was a big lad, so his head went back and slammed into the concrete wall. In other words, I knocked him out cold in front of a crowd of more than 100 people. I was escorted to the arena’s holding center and was told by the supervisor that I would be charged for assaulting her son.
Security footage was then produced, showing the son hitting me and the co-workers repeatedly over the course of the playoffs. As a result, charges were not laid. It was clear that I was leaving the building permanently after I was let go, and I received roaring applause from my co-workers as I was escorted out of the building.
65. Out Of This World
My dad hated his job, so he just decided to walk into the boss' office during lunch one day and say the most hilarious thing ever: "I have been contacted by the mothership. I have to return to my home planet. Thank you for the job and for teaching me about the ways of the earthlings." He then shook the guy's hand and left the building. They never contacted him again.
66. The Chips Are Down
I got hired at a very small knock-off dollar store in an old, failing mall. The owner was foreign with a very thick accent. He told me I'd get $6 an hour but neglected to mention it was under the table. I spent about an hour stocking the overly cluttered shelves before I was told to get more chips out of the back storage area.
I walked back there and about a dozen men were sitting on boxes, all crammed in a small back room. I asked where the chips were and they just glared at me. They started speaking in another language and motioned towards me. Then, one guy got up and asked what I needed. I told him I was supposed to get a box of chips and he got a box out of the pile and handed it to me.
The entire time these guys were all staring at me. Everything back there looked shady and it was very uncomfortable. A while later, I had to use the women's restroom which was also in the back. That's when things got super creepy. While I was inside, someone tried to open the door. I was the only woman there.
The owner told me he wanted me to come back that night late in the evening after the mall closed. I didn't show up. I came in the next morning and lied about why I couldn't work there. He still gave me the few bucks from what little time I did work. I don't know what that guy had going on there and I didn't want to find out.
67. Break Away
We had just gotten a new boss who for some reason hated the friendships that we made. She said I had been stealing time from the company and "caught" me on video outside on breaks I wasn't supposed to have. She pulled me into the HR office and berated me for taking breaks. She had been cutting my hours slowly but scheduled me long enough to force me to take a 30-minute breaks.
The HR girl tried to correct her several times, telling her I was entitled to my breaks, but my boss wasn't having it. She said she had proof of me leaving, but never showed it to me. So, the next time I was scheduled, I clocked in, waited 30 minutes, and just clocked out without saying anything. Nobody ever called me for a no-call no-show.
About a week later, I went back to the store with my friend who was also an ex-coworker and quit the day before and they threatened to call security on us.
68. Not Under My Watch
I used to work for Regal Cinemas throughout high school. Having been one of the most reliable employees for a while, a management position opened up and I figured that I would apply for it because it would be more pay. Unfortunately, I didn't get it because I was planning to go to college and wouldn't be there during the semester and only be around for holidays and whatnot. I understood their decision, but the person they hired instead was incompetent.
Fast forward about a month, I'm in charge of our theater cleaning team responsible for 22 theaters on a busy as heck weekend. We pretty much have a set schedule of when theaters are supposed to let out, and thinking that everyone should be responsible enough, I would help out one team do one wing because we had several large kid movies, which always get really dirty, finishing at the same time.
After cleaning all of those kid movies, I find out that one of the male restrooms is flooded. I, being the only one over 18 at the time, don some rubber gloves, plunger, and a mop and go to battle with a poop-filled flooding toilet. Having successfully defeated the poop monster, I am greeted with the woman that was hired as a manager instead of me.
She starts going off on me because the other team I had set up to clean the other half of the theater apparently didn't do anything and couldn't be found. She also yelled at me for not being where I was supposed to be even though I was still doing my job and wrote me up for "being insubordinate" when I defended myself in a reasonable matter.
I later found those kids by the trash compacter stoned as heck and gave them a piece of my mind. I finished my shift, went to the head manager on staff, told him everything, and told him that I was giving him my two weeks' notice. He offered me more pay, telling me how much of a valued employee I was, how much I was respected among the management for putting up with all of the garbage I had to do before and always being available. It turns out that the manager who chewed me out still works there several years later, while I have moved onto an actual career.
69. Gone Without A Trace
A coworker of mine got really upset one day at work. This was at a large multinational company. He went home and never returned to the office; never called, nothing. He just stopped going in to work. He expected at least a call from his manager after a couple of days, but nothing.
Four months later, his manager asked me if I'd seen him at all recently. I said nope and added that I thought he had quit. But the crazy part is, it was another two months before they finally stopped paying him. It was pretty epic. And for those of you wondering, this was in Ontario, Canada, where there is no law by which the company can force you to return funds that were paid out by mistake.
70. A Match Made In Heaven
I started my career as a copywriter for an internet marketing agency. It was small and I was inquisitive, so my role increased significantly as we ramped up and hit the country’s big lists of fastest-growing companies. No raises though, despite the fact that I was the only analyst for over 200 clients. Eventually, the company president told me they couldn't find someone else to do just one of my jobs for less than six figures.
So, I decided to make things fair—I started coming in half the time. Eventually, they got tired of that and told me to come in full time, or else they would part ways. But I didn't come back full time. Instead, because they had royally upset one of their clients and didn’t have anyone else they could rely on, they reassigned me to head up a project with them.
I accepted, then took a two-week vacation before informing them that I was going to work for that client permanently. And because of a technicality, I was able to get three months’ salary from them after quitting. It was pretty epic.
71. Lining Up To Quit
I was a restaurant line chef. I worked a 12-hour shift and I was given two breaks of about 10 to 15 minutes each. I burned my hand numerous times because they gave me plates that came right from the oven and never said a word. At the end of the shift, I told the head chef I was done. He called me soft and said I was the third person to quit on him after a day. I said, “Maybe it’s the way you treat people.”
72. Going in Blind
I needed a summer job while in high school so I applied at a local grocery store to bag/stock/clean. On my first day there, there was some sort of confusion as to what I was supposed to do or to whom I was to report. I was sent to the front counter where the customer service manager gave me a till and told me to open a register. Mind you, I'd had ZERO training on a register. I didn't even know how to put the till in it. I told the lady this and was told to go do my job.
Within about two minutes at the register, there was a line several deep and I'm just standing there with the till in my hands. The customer service lady comes storming over asking why I had such a line and I tried AGAIN to explain to her that I was supposed to be a stocker or whatever and that I knew nothing about operating a register. She called me stupid in front of the customers so I handed her the till and told her what I really thought of her. I walked down the street in my uniform and got a job at another grocery store.
73. $40,000th of July
I had a lawyer draw up an intent-to-sue-for-harassment after a new boss required me to work on the Fourth of July. Usually 100-150 people in the office, but that particular day I was the only one in the office. That was the final straw after six months of harassment. I ended up winning a $40,000 settlement. I still smile when I think of it.
74. Getting The Message
I quit my most recent job. I knew I was done with them and I was just waiting to collect my last check before I quit. So I planned to suck it up for a few more days and pretend that everything was still great. But then, I got a text from the owner's son on a Friday afternoon as I was going home from our workday. Its contents surprised me: “Before you go home, please come by the shop because I need you to sign a write-up for taking extra time on your break.”
Seriously, man? Who does that? I texted him back and said I was already home and that I’d see him on Monday. I knew right at that moment that there was no going back on my decision to quit in the near future. So I waited until Sunday night, which happened to be Valentine’s Day, just before they normally texted out the weekly scheduling along with what jobs we would be at, who we were working with, etc.
Minutes before the schedule was to be sent out, I texted the owner’s son and said, “Oh, by the way, don’t worry about scheduling me anymore.” I left it at that, and he never responded to me directly. But a few minutes later, he sent the following message out to the employee group chat: “Some jerk just decided to quit and ruined this week’s scheduling, so everybody please come down to the shop right away so that we can move some things around.”
I just know that everyone was enraged at being asked to come in on short notice, and on a Sunday no less. And I guess the guy forgot that I was still in the group chat because I got to see that message come in and enjoy the fallout directly. Shortly after he sent that message, I hit the group chats with my final blow: I sent a laughing emoji, followed by the middle finger. And then I left the chat.
This place was a family-run business that regularly promised us bonuses (which we never got) and raises (which we also never got). I waited a year before asking for a raise since I never missed any days without a week’s notice, nor did I ever show up late or have to go home early for any reason. I was the best employee they had, and everyone knew it.
I never received a single customer complaint in all my time working there, and I always had the tools and materials needed. So screw them for telling me to “give it another three months and we will see,” then writing me up one day because I needed an extra 15 minutes to rest on a big demo job.
75. Mamma Mia!
A friend of mine worked at a local pizza place. The owner was a total jerkwad, changing timesheets that people had submitted to screw them out of money and all that fun stuff. Unfortunately, it was the only work that my friend could find at the time and he was saving up for tools. He went to farrier school but needed to buy his own setup.
Once he made enough money to afford his tools, he proceeded with his epic exit. He walked into the pizza place, opened a can from their fridge, chugged it, smashed it on the ground, and said: “Consider this is my two weeks’ notice.” He then just started making pizzas like it was any other workday. No one had the guts to say anything or call him out for the stunt. It was hilarious.
76. State Of No-Pay
I got what was supposed to be a prestigious political internship that came with a security clearance and everything. I found out at orientation that the “part-time” internship was 40 to 60 hours per week. It was unpaid and no intern had gone on to work with the organization. They also never got a leg up for other federal posts.
We were supposed to facilitate meetings with heads of state, coordinate conferences, and assist the employees with composing published research papers for which we would not be credited. They were drinking their own Kool-Aid, so I bounced right on out of there.
77. Respect Goes Both Ways
I worked as a casual at a gift shop when I was just out of high school. The shop was owned by a lady that I had worked with for three years at a different location, and I had been working at this particular location for almost a year. I had a good relationship with the owner, but when she opened up the new location, she hired another lady to manage the store.
All the staff disliked the new manager because we had been working in the job for years and knew more about the stock and processes than this new lady, but we were teenagers and this manager was in her 50s and treated us like kids, so we felt that we weren't taken seriously by her. Anyway, I was meant to be working the late-night shift but was super sick.
Being casual, I was able to call in sick up to two hours before my shift at no penalty to me. So, I did this. The new manager lady answered the phone and said, "Yeah that's okay. By the way, I've done the roster for the next fortnight and you have no shifts." My reply left her totally speechless. I said: "No worries, don't stress about finding me a shift, I'm bringing my keys in tomorrow once I feel better. I quit."
The passive-aggressiveness from this lady was the final straw after months of being patronized. I'm still on good terms with the owner over four years later, so that's nice.
78. Forced Presence
I worked for a group home. We had a difficult group of residents, but the company policies were so much worse. Every resident was 14-22 years old. They had moderate mental development delays, they all had a psychiatric disorder from severe ADHD to schizophrenia, and they had also all been convicted of violent offenses. I worked the third shift. My normal hours were 10:30 pm to 9 am four days a week.
About six months into working there, they did a massive layoff. They went down to bare minimum staff to student ratio each shift with nobody extra to call in if needed. That meant if someone called out, a person on the previous shift was forced. It got to the point where I was being forced three out of four shifts per week. And not just a few hours. I was working 10:30 pm to around 4:30 pm the next day, and still having to come in for my following shift.
I had an hour commute each way. So, I'd get home at 5:30 pm from a 16-hour shift, and have to leave the house again four hours later. I managed that for about a month. Then one morning I was told last minute I was being forced. I told them I was done and walked out. That month took a huge toll on my mental health. Swear it took me like a year to recover.
79. Over The Counter
It was so satisfying to me when I handed in my notice to my boss. She offered me a raise because she knew full well that I was aiming for better-paid positions, and I really think she thought I'd go for it. I didn't even hesitate in saying no, and she was clearly taken aback. It was the first time in my career that I've ever said no to more money.
But I had no problem at all in doing it this time, because I knew I'd have much better opportunities at the place where I was headed to next, so I was just thinking of the bigger picture. Not trying to blow my own trumpet, but they were screwed without me. I felt that way going into my departure, but their reaction made that all the more clear.
A few days after quitting, I received a call from the manager of the whole service. She said she'd like to offer me even more money to stay. My immediate one-up was offering me an extra £1,500 per annum, which I make at my new job already. The service manager didn't say how much more money she was offering, but left it relatively open.
For context, she was the budget holder and can pretty much offer whatever amount she wants (within reason). I was a bit intrigued by this development, but unless she offered n extra £4k at least, I wouldn't have noticed any difference from a monetary point of view. The thing is, I saw how much money was spent at the company, and where it was wasted.
My job involved observing the company’s financials, and they were pretty horrific. I'm talking tens of thousands per year going to absolute waste. I realized that I had the leverage to ask for an entirely new role to be created for me and to receive a lot more money, but I wanted to be respected and to be listened to when I voiced my concerns. They never did that when I was there, and the problems just kept on persisting.
I know my worth. I strongly feel that I'm worthy of not being reliant on idiots of their level for my entire livelihood.
80. This One Is Just Unhinged
At some point in the last century, a very young technician was sitting in a now long-forgotten meeting. The IT manager in the meeting was a sanguine guy who started with the first mainframe. The IT engineer must have started about the same time. Anyway, the manager got angry about a point that was made and he basically threatened the engineer, saying: "And if you continue like that, you can take the door!"
What the engineer did next was nothing short of awe-inspiring. He calmly folded up his notes, stood up, unhinged the door, and in a mild-mannered, completely serious voice, asked where the manager would like it. It was hilarious, but also extremely awkward and cringe-worthy. I never wanted to leave a meeting so badly in my life!!! I switched companies soon after, for some reason...
81. Not What I Signed Up For
I answered an ad for a babysitting job. I was already working on a casual basis but it was sporadic, so I thought some after-hours babysitting would be good extra cash. Little did I know what a nightmare the whole arrangement was. The couple were both in the armed services and proceeded to tell me that I would be staying in the spare room looking after their six-month-old child around the clock as well as doing the housework.
I would have one day off every two weeks. They said it would be cash-in-hand so I could sign onto the dole (unemployment benefit) to make up the rest of the money. I left on the spot. They wanted a live-in house cleaner and nanny, not a babysitter, and they were not able to pay for one.
82. How Thoughtful
After taking a few days off work while my father was having a brain tumor removed and I was still checking emails and attending conference calls from the hospital, my boss gave me a new project. On a Thursday afternoon, she gave me a Monday morning deadline for a project that would take 6-8 days to complete. I worked 16 hours a day to get it done. When we met on Monday, she asked how my weekend was. I looked at her and said, "I worked all weekend."
Then she asked if I got to visit my dad in the hospital and then I told her, "No, I didn't get a chance because I worked all weekend." A couple of weeks later, she pulled me into a meeting and said, "I feel like you were resentful because you had to work and I feel like I was really good when your dad was sick, maybe you're just tired. Are you tired?"
She'd also make comments when I would leave the office on time—not early, on time—like, "it's great that you just get up and go when your day is over. Like I have to go because I have a daughter, but you don't have any kids and you just leave at the end of the day." Um yeah, I don't live here. I don't go home and sit in a dark room counting the hours until I get to come back here.
I'm also not curing cancer. Nothing we do here matters to anyone outside of here. I give you 100% when I'm here, but when my day is done, it's done. I no longer work there.
83. Tight Schedule
I was 20 and engaged. My work as a book store manager was not letting me have any time off. I missed my fiancée's prom and other important events. I asked to have part of Christmas off, and I got denied. Then I was told because I didn't take vacation that year, I'd just lose it next year. The final straw came when my boss made a surprise audit of my store on a Saturday evening after I had left to go home.
He did not like my calendar display—and his reaction was truly disturbing. He came to my house to yell at me. He didn't just knock on the door and ask, he came into my house, past my roommates, and into my bedroom where I was in bed, reading. He then proceeded to berate me nonstop for five minutes about my display while I sat in bed. Then he left and told me he'd meet me in the morning and he'd fix it with me there.
I felt that was it. My boss came into my private bedroom to yell at me about a calendar display off hours. I called Amtrak, made tickets to see my fiancée, and the next morning, before I got on the train, I went into my store, met him, handed him the key, and walked out just a few days before Christmas to let him deal with it.
I felt great. I hung out with my fiancée for a week or so at my leisure and got another job a few weeks later. But what’s even better was that the next year, they let me work part-time to train new managers. Weirdest of all? My boss apologized to me and we were friends for many years afterward.
84. Stand Up And Fight
I applied for a job at my long-time favorite restaurant. I celebrated my birthday there every year. The owner asked me to come in for a try-out as I communicated I was looking at other job possibilities. I came in and they just stuck me on dishwashing for an hour. No biggie. Then, their dishwasher didn’t show up, so the kitchen manager asked me to stay on for their lunch rush, saying I'd get paid for the hours.
I did, and the kitchen staff was nice, so I was happy to help even though I figured I’d probably be taking a different job. I filled out a time card at the end of the shift and told the manager I probably wouldn’t be back. He understood and thanked me for the help. Fast forward a couple of weeks—I asked him if I should pick up my measly paycheck. His response caught me totally off-guard. The manager told me it was out of his hands and to email the owner.
So I did, and she told me to take off over text. She said they were "staging" me and that I wouldn’t be paid. When I told her I stayed an extra three hours and that I was told I’d be paid for that time, she stopped responding. At that point, I decided I want to be petty over the 40 bucks, so I got the state labor department involved. A dude went in there and made her pay me for my hours, including the first "staging" hour.
A couple of weeks later, I got my 40 bucks and I never went back to that restaurant. I am very glad I did this and I don’t think it was petty. While sharing the story with others in my city, I learned this practice was very common with local restaurants. I hope that from my small experience, others learn to stand up for their labor rights too.
This restaurant closed down a couple of weeks after I got that paycheck. The owner made a long-winded complaint on a Facebook page about how the food culture had "changed" in the city and her restaurant didn’t fit in. However, most people knew that her mismanagement of employees had caught up to her.
85. Technical Problem
I was getting screamed at in a meeting by some marketing jerk that was literally demanding my technical group perform magic on a completely unrealistic time schedule with almost no resources. Literally screaming at me in front of about eight of my peers, calling me incompetent, screaming at me to “just do your job” and all of that. I stood up, said I refuse to be talked to like that and left the meeting.
Normally if you just get up and leave these types of meetings, you’re fired. Boss scheduled a meeting with me later in the afternoon after hearing about it. Figured I’d be walked out, but I was told they fired the marketing guy. I was about to just say “Screw this, I quit,” but the company kept me on and fired the other guy. Pretty happy, it’s been a solid place to work ever since.
86. Cut Off Time
I'm a bartender and I was working in some terrible Mexican restaurant downtown. The tips were bad because the food was bad so we were barely ever busy. So already I'm living in NYC making barely $400 a week when I'm used to making more than double. At this point, I've been there for two months and I hate it more and more every day.
Around this time my mother gets really bad pneumonia and due to complications, it degraded her heart. So, she had to have open-heart surgery to repair a valve. It's a risky procedure and my mother is touching 65. When she gives me a date for her surgery I go to my manager and give her a basic breakdown of the situation and tell her I need four days off from X to Y so I can be with my family.
Now, let me state that staff turnover was incredibly high because in addition to us making horrible money the manager was a complete and utter moron, most staff left after a month. But she says no problem, and just to play it safe I send emails and texts to her confirming that I indeed do have these days off. She agrees. I think cool, no problem.
Well, I was dead wrong. Three days before the surgery the schedule for the week comes out and I'm scheduled throughout the entire week. I immediately go to my manager and ask what is up because I'm not wasting away behind this moldy, rat-infested bar in the West Village while my mom has surgery. No kidding, this woman has the nerve to say I didn't request off at all!
When I show her my paper trail stating that yes, I did put in a request she says "What difference does it make if you're there the surgery is going to have an outcome whether you're there or not." And starts to rattle off how I need to be a team player and I'm messing things up by requesting off and yadda ya. Her voice fades off and I literally see red. I say nothing and go back to work.
This is at 5 PM. Happy hour and our rush starts at 8 PM. I'm the only bartender on. Fast forward to 8:30, my bar is slammed, I have a bunch of drink tickets from the servers and it's a mess. My manager comes behind the bar and instead of offering any assistance she tells me to not bring "home drama to work." I stare at her in disbelief for a moment, truly stunned that such a tone-deaf moron could possibly be in charge of anything.
I laughed in her stupid face and walked right out the door and went to go see my mom.
87. On The Road Again
I was driving to work one day, but got stuck in traffic. I called my boss to let him know that I would be late. He said fine. But then, when I got to work, I was met with shocking behavior from him—he started yelling at me. He said: “If you pull something like that ever again, you will be fired.” He didn’t believe that I was stuck in traffic caused by a wreck, even though the crash that caused the delay was all over the news.
Coincidentally, the next day, there was another wreck on the same road. I quickly realized that I would be late again, so I just turned around and went home. My boss called me, yelling at me again. “Where the heck are you?” I told him I got stuck in traffic again and reminded him that he had told me if I “pulled that again,” then I would be fired.
He started saying “Oh come on, I didn’t mean it! Can you please come in?” Nope. Bye!
88. Next Time, Try “Sorry For Your Loss”
I once read a story about how some guy’s father passed, so he informed his boss that he would not be working overtime that day. Again, he didn’t even take the day off. He just chose to spend some of the rest of his day grieving rather than doing extra work. The next thing he knew, he got a text from his manager, telling him to “stop playing the victim” and that he was “letting his coworkers down.”
The dude read that and that was his final straw. He immediately responded, "Mail me my check and never talk to me again. I quit." Pretty satisfying just reading it.
89. Getaway Car
Something like three weeks into the beginning of the first global lockdown, a guy who was about 24 years old looked like he had just been run over by a train or something. He was a McDonald’s employee delivering me curb-side food. Due to the way he looked, I asked him if everything was okay. His response was chilling: he told me that working at that franchise was a living nightmare.
Apparently, they only had three employees running the whole restaurant, and one manager who was constantly chewing the others out. This was all before the pay went up and before the national government assistance payments began, so he was only making something like eight dollars an hour and he had no other source of income or job prospects.
Right as he handed me food and finished telling me how bad things were inside, the manager came storming out and aggressively cursing at him. He yelled until he was red in the face for the guy to move faster. I knew I had to save him, so I asked the guy if he wanted an easy security job at our factory for $14.00 an hour. He said yes, but he had no access to transportation.
I told him to just hop in and I'd drive him, as I was heading into work now anyway and my boss needed another guy to work. Without another word, he jumped into my car like something out of a '90s action movie. And we took off into the sunset. He never even told the boss he was leaving. I got him hired that same day, and he began the new job that night.
He then went back to that McDonald's to recruit the other two kids who he had been working with there. Now they all work security, where they mostly can sleep all they want at the post, as long as they make sure doors are all locked at night.
90. Skirting The Situation
I was the only waitress at a newly-opened diner. The boss didn't have me sign any paperwork. Everything was under the table. However, that wasn't what made me quit at the end of the night. To get me where he wanted me to go, he would pinch my skirt at my upper thigh, not quite the butt but very close, and pull me around like it was a leash.
Needed me in the kitchen? Rather than call me, he would come out, pinch my skirt and pull me to the kitchen. Needed me at the cash machine? Again, he’d come over to wherever I was—it didn't matter if I was serving a customer—and grab my skirt to pull me. That act in itself made some customers uncomfortable. Mind you, one couple left an almost 50% tip in the end...but I think it was more out of pity and embarrassment on my behalf.
I was supposed to come in the next day, but I called that night and said the job wasn't for me. I came in a couple of days later to turn in my apron and he just took a wad of cash out of his pocket and paid me immediately. God, he was creepy. I think it was a smart move to quit.
91. Get Your Storey Straight
I used to have a really terrible retail job in a department store. I was making $7 an hour. I worked in the part that sells bedspreads and bathroom items and other boring stuff. One afternoon, some regional managers came for an evaluation. They determined that everything in the department, including floor display furniture, had to be moved all around AT ONCE! Like, this had to be completed within a day or something. Because, you know, sales will just pick up like bang snappity boom if we do this!
The store Assistant Manager who was second in charge orders some guys from receiving to start hauling merchandise to the stockrooms in order to get the displays moved. I'm hanging at the register since my only other duty is to tidy the department up, which I can't do because it's in shambles. Then, she ordered me to get the merchandise back from the stockrooms and put it back on the floor. It was towels and washcloths that the guys had taken into the back not 20 minutes ago.
I do. One of the stock guys comes back and is like, what the heck are you doing? I'm putting this out on the floor as the manager told me to. So, he goes and tells her. She comes back and lays into me for going against the program. I remind her that she asked me to do this specifically with detailed instruction. She gets confused and probably realized it was her mistake.
But instead, she tells me to hash it out with the stock guy. I decided this job wasn't worth the hassle, told her that, as store manager, it was her responsibility to delegate tasks in an efficient manner, and she was the one who ought to have straightened this out. I walked out. It wasn't my most mature moment, but whatever, no regrets.
92. Bottom Line
I worked at Best Buy and was a full-time employee in the home theater department. At the time we were four months into a new system that allowed us to see our sales numbers; revenue, services, margin, etc. I was a model employee, all my numbers were best in-store and district, I had a great return customer base and had scored two perfect secret shopper scores in the past three months.
It was time for my yearly review and I was prepared, awesome sales numbers in hand, ready to receive my well-earned raise. In the three busiest retail months of the year, November, December, and January, I had made $389,000 in pure profit for my store, not sales, but actual profit. After requesting a raise, I was informed that I had capped out in my position, at what must have been a bank-breaking 9.75 an hour.
I left that day devastated, after two years of busting my butt for Best Buy I was basically told to go screw myself. I returned to Best Buy the next morning and told them to shove it. My yearly take home after insurance and taxes was 12,900.00, 1/30th of what I made my store in profit in three months.
93. Reading Material
When I quit one of my jobs in the past, I left behind several pages of screenshots and explanations about the behavior of a colleague who had tormented me day in and out. He essentially gaslighted me and my immediate colleagues all the time, and it started to cause me a lot of mental distress. Since most of it was via Slack messages, I just wrote out detailed explanations of how his behavior was impacting us and provided lots of documented examples of how he was screwing with our work.
I gave it to HR, and also emailed copies to this guy’s boss and several other people. Here's the surprising part—it apparently led to several C-level meetings. And six months later, the guy quit because “He didn’t have the same freedoms anymore” and couldn’t handle being held to account for his awful behavior. Not the best way to quit ever, but it was definitely my favorite way to quit.
94. A Long Vacation
Working at Walmart, after a couple of years of being a mindless employee, I saved up my two-week vacation and put in for it. I told them I was seeing my family. On the last day of work, before my two-week vacation, I put in my two weeks’ notice. It took the manager a minute to do the math. Her: “So...you’re not coming back?” Me: “No. No, I’m not. Take care!”
95. Coming Out on Top
I was working at a sporting goods/automotive store with a fairly large staff with around 35-40 people. One of the guys in automotive was gay, not flamboyantly, but it was pretty obvious. He was middle-aged, portly, but an extremely nice guy who was a genius in terms of cars. He had been with his partner for nearly two decades and they were quite happy. However, our new general manager was awful, and she made comments about his romantic preferences for nearly a month. He tried not to show it, but I could tell it was hurting him.
Then, his partner's company suddenly exploded financially, in a good way, massive bonuses, huge raises, very cool things happening. The two of them decide that they now have the money to move to Vermont, get married for real, and basically retire. So, at a store meeting, my automotive friend says he has an announcement. He tells us that after many years with our company, he's retiring, effective immediately. He thanks us all for being good people to work with and that he enjoyed his time here. He then took off his name tag, walked over to the GM, and stood there for a moment.
I held my breath and waited—it was utterly legendary. He then held his arm straight out in front of him, and dropped the name tag on the floor. His hand then rotated, arm still out, and morphed into the most perfectly formed middle finger I have ever seen. He spoke five words, very quietly. "Screw you, you hateful woman." He then turned, and walked out the door, head high, and with a "hater's gonna hate" strut. The rest of us were silent as the GM turned bright red and stormed off to her office. Then we laughed and cheered.
96. Projecting Gossip
I worked at a restaurant and the hostess was convinced I was sleeping with the owner. I was not. She was convinced the money I was using to take a vacation must have come from him and that I was hooking up with him behind his family’s back. She made things really weird and horrible for a couple of days. She told the new hires I was saying nasty things about them and made up really bad rumors about me.
I walked out of a shift after she confronted me in the storage room demanding I admit I was banging this guy. This guy who I never interacted with outside of the occasional table transfer or inventory update was bald, fat, and married, and had hardly said more than a hundred words to me beyond work instructions. After I left, I found out the dark truth. It turned out they were sleeping together and she was crazy. I'm so glad I quit.
97. Following Up
My insufferable manager followed me after work to my second job because she didn't believe I had one and was just using it as an excuse to get out early. My manager at my second job said, "There's some crazy lady banging on the doors yelling your name." So, I grabbed my uniform from my bag, opened the door, threw it in her face, and told her to shove off.
98. Am I On Candid Camera?
I was a cashier at Lowe's during college for less than a full day. I made it through the multiple-day training, but there was so much stupid stuff going on I almost thought I was on a hidden camera show. All of the employees complained about how hard they had to work while simultaneously not getting enough hours. Nobody understood why they were hiring like four new people (I was one of those four).
The truth turned out to be darker than I could have expected. They hired us because they were progressing through a harassment complaint that required restructuring of the store and firing off some employees. This was known to HR and explained to the new hires (which was against company policy, by the way), but it wasn't known to the other employees.
The hiring manager was inappropriate and told us not to worry about the harassment stuff, assuring us that everything would "go back to normal" soon enough and we wouldn't have to "be so uptight." They fired her the day before I started, along with one of the cashiers who trained me. She also offered me terrible guidance for the application process.
They were looking for part-time help and two of the three days they needed me, I was off from school. I told them I could work most nights, but if they needed daytime help, it had to be on those days. In my first week's schedule, I was working mornings every day that I was in school, and I wasn't given any hours on my days off.
Aside from the fact that I was given two times the hours the position called for (when other employees were shorted), my work schedule was impossible to consolidate with my school schedule. I only went to work on my first day to tell them I was quitting and that their application process was a mess.
Then they asked who trained me and everything made sense. They thanked me for "at least showing up to quit" unlike the other three they hired, who just stopped returning their calls and no-showed their first days.
99. Golden Parachute, or Golden Arches?
I worked in a high-end restaurant that didn’t treat its employees well. One of the cooks gave his two weeks’ notice and, in a passive-aggressive move, they didn’t schedule him for any shifts for what should have been his last week. So, on his final scheduled shift, he showed up in a full McDonald’s uniform. The managers were in shock.
He refused to take it off and they couldn’t tell him to leave, because then they wouldn’t have enough staff for the dinner rush. So he worked for his whole eight-hour shift at this fancy upscale restaurant wearing the McDonald’s uniform, and any time the manager asked or told him anything, no matter what it was, he responded with “Would you like fries with that?”
100. A Slam Dunk
I worked for an electrical company that was family-owned and operated. The owner's brother was constantly calling me an idiot all day, saying I couldn't do anything right. One day, he told me to go to Dunkin' Donuts to get breakfast for everyone. He said to me: "Can you at least get donuts for us without screwing it up?” That was the last straw for me.
I took his van to the donut shop, bought myself a nice sausage egg and cheese sandwich, called my girlfriend to pick me up, and left his van right there. He called me at 11 am, flipping out. He shouted: "Where the heck is my van? Where are you?" I told him that I went and got breakfast as he said, but that he never told me to come back. So I went home.
101. Egg On His Face
My cousin once quit his job by throwing an egg into the boss' face. He worked in a restaurant and brought me along one day to see where he worked. I was only a little kid at the time. While I was there, the boss was yelling at him because he brought me. He went on a whole rant about how I was too young to be there and needed to be babysat.
Somewhere during the rant, the boss said a curse word in the regional language that could make your family disown you (not joking). This got under my cousin’s skin. He got fed up, took off his nametag and uniform, picked up an egg from the kitchen, and with a powerful swing threw it directly into his boss' face. And that was the end of that job.
102. A Church In El Paso?
I was a cashier at this cafeteria for a large company in my town. The people that worked at the company would put their tips in a bucket and there were like 10s and 20s in there. The manager of the cafe wouldn’t let me have any tips because she said that cashiers couldn’t be trusted. Instead, she did something so selfish—she said she always shipped the tip money to her church in El Paso, but we knew that was a load of bull.
I just never went back. It’s also unlawful, I think, to collect money for one thing; but to do something else with it without disclosing who or what it is for is a whole other story.
103. If It Ain’t Broke…
I worked at a company that gave out exorbitant amounts of vacation. Anyone who worked there for 25+ years received 8 weeks of vacation and 2 weeks of personal time. This was a family-owned company, but rather large. We ran three shifts totaling 250+ people. Enter Jimmy. Jimmy was a grizzled old man. He started at the company when he was just 20; now he was 63 and gave absolutely zero cares.
Jimmy also knew how to make a specific part for our product, just him and one other higher up in the office. One day, the plant owner comes out and announces he's selling to a corporation. He's older and ready to retire, but he promises that there will be very little change and wishes us all well. Nope, wrong. The new company comes in and immediately goes after many of the great benefits we had.
The first thing they do is cut everyone's max vacation down to 4 weeks, and do completely away with personal time. Anyone who's maxed out had until December 31st of that year to use it up, and they wouldn't pay it out. They then go into the office and clean house, firing anyone who's close to retirement. Including Jimmy's back-up guy for the part he makes.
But they also do away with one very important rule: You no longer have to get vacation approved, you can just call in and take it. Jimmy is furious, and they know it. They also realize he's the only one in the building who can do his job now. So they hire a new kid for him to train, most likely to permanently replace Jimmy when the time comes. So Jimmy does what anyone would do.
He calls in the first training day for the new hire and lets us know he's going to use all of his PTO at once, and promptly takes 10 weeks off. We had a back stock of parts he had made, so it wasn't too unnerving. But for 10 weeks, Jimmy went and applied to other jobs, found one, and started. Fast forward 10 weeks, and it’s the day Jimmy is supposed to return.
He doesn't. For two days they try calling him, and even go to his house. He's nowhere to be found. Finally on day three, he calls and resigns, and they lose their minds. The parts he makes are specialized and patented by the original founder, so you can't just hire someone off the street to make them. What eventually happened was they had to contract the original owner to come in and teach some new hires how to make them.
When the original owner found out what they had done, he got furious. The last I heard he charged them a seven-figure contract to teach them how to produce the parts, and they had to pony up or close down. Moral of the story: don’t mess with people's vacation time or retirement funds.
Sources: Reddit, , , , , , , , , ,
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