spectacular resignation stories: share in the comments

by Alison Green on September 28, 2017

Usually quitting a job is relatively mundane — you might be nervous about it, but it generally won’t involve yelling, profanity, or other fireworks. But occasionally a resignation is truly spectacular.

For example, there was the flight attendant who, “upset with an uncooperative passenger on a just-landed flight … unleashed a profanity-laden tirade on the public address system, pulled the emergency-exit chute … launched himself off the plane … ran to the employee parking lot, and left the airport in a car he had parked there.”

Or this story from a commenter: “(My horribly offensive coworker) showed up at work last week wearing shorts. My boss looked him up and down and said, ‘Shorts are against our dress code. You’ll need to go home and change.’ He nodded and said, ‘Oh I know they’re against dress code here–but they’re not at my new job. I start today! So…Bye!’ And then he walked out.”

Or this: “I once quit with no notice, and actually didn’t quit. I just didn’t return, figuring in three days I’d be fired (I was too afraid to go back). I went in about two weeks later with a guilty conscience to turn in some stuff and I was still on the schedule. They never even realized I was gone. About a week later I got a voice mail asking if I was showing up for my shift. Although it’s impossible, I sometimes imagine I’m still on the schedule, years later, and laugh.”

So let’s talk amazing resignations — ones you’ve done, seen, or heard about. Share in the comments.

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  1. YAS*

    Oh, how I remember thinking how professional I was at 18… until my last ever shift at a popular drive through restaurant. A particularly rude coworker demanded I help him with an order and snapped when I stopped check the order, and then I snapped. I dropped the bag on the floor and told him, a few times, to f off. I stormed off to my car and drove into the (actual) sunset.

    1. SNS*

      I did a pretty similar thing on the last day of my college bakery job. This customer was chewing me out for not slicing her bread right, so I stopped, looked her dead in the eye and said “If you want my help, be polite, or I’m not serving you.” I think she was so shocked at a customer service person talking back to her, she didn’t say anything else. Just let me finish slicing the bread and ringing her up, and walked away in silence. It was the most cathartic thing ever.

      1. NLMC*

        I really wish more customer service people could say this and be backed by management. Customers are not always right and no one should be talked to like they are not valuable people. I no longer deal with the general public so life is MUCH easier these days. Even tough days at work are nothing compared to dealing with customers.
        Good for you!

        1. Admin Amber*

          Yes, I am amazed that the Trader Joe’s employees don’t go postal on some of the customers. I am ashamed when I shop there and see such horrendous behavior.

          3. Damn it, Hardison!*

            As a former TJ’s employee (many, many years ago), I chalk it up to the awesome managers and coworkers. It was really a fun place to work and the people were great, so it made the occasional boorish customer interaction easy to brush off.

          4. Amber T*

            TJ’s has the nicest staff and the worst customers. Seriously… heaven forbid you say excuse me when reaching for the cheese that’s above my head so I know to move and not let the avalanche of gouda kill me.

            2. Nolan*

              I won’t go to my local TJs after 4pm because all the other customers are awful, and once work gets out there are too many of them in there for me to put up with.

              Meanwhile, most of the grocery store employees in my area, in any chain, are super friendly. I don’t know how they stay so cheerful!

              1. Megan*

                I was once in a Trader Joe’s when the fire alarm went off – this was right after work and the place was packed. It took maybe 25-30 minutes for the fire department to come and give the all-clear – a long wait, maybe, but not unmanageable. By the time they let us back in, dozens of people left, just abandoning carts full of food in the aisles. It must have taken the staff hours to sort and reshelve everything.

                1. Tuesday Next*

                  That’s horrible for the staff but really not that surprising. My schedule has so little wiggle room that I would have done exactly the same thing.

                3. Karo*

                  That’s not particularly uncommon. I worked at a grocery store for years and we hated fire alarms because half the shoppers would abandon their stuff and it took a good bit of time to put it all away, figure out what had to be trashed, etc.

            3. SystemsLady*

              I’m glad to see my suspicions that TJ’s shoppers are unnaturally aggressive and impatient confirmed here.

              1. Ruth Ellen*

                Weird. I’ve never found the customers at any TJ any different from anywhere else. On the other hand, their employees are all amazingly helpful. Also, I love how this conversation about quitting jobs turned into a conversation about Trader Joe’s.

              2. Rachel in NYC*

                I’m not sure you can say its unnaturally aggressive…at least not in New York…when the line starts when you get into the store (and on a Sunday, I’ve gotten on lines to get into TJ)

        2. StudentPilot*

          One time, when I was working at a book store, this customer chewed me out and I had to just stand there and take it. When he left, the woman behind him dropped her books on the counter and walked away. I had no idea why – I hadn’t been rude to the guy, had done everything you’re “supposed” to…..

          and then she dragged the man back and made him apologize to me for his behaviour. It was GLORIOUS.

          4. BlueWolf*

            My boyfriend and I were at the bar of a bar/restaurant which also has booths in the bar area. A woman and her friend were chatting in one of the booths, while the one woman’s two small children were climbing all over bar stools at the bar (right next to where we were sitting). She completely ignored them. My boyfriend politely told the two boys that they should not be climbing on the stools because the bar is for “grown-ups”. The woman promptly yelled at my boyfriend for talking to her children. She stormed out of the restaurant, much to our delight. Later the manager comped us a beverage and dessert and thanked my boyfriend for talking to the children. The bartender felt uncomfortable confronting the woman I guess (for good reason based on her reaction). Of course, it is illegal for minors to be at the bar itself, let alone the safety hazard for the children and the liability to the restaurant if they got hurt. I think the restaurant was perfectly fine with maintaining us as regular customers and good riddance if that woman never came back.

                4. GreenDoor*

                  We just went to a new Milwaukee brewery/bar last weekend and my 3 & 4 year old learned how to “belly up” to the bar and ask the bartender “what’s on tap?” Of course, she rattled off the soda list. But yea, in Milwaukee kids in a bar is perfectly normal.

                  It’s also legal to underage drink in Milwaukee as long as it’s in a bar and the child is with his parent/legal guardian (although the bar owner has the right to refuse to serve, too). Hence, I was able to let my beer-loving 3 year old take a sip of my beer. It’s a weird cultural thing here that most outsiders find appalling (please no judgey comments. My kid is no booze hound).

                5. Amy*

                  As a person who grew up in Wisconsin: Wait, other states don’t let parents give their kids alcohol??

                  It’s not, like, a normal thing people regularly do in WI either, but I always figured it fell under the realm of ‘it’s the parent’s decision and they’re there to be responsible for the kid’. I was also really surprised when I ended up in the Boston area for college and couldn’t buy wine at Target or CVS. It seemed so puritanical in comparison.

                6. Gogglemarks*

                  Responding to Amy: liquor laws are so, so different depending on what state you’re in. In Iowa, minors can only have alcohol “for medicinal or educational purposes in a private home” and only if it’s their parent or guardian who’s giving it to them. In practice, this meant that my parents started asking if I wanted a glass of wine with dinner about the time I turned fifteen, but that one of my (rule abiding) friends with teetotaler parents didn’t try any alcohol until she went on a trip to Canada in college.

              3. Lass are weird*

                In the US, at least, this depends on the state. Some states allow it if they’re accompanied by someone of legal drinking age, some require you to be 21+ to even be in the bar.

              4. I'm A Little TeaPot*

                Where I live, illegal to be at the bar (or in the segregated bar area) if you’re underage, regardless of time of day or presence of parent. Babies not excepted. Table/booth in the restaurant section is just fine.

              5. Amber T*

                I used to sit at the bar with my dad whenever we ordered from our local Chinese restaurants – we’d both order a Coke and sit and have “real” conversations… 10 year old me thought I was so cool!

                2. TrainerGirl*

                  When I was a freshman in high school, I went to the homecoming dance with a bunch of friends (coed). We were allowed to go to a Chinese restaurant for dinner first, and it was the first time I’d ever gone out to dinner without my parents. A drink was mistakenly delivered to our table, and our idiot 14-year old brains thought that if each of us took a sip (about 15 kids in total), it would be okay and we couldn’t all get arrested. Teenage logic on full display!

              7. BlueWolf*

                This was in Virginia. Upon Googling, it is apparently not actually illegal, that’s just what the manager or bartender said to us at the time. However, establishments are allowed to make their own policies forbidding it. It also was a liability and guest comfort issue, as in we really didn’t want children climbing on stools right next to us while trying to enjoy our meal at the bar. And I can only imagine if one of the children fell off the stool and got hurt. The mother definitely seemed like the type who would blame the restaurant and not her own lack of attention, considering she got mad at my boyfriend for politely asking them not to do it.

                1. SleepyMel*

                  If she wasn’t drunk I would not have said a thing. Being a mom is tough and people are so eager to judge mothers, it’s sad. If she was drunk – that’s a problem. Otherwise it sounds like you were just kinda annoyed at having to deal with children when you didn’t expect to.

                2. CMart*

                  It very well may be a local law. The town I live in doesn’t allow for minors to sit AT the bar, but it’s not a state-wide law by any means.

                  I used to be a restaurant bartender and I learned quickly that “I’m sorry, TownVille is stupidly draconian” was a good balm for the wounded customers who just wanted a place for their kids to sit while they waited for a table.

                3. Miss Pantalones en Fuego (formerly Floundering Mander)*

                  Frankly I don’t see a problem with asking a child not to annoy me by climbing on the furniture next to me. I don’t have a problem with kids, I wouldn’t judge the mother as being a bad mom, but really. Why should I be unable to enjoy an adult space because I’m not allowed to politely ask a child to stop doing something annoying in that space?

                4. Layla*

                  Sleepymel – well, they shouldn’t have had to deal with someone else’s children. Parenting is tough because part of the deal is that you don’t ignore your children – or let them endanger themselves.

            2. Not Rebee*

              In California, minors can be present in the bar section of a bar/restaurant but cannot actually be seated at the barstools of the actual bar. So yes, if the restaurant is full you can go sit at a table in the bar area but you can’t actually order anything from the bartender, belly up to the bar, or sit at a barstool unless you’re 21. And usually the first thing they do after you sit at the stool is ask for your ID, before you’ve even tried to order anything. And no, “I’m just ordering food” doesn’t work. Nor does “I won’t order anything, can I just sit here?”

            1. Bruce H.*

              My guess is something along the lines of “If you don’t want to sleep on the couch until Easter …”

            2. StudentPilot*

              My thought at the time (and still is) was that he was taken aback on being called out on his behaviour – most people turn a blind eye to someone berating retail/service industry workers – that he just….did it. (He actually did sound sincere in his apology too. I can’t remember what he said, but I remember thinking it sounded like a real apology.)

              1. The OG Anonsie*

                People are not used to being called out and will shamefully cooperate a lot more often than you’d think when you give them no way to run away and pretend they did nothing wrong.

                There’s a bit of lead up story behind this that’s not interesting, but the short version is I was standing next to a handicap parking spot with my neighbor who needed it. We had just had to ask someone who was not handicapped to move their car so he could park there. Before my neighbor actually moved into the space a different person with no handicap placard or plates zipped into it. My neighbor called out to her “are you handicapped? Do you need that space?” as she went by and she just yelled “NO” back at us before literally running into the office.

                I was like, oh no you will not, and I followed her in and told her to go back out and move her car. Even though she knew good and well we had called out to her about it being a handicapped spot as she was getting out of the car, she acted all surprised and nervously came with me back out to her car and moved it. She also waited until she was actually driving away to yell that we were assholes out her window at us, because people are almost never confrontational unless they can scurry off into the night afterwards.

                1. iseeshiny*

                  She’s super fortunate you didn’t just call the parking enforcement to give her a big honking ticket. It’s what I would have done.

                2. Pomona Sprout*

                  Beecause of course anyone in genuine need of a handicapped space or trying to help such a person is an asshole, and the ablebodied person who was trying to hog that space is…….what, a perfect angel? *FACEPALM*

                  Ouch, I think my head just exploded. Seriously, wtf is wrong wth some with some people?

        3. Wannabe Disney Princess*

          I used to be the manager at a very small, family owned business that sold bulk food items. It was in a VERY well-to-do area, so many of our customers treated us as less-than. I had one woman unload on me. When she was done she glared at me and said, “I DEMAND to speak to your manager.” The expression on her face when I said, coldly, that I was the manager was priceless.

          1. LibrarianInTheWoods*

            YES. I adore any story that ends like that. Never got a chance to do it when I was managing a small college library though.
            I did attempt mostly keep a calm/quiet demeanor most of the time, so my best customer service stories are when I’ve raised my voice . Once, a student was talking over me re: a printer error (mansplaining his female librarian), I finally got fed up, stared him down, and went “SIR. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO LET ME FINISH MY SENTENCE.”
            It worked, I dealt with the printer thing, but then looked over to see one of my library regulars staring at me with a look of O_O.
            “Oh my god, I’ve never seen you DO that. Awesome.”

            1. JeanB in NC*

              I did the exact same thing as a librarian once – the guy kept interrupting me and I finally said, hey, you might be able to figure this out if you actually listen to me. I got looks too.

            2. Talia*

              I, alas, did not get to do that to the person who tried to mansplain me. I suggested a solution, was told firmly “NO, that WON’T WORK!” and then went to find someone who knew the AV equipment better than I did. When I couldn’t find anyone, I came back to find they’d got it working, and asked how… at which point they proceeded to mansplain the thing I had suggested in the first place, as if it had been all their own idea.

            3. Loony Lovegood*

              Once I had a client who not only gave me an extensive lecture on the phone, he started using a baby voice at me. As in, “I”m tired of you saying you’re SORRY! Nyeeeaaah, I’m sorry Mr. XX, nyeah nyeah nyeah!”

              The first time this happened I was frozen in shock that it was actually happening. The second time, I said, “Mr. XX, I would be happy to discuss this with you to resolve the issue at hand, but you’re going to need to keep a respectful tone, or I won’t be able to continue this call.” He never acknowledged that I’d said anything, but he also never did it again!

            4. Monsters of Men*

              I have done that so many times. I think my demeanor makes it easier for the customer to swallow, because I rarely get pushback. “Excuse me – PLEASE let me finish.” always does it.

            5. Jean Lamb*

              My favorite library story is the guy who brought in a tarantula for my viewing pleasure (in a plastic box, no danger). Instead of jumping in fear, I happily squealed, “oh, it’s so CUTE, can I pet it?” He never did it again, I must have sorely disappointed him, as I had planned.

            2. Deejay*

              In a similar vein – “I’m the owner’s . I’ll get you fired!”
              Followed by “I’m the owner. I’ve never seen you before” or “Hey, ! I didn’t recognise you! Why didn’t you tell me you were in town?”

                1. DecorativeCacti*

                  My boyfriend works somewhere that people try to pull that and his owners have told him only to accept that if the person can call them and get them on the phone then and there. Their kids also work there so I love the stories that involve angry customers demanding to speak to the owner to which the kids pull out their cellphone and say, “I’ll call my dad right now.”

          4. molliekay*

            During my last few days at a pharmacy that also processed photos, I encountered a gem of a bad customer. She insisted that we reproduce a copyrighted photo and I explained that I wasn’t about to break the law.

            She demanded to see my manager, like they all do. “I am the manager on duty today,” was my polite response. So she asked for the district manager’s phone number. I gave it to her and said, “Here you go, though I’d call fast. Tomorrow’s my last day.”

            I’ve never seen anyone so red.

          5. Snazzy Hat*

            My ex-husband was a gas station manager for a few years, and I always hoped he would get a rude and very wrong customer who would demand to speak to the manager. Knowing him, he would have cheerfully said “hi, is there a problem?” as if he hadn’t just experienced the situation first hand, then reveled in watching the customer turn red with embarrassment.

          1. bunniferous*

            Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth I worked third shift Waffle House as a waitress. Once I hit a customer over the head with a menu. He deserved it. Management didn’t care. They always backed us up.

        5. Akcipitrokulo*

          I was about a month into a call centre job, when got really, really bad customer. He was arguing his bill – I was being polite but getting stressed, and my manager picked up her extension to listen in. A few minutes of ranting later, he demanded to speak to my manager, and she gestured to put him through.

          He started to explain, and she said “I know; I heard. Don’t you EVER speak to one of my agents like that again!”

      2. Specialk9*

        Good for you. It’s pretty shameful what awful behavior one has to swallow for ‘customer service’. It shouldn’t be that way.

      3. Specialk9*

        Also, can we all agree that for that flight attendant pulling the chute to run away, that flight delay would be worth it for the story? I keep getting tears of mirth in my eyes imagining it.

        2. Former Usher*

          At the time of the flight attendant incident, my job was particularly stressful. My co-workers and I would joke about “pulling the chute,” and everyone knew what we meant.

          1. SSS*

            Considering his actions could have severely injured workers under the plane, he deserved the trouble. It’s a great fantasy rage-quit, but far too dangerous to innocent bystanders to have been done for real.

          2. Clewgarnet*

            I’m not surprised! Repacking a chute like that is expensive, and it means the plane’s out of service for a while.

      5. ZK*

        I was assistant manager of a retail store that was closing, so we were all losing our jobs. We had signs up every where saying, “NO RETURNS OR EXCHANGES.” A woman tried to return something and was told be my employee, politely, that it couldn’t be done. She called the store a short time later, demanding to speak to the manager. I gave her the same answer and she just started yelling (and yes, she really was yelling, everyone at the counter heard her side of the conversation), telling me she was going to contact my regional manager. When she finally paused a moment, I said, “What part of store closing and us losing our jobs did you miss? And our regional manager is now the liquidator in charge who made the rule.” She started swearing at me and I finally interrupted her. “Nice mouth!” And I hung up on her. Felt so good, haha.

        1. Monsters of Men*

          Okay, but really. What was her thought process here? Let me get this worker in trouble for a CHAIN OF STORES NEVER OPENING THEIR DOORS AGAIN

    2. Sterling*

      Age 19 and I worked at a sandwich shop in a small town that didn’t have much else other than a factory. This shop was the only thing still open at 10pm when many of the 2nd shift factory workers from across the street took their dinner break. We had 2 people working and 30 angry men demanding their food. I also was suppose to be prepping for the next mornings shift (baking bread, prepping veggies and such) my boss calls and proceeds to tear into me about how she drove past and saw the line and how lazy I am and how I need to get people moving faster. At that moment one of the men that I was making a sandwich for called me the C word and snatched his sandwich out of man and stormed out with out paying.

      I stopped went to the back and in sharpie wrote on the managers door “Screw you I quit.” And left my uniform shirt on the floor. I have never worked food service since.

      1. Happy Former Grocery Store Worker*

        That’s a good one!
        Early 20s grocery store job. We had a new policy that instead of receiving an annual COL raise, the company would give out a bonus check, maybe $500 before taxes regardless of years employed. I quickly did the math and realized I was getting a lot less. I had been there for 6 years through high school and college. Grocery stores are notorious for poor management and work environments (except Trader Joe’s).
        I put in for vacation week scheduled the week after we were to receive bonus checks. I go to pick up checks; regular pay, vacation and bonus. On my way down the stairs I run into my boss and give her my two week notice, both of them being vacation weeks for me. She was furious!
        I just really didn’t care. I had put up with 2 years of this manager scheduling me on times I could not work, because I was in class, etc. It didn’t matter how many times I asked for a day off. She would schedule me and then be mad when I couldn’t work. She was so dumb.

        1. Snazzy Hat*

          Oh my god, my s.o. quit a job at a pizza chain while he was in college because his boss scheduled him during classes, and when s.o. told boss to stop doing that, boss asked, “what’s more important, school or work?” The answer was school.

          1. Redtail*

            Same thing happened to me, I got a long, condescending lecture about my priorities, and I just died laughing about two sentences in. Yeah, sure, this part-time food service gig is OBVIOUSLY more important for my future than my fucking degree, of COURSE. Astonishingly, I didn’t get fired, and they did stop scheduling my shifts during class.

          2. la bella vita*

            Ugh I had a job as a hostess during for a little less than a year before I quit. The rule was that everyone had to be available for two weekday lunch shifts per week, which no one wanted to work because we would make no money. The rule was reasonably well enforced during the summer and fall semester, but fell off a cliff in the spring and several of the other hostesses claimed they had class every day. Because of that, I was the only person available Tuesday and Thursdays and I was never allowed to take either shift off when I needed to study, plus I was stuck with two terrible low pay shifts per week when I probably should’ve only had to work 2-3 per month. I gave my notice a few weeks before midterms and the manager was mad, because who was going to work Tuesday and Thursday lunch??? As politely as I could I told him he should have thought about that before he told a bunch of the other hostesses that the clearly stated job requirement didn’t apply to them.

          3. Miss Pantalones en Fuego (formerly Floundering Mander)*

            My first year of college I worked at a big electronics retailer that always scheduled their twice-annual inventory nights at the same time as finals week. The shift was absolutely mandatory and everyone had to work all night. You stayed until it was finished no matter how late it got, even if you ran out of things to do. They even expected the part-time high school students to stay all night.

            The first few times I worked this shift they let everyone who had finals go around midnight, and the high school students were exempted if their parents asked. Then they changed the policy so that there were no exceptions. They were surprised when a bunch of their student staff quit because they didn’t want to be at work until 4 or 5 AM the night before their final exams.

            1. zsuzsanna*

              When I was in high school, there were labor laws about how late you could work if you were 16 or 17. This would not have been allowed..

  2. Katie the Fed*

    One guy I worked with quit, and left up an out-of-office message with stupid quotes from all of his bosses and seniors over the year – attributed to them by name. Because our IT is so notoriously bad, it took well over a week from them to fully disable his account so that the out-of-office stopped being sent.

    4. Deloris Van Cartier*

      How long was the out of office message? I feel like I could fill up a page with just one month sometimes!

      1. Calliope*

        Agreed! I can’t decide whether “AMAZING” describes the quitting employee, or the ineptitude of the IT department! Or…or *was* the IT department truly inept?

        2. Chinook*

          “Or…or *was* the IT department truly inept?”

          I mean, was the IT Manager one of the ones who was quoted?

      2. Bea W*

        Probably would have taken my former employer 4-6 weeks, the minimum amount of time it would take for them to fix business critical issues for my team. What I wouldn’t have given to get something fixed in only a week!

    12. NotAnotherManager!*

      That is spectacularly unprofessional – like the car wreck you can’t look away from. I guess if you’re not looking to have your “eligible for rehire” box ticked, it’s cathartic? I would chuckle just at the time someone took to keep a list of stupid things people said to you over the year.

      We had someone email the entire organization on a Saturday once to enumerate their complaints about the firm, their boss, their coworkers (including that they had been the one to leave a deodorant stick on a specific person’s desk because they “stunk”), etc. IS had that message recalled and removed within a half-hour on a weekend, and only the HR people got to keep a copy.

      1. Samiratou*

        We had a sales rep drunk-email the “department-all” email address ranting about her boss and various other complaints. She tried to recall it on Monday morning, but since she was 2 hours behind most of the office…yeah. Sorry, sweetheart. We talked about that one for awhile.

        I wonder if I still have it somewhere in my archives….

      2. Katie the Fed*

        He actually was a spectacular asshole, so I can’t really high five this as much as all the commenters. It was funny though.

        1. The OG Anonsie*

          It’s a great idea, made funny entirely by whether or not the person who does it is someone you want to have that satisfaction or not.

      3. Consultant*

        Recalling a message in outlook doesn’t mean that recipients can’t read it. It only means that they receive a message “X would like to recall the message Y”.

        Unless you do that on the level of server I guess.

        1. Anonymous 40*

          It depends on the circumstances. If the recipient has already read the message, recall fails. If the recipient has Outlook open but hasn’t read it, the message disappears. If the recipient doesn’t have Outlook open, the next time it’s opened it downloads both messages, the original and the recall, and will remove both after all mail finishes syncing. If someone’s fast enough, they can open the recalled message before it’s deleted.

          1. Stone Satellite*

            And let’s be honest, who doesn’t read the email when they get the “would like to recall the message” notice? Just to see? We don’t use Outlook at currentJob so it’s harder to tell which emails people actually regret vs the ones they should regret.

      4. Karen D*

        I tend to agree. Yeah, it may be cathartic but unless the guy never received external emails, he just smeared his organization to anyone who happens to come into contact with it. That’s just … just not a good idea.

        1. overly produced bears*

          Outlook lets you set different Out Of Office messages for internal vs. external folks. Don’t know about any other messaging program, though.

      5. chocolate lover*

        I have an email folder called “stupid comments” for the real doozies. Not many in there and I haven’t updated it in a while, but I still do shake my head sometimes at the memory of them.

      6. Close Bracket*

        If the managers were that stupid, I doubt that eligibility for rehiring even cross to that person’s mind.

      1. Elizabeth West*

        I’m not giving that lying piece of shit one dime of my money. He should quietly fade into the bushes of obscurity along with the rest of this horrible administration. I’m sick of incompetent assholes getting to make bank off their stupidity.

        /rant over

        1. SpiderLadyCEO*

          THANK YOU! I am too. I cannot believe we are just letting him back into society, having him on talk shows, treating him as if he didn’t spend the last few months working for a heinous administration, supporting said administration, lying, blustering, covering up, literally hiding in the bushes….He’s done. Put him in a corner. Maybe back in the bushes.

        2. Elder Dog*

          Besides, you can read his book for free a month or so after it comes out by getting it through the library. Don’t ask for it right away though. If there’s too many “holds” on it they’ll buy another copy.

    18. DecorativeCacti*

      We had someone do something similar but in an analog way. They typed up and printed a document all about how terrible their boss was and the awful things they said to this employee, then came in before everyone else and distributed copies around the building. She then stood at the employee entrance handing them out for a while.

        2. Ego Chamber*

          Serious question: What kind of spectacular resignation stories were you expecting? “My boss was a big, swinging tool, so I spent time in my off-hours looking for a new job while still performing my work up to company standards and not alienating a single one of my stupid coworkers”?

          Apathetically responding to bad situations like a professional, reasonable adult is not what this letter requested. :)

        1. Starbuck*

          Exactly what I was picturing. I used to write e.e. cummings-style poems using rambling stream-of-consciousness quotes from my boss.

    20. Wendy Darling*

      My shoulder-devil now sincerely regrets not doing this when I left my job at AwfulCorp after my boss went off on me for asking how to do something totally outside my normal job that no one had ever told me how to do. (My shoulder angel knows better, but it would have been briefly satisfying until my awful boss started badmouthing me to everyone she could get to hold still long enough.)

      Her email closed with, in red all-caps bolded underlined italics, “IF YOU HAD SPENT AS MUCH TIME WORKING ON THIS PROJECT AS YOU DID WRITING THIS EMAIL YOU WOULD BE DONE BY NOW.” (I spent 10 minutes writing the email but okay.)

      I worked remote and just silently closed my laptop and vanished for the rest of the day, which was the last day of work before a long weekend. I took the weekend to cool off, completely and utterly failed to cool off, and gave notice first thing Monday morning. Somehow, my boss was surprised that she berated someone in red bolded underlined italic capslock and they subsequently quit.

      1. Decima Dewey*

        This resignation story isn’t mine. Lucinda, a secretary, worked for Fergus, a VP at the investment firm I worked at. Fergus made an unsuccessful attempt to take over the firm, ended up resigning to set up his own firm (taking one of the original firms largest clients with him). After an interval, Fergus contacted Lucinda and offered her a job with his new firm. Lucinda submitted her resignation to Fergus’s old boss, got a grunt in return. While working out her notice, Lucinda continued to get sensitive documents to type up. For a while, she thought she’d misjudged the guy. Until the date he came to her desk, pale-faced. It seems he’d finally read her resignation, and realized she was going to be working for Fergus.

      2. Anonicat*

        Shoulder angel/devil references always make me think of Kronk from The Emperor’s New Groove.

        Devil: besides, look what I can do! *does handstand pushups*
        Kronk: But what does that have to do with-
        Angel: No, no, he’s got a point.

        1. Not So Newbie to AAM*

          “Now, now, guys, remember: from above, the wicked shall receive the just reward” …….. “That’ll work.”

          That movie cracks me up!

    21. Gazebo Slayer*

      WOW

      I once worked at a place where I compiled a list of funny things people had said which I emailed to a well-connected longtime employee for everyone’s amusement when I left, but most of them weren’t *stupid* things, just clever quips and odd circumstances and the like (“a teapot with a spout shaped like a squid that’s specifically described as *cursed* will get a better price than a teapot with a spout shaped like a squid that isn’t cursed” or such).

      1. Gingerblue*

        I was previously unaware that I had a burning desire for a teapot with a spout shaped like a cursed squid, but my god do I need one.

      2. DragonDreams*

        We had a “Wall of Shame” at a movie theater job that we wrote the best questions on. The very first addition to it, was I kid you not, “Whose name tag is this?” yelled across the lobby.
        Second entry came from our district manager, who said “My wife’s husband has a brain tumor.”

  3. overly produced bears*

    I’m always amazed at some of these, mostly because where I’ve been for the last 7ish years, it’s such a long process of leaving the job. Turning things in, getting it certified you turned things in, and all that jazz.

    1. Birch*

      Yeah, I had to turn in a parking pass once that would have fined me 50 bucks for not turning it in. Only the office to turn it in closed before regular business hours. Definitely a situation where begging and “I can’t bring it on Monday, I’m moving to another country tomorrow” works well.

      1. Steve*

        After I was laid off from my first job out of college, I went back the next day to give them the VPN smart card reader and a couple books I had at home that the company had bought. The receptionist wouldn’t accept them for security reasons. Eventually I convinced him to call down my former manager even though I didn’t have an appointment. (I doubt, in retrospect, that anything would have happened if I hadn’t bothered.)

      2. CMF*

        I was terminated from a job, which was fine by me.

        But I had called out that morning, because I was sick. So the HR lady called me and told me I didn’t need to come in on Monday. I said, “ok, whatever.” She continues to talk about how I’m eligible for unemployment because whatever reasons, they’d send me information about COBRA, whatever… I let her talk. We hung up the phone. I went back to sleep.

        My phone rang again twenty minutes later. She didn’t know I had a laptop. She needed me to come up immediately to return it. I told her that, as I was ill, and had ALREADY CALLED OUT, I would be happy to talk to her about it on Monday. “You need to drop it off at 8am Monday!”

        “I will be happy to call you when I have time on Monday to arrange a time to return my laptop.”

        I dropped the laptop off on Tuesday.

        I got an email from HR Wednesday morning asking for my password, because IT couldn’t get into my laptop. I had never changed it from the password they had initially issued me, but I simply replied, “that sounds like something that isn’t my problem. Good luck!”

        I assume they figured it out eventually.

            1. Liz in a Library*

              I read it as AdAgencyChick saying that the company should have made the arrangements to get the laptop rather than making CMF come in.

          2. Annie Moose*

            If it was so important for IT to have her password, they should’ve asked for it when asking for the laptop in the first place. Sounds like they had very disorganized termination procedures.

            1. JessaB*

              This. I used to drive past bosses crazy when I’d type out a list of equipment and serial numbers and making the boss sign that they gave me the stuff. And then make them sign that I gave it BACK, because companies just don’t keep decent records. I insisted on keeping my own records.

      3. MCMonkeyBean*

        I worked at a bank that was in a small shopping center on a popular street with very little parking. When I had to leave no one asked me for my parking pass back and I tried not to use it too often but it was so nice being able to park there on occasion when I couldn’t find parking anywhere else. After a few weeks a guy who still worked there called me and said they really needed it back and it had been causing them problems not to have it and they would be fined or something and I freaked out and felt SO guilty and rushed over first thing to return it, only for him to say he was just kidding–he just wanted to have a second pass for himself to keep one in each car.

        I was so mad that he did that, but also it wasn’t my pass to keep. It was very confusing emotionally, but I feel confident that it was a dick move for him to lie and make me feel guilty for no reason. He could have just told me he wanted it and I would totally have given it to him!

        1. Close Bracket*

          It wasn’t his to keep either. If he came clean before you gave up the pass, in your shoes, I would have given it to HR or somebody rather than him. I’m petty like that :-).

          1. Niac*

            I’d definitely call HR and let them know that you had given your parking pass to so-and-so and you just wanted to make sure it had been turned in. I’m petty like that!

    2. Yams*

      Oh goodness, that reminds me of the time my ex-boss was pressuring me to quit on a Sunday, without anyone present to receive all my equipment and close off my accounts, and without technically resigning since I wouldn’t be able to sign the required documents. I nipped that one in the bud pretty quickly. Which turned out to be the best idea ever, since I was later told that the HR lady’s last day was the same Friday I resigned.

      As a bonus I was pretty sure this boss wanted me quit in that way in order to sue me for abandoning my job, he had a knack for getting people into iffy legal situations.

      1. babblemouth*

        How can anyone sue you for abandoning your job? You’re (I hope) not shackled to your job, you can walk away whenever you want.

      1. The OG Anonsie*

        IME, having to meet with multiple people to turn things over / do whatever trainings in person and make a record of it. You gotta fit into their schedules.

        Slash, I also worked in a field where handoffs required institutional approvals and you had to start that process with at least a month lead time to make sure they had the approval before you were allowed to start cross-training. It was a legal thing totally out of our hands, but it made staff changes a nightmare.

    4. The OG Anonsie*

      I had a job that theoretically had a lot of security procedures around returning access devices and badges and all due to there being a LOT of very stringent legal regulations about access to our facilities or computer systems. But the manager I had just… He so thoroughly did not care about anything he was responsible for (which was Reason #1 on Top Ten Reasons I Left That Job, and also on the forms I gave HR heh) that he no-showed to three different times I had scheduled with him to hand over my stuff over the last few days I was working there. When he no-showed to the third one, the one at the end of the day on my last day to hand over my badge and all, I was unsurprised but still angry that now I had to deal with this problem as per usual.

      As a CYA I forwarded every email and meeting notification from the last several days, showing how many times I had tried to give him the stuff back and he had no-showed, over to HR with him copied and said I left my stuff in his office and that was really the best I could do.

  4. Amadeo*

    I came pretty close to showing my behind when I left the daily regional newspaper I built advertising for. I was going to a weekly local newspaper they (for whatever odd reason) considered a competitor. They made ad reps march out of the building with a box of their stuff the same day they gave their notice if the reps were going to a competitor, except I wasn’t an ad rep.

    They threatened to march me out (my team lead at the time was hoping they wouldn’t but brought me a box for my things just-in-case) but ended up not, and I heard from our supervisor that the publisher had gone on about how they would sue me if I took any ‘secrets’ (I still, to this day, 5 years later, haven’t got a bloody clue what ‘secrets’ I would have stolen!) to said competitor. I looked her in the eye and told her I didn’t have to finish the two weeks if I wasn’t welcome. She fell all over herself trying to prevent that and I did end up finishing out the notice period, but good lord the temptation to throw my ad tickets into the air in a spectacular shower, grab my box and march out that day was super high.

    1. hypernatural*

      Ha, this reminds me of the time I quit my job and it was ruled I was going to a competitor (same industry, different market, but whatever) so they “walked me out”. Only I worked from home, so I had to drive into the office to hand in my laptop and things. And my manager also was working from home, so I had to find someone to take my stuff. It was weird.

    2. Tris Prior*

      Ha, I quit my job once to work for a competitor and I was HOPING they’d march me out! Alas, no. I was “too valuable.” They made me serve out my 2 weeks but took me off the really horrible project that I’d been leading, out of fear that I’d blab all about it to my new employer, I guess? Oh, darn! I’m off the stressful evil rife-with-technical-issues project and instead helping a co-worker with simple stuff? Cool. Easiest notice period ever.

      Though I really wish they’d given me that 2-week break between jobs that everyone else got (my finances were such that I could go a couple weeks without pay, especially considering all the untaken vacation time I was getting paid out from that job). Oh well.

      1. Amadeo*

        My supervisor and team lead really didn’t want that to happen, supervisor even got a counter-offer approved trying to prevent me leaving at all. It didn’t take long for most of the creative rats to jump ship there and the paper and it’s parent corporation outsource their creative out of the country now. They don’t circulate in an area that would take that well if the populace knew.

      2. SusanIvanova*

        I got laid off once and got marched out – but it took them three hours between telling me I was laid off and doing it, during which time I still had access to my computer and could’ve done whatever it is they think marching out prevents.

        But all I did was go out to lunch with my totally shocked team. True, it was part of a large layoff, but if my team lead had had anything to say about it I wouldn’t have even been close to the first one picked. But I’d had the effrontery to be right and female when my grandmanager was being wrong and sexist, and my direct manager was a doormat, so there I was on the short list.

        1. Clewgarnet*

          I was once part of a mass layoff when the company went into administration. However, one of the people they laid off was the person who kept the list of what equipment – laptop, monitor, mobile phone, etc – had been issued to which employee.

          I still have that laptop.

          1. Aeth*

            I was part of a mass voluntary redundancy once, in a public-sector job which involved being on the phone a lot. On my second to last day, a very haughty man called and demanded I tell my manager to recruit more staff as a result of the long waiting time he’d had to endure.

            I advised him that I’d pass the note on but as I and twelve of my colleagues in this site are being laid off tomorrow I doubt he’d see any action come from it. At that, he demanded to know how much I was receiving and I told him that was none of his business.

            Not exactly spectacular but definitely enjoyable, under the circumstance.

    3. Code Monkey, the SQL*

      My mom got the march-out from the church where she worked (as a graphics person) from when I was in grade school to when I was a frosh in college. Watched her close out her computer, took her keys, escorted her to the door, the whole thing.

      My parents don’t go to that church anymore.

  5. argus*

    When I was 19 and starting college, I decided to keep my job and transfer to a location closer to campus. On my first day at New Location, I was disappointed by how unfriendly everybody seemed compared to Old Location and worked myself about how I just couldn’t go back there the next day for my second shift. I had never quit a job before, so my best friend called my boss, pretended to be me, and quit over the phone. It was something like “Hi. I can’t come in today because I quite. Bye!”

    1. argus*

      A few years later, I was volunteering somewhere and I quit by writing a 9-page, single-spaced treatise on the many dysfunctions of the organization, which I then e-mailed to everyone in the organization.

    2. Jesca*

      Hah!

      My first ever job was at one of those chain pizza shops. It was pretty awful. My first manager would show me his track lines on his arms. My second manager tried to frame me for his cash drawer theft. The third manager. Ooooh the third manager. This guy would literally treat me like garbage in front of all the male coworkers and even the customers! He would cuss me out (haha yes) on a regular basis customers present or not for what other coworkers were not doing. I wasn’t in charge! I was a part time high school kid! One particular Saturday he went on a great tirade against me during the busiest time in front of the customers and all the coworkers. Well I had just found out I landed a sweet gig as a summer intern in a lab. I waited until 5 minutes for my next shift the next Saturday, called the little ass wad up and told him I wouldn’t be in and that I quit. I have a new job and start Monday. Haha he got quiet for a second, and I will never forget this, and then said “Fuck you, Jesca!” To which I just as quickly replied, “No, I believe I just fucked you! Enjoy the rush! Oh and Jim? Have a nice fucking day!” I then went in and watched the mayhem! He hadn;t bothered to hold any of the other employees accountable because he always had that “stupid woman” did do it all!
      I still laugh. I don’t condone this, but I have no regrets.

  6. Snark*

    The summer after my first year of college, I worked at a call center doing cold-call sales. One of my coworkers ripped off his headset one day, screamed “I QUIT THIS PLACE SUCKS” and stalked out. He got in his ancient Nissan minitruck, put it in gear, and attempted to drive over the landscaping between his parking spot and the driveway. He bottomed out trying to drive over a bush, got stuck, and ended up having to come back in and ask for help pushing his car off the landscaping from the coworkers he’d just staged his great exit from, his face a particularly remarkable shade of vermilion.

    2. Turquoise Cow*

      Was he so mad he couldn’t see the landscaping, or wanted to make one final gesture of defiance by messing up the landscaping? Was it on purpose or a complete accident?

      Cause that would have been kind of inspiring if not for the last part.

      1. Snark*

        I think it was on purpose. He just wanted to mow that landscaping down as a final upraised bird. I can’t say I really blamed him.

    6. The Cosmic Avenger*

      It sounds like the kind of place that nobody is really happy to be working at, so I hope his coworkers were sympathetic.

      1. Snark*

        I mean, we had to give him the sarcastic slow clap just for form, but we all secretly wanted to do the same thing, and hated it as much as he did. I quit a week or two later when I ended up getting offered a job helping a friendly older guy do facility management at a local company, which basically equated to riding around in his pickup shooting the breeze and puttering around doing random chores. It was glorious.

        1. Merci Dee*

          During my early school years, my dad was getting one of his master’s degrees at a seminary in New Orleans, and he got a break on his tuition by doing a “work-study” arrangement with the school. Because of his extensive background in construction, he worked with the facilities guys on a part-time basis to do some maintenance around the campus. I have very fond memories of riding around the campus with him on the golf cart, and “helping” him with some of the smaller jobs that he had to do. I got to use the screwdriver and the hammer, mostly, and I thought I was some hot stuff. Even as I got older, I always loved helping my dad with his projects. I was ridiculously excited when he gave me the gorgeous wood table he’d rehabbed and re-fitted when I bought my own place earlier in the year. He knows how much I love that table, and said he thought it would look great in my dining corner.

        2. bella mechanique*

          Along this same line, we had an employee get really pissed at the boss and quit suddenly. They hadn’t been getting along very well and everybody sort of wondered if she would eventually quit. During a meeting where the boss was handing out very generous bonus checks, this lady started airing a bunch of pent up grievances that had apparently been eating at her. She eventually got up and stormed out but when she did her ballet flat shoe came off her foot. She was half way down the hall before she realized it and had to schlep back and get it. It totally killed the effect of all the screaming she had done at the boss (who still gave her the bonus check, by the way!) So now when we’re joking around at the office we will ask each other, “Are those your quitting shoes? Make sure they’re lace ups!”

  7. JeanB in NC*

    I have a somewhat spotty job history and have walked off a number of jobs with no notice, some of which involved yelling and screaming (not all on my part) but fortunately I have blurred out all this out. However, if you want stories about when I should have been fired but wasn’t, I have a couple of a great examples of that!

    2. Anon for this for sure*

      Oh God, I have one of those. I sent an email meant for my sister to my boss’ boss. Naturally this was an email on a particularly bad day at the office so I was venting, and included such gems as “they would mess up a 2 for 1 deal in a brothel” and “I don’t know who the bigger idiot is, management for the way they run things or me for putting up with it”. I immediately got a reply of “I’m assuming this wasn’t for me?” I got really hot, then really cold, and just stood up and knocked on my boss’ door to fill him in. I think the only reason I wasn’t fired was because apart from that I was a fantastic employee and as horrible as the email was, technically I wasn’t wrong. I’d totally have fired me though; I still turn red thinking about it many years later.

      1. Danger: Gumption Ahead*

        My friend did a “Reply All” misfire that would have had him fired if he wasn’t working at an international org. His wife had been removed from authorship of a publication by her boss. Friend wrote a very scathing and very funny take-down of the boss’ character. His wife e-mailed him and let him know it went out to the entire world and he sent a follow-up e-mail saying, “I am sorry that I sent the previous e-mail to the organization wide e-mail address. I am not sorry for what I said and I stand by my statement”

        They both ended up in a hardship assignment, but loved it, so it ended well

        1. Samiratou*

          I had a reply-all incident early in my career meant to go out to a coworker but went to the larger thread, calling out a sales rep for lying to a customer in a way that required us to undo and then redo a bunch of work. The sales rep, her boss and a VP was included, but the VP (who normally worked in another state but happened to be here that week) thought it was funny. And true, so there’s that.

          It could have been much worse.

          1. AKJ*

            I was accidentally included in a “reply-all” incident where the first e-mail in the long, long chain was questioning my ability to do my job because I clearly didn’t understand how important his order was. The e-mail I composed (but did not send) in reply would have gotten me fired. In retrospect I should have sent it anyway, because I didn’t stay there much longer. I could have gone out in a blaze of glory instead.

            1. Samiratou*

              Ugh, that’s awful. I hope subsequent emails put the entitled jerk from the beginning in his place.

              In my case Coworker and I were asked to run a process to update data for a potential big client, only to get a panicked email after doing so to undo the update because the rep had told the potential client that we would only update this info if they paid us (not true). Reverting took longer than the original update process, and wasn’t something we’d ever done before, so it sucked. Shortly after we undid everything, we got and email that she made the sale and now could we run the update process again? The email I sent, that was meant to go to Coworker, commented something like “do you think she means it this time?” so nothing to serious, but I was irritated at a) the amount of work we’d had to do and b) I potentially needed to train people from the client and what if they asked about our “policy” of not updating their info.

              I have since learned to forward rather than reply to individuals in a chain if the content is not applicable to all recipients.

              1. Amelia Schmidt*

                I was the accidental recipient of a voice mail message I shouldn’t have received. It was from one of the co-owners and was directed towards the other co-owners, and it was asking how a certain big mistake happened, and basically blamed me for the mistake. I wasn’t the one at fault for the mistake (it was actually the spouse of one of the other co-owners) but I had identified that a mistake like this one was very likely and easily going to happen and had mentioned it more than once and been dismissed over and over again. I did receive an apology, and they did fix the procedure so this mistake didn’t happen again (by giving me the project) but I was so angry I almost walked out that day. If he hadn’t apologized to me so quickly, I probably would have.

              2. SusanIvanova*

                Not my story, but this reminded me:

                There was a team with three people on it. One part of the company decided that their project should go on maintenance mode and eventually be shut down, so they laid off two of the people – nice severance package, everything. Meanwhile Sales had just started a big successful push on it. This wasn’t an old useless thing that deserved to be EOL’d, it was fairly new and there was a demand for it even before that push. After – whew!

                So, in a panic, they hire back the two people they’d laid off, and let them keep the severance package even though it’s only been a month. The third guy is naturally annoyed at this and asks if he could get anything to make up for that. Nope! So a month later he’s got a new job and he’s out of there.

      2. Em Too*

        I guess it depends what you said about grandboss but I would have laughed so much. Then I would have told everyone an anonymised version every time there was a discussion about how to elicit feedback.

      3. Angel*

        Can we just talk about how brilliant the quote “they would mess up a two for one deal in a brothel” is?

        1. Anonicat*

          In Australia, we say “couldn’t organise a root in a brothel” or “couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery.”

      5. JeanB in NC*

        Mine was when I was working fast food as a teenager, and some lady got irate at me for whatever reason and threw her shake at me when I was handing her her food. I don’t even remember doing it but I took the tray and just flipped it so that food went flying all over her. She started screaming at me and telling the managers to fire me (there were 2 close by) and instead they escorted her out of the building. They stuck up for me!

      7. MCMonkeyBean*

        I was so lucky with the one mistake I made like this. In my high school environmental science class we were supposed to three papers based on an activity of our choice at any time during the semester. I was an excellent student but also an excellent procrastinator so I always put them off until the last minute. The teacher at one point updated everybody’s grades who hadn’t turned any in yet to show 0’s for all of them as a reminder I guess, like “hey, this is what your grades will look like if you don’t do these assignments!”

        I sent an email to a friend to complain about it and accidentally sent it to the teacher instead. Luckily I was a major goody too-shoes and I think the harshest word I used was “silly.” The teacher responded to the email as if I had meant to send it to her just saying she wanted to make sure everybody realized what a big part of our grades they would be and didn’t blow them off. I think she never knew I meant to send the email to someone else, though it’s possible she was just being nice I guess and ignoring my stupidity.

      8. Anon for This*

        I once worked as an admin for “Phil,” who was basically what you would get if you crossed a sexist good ol’ boy with a porcupine in a particularly bad mood. One day I couldn’t stand all the “honeys” and “you incompetent morons” any longer so I texted my sister saying, in very colorful language, that Phil was an asshole and working for him made me want to move to Hawaii and live off coconuts and sand. Except instead of texting it to my sister I texted it to Phil. Oops.

        He came storming out of his office and demanded to know why I had said such horrible things about him. Normally, I would have apologized and pleaded for my job, but he got me on a really bad day. So instead, I basically just read him the riot act, telling him all the reasons working for him sucked and why he was never going to keep good quality employees if he kept behaving this way. At the end of my tirade, I looked up, completely expecting to be fired, to discover that Phil was grinning. He looked at me, looked over at my astonished coworker who started the next desk, and said, almost proudly, “girl’s got some balls!” Then he went back in his office and we never spoke of it again.

        He was much easier to deal with after that, and I ended up not quitting until a job opened up in an organization I had wanted to work for for a long time.

        1. former expat*

          I think this is my favorite anecdote so far, actually. I might have to use “live off coconuts and sand” myself when the opportunity comes.

  8. Countess Boochie Flagrante*

    A retail coworker of mine just walked away when they went for lunch… on Black Friday. As in, all hands on deck, all registers open, line to the back of the store, and the person they were supposed to come back and relieve just waited and waited until we figured out this person wasn’t coming back.

        2. Countess Boochie Flagrante*

          What made it extra weird was that even though we were retail, BF was not nearly as bad for us as for most shops. It was a small fabric & craft store, so we didn’t have monster crowds or stampedes or anything like that. Busy as anything, yes, and all hands on deck, but our customers were actually much more chill and patient than they were on other busy days, and our ASM would usually buy everyone snacks near the end of the day.

          1. Snazzy Hat*

            YES. Hardcore quilters were my favorite fabric customers on Black Friday; they always offered to fold their own fabric so I could just stick to measuring and cutting more efficiently. Working register wasn’t bad either, since I knew the drill and loved the beep-beep-beep-done-bye-nextplease rhythm.

        3. paul*

          Things…I’ve seen things….fistfights over 256 megabyte USB drives….cops called because two grown men started beating each other up over a chair that 30 bucks off…

          I now spend Black Friday happily stuffed in a food coma most years.

          1. Marillenbaum*

            I don’t go shopping on Black Friday because I find it stressful, and I feel so guilty about people who work retail being stuck at work. Instead, it’s my day to officially (!) kick off Christmas: I get out the hot chocolate, the old movies, and the cards I’ve ordered, and spend the day writing my Christmas cards!

              1. Ego Chamber*

                Cyber Monday starts on Black Friday, so I’m 100% okay with missing the entire clusterfuck. Last year I was working retail, but for a cell phone store, and it was s o s l o w that everyone working there was on the store computers online shopping. We didn’t even have any customers until 11.

          2. RadManCF*

            I like to protest the crass consumerism of black friday by going to Fastenal in the afternoon. At least the stuff they sell is useful, and surprisingly, they actually have discounts on black friday.

            1. ResurrectedToast*

              Fastenal? The store that sells things that fasten things to other things? That’s…….
              .. unique.

              1. Pomona Sprout*

                I never heard of Fastenal till now, so I googled and found out they have a a whole bunch of stores in my area, including one about 10 minutes from me. Go figure, lol!

    2. Squirrel*

      Black Friday has been the only thing to make me quit without notice before. I was working a second job at a department store over the holidays for some extra money and had to work a 14-hour shift on Black Friday. It was absolutely horrendous, but I made it through just fine. I got to leave around 10:30 that night (IIRC), and I was scheduled to come back in the next day at ~9AM. The parking lot of the mall was absolutely packed, and the only parking I could find was on the complete opposite side of the large mall, and I was schedule until after the mall closed, so I would’ve had to walk around the mall, in the dark, in the cold, by myself (the front entrance to the store would not be opened for employees to walk through the mall for some reason). No flipping way I was doing that, so I called in, said I couldn’t find parking and wasn’t able to make it in to my shift, they said I would be listed in the system as not rehireable, I told him good and hung up.

      1. Detective Amy Santiago*

        Maybe I’m weird, but I always preferred the Black Friday insanity to the Day After Christmas insanity.

        1. Chinook*

          “but I always preferred the Black Friday insanity to the Day After Christmas insanity.”

          Up in Canada, those Boxing Day Sales can be horrid. I still remember having to plead to be allowed to go home when I worked one because I was about to pass out from a kidney stone. The manager almost didn’t let me until I started swaying.

            1. Al Lo*

              Thankfully (for retail workers), most Canadian stores don’t take returns on Dec. 26 and 27. Most places will only start returns after the big sale day.

        2. Anonicat*

          The lead up to Christmas is pretty intense too. I once had a customer rant at me the day before Christmas Eve because we didn’t stock the same jam or something as the stores in a completely different state and Christmas would be RUINED without it. Customers behind him in line later found my manager to say how patient I was with crazy man…but really it was just that it was 2 days before Christmas and I was all out of f***s to give.

      2. JGray*

        Oh Black Friday. I worked retail in high school and the store always opened at 5 am. I always had the 5 am shift. The only good part is that because I was part time they would usually let me go home by noon. The store I worked for had the best deals at 5 am & we usually didn’t end up too busy so I actually would sometimes go shopping. I will always remember the snow boots that with my discount I got for like $6 or $8. The store that I worked for also had Super Saturday sales which were some of the best and I remember it seemed every time the day after we had people come in the day after the sale wanting the sales price. The best excuse I heard was one woman was mad because she was on her lunch break & the line to check out was too long. But we had good managers who usually didn’t take crap from people.

      3. mehkitty84*

        Oh retail. I have so many stories from my time working at the mall. A week before Christmas we had our key holder quit the week before the holiday without notice. He came in late with his apron in his hand and went right to the manager saying he couldn’t work that night. He then said well probably not tomorrow either… She then said are you quitting? He said yes. I went in the back after he left and said to her “looks like I am closing alone?” I also said I would pick up his shifts if need be. I at least got her to laugh… The kicker? He had to quit because he told his family he was graduating College and in fact he wasn’t and took their money to just not enroll or go to class that semester…. I hated working with him anyway as I had to take our phone from him to avoid his countless phone calls to our manager at home! He wouldn’t even ask me first just picked it up and called her…..

      4. Candi*

        “the front entrance to the store would not be opened for employees to walk through the mall for some reason”

        Just a very late note: It may have been MALL policy. And if the mall management/corporate was particularly cold, there may have been a nasty fine (business definition, not legal) if store management did it anyway.

    3. Elizabeth West*

      This happened in a carpet shop/rug cleaning business I worked in for a short while. I’ve mentioned Coworker from Hell before, the sales person who was so vicious she’s the only coworker I ever had whom I actively hated? This occurred before I worked there, but somebody told me that they hired a sales guy once and CfH was so mean to him he quit after three days.

      There was a guy who started while I still worked there who quit after a week. I suspect something similar, though he didn’t say.

    4. SaraV*

      I worked overnight stock at a store when I was younger. A coworker who I shared duties with went on to a new job, so I pretty much took on everything she had been doing, too. I want to say also that the rumor was that they weren’t going to hire a replacement. A week or two later, I was told I wasn’t getting enough stuff done. Quit the day before Thanksgiving.
      Looking back, what I did Wasn’t Cool, but still glad I quit.

      1. Snazzy Hat*

        That brings to mind Homer Simpson yelling “I’ll show him ‘inanimate’!” and he stands there angrily yet motionless. Oh, I’m not getting enough stuff done? How about I get NOTHING done?

    5. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

      I had a co-worker quit during the first long weekend of the summer. We were a very busy highway restaurant/rest stop. She just put her tools down and walked out the door without a word. I saw her go and assumed she was on a smoke break. We were so busy that the manager didn’t notice for about an hour. It turned out that she was mad because she had to work the long weekend, everyone did but she took it personally.

  9. Anonish*

    My last job, I gave my two weeks notice to my manager on a Thursday morning, and we were in the middle of a big project so she asked me not to tell the team until Friday afternoon. I came in Monday morning and found that my manager had been fired over the weekend. I walked into the grandboss’s office and told him, “Since Jane’s not here anymore and anything I would have been wrapping up was for her, I think it would be best if today were my last day.” There was a lot of scrambling around to get me an exit interview and a goodbye lunch to show that I had indeed quit and not been fired, but I think there are probably some people who still think my boss and I were fired together. It was the kind of place where that type of thing had happened more than once.

              1. Jane Doe for this too*

                My father was an academic, and the day in October my parents started a foreign vacation the head of the department called him up at the overseas location to let him know that while he was up for tenure the following September, his position was being eliminated in May.

                The guy could never understand why dad left in February. Mum never forgave the eejit for ruining their first vacation in almost a decade.

              2. Strike*

                I’d say that’s dependent on the situation, worked at a small shitty IT shop for 2 months where they claimed I’d be a bench technician and then had me sell Verizon phones and I’d have preferred the phone call so I didn’t have to drive 45 mins there and 45 mins back when he had me come in to fire me for not selling enough phones (again, the job posting was for a BENCH PC TECHNICIAN ROLE).

        2. Turquoise Cow*

          I guess that’s better than being fired first thing Monday morning?

          My old job usually did all the firings (there were semi frequent mass layoffs) on Fridays.

          1. nosy nelly*

            If she was salaried, wouldn’t she have to be paid for a full week if she were fired first thing Monday morning? So that would be much better, I think…

            1. anon anon*

              I think in most states your first/last paychecks can be prorated if you are salaried. So it’s based on the days you actually work, even if they are incomplete weeks.

          3. JoAnna*

            When I was laid off, it was a Wednesday morning. No idea why they picked that particular day/time. It was during my regularly scheduled one-on-one with my boss, so maybe he picked the time? Not sure.

          4. SusanIvanova*

            How about being fired on a Monday morning that’s also a holiday? Not me, but Coworker Coffeecup who more than deserved it:

            It was a school holiday so a lot of people had taken the day off. The manager stuck with the task of firing Coffeecup couldn’t find him – and while tech jobs are pretty flexible, if you’re taking the whole day off it’s only polite to tell your manager – so he stopped by my office to ask if I “knew if he was working that day”. Oh, the straight line. “I don’t know if he’s working *any* day.”

          1. Anonish*

            She told him that the scope of work he wanted completed in a set period of time was literally impossible with the resources and staff she had been allotted, and he did not like that answer so he fired her to find someone who would lie to him. Not that I’m biased. He was a real jerk and she was a great manager.

          1. Kate*

            My mom got laid off on a business trip. Like she was literally standing in the train station about to board to a meeting. Excellent timing.

              1. Kate*

                Yes. That was the phone call. “Do not get on the train. You’re being laid off.” It was actually not a terrible thing because she was pretty unhappy and was just biding her time until retirement (which she was hoping to do like 6 months later), but the timing of it all was a real hurt on her ego.

                1. The OG Anonsie*

                  I… guess maybe it was a kindness to let her skip the whole trip rather than make her go through the whole thing and then lay her off afterwards?

                  Depending on the circumstances and whether or not they could have done it before she got to the damn platform. If they had more control, that’s heinous. If they didn’t, though, I guess they were trying to save her the trouble? I only speculate because I have seen those orders come down from on high onto managers just as surprised as the employees were. I know someone whose company laid off several of her employees while she was on vacation without telling her they were going to do it (or that it was possible, they had previously promised there would be no layoffs for at least another year) and she only found out because one of the laid off employees called her.

                2. MoodyMoody*

                  Not exactly the same thing, but my father had typed out his retirement letter to give to his company one month before he retired. The company closed a week before that time and laid everyone off. My father decided that unemployment paid better than Social Security, so he sent out resumes with all of his age information (birth date, etc.) He was scared a couple of times by being called in to interviews but deliberately botched them. Six months later when unemployment ran out, he happily applied for SS.

            2. Mark from Atlanta*

              Same here. It was on a Wednesday and I was 1000 miles away from home working as a consultant at a client shop. I took a phone call around 1:00 pm from my manager who told me I had been let go the *day before!* I didn’t make any sort of a scene; just quietly packed up my laptop and walked out the door. The look on the client’s face as I was obviously leaving for good was priceless.
              I didn’t mind that much because my company was at best a 3rd tier company within our industry and was far from being one of those firms that people like and respect. Plus, I was on a project that was destined to fail due to lack of time, resources, money anyway so this was at best a good, but inglorious way to leave. I went straight to the hotel and checked out and managed to catch an early flight home, went to the office, grabbed the very few personal items I had and just walked out forever.

              1. Kate*

                Wow. That’s crazy. It seems to me the companies that do that to their employees are the ones you don’t want to work for anyway. I hope things are better for you now.

                1. Mark from Atlanta*

                  yes. But ‘better’ is relative. At least I work for a second tier company now (maybe 1.5 on a good day :-)

            3. Agile Phalanges*

              I got laid off on a business trip. They shut down my entire office, and the CEO and all the directors flew in to the office location to make the announcement during our regular weekly “stand-up” meeting. Folks thought it was a little strange when the CEO walked in (he was based elsewhere) then all the off-site directors, too. I got called by my department’s director shortly after the in-person meeting at my home office. I was in another location of our company, so it was kind of awkward, more for them than for me. Luckily, we were given six months notice, so while the announcement was then, I didn’t have to leave on the spot, and in fact it worked well to wrap stuff up, etc., once the shock wore off. But yeah. Awkward. And weird not to be able to commiserate with my co-workers in person. I think my director felt HORRIBLE having to be the one to tell me, though, which sucks for her.

            4. Surrogate Tongue Pop*

              I got laid off while in Vegas. For a work conference. For the sole reason that I was the last project manager hired, so I was the first to go. Classic LIFO. Needless to say, I did not return to the exhibit hall or any sessions and went and got a pedicure. IRONY…I got back to the office and they never gave me an end date. I had to involve HR and VPs and whatnot to get SOMETHING in writing so I could plan. The company was merging with another company and I ended up not ever being let go, worked there for 5 more years, And for the 10 months they kept me waiting on the end date that wasn’t (whilst working crazy merger hours), they paid me a 30% bonus. A year after the merger was over. But neglected to inform me that this lovely thing was going to take place. That was a surprise in the paycheck! I nearly called my bank thinking it was a mistake and finally got a hold of HR to get the whole “they decided to pay your for your time in flux”.

          2. Rebecca in Dallas*

            One of my friends had been working mandatory overtime. She got home from a 12-hour shift and had message on her voice mail that she was being laid off.

            Oh, a different friend! In Texas, if there is any snow, the whole state shuts down basically. Roads ice over and there aren’t enough of those salt trucks to get everything taken care of. So a lot of places close down or let people work from home. A friend of mine spent like 2 hours getting to her office for a “mandatory” meeting on a snow day… to be told she was being laid off.

            2. No, please*

              Man. I live in TX and that would piss me off. Anything besides sunny and dry causes all kinds of crazy shenanigans with local drivers.

              1. Noobtastic*

                Yeah, here in mid-to-southern Texas, we get icy roads once in a blue moon (like every few years, y’all!), and nobody has a chance to learn how to drive in it, so it’s best to close it down.

                I remember one year, where there were over 600 automobile accidents by 8 a.m., and the company I worked for had a “delayed opening” of 9 a.m. I basically said, “Screw that. I won’t be in before lunch. Actually, I’ll eat lunch at home. I’ll be in at 1 pm.” My boss OK’d it, because he had heard the news, as well, and in between swearing at the higher ups, he declared he wouldn’t be in before ten, and they had BETTER BE THERE FOR THE MEETING, DAMNIT! Well, on my way to work, just before 1, I passed a dazed and confused driver who was stopped, backwards, on the highway, because the had hit an icy patch, and didn’t know how to handle it. She was lucky there was hardly any traffic, and spinning around backwards was ALL that happened. I saw maybe 10 cars on the roads at that point, since every single school in the state was closed, so all the parents were staying home, anyway, AND the radio and TV announcers had said, REPEATEDLY, that the word from on high was “emergency vehicles, only!” Yes, emergency vehicles only, except for my company, who wanted everyone in at 9 am. With 600 auto accidents in the area.

                I didn’t hear about any co-workers dying that day, but I sure did get an earful about the smart people who followed the government’s admonition to stay off the roads, and stayed home with their kids, and had to use their PTO. At least they weren’t penalized for it, as my brother would have been, had he taken the day, but fortunately, it was already his day off. And at least we were allowed unscheduled PTO. Still, it took me years after I left that company to stop checking their open/closed schedule for inclement weather, whenever I was checking for my own schedule. And swearing.

                The same company didn’t even give us a delayed opening, the day we had over a foot of snow, and even the SUVs on the road were having trouble on the un-cleared hills, of which there were a fair few. Also bridges. Also NO ICE TRUCKS. My boss didn’t believe it. I mean, literally, he thought that I was lying when I told him that the company had not closed, nor even delayed opening. I was calling him to tell him I couldn’t make it, and he said he had looked outside, and had not even bothered to check the inclement weather closures, because OF COURSE it was closed that day. Every school in the area was closed, but our company opened “on time.”

                I think the CEO must have lived across the street and just walked to work every day, or something, because it was ridiculous. Oh, yeah, I DO know that the CEO had spent most of his life in a northern, mountainous region, where they have BLASTED ICE TRUCKS!!!, and experienced drivers.

                He was going on about how if you leave early, and allow plenty of time to drive carefully, you can make it, no problem. I muttered to one of his underlings, “But what about the other drivers on the road who are NOT careful?” He nodded his head, but could do nothing about it.

                I was in a serious accident not long after that. Caused by an un-careful driver. No matter how carefully *I* drove, I could not have avoided being hit by Mr. Swervy-Pants.

                If I met that CEO today, I’d probably stick my tongue out at him. I missed his predecessor who had announced, “The safety of our employees is our primary concern. Nobody knows how to drive in this stuff, and it takes forever to get the roads clear by sunshine alone, because we have no salt trucks, so please, people. Just stay home. We are not an emergency industry.” GOLLY, I liked that old man. He was so good and kind and polite and respectful, even to the lowliest office drone. He smiled at everybody. Not a fake smile. It was in his eyes. The new guy had shark eyes, I swear. And his wife! I just felt sorry for her. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes either, but they weren’t shark eyes. They were “I can’t even try anymore, but at least I look pretty” eyes in the body of a woman at least 30 years junior to her husband, and she was either his second or third wife. I had never met an actual trophy wife before her. So sad.

                TL;DR: Inclement weather policies are, in my opinion, a reasonably good standard for measuring the basic human decency of the person in power to establish those policies.

          1. Anion*

            Oh! Oh!

            I was a supervisor at a call center. The company’s VP had been given permission to start an offshoot company–there’s a good resignation story in that one–and he basically blew all the company’s money and tanked the business. Part of the reason for this mishandling was the VP was having an affair with the Office Manager, and the two of them became notorious for their very long lunches and “meetings” in the VP’s office–he was distracted, basically, and doing everything she wanted. Then they got engaged and that took a ton of their time, and the company lost more and more money and became more and more mismanaged, which they blamed on the owner (who was an awesome guy, and they had all the employees believing he was some kind of ogre. He actually cornered VP at the last office Xmas party and said, “It’s your fault. It’s because of YOU these people think I’m an a**hole.” It was pretty amazing).

            Anyway. So I was laid off. Then there were more layoffs.

            Then one day, the Friday before the VP and Office Manager’s wedding, the company’s owner calls everyone in the corporate office into a meeting. He stands up and reads a list of names–a list which did not include VP and OM.

            Then he says, “If I did not just call your name, you are no longer employed with [Company Name]. There are boxes outside for your things.” And he left the room.

            My husband and I have wondered for years what that wedding the next day was like.

            1. Strike*

              if he’s as scummy as the rest of the story I bet VP was stashing money for the “offshoot company” he was supposed to be creating

        6. Not a Morning Person*

          A friend of mine got fired while she was in the hospital. She was back in her room recovering from her surgery when she got a call from her new manager who chose that day and time to call so he could fire her over voice mail. Yes, he was a jerk.

        1. Larina*

          When I put in my two weeks notice for a small family owned company on a Tuesday, I got a call that Sunday night from the matriarch of the family telling me that they’d already hired another person for my position, and didn’t want me there while they were training her, so I didn’t need to come in for my last week of work.

          Honestly, it was a huge relief, because that job gave me so much anxiety. And I got to have a week off between jobs that I wasn’t expecting.

        3. CS Rep By Day, Writer By Night*

          The manager before my manager was on vacation for a week. She was extremely unstable apparently and didn’t want the confrontation they expected upon terminating her, so the called her the day before she was supposed to return and just told her not to bother coming back.

          1. AMPG*

            I had a gig for a temp agency that was going horribly – I begged them to take me off the assignment after about 3 weeks. It was a tiny open-plan office in the back of a warehouse, with only me, the office manager, and the AP/AR person. At the end of one workday, after I had spoken to the temp agency about a new assignment but before they had been able to find something else for me, my contact at the agency called to say that the company had decided that day was my last day. I was sitting four feet from the desk of the office manager who had made the decision to fire me while the temp agency contact was telling me this over the phone.

            1. Miss Betty*

              That happened to me as well. Every Friday when I went to pick up my check, I’d tell the agency I didn’t think this assignment was going to work out and could they place me elsewhere. “No, no, things are fine, stick it out.” That happened 3 weeks in a row and the 4th week they told me that the client said it wasn’t working out and not to go back. Nearly 10 years later, I went back to the agency and found out I’d been classified as do not rehire. The person who classified me that way was long gone and no one still there knew why but couldn’t revise my status. It’s nearly 20 years after that second encounter with them and I still have no idea what happened! Happily, I don’t care anymore and I don’t think the agency exists any longer. (I still remember that the client I was fired by was full of horrible people, though, including someone who commented about a young woman who was receiving a small life insurance payout from her dad’s death how lucky she was to get that kind of money when she was only 18.)

            2. SignalLost*

              I got terminated from an agency gig – the company hired me to answer phones and was EXTREMELY clear they were not going to let me do anything else, even though they had a backlog of filing, etc, that I could have done. The office manager saw me reading a book while I waited for the phone to ring and was very snippy about how I wasn’t doing anything when she was the one to tell me and the other office employees flat out that I could not be trained on anything else at all because I might steal their secrets. The agency called me on my way home and told me not to go back in that day.

              Lady, if I ever open a company manufacturing small electrical appliances, I’ll keep you in mind.

      3. Sunshine on a cloudy day*

        Oh man – my first job out of school was at a creative/media startup. This absolutely should have been a sign not to work there, but I was young and dumb. Before I started working there they hired about 20(+) people for what sounds like the coolest/dreamiest job ever. Think being paid to experience something cool then write about it. Then the owners realized that their model was really expensive (they had pay for these people to do each cool thing, plus pay their salaries).

        So then the CEO decided to fire all of these employees in a mass email at 9pm on the night before Thanksgiving…

      4. Kris*

        Not the worst – when I worked for a national home builder they had an executive across the country for a meeting, met him at the airport to fire him and then refused to pay him back for the flight or the hotel he had booked. They were such horrible people. I got out of there soon after.

  10. Anon This Time*

    A former coworker of mine went to resign to our boss in person and ended up yelling at him and storming out of the office. I did not witness that part, just heard about it secondhand. However, we had a good laugh later when we received the letter from the unemployment office. No, our office was not so egregious that it could be seen as constructive dismissal. Our boss got on the call for the unemployment office’s interview and the employee never called in. So the unemployment was denied. This employee was also constantly late to work so she could have been fired ages before that.

  11. Red Reader*

    At one point when I was 20 I was offered a 10-15 hours a week job doing market research surveys. My first day was a Sunday. After my first 45 minutes, which involved being cussed or yelled at by no less than 28 people for interrupting their weekend, I went up to the manager with a panicked look on my face and said “I just got a text message that my house is on fire.” He, not being a complete jerk himself, went wide-eyed and told me to go and he hoped everything was okay. I just never went back.

    (Amusingly, I did get both a paycheck and a W2 for my 45 minutes of work.)

    1. Blue Anne*

      Ohhhh, I worked one of those jobs when I was in college. I was studying Philosophy, but nothing gave me more appreciation for Marx than working at the survey call center. I stuck it out for six months while I finished my degree and got a better job, but lots of people didn’t.

      One day a girl next to me just left. I wasn’t paying much attention, but she left her jacket and everything so I figured she’d gone to the bathroom. Twenty minutes later a manager came up, looked around and left a nasty note on her keyboard. Another twenty minutes later he asked me if I knew where she’d gone. We looked at her stuff and it looked like she had left her jacket and just her purse – like, none of the stuff in it, she’d taken her wallet and phone. And left the other stuff as a ruse to give herself a good headstart on us, I guess?

      1. fposte*

        Your last line makes this one particularly hilarious to me. But I guess she was right, since nobody managed to catch her!

      2. poptart*

        Who DIDN’T walk out of a call center job in college?! I worked at one for a couple months, when suddenly they changed the pay structure and bonus system that five of us were talking on our 10 minute break and decided to just leave instead of go back in. No one ever called us or attempted to find out where we went, so I’m guessing it happened pretty regularly!!

        1. Kelly L.*

          Yep. I’ve told this before, but I tried to give notice at my long-ago call center job, and they didn’t even know what to do with it. They were just used to people stopping showing up.

        2. Foreign Octopus*

          Yep.

          I left a retention call centre job after six days (the training period was four weeks sitting in a classroom with assholes who would not shut up about how much they liked Charmed and can we watch Charmed instead of doing the preparation? As though we were in school.) On the sixth day, I just snapped. I typed out a two line resignation letter, dropped it into the manager’s office, and lied about getting a job in London (I was straight out of university and didn’t know how to leave toxic jobs).

          The worst thing about it was that they had me sit at a computer doing an automated exit interview. I wish I’d refused that now.

          1. Gazebo Slayer*

            Oh man, you must have had classmates like some of my high school classmates! Who’d spend the class period interrupting the teacher to whine “I wanna go out to breakfast, can’t we go out to breakfast instead?” and the like.

          1. yasmara*

            I did that too – it was a new restaurant & I went to 2 training sessions before starting work (and I don’t even think I got paid for those? It was a LONG time ago!) and was notified I got a better job via a temp agency paying twice the hourly amount. I just never went back to the restaurant.

        5. Jaydee*

          I worked at a call center in college. I pride myself on never smoking a cigarette (both my parents smoked heavily when I was growing up) but that job made me want to start.

          I was also working a full time unpaid internship in large city 45 minutes away from my college during the days and trying to do call center work on the nights and weekends for, you know, money.

          One day, I was driving back from my internship, barely able to stay awake in the car because I was so sleep-deprived. I realized I was going to be late for my shift at the call center, so I called in and got the answering machine. I left a message that I wouldn’t be coming in that day. Or ever again.

      3. Specialk9*

        I mean, that’s how one leaves a murderous possessive mob boss, not an entry level job! She left her coat and purse??

        1. Ego Chamber*

          That happened surprisingly often at the call center where I used to work. Like, more times than you can count on one hand. The working theory is that the person intended to come back, but then decided not to/couldn’t force themselves back through the door after they had their smoke/lunch/whatever. (Mostly there were abandoned coats in spring and fall—I have no explanation for the purse being left behind, the closest we had to that was a mostly-empty backpack that might have been functioning as a trash can under the desk?)

      4. RT*

        This gets more and more wonderful the more I think about it, and I have so many questions. Did she just think to herself, mid-shift, “I hate this job so much that I’m willing to part with my jacket and purse in order to never see the inside of this place again?” Or, as I prefer to think, was this meticulously planned? Did she spend weeks planning the path to the exit where she was least likely to encounter a manager? Did she leave her regular purse and jacket at home that day and come in with things she’d been meaning to get rid of anyway? Or did she go to Goodwill and get the cheapest bag and jacket she could find, just to pull off her daring escape?

        I like to think she’s in Zihuatanejo now, watching the sun set. Godspeed, call center girl. You were too good for this life.

      6. Mookie*

        I had a colleague leave his car behind, and it was for precisely that reason, to throw us off the scent and assume he was somewhere in the building. His wife picked it up for him a few days later. We waved to her from one of the top floors and she did one of those what-can-you-do? shrug and headshake deals.

      7. Noobtastic*

        My first job at a call-center, after three days, I realized that they weren’t simply mistaken, but were actually LYING to us, their employees, and I strongly suspected that they were lying to their customers, as well.

        I quit that day. I did tell them, but basically, stood up, gathered my things, told my boss quietly that I was resigning, and walked out.

        Not two weeks later, I was watching the news, and saw a story about this company being actually raided, during office hours, by the FBI, for fraud and other things. That could have been me!

        I had another job in a call center, and they were jerks in their own way, but at least they were honest jerks, and not doing anything illegal.

    3. TiffIf*

      I worked one of those jobs while I was in college! I was on a specific project for about a month and then they didn’t have any more projects for us so they told us to go home and they’d call us when they had a new project.

      Three months later they called me and said they had a new project. I laughed and said I had a new job don’t call me again. I mean, seriously, you think I’m going to sit at home for three months waiting for you to call me with a new project? I have bills to pay!

      I don’t know if that counts as quitting?

    4. Former Mouse Slave*

      Ooh, I did something similar-ish. In my case, it was lie like a rug and tell my current job that I had gotten a job “back home with the library” (my actual dream job) and that I was giving my two weeks. I actually did end up getting that job–just three months later than I’d told them I had. But that’s how I avoided working Christmas Day at Walt Disney World.

  12. ByLetters*

    At horrible Old!Job, a middle manager hired her cousin for a janitorial job and was paying him roughly three times the actual wages others of the same position were getting. Shockingly, both individuals had personality issues, and he ended up quitting after getting into a screaming, obscenity laden argument with her in full view of several customers. There was name-calling from both sides, with witnessing customers & employees standing there open mouthed for several seconds even after he had stormed out of the building, letting the door slam behind him.

    I’ve not quit dramatically, but I did have a manager who was notorious for putting people on the schedule after they’d left and demanding they work the shifts, trying to guilt them into feeling bad for shorting the other coworkers. After watching him do this to several others, when I left I specifically printed out a resignation letter — even though that was unusual for my hourly position — and had him sign it, then made him a copy. He threw a HUGE tantrum, demanding to know why he needed to sign it, why I was being so untrusting and childish, and so on. I watched him throw my copy in the trash.

    I quietly made sure my coworkers knew that my end date was absolutely final and told them all about the letter so that no one was surprised when .. for the next three weeks .. he continued to put me on the schedule, swear at me over the phone, and blame me for my coworkers having to work doubles or come in on their days off to cover “my” shifts.

    1. Not Australian*

      I had a month’s sick leave to get a hysterectomy, and my boss hired her seventeen year old son as a temporary replacement. When I got back, I found that he and a friend had been drinking and smoking stuff in my office, and looking up people they knew on the confidential patient database. (It was a hospital.) My actual work over the month hadn’t been touched, so it was all sitting waiting for me when I got back. I went to my grandboss and calmly told him that if Penny thought her son could do my job he might as well go on doing it, and I caught the next bus home.

      1. ByLetters*

        Yeah, my wife thinks I’m crazy for trying not to lean on parents to get a better job, but I’ve seen so many horrible situations caused by nepotism (as have my parents!) that I refuse to even consider it. Even if it were a situation where I KNEW I was qualified, others don’t know that — and I wouldn’t want to be perceived as having taken advantage. When I got married, changing my name was actually a huge relief for me, because now it’s not immediate for people to connect me to my parents. Sometimes people will find out, but it’s usually long after they’ve met me.

    2. Rusty*

      To all asking about late-1990s grocery law in Massachusetts, the fish counter involved knives and ovens, therefore no minors allowed. This person was a high school dropout (who had her GED) so she was able to work hours other kids couldn’t. She was being exploited and she knew it.

      I switched grocery chains when I was 17 and moved to the seafood counter on my 18th birthday!

  13. Rusty*

    I worked in high school at a mismanaged grocery chain that is now out of business. I was a cashier but they had a 16-year-old girl working behind the fish counter (which was illegal) and who was not being paid properly for the work she was doing (because she wasn’t supposed to be doing it!).

    On Sunday, the beginning of the pay period, she clocked in, wrote “I QUIT” in cod, haddock, and tilapia filets in the seafood counter, and clocked out. She framed a photo of her masterwork and her last paycheck for $2 and hung it in her bedroom.

    5. fposte*

      I don’t know my grocery law–what’s the deal with the age restriction on fish service? Is it something about age for working dangerous slicing equipment or something?

      1. Detective Amy Santiago*

        I remember that we weren’t allowed to work the deli slicers until we were 18 when I worked in a grocery store, but the fish counter was okay.

        1. Yetanotherjennifer*

          Oh that’s interesting. I’ve never heard that before, but I don’t doubt for a minute that my state has such a law and had one when I was working for a deli at age 16. I absolutely used the meat slicers. I can still pretty accurately estimate a pound. I’ve learned so much about what my past employers were up to by reading this blog.

      2. Bakery girl*

        I worked in a grocery store bakery in high school and wasn’t allowed to touch any of the equipment because I wasn’t 18 yet. I could wash dishes and serve customers, but I wasn’t allowed to use a slicer or the ovens.

        1. CityMouse*

          At my bakery, the thing you weren’t allowed to do under 18 was clean the dough machine, because of bunch of people had lost fingers to it. Of course all you had to do was unplug it, and it was totally fine.

      3. S-Mart*

        I don’t know about fish service, but I do know that (in my state, at least) there’s a minimum age (18) for operating meet slicers. Or at least there was 20-some years ago when my parents owned a sub shop.

      4. Cassandra*

        Yup, slicers against the law for minors to use. I had a job at age 16 in a local cafeteria. I could run the potato-peeling machine (an absolute beast that could eject potatoes at skull-smashing speed if it felt like it that day) because nothing sharp was involved, but I couldn’t slice meat or tomatoes or indeed anything on the electric slicer.

          1. Cassandra*

            What, the potato ejection? Yeah, after my first panicked duck out of the way of a fast-moving spud (fortunately, spuds are not aerodynamic, so it didn’t fly far), the manager on duty taught me The Beast’s main quirk: push potatoes away from the center of the hopper before turning The Beast on.

            This was North Carolina over a quarter-century ago. It might even have been municipal rather than state law.

            1. Elizabeth West*

              I’m jealous that you had a machine to do that. When I worked at a local restaurant in my hometown with my friend, every Wednesday we had to peel 400 pounds of potatoes BY HAND.
              It was kind of fun; we’d put the radio on and talk all day.

              1. Hlyssande*

                How did you manage 400lbs without massive hand and arm cramps? I have trouble after half an hour, and that’s WITH the fancy peelymajig I’ve got.

      5. Turquoise Cow*

        In my state (NJ) you can basically only work register or carts until you’re 18. Anything where there’s actual food handling or knives (even just box cutters) is restricted.

        At my old store the service departments used to basically snap up male cashiers the minute they turned 18, because most of them would rather work maintenance than be cashiers.

        1. chocolate lover*

          My husband works at a fast food restaurant in MA, and it’s pretty similar. Under 18 can only work the registers.

      6. Guacamole Bob*

        I don’t know the law either, but it seems not crazy to have an age restriction in seafood, where the food safety requirements at least should be fairly stringent. There’s not too much someone can do to screw up food safety stocking regular shelves, but I want the person tracking whether the fish has been stored at the proper temperature and the ice has been changed out at the right time to be on top of things.

        Not that there aren’t plenty of 16 year olds who could handle that responsibility, but I can understand where such a law might come from.

    12. Rusty*

      To all asking about late-1990s grocery law in Massachusetts, the fish counter involved knives and ovens, therefore no minors allowed. This person was a high school dropout (who had her GED) so she was able to work hours other kids couldn’t. She was being exploited and she knew it.

      I switched grocery chains when I was 17 and moved to the seafood counter on my 18th birthday!

    15. Jen S. 2.0*

      This is GOLD. I am so on this girl’s side.

      (Also a big fan of the use of “peelymajig” upthread. I wish I had an excuse to use that word.

  14. EddieSherbert*

    It wasn’t super over-the-top on the surface, but it was hard to organize! Three coworkers and I plotted to quit ToxicJob (a team of 12 people total) in the same week.

    Two of us were moving to new jobs, one was recently back from maternity leave but decided to be a stay-at-home parent, and one was taking early retirement.

    We were all completely professional but you could see the managers panicking.

    (Also, we were sure to cover the toxic management in our exit interviews, and each of us SAW the HR person write some BS excuse on the form. Mine wrote “moving closer to family”… because I was going to the state I wen to college in. My family actually lived an hour from ToxicJob.)

    1. NotAnotherManager!*

      I’ve reviewed our exit interview forms, and HR has a list of codes that they use for “reason for leaving” – they are very generic things like new job, returning to school, relocating, voluntary termination, involuntary termination, and (my favorite euphemism), involuntary resignation. (I think that the codes are set by our jurisdiction for some sort of mandatory reporting purposes.) They DO, however, put all the comments into the form, though, so when the marketing department was going through assistants like water (because the head of the department was a psychotic loon), those were featured front and center in the “involuntary termination” meeting. One, maybe two, “bad fits”, maybe. Nine in less than two years? That’s not them, it’s you, department head.

      1. EddieSherbert*

        Yeah, I have no idea; I hope it was a code or she was going to add more after the meeting… But for the sake of appearances, don’t let me rant for 30 minutes while writing nothing down, and then say “so you went to college in State?” and write “move closer to family” when I confirm that I did! *facepalm*

        (and my exit interview was with the HR Director!)

    2. I'm A Little TeaPot*

      I and 2 other coworkers all resigned from a small, 12-15 person team in the same week. 2 Monday, 1 Tuesday. All accidental.

          1. I'm A Little TeaPot*

            Little late, but oh well. It was A, B, and C. They all knew the other 2 were looking, but didn’t know until resignations started happening that all 3 and found something.

    3. Nolan*

      I gave my two weeks notice from my first job at a local restaurant on a Thursday. On Friday, someone else gave theirs. On Saturday, a third person gave their notice. On Sunday, one of the owners called my dad and told him I was encouraging other employees to quit and that I shouldn’t come back. Later that day, a fourth person gave their notice. We hadn’t really conspired to leave, we were all just disgruntled high school kids who hated the job at the same time.

      The worst part was that I was (and still am) friends with the owners’ daughter, and I was afraid of going over her house and seeing her parents for months!

  15. Lore*

    I have one senior colleague who’s notoriously hard on assistants, particularly when they start with starry-eyed dreams of the glamour of publishing and are terrible at the less interesting parts of assistant-ing. A number of years ago, one of them quit via tiny Post-it on her monitor at the end of the day. The weird part is, she was ultimately leaving to get an MFA, so she had a totally legit exit strategy but she just couldn’t take it anymore.

      1. Pickles*

        I kind of want to do a tiny post-it of resignation someday, and see how long it takes my management to notice.

        1. HR Anon*

          HR rep here.
          I returned from lunch one day to find an employee key card with a post-it note with “I Quit” written on it. No name, no signature, nothing. We had to look up the key card number to figure out who it was. Two weeks later, got the unemployment notice for this person and sent in a photo copy of the key card and post it note. Unemployment office actually called to confirm this really happened. Needless to say their unemployment claim was denied due to resignation.

        2. Beezus*

          I had a coworker do that do that ! She left a tiny post-it on her desk and just never came back from lunch.

      3. Not a Morning Person*

        Fast food job in high school: I was fed up with the job one night and wrote my resignation on the back of one of the paper order forms in pencil (yes, it was awhile ago) and gave it to the assistant manager on duty. I was so happy to leave that job. It was more about the coworkers than the management though. I cannot imagine myself being successful at supervising teens in their first jobs.

  16. Hey Anonny*

    I don’t even know if this counts, but a few years ago I was dealing with major anxiety and depression stemming from a very toxic manager and unreasonable workload. My direct manager/supervisor was wonderful and he knew I had been job-hunting for a few months and was super supportive about giving me time off for interviews, offering references, whatever. It finally got to a point where for my own mental health, I had to quit without anything new lined up. I told my manager over lunch and he cried, but was understanding. It was a really tough decision, but as soon as I told him that my last day would be in two weeks, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders.

    Until we got back to the office from lunch. I was still sort of teary and emotional, but prepared to get through the rest of the afternoon quietly. My birthday had been over the weekend, and the whole office surprised me with my favourite kind of cake and a card they had all signed. It took everything I had to grit my teeth, smile, and be thankful while they were singing to me and waiting for me to blow out my candles. I didn’t tell anyone else I had given notice for another week because I was so mortified by the timing!

    1. Detective Amy Santiago*

      This reminds me of the time we planned a surprise going away potluck for a teammate who had given notice.

      And she informed us that she rescinded her notice and was staying at said potluck.

      1. Hey Anonny*

        oh, that’s kinda messed up.

        You could not have PAID me to stay at this job. (Which, I guess they were doing…through my regular paycheck?) But I reached the point where I either had to quit my job or I was going to check myself into a mental health facility. I was talking seriously with some friends who had been committed before on what to expect, and a few days later I realized it would be a lot easier to just quit.

        1. ECHM*

          Yep … the day I knew I was ready to leave my longtime job, I walked into our living room and told my husband, “I’m either going to get a new job or kill myself.”

      1. Hey Anonny*

        Sadly, he’s still there and still working the same ridiculous hours, but he’s got way more distance from the toxic boss (they work in different departments.)

    3. jj*

      OMG I quit a terrible job at the same time another person did (gave a week’s notice, I think?) without another job lined up, which was hands down the scariest thing I had ever done. The next week they threw us a pizza party to celebrate our “new adventures.” That one was tough to grit my teeth through…

      1. Hey Anonny*

        Yeah, it was kind of hard once I started telling people and they were like “what are you gonna do next??” and I told them I was gonna take some time to figure out my next move, trying to keep things light. And then they’d ask if I was gonna travel. (I was about to be unemployed, and I still had to pay rent and now had to pay for my own health insurance! Travel with what money, exactly??)

    4. Hey Anonny*

      Just remembered one more detail. On my last day, I sent an e-mail to my team and everyone in the organization I had worked with (I had been there for 4 years) thanking them for everything and asking them to keep in touch via LinkedIn or e-mail. About 45 seconds after I hit send, I saw my toxic manager get up from her computer and leave the room without making eye contact with me. She didn’t come back into the room until I was gone.

  17. Marieplm*

    When I was in High School, my friends and I worked at a local fast food joint. The owners were fairly lax, so we worked 40-80 hours a week as high schoolers and made great money. We essentially ran the place, from opening, doing bank runs, closing, ordering, scheduling, the whole thing – and we did it pretty well, if I do say so myself. Eventually, they owners sold the franchise and the new owners tried to make a ton of changes, none of which we were happy with. They were also fairly mean and rude. One Saturday during lunch rush, they yelled at one of my friends and made her cry. So all – every single one – of the employees walked out. We came back a week later on payday, also during a rush, and dumped all of our uniforms on the counter where you order. Then, we all went and got jobs immediately at another branch of the same restaurant, where we all worked until we graduated college. Is is possible to be proud and ashamed of the same event?

    2. Lunch Meat*

      I am imagining you all as a roving gang of vigilante fast food workers, taking over good stores and helping them succeed and bringing justice to bad stores.

    4. Erin*

      If it makes you feel better It’s the only way fast food workers can organize. They have no fear over loosing their job.

    5. AdAgencyChick*

      You should not be proud and ashamed. Just proud. That’s awesome.

      I often fantasize about doing a lottery pool with my direct reports when the clients are being particularly egregious and the Mega Millions total is high enough that we’d all be set for life even dividing up the total. So…you’re my hero.

    6. Gazebo Slayer*

      You should be proud, without question. You and your friends, as high school kids, ran the place, and the ungrateful new owners threw it in your faces and treated you like crap – so you got back at them in the best and classiest way.

      Maybe you taught them that their employees actually do have value and the owners can’t just go Galt and do everything themselves because the world doesn’t work that way. Maybe this lesson benefited their future employees.

      Again, yay for collective action!

  18. Stephanie*

    I imagine this’ll be mild compared to some of the others. I used to work at Mega Shipping Corporation (the brown one) and we had an employee walk out…after he threw his badge into a shipping container that was set to go on an airplane.

    1. fposte*

      Something like that might explain the recent Consumerist story about a customer finding an employee badge in her jerky.

      1. Stephanie*

        It was kind of a headache actually; those badges are controlled by the FAA and the city entity that runs the airport (I was working at the cargo facility of an international airport in a large city). Since the badges granted access to the airport beyond the usual passenger areas, we had to recover as many as possible when an employee quit–lose too many and you ran the risks of fines, etc.

    2. many bells down*

      I dropped my security badge in the parking garage (since I only needed it to enter) when I quit a job after being told to lie to clients. Left a note saying a I quit, hopped in my car, dropped the badge on the ground and left.

  19. Farther and Happier*

    I had applied for another job and the interview went well. The person interviewing me told me I had the job but that the hiring manager was out due to a family matter, that I would be getting a phone call in a day or two. A few days later the place I worked at fired half the staff. They regular did culls like this, firing half the staff so we could have a “better attitude” which, of course, never worked. It was part of the reason I was so unhappy there. My manager called me in after she firing 20 folks and said, point blank: “I just fired half the staff. But I am not firing you. You want to know why? Because you are smarter than this job. And if you worked smarter, then you will be making more money.” I went in the next day and said to her: “You are right, I am smarter than this job. I quit.” The look of shock on her face was golden. I knew I had a job lined up, I was just waiting to give my 2 weeks notice after the official phone call. I got the call a few hours later. Best decision I ever made.

    1. Snark*

      Nothing like living in fear of imminent summary dismissal to improve one’s attitude. The floggings will continue until morale improves!

    6. Elder Dog*

      This isn’t a quitting story but only because none of the management figured out who it was. The entire small company had to attend a meeting where we were blasted for 20 minutes for all of us having bad attitudes because somebody had called osha after a senior partner came in every blessed day and turned the heat or the AC (depending on season) down to the point people who worked as draftsmen had to wear gloves and everyone wore their winter coats. If we couldn’t be cheerful, we wouldn’t be working there!

      Someone from the back called out “Don’t listen to him! They can’t fire us. Slaves have to be sold.”

      The whole place including most of the partners broke up laughing. The senior partner with the cold fetish retired soon after.

  20. Anon today...and tomorrow*

    I was an assistant manager at a well known retail bath/lotion shop. The manager was this woman who spent most of her time on the phone planning her upcoming wedding. She was very lazy and was big into doing none of the work but taking all of the credit and never listened to anyone else’s ideas because “I am the store manager. Me. Not you. I get to decide how this store operates!” One day I was working a Friday mid shift. The day prior I had been in the store until close to midnight working on a floor move. The manager had made it mandatory that everyone assist but then had left early to go to dinner with her fiance leaving me in charge of the whole move. I was tired, bitter, and ready for her to piss me off. She did. I got a rare personal call at work and she had to put her wedding planner on hold to have me take the call. She was furious and cursed me out in front of two employees and several customers. I was scheduled to work that weekend as manager was busy with wedding plans and the other manager was away for the weekend. I didn’t say a word as she cursed me out, but I knew that this was my last shift. At the end of the shift the manager was checking me out (an anti-theft thing retails stores do) and I handed her my keys. She took them and said “What’s this?” And I said “I quit. I don’t like you and can’t work with you.” She looked at me and then the keys and said “but who’s going to work this weekend?” I smiled and said “That would be the store managers problem to figure out. And as you like to remind everyone, YOU are the store manager. Have fun.” and then I turned around and walked away. It was the best feeling I’d ever felt. I felt so light.

    7. Pineapple Incident*

      Oh I relished the idea of doing something similar to the crappy store manager I worked for in retail. She’d often bring in her toddler daughter for us to keep an eye on while we were with customers and not pay attention to her, and would always pressure the shift supervisors to take any shift she didn’t feel like working (because obviously like your person, her time was more important than everyone else’s).

      Bravo- you’re a Retail-Job-Quitting Superhero!!

  21. stitchinthyme*

    I haven’t quit dramatically, but I did once tell an exit interviewer that I’d rather swallow razor blades than ever work there again. Obviously, I didn’t care much about burning bridges.

    (I’d been at the job four months, only gotten a computer one month in — and I’m a computer programmer! — and never actually got anything to do even after I did finally get a computer. There was also no outside Internet access, so I had to bring in a book just to keep from falling asleep.)

      2. stitchinthyme*

        You know, I heard that a lot, but it got really boring after a while. And plus, because I was not doing anything, I was always afraid that I’d be fired at some point. (I heard later that they laid off my whole group, so my fears were not unjustified.)

        1. Annie Moose*

          Yup. Can confirm that getting paid to do nothing is not actually very relaxing. As counter-intuitive as it seems, it’s so boring you just want SOMETHING to happen, and you live in constant fear that someone will figure out how useless you are and fire you.

          (I had an internship that was largely like this–today, I know enough to go to a manager and tell them, hey, give me work to do, but back then I had no clue how to handle it and it was not fun at all)

          1. Bryce*

            Ever heard of the programming phrase Dependency Hell? I spent two summers in an internship stuck there trying to install a thing that would let me do the work I was actually supposed to do, my boss and I were both too stubborn to admit it wasn’t working. Taught myself general relativity in the downtime, though.

          2. Bored All Day*

            This has been my job for the past 3 years after a merger. You’d think that it would be great, but it’s more stressful than being busy.

        2. Turquoise Cow*

          My job declared bankruptcy and began to shut down, but kept us on about a month more than necessary, just in case. I was literally reading books and watching television on my iPad it was so boring. I mean, yay I’m getting paid, but I’d rather not be in the office?

          They finally, after umpteen years of working there, allowed us to “work” from home a few days. I opened the laptop and left email open on the off chance I’d have to do something, and did whatever at home.

          At least for the first part of it I had coworkers, but then they kept me on an additional month than most of the ones I was friendly with. Sadly, we had to stay the whole workless period in order to get our severance, which for me was an extra month’s pay, or I might have just stayed home everyday.

          People think doing nothing at work is fun, but it’s really not.

      3. Detective Amy Santiago*

        Security guard in an office building.

        At OldJob, our front desk security guard read or did school work. Once she earned her degree, she left.

      4. Elizabeth West*

        I had a temp assignment once where I did nothing all day but read a Reader’s Digest condensed book someone had left at the front desk. I think I answered one call and dealt with one client the entire day. I nearly fell asleep!

        1. Tech Comm Geek*

          I was an office temp in the early 90’s as my summer job. This was well before Internet on the desktop. I got a lot of jobs as vacation replacement for receptionists. Receptionists do a ton of work besides greeting people and answering the phones, but I was rarely trained on anything but those tasks. I wasn’t allowed to have a book.

          I have been so bored at work I had nothing better to do than read Excel help files. It was utter hell. On the upside, I learned to do really arcane stuff in Excel, and I still use that knowledge.

    2. N Twello*

      I had a similar experience once. My manager was in another city, with reports all over the continent, and she never had a one-on-one with me, despite my efforts. I tried to keep busy fixing old bugs and learning things, but it was ultimately just impossible. What really got me was how mad she was when I quit after 4 months.

    3. Pseudo-Fed*

      Almost this exact thing happened at my current gig. I was hired as a programmer, but they took five weeks (!) to get me a laptop and access to the job site. I sat around the office for five weeks, drawing a paycheck while blowing through maybe nine novels. It sounds sweet, but I was still getting up early, fighting traffic and paying for parking.

  22. Justin*

    I used to teach in Korea, and I taught at a public school. The pay was slightly lower than at private schools, but it was steadier. To be clear, a “private” school there isn’t how we think of Gossip Girl stuff (that stuff exists but is rare), but rather where parents send their kids after the regular school day to study more, sometimes until 10 pm (yeah… things are different there). Many of my friends worked at said private schools.

    Unlike the government school where I worked, though, the private schools had their own individual rules. And that meant sometimes they would just up and not pay people and there was little recourse, since most of us didn’t speak the language. (I’ll add not many of us were trained very seriously, so a lot of us weren’t great at it either. I did go to grad school and am still an educator myself).

    So, this isn’t very dramatic, but when conditions were bad, friends I knew would often pack up all their stuff, buy a ticket, and just fly the hell back home to the US, UK, etc. It happened often enough that it was simply called a “Midnight Run.”

    “Oh, what happened to Codi? Midnight Run?”
    “Yeah.”

    1. Lily in NYC*

      I worked in one of those schools in Taiwan! They are called “cram schools” there. But I was lucky – the one I worked in was fantastic and treated us really well.

    2. Mona Lisa*

      Ha, one of my friends did this when she was teaching in Korea! She had done a weekend trip to Singapore, and her flight was delayed such that she wouldn’t be able to make it back in time to teach. Her school kept threatening her with firing and no pay as she tried to explain the situation so she booked another ticket to leave Korea a few hours after she got back in town.

  23. AdAgencyChick*

    The editor who had to work the weekend and was so upset by this that he threw his laptop on the ground and jumped on it as he said “I’m done!”

        1. ThatGirl*

          It means Paper Cartridge Load Letter – meaning the printer is out of paper. I mean, I laugh at that scene as much as anyone, but it’s really not that mysterious.

            1. NotAnotherManager!*

              Yep – it’s not that no one could figure it out, it’s that it’s an example of an error message being in the jargon spoken by the people who designed it versus the people using it. PC (as an acronym) has a lot of better-known meanings, including personal computer, and I know of no one who calls a printer paper tray a “paper cartridge”. (And have seen one or two less savvy people take the paper back to their “PC” at their desk to load it.) That’s what makes it absurdly funny.

              My printer at home uses MFT for the pop-out side tray on the printer – I think it stands for multi-function tray (meaning you can load paper, card stock, labels, envelopes, odd-sized things that don’t fit in the regular paper tray), but I am in a technology-heavy industry and that’s so unintuitive, even I had to look it up the first time.

              1. Printers are evidence of malevolent AI*

                Printer errors are the devil.

                My favourite printer error is “Ip0 on fire” that came from older printers (which could catch fire due to friction) on Unix systems. Mainly because, to quote wikipedia, “the message does not reliably indicate whether the printer in question is actually aflame.”

  24. Teresita*

    Oof. Years and years ago, I worked at a company with a group of terrible people. Our team lead was nasty and bigoted. (Examples include: called people “retarded”, calling people “monkey butt”, saying that “Everyone who comes here [America] needs to learn English, I don’t care how that sounds”.)

    After literally 2 months, I saw that it wasn’t a fit for me (I have other examples but I’m aiming for brevity), but I stayed another 3 months really trying to give it a good faith effort. I was miserable, so I made a choice. Because of our team lead’s propensity to treat others with complete disrespect and general horribleness, I took the coward’s way out. I went to the head of the department with my letter at 4pm and said “Today’s my last day. I don’t feel safe giving more notice in this environment with the amount of abuse that happens within our team.”

    He proceeded to ream me out, yelling at me and tell me my reasons weren’t valid, trying to bully me into staying another week. (Note: NONE of what I was working on needed succession planning. I was literally a catch-all for project overflow whenever necessary.) After about 15 minutes of his abuse, I just stated “I’m sorry you feel that way, and thank you for your time” and grabbed my stuff and left the office.

    Not the most professional or courteous thing to do, but that place was killing my soul.

    1. Snark*

      I love the “your reasons aren’t valid,” excuse. Oh, thanks, Boss, I knew I’d neglected to prepare a god damned Federal case supporting my decision to resign, let me get right on that.

      1. AMT*

        Hell, I don’t think it was unprofessional at all. If you know you’re going to be yelled at and bullied, written resignation and no notice is a totally appropriate response.

    4. MicroManagered*

      “Today’s my last day. I don’t feel safe giving more notice in this environment with the amount of abuse that happens within our team.”

      He proceeded to ream me out, yelling at me and tell me my reasons weren’t valid, trying to bully me into staying another week.

      Gotta love when someone proves you right.

    5. Lissa*

      I’m probably going to regret asking this….but is “monkey butt” a bigoted slur? I just thought it was like…something an eight year old would call someone.

      1. Froggy*

        I was coming to ask this myself! It is actually a nickname I call my dog regularly (a combination of monkey and butt head) and I sincerely hope I haven’t been saying something terrible this entire time!

      2. Ego Chamber*

        Urban Dictionary says “monkey butt” is when you get a heat rash on your butt that makes your butt look like a baboon’s butt. Still not something I would want a manager to call me (even if the manager was 8).

    6. Anion*

      I worked briefly at a mall music store. My manager there (who had a real chip on his shoulder and didn’t like me anyway) told me about two weeks in that I should keep an extra eye on the black customers because “they’re the ones who steal.” I knew then that I had to get out of there. (I regret not saying anything to him about it at the time, but I was only seventeen, and flabbergasted that he’d sad it, and had already been reamed out by him numerous times–enough to make me cry, and cry hard–and just couldn’t face the thought of going through it again. Now I wouldn’t keep my mouth shut.)

      So the next weekend, I showed up for my shift wearing a T-shirt–bought specially for the occasion–that said in big block letters, “RACE is an idea whose time has passed,” handed him my resignation note, and walked out without saying a word. (The note said something like, “I quit. Sorry if this inconveniences you.”)

      1. many bells down*

        This reminds me of a story my husband told, about a programming job he held in the 90’s in a … not very progressive part of Utah. Mr. Bells was a bit of a goth, in the 90’s, and that didn’t really go over well in the heart of Mormon country.
        So one day the company owner calls him in and proceeds to give him a long lecture about how he needs to “rethink his lifestyle” so that he can be part of an “elite team” who would get direction “from the Holy Spirit.” “It’s not your fault you’re like this”, he went on, “it’s because our country is imitating The Blacks. Don’t get me wrong, some of them are as smart as you or me, but mostly they make great athletes and gladiators.”

        Yeah. Gladiators. He didn’t last much longer at that job for about every reason you can imagine.

    7. Teresita*

      Aww, thanks for your responses, everyone! I’ve felt terrible about it all this time, so it’s nice to hear from others that it wasn’t an unforgivably unprofessional thing to do.

      While ‘monkey’ is a racist slur, I don’t believe the team lead was intending to use it in a racist manner. She applied “monkey butt” to people of all races, and she herself was a minority (not that it exempts anyone from using a racist slur). But regardless of the racial connotations, it’s still a terrible thing to call your employee.

      And now it’s all coming back to me….she constantly sh*t-talked our group all. Day. Long. I’m talking from 9am to 5pm, all day long, mocking employees and clients alike. And it was really personal, vicious stuff, too. Making fun of people because they were enthusiastic about their dogs (I literally remember her saying “If I ain’t talking ‘woof woof’ they ain’t listening”), making fun of people because they were too shy, making fun of people because they were too lazy, making fun of people for what they ate, wore, etc. God, I hated that place so much.

      ONLINE CATHARSIS.

      1. teclatrans*

        (But the english-only stuff is bigoted, so your general sense of that is supported in your examples, plus sometimes we can’t find specific examples but picked up enough on the microaggressions to be able to characterize someone as bigoted….)

      2. BePositive*

        Sorry, I never heard of Monkey as a racial slur. Could you let us know which group or refers to? I do NOT want to unintentionally offend someone

        1. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

          It’s a commonly used slur for folks of African descent and certain Southeast Asian groups.

        2. Ego Chamber*

          It’s not a word you can’t use, just don’t ever ever get in the habit of calling small children who like to climb on things “little monkey,” or similar because there will be a wrong time for it and it will happen and it will be horribly upsetting to everyone involved (my cousin said it to a kid she was babysitting and that’s how my family learned it could be used a slur, I swear to god she had no idea prior and she always said that to small kids, even her own kids (her kids are super white)).

          1. Close Bracket*

            When I am frustrated with the universe, I internally scream the line from Buckaroo Banzai, “Not my goddamn planet, monkey boy!” I make sure to keep it internal.

  25. Melissa C.*

    At an old job, someone quit once by leaving at lunch one day. The next day a courier showed up with her laptop and office keys, along with a note saying that she “just couldn’t take it anymore.”

    1. Tuesday Next*

      I also had a colleague go out to lunch one day and not come back… on his first day. I never even found out his name. Nobody in management ever mentioned him again – us juniors speculated in vain as to what could have happened to him but nobody wanted ask. (That all makes it sound like a terrible place to work, but it really wasn’t.)

      1. Dex*

        We had a guy like that as well. Data entry job. New hire came in, and we proceeded to train him for the first hour or two of the day. At one point, he asked where the restroom was, so we let him know, and he went off to use the facilities.

        We never saw him again. We used to joke for years that he was still in there, hiding somewhere behind the toilets.

  26. Lily in NYC*

    My best friend from college worked as Chevy Chase’s personal assistant the summer before he started grad school. This was pre-internet so it wasn’t quite as well-known what a jerk he was. My friend lasted only a couple of weeks – Chevy called him something nasty (homosexual slur that starts with F) because some cheese slid off a pizza that was delivered. My friend threw the pizza across the room in Chevy’s general direction and walked out. End Scene.

      1. Anon today...and tomorrow*

        I dunno…I’d be Tom Hiddleston’s personal assistant any day. Or Michael Fassbender. Or Benedict Cumberbatch. Or…no, just those three.

        1. Lissa*

          You’d probably end up with the bloom off the rose within a month or two! I feel like my celebrity crushes should stay in the realm of fantasy, I don’t actually want to know all their personal habits. (though I imagine personal assistant might be an OK job depending on who it was for . . .)

      2. Fiennes*

        I have a friend who worked for years as the assistant to a Hollywood star who will go nameless here — but is both an Oscar winner and a blockbuster name, so fairly high up the food chain. She LOVED it … because the actor in question was clear about his expectations, which (while particular) were more reasonable than diva-esque, paid his employees extremely well, and made sure they, too, got decent hotel rooms/meals/transportation/etc. But in the course of working for him, she met many, many other personal assistants who were treated like dirt. The quality of the job as a personal assistant is 100% determined by the personality of the person you work for.

        1. Bagpuss*

          I have a friend who was assistant to a very famous and successful writer for years. She loved it, but he is a really nice person. I think she worked for him for about 18 years. But the job involved working really, really closely with him – I can only imagine how awful if would be to have that type of job if the person you worked for was not a nice person.

        2. MCMonkeyBean*

          Aw, don’t let them go nameless–it’s so common to find out a star you love is a huge jerk behind the scenes, I want to know who is so lovely!

    3. Former Usher*

      If I ever hire a personal assistant, I will screen for someone who can keep the cheese from sliding off my pizza.

    4. JulieBulie*

      By the time you get to a certain age, you realize that sometimes cheese is going to slide off of the pizza. That age is approximately 9. Calling people names doesn’t keep the cheese from sliding.

      Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be anyone’s personal assistant either. I just wonder if it occurs to some of the nastier celebrities that they’d have better assistants if they weren’t such assholes to begin with.

      1. Lissa*

        I think they don’t even realize how awful they’re being after a certain point, because everyone caters to them so much. I’ve seen this with enough “minor” celebrities I can only imagine what real celebrities are like. It’s like “when you’re used to privilege, equality feels like oppression” but on a very individual level. These people feel like they are genuinely being treated horribly when they aren’t given special treatment, because they don’t even recognize it as special anymore on some level.

        2. sstabeler*

          That’s actually largely true- which is why (for example) child stars often end up as dysfunctional adults. While they are children, they have handlers from the studios keeping them under control. However, the studios used to have a bad habit of simply withdrawing the handlers at 18, without actually teaching the child stars to act like adults. Hence, said star goes off the rails quite dramatically. (it’s why you generally find the stars that successfully make the transition often have/had someone to keep them from getting too much of a big head.

  27. K.C. without the sunshine band*

    I worked at a perfectly lovely company for a perfectly lying scoundrel of a boss, Fergus. I had to get to 6 months in order to not repay the signing bonus. At 6 months and 10 days, I went to my boss’s boss Simon (who had started the same day as me!) and told him I was quitting because I couldn’t bear to work for Fergus. He listened to all I had to say, looked at the proof I had of the man’s low integrity. I told him I would keep all of that between us. Simon said to let him see what he could do, maybe we could work something out. I told him I already had another position lined up and would not be staying irregardless.
    I told Fergus I was leaving and he said I would have to pay back the signing bonus. I promptly showed him the dates on the paperwork and that I was 10 days past that. He was fuming.
    I left work that day planning to work out my notice. I had not yet told the 40 or so people who reported to me. That night I got a call from HR. They were shipping me the things from my office, and I wasn’t welcome back on the premises.
    The next day, one of my reports called. I met a bunch of my team in a parking lot down the road for a pizza lunch so they could all say good bye. Last I heard both Fergus and Simon are still there.

    1. stej*

      HA – this was the case for me except it was 2 year payback (not even prorated) for relocation expenses. My awful boss tried to pull that shit on me, too, and I told him that it was 2 years from the day I signed the agreement, not 2 years from when I started in my role. (about a 2 week difference) He was livid and demanded to know why I was leaving, and I shrugged at him as if to say “eh, I don’t have to tell you”.

      It was amazing. It also taught me to never ever sign a freaking relocation agreement, especially with a non-prorated repayment clause.

      1. melissak334*

        Reminds me of when my old company was falling apart in slow-motion. My boss asked me why I was leaving, and I just sort of jerked my head toward the (mostly empty) main office.

  28. sometimeswhy*

    I gave two weeks notice to a job that juuuuuuuuuuuuuust happened to make my last day April Fools’ Day. Everyone thought it was an elaborate prank until the end of my shift at 7am (shift work; whee) on April 1 when I went around trying to figure out who to give my security badge to. No one from HR was in yet. Neither my supervisor nor his boss were in yet. Security didn’t want to take them so I ended up giving them to my counterpart on the day crew, emailing my boss and copying my counterpart, our evening shift counterpart, and HR.

    1. EddieSherbert*

      Hahaha, awkward. Too funny though.
      “No really, where do I leave this? No. Really. No!.. Forget it, you take it, I’m out!”

      1. sometimeswhy*

        My counterpart from the day crew followed me out to the parking lot, the whole time offering my badge back to me with exhortations that no one needed to know it wasn’t a joke. She wouldn’t tell anyone if I just didn’t go.

        I’m pretty sure they didn’t even have anyone scheduled to cover my next shift, two nights later.

    2. Close Bracket*

      I left a job with my last day on July 3 ones. Almost the entire office, including my manager, was out because the fourth happened to be on a Friday. I left my badge on her desk and walked myself out.

  29. totally unprofessional moment*

    I got pissed off one day at my part-time retail job and took off my badge, threw it on the floor and said “You know what, fuck this place.” Some lady who obviously didn’t recognize a tantrum when she saw one, chose that moment to walk up to me at this moment and ask “Hellloooooo, do you work here?” in that condescending, you’re-a-peon type of way, to which already angry me replied, “Find someone else to get your shit, I don’t work here anymore.” Thing is, I worked that job for two years; I didn’t particularly hate the job, but that day I fell off the cliff when they made me risk my life driving over 60 miles in super-crappy weather for $8 an hour.

    It wasn’t my best moment, but I really don’t regret it too much.

    1. Turquoise Cow*

      I forget the original reasoning, but this reminds me of the kid at my part time job who quit. He was working carts and came inside, asked where the manager was. Manager was upstairs in the office that overlooked the store. The kid went over near the window and yelled up to the manager, so manager opened the window and yelled “What?”

      “I quit!” yelled the kid. He then lowered his pants and mooned the manager. Then he walked out. Manager was unfazed, and it was like 9PM on a weekday, so there weren’t many (if any?) customers to witness this, but the rest of us discussed it for years.

      I forgot until just now.

    2. Cherith Ponsonby*

      For a moment I thought you meant they’d made you drive in weather that was so crappy that you’d actually driven off a cliff! Because I reckon that would make me quit even an otherwise good job.

    3. totally unprofessional moment*

      I also have to note, that when I had worked at this company previously, we had a major flood that was shutting down all of the roads and were told we would have to stay the night at the store. The rain stopped temporarily, the flooding receded temporarily, and a bunch of stupid customers came in, and we weren’t allowed to leave to get home before the next round of flooding began. Look people, when there is a 1,000-year flood, you do not need new shoes. You need to go the hell home to your family.

  30. Carly*

    I recenty left a horrible company (One example: instead of managing their employees they watched us all on the security cameras) but before I quit they had hired two new sales reps. The first two weeks they had them in head office “training” (learning how to use LinkedIn to send messages. Literally the only thing we were trained on as sales reps other than the app). The third week they come to the downtown office where they’ve stashed all the sales reps.

    One the reps, J, immediately starts asking everyone if this environment is normal and if it’s just an off week or is it always this weird?

    It’s always this weird.

    After four days of being told to shh by the sales director (while on the phone wth clients!), learning that nobody had ever travelled internationally (they said people went all the time – the main reason he joined because we had no other perks or benefits), being watched on cameras and punished for the things they’d seen (putting sticky notes on a colleagues laptop as a prank) etc etc his boss finally returned from who knows where (legit disappeared for a month with no word) and asked the two new reps to go into his office so they could roleplay. J says that he would rather be trained on what he has to sell before moving into role playing. The boss says he’s in charge and he was trained in head office so they’re doing role playing. They argue some more, which everyone in the office can hear, and J loudly says “you know what? F*ck this” and gets up, leaves the bosses office and looks around at everyone watching with their mouths open and says “f*ck this place for sure” and walks out with the middle finger up on each hand.

    A few days later another sales rep called the same boss and told him to eff off and never speak to her again for any reason and never came back.

  31. Amber Rose*

    Well you’ve already got mine up there! Got nothing to top it either. :D

    I still wish to someone day say I quit with a glitter bomb. Or release a couple hundred “I quit!” balloons with streamers. A girl can dream.

    1. Workaholic*

      I had planned to make origami birds out of fast food wrappers and hang them around the building when i quit my first job. I don’t remember why i didn’t. Probably just so happy to get away from the mgr (i was the asst mgr)

    2. JulieBulie*

      How about balloons filled with glitter??

      I like the origami birds idea too… people should resign with flair!

    4. CollegeAdmin*

      I used to dream about quitting my last job and flouncing out while wearing a cape with “1812 Overture” playing in the background.

      It worked out that my job after that was working for a different department in the same institution, so I couldn’t do that without burning bridges quite spectacularly. But still. It would have been epic.

  32. Professional Shopper*

    Back when I worked for a now-defunct tuxedo rental company, my last shift before I left for college, I closed the store early and walked out.

    The awful manager of that location had scheduled a seven person special fitting and not ordered the suits. I got a voicemail that the party was coming in, expecting their suits to be ready (the suits were two states away), and after my boss, the general manager and the home office didn’t call me back, I locked up the store three hours early and went home to avoid the customer meltdown.

    Now, having planned a wedding, I do regret not trying to call the bride to warn her.

    1. Professional Shopper*

      Since the turnover was so high, I got hired by the same company in another state a few months later. They still hired me after they heard this story–which by then involved multiple screaming voicemail from the irate bride and groom.

    2. EddieSherbert*

      Ummm, I probably would have done the same thing rather than face an angry wedding party as a teenager. Nope. That is well beyond my ability, emotional-level, and pay-level, thank you very much!

      1. Turtlewings*

        Same — warning the party would have been kinder, but I can’t blame a teenager for just hopping on the nopetopus and riding out!

      2. Snark*

        This. I mean, a warning to the party would have been great, but if everybody above you screwed up and put you in an impossible situation involving one of the biggest days in someone’s life, with big money and huge emotions on the line….no sir, that is above my pay grade.

  33. Hannah*

    Shortly after I finished college, I took a retail management job while I was looking for something within my field. It was advertised at $12/hour, but when I started they told me it was actually only $8/hour, so we’d already started out on a bad foot. They had my training done by someone who was going to work beneath me and who was obviously mad that they’d hired in a manager above her, so who was making the training massively uncomfortable. Everything in the store was pink and glittery, the work involved giving makeovers to small children in packs (I’m not good with kids), and I was miserable right from the start. Anyway, at some point during the day I realized that the $8/hour I was going to be making wasn’t worth my sanity – so I turned to the girl training me and said “yeah, I don’t think I’m going to keep this job.” “What, THIS one?” she asked me. “Yeah… I’m going home,” I told her. AND I DID. It wasn’t horribly responsible of me, but it was definitely the moment when I realized I wasn’t willing to just take whatever was thrown at me. I ended up doing temp accounting work for awhile instead until I got a full time office job, and I never looked back. A year later, I got a check for like $12 for the two hours or so I spent there in the mail from their auditor.

    1. Snark*

      That…..sounds like a preview of a particularly inspired ring of hell, not a job. Managing for $8/hour while putting lipstick on a dozen seven year olds at a time and being openly resented by someone even further down the chain than you?? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHNOPENOPENOPENOPE

    2. KK*

      There used to be a placed nearby growing up called Club Libby Lu that did this sort of thing. I LOVED it as a little girl, but I could see it being an awful place to work if you don’t like kids (or all things pink and glittery). Haha.

      1. many bells down*

        We had a place called Olivia’s Doll House that did elaborate tea parties for kids complete with the makeover and the dress-up clothes. Had my daughter’s 5th birthday there, it was pretty great for parents. I hope it didn’t suck for the employees.

    4. queen b*

      I know that there are different rules for different states, but $8/hour for a manager job seems like a JOKE to me.

      1. Gazebo Slayer*

        Seriously. Especially with the bait-and-switch. (I’ve been bait-and-switched on pay like that, and have known others who’ve had that experience too. Incredibly shitty.)

      2. Ego Chamber*

        There are no rules/laws about pay for management jobs, only labor laws re: exempt or non-exempt. Regardless of your title, they can pay you minimum wage if they want to as long as you’re not exempt (assuming you accept the job). I’ve worked at several places that do this and it’s all legal.

        1. sstabeler*

          I’m 99% sure you have to get MW even if you’re exempt, actually, though i’m not a lawyer, so…

    5. Angel*

      The process of being hired for my last job sketched me out so much that I forced the manager to confirm my position title and pay rate in writing. This turned out to be the right thing to do.

      I quit that job the day after I came back from my eclipse trip. I knew I was leaving before that, but the manager was such that I knew if I turned in notice before the trip, she’d rescind my days off.

  34. Anon coworker*

    I once worked in a very short-staffed inpatient mental health facility. A coworker on my shift quit on the spot, in a huff, after yelling at our boss for half an hour (we could all hear through the office door), then expected me to be sympathetic to her cause as she walked out the door, leaving me even more short-staffed than usual.

    The incident that had caused her to snap? Being called a b*tch by one of our teenaged patients who was with us in part because of anger issues. Like. No, that’s not okay (and Boss agreed it wasn’t okay), but when you work with teenagers who are in the midst of treatment for emotional challenges, you’re sometimes going to get called names. Heck, when you work with teenagers of any stripe, you might get called names! It’s one of those things that comes with the territory of working with young people whose brains aren’t all that great at impulse control yet. Coworker would have gotten an apology as soon as Patient calmed down enough to reflect and give her a real apology, but she wanted one RIGHT THAT SECOND while Patient was still angry, and Boss said that wouldn’t be productive or realistic. So she left.

    3. nosy nelly*

      a friend of mine who used to work in a similar facility would refer to it as a good posting because he only got punched once in the first three months. comes with the territory, to an extent.

  35. JD*

    I had a crap job with one of those “we have a ping pong table and are a fun company” type places. My boss expected insane things from me. He would only eat one lunch from one place with a super picky order. If there was the smallest thing off (like two sauces instead of 3 in the bag) he would make me go back. By the way, running errands was never part of the job description. Then he asked me to book a flight for his wife and when I asked for her info (birth date, full name) he screamed at me for not know…you know, after being there for 1 day. It just kept going on. Also I don’t find that type of office culture fun like a lot of people do. I don’t want to play ping pong with you, I want to do my work and go home.

    Finally he threw a a piece of chicken out of his perfectly correct order because he changed his mind and wanted dark meat that day. I stood up calmly, didn’t say a word and just walked out the door. Thank thanks buddy.

    2. paul*

      There’s some rare times when I wish you could use the “they needed it” defense to just clobber someone; I think that manager fits into that category.

    4. Gazebo Slayer*

      Bosses who expect you to read their minds are the worst. Also, how did they ever get to be the boss in the first place if they can’t or won’t communicate basic information to other people?

  36. Thirsty Thursday*

    I used to work for a hipster vegetarian restaurant that was bought out by a kind-of terrible guy who was EXTREMELY bad at managing. He made a bunch of changes to the interior/menu/staff, then wondered why this very popular restaurant was suddenly not hauling in bank all the time? Dummy.

    Anyways, one weekend he had a bunch of staff quit (including myself). One gal, I’ll call her Arya, decided to stay on and was suddenly promoted to shift lead/closer. However, no one gave her a key to lock up (like I said, he was a dummy). She calls and texts and does all the things, and he keeps saying “I’m on my way” or “I’ll be there soon” and after sitting around for an hour and a half, she texts him saying “I quit” and just LEAVES. The door is unlocked, the money is sitting out on the counter in the office (he also hadn’t given her the code to the safe) … Manager guy NEVER shows up to lock the door.

    How do we know? Because Arya left to go to a party, where there were a bunch of former coworkers. She tells this story of Dummy Manager Guy, and possibly someone at the party (not me, I swear) or possibly random happenstance, but the store gets robbed that night. Arya fields frantic calls the next morning from Dummy Manager Guy, and she’s just like “um, maybe next time show up when you say you’re going so the store gets locked up? Also NOT MY PROBLEM ANY MORE.”

    The restaurant went out of business a few months later.

      1. sstabeler*

        it can be both. Dummy Manager Guy probably deserved to get robbed in the fashion that he did (as in, thieves walked in, took the money, then walked out- nobody was ever actually at risk) HOWEVER, it was still wrong of the thieves to do it.

    2. Thirsty Thursday*

      Oh, and this isn’t a quitting story but a hero story. Same restaurant, same terrible Dummy Manager Guy … he’s doing interviews to hire some new people, but he thinks he’s The Man so these interviews would be 2 hours long. He’d want to know your favorite cooking show, your favorite recipe, etc etc … all just to be a waiter at a casual restaurant (this wasn’t a 5-star place by any means). Anyways, he’s in the middle of interviewing this guy who had spent the last three years managing the local organic co-op, and the Potential Hire says “I’m sorry, I really have to go to the bathroom.” He gets up and walks straight out. On his way, he walks by me (working) and says “who the F*** does [Dummy Manager Guy] think he is? He’s a disaster.”

      I was in such awe of this guy and his innate confidence; we became friends and are still friends to this day.

      1. Snark*

        Sometimes you make friends with people because they’re so damn awesome you just hope it rubs off on you. I think I married mine.

    3. Lissa*

      Wow, that’s horrible! Was he expecting her to just…sit there all night?? There are some people I really wish I could sit down and *make* them tell me their honest reasoning/thought process because it boggles my mind so much.

  37. AnonToday*

    When I was waiting tables, I got transferred to another one of our restaurants across town, and the manager there was TERRIBLE- super nitpicky and blamed me for things I couldn’t control. The last straw was him yelling at me for selling a kids meal to an adult to eat (at the customer’s request, but apparently we’re not supposed to allow that). Early on in my shift, another waitress finished her shift and needed a ride home, so the manager asked me if I could take a break and drive her home- I dropped her off and kept going straight to my house, never to return.

  38. anon24*

    When my husband put his two weeks in at his last job, his boss begged him to stay and offered to give him the raise he’d asked for a few months before. My husband said nope and his boss told him to get the hell out and escorted him out of the building without letting him say goodbye to anyone.

    He was really close to some of his coworkers and they were very upset with the way he was treated. So when one of them got a job working with my husband at his new job, said coworker went to the boss and said “well, I’ve worked here 11 years, it’s been great, I got a better offer, bye” and walked out. At least two other employees have walked off the job since and there are currently 5 employees planning to get jobs and walk out together.

    Beware how you treat a resigning employee.

    1. MarsJenkar*

      It’s like Alison has said: If you’ve shown you won’t honor notice given by an employee, you’ve forfeited your right to said notice.

  39. FedGuy*

    I worked in a grocery store while in high school. On a particularly busy Saturday, in the height of holiday shopping season, one of my fellow high school age coworkers did something one of the managers didn’t like. He was called to the manager’s office and must have assumed he was going to get fired. So, instead, he got on the store loudspeaker, and wished a “Merry (Expletive) Christmas” to the manager in question, who he referred to as “that Fat (Expletive) (insert manager name here).”

    While the other store managers were trying to track this guy down, amid horrified looks on faces of scores of shoppers, someone called for “Floor Maintenance, cleanup in aisle 3.” This fellow happened to be assigned to floor maintenance that day, so he got on the loudspeaker again and announced, “there is no more floor maintenance thanks to that Fat (Expletive) (insert manager name here).”

    They eventually chased him out or he got out before they found him, I can’t remember which. Ironically, said manager later commented that he was only planning to give out a verbal warning to this guy, not fire him.

    1. Katriona*

      This reminds me of an incident at the Target I worked at in high school. It’s not really a resignation story since the guy had already been fired for getting high in the parking lot directly in front of a security camera on his break, but he stole a walkie-talkie and used it to broadcast all manner of creative obscenities throughout the store. The best part is it took maybe an hour before someone thought to just have everyone change the channel we all had our walkies set to.

  40. Ennui*

    I used to work at a media company with a very toxic culture. It was meetings, meetings, meetings, especially when you were in middle management. At entry level, my workload was already unbearable. However, I was told that this company was a lot better than most in the industry, and I was seen as a whiner for giving feedback to management about my workload.

    I was the social media manager and web writer for this publication, and Mondays would start off with a company wide meeting which would last two hours, a 15 min meeting with the editor, and another production meeting, which would last another two hours. After that, it was lunch time, and it was expected that I skip lunch so that I can quickly write and post on social media. If I ever gave feedback that I should be exempt from some part of meetings since I was not part of other aspects of production, my manager would refuse.

    Prior to this, my manager was also quite toxic and threw me under a bus a few times. (One memorable incident was getting content ready for a daily newsletter. I’d lined up the content for her to edit, but she kept putting it off till 4pm, when it was supposed to be coded and programmed to be sent to our mailing list by 5pm. She finally tackled it at 5pm and blamed me for not lining up content for her, when in fact, my indirect superior and I had completed this task before 1pm.) She also liked to belittle me and constantly made me feel like I was not good enough to do my job.

    What I had to submit was this report created by upper management to talk about numbers. I had to pull out the top five best and worst stories from the system, when a program could have been written to do that. I also had to write down the X no. of things we learned this week. It was a pain in the ass because I didn’t know what “upper management” wanted to read, and instead of being honest with the things we actually learned, we had to cushion the phrasing and make it sound like the micromanager of upper management would not write some cutting remarks in the report and email it back to us, insinuating that we were stupid.

    The report was also a waste of time and I could have done work that would have been more productive, like producing actual content for the website. The Friday I had had it, I didn’t hand in this report as there was far too much work to do and I really couldn’t concentrate looking at the goddamned excel table. My manager asked to have it on Monday after our short 15 minute meeting before meeting (again) other people on production. I told her it wasn’t done, and she lectured me, saying that I was already on thin ice (due to one emotional outburst at work that involved me yelling at my boss because he had cornered us and gotten rather adversarial about falling numbers on social media). I shrugged and told her that I would turn in my resignation after the meeting, and stewed. When production came in, one of the designers asked, “What’s wrong, Ennui? Why does your face look like a storm cloud?” Cue awkward silence.

    I handed in my resignation and went to cry in production, because I felt like I failed miserably at this job and wasn’t good enough to survive. I have not worked in that industry again. I don’t know why I’m typing this, but I guess it feels good to get it out, even if it happened a long time ago.

      1. Ennui*

        No, it didn’t. I don’t live in the US, but I am very glad that other people have also shared similar stories working in such media companies. It goes to show that I’m not alone.

    2. JulieBulie*

      A two-hour company-wide meeting every Monday morning? That’s… sick. And then there’s the whole hellish rest of the week, too.

      I’m glad that sharing this miserable story made you feel a little better! You were treated like a machine, you were set up to fail, you were used like a tube of toothpaste that they wanted to squeeze dry.

      Don’t say that you weren’t “good enough to survive”. You DID survive there, and then you moved on to (hopefully) a place that didn’t take advantage of you. That’s progress!

        1. arknrbn*

          This totally wasn’t you–they were toxic and nutso. Just because you’re not willing to put up with their rubbish doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with YOU. I’ve never worked at a media company, but it was pretty clear from your story that you did the right thing by getting out. I hope you can continue your recovery. :)

  41. Kiki*

    Not me, but the woman I replaced for Current Job. She had given 4 weeks notice to Boss and had agreed to work through the 4 weeks. But one week into her notice she came into the office on the weekend, shredded every paper in her desk and deleted every file on her computer, and sent lengthy emails to Boss and other team members about how bad they were at their jobs and how she hated them.

    Of all the jobs I’ve worked at, Current Job is the one where I’d be the LEAST likely to do something like my predecessor did…so I don’t know what was up with her.

    1. Former Hoosier*

      I replaced someone who had been fired. Several months after she was fired I discovered that she had shredded an extensive number of legal files that we really needed. She actually shredded all of the files in her office but those were the ones that were critical to the business and had we gotten sued the company would have been in extreme jeopardy.

      She got fired largely over a political issue and I don’t blame her for being bitter (although she was also not competent) but I was stunned that she did that. She was given a month’s notice. When I told her CEO what she did, he realized that he shouldn’t have made it effective immediately. He was terrible at firing.

    2. The OG Anonsie*

      You never know, I’ve worked in several places where everyone seems cool until you see them deal with the stepchild of the department. One person (or maybe a couple of people depending on the size of the place) that everyone just treats more poorly, who doesn’t get the same wiggle room with time off and never gets positive feedback and stuff like that. Usually they just don’t fit in socially at first and then it snowballs into being treated differently all around. It’s gross and usually a symptom of a place with issues simmering under the surface, but if you fit in and also weren’t an asshole who took things out on the odd one out then you might not ever notice it.

      This reminds me that this was actually a plot point in Psycho-Pass, where a company had an organized thing where they would designate one employee to be acceptable for everyone else to treat like shit, and when that person got close to not being able to take it anymore they would transfer them away and make them a normal employee again and someone else would become the abuse case. They argue that it reduces other personnel issues because everyone has a target, and that if they didn’t organize it, it would just happen naturally anyway. I remember watching that episode and thinking it sounded pretttttty familiar.

      1. Junior Dev*

        Your first paragraph basically describes how I was treated at the job that just fired me–i got in trouble for stuff everyone did on a regular basis, and it formed a vicious cycle because I was so stressed out my performance suffered.

      3. Mental Mouse*

        The word for that is “Sin-Eater” — the person in a community who’s the official or unofficial target of abuse, meant to soak up everybody else’s hostility.

  42. La Revancha*

    My husband told me a story of a big time exec in a very niche industry sending an email out to the entire company telling them that he was quitting and that they could sick his big d***. You would think this would have prevented him from getting another job, but nope. He got another job with a similar title at a big company!

  43. Only here for the teapots*

    I worked for a couture fabric wholesaler, owned by a Canadian couple, with their main warehouse in the US. The owners were completely amoral about cheating customers, cheating employees, lying to the bank/insurance company/customs etc. They kept a spreadsheet of customers they didn’t like (called PITA pain in the a$$) and instructed the billing person to add surcharges to their invoices. When their US house was under construction they lived in the warehouse, so we’d find unemployed hubby sacked out on the breakroom couch at all hours, or in the one restroom showering or stinking it up. They demoralized their warehouse clerk with constant harangues and bullied her into working overtime off the clock.
    I had shown the warehouse person the state/federal law websites relating to these abuses, and unbeknownst to me the owners had been monitoring internet access. The female half cornered me the next morning, and I do mean cornered. She was about twice my size and tried to use sheer bulk to loom over me while going apoplectic about my betrayal.
    I completely lost it. I have never been so angry and outraged about a job in my life, and let loose everything I had about their disgusting personal and business practices. Every time she tried to scold me for outing her abuses & lawbreaking, I yelled the laundry list of people who had legal and/or financial interests in seeing her prosecuted, closing with “You should be deported!” at all caps volume.
    Then I left.
    The unemployment office brushed off her claims of my malfeasance and granted me benefits. The warehouse employee found other work, and the company went out of business after one of their Oscar-gown designing clients found out about years of overcharges.
    I don’t wish the hell of working for that kind of place on anyone, but the joy of rage quitting like that is truly worth experiencing.

    1. Not Australian*

      My son worked for a British version of this couple. His boss had taken a huge warehouse, filled it with second-hand books, and was selling them dirt cheap. Boss’s wife, apparently, wasn’t happy – so boss bought a large motorhome, drove it inside the warehouse, connected it up, and the wife spent her whole day in there, seven days a week. It almost sounded like some really creepy kidnap scenario…

      1. Specialk9*

        Is it weird that that’s kind of my dream? A warehouse or airplane hangar, with a little snug house tucked inside…

        1. nonegiven*

          I know of a couple of ranches with a really big metal barn that had a three bedroom home built into one end. One was for the foreman of a weekender with plans to retire to the big house. The other is for the owner and his family. They live in it now but when the tax guy came around, he was deployed and had his family with him. The tax guy looked in a front window and measured the entire building and put it down as a really big house.

  44. Eva L'Dour*

    I had called out sick for two days in a row and I just couldn’t bring myself to go back to my dysfunctional department and incompetent boss. So even though I did not yet have another job lined up, I sent him an email saying, “I’m not coming back to the office. I would rather be jobless and homeless than spend another minute working for you. “

    1. Work Wardrobe*

      “I would rather be jobless and homeless than spend another minute working for you.”

      What a fabulous burn.

  45. Ama*

    Well mine would have to be the boss at a former employer who disappeared for two days, eventually contacting us after we finally resorted to calling her emergency contact to say she had been in a car crash, and then when we innocently tried to find out what hospital she was in so we could send flowers, went ballistic, accused us of checking up on her and resigned effective immediately. We all thought she’d just had a nervous breakdown (as at that point she admitted there had been no car crash).

    However, when we started pulling together her files and accessing her email so we could assign coverage, she had clearly destroyed several paper files and tried to wipe her work computer. Turned out she’d been doing all kinds of things on the budget she wasn’t supposed to — both charging personal expenses and things that made her look like an administrative wizard, like buying a new printer for the office and then claiming she’d got it for free from another department, and paying someone to design our newsletter and then claiming it as her own work (two years later, that vendor contacted us wanting payment on his last invoice – she’d destroyed his files pretty effectively so we had no idea who he even was until he found a way to contact us). The department was about to undergo a routine audit, and she knew all her lies would be discovered, hence the fake accident.

    We never did figure out whether her original plan was to fake the car accident and have to resign for medical reasons, whether she just intended it to buy her enough time to destroy records and get out of dodge, or whether she really did have a nervous breakdown from the stress of the situation.

  46. Jackfruit Beret*

    I ghosted a job once. In college. I worked at a copy center from 6-8 in the morning. No one ever came in. My boss didn’t show up until 9, so no one would know I was there aside from me signing a sign-in sheet when I arrived on my shift. One day I stopped going. Part of me was curious how long it would take for someone to notice. It wasn’t until the end of the pay period, when I received a voicemail telling me they had replaced me. I felt guilty. Tried to make up some excuse, which they immediately recognized as some excuse and got a different job.

    1. Squeeble*

      LOL. I have no idea if that was a good job for you or not, but based on your description it sounds kind of awesome. Two hours of early morning work where you can be totally alone??? Amazing.

      1. Jackfruit Beret*

        Terrible job for me. If it was nighttime I would have loved it, but I am. not. a. morning. person.

  47. AAA*

    We won an industry award for our work for a prior year but due to having moved I was already in my notice period. However over a normal percent of the work done that year was purely on my head and I’d been constantly praised by management and asked my “secret” to success. It says alot about my department that my answer was ” I actually DO my damn job?!”

    The bosses has promised a potential client that we had capacity to take on their work via claiming we had 3 times as many staff as we actually did.

    So on the quarterly meeting day all departments are in the building and they are using two other departments staff to take a photo with this award and claiming they all work for out department – which our company website disproved easily btw! My newly promoted much younger and pretty useless department supervisor (the MD’s “pet” employee who could do no wrong) told me I wasn’t allowed in the photo as I’d be leaving next month and it was “too complicated” to explain why I wasn’t there anymore if anyone asked…. Here- man the phones whilst her and the fakes take the picture…

    I waited until they finished, went to lunch and didn’t go back for the afternoon “morale session and company review” Spent 2 hours travelling home with spotty cell service occasionally getting calls from said supervisor as to where I was (didn’t answer) because the department director never checked his email to see I emailed saying that since it was so complicated for me to be seen as working for them in a photo for an award I earned them through my hard work I wouldn’t be working my notice out.

    I still got paid I believe (this was a long time ago).

  48. SoCalHR*

    I once worked for an EXTREMELY toxic environment (think borderline Devil Wears Prada) and was told one of my predecessors (there had been many) quit over night by leaving a post-it note in the office after hours. It was already clear at that point that I wouldn’t be at this company very long for sake of my sanity, but luckily(?) they saved me the trouble of the post-it-note-resignation as they fired me, over the phone, after we had a conversation about accommodation of my temporary disability the day prior.

  49. Pickles*

    One guy sent an epic multi-page rant on his last day to every senior leader in the building and CC’d the group disto for all his coworkers. In addition to every grievance he’d ever held, especially about not getting promoted and how terrible the organization was, he also personally invited the senior leaders to his going away lunch. Then he immediately left for said lunch since it was his last day, so almost no one saw it right away, but those who did saved it. This guy has been gone for nearly 10 years and they still have copies they share with new employees. Oh, and since his new place not only didn’t promote him but also has a higher cost of living, he tried to come back at the same rank six years later. Maybe he thought everyone would have forgotten?

    1. Artemesia*

      I have been retired for 5 years but still have a copy of an epic rant my boss shared with me by one of our employees when he resigned. He was good enough but not very good and our evil hire had been amping him up about the injustice of him not getting more promotions and recognition. It was a florid rant that ran several pages. It reminded me again that no matter how right you are (and he actually wasn’t) this sort of thing always makes you look like a fool. (I come from a family that over the generations has sent this ranting letters from FIL to DIL, to MIL to SIL etc etc and they ALWAYS make the recipient feel self righteous and make the complainer look like an idiot. They NEVER help.

  50. Robin Gottlieb*

    After six weeks, I couldn’t take any more verbal abuse from the CEO. I emailed her saying I was quitting immediately, listed all the reasons why and copied everyone. They still have my letter and show it to new hires just so they know what they’re in for (there’s a lot of turnover there).

    1. Specialk9*

      I love that your comment is right after the prior comment.

      Artemesia: It was a florid rant that ran several pages. It reminded me again that no matter how right you are (and he actually wasn’t) this sort of thing always makes you look like a fool. They ALWAYS make the recipient feel self righteous and make the complainer look like an idiot. They NEVER help.

      Robin: I emailed her saying I was quitting immediately, listed all the reasons why and copied everyone. They still have my letter and show it to new hires just so they know what they’re in for (there’s a lot of turnover there).

      Uh… That’s not why they’re showing your letter.

      2. Agatha_31*

        That seems unnecessarily personal, particularly in a post specifically inviting people to share their resignation stories. Also, there’s exceptions to every rule. So it’s an unnecessarily personal speculation.

  51. LadyLupo*

    My old assistant manager, I work in a retail setting, told me he was taking another job. I wished him well, and said as a member of management, I do need an official letter of resignation, with at least two weeks notice. That way we could plan out his last day, and I can work on getting him off the schedule, and his credentials deactivated.

    He left his notice, all right. On a notecard. Tucked into the keyboard on Register 1.

    What was amusing, is he told me corporate “had too many rules to follow, and were so strict!”

    The job he left to take? With Budweiser. TABC rules and regs are apparently less taxing than mine. For the record, I issued a verbal warning, then written warning about his lack of punctuality, as he’d habitually punch in anywhere from 20-30 minutes late at least once a week.

    I guess I just set the bar too high…

    For myself, I once left a telemarketer job at the fresh age of 18, where we sold local and long distance phone packages. This guy started railing at me for calling (I know, telemarketer = evil). He asked why I kept “choosing” his number, I explained I didn’t choose, I had a computer auto-dial, I was just doing my job, like a good little phone drone.

    He told me what I could do with the computer, graphically, using very crass, descriptive terms for parts of my anatomy only the hubs and doctors see.

    I snapped. I told him in the same polite phone cadence, without raising my voice, that as he appeared to lack corresponding male parts, given his willingness to verbally abuse someone for doing her job, I had a proposal. Fly his happy (donkey end)* to my (fornicating)* town, come to the (fornicating)* call center, and he can demonstrate his own (excrement)* talk on HIMSELF, then we could discuss my own attempts. Because of the tone of voice, it took him a moment to realize what I said, then he started screeching like a rabid bonobo. I thanked him for speaking with us here at PhoneCompany, wished him a FANTASTIC day and disconnected.

    I then took myself out of the queue, went to my floor supervisor and promptly quit. He asked why. I looked him right in the eye and said “because when QA reviews my last call, you’re going to fire me. :D”

    *not the actual words I used, cleaned them up here.

    2. Queerty*

      OMG, your telemarketing quit made me make a horrifying noise trying to keep in hysterical laughter that attracted attention from my officemate.

      1. Queerty*

        (for context, I used to work in a call center for a major health insurance company so your descriptions of screeching bonobo and QA… resonated.)

        1. LadyLupo*

          I swear whenever I’m on a conference call or in a training session and someone runs “Q & A session” together where it sounds like QA session, I twitch. It’s like I’m reacting in a demented Pavlovian response.

    3. Artemesia*

      One of my kids did get fired at a call center for responding to a very abusive caller in a similar way. Part of the job is eating s#$% and this kid wasn’t up for that.

      2. Basically Useless*

        I worked at a call center for a catalog company. They told us: you warn verbal abusers twice, then hang up. You aren’t paid enough to listen to that.

  52. DZA*

    I’ve been a member of an online message board for several years. About 10 years ago or so, one of the other board members announced he was going to quit his job at a grocery store and asked for suggestions on how he should leave. Not expecting him to take me up on my suggestion, I recommended that he have a little parade, driving one of the motorized shopping carts down the frozen foods aisle, with lit sparklers attached to the front and a boombox on the back playing something jubilant (“We Are The Champions” or some such). As it turns out, he took me up on the suggestion, had someone record the whole thing, and we got to watch a very happy ex-employee escort himself out at about 1.5mph past the Hungry Man dinners.

      1. Fur Princess*

        I’m so glad I telecommute so I was able to laugh loud and long at the visual this story created. I wish my current department had one of those scooters so I could do something so wonderfully epic when I finally tell them to shove it.

      1. DZA*

        I really do wish I still had access to it; sorry. If it’s any consolation, just remember that the book is sometimes better than the film adaptation!

  53. em2mb*

    After graduation, I took a job working nights at a community newspaper. One of my childhood friends was feeling sort of aimless (she needed an advanced degree to get a job in her field, but she was feeling burnt out and didn’t have the funds to start grad school right away), so she asked if she could move with me and share expenses. I agreed, and my friend got a job working at an Italian restaurant. She’d been waitressing for years and was really sharp and smart, but she didn’t know what she was getting herself into. The restaurant was owned by a guy who’d bought up most of the properties in the city’s historic downtown, renovated them, then installed one of his relatives to run them. This property was managed by his wife and eldest daughter.

    If you’ve ever been a server, you know that you get better tips if you dress up, wear makeup, bat your eyes a little, flirt … well, the wife/manager used to get mad at the waitresses if they came to work “looking prettier than her daughter.” So she decided she was going to order them uniforms rather than go with the standard black pants/white button down. She asked all the staff what size they wanted and got the guys the sizes they ordered and all of the girls an XXL mens button down — in bright orange, with a sage green, knee-length apron. (Because what says Italian like dressing your wait staff like pumpkins?) My roommate gritted her teeth and tolerated it because she had a lot of regular customers who tipped well.

    There were lots of little things over the next year, but the final straw was when my roommate caught the wife changing the tip amounts on the credit card receipts “because no one deserves to make a 25 percent tip for bringing a salad and an iced tea to a table.” My roommate had had enough — she quit on the spot. The wife petulantly reminded her that technically, the restaurant owned the shirt and apron she was wearing. That’s when Roommate remembered it was laundry day and her only clean bra was a lacy red push up. She untied her apron, ripped off her shirt and stormed out in the middle of the lunch rush, tits on display.

    The best part, though, was how I heard about this — not when I got home from work, but from a coworker who’d BEEN OUT TO LUNCH WITH THE HEAD OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE when he heard yelling in the kitchen, followed by my roommate marching out in her bra and trousers! (Everyone in my office thought it was hysterically funny that the owner had finally gotten some comeuppance, so I didn’t face any kind of repercussions.) My roommate found a better paying job within two weeks. She’s since gone back to school, gotten a graduate degree and is working in her field.

      1. em2mb*

        I moved away from this town for a while, then came back to work for another news organization in a bigger metropolitan area nearby, so I often see my old coworkers at news conferences. We’ll usually grab lunch after. The coworker who witnessed it can’t ask how my old roommate is without laughing so hard he almost chokes. We were 23 at the time; he’s got a son not much younger than us, and I’m pretty sure we were his warning for what unsupervised barely adults are actually like when they move away from home.

    7. Just employed here*

      I don’t know if I just didn’t read this right, but why would you have faced any repercussions?

      1. em2mb*

        I mean, journalism is a field where your reputation really, really matters. It probably could have gotten back to the restaurant owner, a prominent attorney in town, that the employee who walked off the job in her fire engine red bra was best friends with the copy editor down at the newspaper. And it could’ve been hella awkward for me if my coworker had witnessed it and *not* thought it was hilarious. My roommate and I were super close — I was working about 60 hours a week, and it wasn’t unusual for her to bring me dinner in the newsroom (everyone on staff did this, not just me). I’d kind of put in the category of “your spouse behaves badly at the holiday party” — not necessarily your fault, but it doesn’t reflect well on you.

  54. LKW*

    My company, like many, has rules regarding romantic relationships. Once you hit a certain level in the organization, you really were not able to have relationships with anyone below that level because you had influence over how money was spent, raises, bonuses, etc. On a Friday evening I got a call from a friend who told me about someone we worked with who was being forced to resign because the powers that be found out she was having an affair with an older, more senior person in our division (both married to other people as well). We chatted for a bit and I got the whole inside scoop. I didn’t believe it was true but hoped for the best (I hated this person with a passion). Both were required to resign; the more senior person attempted to resign quietly, just a quick good bye note to his closest colleagues.

    On Monday morning I logged in and there was an email from the younger woman, who was always an oversharer to begin with, sending her goodbye to the division. This was pretty standard and most just wrote a few short sentences… “… new opportunities and challenges…. such a wonderful group of people to work with… here’s my contact info…”. But this email, oh this joyous confirmation of the story I heard on Friday was essentially a multi paragraph love letter / resignation letter in which she wanted to name a few people who were truly meaningful in her life and she spent an inordinate amount of time on older senior person referring to him as a mentor and a teacher.

    And she sent it to about 6000 people. Most of whom did not know her.

    On my project people were wondering what was going on and I had significantly senior people at my desk while I gave them the full run down of the scandal and fall out (I had an inside scoop from someone else).

    And I called my friend and a few others and read them the entire beautiful email because it was GLORIOUS in it’s abnormality and delusion.

    1. Hlyssande*

      I’m actually glad/relieved that the more senior person had to resign as well. It would be too easy just to fire the underling and leave the senior person without any repercussions, if that makes sense.

      But that letter, LOL.

  55. Eli*

    A coworker of mine was promised a promotion and office (rather than her current cubicle), only to come back from vacation to find her boss had instead hired a friend of hers for the position (who she would now be reporting to) and the new office was nixed. She rightly told her boss she quit, and they ended up yelling at each other, with the boss screaming, “this is NOT how people quit at Teapots, Unlimited!!!” Well, I guess she was wrong, because my coworker left that day. None of us blamed her!

    1. MCMonkeyBean*

      At first read I thought you meant a friend of the coworkers, but you probably meant a friend of the boss. Would be extra crappy to have your friend take the job you had been promised!