the flasher, the scathing tirade, and other stories of magnificent rage-quits

by Alison Green on September 13, 2022

The recent post revisiting the employee who quit by spelling out “I QUIT” in fish inspired me to round up some more epic quitting stories that have been shared here over the years. Here are 10 more good ones.

1. The flasher

“I was hired by a daycare to run their two classroom state-funded Head Start program. I had recently left a job at the local early childhood development program, so I was familiar with it. On my first day, I was told I could just review their set-up, meet with the teachers/kids, and review their paperwork. It was not good. I saw many mistakes that would need to be fixed and all the kids that had been enrolled were missing required paperwork and they were mixing funds and supplies with the regular daycare so it was a mess.

Anyway, at about 2 the owner told me she needed to run errands and since someone had called out, I needed to ‘run the front desk.’ I told her I didn’t think I could do that and she was very short with me and said all I needed to do was buzz parents in. Of course it all went to hell as soon as she pulled out of the parking lot. Parents who had lost custody and weren’t supposed to show up, parents who wanted to pay in advance, phone ringing off the hook, sick kids whose parent wouldn’t come get them.

I guess another employee who had her cell called her and she came skidding into the parking lot about 3:30. Once everything was settled, I was called into the office and thoroughly griped at. When she finally stopped, I basically said, ‘Yeah, this isn’t for me. This was my first day and you left me alone to handle all this, your Head Start program isn’t properly set up and it’s going to take someone weeks to fix it but it won’t be me because I quit.’ She started to blow up and I said ‘Bye’ and turned to leave. She said, ‘I’m going to need that shirt back’ (all employees were required to wear a red polo with the daycare name embroidered). I took it off, tossed it on her desk and walked out in just my bra. A couple of parents in the parking lot were shocked to see a shirtless person walking out of the daycare.

I still don’t regret it.”

2. The F-you

“I worked at a law firm where almost every single legal assistant rage quit. It was really fascinating. It was a complete toxic dump. The attorneys were horrible, the HR director had no spine. It was totally common for the entry level assistants to just burst into tears and go into HR’s office and tell them they were leaving, but we had one woman who did the whole stalk out in the middle of the day saying ‘F*** you’ to everyone she passed. She was considered a hero among us all. I was younger then and I left a note on HR’s desk and left one Friday and never came back.”

3. The tirade

“The best rage quit I ever witnessed: we had a weekly all-hands staff meeting with mandatory attendance. If you were on the road you were required to dial in. ‘Mike’ called in, and when it was his turn to speak he delivered a scathing tirade that was the stuff of quitting fantasies — absolutely A+ stuff. The big boss was so stunned he couldn’t respond at first… but then he pulled it together and hung up on Mike. But Mike was a step ahead — he’d dialed in on TWO lines, so he was STILL on the call, and got another couple of killer lines in before he got disconnected for good! Mike was a company hero for months after that.”

4. More fish

“I have another ‘resigned in fish’ story! The terrifying paralegal at Exjob brought a large side of raw salmon into the office, stashed it in her top desk drawer, and then crazy glued the lock. She then locked her office and crazy glued THAT lock. The hazmat teams were called by day 8. She was never pursued for this because she was … terrifying.”

5. The house fire

“I worked for a phone survey group for, like, an hour. Then I looked at my phone, made a dramatically concerned face, told my supervisor I’d just gotten a text that my house was on fire, and left, never to return.

(Eight months later, they sent me a W2 for my one hour, bless them.)”

6. The correction

“At a ridiculously toxic job, the VP was the worst person there, even by their standards. She demanded an absurd, Panopticon-level of surveillance in the CS department, played favorites and played people off each other, told us not to discuss our pay with each other (illegal), and tried to get an employee fired for being an out gay woman (illegal).

She also had the habit of shaming people in company-wide email and couldn’t write to save her life. Some people don’t have great grammar and would be well served by an assistant drafting emails, but this woman’s emails were so poorly written they were inscrutable.

So towards the end of the day, after a brief but unhinged full company email that used ‘your’ for ‘you’re,’ a hero in the claims department replied all with just, ‘ *you’re.’ 10 minutes later, he popped in to the customer service department to tell us he had gotten what he wanted (being fired) and asked if anyone wanted his stapler.”

7. The wrench

“Possibly an apocryphal one here, but when I worked on the oil rigs there was this story:

The background is that on an oil rig you drill using 30 feet sections of pipe, which you screw together and then insert down a hollow steel tube (we drilled at sea). When you drill down 12,000 feet, thats a lot of pipe. So when the drill bit on the end wears out it’s a long job. So one time they had pulled all the pipe out of the hole and were changing the drill bit when one of the blokes accidentally kicks one of the big steel wrenches across the drill floor and plop! it goes down the tube and sinks through the drilling mud all the way down – 12,000 feet. So they have to put a tool on the end of the pipe to catch/hook the wrench and put all the pipe back down and back up again. After three unsuccessful attempts they finally get the mangled bit of metal out onto the drill floor. This has taken a week and rigs cost about a million dollars a day to run.

So the “Company Man,” as the big boss is called, stomps over to the roughneck who kicked the wrench and unloads a torrent of swearing and abuse telling him to grab his stuff, he’s ‘run off,’ i.e. he’s on the next helicopter off the rig and he’s sacked and will never work for this company again. The guy stares him in the face saying nothing, then walks over to the mangled wrench and drops it back down the hole.”

8. The cough drops

“I had an employee run out to her car “for cough drops” on her first day, about two hours in and never return. I hadn’t even assigned any work yet, just gave her a manual to flip through.”

9. The long goodbye

“I don’t have a rage-quit story, but I have an awesome story of how someone left after being fired.

They did it at 3 pm on a Thursday … I have no idea why they didn’t wait until the end of the day.

As she left the conference room, she loudly yelled, ‘I JUST GOT FIRED!’ Cue everyone popping up out of their chairs like meerkats to see who it was (it was a cubicle farm, so no privacy at all). She walked towards her desk to grab her personal belongings, but on the way she stopped by each cubicle… ‘Did you hear, I was just fired!’ ‘Lovely working with you, won’t see you again because I’ve been fired.’

Her manager was trailing along behind her with his mouth just hanging open and eyes wide. He had NO idea what to do. HR ran off, I think to get someone else higher up to help. But I never saw them come back.

People were laughing and cheering for her. It was talked about forever. Randomly someone would say ‘I’m fired!’ from behind their cubicle wall and everyone would laugh.

She took about 30 minutes to gather her things, say goodbye to everyone, then finally leave. It was spectacular.”

10. The misunderstanding

“This isn’t quite a rage quit, but it’s close enough and a good story.

My brother-in-law was a manager of a fast food restaurant. He came in early one morning to find the place had been emptied out. All the tables and chairs, the food, the glassware, everything. The owners had decided to close the restaurant and move it to another town and ghosted both him and the employees. And it was payday!

He called the owners and got machines, then noticed they had forgotten to take the very expensive cash registers. He loaded them on his truck and took them to an undisclosed location and basically held them for ransom.

Once he did that, the owners were falling all over themselves to get in touch, claiming it was all a “misunderstanding” and checks would be mailed. He said no, the checks had better be delivered here, by noon, and I am going to drive everyone to the bank to cash them before I remember where your cash registers are.

So many sleazy restaurant owners screw their employees, it’s nice to see it can backfire.”

And in case you missed it, here’s a photo of that original resignation in cod.

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{ 294 comments }

{ 294 comments… read them below }

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        I fully expect to see this turned into a subplot in the sequel to Hench, which is about temp work and middle management headaches in villainous organizations.

          1. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

            I read it after it was recommended on a Weekend Open Thread two or three weeks ago. Definitely worth the read.

        2. Bronze Betty*

          I just got Hench from my library (after placing it on hold), but haven’t started it yet. Looking forward to it.

      1. Where’s the Orchestra?*

        Absolutely, and the way he went about it also means he knew the “owners” far too well.

        Good for him for getting everybody square first.

    7. Myrin*

      I’m just flummoxed that they cleared out everything but then forgot to take the cash registers of all things – really speaks to their level of organisation.

      3. Princesss Sparklepony*

        I’m wondering if the registers were bolted down… And if they had a moving company come in and move all the stuff that wasn’t bolted down. Since it was done at night the deposits would already have been done, so there wouldn’t have been any cash in the registers. The owners were maybe going to get the registers later…. not thinking that someone would hold them hostage.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        I would be like Goldie Hawn rewinding Meryl’s death scene in Death Becomes Her. One more time as you’re dragging me away!

    17. Meribeth*

      The story about #10, the cash register guy was submitted by my brother about my husband. He died 10 years ago when our children were young. It has been so wonderful to remember what a smart and resourceful man he was and what a great storyteller. My children and I have enjoyed reading all your comments. Thank you.

      1. Former Employee*

        I so enjoyed that one for so many reasons, the resourcefulness, of course, but also the thoughtfulness in that he made sure everyone received their paychecks, not just him.

        I am so sorry to read that you and your family lost such a wonderful, kind man.

        May his memory be a blessing.

  2. T. Boone Pickens*

    Holy smokes these are great! Mike in #3 is DEVIOUS! So funny. I would also have paid at least $20 to have been on the oil rig for #7 to have watched that happen live.

        2. Carol the happy elf*

          Even if it’s not, somewhere in the eternal universe of payback, it. really. happened. That beautiful, operatic event HAS to be real.
          (We call things like that the “Murphy-verse”, and their truth is the truth of the ages.)

      2. Pants*

        That was my fave for sure. I’ve worked in that industry and there are “Company Men” everywhere. I would pay a LOT of money to see a video of this quit.

      3. FrivYeti*

        I find it hard to believe that the oil rig story is true, if only because *deliberately* dropping the wrench down once you know it costs your company millions would open you to criminal liability, and I can’t imagine the boss in this situation not going for it given his attitude about the *mistake*.

        1. Jonquil*

          I feel like you’re in a pretty vulnerable position on an oil rig too, because your only way back to land is via the company-provided helicopter. I feel like you’d want to save your sabotaging for when you were within swimming distance.

    3. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I totally LOLed at #7. It sounds like something that would happen in a movie and the actor playing that guy would be amazing and deadpan and probably my new favorite actor.

    4. I Prefer my Legends Suburban Actually*

      This story is beautifully illustrated (assuming you accept that cartoons can be beautiful) in The Big Book of Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand . I highly recommend the book.

    5. archangelsgirl*

      #7 allllll the way. I love the disconnect between the office people (the boss) and the technical knowledge people in the field. Dear boss: Unless you have a better idea, you have to humour the tech people.

    6. FormerRigWorker*

      I heard that back on the rigs in 1989, I really really wish it’s true. It’s virtual the same story word for word so it could be

    7. Lily*

      From Snopes:
      “Print sightings of this legend go back to 1974, but folks recall hearing it in the early 1960s. If lore were to be believed, this incident has played out at

      every oil field you could think to name: East Texas, Alberta, Alaska, an offshore rig near the east coast of Canada, eastern Venezuela, and in the Gulf of Mexico, for instance. What gets dropped in the hole changes too: Hammers, sledge hammers, and wrenches are the instruments of sabotage in various tellings.”

      2. münchner kindl*

        Yeah, it’s a great story- but once you start to think one second: so during all this work, the big hole is not covered at all? You cover normal wells, let alone really deep wells. What if a worker had stumbled and fallen into the hole?

        So if the company was stupid enough to break safety rules by not covering their deep hole – and workers were also too careless to not put something on there for their own safety – then everybody deserves what happened.

        1. Katt*

          The story is probably rooted in a real event that is far less exciting. People embellish it because it’s fun! Think of the movie Unstoppable – it is based on a real event but was highly dramatized for the big screen. In real life, there was no tour train full of kids, no exploding locomotives… plus in the movie, the characters who couple their locomotive onto the end of the train are threatened with firing but in real life that was considered one of the better plans, haha.

          Re safety rules however, depending on how long ago the original event took place, I could believe they left an exposed opening like that. I’ve heard all kinds of horror stories of rig accidents and lax safety standards.

    8. LTR FTW*

      #3 was my post originally — I still think about that day ALL THE TIME, it gives me so much satisfaction! One of my colleagues had a party at his house shortly after the Tirade, and when Mike walked in everyone literally cheered.

  3. The Prettiest Curse*

    I never knew there was a photo of the legendary Resignation in Cod. That makes it even funnier!
    Also, kudos to the cash register hostage taker, and also to Mike for having the foresight to call in on two different phone lines for his rage-quitting rant.

  4. Chirpy*

    ooh, that last one. my sibling had a restaurant ghost every employee (they may have eventually texted) but everyone found out they didn’t have a job by showing up to a locked building. Nice to hear at least one place didn’t get away with it.

    1. ACM*

      Yeah, a restaurant around here did that a couple weeks before Christmas one year. The employees showed up to find the place locked and a notice in the door saying they’re all fired.

      Another restaurant in the area, famous for its sharp pr, offered the employees a free meal with a paystub and encouraged them to drop off applications.

      1. CommanderBanana*

        Same thing happened to an ex of mine. He got a call from the restaurant where he was a line cook saying they had closed, effective immediately. It’s a Thing in the restaurant industry sadly.

      2. Amadeo*

        We had a restaurant around here do the same thing around the same time – was a sit down place in the local mall. I don’t know if we had another place do the application thing though. It was long enough ago that my details are fuzzy. I just remember going in to work at my retail job I had then and seeing the note on the place’s door on my way by and thinking it was a horrible thing to do to people.

    2. Ari*

      That happened to me as well. Only no note at all. Just the doors chained and locked. Even the managers had no idea what was going on.

    3. whingedrinking*

      An ESL school in my area was basically throwing a pouty baby fit because the teachers had unionized. The administration refused to negotiate for months, so the teachers went on strike in the middle of summer, by far the busiest time of year for private ESL schools. The administration finally agreed to at least come to the bargaining table and the teachers agreed to come back and teach – only to find a single piece of printer paper saying “sorry, we’ve gone out of business” taped to the doors. This was crappy for the teachers, of course, but spectacularly awful for the students.

    4. Autumnheart*

      Back in the dotcom era (1999 to 2003-ish), my social circle had several people in it who found out that their startups had gone bust via showing up to work to locked doors.

      1. JustaTech*

        Among the tall tales (that may or may not be true) in my industry (biotech), is the story of a biotech startup that was going under that took everyone out to lunch, and when they got back the doors had been padlocked shut.
        (Too much very expensive stuff to steal or break, I guess.)

        When the local chain conveyor-belt sushi place went under a few years ago most people found out when they showed up for their shift. And then only about half the folks managed to cash their last paycheck. The store next door was closing at the same time, but in an organized, dignified manner, to the point the folks who had worked there were comforting the servers and cooks at the sushi place.
        Either the sushi place was desperate for cash or a lot of people helped themselves to the plates and stuff, because I’m still finding branded soy sauce dishes at other sushi places in the area years later.

    5. solecism*

      My one waitressing job, I was away for the weekend and a coworker called to tell me not to come in Monday because employers had ghosted at the end of the pay period. Never got paid for that last one. Sigh.

  5. Caramel & Cheddar*

    I don’t think I could bring myself to do any of these, but each of these people is spectacular and wonderful in their own way.

    1. Dana Whittaker*

      I worked for a company whose CFO was absolutely legendary nationwide for his practical jokes. He hid some really smelly cheese behind the drawer in the facility manager’s office, which drove FM absolutely BONKERS until CFO fessed up about a week into it.

      1. cardigarden*

        In this case, does facility manager mean head of maintenance? Because if so, holy crap what an remarkable way to make sure no maintenance issue you flag ever gets fixed.

    2. AJoftheInternet*

      I don’t know why it took them 8 DAYS. I would have been in there with a drill taking out locks on day 1, because presumably the company requires use of the office!

        1. The Cat’s ass*

          Yup. It’s one of those hermetically-sealed office buildings so it took a while for the smell (omg, the unholy stink) to percolate through the office and then the whole HVAC system.

          2. Rainy*

            There was a post on a group I read on reddit a few weeks ago (or more, what is time) from someone who was born without a sense of smell and was pranked with a dead fish under her bed…which she couldn’t smell. She was just going about her business while her roommates and everyone who set foot in the house suffered for weeks, and then the guy who pranked her confessed, removed the fish, and got mad at her about it.

            1. But what to call me?*

              Currently 3 weeks post Covid and my sense of smell hasn’t recovered. Pro: not a thing in the world is stinky. Con: no way to tell if something is stinky to other people.

              Someone could prank me like that and I’d have no idea.

              1. Kaye*

                There was a thread going round Twitter a few weeks ago by a guy whose cat had decided to puke down the back of the radiator when the whole family had Covid and nobody could smell it… until they recovered.

            2. PreggoAmoeba*

              That was a fun one. The prankster didn’t realize the OP couldn’t smell and the room mates were suffering for a couple days.

        2. AJoftheInternet*

          Certainly, but the company needs the OFFICE?? Like.. there are important case files in there? Or legal books? Or other things that are required by the rest of the firm?

    3. KTB1*

      My coworkers and I once found some fermenting apples that someone had apparently forgotten in a drawer, but that was accidental (on both counts). I can only imagine the unholy stench of rotting fish. YIKES.

      And if she was in the PNW, my grocery store sometimes offers BOGO salmon when it’s in season. We have A LOT of salmon up here.

      1. JustaTech*

        I had a coworker once who would stop by Subway on his walk into work in the morning to buy his (2?) tuna subs.
        Which he then kept in his desk drawer.
        (We had a perfectly good, clean, not-full, shared office fridge, but he decided his desk drawer was the best place for all that mayo.)

        The day after he left my coworker and I were in his drawers, making sure he hadn’t forgotten a sub, because yuck.

      2. Lucy P*

        Nah, nothing says “I hate you” like smelly, rotten, uncooked seafood. Sometimes the message is worth the cost.

        1. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

          I assume those are frozen, but not cooked. So there would be 4-5 hours added to the time before smells started to emerge…

      1. AnotherOne*

        you have to wonder if for some reason it was just in the office freezer.

        i think that would make it better.

    3. Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain*

      True, and while I’ve never smelled it rotting, salmon is a less “fishy” fish taste to me so why not pick a stronger(?) fish — like sardines or anchovies.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        If you’re doing this type of stunt, you want something that won’t start smelling really bad until it starts rotting. This means you can have a few days’ head start and (if you want it) plausible deniability. If it smells fishy (sorry) from the start, the culprit will be more obvious.

        1. Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain*

          Devious. But they must have already known she was up to something with super glueing the drawer and door shut, so no head start or subterfuge necessary; just skunk the place from minute 1.

          1. The Cat’s ass*

            I recall that nobody realized she’d done the crazy glue thing until the smell started and they couldn’t get the office door or the desk drawer open. We actually had to close for a couple days to air the place out!

          1. Po-tay-toes*

            I was going nuts trying to find the source of a horrific smell in my apartment for weeks before I finally found a rotten potato that had somehow rolled behind my refrigerator.

            1. Laika*

              This just happened in my house! I was so certain it was a dead mouse until we finally discovered the rogue ‘tato

          2. DataSci*

            That’s a longer-term game than fish, but my GOD I have never smelled anything worse than a truly rotten potato.

            1. White Squirrel*

              I had a small potato that had somehow rolled behind something and eventually began to rot. The smell was horrific!

    4. Aggretsuko*

      I’m reminded of the book Welcome to Temptation, in which tiny little shrimp are deployed into tiny crevices in a jerk’s car.

      2. Pennyworth*

        I had a coworker who claimed to have put a couple of shrimp under the carpet of a friend’s car that he knew was going to be parked at an airport for two weeks while friend and new wife went on their honeymoon.

      3. PreggoAmoeba*

        There’s also the infamous jilted wife who put shrimp in the curtain rods for the husband and his new girlfriend. Husband promptly gave wife the house free and clear because of the awful smell.

      1. Sally*

        You know what else smells really bad after a few days? Milk that has spilled on your car’s carpeted floor that you were to lazy to mop up. Don’t ask me how I know this.

        Just an idea for future rage quitters who like the idea of leaving a stink behind. :-)

        1. Despachito*

          Or beer.

          Or blood from fresh meat (a guy I know bought some meat for a barbecue and some water mixed with blood spilled incidentally in his car and soaked into the upholstery… after some time he had people wondering whether he had murdered someone and hid the body in the trunk).

          Just sayin’…

          1. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

            Or… bodily fluids.

            My wife had an (upper GI) food poisoning attack in my car the night before I went on a week long business trip (leaving at 5:30 AM, so couldn’t deal with it before going).

            When I got home and had to deal with it… You do NOT want to know what it smelled like. $300 later (multiple interior shampooings…), it was driveable.

            1. KTB1*

              Or like the time we had to take apart the passenger door in my car after my husband suffered the aftereffects of singlehandedly consuming 2+ bottles of champagne at a NYE party. He didn’t even make it home before they started coming back up. Fortunately, it was cold, so we had time to clean it thoroughly the next day.

        2. Anon because he tells this story a LOT*

          Bouillabaisse.
          My husband spilled a gallon of bouillabaisse* in the car…he says he could smell it for years. I heard the story when I asked how he had managed to get colorless spots in a car carpet.
          (*The restaurant had made too much soup to sell in one night, and it had been really good soup… )

    6. Petty Betty*

      Not in Alaska. A lot of us get it free from friends and relatives all the time. Freezers overflowing and have to “get rid of last year’s catch before we can go fishing this year” kind of scenario. And I’m talking chest freezer, not the standard kitchen freezer.

      A lot of us subsistence hunt and fish, then we know others who do, too.

  8. Bluzcluz*

    Not all heroes wear capes. That cash register guy story is epic. Those shady business owners deserved it. Like wth?

    2. Where’s the Orchestra?*

      The only change I would have made is insisting to each employee that the literally cash (as in ask the bank tellers to give them the cash from the check instead of making a deposit) those checks so the ghosting former employers can’t try and claw back those deposits at a later date.

        1. Where’s the Orchestra?*

          Actually, had a company freeze and then claw back a payment to my dad back when I was 12 (engineering consulting fee). They were made to pay up plus penalty fees by a court, but it was a hot mess while we waited for them to reissue the check and fines (to cover overdraft and bounced check fees).

          However I don’t know if that would still be possible to pull off today.

      3. Another Anon*

        He drove the employees to the bank the checks were drawn on and made sure they all cashed.

        There was no chance he was going to let them get away with bouncing the paychecks, which is no doubt exactly what the owners were planning once their disappoint act failed.

  10. RhondaDawnAnonAnon*

    It bugs me that organizations like like #2 manage to stay in business, but good for the assistants for getting out.

    1. EPLawyer*

      Law firms are notorious for their toxicity. When I was a legal assistant, I lasted one month on a job. The lawyer would tell you to do something, you would do it and he would scream at you for doing it and not doing the other thing. He would throw things too. Fortunately he had bad aim and never hit anyone. The pay was not NEARLY enough to deal with it.

      1. The Original K.*

        I’ve heard many stories from lawyer friends about partners who scream and throw things and are generally abusive.

      2. Bunny Girl*

        That’s what my supervisor would do. She would tell me again and again that she didn’t have time to train me (uhhhh so what was I supposed to do?) but she sure had time to come over to my desk and rip me a new one anytime I did something “wrong.” Or she would email me, tell me what she wanted me to do, I would follow her instructions to the letter, and then she would come over and yell asking why I did that.

      4. Lizzo*

        Too bad it wasn’t dodgeball rules, where if you catch the object thrown at you, the thrower is the one who’s out.

      5. DrGirlfriend*

        I was a MISERABLE legal assistant for about 6 months before I got fired- the toxicity is absolutely unreal. I ended up doing a career swap and now I’m in medical school (medicine being another notoriously toxic field), but it’s maaaaybe 30% as bad as the law firm even on the worst day. That firing was truly the best thing that ever happened to me.

    2. WellRed*

      The picture of tat woman dating f*k you to everyone she passed made me laugh out loud. “F*k you.” F*k you.” “Hey, f*kbyou!”

    3. Bunny Girl*

      That was mine and yeah it was mind blowing. The cherry on top is that they were a law firm that specialized in employment law and they broke… multiple employment laws. It was kind of fascinating.

      When I left I totally had forgotten that the HR director was out of town for a conference so no one saw the letter until late in the day. My supervisor had texted me multiple times to ask where I was but I was an hour deep into an unlimited mimosa brunch and just decided not to respond.

      1. Dee Dee*

        Agree, a true legend. Being a grammar nerd myself, and also very attached to my favorite stapler, I think this guy is my new hero!!

        1. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*

          asked if anyone wanted his stapler is my favourite moment from all these stories. Possibly favourite AAM moment. (“Hey, I’ve been fired. Anyone want my stapler?” HE IS MY KING)

    2. PotsPansTeapots*

      I think it wound up on the desk of a woman who was only there another few weeks. It was the summer of ragequits at that place.

      -#6

      1. Melanie Cavill*

        Please tell me it was like a baton or some sort of horror movie macguffin and the next person who had it would be the next person to ragequit.

    3. Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain*

      I’ve seen that movie…from what I remember, he burns the building to the ground ;)

    4. TrixM*

      Just surgical in the precisely-calibrated level of perfectly-polite public contempt.
      I’m in awe.
      (I’m not ordinarily in favour of commenting on someone’s grammar outside of formal writing contexts, but that was perfect.)

  15. Anon for this*

    Earlier in my career, I had to terminate a long-term employee of the organization where I worked at the time (long story short, she was horribly verbally and emotionally abusive to her staff, up to and including using racial slurs). When I went to walk her out of the building, she told me that she had parked on the other side of the building and asked if we could go out a different exit that was closer to her car. I said, sure. So as we walked to the exit, she yelled out “I just got fired!” at every single person we passed. It. Was. Horrible. I finally got her out of the building and to her car. THEN, I had to make arrangements to come in on the weekend for her to empty out her office, where she had 20+ years of accumulated crap. She brought her body-builder husband with her, who kept glaring at me the entire time she was packing up her stuff. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to bring a burly security guard with me to meet with her, but it was, bar none, the most uncomfortable termination meeting I’ve ever had to do. And that includes the guy who went out and slashed the tires on my new car right after I’d had to let him go.

    2. irene adler*

      Gee, she was let back in to collect her stuff?
      Awfully considerate of you and your employer.

      After all, this is the reason they make dumpsters.
      Just saying.

      1. Anon for this*

        The company I worked for at the time was very employee-friendly, almost to a fault. It had its good and bad points.

      2. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

        Well, it depends on the personal belongings..

        1. Irreplaceable stuff such as pictures.
        2. Books. I have between $3000 and $5000 in personally owned reference books in my office (bought on my nickel, with no reimbursement). If the company put them in the dumpster, you bet there would be a lawyer on their ass ASAP.

        Fortunately, I do not work for assholes.

        1. The_artist_formerly_known_as_Anon-2*

          When I went to one job, I had to purchase my own computer reference books – they cost me around $200 in 1991. When I left that company five years later, they tried to make me leave the books behind. I said NO — since your company wouldn’t pay for them (which is highly weird in itself) I’m taking them with me.

          But I did e-mail = “Here’s how you can order the current manuals from….”

        1. Lurker*

          No, but instead of allowing the terminated employee back in the office, you can box up their belongings and mail them to the former employee.

    3. UpstateDownstate*

      ….and this is why at my current job I have the managers deliver the terminations with someone from hr in presence. You wanted to hire them? You can now fire them. Sigh…I’m so sorry about your tires!

  16. SJ (they/them)*

    i gasped SO LOUD at the wrench one oh my god. I would never have the balls. I just. Aaaaahhhhh!!! Amazing.

        1. Despachito*

          Not wanting to be a killjoy but they could have sued him for the costs of pulling the wrench up again. (I am glad they didn’t)

          2. Art3mis*

            Would be a waste of time and money, you’re not going to get $7 million out of an employee, even if you won the suit.

  17. Mrs. Whatsit*

    #10 reminds me of discovering that my favorite ice cream shop (a staple of the neighborhood for decades) had closed by reading a local news article about how a manager showed up for work one day to find the door padlocked and no one knew what was up. No response from the owners by phone iirc. Didn’t realize this kind of behavior was A Thing. Yikes.

    Also, that oil rig story is amazing. Made my day.

    1. soontoberetired*

      I know a number of stores that have done that thru the years, including a very pricey niche houseware shop that didn’t pay its employees for their last two weeks. That owner tried to open another store a couple of years later in the same town. I do believe that person was met with lawsuits within days of the new store opening. They still owed money to the employees, and vendors from the previous shop!

    2. I'm just here for the cats!*

      Yeah for a short time my mom worked a 2nd job at the local pizza place and at least they had the courtesy of calling and telling her not to come in that they closed the place.

    3. Dust Bunny*

      I can think of two restaurants in my city that have done this. I think they both got the pay they owed squeezed out of them by the legal system, though, thank goodness.

    5. Polly*

      There’s a popular small chain brewery/restaurant in my area that closed about half their satellite locations (including ours) with zero notice, and then quickly/quietly rebranded… we’re an hour south of their main hub and it seemed they escaped backlash, but I’ll never eat there again. What a terrible thing to do to your employees. I had a friend who worked there and they got their M-Sat schedules on Sunday afternoon, showed up the next morning, and the building was locked and the signs were gone…

      1. Polly*

        Replying to my own comment… I got curious and looked it up, it looks like the entire chain shut down for good in mid-2019 (shows how often I get out post-COVID) and the owner/founder declared bankruptcy around that time. The “surprise! you’re fired!” closures were in 2015 or so. Karma did finally catch up, it seems.

  18. Elmost*

    #4 – I kind of want to know. Did the terrifying paralegal have a good reason for the salmon/super glue situation, or was she just completely off her rocker?

    Not that I can think of many things that would justify that level of revenge, of course…

    1. the cat's ass*

      Well, we had a Hellbeast boss who was slowly winnowing down what she called the ‘middle layer’ of the office which included Terrifying paralegal, head of transcription, head of billing, me,etc, because Hellbeast was going to ‘manage the minions’ (that’s an exact quote!) herself. And of course, she went about it in her usual horrible way. So the writing was on the wall for anyone who wasn’t an MD or a minion. So it was a definite combination of the Hellbeast boss once again Hellbeasting and Terrifying paralegal being, yeah, at least a little bit off. It’s been over twenty years since i bailed out of that job, and i still look back and shudder.

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        I want to hear more stories about how terrifying Terrifying Paralegal was. Although maybe I actually don’t.

  22. whistle*

    My friend rage quit her job of 10 years this morning!!! She didn’t do anything other than say “I quit” and walk out, but it’s been a long time coming and I’m really happy for her!

  23. Zelda*

    I have a part time job that I have been trying to quit for a month. I think I may have to end up ghosting, wish I could do something like one of these stories, but it is hard when fully remote.

    1. Lady_Lessa*

      Two suggestions, depending upon your tastes. Sending a short video of a woman walking free into the sunrise or more of a disaster picture or video. “Astronomy picture of the day” has a very nice picture of a volcano and lightening.

    2. ferrina*

      If you’ve got any company equipment, make sure you send it back with some kind of evidence of return. The company can go after you for unreturned equipment. It happened to a friend of mine. But the company had been shorting her on her 401k, so she said she’d return the equipment when they put the rest of the money in her 401k.

  24. Dr. Doll*

    These almost make me want to have a terrible job so I can spectacularly rage-quit some time. (No no, gods and demons, not really!)

  25. PotteryYarn*

    My two favorite quitting stories that I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing:

    1. This guy in sales had made a HUGE sale the year before and was being touted as The Next Big Thing™ around the company. Fast forward a few months and he hasn’t made a single sale all year. One day around lunchtime, he just stands up, tells his supervisor that he’s quitting, and walks out of the building. Some of our coworkers followed him on Instagram and saw that he immediately purchased a first-class ticket to a tropical island that departed at 4 PM that same day and went on a nice little vacation by himself.

    2. I used to work at a breakfast-focused restaurant chain and helped to train new servers. We had a girl transfer from a different store to our store at one point. She had been at her old store for a few years and really truly did not need any training and was able to jump right in. After a couple weeks, she’s working her own section on a weekend morning and in comes one of the local collegiate sports teams. This team comes in pretty regularly—it’s a large group of 20-25 people and they have somewhat complicated orders, but overall they’re very nice and tip well. They are seated in her section. A few of us offer to help her because it’s a lot to manage, but she tells us she’s fine and gets the order put in. The food starts coming out of the window and begins to pile up, but she’s not taking it out to the tables. We start looking around to see if she needs help and she has completely disappeared. Apparently she walked right out of the back door and just never came back. Didn’t tell a soul she was leaving. It was so bizarre, and I’ve always wondered what happened to her and what pushed her over the edge.

    2. DogTrainer*

      Back in college, I was a server. One day, I was training a brand new server at our restaurant. Nothing interesting or unique had happened, but about an hour into the training shift, she said, “Oh, I have to run home! I left the oven on!” Then she left and just never came back.

      It was truly bizarre. I still can’t figure out why she just couldn’t say, “Nah, this isn’t for me” instead of ghosting.

      1. Jennifer @unchartedworlds*

        With ones like that, I always wonder if perhaps they actually did mean to come back and then something happened. Like maybe the oven caught fire and by the time she’d sorted out all the consequences it was a few days later & felt too embarrassing to come back. One day there might be a letter to Alison, “I inadvertently ghosted my workplace after an oven-related incident, is it too late to apologise?”

  26. allornone*

    I knew someone who rage quit at Barnes & Noble one day. She was entirely justified- she was legit the only employee on the floor (registers and customer service), it was slammed, and the manager on duty refused to come out of the back room and help. Per her story (we weren’t coworkers at the time), she just took off her lanyard and walked out.

    Sadly, years later, it would bite her on the butt as she was trying to get another job at the B&N location I was it (we met working for Borders bookstores before it went under), and was deemed unhireable for job abandonment. I told the story to my manager in case knowing the circumstances would make it better, but nope. Just as well. She might have been justified in quitting, but she was fairly entitled with a lousy work ethic. I was relieved not to have to work with her again.

    Another guy got fired from the cafe and simply walked out the doors, straight to the mall balcony a few feet away, yelled at booming “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCK!” and walked calmly off into the night.

    1. Not Your Admin Ass(t)*

      That final paragraph legit made me bray out loud at the work desk! I wish I had the voice for booming yells. Sadly, when I walk out, the best I’ll manage will be an indignant “screw this place!” in my tiny little squeak.

    2. ferrina*

      For big corporations like B&N, there can be a corporate HR system that is hard to override. Often it’s not worth it for individual managers to try to wade through the HR process (which may or may not even get them what they want). I was declined for a job at Chain Retail because a couple years earlier I’d worked for a different chain that they’d acquired, and my employee records were in HR limbo. It was easier for them to hire and train someone else than to bring me in.

    3. 2 Cents*

      I was amazingly not fired for this, but when I worked at Borders (RIP), I was often the only peon on the floor, so the only person on cashier duty. The manager refused to come out to help me, so when people got to the front of the line and started complaining to me, I said something like, “I agree, this situation is unbelievable. I’ve been asking in my headset for help, but they refuse to staff more people! Here’s the corporate number. Please call and complain.” I was dead serious, and I wonder if any of those people took me up on it.

      2. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

        To be honest, from a customer PoV, that may have been the best thing you could have done.

        When someone is being inconvenienced for whatever reason, honesty as to the reason is better than bulls**t.

      3. MiK*

        We did this when I worked at Michaels! My store was in Camada and for the first time our dollar was at par with the US. Customers were complaining as we still had higher prices on everything, listed right next to the lower US prices. Our team said “nothing we can do, call the corporate office” And they did! Corporate got in touch with our manager, told us to stop telling people to call them, and then changed all the price tags so we had to rip off the lower US prices on every single product.

      4. The OTHER other*

        I worked and later managed in retail for years, the thought of having ONE person working the floor of a large and busy store and a line of customers waiting to buy stuff and the manager refusing to come out from the back is shocking. That’s a manager that needs to be fired.

  27. Ms. Yvonne*

    All so good. I feel like oil rig guy and topless daycare lady would really hit it off. Their eff yous are on the same level. Raw, human eff yous.

    1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      They went out for a salmon dinner. And sent the leftovers to their previous bosses, via pony express. Enjoy!

  28. Baby Yoda*

    Hey, Cough Drops was me! Fun to be included, but I looove the guy who re-dropped the wrench down the hole.

    1. M*

      Was it really 2 hours of flipping through a manual it was it actually longer? I’ve have seconds thoughts too if handed a manual and otherwise ignored when I showed up at the date and time I was told.

      1. Unkempt Flatware*

        Yes! I came here to say just that. I always know it’s a bad sign when a manual is plopped in my lap as my first bit of training. I have always wanted to write to Allison to ask how to handle it when, 9 times out of 10, it’s clear a new job wasn’t ready for me. No computer access. No station to work in. Here’s a manual to read. Away they scamper. Can I just say, “hey, call me when you’re really ready”?

        1. Baby Yoda*

          It’s been a long time but I think 2 hours was the most it could have been. She had said she wanted to refresh her mind on the processing, so I didn’t want to give her files to work on too soon. I finally reached her a day or so later and she told me she’d exaggerated her experience and just freaked out looking at the manual and left. Oh and no, she hadn’t had a sore throad.

    2. Weaponized Pumpkin*

      I had a temp job where they practically threw a party when I came back from lunch. Apparently two previous temps had gone out for breaks on their first day and ghosted. It was the easiest, nicest place ever, just boring.

      1. Daisy*

        I used to sub, and the first time I was in the PALS room the paras wouldn’t even talk to me. I came back from lunch and you would have thought I was their long-lost daughter. Apparently, several subs in a row just drove away during lunch and refused to come back. They thought it was because the subs were upset by the children, but I suspect the adults were driving them away as some sort of test.
        Turned into one of my favorite classes to sub.

        1. JustaTech*

          My friend had a new employee at her daycare do something like that. Thursday of her first week the new gal goes out for lunch and just … didn’t come back. So my friend is scrambling to 1) get coverage for the room so they’re in compliance with the law, and 2) call every hospital in town to try and find her staffer, assuming she’d been hit by a car or something. (Turns out another friend of ours knows the most efficient procedure on finding potentially-missing adults who may be hurt/sick/arrested or maybe just quit.)

          Turns out the person was fine, they just quit, and apparently was so embarrassed that they never cashed their paycheck for that partial week.

      2. Art3mis*

        I had a temp job like that except that I fully understood why temps did not come back after lunch. They were not nice at all. It was only until the end of the week and when my agency asked if I wanted to go back the next week that was a firm no thanks.

  30. Aspiring Chicken Lady*

    The Worst Coworker Of All Time ™ got a job offer in the middle of the day. He yelled “I’m Out of Here” into the cubicle farm full of staff and clients. I heard it from the next room over.

    It was An Actual Miracle of Composure and Professionalism ™ that not a single staff member yelled out “Thank God!” … although everyone was thinking about it and there may or may not have been cocktails raised that very evening.

  32. Angstrom*

    A variation on #4 I heard was by a jilted lover — raw shrimp in the curtain rods of the ex’s apartment. Tore the whole place apart looking for the source of the stench before finally looking there…. ;-)

    2. KayDeeAye*

      There is a short story that uses this idea, except that she uses the shells of shrimp. I can’t remember the name of the author, but it’s great. In the end, the jilted wife is able to buy back her beloved house at a bargain price because nobody can figure out how to get rid of the smell.

    3. Joanna*

      I’ve heard the shrimp in the curtain rods story.

      I do know a guy who dumped his wife of 40 years for his high school sweetheart. The wife asked to have a few days in the house to clear out her things. She took all of the electrical cords to appliances that were detachable. I have no idea how I kept a straight face while the guy complained about it. He really did deserve it.

    4. Amy Farrah Fowler*

      Hahahaha, when I heard that version, the guy moved, took the curtains with him and didn’t understand why his new place smelled as bad as his old place. Probably not a real story, but hilarious to think about.

      2. Where’s the Orchestra?*

        If there is a Firehouse Subs by you it can also be located there as well. However, I cannot tell you which is better because I do not care for lime aid/lemon aid.

    2. helenteds*

      I was scrolling through the comments to see if I could find someone who shared my love for that mental image, now I am picturing meerkats popping up out of cubicles.

  35. Snoozing not schmoozing*

    #2: “[W]e had one woman who did the whole stalk out in the middle of the day saying ‘F*** you’ to everyone she passed.”
    Did anyone else fantasize that she sang it to “So Long, Farewell” from Sound of Music?

    #4: Impressive planning and commitment, and I don’t know if I’m more in awe or fear.

  36. Aggretsuko*

    ‘Lovely working with you, won’t see you again because I’ve been fired.’ somehow reminds me of “Not Getting Married Today” from the musical Company. I picture her singing it out.

  41. Will Work for Chocolate*

    I would like to propose that, much like “Good News Fridays” is posts full of good news, that the last (or first, or second, or third – whatever) Monday (or Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday – again whatever) be nothing but rage quitting stories. I need more of these in my life, and on a regular basis.

  42. Kara*

    Oooh oooh … I have one. This wasn’t exactly a rage quit, but similar.

    It was the early 1990s and I was working for a contracting company, contracted out to a dot-com startup. Remember those days? It was supposed to be a 6-9 month contract with an option to go permanent at the end of it. The company was an online licensed goods portal and my job was to take the print catalogs of client companies, scan them, and create our inventory database.

    For the first 4-5 months everything was great; there was a ton of work to do, we were all happy, clients were thrilled. Then things started to get wonky. The two owners (brothers) had been going to a bunch of merchant shows and trade shows to promote the business and we found out they’d been making parties and vacations of it, taking their spouses, kids, relatives, staying in super expensive resort hotels, flying first class, etc. etc. The money situation started to get tight and we were told we couldn’t purchase additional equipment or bring on additional data people “right now” but they still kept going to these trade show/vacation trips.

    The final straw was when they laid off two of our data people but still did a trade show in London and took their families alone for the “vacation”. I realized that this wasn’t going to become a permanent job and I needed to reach out to my recruiter. The very next day, a Wednesday, my recruiter called me and told me that they were going to have to pull me from the job. They said that the last 3 checks covering my pay had bounced and the owner they’d been dealing with stopped answering his phone or returning their calls. They said I should work out through Friday so I’d have a full weeks pay and they’d find me a new gig as soon as they could.

    About an hour after I had that conversation, the brothers asked me to come into their office and talk to them. They tried to make excuses for the situation which I told them I couldn’t do anything about – I’m not the contracting company. Then they said that I couldn’t leave on Friday because it would leave them in the lurch – again, I have no say in that. The contracting company won’t pay me for any work past Friday. We went round and round and round. Finally I told them that my contracting company had been willing to cover me for 2 more days to at least try to transition some of the work, but this point I didn’t feel that would be effective, so I’d just pack up my things and leave now. As I walked out of the one brother’s office he yelled after me “I am going to tell everyone who calls for a reference that you lack professionalism! You’ll never get another job.”

    I stood in the middle of the office and said – full voice, but not yelling: “Name, you wouldn’t know professionalism if it bit you in the ass.” I packed up my computer (oh yeah, I’d been using my personal laptop at this gig) and walked out. The two brothers followed me out of the building and all the way to my car alternately begging me to stay, telling me they’d give me money to take to my consulting agency right now … and telling me that I was a horrible employee and person and they were going to make sure I never worked in Atlanta again. I just got in my car and drove off.

    My agency paid me through that Friday anyway and I never heard anything else about it.

    1. Falling Diphthong*

      Then they said that I couldn’t leave on Friday because it would leave them in the lurch.

      I love this detail.

      And the following you while simultaneously blandishing/threatening. It’s why I believe almost all the “would someone really be this clueless?” stories.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        “How can you leave me, you horrible cow!” is not really the “you’re right and I love you again” line far too many people think it is.

  43. Budgie Buddy*

    After #7 all I can think of is Gandalf saying “Fool of a Took! Throw yourself in next time and rid us of your stupidity.”

  44. Bob-White of the Glen*

    “The guy stares him in the face saying nothing, then walks over to the mangled wrench and drops it back down the hole.”

    This is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. Wish I could have seen the screamer’s face!

  45. La Triviata*

    At a bad job I had years ago, one woman was supposed to be managing the receptionist. She had no management experience and little idea of how to manage someone, but had hugely inflated ideas about her expertise. She had little to do with the receptionist and never gave her any feedback on how she was doing. The time for the receptionist’s first review came up and the “manager” landed on her with complaints and told her how horribly she was doing, said she wouldn’t get a raise (which was almost automatic at that time) and told her to improve or she’d be out. The receptionist collected her paycheck (yes, it was payday and we were still doing paper checks at the time), set the phones on the nightlines and left. No one could figure out how to get the phones working, so the office was essentially holding itself incommunicado. Took until the next week (since it was Friday) to get the phones open again.

  46. Esmae*

    Technically more of a rage resignation, but:

    Two weeks into a three week notice period, which she’d only agreed to because the manager made her feel bad about leaving, a former coworker of mine was seriously regretting agreeing to that extra week. Then the manager decided to snap at her at the front desk, in front of customers (not to mention the rest of us). My coworker picked up the front desk phone, called HR, and asked if, since she’d given notice two weeks ago, she could just leave. They said yes. She got her purse, clocked out, and never came back.

  47. Tangerina Warbleworth*

    #4 is awesome as it is, but:

    I would have microwaved that salmon before I put it in the drawer.

    2. a frog*

      I was going to say… if they had temperature control over the office, to crank it up so it would just keep cooking day after day!

  49. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

    I have no idea how my little “house fire” made it into this collection of gold, haha.

  51. CatBookMom*

    In the late 80s I moved from Denver to LA to work for one of the 2nd-tier national CPA firms. Things went badly, and I left after about 6 months, into a 16% raise, etc. job. About 6 months after that, people showed up to work on Monday and found the doors locked. The Texas office had gotten into serious SEC & IRS problems with a scheme they’d developed for some real-estate partnerships, RICO penalties applied, yada.
    Apparently the LA partners decided to bail, and left all of their employees jobless, unpaid, yada. I don’t know about what happened at other offices. LA auditors traveling had to ante up travel and hotel costs on their own credit cards and wait a month or so for reimbursement. They were even worse off.

    1. CatBookMom*

      Replying to myself to correct some mistakes I made in relying on my memory. The collapse came 3 years after I left, not 6mo. The whole national firm collapsed and filed bankruptcy.

  53. TG*

    I quit a toxic job and a very toxic boss. I gave notice and he proceeds to pull me into his office and start to yell at me: I calmly sat there and said I don’t care what you think about me; I’m a good person and I’m done here soon.
    Just repeated it to him.
    Finally he said I could leave then and there. It was my second day into notice period. I went to HR and said I gave notice so need to be paid to the end of my two weeks but my boss told me to leave now.
    So I got a two week paid vacation before I started my new job!

    1. Sad Desk Salad*

      A friend of mine did something similar. She was being pushed out, and found a new job. She gave two weeks and when they asked how long it would take to transition her work, she said one week. They said, OK, go ahead and transition out and take next week off, full pay. Great! A free week off! Right?

      I warned her to get it in writing so that they wouldn’t somehow use her remaining PTO instead of paying it out on her last day, but I needn’t have worried. She had that covered.

      She had already figured out that company surveys were the following week, and our new management was WILDLY disliked and she knew they expected poor results from her, and wanted her out before the survey was released. But, of course, she was still on the payroll for that week, and still had access to the survey, so she managed to fill it out anyway.

      Management got terrible marks on the survey from all but one employee and was roundly chastised by upper management (which of course they took out on the rest of us, but that’s another story). We were all in the room when management looked at the data, and when it dawned on them that there were 7 employees giving survey responses instead of the 6 they were expecting, the looks on their faces were priceless.

  54. MC*

    OMG #1 – I want to ask if you worked at a Daycare Chain but I shouldn’t say the name, but, god, I also worked at a Day Care with the red polo with the embroidered logo and that was a shit show. It started off fine but it devolved into one of the most mentally draining jobs I ever did. I was there 6 months and people were constantly coming and going and i stayed because I needed the money.

    My experience was so bad, there, I wish I had a cool quitting story.

  55. Mike*

    I remember back as an undergrad when I worked as a server at the Faculty Club. I was an older student (25 or so), and one day we were understaffed by three servers. We were busting our humps getting everything set up after lunch for the dinner shift and an hour behind. However, the shift manager and his assistant buddy were jokey guys with nasty barbs in all their jokes, sophomores promoted before their time, I’d say, and I think had plans they were going to be late for, so they started riding everyone, especially me, but not working harder themselves. After an hour and a half of this, they finally said something really insulting to me, I forget what, and I just faced them, saluted each with a middle finger, and said, “F*** you, I quit.” Took off my apron on the way out of the dining room, went straight down to my locker, and clocked out.

    I went in the next day to hand in my uniform, and when I went in the kitchen, the cooks asked, “Are you going to come back to work?” “Not while [manager] is in charge of me. Besides, I found a new job the same day for $2 an hour more.” (Work-study is nice that way.) They just shook their heads and said, “That guy just drives off all the best workers.” When I handed in my uniform to the assistant manager of the club, she asked me to clarify my side of the story, and said it was a shame to lose me and added that they probably promoted those two much too quickly, and said I was always welcome back if I needed a job. (I never did.)

  56. Cam*

    A couple of from working at a University:

    A colleague told us she was quitting by phone – she was boarding a plane to the US.

    Another colleague worked in student admin. He got a video on “Funniest home Videos” that involved a fountain and someone looking like they were peeing. This was the 1990s when voting involved calling a number, so he used the university switchboard phones to call multiple times. Well, the video got the highest votes, so he won $250K. He left a message on the university admin answerphone that he was quitting.

  58. Luna*

    For a story labelled ‘the flasher’, I certainly expected something a bit more… shocking than just a woman walking somewhere with a bra on top. (But this might just be the European point of view of things saying that…)
    Still, a good way to quit. I hate the ‘Sink or Swim’ type of managers that throw you into the deep end and, if you drown or struggle to get yourself back up, they think *you* are the failure.

  60. Troublemaker*

    I recall an experience like #9. I was working from home and fired over Zoom by my director and bosses, who live on the other side of the country. I decided to go to the office to clear out my desk. My credentials had already been deactivated, though, so I had to wait for somebody to let me in. My coworkers and I had a nice conversation about things while I packed my desk; since our bosses weren’t there, we ended up relaxing and chatting for a while.

    Oh, also, there was the time that I reacted to being fired by pulling out the ukulele in the middle of the office and singing, “This feeling / inside me / finally found my life / I’m finally free / no longer / torn in two / living my own life / not working for you” because I was so glad to be free.

  61. HarryMonk*

    A friend of mine recounted a great story to me. He was working in accounting for a company here in the UK and they used to get departing colleagues to make a speech while stood on a desk in the office.

    There was a very quiet guy who, when it became his turn to deliver a leaving speech, stood up and listed some of the people he’d miss. He then got to who he wouldn’t miss and let them know exactly why, with examples e.g. “Dave, I won’t miss you because you take lots of personal calls, spend most of your day gossiping and the rest of your team is carrying you”. He did this for maybe 6 or 7 people.

    He dismounted, collected his things and left to a kind of stunned silence broken only by the sobbing from one of the women he’d called out. I think there had been a poor management culture that had allowed certain poor behaviours to thrive and to my friend – the quiet dude had basically said what everyone else was thinking but was too polite to say.

    2. London Calling*

      Heard a great on, don’t know how true it is, about an email sent company wide by someone who rage-quit

      A – f- you
      B – f-you
      C – you’re OK
      D f-you
      E – you’re nice.
      F – you, I like
      G – f- you

      And so on, all the way through the compay

  62. Sad Desk Salad*

    The wrench one literally made my jaw drop. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was so simple and perfect. I hope he wasn’t sued for that.

    The restaurant one didn’t surprise me, although I’m glad the manager got everyone paid. When I was bartending at one of a small chain of family-owned restaurants, I was closing up one night and doing the weekly inventory when my manager offered to do it for me. This is in Maryland, where hourly wages for bartenders and servers is $2.13 an hour, so I wasn’t getting paid for the work and was thrilled to let the salaried manager do it. As I was grabbing my coat, he stopped me and mentioned that the owners had decided to close the restaurant, and not to come in the next day. Apparently they ghost without notice to keep people from pillaging the bar and cash registers. The advance notice from my manager was a courtesy–everyone else walked in to work the next day to find locked doors and a sign announcing the sudden closure.

    In hindsight, we should’ve seen it coming. It was a sports-type bar and half the TVs were broken, there were no sports channels beyond basic cable, the beer selection was never upgraded, and we’d had trouble with health inspections that some basic upgrades would’ve resolved easily. They managed to stay open through the holidays and ditched us all right after the new year.

  64. Meribeth*

    The story about #10, the cash register guy was submitted by my brother about my husband. He died 10 years ago when our children were young. It has been so wonderful to remember what a smart and resourceful man he was and what a great storyteller. My children and I have enjoyed reading all your comments. Thank you.

    1. Don't be long-suffering*

      No. Thank you. And thanks to your human being of a husband. I’m sure his values live on through all of you. Peace.

  66. Maggie*

    I rage-quit my last job. I’d been perfectly happy there for 15 years, then got a new manager. She was… not great. Calling out sick had to be 3 calls, one message to her, another to the assistant manager, and a third to your unit supervisor. Emails were not acceptable. Any issues had to be brought to her in person, so there was never a paper trail. The worst was that if she wanted to discuss performance issues with you, the assistant manager and unit supervisor were present too. Nothing like being scolded for being 2 minutes late in front of an audience. After she told me on Friday evening that my schedule would be different starting Monday morning, because apparently she viewed having a schedule that was anything but 9-5 as a ‘special privilege’ that I didn’t deserve. I had to document how long it took me to do each task, because she felt I could be doing it faster, and defend every deviation from her arbitrary timeline. (She’d never actually DONE my job, but had some very interesting ideas about how it should be done.) It reached the point where I’d have a panic attack any time she called me into her office. One morning, I wasn’t feeling well, and stopped to pick up a Covid-19 test on the way to work. I texted her and the appropriate sub-managers that I would be a few minutes late, as the first pharmacy I stopped at was out of tests. She called me into the office with sub managers in attendance, of course), accused me of making it all up as an excuse for being late because she didn’t receive the text until three minutes after my scheduled start time. I explained that I’d sent it ten minutes earlier. She demanded to see not only my phone for the timestamp on the message, but my receipt, AND the used covid test (a photo was not enough, she wanted the snot-swab and test cartridge.)
    I sobbed and hyperventilated in my car for a few minutes while retrieving the test, and decided that I’d had it. Weekly panic attacks were not worth $16 an hour. I grabbed a shopping bag along with the tests, went back to her office, dropped the used test on her desk and said “Here’s my test. If you have any other demands, take it up with HR because I quit.” I cleaned out my desk, and told the director that I was done. I wish I could say that it was incredibly cool, but I was still hyperventilating and ugly-crying, so it was probably more cringe than cool. The best part is that the only other person in the office who was trained to do all the stuff I did was retiring in a couple weeks. They only posted one part-time job to fill the 60+ hours we left. A friend who still works there told me that in the 4 months since I left, 3 people have taken the job and quit, because it’s just absurd to expect one person to do the work of two in half the time, especially for minimum wage with no benefits.
    I found a new full time position about a month later with a wonderful boss who treats me like an adult who knows what they’re doing.

  67. RLR*

    Mine isn’t nearly as great as these, but years ago I worked in high end retail. I got a new job but they asked if I would work part time and cover some Sundays because a lot liked that day off and I usually picked up that shift. I could use the extra money so why not.

    I went in 2 weeks before Mother’s day, which was a very busy season for us, and noticed that the store manager took a $15k sale, that was mine, for himself. There would’ve been 3% commission on it and with $12/hr at the time, that would’ve been a nice chunk of change to me. (i think he was banking on my not checking sales while I was off) I waited until the doors were unlocked, grabbed my stuff, and said “f*** you, [Manager], and don’t call me back again.”

    Not sure why but the manager was let go about a year later. He still periodically looks me up on LinkedIn but never had reached out. (thankfully)

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