As a great man once said: "You've gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run". Nowhere is this more true than at work. These Redditors came together to share stories of days when they thought they were just gonna have another mundane day at work, but instead, they ended up running for the hills.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Bottoms Up
I quit this really horrible desk job at a bank, and I did it in an amazing way. 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 can. I managed to comfortably drink four cans while doing some work before two supervisors and a manager started walking towards my desk. Needless to say, I was asked to leave.
4. 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”.
5. 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.
6. 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 General Manager. 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 General Manager 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 General Manager 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 General Manager had done to me and walked out in front of everyone.
7 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.
8. 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.
9. Well Done
I worked at a restaurant and was treated like garbage with bad shifts, terrible sections, mistreatment 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. Money Hungry
I was working as General Manager 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. $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.
22. 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.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. 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.
26. 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.
27. 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 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.
28. 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.
29. 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.
30. Asset Incognito
I worked for a big chain tire store in a very rich part of town for a while. I was overqualified for the job, but it’s what was hiring. One day I get a call saying another tech got fired for failing a urine test. I get in and our lead tech comes in with a torn bicep and has to be gone for a few months. I'm now the most knowledgeable person in the shop, taking on a ton of extra duties and extra hours.
So, working 60+ hours a week as the only tech with ANY diagnostic abilities I ask for a raise/promotion. I’m rejected, but the guy that was hired on a week earlier, amazing tire buster but can't do any mechanical repair past changing an air filter, got a double promotion and a dollar per hour raise. I put in my notice on the spot.
31. 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 General Manager, 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 General Manager turned bright red and stormed off to her office. Then we laughed and cheered.
32. On the Hut
I was 19 and working for Pizza Hut as a manager. The store manager left me understaffed and with half a box of cheese in the freezer. We usually went through about 2-3 boxes a night. It was the middle of a busy shift and we're out of cheese and my dining room is full and I'm understaffed and furious having to deal with angry stupid customers.
I walk into the dining room and yelled "We're out of cheese people. Everything is on the house"! I ordered the one waitress to not clean a single table, finish up, and go home, the same for the one prep cook. The place was destroyed. The store manager opened with a nice letter from me. He called me and tried to convince me to come back.
33. Request in Denial
I was a manager at a company where the executives were ineffective. I worked 60 hours a week most of the time and had to do all of my director’s duties because he didn’t understand our systems. The work environment was also pretty hostile and passive-aggressive. People cried on the job daily in other departments, slightly less in mine. Managers and staff would snap at other departments the same way the executives did because of the stress.
I tried to take care of my department and make sure they weren’t being abused or taken advantage of. I had three days' leave for a passing in the family but had to work every day from home and the funeral itself. It was especially vexing because it was to re-do the same thing every day that my boss would just forget to complete and need to be done again the next day. I brought this to his attention, as well as all the other issues, and he said he would try to do better. Months went by and it got worse.
Finally, our team sat down with him and told him things needed to change. I told him that the environment was more hostile and aggressive than ever and the team agreed. He told me that was my perception and we needed an attitude change, then left for a meeting, which I had provided the data for him. I cleared out my desk and left after quitting with HR.
For me, the kicker is that he kept assigning me tasks and insisted that I was still working there for days. Never been more relieved to quit in my life.
34. Tis the Season
I was 21 working with UPS. I worked as a truck loader for the first year and became the fastest loader in the warehouse just because I like working quickly. Only wanted to become a supervisor because my manager was really easy to work with and always wanted to help with solutions to problems. Once they promoted me to a supervisor, they transferred my manager to a different warehouse and didn’t say why.
I worked as a supervisor for a year and once peak season arrived in November to early January, things were getting crazy and my manager was just a yes man to his boss. He never helped solve issues, just said “figure it out” or “just get it done". Well in November, my best friend and I had won a World Series of Beer Pong satellite tourney to get free entry and stay at the Flamingo in Vegas for the Tournament worth $600. The tournament was from January 1st-5th.
Well during peak season, it’s nearly impossible to get time off and I looked at this tournament as a once in a lifetime opportunity with my best friend. Things were just getting so crazy and they weren’t approving any vacation requests. I wasn’t getting assistance from my boss with the workload so I just said whatever I’m out.
Come to find out my manager, his boss, and four other managers got fired for changing time cards to make their production numbers look better, which is why they shipped my cool manager away because he wouldn’t participate in the dirty deeds. My best friend and I placed 46th out of 500 teams. It was one of the best memories I have to this day. No regrets.
35. Terrible Management
About 10 years ago when I was working in retail as an assistant manager, I was transferred to a nearby store to essentially act as manager while the current manager was on leave for stomach cancer. There was no extra pay involved, and I wasn't terribly happy about having to do it, but I wanted to prove myself and played the part. Fast forward nine months, the original manager returns and re-assumes the position of acting manager.
Almost immediately, I didn't care much for the guy. He seemed shallow, petty, and had little regard for the well-being of his employees. Again, I played the part and was civil. Around three months later, my grandfather had passed, and my family was in the process of deciding what to do with my grandmother, as she wouldn't be able to afford their house. Talking to my boss about this, he mentioned that he couldn't wait until his grandparents passed because he would inherit all kinds of awesome stuff.
Especially because of what I was dealing with, but also in general, I was disgusted by him. My family had finally worked out on a somewhat short notice being able to move my grandmother and sort through her belongings because she was moving to a much smaller home and couldn't bring everything. It was expected to be an emotional affair for the entire family as the family had a lot of history and memories in that house. The date of the move was a scheduled working day for me. Things were typically flexible as far as having shifts covered, so I didn't think it would be a problem switching shifts.
When I brought it up to my boss, he showed absolutely no regard for my situation and told me that I couldn't switch shifts. There was no valid reason for this. It was just him being his manipulative self. I lost it. In a store full of customers and other employees, I blew up at him. I'm pretty sure I called him every name in the book as he sat there wide-eyed and mouth agape. When I was finished, I tore my uniform shirt off, threw it on the ground, and walked out.
When I returned from helping my family, my district manager requested we get together and talk. She listened to my story, and after having heard various accounts of what happened, pleaded with me to stay with the company by finding me a position at another store. I didn't expect that in the least. Six months later, my former manager had been fired for theft and I soon was promoted. Later, it was found out that he never actually had cancer, but just wanted to take a paid vacation at the expense of everyone else.
36. Lifelong Accomplishments
After working for 37 years, I requested leave from work to care for my partner who was dying of cancer. I had eight weeks of PTO time and was denied the request, so I quit to care for him in his last month of life.
37. Moment’s Notice
IT manager here. I was working for a company that didn't consider us a real department. Lots of things leading up to this, but the last straw was an announcement that a satellite office was being shut down and any employees that could, would relocate to our office. We, the IT department, found out about this at the same time as the rest of the company MONTHS after the decision had been made.
Nobody told us anything, and this would involve obscene amounts of extra travel, hours, and stress as we accommodate the moves, the infrastructure, and everything else involved with such a move. I left in the middle of the announcement. My boss, the CFO threatened me to fire me if I don't do the work. Well, you can't fire someone who's already quit.
Then the CEO calls me and asks me back to negotiate. I agree to come back for six months if I get a 25% raise for myself and my entire team. After six months, I left and they laid off everyone else.
38. Baked with Power
I worked at Walmart for a month in the bakery section. I was doing fine and getting along with the other employees, but then we get a new assistant manager. This woman has given other family members of mine problems at different Walmart stores. When she found out who my mom was, she started harassing me and would patronize me in front of customers.
The worst part was that she would have me work the bakery by myself until closing every night when everyone else got to leave at 2 PM while I would stay until 8 PM. She also made me work in the deli section, wouldn't let me take my breaks, and wanted me to clean the bakery every night alone. I had been working alone from 2 pm-8 pm for four days straight.
On the next day I came in, and right before the other bakery employees were about to leave, I tossed my vest, told another employee I quit, and left.
39. Shift in Tragedy
I quit my first job when I was 15. It was the summer, and I was a lifeguard at a pool where one of the best club swimming teams in the US practiced daily. I was good friends with one of the better swimmers on the team, but it was more of a relationship where I looked up to him in a major way. He was really kind and smart and funny, anyone you asked would have nothing but good things to say about him.
One day I was woken up by my mom who was good friends with the kid's parents and she told me that he had passed on in a car accident the night before. I was extremely distraught because he was one of the best people I had ever met, but I still went to work that day. At work, I couldn't focus, I would randomly break out in tears and start hyperventilating, I lost my faith in God, and it was overall a really terrible day.
About halfway through my shift, I went to my boss and asked him if I could go home because I was really upset. He told me, "No, you can't. Going home isn't going to bring back your friend, and your job should be your primary focus during the day". I replied with something along the lines of, "You can shove it. I quit," and stormed out. I didn't have any regrets after doing that, I felt like it was the right thing to do, and no one thought any less of me for it.
40. Hanging Up My Apron
A very long time ago, I worked at a Kinko's. Either the manager or the assistant manager was on duty every day of the week, in theory. Both of them were lazy. Neither stayed for more than an hour of their shifts and they trained me to do the daily paperwork. There was a deadline for when it had to be sent to corporate so that often had me leaving the front counter one person short during our busier times of the day. When it got slammed, I'd have to go through the whole procedure to stop what I was doing.
First, I had to wait for the safe to open, put the money in marking how far I had gotten with the counting and trying to resolve any cash vs receipts mismatches, and go up front to help after taking four minutes to pack the money in the safe. Then I'd have to reverse it when I came back. So, eight minutes shot every time I was called up front, and often that was as often as every 10 minutes during busy hours. 18 minutes gone for 10 minutes’ paperwork.
I'm in the middle of my final quarter of school when I get a scathing performance review. I was leaving the front unattended for too long. I pointed out that I shouldn't be doing the paperwork in the first place, but of course, that didn't fly. Apparently, the district manager had just laid into the manager for never being in the store when the DM came by and I was going to be her punching bag.
I don't get angry often, but blaming me for not being at the counter while I was doing her job made me livid. We agreed that I'd take the three-day paid "decision-making leave" where I would decide if I really wanted to continue working there. I would never have to do the paperwork again. I was two weeks from my portfolio review, and I had no time to be looking for a job.
My first day back, the assistant manager comes in for his shift. "Hurry up and go do the paperwork. I've got paintball in an hour"! I said, "Screw you". I rolled up the apron and threw it at him and walked straight out the back door. As satisfying as it was in the moment, I was freaking out about how I would pay rent all that night. I got a job right after my portfolio review, so it ended up working out in the end.
41. Low Ink Levels
My boss didn't do payroll before leaving on a business trip and left it to the poor office manager to tell people they weren't going to get paid on time. I walked out of the staff meeting saying I'd be back when paychecks arrived. By the time I got home, I was mad enough to call my ops manager back and quit. Why didn't the boss do payroll? The stated answer was printer toner cartridge at home was empty. Guess he'd never heard of writing checks with a pen.
42. See You, Motel 8-er
At my first job out of college, I was informed that it might involve some "light travel," which was fine. However, about two weeks into working there, this turned out to mean they wanted me to spend 6+ months in a cheap motel room with my slob of a boss in Arkansas. Now, I'm a young guy and can handle most types, but I think it's incredibly unprofessional to have to see your boss in nothing but his tighty-whities as he brings back trashy chicks from the latest dive bar and makes you leave the hotel while he screws them.
I'd have complained but the guy above the two of us was his longtime friend and fraternity brother—I wasn't winning any arguments. I spent three months there before they brought us back to the main office for a one-week stretch and I decided that this just wasn't for me and I couldn't go back. I walked into the main office and just told them it wasn't for me and gave my two weeks. I handled it professionally.
It was them who decided the next day to bring me into the conference room where about 20 co-workers were sitting only to have the boss make me stand while he called me a quitter and let them know that "This is what someone who isn't committed to their job" looks like. The next day I came in and my stuff was in a box and I was told that my two weeks' notice was not needed and they didn't want me to return.
Two weeks later I had an interview for a better paying job which I've been in for four years and haven't looked back.
43. On the Dot
I was working at a call center. My shift started at 10. I badged into the building at about 9:55 and logged on, but the decrepit PC I was using took so long to boot up that when I finally logged in, I was 15 seconds late. I told my supervisor and he said there's nothing he can do and since I was late, I was put on probation and wouldn't be eligible for a raise for another month. He then said that I should arrive 15 minutes early so that situation won't happen again. I handed him my headset, walked out, and have never worked in a call center since.
44. 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.
45. 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. I basically said, "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.
46. 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.
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. Anyway, eventually she 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. 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.
47. Mourning Event Staff
A friend of mine passed nearly a decade ago. When I requested the day off for his funeral, my request was denied. 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.
48. 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. 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, he said I was overreacting but he proposed to move me to another shift. I quit. 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.
49. 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.
50. 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.
51. 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?”
Sources: Reddit, , , , , ,
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