Was there ever a job that you had that you decided the juice wasn't worth the squeeze? Or maybe you just wanted to leave a job in the most grand and uproarious gesture possible? Maybe there was another coworker that bugged you so much that you finally decided that literally any job in the world would be better than this right now.
These people on Reddit discuss their favorite experiences of these things happening. Maybe if you have a similar situation, you can take their advice.
Forever Done With Their Stupid Policy
“Three months after I began working at a restaurant, a girl on the floor had a walkout. The policy of our restaurant was that the server had to pay for the walkout, no matter whose fault it was, and this girl was beside herself. It was a $60 check, on a slow night, and she simply did not have the money to cover it. So our floor manager did the decent thing and used his free meal (managers were comped a meal each day they were scheduled, since they tended to work 12-hour days) to comp her table so that he didn’t have to write her up for a walkout.
Well, the lady who walked out apparently realized it the next day, and sent the corporate headquarters a letter, apologizing for the walkout, along with a check for roughly the amount the dinner cost, tip included. When corporate went to pay the tab, the only similarly priced item they found was the dinner the manager had comped. So the VP walked into the restaurant at the start of a Friday evening shift and sat down in one of our sections to have a chat with him.
The VP started to chastise him for comping the meal rather than making the server pay, and the manager told him it was a stupid policy. So the VP, who apparently was universally hated, stood up and snarled, ‘Well if you think I’m so bad at my job, why don’t you quit?!’ And the manager said, ‘Fine,’ stood up, tossed his keys into the VP’s hands, and walked out of the restaurant.
That shift was awful without a floor manager that night, but it was worth it to watch him stand up to the VP like that.”
Really Just A Waste Of Pizza
“I used to deliver pizzas for this place in North Dakota. One of the other drivers would constantly complain about the owner cutting his hours or scheduling him during a day when he had already requested off for weeks ahead of when the bi-weekly schedules were prepared. Our restaurant also had a pretty sizable pizza buffet. One night, the driver got back from a big delivery where the homeowners didn’t tip because it took the driver too long to get there. The problem, though, was that the house was actually outside of our delivery range; in fact, the house was beyond the reach of the paved roads. The owner happened to see that these guys placed an online order, approved it in our system, messed around with the delivery queue so that the driver he disliked was the one to take it, and basically just hosed the guy over for no real reason. Driver got back, complained about the delivery, and the owner told him to pack his stuff up and leave if he didn’t like it. The driver responded by grabbing a family-size style box, walked over to the buffet, hauled all six giant pizzas and stacked them into the box (which wouldn’t shut), headed for the door, paused, and then threw all six pizzas at the owner.
Personally, I’d have kept the pizzas, but I can appreciate the emotions he was going through.”
Got The Promotion After All
“So up until about a year ago I worked for a local power company as an IT contractor. I worked my butt off for five years and was managing ten contractors around the state and pretty much did the work of three people. When my manager (who was an employee of the company, not a contractor) announced her retirement, she told me she wanted me to be her replacement. So I submitted my resume, told my wife, and got really excited.
Weeks go by. I keep asking my manager what was going on, but she wasn’t really sure. Then one day she comes into my work area with a bummed out look on her face. Turns out that HER boss decided that since I wasn’t a ‘real employee’ I couldn’t apply until AFTER they had considered internal candidates. In the end they ended up giving a manager from another department the job without me even getting an interview. The guy the gave it to was a real schmuck who didn’t know the first thing about what we did. The worst part was that since the announcement wasn’t ‘official’ yet, I couldn’t tell anyone until the next day.
I was FURIOUS. Then I cried. Then I got mad again. Got online, looked at local job postings. Found one that looked great. Sent my resume without any real hope of getting it. I literally got a call from the guy in about an hour and he set up an interview. I went in the next morning for the interview (just told my manger I had a personal issue and would be in late – the FIRST time I’d ever called in to that job) and it went great. They made me an offer that afternoon which came out to about a 40% increase from what I was making before, with actual benefits, an AMAZING retirement plan, and about double the PTO.
The greatest feeling in the world was when that stupid schmucky loser came over to our area for the announcement. Everyone was in shock because I was the obvious choice for her replacement. He turned to me and was like ‘I’m going to count on you to help me get up to speed’ with this big grin on his face. I just smiled and said ‘yea, that’s not going to happen. I start my new job the same day you do…’
He laughed like I was joking, but I didn’t laugh with him. It took a moment for it to sink in, and the look of absolute panic on his face was the sweetest thing I’ve seen in a long time. He spent the rest of his day sitting in his cube with a sick-to-his-stomach look on his face.
I felt bad about leaving my employees (they were a great crew) under the new manager, but I love my new job so I don’t regret my decision.”
Left At Exactly The Right Time
“I was working as a waitress at a sports bar with like a gazillion draft drinks. It was out in the boonies. This place was probably 10,000 sq. ft. with a really open floor plan. Management was mostly cool, the other servers were catty and lazy. There was this one manager that was just the worst. If I rang in a drink for her to make, she would roll her eyes and grunt loud enough for me to hear her across the restaurant.
So, after eight months of putting up with some high-school clique garbage with the other servers and this one turd of a manager, I decide to go back to school and move to the city. I found a new job, found a new place to live, and put in my notice at the sports bar.
On my second to last day, I was working a Saturday lunch. This manager is powerfully hungover and in a terrible mood. Two of the other servers were too hungover to come in, so we had half of the staff we needed. The one other server on shift was the ringleader of the clique. Insufferable lady.
Anyway, the manager is already on my last nerve, and Ringleader lady is being the same annoyance she always is. We see some minivans pull up in the parking lot. Then more, then more, then more. Little League Baseball players and their families come streaming into the restaurant. HUNDREDS OF TINY PEOPLE IN CLEATS AND THEIR SCREAMING INFANT SISTERS AND TIGER MOMS. EVERYWHERE.
I looked at the manager’s scowl, and Ringleader lady’s face, and decided that I’m out. I took my apron off, walked by the bar flipping the manager off. Her face was priceless.”
Gaming The System
“A team of 6 of us where on a conference call with our offshore developers. Our boss says everyone is working this weekend. One of the lead architects, this guy was the linchpin of the whole thing, says, ‘No. I have plans this weekend. You approved it 4 weeks ago.’ We’d worked the last six weekends and because of it, this dude had the foresight to get vacation approved for the upcoming weekend. Pretty genius if you ask me. Our boss says, ‘Well you just have to cancel,’ trying to say it like a hardened boss and make it stick. The lead architect flatly says, ‘Nope, I’m out.’ CLICK! (remember we were on the phone). There’s a round of people asking if he’s still on the phone and if he hung up. Then those of us in the onshore office started prairie dogging our cubes just in time to see the lead architect exit the office. A week later the company ended up paying this dude $200K for a 2 month contract to complete the project. He was the only one that knew the system well enough, they didn’t really have a choice.”
Went Out With A Bang
“I was serving at a family restaurant at the time. There were three of us opening the restaurant and working the lunch shift: myself, the daughter of the owners and this woman who was a bit unstable. The daughter and I are getting everything set up when the woman comes into work completely wasted. Too slurry to actually make words, reeked, the whole nine.
The daughter was cool and we both liked this woman so we pulled her aside. Our manager wasn’t in yet but we knew that if she saw how smashed the server was, she’d fire her on the spot. We told her this and to go home and get some rest and we would cover for her (like tell our manager she came in looking like she had the flu so we to told her to just go it was so bad).
She didn’t believe us. She thought the other server would definitely rat her out to her parents and that we were trying to ‘set her up’ (which neither of us would do). She flips out, knocks over the salt and peppers shakers we were trying to fill and tells us to suck it. She grabs her coat and leaves. The restaurant was all windows so we were watching her after she went outside. She turned around, both hands waving the middle finger proudly as she slowly walks backwards…….then trips over the curb and wipes out. It was hilarious.”
They Waited Too Long
“There was a period of time where I held two jobs, the secondary of which was a position at a local UPS Store. I would bust behind and work 70+ hours a week fairly frequently. I learned quickly and it wasn’t long before I was one of the main workhorses behind the store. I did almost all of the custom packaging work, including crating and designing boxes for odd shape shipments of almost any size or weight. I also happened to have a background with computers and promptly became the main printing guy for the store. I literally handled print jobs for thousands of booklets for local schools on my own (including design). All of this to say I was a very important employee at this particular UPS Store.
I told him when I started that this job was secondary to me and that I would leave when I started going back to college. When that time finally started coming around, I gave him notice that I would be leaving so he could find another employee or two to train for my position. I waited for TWO MONTHS so he would have time to find a replacement and I never ONCE saw him look for a new employee.
My girlfriend and I had been planning a week-long trip to go see my family that I had delayed so that I wouldn’t leave my boss high and dry. I had intended to schedule the trip after I left and before school started, but my boss had procrastinated finding a replacement for me so long that I didn’t have much time to wait anymore. I finally told him that I would be leaving on a certain date that was nearly a month away so that I could schedule the trip before school started.
He stood there silently for a moment, then blew up on me, and chewed me out. The reason he was mad? He was going to be out of the store for a few days — one of which was the day I was leaving. He said he had specifically told all of his employees not to even think about requesting time off during these days. He looked me in the eye and told me about how ‘disappointed’ he was in me and told me how ‘selfish’ I was. He went on chewing me out for a good five minutes. I was in total shock. I couldn’t even muster up a proper verbal defense. I was so totally disgusted and angry and in a state of utter disbelief. I wanted to throttle the guy. So I said ‘Forget it. I’m out.’
He stormed out before I could get my things together. I ended up sticking around for the last four hours of my shift so I wouldn’t leave my coworker on his own during Christmas season in a shipping store. I got some sick satisfaction knowing that my boss would have to pay me for the remainder of my day there, even after I had told him I quit. He never technically told me to leave. I’m still angry about what happened to this day. I’m pretty sure he lost the rest of his staff shortly after I quit. Nobody liked him at all.”
No More Dishes For This Guy
“During college, I bartended at a hotel restaurant. They had two kitchens, one with the restaurant and bar attached and the other way up on the other side for banquets.
Two kitchens means two dishwashers and there was a dishwasher that management used to just abuse. During a particularly busy few weeks at both the restaurant and lots of weddings for banquets there was a lot of dishes.
The guy had worked there three years and he never talked. He was quiet, but nice, did his work and kept his head down. He would finish the dishes upstairs at like 11 pm after six hours of slaving away up there and then come down to the other kitchen to a ridiculous pile of dishes and pans.
One night he just snapped out of nowhere. A couple of us were outside smoking and saw him come down. He just sat there for a minute and stared at an extra messy dishwashing station…just stuff everywhere with caked on food, stuff from hours before, full bins of silverware floating in disgusting (now cold) blue sanitizer water, etc.
Nobody saw him do it but a coworker walked back and found a note taped to the station five mins later that read ‘FORGET THIS MESS. I QUIT. -JASON.’
It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. We were all so happy for him that he had the courage to do it. Management at that place would just treat him terribly and they deserved it.”
The Boss Never Even Tried
“I used to work at a community mental health center as a therapist. The entire experience was terrible, and I started looking for a new job less than one month into starting there. I submitted my two weeks’ notice on a Monday, and then two days later one of my clients attempted suicide. The day before, I had spent all day working with her on managing her symptoms and she had been agreeable to admitting herself into a hospital the next day. However, that night she had a break and ended up in the hospital against her will.
Well, the next day (on a Wednesday) my supervisor and the director of the program pulled me into an office and spent almost an hour questioning my ability to practice and essentially blamed me for her attempt. I sat quietly, stewing, the entire time. I looked at my boss, who had been the worst supervisor ever because she was just a puppet for the higher ups, and asked if she was going to say anything or defend me in any way. She simply stared at me. I started laughing and said, ‘yeah, why would you start now.’ The director began telling me that I would never make it in this field because of my ‘attitude’ and didn’t want me to work there anymore because he couldn’t guarantee any of my other clients would try and attempt suicide. I simply looked at him and told him to go stuff himself.
Then I turned around, went back to my office and calmly began packing my stuff into a box. The director came running after me (which caused all of my coworkers to take notice) and pretty much backpedaled like crazy, likely because he didn’t want to get sued for all of the things he’d said about me. He then told me that he would pay me for the remainder of the two weeks I was supposed to be working there. The rest of my coworkers stopped what they were doing and helped me pack up my belongings, and there was a small line of people following me with my stuff to my car on my way out the door.
Worst job ever.”
Made A Mess On The Way Out
“When I was 17 I worked for a major office supply retailer.
I had a deputy manager that did nothing but sit on her behind and talk on the phone to her fiancé in the office all day. This wouldn’t have bothered me too much but you would take no end of grief if you required her to make any effort, even something as small as giving you the keys to the security cage to retrieve stock you’d sold.
So one day I sell a desk and a computer. I ask her for the keys and she tells me to wait as she’s on the phone. 15 minutes later I’m still waiting so I ask her again and get the response ‘Oh will you just get a life’ and tosses the keys to me. She literally had them in her pocket.
Obviously I’m angry but the customers have been waiting long enough so I go and get the stock. I walk back to where they’re waiting next to the till and there she is behind the desk, apologizing that it took so long, and basically blaming the delay entirely on me.
I told her I quit on the spot and in a brief moment of madness hurled the large ring of keys behind the desk where the display stand for the ink cartridges was. The display shook and hundreds of cartridges decided that they wanted to try skydiving. The magnificent thing was this was a late shift and my coworker had gone home for the day while I was retrieving the stock. She was going to have to tidy and reorganize this mess herself. I briefly heard her yelling abuse at me as I walked out of the door.”
His Wife Made Him Come Back
“One from the other side.
I caught an employee prepping an item without gloves on, dirty fingernails and all, just digging his bare hands right into it.
I took the item away from him and dropped it in the trash as I explained everything he did wrong (he wasn’t even supposed to be shredding the item in question while it was cold, as it leads to a mushy, substandard finished product).
He looked at me, made an ‘up yours; motion, said something in Spanish, then said, ‘Eff you, I quit.’
He came back at the end of the night begging for his job back because his wife was kicking him out.
‘Sorry, no can do.’ I didn’t even feel bad.”
Always Let The Other Guy Talk First
“A lawyer my dad knew that worked for a major bank in Canada that for some reason wasn’t happy with his job and decided he was going to quit. He wrote his letter of resignation and was preparing to go hand it in to his boss. That day he got called down to his boss’ office and thought, perfect, I can quit now. He went into the office and was trying to quit but his boss insists he has something important to say. His boss sits him down and tells them they’re letting him go, then asked what he wanted to tell him. He pulled out the letter of resignation, showed it to him and tore it in half, now they have to pay him 2 years compensation as they are required to give people a severance package (and him such a large one for his position) if they are letting them go for reasons that are not due to the person’s behavior (job/budget cuts and so on). Always let the other guy talk first, could turn the tables.”
Don’t Cry Over Spilled Paint
“I work in a paint factory, making paint. One day one of our more unstable workers spilled about 100 litres of paint on the ground, not a big deal. He proceeded to leave the factory. We thought he was just upset and was going for a smoke. It turns out we were wrong, he went down to the pub knocked back six pints then came back to work, stripped down to his underwear in the front office, also our shop, flipped over the boss’ desk and quit. The boss is a prick and watching him blow his stack was amazing.”
Never Looked Back
“I worked part time at a Sports Authority when I was 18. I was the only person ‘trained’ in the Outdoors department this store had. One night we had a skeleton crew and I was in my normal spot at the fishing counter where all the expensive reels, paintball stuff and air soft stuff was. A lot of that stuff is easy to steal so I spent most of my time over there making sure no one opened up boxes of paintballs or markers and stole them.
The footwear manager came over to me, he was this Cambodian guy with yellow teeth, awful breath and a heavy accident. He started laying into me about how a woman in footwear needed help picking out socks. I have no idea what made picking up the pack of socks and finding the size so difficult for this woman but apparently she complained that no one was over there to help her. After I kept telling him that I know nothing about footwear, socks or the shoes over there the manager started to take personal shots at me, saying I was lazy and always sitting behind the fishing counter because I didn’t want to stand and do work (I basically ran the entire outdoors department, when I wasn’t at the counter I was in the back building bikes and then carrying them up to the top of the rack in the showroom area or sharpening skis/snowboards).
After I asked him if he was done talking, I took the quick detachable name badge off, threw it at him and said I quit. It was an amazing feeling and the look on his face was priceless. I had a full time job so it didn’t bother me leaving that place. I got tons of calls from the store manager all the way up to the regional manager asking me to come back. Forget that place and forget retail.”
Things Were Not OK
“I worked in a restaurant for a few years. It was only a small place. and on this particular day there were only two waitresses working and the chef, who also doubled as the manager and boss. We were really busy, and the boss was getting antsy. If food wasn’t taken out to its table the second it was made, he would start yelling, regardless of what we were doing at the time. He wasn’t usually like this, but he’d been stressed about some things at the time.
The other waitress was newer than me and wasn’t used to this, and all at once things just snapped. They started having a yelling match, which I eventually broke up. She was fuming for the rest of the day, but the boss was unfazed. Towards the end when things were quieter they seemed to be calmer around each other.
At the end of the shift, as we were closing, she turned to him and dramatically yelled ‘I quit!’ and slammed the door in his face. She told me she wanted to do it much earlier, but didn’t want to leave me alone to deal with things. The boss looked pretty stunned as by this point he’d figured everything was ok again.”