let’s discuss deranged things your employer did when you resigned

by Alison Green on January 25, 2024

Some managers handle it really, really badly when people resign. From the managers who stop speaking to resigning employees (because leaving is a personal betrayal, apparently), to the manager who told a resigning employee “I hate you” and threw things, to the manager who slashed an employee’s tires on their last day (!), some bosses lose their minds when people leave.

Let’s talk about bananapants things your employer did when you resigned. Please share in the comment section!

You may also like:
{ 1,032 comments }

{ 1,032 comments… read them below }

  1. Maple Leaf*

    I recently resigned from a job I had been in for 8.5 years. The supervisors in the unit had a history of either ignoring you once you gave notice or doubling down on their micro-managing of you. I waited until the last possible second to give notice (yes, I did it at 4:58 pm on a Friday, providing exactly 2 weeks notice). My supervisor then proceed to ignore me until 3 pm on my last day when she sent me an email with 187 item “to do” list, to be completed by 5 pm that day. This task list is not something that could have been done in a week, let alone 2 hours. I laughed and laughed to myself, then walked out at 5 pm having not touched the task list. I happily started my new job on Monday without a regret.

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        I kind of wish that you’d just waited until 4:57 and replied to the email, “Haha, no” right before you signed off for the last time. Or even just, “No.”

        1. MassMatt*

          This is eminently reasonable, given it would take most people about two hours to read a list of 187 tasks.

          That’s the kind of nutbaggery I would definitely want to save for future humorous reference: “look what a prior manager sent me, two hours before I left the job. No, scroll down, there’s another page. No, keep scrolling. Keep going! Yes, that’s right, this was at 3pm on a Friday of my last week there. A hundred tasks? No, there’s at least three more pages!”

    2. Clorinda*

      What was the expectation there? That you would sty till it was all done, delaying your departure date if necessary?

      1. birb*

        That she can technically say she “didn’t do anything that needed to be done for the transition” and be the victim later.

        1. Michelle*

          I have been looking for some excuse, any excuse, to write in about my sister’s horrible, horrible boss of a few years ago.

          To keep it relevant: the nutso thing he did was come to her home in the middle of the night on the day she gave her notice and remove the lawn sign she had up for his business.

          But the real reason I want to write about him is that nearly every day for the 3 years she worked there he made all his employees hold hands and close their eyes while he LED THEM IN PRAYER once a day at lunch.

        2. Pdxer*

          This is exactly what I was thinking too. “Just TRY to use me as a reference! You didn’t complete my seemingly-insane-even-to-an-insane-person list of nonsense! Terrible employee!!”

    3. Maple Leaf*

      I should add that the task list was separated by category, tabbed, highlighted, bolded, underlined, etc etc etc. The supervisor likely spent a solid 10-15 hours putting this task list together, which is not a very effective use of her time.

      2. Not Tom, Just Petty*

        Was going to ask. Revenge is a dish best served cold and old that…how long did she spend putting that thing together, just getting hotter and hotter.
        187 color coded, cross referenced tasks?
        pwahahahahahahaha
        Rock on with that nonsense.

      3. HalJordan*

        Oh, that’s just begging for a “Wow, so organized! Glad to see you’re ready for the next person in the role. Good luck with the transition!”

        1. LeafFreckleton*

          long time reader, maybe first time commenter – this is so good I could not pass by without thanking you for this image!

      4. goddessoftransitory*

        “Boy, it was really generous of you to share this creative writing exercise. I can see you worked hard on it; best of luck in the future!”

    5. Never the Twain*

      With a list that long, there must have been at least one item which wasn’t clear (or which you could pretend you didn’t understand). So wait till 4:59 and email requesting clarification “asap, so I can get on with it as soon as I get your clarification.”

      2. Maple Leaf*

        Honestly, I didn’t read past the first 5 lines once I saw the insanity that she had put together. I scrolled through the entire email but basically ignored it after that and definitely did not reply to it or take any action on it. I bounced on out of there at 5 pm, and haven’t looked back!

        PS – I am not worried about loosing her as a reference as I didn’t use her to secure my current job (she is an entire banana pants blog unto herself and her out of this world ways she tried to supervise the team).

    7. Hazel*

      At 18, I worked in a poorly run day care. When I went into the owner/director’s office to give notice, she started crying and asked me to stay because this was a terrible time to leave.
      I suspect she said it was a terrible time for me to leave because the week before I had anonymously reported her for serious safety violations due to under staffing. I’m sure she had been given a very tight time frame to turn that around.
      Her son had been a good friend in high school, but he never spoke to me again.

    8. London Calling*

      I had a similar. New manager (who barely acknowledged my existence anyway) a week before I left sent me a list of several hundred purchase orders with a request that could I tell her if these had been properly authorised by the right people and within their budget limits? (a question about the PO system, incidentally, that IT could have spend 10 minutes explaining to her without all that malarkey).

      I have no idea if she was taking it out on me for resigning or if she seriously thought that with a week to go, my job already handed over and my stated intention to take a few months off into semi-retirement (so no reference requirements) that I was actually going to do more than a) read it b) laugh and c) say ‘Yep, not gonna happen’; but that was what I did.

      No idea what happened to the list but the manager was on her way a few months later (as was my replacement. Never did find out why they departed so abruptly but I can guess).

    9. jojo*

      Should have forwarded the list to HR and told them there was no way o complete it between 3pm and 5 pm when ou resignation takes effect and you are not responsible if a months worth of work does not get done in the final two hours of your employment with the company.

  2. Super Anonymous*

    When I gave my 2 weeks, I was told it was “unprofessional” to give less than 4 weeks. No, my industry does not have a standard amount of leave required.

    1. LovelyAardvark*

      I got radio silence when I have two weeks notice. When I sent a follow up email to the management team a week later asking about wrapping things up, my manager sent an email directed to me, but sent to ALL STAFF, instructing me to clean out my desk and transfer all work to coworkers. No context showing that it was anything other than me being fired. lol. It was a weird intimidation tactic.

      I ended up sending out my own farewell message to the staff on my final day thanking then for the work experience and telling them I had a new job.

      She was nuts, and this was not the weirdest thing she did. But it was a Social Security field office. You know, a circle of hell.

      1. LovelyAardvark*

        *gave two weeks notice.

        FYI, everyone else that had quit while i had been there for two years had a nice farewell message sent by management on their behalf. But I was her 5th team member to ditch in a year and she had a weird obsession with me. So I guess my departure was a personal betrayal.

      2. FricketyFrack*

        Ah yes, I’m sure that definitely won’t result in people looking for other jobs and/or quitting without giving notice. It’s amazing how managers like that never realize that they’re either perpetuating a bad cycle or actively making it worse. But then, if they were capable of that kind of self-reflection, they probably wouldn’t be so awful in the first place.

      3. nonprofit llama groomer*

        In a prior job I had to deal with an SSA field office regularly and they were great to deal with until one FOD left. After that, that office was terrible to deal with. Same experience at what used to be known as ODARs and are now OHOs (I think because it is so many years later).

      4. Alphabet Soup Dragon*

        Ah, SSA. Or “ASS backwards” we call it at our agency. That’s not even how Federal firing works…. She can’t just decide that today is your last day because she’s upset about being down an FTE. I hope you are in a much better environment now!

    2. Not a Real Giraffe*

      When I gave three weeks notice, my senior leadership were *pissed* it was less than the three months’ notice they truly expected to receive. Also not a standard expectation for my industry.

    3. Liz the Snackbrarian*

      I was told I should have given four weeks and said “Well the handbook says two, I checked.” Thankfully this boss was super chill.

    4. Spreadsheets and Books*

      I had a similar experience, though admittedly not from my direct manager. The company handbook (not a signed contract or anything… I am in the US where enforceable employment contracts are rarely a thing, and my industry has no standard expectations either) technically requested 4 weeks for general employees, 6 weeks for director-level employees, and 8 weeks for VPs and up, but I watched numerous people at all levels on my team leave as there was a promoting from within problem (i.e. it never happened and the external hires were usually not great) and not one of them gave more than 2 weeks.

      After I became a similar victim of getting passed up for a promotion, I found a new job and gave my 2 weeks’ notice. Since it was never an issue for anyone else on the team, I figured it wouldn’t be an issue for me either.

      Wrong. I was hauled down to HR and reamed for not giving 4 weeks. They were furious that I had the audacity to only give 2 weeks and did I know the problems I was causing?? They actually tried to make me call the new company and ask to have my start date pushed back. I helpfully pointed out that 5 other people quit during my tenure and they all gave 2 weeks, including a director, and asked why this rule only appears to apply to me. Apparently, because I quit at the same time as someone else on my relatively small team, a “policy” that’s almost always ignored was suddenly Very Very Important.

      I told them, in diplomatic terms, to shove it.

      1. Reality.Bites*

        Two weeks notice is a courtesy, not a requirement. “In that case, I’ll leave now” is always an option.

        1. Spreadsheets and Books*

          Yep. At-will employment! I really liked my team and didn’t want to leave them high and dry while I passed off responsibilities, so quitting on the spot would have been extreme, but I wasn’t about to call my new company and try to change the start date. Especially since I negotiated a higher salary and a sign-on bonus that appeared to be at least somewhat contingent on starting ASAP because the role had been empty for a while and the team was swamped.

          It all worked out; I’ll have been at said new company for 5 years this spring.

        2. Michelle Smith*

          Exactly, this is what’s baffling to me. We’re employees, not slaves, you cannot force us to work after we quit!!

          1. Dawn*

            Sometimes – sometimes more often than not – people who have some authority in the workplace mistake this for absolute authority over a person.

            They are wrong, but I’ve been reading this site long enough to know that unfortunately (and especially in America) many people feel compelled to go along with it.

            1. Mister_L*

              I once worked at a transport company in a small town right next to the city I live in.
              My country abolished royalty / aristocracy after WWI, but the boss sure thought of himself as the king of the town.

        3. Perfectly normal-sized space bird*

          Yup! My cousin had a job at a “but we’re a family” place where their paycheck kept failing to be direct deposited for months. The whole place was a hot mess but cousin finally had enough and resigned via employee chat since the manager kept ducking out and avoiding “where’s my paycheck?” conversations. The manager responded with a snotty text reaming cousin out for not being professional (manager was “so disappointed” in them) and how employees in a professional setting are required to give two weeks’ notice. Cousin and I had fun drafting a letter in response.

              1. Perfectly normal-sized space bird*

                Yes, though it didn’t amount to much, sadly. Though they did get in trouble for illegally classifying him as an independent contractor.

            2. Your Mate in Oz*

              Alternatively, people who are not paid are not employees, they’re volunteers or slaves. I guess trying to quit tells you which category management think you’re in?

        4. Frostie Fan*

          I had worked for more than a year as a “temp”; I was legally the employee of company that placed me to work for another compnay. The job was supposed to be for a couple of months so I was initially okay with no benefits, i.e. vacation and paid holidays but as time went on (and my job search was not getting anywhere) I stayed since the pay was decent. I asked my legal employer for holiday pay and at least a few days of “vacation” but was refused since their contract with the company using me did not provide this. The need for my services was coming to an end but I was to be kept on another month to cover over the December holidays (everyone had use-it-or-lose-it time to burn) and train an internal transfer to do my work. I got a job offer around Thanksgiving and told the manager I was leaving that day within minutes of learning that the new job was a sure thing. They were super pissed and my legal employer admitted that they should have done better for me. I slept like a baby that night.

    5. Strict Extension*

      I once had the owner of a business I worked for complain that someone gave three months notice because the end of that notice period was in October, and it is apparently not possible to give enough notice if you are leaving in the fourth quarter.

    6. Kit Kendrick*

      There was a time in my working life when, if a round of layoffs went through a company, the employees were given at least two weeks and often much more to pass on their job duties, apply for positions elsewhere in the organization, and so forth. I haven’t seen anything like that happen in more than a decade.

      This spring, my manager was told at 8am that he had to come into the office on what was normally a remote day, and when he arrived he was escorted to his desk so he could have an hour to pack up and be gone. (No it was not for cause — several other people got the axe the same day). As far as I can tell, the norm in the USA is now that anyone being laid off, let alone fired, is expected to be out the door the same day they are notified.

      If employers are no longer expected to give notice, then I don’t see why workers should be either.

      1. LabRa*

        At my current company, when an employee is laid off their computer access is terminated at the end of the call informing them of the layoff! Which is really not helpful to those of us left behind to pick up their work…

        1. Skippy*

          IT should be ready to transfer the account or give a PW to the supervisor in that case… we do this because of the possibility of malicious deleting/email sending, etc. Though the person who really did send something firable did it during her 2 weeks’ notice, and I found out on her last day.

      2. Cat Mom*

        When I was laid off, at 8am on a Wednesday, I was told to log off for the rest of the day and that IT would be revoking my access within the hour! Of course, this was at the height of the pandemic, but I’m not surprised that that practice is continuing.

      3. jojo*

        Employer giving notice is tied to how many people it employs. Smaller employers are known to have put a padlock on the door that workers find in the morning when they show up for work. Locked out. I worked a contract with known end date. All employees wentto register with employment office on the clock.. they qualified for special benefits due to the nature of the large layoff.

      4. I forgot my user name againn*

        Not me, a fully remote family member, went to log on in the morning. Their ID wasn’t working. As soon as they tried to login, they got the call they were laid off and please come by the office to turn in their equipment.

    7. Bumblebee*

      This happened to me as well! After my last day apparently there was a happy hour where the CEO of our nonprofit gave a long speech about how unprofessional it was of me to leave at all, really, and with only 2 weeks’ notice.

    8. *OOF**

      This happened to me, too! I put in my two weeks and the owner went off on me. He said that I should give one week of notice per year worked at the company.

      The next day, when I made the mistake of telling him that I had run that claim by an employment lawyer (a family friend), he went ballistic and fired me on the spot. So they didn’t get two weeks, much less four.

      1. reg*

        ok see he’s confusing the period of time needed to adjust after a breakup with employment law. that is a lot.

        1. Princess Sparklepony*

          OK, that made me laugh and I almost had a coughing fit.

          They were like family… so it was a breakup?

      2. Princess Sparklepony*

        So, it turns out they didn’t really need you for those two weeks much less the four. They really went out of their way to prove your point!

    9. Sally Forth*

      I got the same. Thing is, I had written the letter and dated it to give three weeks but she was away with no excuse or warning for three days. One of the reasons I left was being left alone with no direction or communication.

    10. Was At Twitter*

      There are a lot of amazing managers here, but I think mine takes the cake. My last manager was Elon Musk. Briefly. I worked at Twitter. Elon sent a whole wave of truly unhinged antisemitic and homophobic harassment at my colleague Yoel Roth so bad he had to flee his home (this is all public, you can look it up, it was even worse than what’s reported).

      I’ve been dodging reporters ever since so I can’t tell you what happened to me, other than the parts of the depositions that are now public.

    11. Rosacolleti*

      Surely employment contracts stipulate notice periods? On ours it’s 4 weeks each – 4 weeks notice of resignation or termination.

      1. Audrey Puffins*

        The US doesn’t have written contracts in the way other countries do, so if they have specific expectations about resignation periods then they need to put it in the employee handbook, otherwise 2 weeks is the general standard (but longer if you’re very high up). Which seems odd to me, as a UK worker who has always had a written contract to refer to and has always been expected to a give 4 weeks notice (having never been in a job long enough to have to give a longer notice period), AskAManager has been extremely educational for me in so many ways :)

        1. Capt. Dunkirk*

          In the US, even if the company puts it as a rule in the employee handbook that a certain notice period is required, it’s not legally enforceable at all.

          Employers will act like it is, of course, but the reality is that they can’t take any legal action against an employee for violating it.

      2. jojo*

        US does not have employment contracts. You get a job description and a wage offer. It may include special consideration if for instance, while negotiating you might get extra vacation days or if you have an already planned vacation it may say you are off those days with no penalty.

    12. Random European*

      If two weeks notice was enough for the Queen of Denmark, then two weeks notice is enough for any industry.

      1. Nesnay*

        It is generally not enough in Denmark, though. For most jobs, you will need a calendar month. So if I wanted to quit today, my last day of work would be February 29th.

        1. Random European*

          To be fair, the job of reigning monarch of Denmark does not follow most of the standards of the country. She’d have retired more than a decade ago if it did. I don’t even think they have a union.

          I wonder if the court employees have a union. Is there a union that negotiates directly with the king?

            3. Creag An Tuire*

              Marie Antoinette didn’t think she needed a union, and *look what happened to her*. I rest my case.

        2. Techno Support*

          Only a month? Sweden’s standard notice period is 3 months, though it can vary depending on how long you’ve been in that position and what type of employment contract you have.

    13. Fondu*

      This reminds me so much of one of my good friends…it was in her contract to give four weeks’ notice (managing a department in a nonprofit, not a lot of staff redundancy so she did a lot of specialized tasks, but nothing absolutely irreplaceable). So she gave her four weeks.

      Managing director has a fit and rakes her over the coals for being “unprofessional,” because “even though the contract says four weeks, you should know you have to give more notice, preferably eight weeks! There was an unwritten agreement that you’d give more notice!” Seriously.

      She basically told the managing director that she was tired of being walked on and that her resignation was effective immediately. Oh, and! Open-plan office with the managing director’s office in a sort of glass cube separated from the other desks, so everyone saw and heard the whole argument. Morale was low after that.

  3. Hurt Feelins*

    When I quit a summer job in college I said that I couldn’t keep doing the work with my college classes (the job required overnights). My boss told me she understood and was relieved that it was because my classes were starting. She thought I was coming to complain in retaliation about everyone complaining about me. She said it made sense to just finish my shift then and there and I left.

    Readers, I did not know everyone was complaining about me. I cried the entire drive home.

    2. Silver Robin*

      Wow your boss is terrible.

      Either you were actually annoying your coworkers and your boss should have worked with you on that, or your coworkers were complaining about nonsense and your boss should have never breathed a word of it to you. What they hell were they thinking to go whatever this route is??

      Glad you are rid of the place.

        1. Sweet Summer Child*

          Dude. was typing the same thing and accidentally closed my screen. (I hate this laptop) Came back to the comments and thought, oh, it did post before I lost my place.
          Nope. Someone else has read enough AAM to know that anything is possible.

      2. Jojo*

        That was my thought as well. I’ve worked for a boss who would have lied like that when someone resigned. Actually, I’ve worked for 2 bosses like that, but one of them wasn’t quick enough to have thought that up in the moment. He needed time to plan his petty, vindictive revenge.

      3. Hills to Die on*

        I had a boss that did that. Told me everyone was mad at me for letting them down. I talked to them – we were a tight group – and they told me no. That they felt that way about the manager, but not me.
        Years later we all still talk, but not to him.

    4. LifeBeforeCorona*

      I bet no one was complaining about you. It was just one final dig when she knew that you couldn’t respond.

      1. Judge Judy and Executioner*

        I agree, wasn’t there another manager who would tell their employees how EVERYONE was overwhelmed with their work when they needed time off for a medical thing. The manager told everyone this individually, and it wasn’t until they later compared notes they realized it was all lies.

        1. I forgot my user name againn*

          I had a retail boss that told the other keyholder, she had to work every Satuday night because I had children and couldn’t do it. I found out when she asked me to switch one weekend. I didn’t have any children at that time.

    5. Gilgongo*

      My boss told me I was the second most hated person on in our department (after him).
      It wasn’t true at all (I don’t think he realizes how close I am with other people in our department). I think he was just lying to make himself feel better.

      1. Chick-n-Boots*

        WOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW. That’s…..really something. Talk about being disconnected from reality!!!

      2. Princess Sparklepony*

        Come on now, he told one truth there – he definitely was the most hated person in the department. He got one thing right.

      3. Mr. X*

        He was the most hated person, ask anyone. It was beautiful, how much people hated him. People came up to him with tears in their eyes and said, “Thank you for being so terrible.”

    6. I'm on Team Rita*

      My guess is this was a blatant lie unless you already had bad vibes from your coworkers.
      Don’t cry, laugh! You got away!

    7. goddessoftransitory*

      What a horrible thing to say, and obviously a lie designed to make a teenager feel bad!

    8. Vincaminor*

      For what it’s worth …
      At the retail job I worked after college, in which I was way too invested, every time the manager didn’t like something I did, she told me “everyone else wanted to quit” because of me. Which worked until I apologised to a coworker for making her so uncomfortable, and she didn’t know what I was talking about.

      I don’t think everyone was secretly complaining about you, either.

      1. CountryLass*

        I had a (older, male) boss who disliked women, especially younger ones. He pulled me aside and said that the (younger) man in the office had told him that I was wearing clothes that made him uncomfortable. I listened to what he said, then spoke to my colleague a couple of days later, to apologise and ask if there was a particular outfit or thing that made him uncomfortable so that I could try to avoid it. He had not a single clue what I was talking about as he had never spoken to anyone about my clothing choices! Went on to work with the colleague in 2 different industries over the course of a couple of years, but the boss got fired within a year of this. Partly for referring to me as ‘that little b!tch’ in an attempt to encourage the male team members in a sales competition that I was winning… I tore a strip off him then called my area manager.

  4. Stella70*

    Hmmm. I can’t think of a single time an employer showed emotion over the news of my departure. The closest one came was when she patted my shoulder and said, “To thine own self be true”.
    Could it be that I am not nearly as special as my mom tells me I am? (She’s 84, with zero traces of senility, if you must know.)

    1. Silver Robin*

      that is kind of a hilarious response, it feels so formal and grandiose. Like a mentor in a fantasy book dispensing wisdom to the young protagonist. Or maybe I am just imagining it wrong, but at least I got a giggle out of it

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I’m trying to invent a context where that would make sense as a response. Announcing that you’re leaving work to go on a spiritual pilgrimage? Leaving Chevron to be a full-time Greenpeace activist? Quitting to compete on RuPaul’s Drag Race?

        1. Princess Sparklepony*

          Quitting to go touring with a Shakespearian theater company? It would definitely work there, right?

      2. SheLooksFamiliar*

        Eh, I read it as ‘This isn’t great news for us and we’ll miss you. But you gotta do what you gotta do.’

        No matter how you interpret it, it’s still giggle-worthy.

      1. Hlao-roo*

        For those who need a refresher on who Carl is, read #12. The spill from “Mortification Week: the terrible misunderstanding, the cat serenade, and other stories to cringe over” from August 7, 2023.

        1. Stella70*

          You are amazing, too, Hlao-roo! If I didn’t screen shot my “confessions”, I would never find them again. :)

        3. Dogbythefire*

          I am quite literally sitting here laughing with glee and crying at the same time over #12. Thank you for that – it really improved my evening! “But Carl, I hadn’t even pulled my pants down yet!”

      2. Stella70*

        That made me blush all over again, Lorna! (As well as move my coffee further away my elbow….) No, I think when I left, Carl was probably just relieved he could begin using the lower level bathroom again.

    3. Dust Bunny*

      Mercifully, none of the jobs I’ve left have gone bananas. Granted, I’ve never left in a sudden or dramatic fashion, but even the ones that were run by less-than-ideally professional people took it as a matter of course and didn’t do or say anything weird.

    4. Corrigan*

      Yeah. I quit a job after 4 years and I was the only person doing what I did. My boss didn’t show up for our weekly meeting (not unusual.) When I finally tracked him down and let him know “I’ve accepted a position at X, my last day will be Y.” He said “Really?” I said yes. Then he said “What else is going on?” Just changed the subject. Gee, thanks.

    5. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

      My reaction when I read this: I’m so glad I have no stories to report!

      The funniest resignation story I have is leaving a company that my team had just been acquired by, and almost all of us (boss included) left within a couple months of the acquisition. I was the first to announce my imminent departure, and this is how it played out in our team meeting:

      Me: I think you all know why I’m leaving.

      McCoy: Yep, no need to say a word. (McCoy and I both knew the other one was actively interviewing and had wished each other luck.)

      Me: Actually, it’s that after six and a half years, I just can’t stand working with Scotty. (Scotty, the only other employee who’d been there that long, and I were known to get along well.)

      McCoy: Well, you gave it the good college try.

      Scotty: I can change! :D

      2. Ama*

        Yeah other than my boss that cried at my going away party and in my exit interview advised me to marry my boyfriend “for security” mine have been pretty tame. (Said boss really wanted to be my “life mentor” not just a professional mentor and ignored that I just politely changed the subject every time she tried to give me life advice.)

        I did actually marry that boyfriend but not until six years later and it wasn’t “for security.”

        2. Dancing Otter*

          For “security”, SMH.

          When my Mom and Stepdad got married, they went together to revise their wills.

          Upon reading Mom’s list of assets, the AH lawyer said he had thought she was marrying Bill for his house.

          Quite apart from the “He said that to her FACE?!” factor, Mom had investments worth more than ten times the equity in the house.

          Incidentally, the lawyer lost his license a few years later on an ethics charge. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy /s

          1. Skippy*

            Ou restate lawyer told my (immigrant) husband that she guessed he was “one of the good ones, not like the guy who got deported 4 times and killed that girl over the weekend.” I’d like to think now that I would stand up and leave.

            1. Dogbythefire*

              It’s so ingrained not to make people uncomfortable, isn’t it? Even (or especially, maybe?) when they’re just awful. At times, I’m astonished they’ve voiced their awfulness and can’t even think.

        1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

          Scotty left, McCoy left, Kirk (our boss) left, etc, and all of us very shortly after the acquisition. We took one look around at the dumpster, saw it was on fire, and updated our LinkedIn profiles. That’s why I knew I could deadpan it being Scotty’s fault and know there was no chance of being taken seriously.

          Plus Scotty and I kept in casual touch afterwards, and even caught up one afternoon when I was passing through the city he moved to. Not friends, exactly, but good rapport.

          I’m glad that’s my most memorable resignation story! (I have other deranged stories from my brief time at that company post-acquisition, but none of them from my immediate boss or team, because we all had come from a sane place and landed there involuntarily.)

    6. Corvus Corvidae*

      The closest I’ve ever gotten was when I handed in my notice and my then manager said “Damn, you beat me to it.” He handed in his own notice on my last day, lol.

      2. Greg*

        I had something similar. I liked (and was good friends with) my immediate boss, but hated the guy above him and, before I left the office one day, had typed up my resignation letter, left it in my desk, and was preparing to verbally resign the following day. There was a work event that evening, and my boss and I went to grab a slice of pizza before going to it. Over dinner he told me that he had just resigned to his boss, and I burst out laughing. The next day I went into Big Boss and resigned as well. He probably assumed it had something to do with Immediate Boss quitting, but whatever

        1. Princess Sparklepony*

          My weird quitting story was that my boss quit and got another job but declined to take me with him (it would often happen in that industry.) So HR didn’t know what to do with me. Then the HR person decided that I was my bosses mistress and suggested that… I got a fairly nice settlement.

      3. Bruce*

        2 years into my first job we had a huge layoff, and my grand-manager told that he was OK but he was ordered to layoff a guy who had started >that day<. He resigned himself, came by to tell me and my boss that he was on his way out. Then he spent the next week finding a new job for the guy who'd been fired on his starting day. It sounded like my first level boss and I might have been laid off too if our manager had not bailed out, there was some weird choices being made… but we stayed for a couple more years and I learned a lot before I moved on.

      4. o*

        I’m giggling: your username is well-chosen when it comes to your boss’ resignation. (Fellow [assuming you are, but anything’s possible!] bird nerd here.)

      5. Lolllee*

        This happened to me too! What made it really funny was both my boss and I went to work for the same customer’s company. I overheard a coworker at my new (customer’s) company complaining they couldn’t get a hold of me at my old (supplier) company. I stepped into the room, and said, “I’m right here, just started 2 weeks ago, not sure I can help you now with Huge Sudden Urgent Quality Issue but I’ll try!” New coworker shook her head in annoyance and said she’s just have to call Boss directly (at old company). I said, “Oh, he’s just down the hall, started here two days after I did!” Everyone in the room turned to stare. finally, someone asked who was in charge of quality at my old (supplier) company now. I said “no one”, looked at the Huge Sudden Urgent Quality Issue and suggested they call the president directly. He was the reason we both left. I advised they call him at 2 am which was when he preferred to address all Huge Sudden Urgent Issues, which was why my manager and I had left.

    7. MissB*

      Same. I haven’t had that many jobs as an adult!

      I left a job when my kids were 2 and 3 years old. Daycare just wasn’t working out. My big boss called me in before I left and said “we will be here when you decide to come back”.

      8 years later, I was ready to come back and they had a position open that I applied to, and am still working there not quite 20 years later.

      I overheard that same big boss tell my boss (when I returned) “she looks exactly the same!” It wasn’t creepy. Just funny. I guess I don’t age?

    9. Bluebonnet*

      Your remark about “not nearly being as special as my mom tells me I am” made me smile. My mom very similar. :)

    10. Kuddel Daddeldu*

      My manager in my second job got white as a sheet when I gave my notice (six weeks, as per contract). I was his second in command and had been with the company for six years, building the department from scratch. He took it well and we kept in contact afterwards, but the shock was visible.
      The next time, eleven years later, I had seen writings on the wall that my department would be wound up, so we had an amicable discussion on that I’d finish one project and then go on garden leave (I had been headhunted to a competitor but into a very different role. I’m still there but in a nice plot twist the two companies merged threee years after I moved!)

  5. Happy to have left*

    My bosses reaction was to tell her that my notice period was way too short and that I was burning bridges. I gave her four weeks notice, the standard in the industry and at the organization was two unless otherwise stated in the job contract (it wasn’t). She told me that I should have told her I was interviewing elsewhere. Then she told me that she would absolutely not release me and that she would escalate this to the Vice President if she had to. What made it even better, was that she was making me interview and compete for my current position that I had built from scratch with minimal support.

    1. pally*

      “she told me that she would absolutely not release me”

      I’m envisioning the boss standing at the door of your office not allowing you to exit. Like that’s gonna keep you from taking your new job.

      1. Magenta Sky*

        And I can envision looking her right in the eye while dialing 911, unlawful imprisonment being a crime and all.

      2. Ama*

        Bosses that do this always crack me up. It’s so telling that of how they think of their employees that they think they can somehow forbid you from leaving.

      5. Ohno*

        might be an education thing . instead of making things better a lot of places have made it so they can hold your license if you try to leave

        1. jojo*

          I have copies of all my certification. I can take them anywhere. Because they are from an outside agency.

      1. Happy to have left*

        No, I think was a scare tactic and I think she realized that that would make her look ridiculous. I did call my HR department though..,

        1. snowfall123*

          I need more details on how this played out.

          Did HR do anything? Did you stay for only 2 weeks instead of 4 that you gave? Did she give you the silent treatment for the rest of your time there?

    4. LoV...*

      “she would absolutely not release me” I’m imagining a B movie villain monologue starting here, like, I’m afraid I cannot let you leave.

      1. Miss Ames*

        When I gave notice, my manager said “You can’t just leave.” That is literally what she said. Huh?? This was September 2021 after coming back to the office from Covid changes, so we both had masks on – which was good because at least only my eyes were visible after hearing that one!!! I took a slight pause (during which my brain was reeling) and just said, “well, Yes, I can.” I think I added rather stiffly, “I have that right.” It was bizarre – What did she take me for, a slave? how was it that she would think I couldn’t “just leave” – ???

      3. Hannah Lee*

        Boss “I won’t release you!”
        Employee “You won’t release me? Be warned! I am prepared to flounce!”

    5. BellyButton*

      People are so ridiculous. She isn’t going to “release” you?? She is going to escalate it? It isn’t a prison sentence (or is it?? ha!) what did she think she could do?? Is she going to chain you to your desk and hold you captive.

      1. Rex Libris*

        I think she was confusing indentured servitude with at will employment. A common mistake in administrative circles.

    6. Yes And*

      I feel like both OP and other commenters are burying the lede here. “She was making me interview and compete for my current position that I had built from scratch with minimal support.” Sorry, WHAT?! And she was surprised you were interviewing elsewhere?

    7. Observer*

      Then she told me that she would absolutely not release me and that she would escalate this to the Vice President if she had to

      And just what did she think the VP could do about this? At least in the US, your employer doesn’t need to “release” you. And even in most other countries, as long as you are in compliance with your contract, they also don’t have to “release” you. Yes, there are still countries where slavery exists, but it doesn’t sound like you lived in one of those.

    8. Marzipan Shepherdess*

      “She would absolutely not release me”? Unless your job was making license plates in Club Fed, she had absolutely no power at all to REFUSE to “release” you after you’d quit your job! What on earth have some of those bosses been smoking, anyway?!

    9. goddessoftransitory*

      “Okay, you get I’m not actually in a cage and you have the only key, right? I can just leave? Like, walk out?”

      Honestly, what is with some bosses and their notion they have their workers bound to them in blood?

      1. Princess Sparklepony*

        Don’t give them ideas. You’ll end up in a Triangle Shirtwaist Factory situation where all the doors are locked.

    10. Artemesia*

      I hope you said ‘Gee, when you asked me to interview and compete for this job that I built from scratch, I just assumed you were letting me know it is time to go.’

    11. Fluff*

      I hear your reply in the evil alien voice from Independence Day:
      “Reeelease meee. ::heavy breathing:: Releeeease. Me.

      Steam, tentacles thrashing exist.

      2. Pdxer*

        Funny, I was thinking more of the independence day parody scene from “Muppets in space,” myself…

    13. Laura*

      “I will absolutely not release you from this job!”
      “Well, you can keep paying me if you want to, I’m fine with that.”

  6. Katie Porter's Whiteboard*

    As someone who is planning on resigning, this post is making me unnecessarily anxious.

    1. ThatGirl*

      If it makes you feel better, these are all gonna be outliers – it’s fun to hear the crazy stories but most of the time resigning goes fine and is boring.

      1. ThatGirl*

        Also, let me offer a counter-example if that’s OK: My husband was super anxious about giving notice at his last job; his newish boss seemed a little unhinged and had previously freaked out when a different coworker gave notice and marched her out two weeks early. But when it came time, she was fine! Very supportive even! Let him work out his whole notice without incident and wished him well!

          1. Expelliarmus*

            My guess is that maybe the boss was new to managing in general and just needed some time to adjust to employees resigning?

          2. ThatGirl*

            No, she was a great employee. The manager was new to managing, I think. But there had been a Thing the week prior – she got into a car accident on her way to work and needed to go to the hospital to get checked out. Her phone died so it took her a few hours to get sorted and get charged and the new manager basically accused her of lying about it and demanded to see her hospital papers. (And this is a profession that knows all about HIPAA.) That was the last straw that led her to resign the following week, but she was more than ready to work another 3-4 weeks and close things out with her clients. Instead they were all left hanging.

        2. Avery*

          Another counter-example: the worst boss I ever had? When I told her I was resigning, the first thing she said was “Congratulations!”
          (She knew I had training in another field, and that my new job was in that field, while the current one wasn’t.)
          There was maybe one or two passive-aggressive barbs about making sure I did well at the new job, but the actual resignation and notice period went as smoothly as I could have wishes.

      2. amoeba*

        Absolutely! Doesn’t belong in this post, but just to cheer you up a bit – when my colleague resigned, my boss told him he was sad to see him go, wished him all the best, proceeded to inform the department by mail (with nothing but warm words for colleague) and continued working together well for his notice period. No drama whatsoever, and I hope that would be the norm!

      3. lyonite*

        Yeah, I’ve never run into any drama leaving a job. In think that’s true for most people! But it doesn’t make a good story.

      4. Echo*

        Yes! The last time I left a job, I had a manager who I’d actually seen have emotional outbursts at work over other things, and when I gave notice her response was 100% friendly and professional.

      5. ConstantlyComic*

        Another counter-example: my supervisor at my first job was not only absolutely chill with my leaving, but was also fine with my eventually cutting my initial notice period short so I could attend the funeral of a family member who had passed suddenly.

      6. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        Exactly. This post exists because the craZy is rare and memorable, so you’re unlikely to see the issues yourself.

        Post-resignation is about the only time my employers have been “normal.” I’ve either been walked out immediately, received a counter-offer, or worked my notice in peace and wished well, but never anything bizarre. At least nothing bizarre by AAM standards.

    2. The Bill Murray Disagreement*

      Hopefully, if you have an otherwise decent to good boss, none of this will happen. I have often felt a tremendous sense of loss when a great employee or colleague gives notice BUT as someone who doesn’t feel like I have to take all my emotions out on the people around me, I buck up and wish the person the absolute best (“I am so sad for us and so happy for you!”) and help them plan their transition of work to their colleagues or backfill.

    3. Jazz*

      I know, it can be nerve wracking resigning and finding your employer wishes you well like a normal person. You lose the chance of a story to dine out on for years.

    4. anecdata*

      But if it goes badly, at least you’ll have a good story to tell us!
      (Fwiw, it’s likely to be fine – you get to leave when you want to, and these stories are deranged /because/ there not common)

    6. Elspeth McGillicuddy*

      Remember, these are the ones that are STORIES. The ones that are so unusual that someone remembered them years later and retold the tale. I actually sometimes find it helpful to read these sort of thing (specifically about Internet dating), because it means that my experience is nearly certain to be less interesting.

    7. Trippedamean*

      After over 2 decades in the workforce in a number of different jobs, I’ve never had anyone react badly when I’ve resigned. At most, they were a little sad (but didn’t really show it).

      But if I ever do resign and my boss does something wild because of it, my mantra is: “What are they going to do, fire me?”

    9. Jay (no, the other one)*

      The worst thing that happened to me when I left my last job was that they took an hour of our team meeting to give everyone a chance to say goodbye. It was sweet and lovely and my eyes were swollen for days.

      Seriously. No drama. It was fine.

    10. asterisk*

      Every time I’ve resigned from a position, my managers have always expressed that they’re sad I’m leaving but supportive and excited for the new thing I’m going to.

    11. Ama*

      I’m also resigning soon — this post is actually helping me because I know there is no way anyone at my office will do anything this extreme. They won’t be happy (I do a crucial role that will be very difficult to cover if they don’t find a replacement quickly) but they will be professional about it.

    12. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      Don’t worry, people are sharing them here BECAUSE they’re so over-the-top weird! When I’ve resigned it’s always been “okay, make sure you document everything for handover” or “is there something we can do do make you change your mind?” (no, the new commute is 1/3 of the old and you can’t buy time).

    13. Hamster*

      I don’t think you should worry. A rule of thumb I’ve learned is to see how it’s gone for previous people who have left. One job that had really high turnover was very inconsistent with how they treated resigning staff members. Some were allowed to work out their period, some were walked out right away. Eventually people began giving a few days of notice instead.

      Another job, only 1 person left in the year and a half I was there, and he stayed his 2 weeks and was given a good-bye party at the nearby bar after hours. The team joked that our boss may have cried after hearing the news but in front of us boss was pleasant, friendly, professional etc.

      Early on in my career, I quit a job via email. The owner was verbally (and I think physically?) abusive, like he’d throw things, smash pens, call me and other staff members idiots, berate us over a staple placed a millimeter crooked, refuse to pay. I forget his reaction now, but I felt a huge sense of relief – I think I was only there for 6-ish weeks? that was 5 1/2 weeks too long.

    14. Happy meal with extra happy*

      I had a horror show of a boss, and I was super nervous about resigning. It was also the first time I’d done it from a full time job. I wrote a three sentence resignation letter and handed it to him, and it was honestly fine. (I know the letter necessarily isn’t required, but it can make it easier.) The two week period wasn’t a big deal, and there was never any sort of drama. I’m sure, after I left, he talked a bunch of crap about me, because that’s what he did, but that’s his issue, not mine. Fortunately, I was at my next job long enough to have multiple references from people who left, so I don’t ever need to use my first boss.

    15. Feral Humanist*

      I thought there might be drama when I left, two jobs ago. They’d tried to retain me and failed (their fault for offering very little money until I had another offer in hand). But they understood my reasons for leaving and were actually quite nice about it. I also offered to work 10 hours a week through a major event about 6 weeks after I started the new job (new job was aware, and because there was a relationship between the two organizations, they were okay with it). I don’t think I’d make that offer now, but at the time I was trying to maintain good relationships with everyone.

    16. Bitte Meddler*

      I gave notice in January 2020 to a House of Evil Bees. My manager (a Director level person) was vindictive, petty, and manipulative. He had laughed in my face when I told him the Sr Manager on a project I was working on was giving me free rein for a good chunk of it. (“What would YOU have to offer??? LOLOLOL!”)

      I was terrified of having a 1:1 with him to tell him I was leaving.

      All he did was wish me well. (Pretty sure he was happy to see me go, but not as happy as I was to get out).

      This past October, I left the job that I had gone to from House of Evil Bees. Management didn’t want to see me go, made a counteroffer, but understood that they couldn’t match what the new job offered, both in term of pay and work environment. They did, however, tell me that I would always be welcomed back.

      I think quitting seems scary, especially if you have a toxic manager, because they’ve held so much power over you and you therefore expect them to punish you (and that you’ll have to endure the punishment). It’s hard to see that turning in your notice is the end of any punishment you’ll ever receive from them. But it’s a ticket to freedom and, man, it’s so wonderful when they’re firmly in your review mirror! :-)

    17. Venus*

      My most stressful resignation was when I left a group with a new manager and some problem employees, where I was one of the better ones and I felt like I was leaving him at a bad time.

      He was genuinely happy for me! Excitedly asked a few questions about the new work I’d be doing, and supported me through everything.

    18. Roland*

      People are only posting them because they’re strange! If any of these reactions were common, they wouldn’t be interested. At my previous resignations, my managers just said I understand, thank you for telling me, we’ll miss having you on the team and reach out in the future if you want to come back.

    19. Web of Pies*

      The last job I resigned from, my boss told me he was sad to lose me, but really happy for my future endeavors, and was just very kind about it. I’m about to resign my current job to go back to that one. :)

      You got this!

    20. Seeking Second Childhood*

      I resigned because I was moving out of state to get married. My manager & his looked into whether or not they could have me work from here. When the tax team said no, they bantered about getting my fiancé a job in their city and wished us luck.

    21. Bluebonnet*

      I agree that most of these are outliers and most resignations are boring. I resigned at a job of eight years several months ago. My boss wished me well, told me to make sure my work documents were up to date, and gave me a nice card with a gift card on my last day. Very boring but in this case, boring is good.

    22. Willow Pillow*

      Unhinged isn’t necessarily a bad thing for you! I gave 4 weeks’ notice at a job and they flat-out lied to me about it being standard to pay out notice and walked me out that day (the last person who quit worked through her notice a couple of months beforehand). I ended up with a month off and laughed to myself that they were so concerned they’d rather pay me to not be there.

    23. Leira*

      I resigned recently, and nothing terrible happened. I was very worried about it, to the point that I’d imagined so many arguments they might make to negotiate me staying longer and come up with all the answers to these hypothetical conversations (I didn’t have anything lined up, but was leaving due to burnout). No one pushed back AT ALL–I was shocked. I just said “my last day will be December 30” and didn’t give any of the higher ups any indication of what I was (or was not) doing next, and I left, and everything was fine. Hope that helps soothe the anxiety some!

    25. two time quitter*

      when I quit my first full-time job post college I was beyond nervous and my mom said “don’t be nervous, you’re not doing anything wrong” and I found that very comforting perspective that helped a lot!

    27. Raging Iron Thunder*

      Mine wasn’t too bad. The worst that happened was (1) my boss said, “You’re ACTUALLY leaving?!” apparently he thought I wouldn’t when he was totally underpaying me. And (2), didn’t bother setting up any kind of going away party.

      Oh well, glad to be out of that crazy town.

    28. Chirpy*

      For what it’s worth, my most awkward resignation was that after I told my boss, she told my closest coworker before I had a chance to tell her myself. But it was fine in the end.

      The job that cut my position was definitely awkward, but that’s a totally different situation.

  7. Jane Bingley*

    This isn’t nearly as dramatic as some, but it irks me to this day: I gave my boss a heads up when it became clear that an offer was likely so we could plan, since I’d be leaving at a less than ideal time. When I gave my official notice a week later, my current boss asked me for 4 weeks’ notice instead of two to internally hire and train my replacement. They then spent two weeks arguing whether or not to replace me, a week interviewing and deciding not to replace me, and two days deciding who would get what tasks as they were redistributed. I got three whole days to train people after giving 4 weeks notice.

    Lesson learned: never again!

    1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      When I left my previous employer before this one (I didn’t have another job, I was moving), I gave them ten weeks notice because the department was grossly understaffed, like me and two SMEs in a department originally built for a me and six SMEs, and I had become certified in the SM because we were so short-handed so I was like half a SME. There was no drama, but some panic, but they didn’t even manage to get the job posted before I left, let alone a replacement hired or any training done. I literally left on my last day, went down to my packed car in the parking garage, and hit the road for my move.

      1. Autofill Contact*

        This is remarkably close to my own story. I gave about that much notice as well for the same reason. The email on my last day, a Friday, announcing I was leaving contained the job posting. I started my new job halfway across the country on Monday.

        1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

          I forgot to include — halfway through my ten week notice, one of the two full SMEs announced to the team that she had just been diagnosed with inoperable cancer and would be dropping to part time immediately, and I heard about a month after I left that she had passed.

    2. FricketyFrack*

      I gave a job a couple of months once, because my coworker, aka the only other person who did what I did, had recently retired and they hadn’t been moving particularly quickly to replace her (which definitely didn’t help with the burnout that caused me to leave) and I realized my boss basically had no idea how to do our day to day tasks. She knew WHAT we did, but had no idea HOW.

      The continued to take their sweet time hiring and I ended up with about 2 weeks to train someone who was very nice but had never even worked in an office, so she had to learn all of that in addition to the job itself. It was a terrible. I don’t know if I’d say I’d never give a long notice again, but I wouldn’t do it with the hope of adequately training a replacement, because I already know that won’t happen.

      1. Donn*

        IME, it’s not possible to teach someone both the basics of an office and the requirements of a specific field, at the same time.

    3. Person from the Resume*

      I laugh at anyone who thinks they can hire someone’s replacement in 4 weeks. It’s not impossible, but it’s impossible if you give people what I consider reasonable timelines like a week for applicants to submit applications, a few days to a week for someone to review the resumes depending on how many come in, and then another reasonable timeframe to schedule the interviews. Plus if the person hired has a job, they should give at least 2 weeks notice to their current employer.

      1. Jane Bingley*

        In my specific case, it was plausible – I was actually hired and trained during my last boss’ two week notice period! For the role I was leaving the hire had to be internal and had to come from within a specific team. When my boss left, they promoted me less than a week after she gave her notice and I’d already been doing some of her work, so I didn’t need much training time. When I left, there was an obvious choice for my replacement (at least to me), but I knew that person would need some extra time.

        That being said, in general I fully agree! If you move VERY quickly you might get one week of crossover with a 4-week notice. But in most cases the goal is just to set up some future hire for success.

    4. allhailtheboi*

      I was in a situation where it made sense for me to give several months’ notice, which I did. They didn’t manage to hire anyone until my last fortnight, and there was a week’s gap between me leaving and her starting (not a catastrophe, but still not ideal)!

    5. goddessoftransitory*

      The more time given, the more time wasted. Amen to that! The book How To Be Idle actually had something to say about this phenomenon–when the author was at a job where they got paid once they finished a certain job, they could finish in 3 hours. But when they got paid by the hour, guess what took a lot longer?

    6. Adds*

      I gave an employer 6 weeks’ notice once, specifically so they could hire someone to replace me and I could train them. They had not made one single step towards getting another body at the desk when I left. In fact, no one did my job at all until I came back to it 2 years later. Now here I sit, 4 years after that trying to work myself out of that office.

      At the end of my notice, however, I did get a really lovely lunch at a restaurant (even though by that time I just wanted to go home).

      1. Old Lady manager*

        Department wide crazy.
        I had a job where I gave 6 weeks notice once. Was asked to documented all I did. So I did, it took 2 days. I used stuff from my resume draft file. Went looking for the folks to hand it off to and train, asked boss how the handover was going to be. Silence. Gave hard copy to my boss along with link to file on work drive. Silence. The only team that actually processed that I was leaving was accounting and HR. I worked 100% until last “Last Day” 10-14 hrs , 5 days a week plus on call after hours and weekends. “Last Day” I packed the last of my stuff (I had moved most of my personal things the day I gave notice.) I went around saying my goodbyes, giving out my private cell and email address to friends. Turned in all equipment assigned to me and had it accounted for. Went to my bosses office to give him a list of things in flight that may become a problem if not addresses soon. Said Goodbye and how it was a pleasure to work for them. I learned a lot and that I wished them the best. (It is what you say in real life so that you don’t burn bridges.) I handed in my keycard and badge to security and almost made it to my car before someone came running up to me asking me to come back. I thought I had forgotten something.
        My boss was actually shocked that I was actually leaving.
        I reminded him that I had given notice 6 weeks ago, written out documentation of all my actual duties, contacts, calendar, schedules so that they could write up a job description and had waited to train someone or offload duties to someone who was staying.
        He said “I thought you only wanted a raise, not that you would actually quit!”
        I asked, do I get a raise?
        He said no.
        I said Goodbye and how it was a pleasure to work for them. I learned a lot and that I wished them the best. (It is what you say in real life so that you don’t burn bridges.)
        He asked me to stay for a meeting where we would go over the documentation I gave him 5 weeks ago. I had already done a 10 hour day (Salary), said goodbye to all my contacts, etc.
        I did the meeting with his boss, a VIP, an owner and managers of other teams to go over splitting up my job.
        They decided to schedule a meeting on the following Monday to go over things and start cross training. I reminded them that I no longer worked there.
        “But we needed you to do this! We aren’t ready! It’s a bad time to quit!” Blah,Blah,Blah.
        I told them that I was no longer in the HR system and unless there was a contract of some type, I would not be working for free.
        There was no offer to pay me something.
        I said Goodbye and how it was a pleasure to work for them. I learned a lot and that I wished them the best. (It is what you say in real life so that you don’t burn bridges.)
        My daughter and I then left.
        Oh, I forgot to say, It was take your daughter to work day.
        They split my job between 6 people.
        Those 6 friends we pressured to call me daily for help.
        They were told to call me by old boss.
        They hadn’t been given my docs.
        I told some, that if they took me out to lunch, I would go over something with them.
        I contacted boss with a offer to consult, with a price inline to what consultants in my industry we charging per hour.
        He declined.
        I stopped helping at all.
        A friend told me that they had to hirer 3 people to replace me.
        I probably would have stayed for 25% more pay and a 1 week guaranteed PTO increase.
        I didn’t have a job lined up but, I was burned out and willing to live on savings for a bit to give myself time to figure things out.
        Next job I got paid 30% more.
        I make just shy of 3 times that now.
        Plus my daughter knows the proper way to leave a job.

        2. Old Lady manager*

          Also figured out later that folks were told that I wasn’t really leaving. Which explained the lack of interest in cross training and documentation. Since HR and accounting were buddies of mine, they knew I really was leaving and processed everything correctly. They also made sure that I received a check for months of unused PTO.

  8. meetme*

    My old boss had a 3 day long tantrum. She threatened to withhold 6 weeks of PTO that I’d earned if I didn’t give them 30 days notice. Then she called me and had a tearful meltdown and said she was tired of people leaving her after she’d poured so much into them. I’m Black and all of the aforementioned people who left were Black.

    2. SereneScientist*

      Gotta love how personally she’s taking it but with zero reflection on why it keeps happening. Reminds me of a very self-centered former friend who cried to me repeatedly about losing friends, but she just kept on treating people like they were side characters in her life story.

    3. Magenta Sky*

      One of the (few) good things about living in California is that accrued PTO is considered wages already earned, and wage theft is criminal. And threatening it is nearly as bad.

      HR at most companies here would break out the hammer and nails, and order a cross installed in the parking lot, even if it was a joke.

    4. goddessoftransitory*

      BIG step back from this lady!

      Did she actually say the word “ungrateful?” Because that’s what’s dripping off her behavior.

    5. Raging Iron Thunder*

      I want to know more about this boss and how she treated you and other black folks at your job.

  9. Video killed the radio star*

    Withheld my final paycheck for over a year. This was a franchise, and when I wrote and complained to brand headquarters (who could not help me, because my very bad boss was the owner of the business and they were not responsible for him paying his employees, apparently) he had the gall to complain that I had complained! Why would I do that? After all, it had only been 9 months, and he only owed me a whole month’s wages (I’m in Europe, where monthy pay is very common)… I finally got paid by showing up and refusing to leave until he gave me cash in hand. I think he took it out of the till. He was a real gem.

    1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

      When I read stories like that I really start to understand the kind of people who own slaves.

        1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

          They exist in America, too. We don’t have to play into the CIA’s propaganda campaign against a complex and fantastic country on this blog.

    2. Bluebonnet*

      I am sorry you went though that but very glad you stood your ground and got what was your’s.

      1. Video killed the radio star*

        I was 23 and not particularly assertive – looking back, I am incredibly surprised (and proud) that I managed to stand my ground for that long and not just… give up entirely. I’m closer to 40 now, and there is no way I would let it go on for a year – I would pull the ‘not leaving without my money’ thing the first time I asked for it instead of just leaving to come back another time. Thankfully I now work a place that is highly unlikely to pull anything like that…

    3. goddessoftransitory*

      Franchising is its own hellscape. Check out the book Fast Food Nation for an in depth take on its shady, slimy history.

    4. Urban Fervor*

      This reminds me of what I believe were the standard payroll practices in India (Indians, please correct me if I’m wrong). I, an American, visited our company’s offices in Delhi. One of the things I wanted to accomplish while there was to understand and flowchart their payroll processes. My biggest takeaway was that their process for handling resignations was WILD. This was about 6 years ago so I don’t remember all the details, but they required a very long notice period (something like 2 months). Once notice was given, all payments to the employee were frozen until they’d both completed their notice period and returned all company equipment. I believe there also might have been a required waiting period after all requirements had been fulfilled where pay was still frozen for some reason. So people would go *months* without pay through no fault of their own.

  10. HonorBox*

    Not totally bananapants, but I’d had a conversation with the GM of the business I worked for a week or so prior. He asked myself and my teammate if we were “on board” as some others from the team (including our direct boss) had been fired or resigned. We both told him we were, because even though we were both looking for other jobs, we didn’t have anything.

    When I received an offer, I accepted and sent him my resignation. He picked up the phone and gave me quite an earful. “I thought you said you were on board. You lied.” I assured him that I was honest when I answered the question, and he told me that he knew that I was actually going to be offered the job a week or more beforehand (because he’d heard that through the grapevine) and he still considered my answer to be a lie. No one other than my new boss knew of the offer, and certainly wouldn’t have known as far in advance as he was suggesting.

    The best part… the GM was fired shortly after I left.

    1. Florp*

      Ugh, my husband worked for a woman who seemed to get most of her management language from MLMs, and she was constantly pestering people to declare that they were All In. If you disagreed with or even questioned her in any way, this was a major betrayal of your All In Oath.

      Of course, it did not go both ways. She had zero loyalty to her employees and would throw them under the bus or fire them for no reason with no notice.

      1. Gumby*

        You know the only place where being “all in” belongs? When Luke said it to Lorelei. (Yes, it *still* took them ages to get their acts together after loads of manufactured drama but that line was perfection at the time.)

  11. Athenae*

    Promised me a bonus if I stayed to manage a particular event. Did it in writing. Then, when I began discussing my end date after the event, asked if we had ever “firmed up” the bonus amount.

    This was after two weeks of absolute hell managing an academic conference, during which I was screamed at, accused of lying about venue details, screamed at by my boss’s WIFE, and directed to send out bills for fraudulent charges which I refused to do.

    I sent them the original email, with the total they’d promised me in red, and told them, “My last day is X. Come with a check or a lawyer. I really don’t care which.”

    1. AAMLurker*

      I really hope that someday I can utter the words “come with a check or a lawyer. I don’t care which.”

      2. Magenta Sky*

        There’s a certain emotional satisfaction to it, but honestly, I hope I *never* have any reason to utter those words.

        1. Michael*

          After college, my cousin and I both went to work at my parents’ shop. (Intuitively I knew this was not the best situation but rural town, not a lot of options.) After ~2 years I found full time work in my field and gave my parents 2 weeks notice. My dad pouted and iced me out for the entire notice period and my mom talked about how disappointed they were that I wasn’t planning to stay for my entire career (!!!!). (Also they subsidized my degree in a completely unrelated field, not sure what they expected.) Whatever, bullet dodged! Then I stopped getting invited to family functions that doubled as work functions. That stung more, but whatever. Then, after a decade of being their amazing office manager, my cousin went on maternity leave. Cousin and her son had significant health issues after a traumatic birth so she made the difficult decision not to return to work. My parents said the nastiest things about her behind her back about how she had tricked them, how she never planned to return from maternity leave (so???? It wasn’t paid leave!!!!), so ungrateful blah blah blah and they never had anything to do with the child until cousin returned to work part time when her son started kindergarten. Amazing how quickly they all acted like nothing ever happened. I’m grateful every day that I left!

    8. Laura Charles*

      So what did they do? (I am apparently very personally invested in this.) The institution lost, right?

  12. TinyLibrarian*

    Not necessarily bananapants, but I was told I was “unprofessional” for leaving. Just… for finding another job, giving four weeks (above the industry standard of two), and leaving. You know, normal stuff. This place was full of bees, anyway, I don’t know what I expected.

    1. AngryOctopus*

      That was my first job. It was thankless and there was a lot of yelling from the PI (academic research). I should have known better to resign to him directly, but my colleagues all thought I should (probably b/c they worked directly for him, but someone else was my supervisor. I was 23 and didn’t know better though). He called me unprofessional and immature for resigning when I knew the lab had so much work. I didn’t feel bad when he said “maybe today should be your last day” and I said “OK” and took my vacation payout and didn’t look back.

      1. Zombeyonce*

        I love when jerks shoot themselves in the foot just so they can keep being jerks. “The audacity of you trying to leave when we have too much work means that you should just leave now instead of working for 2 more weeks.”

        Only one person wins in that scenario and it’s not the jerk. <3

  13. JC*

    Had a manager be a complete jerk to me when I gave him weeks of notice before leaving. He later told a friend who also worked there that he was trying to get me to quit on the spot.

    1. DJ Hymnotic*

      I had a boss–the business owner, actually–who didn’t beat around the bush and gave me the “you can’t quit, you’re fired” speech after I gave them my two weeks’ notice. Ironically, I had actually desperately wanted to quit on the spot because this person had just posted a six-minute recording to the company WhatsApp thread trashing me, but my professionalism told me to at least offer them two weeks.

  14. Sarah*

    My manager burst into tears and ugly-cried. It took her several minutes to get herself together. And this occurred when I told her I was leaving the position after an annual eval that was less than stellar and included a discussion about me no longer being a good fit for the role.

    1. Lab Boss*

      NOT defending the reaction, but I can understand the emotion. I hate feeling like I hired or promoted someone into a position they couldn’t succeed in, and would be very upset with myself for failing them if it led them to feel they had to quit. But I wouldn’t dump that emotion on them!

    2. Momma Bear*

      I also noped out after a subpar review. Like what do they expect? You got the memo, were you supposed to ignore it?

      1. Caliente Papillon*

        I think sometimes people think they can get more out of you by making you feel less than, you’re not doing enough, you’re not good enough – but ya got potential! Many people upon receiving that feedback will keep working to prove themselves – this dynamic happens in personal relationships too. I’ve been told there are companies where managers are told you can’t give someone the highest praise, they need to always feel like they’re not quite there.

      2. DisneyChannelThis*

        I think sometimes they think you’re desperate to keep your job, and that giving a bad review means you’ll break yourself apart working extreme hours, taking on ridiculous projects, etc to try and save it. When in reality, a bad review just makes you want to job hunt and find a better role.

  15. Optimus*

    My spouse wanted to leave OldJob for a long time but kept sticking around anyway, probably just due to exhaustion/inertia and the distant hope that things would magically improve at some point. Then, two weeks before our annual family vacation (which Spouse had put on the shared calendar weeks prior), they were told no, you can’t go because so-and-so-else requested that time off too. Spouse called me and we decided it’s time. So Spouse went back to their manager that afternoon and put in their two week notice. Here are some of the things their manager, Jane, did in response:
    – made a big to-do over Spouse quitting due to being denied vacation (when the real issue was that Spouse had a different role, on paper, than the person who also wanted to be off at that time, but Jane had not allowed Spouse to transition out of their old role… so Spouse was in fact wearing 2-3 hats and then was denied vacation because someone on a team he wasn’t even on anymore, allegedly… but Jane didn’t want to own up to that part)
    – began rewriting history that she’d actually never said Spouse couldn’t go on vacation
    – got very distant and weird through much of the notice period
    – called Spouse to ask if they’d be willing to work part time instead of quitting

    That last one is extra hilarious, not only because this came at the tail end of two very icky weeks where Spouse was vilified for putting in their notice, but also because Spouse had just accepted an offer at a different workplace.

    We went on that vacation and it was glorious, and Spouse started their new job the following Monday.

      1. Optimus*

        Will it warm your heart cockles an extra couple of degrees if I tell you that Spouse requested an exit interview, during which they left out all the aforementioned grievances but did mention the losses of some accounts as well as some workday/schedule tinkering that (1) included people routinely having to work through meal breaks and (2) was actually documented somewhere? Spouse left HR with some lil nuggets of info to think about.

        Now, whenever I leave a job, I keep in touch with at least a few people so I continue to know what’s going on, because I’m invested like that. Spouse did the mental equivalent of balling it up like scrap paper and throwing it over their shoulder – just dumped it and never looked back. However, Spouse did hear from a former coworker a few months later. Jane had been demoted. I was so floored by this news – Jane had managed that facility for at least 14-15 years at that point – that to this day I remember where I was standing when Spouse told me this. (I was standing in a parking lot in front of a food truck. lol)

    3. goddessoftransitory*

      “Dear Jane: Weather’s great! Getting a fabulous tan!”

      I’d be writing SO MANY postcards.

  16. meganaflame*

    Ooh I’ve got one! I told my previous boss at my last job that I was leaving via Zoom call. She was NOT happy and clearly jealous (she was also trying to leave and my new position was with a partner organization we worked closely with and held in high regard). After we got off the call, she then called me back for the express purpose of having her teenage daughter shame me for leaving. “How could you”, etc. Such a toxic boss but I’m so happy at my new org with an incredible boss and she ended up getting fired. :)

      1. Caliente Papillon*

        Probably more like My daughter wants to speak with you, Miss missy! Yeesh
        Reminds me that I previously had a supervisor who I mentioned to someone else was like an angsty tween about everything and they were like oh my gawd, yes! She was sooooo ridiculous

    3. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      Her teenage daughter got in the phone to harass you???

      I am … wow! What was that conversation even like between her and her daughter. “Her I’m going to call meganaflame back, and I want you to get on the phone with her and say she’s a bad person for leaving. Okay? Okay.”

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        That poor kid. I highly doubt that’s the only time her mother has pulled her into service for some bananapants reason.

        1. Observer*

          Yes indeed. The whole thing is insane, but at least @meganaflame gets to get away from her. The poor teen? Stuck for a while at least.

    6. KK*

      Ooh Ooh! I have a similar! I gave my 2 wks notice to quit. My manager took it very personally. She cried, pleaded me to stay, walked around sad for 2 wks while trying to guilt trip me. I was the file clerk so it’s not like I was running the company!

      Well the next weekend, I ran into her son in a bar. He approaches me with a voice dripping with sadness and anxiety, asking me why did I quit my job working for his mom? And that she was really hurt and upset, angry, conflicted and looked after me like I was the daughter she never had (let me be clear, she was NEVER my mentor, just a friendly boss). He wanted me to call her & ask for my job back!!! That it would lift her spirits & make her feel better about her self.

      I was like “wut??”. I only left that job bc I found another one w/ a better title, better pay & closer to home. It had nothing to do w/ my boss. But yeah, her son came at me. I feel you.

    7. Artemesia*

      And you said ‘Oh Susie, I am just so very very sorry that you have a mother like that; good luck for your future.’

  17. oh geez*

    I’d worked in this office at entry level for just over two years, by no means was I an irreplaceable institution. My supervisor was a very fraught personality type, so I knew it was going to be rough and got a pep talk from a supportive mentor-colleague. Went to my supervisor’s office and asked if they had a minute. They looked at the letter of resignation I handed them and tossed it down and put their hand on their hand and said, distressed, “I might as well go outside and hang myself from a tree now if you do this.”

    I’m still stunned thinking about it years later, honestly.

    2. Expelliarmus*

      OMG it’s like those toxic partners that threaten to kill themselves if you leave them, but at work!

      1. Twix*

        Yup. And having lived through that particular hell, the solution is the same. “Your mental health is a you problem.”

    4. Hornswoggler*

      Blimey.

      I mean, would it have been appropriate/not appropriate but satisfying anyway to have called a welfare check on them?

      1. SarahKay*

        When I was a kid my sister, aged about eight, would often threaten to run away from home whenever my Mum was particularly mean to her – you know, things like telling her it was bedtime (at bedtime), suggesting that her coat would look better on a hook than the floor, that sort of thing.
        Mum’s standard response was a cheerful, friendly “Would you like me to help you pack?”
        (Spoiler alert, sister did not run away from home.)

        1. Bitte Meddler*

          Ha. My mom did that to me when I was 4 years old. I wanted another lollipop from the big bag, she said No, and I threatened to run away. She said, “Would you like me to help you pack?” and I was so mad at her that I said No.

          And then I packed my little pink suitcase (it was like a large hat box with a handle) on my own, marched down the driveway of our house that was in the rural outskirts of a medium-sized town, found myself a nice, comfy ditch a mile or so away, and played with my dolls until I got sleepy, whereupon I got cozy and went to sleep.

          My mom had kept thinking I’d come right back so, when it got to be long after dark and I still wasn’t home (or near enough to even hear her yell my name), she had to call the police and request their help to find me.

          To this day, I do not make empty threats. :-D

          2. LibraryQuokka*

            When I packed up my little suitcase and threatened to leave home as a preschooler, my mother responded, “If you can wait until I’m done with this, we’ll go together.”
            Thus began a long tradition of “running away from home” involving getting in the car and going somewhere random together.

  18. Annimal*

    I left my first real job after 5.5 years with 2 weeks unofficial notice and 3.5 weeks official after a weird situation where I was kind of up for a promotion but they came to me to say “we aren’t doing anything just stay in limbo” and I said “well there is a possibility I won’t be here much longer if you don’t make up your mind about me.” The ED FREAKED out when I put in my notice, accused me of taking advantage of a conflict of interest because of a role/set of responsibilities she never told me she intended me to take on based on one conversation six months prior she’d had with the company I left for, betraying the company, etc. etc. etc.

    I burst into tears and cried for 3 hours, then got on the phone with a relative who’s an employment lawyer to better understand conflict of interest and what I might have to do if they decided to make some sort of continued claim/accusation, etc. The next day my boss came in and acted as if it’d never happened and never brought it up again. Then she tried to refuse to pay out my accumulated vacation time until the office manager showed her that it would be illegal to do so. Now I see her at conferences and she acts like we’re old friends, not like she’s a person that sent me to therapy for years. Great time had by all!

    1. Brookfield*

      Ugh, Annimal … glad that’s behind you. It’s so weird to feel like you have to “play nice” with a toxic former coworker, isn’t it?

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        I wonder how many of these toxic/bananapants types walk away from clear setups to a murder mystery starring an avuncular, quirky priest/retired librarian/ex cop with an issue, never knowing how close they came to being the corpse in the last shot before the fade out to first commercial.

  19. Capt. Liam Shaw*

    Manager and AVP both didn’t speak to me nor came to my going away lunch, Manager who had been there all of 6 weeks mind you. I had applied for the job and didn’t get it. AVP said my leaving was proof that she made the right call the day I turned in my 2 week notice to her, Manager and HR. I left and got a title and huge pay raise ($12,000/yr). I really wanted to tell her it was about the money and not being promoted, but I resisted.

  20. CG*

    Pretty mild by comparison, but I worked for a nonprofit that had terrible senior management and insane turnover. When I started, there were 60 employees and when I left, there were 25.

    After employees announced their resignation or if they were laid off, senior management would completely ice them out. Cancel all their meetings, take them off email chains. They’d even tell other employees not to talk to them.

    I have to say, it was my best notice period ever. Up to that point, I was expected to be on call 24/7 in case the CEO had an “emergency” (didn’t like that I only included the mission statement once in a document). So, being cut off was heaven. I got my transition document done and told my coworkers, then just spent the rest of my time scrolling TikTok and preparing for my new job.

    1. Yvette*

      “ When I started, there were 60 employees and when I left, there were 25.” That is not turnover. That’s people reading the writing on the wall. :)

      1. Momma Bear*

        I had a job where the office dwindled from 35 to 5. Then coworker looked around the barren office and asked if they should start looking for a job. I said they should have already been looking.

        1. CG*

          Yes, very similar experience for me at that nonprofit! I was there a year, and looking for other jobs for about six months. After they laid off four people from our team of seven, it went from actively applying to frantically applying

        2. ferrina*

          My first office job I walked into a department that had been 6 a year ago and was now down to 1- the most junior person. I was too young and naive to see the writing on the wall. I genuinely thought I was going to be part of the fresh start for the department.

          I wish I’d kept my job search going

        3. persimmon*

          My current job had five people when I was hired two years ago – currently three, and hopefully soon to be two. I started looking the day the last person got laid off.

          Apparently pre-COVID it was nine.

  21. juliebulie*

    The year was 1988. I worked for a publisher of computer hobbyist magazines. It was a tiny family business and the boss was kind of a jerk, compounded by rage issues. When I gave my two week’s notice, he demanded an explanation. My official reasons for changing jobs were more money, convenient location on campus where I lived, and good resume experience.

    My unofficial reason was that it was a sexist environment, I had had to prompt them to raise my pay by 25 cents as they had promised, and the boss was generally a jerk, treating us like a bunch of goldbrickers when we were college students doing professional work producing a high quality magazine for $4.25 an hour. And he was a sexist pig. And he often threw temper tantrums.

    But I wanted to leave on good terms, so I didn’t say that stuff. Until.

    The day after I gave notice, there was a memo on everyone’s desk about how disappointing and untrustworthy and ungrateful we were. That really made me mad. So I went home and composed a memo of my own and gave it to him the next day.

    The vein in his forehead began to visibly throb. He called all of us into the conference room and proceeded to read my memo to everyone. Occasionally he would pause in disbelief (for dramatic effect) at what I had written. When he was done, he said, “none of this is true.” And I replied, “if that’s so, why do you never make those remarks when your wife is around?”

    That did it. He threw me out. Several of my coworkers got jobs on campus after that too. I don’t know how he continued to produce the magazines, but changes in the home computer market would render them obsolete in a few years anyway.

      1. juliebulie*

        – Fake “security codes” for using the printer (with experimentation, we found out that any 2-digit number would do, he just wanted to know who was using it for what)
        – Everybody gets business cards except me. WTF
        – Not letting me go to a trade show because I was the only female and they didn’t want to have to rent a separate hotel room just for me
        – Taking my picture when I said no
        – Inappropriate comments about the way I drank a can of Dr Pepper (there was nothing unusual about it)
        – Accused me of flushing feminine unmentionables down the toilet and clogging it. NOPE in fact I used the bathroom as seldom as possible
        – If one of us went to McD’s to pick up lunch for everyone, that person had to stay late after work to make up the “extra time” they took for their lunch break
        – There is a blizzard. Us college students have old cars with no 4-wheel drive or anything. Oh, and I get to make an extra side-trip in the snow to take the proofs to the FedEx place because it’s on my way home (not really on my way home). My parents were having kittens waiting for me to come home

        1. Silver Robin*

          Except this time the memo was handed directly to the boss, not circulated among the reports, was in response to a passive aggressive public response, and it was the *boss* who decided to read it aloud. Petty and a bit immature? Probably, but I think it is significantly different. Besides, what was he going to do, fire her?

            1. Slow Gin Lizz*

              I also wish you had made copies! You are 100% my hero for doing this and for your “if that’s true….” question after he read the thing out loud. I also want to know what your coworkers were doing while he was reading it. Did they look really uncomfortable or were they just rolling there eyes or what?

              1. juliebulie*

                I wish I could tell you what my coworkers were doing. I was looking at my boss. I was as angry as he was, so I kind of had tunnel vision. But I can tell you that no one else moved or spoke. I wouldn’t expect them to defend me, but no one was defending our boss either.

                But really what was most gratifying as that we all ended up coworkers again with my new employer. Where the bosses never had a tantrum.

              1. juliebulie*

                I suppose he did. Don’t most bullies think their nonsense is justified? (A rhetorical question, I don’t know about “most,” but for sure many bullies do.) Like I was endangering the future of the business by moving on. I was a copy editor, for Pete’s sake. My exit wasn’t going to bring the business to its knees… though the subsequent exits of the advertising sales guy and the graphic design layout artist and the editor didn’t do it any good. And it’s too bad. But the ungrateful person was the boss. We were making his magazines for about a dollar more than minimum wage!

  22. Dulcinea47*

    Nothing too dramatic, but when I quit my job of 17 years, my boss initially thought I was kidding. Part of the reason I quit was b/c he was such a bad and apathetic manager. He was my supervisor for nearly a decade andnever once tried to initiate a friendly conversation with me, until my very last day. Bizarre.

    1. The OG Sleepless*

      One of my favorite TV scenes ever is when Peggy gives Don her notice on Mad Men. It takes him a minute to realize she is quitting. He laughs incredulously. It had obviously never occurred to him that she would leave.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        And how he begs her to stay! And kisses her hand! It was so inappropriate but she was thisclose to giving in and I was yelling DON’T DON’T DONT WALK AWAY the whole time!

        1. Sharp-Dressed Boston Terrier*

          I feel you there! I was shouting “SAY IT! SAY IT!” at the screen when Roger Sterling asked Peggy to get him a cup of coffee after they all jumped ship and roared so loud when she said “…No.” that I scared my ex’s cat.

    2. o*

      I couldn’t think of any plantain-pantalones quitting stories in my own past until I read yours, and I remembered. When I left a recent position in which my boss and I never really got along and I was quite overworked and underpaid, they waited until my final day to smilingly apologize for never really learning my job or how to do it.
      Flames on the side of my face.

  23. Lab Boss*

    I worked at a bar for a while while job hunting post-college. When I got an offer I told my manager that the next weekend would be my last, apologizing for only 8 days notice but needing to get over to full-time pay and benefits as fast as possible. His response? “Who gives a sh*t, most people quit this place by just never showing up again.” Which wasn’t directed at me, but it was definitely the least-professional response to a resignation I’ve experienced (funny, though!)

    1. kiwiii*

      This has me cackling.

      The summer after high school, I gave a little over 2 weeks notice to my (20-something, 00s grunge, paid about $2/hour better than I was) supervisor in the produce department of a grocery store because I’d heard that you were supposed to give that much notice, and it was my first job.

      He asked me to repeat the date I was leaving and then said, “Why are you telling me now? Remind me the week of.”

      1. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

        Oh bless, I can just imagine little high school person trying so hard to do Proper Work Etiquette with Appropriate Notice.

    3. Bitte Meddler*

      Oh, man, during the Great Recession, after I’d gotten laid off from a white-collar corporate job, I went to work at a big box retailer to keep some kind of income coming in.

      I eventually found another corporate job and so did what I had always done when leaving a company: Wrote a short resignation letter expressing how much I’d enjoyed working there and thanking them for being a good stepping stone to the next job, etc. Then I took that letter to the HR manager on site (the store was big enough to have one) and handed him all of the keys I had accumulated in the two years I’d been there.

      He sat in his chair dumbfounded. Apparently people usually just told the scheduler that X would be their last day and then either really worked those last days or no-showed. And they sure as heck never turned their keys back in.

      It was my turn to be dumbfounded. That whole time that I’d been guarding the keys with my life, there were dozens of copies out in the wild just waiting for ex-employees to use for nefarious purposes?? Yikes.

    4. CSRoadWarrior*

      Most people quit that place? Maybe the manager should look at his attitude, and think he may be the reason based on his response to you.

      Good for you for finding a full time office job, BTW.

  24. Seen Too Much*

    This happened a LOOONNNGGG time ago at one of the first real jobs I ever had. The only reason I stayed on as long as I did was because it was 2 blocks from my house.

    The owner of the business was 98 and had dementia. We would have to check his desk after he left because he would take payments from clients and lose them for weeks. He would use the bathroom, that was right in the middle of the office, and forget to close the door.

    Then the mice came. An invasion. You couldn’t open a drawer without them jumping out.

    I asked for a, in hindsight, teeny tiny raise, and was denied. I found another local job and handed in my two weeks.

    The office manager told me I was being a baby and wouldn’t hack it anywhere else. She told me I was being disloyal and showing my true colors. Then she told me I couldn’t be trusted so I could only file during my last two weeks – into the cabinets infested with mice.

    I walked out and never looked back.

    1. Anne Shirley*

      “Then the mice came.” OMG. “cabinets infested with mice” WTF. Seen Too Much, I hope you weren’t plagued by nightmares. Also I am picturing an INSANE office manager with crooked glasses, wild hair, and a mouse on each shoulder.

    2. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      So the office manager was keeping this ridiculous business alive because?
      She’d be the one mopping floors on the Titanic.

        1. Jam on Toast*

          Leaving teeny, tiny memos for their human coworkers, like the mice in the Tailor of Gloucester, perhaps? “No more twist” could be updated to “No more toner”.

    3. Observer*

      The office manager told me I was being a baby and wouldn’t hack it anywhere else. She told me I was being disloyal and showing my true colors. Then she told me I couldn’t be trusted so I could only file during my last two weeks – into the cabinets infested with mice.

      Either a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome or she had something going on there and needed to keep things going till she could officially take over. But the former is more likely, imo. The other is more fun for a novel, but I would not think it’s likely.

  25. Wonky Policy Wonk*

    I had one really terrible job for years with a company that my brother worked at, he had referred me to the hiring manager (so people were aware we were related) but it was for a role in another department and our work never overlapped. My manager promised me a raise if I hit a certain metric, then reneged on it when I actually hit that metric, and I point blank told them I would be looking for another job if they didn’t make good on their promise. The were still somehow ~shocked~ when I handed in my notice a few months later and had the audacity to call in my brother to a meeting where they tried to pressure me into staying. I’m still flabbergasted that they would ever think this was OK and it ended up causing a serious strain between my brother and I (he went along with it and still thinks it wasn’t wrong of them to do it). That place was the definition of toxic work culture.

      1. Wonky Policy Wonk*

        Yup, he actually bought a (minority) share in the company ownership last year so he’s pretty much committed for life to that place. It was his first office job after spending a decade doing blue collar work and he has no concept of what normal work place norms are. I kept trying to get him to read AAM to get a better idea of how un-normal it all is but he’s gone full ostrich at this point, so we just don’t talk about his work ever.

    3. Magenta Sky*

      I’m pretty sure my brother would have quit on the spot. I know I would have, were the roles reversed.

  26. cardigarden*

    Not a job, but I had to quit middle school band because an asthma diagnosis and playing the clarinet aren’t exactly compatible. Had a doctor’s note and everything. The band director stopped speaking to me and wouldn’t even look at me if we crossed paths in the hallway, which is such a bizarre way to treat an 11 year old.

    1. Lab Boss*

      Oof, you just dredged up a memory from my Junior year of high school- I’d had a very exhausting summer and just didn’t care enough to want to play football, so I went to the first team meeting (still during summer break) to let the coach know. Three of the four adult coaches in the room gathered around me to tell me I was a failure, that men don’t let people down, that I was nothing to them any more. I tried to salvage the situation with a “grown up” handshake before I left and the head coach, also my guidance counselor, said he only shook hands with people he respected. My mom was usually the one to deal with school stuff but my dad (a towering blue-collar guy) went in for that one to explain that he KNEW I would be facing NO further poor treatment.

      The happy ending to that one was my own lack of professionalism. I graduated with honors and a bunch of scholarships that made the school look great, and got to smile and reject the guidance counselor’s congratulatory handshake on stage in front of an audience. I didn’t make a big scene of it, only the people who knew the history noticed… but man it was sweet.

      1. cardigarden*

        Dude, what your coach did was so f’d up. I’m so sorry you had to deal with that, but being able to reject his handshake is just *chef kiss*.

        1. Lab Boss*

          He was a jerk that everyone hated. He actively withheld information on scholarships from people he disliked.I got one extremely prestigous scholarship and *several* teachers pulled me aside to tell me I should keep it a secret from him, because he hadn’t told me it existed, but he would list me getting it as an “accomplishment” and use it to get a performance payment.

          It was terrible in the moment, I kept my chin up all the way to my car and then burst into tears on the drive home. But I took a couple good lessons from it: Authority figures can be extremely petty, acting professional won’t always be replied to with professionalism, and small town pettiness isn’t always a bad thing- it can be very good at making sure jerks are recognized and treated as such.

          1. Polaris*

            Ah, no petty like small town petty.

            Got into an argument with art teacher over an assigned project, probably because my parents had opted to discontinue dance instruction for my sister from him honestly, first week of school. The principal asked me if I was okay with a switch to a completely different class in exchange for ignoring the teacher’s complaint that I told him that he was “dumb as $h!t and wouldn’t know Picasso if it bit him in the @$$” (principal said this while chuckling). Sounded good to me even if it ignored the fact that he’d said I was an “uneducated little tramp who was a pathetic excuse for an artist”.

            Entered the project I’d been working on that had provoked the argument and “Picasso Exchange” into a juried show. Won high honors. Guess who I had to accept my certificate from in front of the whole school? Me, very quietly, as I shook his hand: “Toldja.”

          2. Unguided*

            School guidance counselors are supposed to help you apply to colleges and scholarships? That makes so much sense but man was I let down and I never even realized it until now.

            1. goddessoftransitory*

              Yep. Mine back in the day was OBSESSED with scoring a million dollars a year in scholarships for students. It was good she cared that much, but it got pretty intense.

            2. Artemesia*

              In the school I taught in in the 60s and the one I graduated from in the early 60s that was the ONLY thing they actually did. True of my kids’ public schools as well although they didn’t get much help on that.

            3. Gumby*

              It varies by school. My counselor basically helped put together class schedules and dealt with students who had/caused difficulties of one sort or another. Since I was not one of those, we spoke maybe one a year. She definitely called and asked if I wanted to be moved out of my mother’s Algebra II class (I did, though the teacher I ended up with was a much worse teacher it was probably still worth switching). I think I might have needed her signature for one application or something? But I didn’t see her often. She was the school counselor of record for around 700 students. (~2700 students in my high school, 4 counselors) So I don’t know how she could have had the time to do much by way of helping with college and scholarship applications for all of us even if only 1/3 were seniors at a time. And if she was going to spend her time that way, I would have been a prime candidate.

          3. Pdxer*

            I had a really horrible band teacher in high school who totally chose favorites, was often extremely demeaning, and occasionally emotionally inappropriate. While exhorting the accomplishments of several of my friends, he turned to me unprompted and said “you’d better pick some other profession. Not everyone has actual talent.” I took him at his word, threw myself into science and healthcare after being heartbroken and upset for awhile, and am now a practicing doctor and academic medicine professor. I ran into this teacher again about two years ago at an event.

            “Well, you’re certainly not where anyone expected you to end up in life,” he told me, looking down his nose. I’d recently heard he’d been unfaithful to his wife, was alienated from his kid, and being investigated for inappropriate behavior with a student. It took everything I had to keep my expression neutral when I told him “hey, that’s funny. You’re exactly where I thought you’d end up.”

      2. idowordsformoney*

        Oh man I had a similar experience when I got my first retail job in high school and quit the track team. The coach told me he should have his son beat me up for wasting his time in front of other adults in the room. I was never allowed to compete anyway because I had dyed hair. It was insane.

      4. Observer*

        went in for that one to explain that he KNEW I would be facing NO further poor treatment.

        Good for your dad! What a bunch of jerks!

        but man it was sweet.

        I can imagine.

      5. Donn*

        These school stories reminded me of someone who quit our high school’s football team because he disliked the coach. Coach said to the someone’s younger sibling, “Tell him we don’t need him.”

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          “Or YOU could tell him, grown adult. If you think that’s in any way appropriate.”

      6. Luna*

        Hahaha, not shaking the coach’s hand, he absolutely knew what you were doing. Must’ve been a sweet moment!

    2. Elle*

      My kid is in HS band and her teachers are kind of like that. Band is everything to them and they’ve never done anything else in their lives. Truthfully they seem kind of burned out and the band could use a change.

      1. La Triviata*

        The high school I went to was new and the very first graduating class was having their graduation rehearsal. The much-loathed school vice principal came to oversee … and the kids STONED him off the field. Literally threw rocks at him until he left.

      2. Chirpy*

        I’ve worked with children in two very different jobs, and it is *always* the parents that are the problem.

    4. Arglebarglor*

      Oh lord, I had a similar reaction from my high school’s music department chair. I played in every wind ensemble, orchestra, chamber group and rock band available to play with in my school, played in the pit for all the high school musicals, took EVERY SINGLE music class that was possibly available in the 4 years I was there (so much so that they ended up sending me to the city college for further music instruction because they ran out of classes to give me in my senior year). Then in the second half of my senior year I had to quit the citywide wind ensemble that the HS department chair conducted–it was on Saturdays and I got a job to help save up for college and a new instrument. He took it REALLY poorly, even though there were plenty of people who were slavering to take my place. As a result he pulled me from the running for all the school music awards I was nominated for, that were to be given at graduation. His son won them all.

      1. knitcrazybooknut*

        Speaking as a former Gold Star and Theater Kid, that is HEINOUS. The small piece of redemption I had for surviving high school was winning about a dozen awards at the end of senior year. What a jerk!!

    5. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

      @cardigarden my contribution to this is about a vindictive teacher, too! Why are so many of them like that?

        1. cardigarden*

          Uhhhhhhhh, I don’t like the implication that teachers on the whole are the bottom of the ladder or otherwise aren’t successful people. Let’s not do that.

          2. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

            Nah, that’s not what she’s doing at all. In the context of a school, the kids are clearly on the bottom. And the teachers are clearly largely powerless except for the tremendous power they wield over the children.
            It’s great that there are lots of public school teachers who don’t use their position to bully (bodily throwing a kid into a dumpster) and promote misinformation (telling us that the Civil War was about states’ rights and slaves were happy to be taken care of), but when you get defensive about criticizing real abuse, you’re protecting abusers.

    6. Observer*

      which is such a bizarre way to treat an 11 year old.

      That’s kinder than the guy deserves. I mean, you had a *medical problem*. Who gets into such a huff when *anyone* has to drop out because of their health? To do that to a kid? That is just disgusting.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        People who believe all illness is made up or “in your mind,” or worse, had parents who thought that way and refused to listen to them growing up about their own sicknesses.

    7. Autofill Contact*

      Oh for sure, the most insane reaction to quitting was my choir director in college. I had a competing class that I needed to graduate and was insanely hard to get into that was scheduled at the same time as choir. So I just didn’t register for choir. She went ape shit. (I was not a music major… I was just doing choir for fun.)

    8. Another School Memory*

      I had a journalism teacher in high school pout and call me out of another class to “talk it over” when I didn’t want to be on the newspaper anymore.

    9. Never Knew I Was a Dancer*

      I still think about this sometimes even after [mumblety] years later.

      My junior year of high school, I found a voice teacher who offered group lessons (yay I could afford it!). I was thrilled, and went every week for a month, but then something came up and the lessons were no longer an option for me. At the end of my last lesson I very apologetically told her that I’d have to withdraw—and she tore me a new one. Berated me for misleading her, letting her down, not following through with it, all kinds of things I can’t remember now because the overwhelming feeling I had was shame for… “misleading her and letting her down.” Cried most of the rest of the evening.

      It took at least a few years until I looked back and realized—what the hell. Who does that. WHO DOES THAT. Bullet dodged.

    10. Luna*

      You just reminded me, I was in my middleschool’s choir club, I was about 10. (I say middleschool, it was 5th grade Gymnasium; elementary school in Germany goes from first till fourth grade, then you move onto a secondary school)

      We were all practicing for an upcoming event, where we’d be singing in a location and all that. So all sorts of practicing going on, prep-works, etc. And then the choir teacher dropped the bombshell on me that I was not going to sing because I was being thrown out of the choir.
      Why? Because I had missed choir club twice over the span of the school year. I had missed those practices with permission and a note from my mother because of my orthodental appointments, I had braces.

      I recall dreading telling my mom because I felt so horrible, she was getting ready and dressed up for the event, and I ‘had’ to break the harsh truth to her that I wasn’t gonna be part of it. (I tend to focus on odd things. She said the issue was with my choir teacher, not me.)

  27. many bells down*

    I guess I didn’t *technically* resign, but a job that had promised me full-time hours starting in the summer just took me off the schedule for an entire month. With no guarantee that they’d even put me back on, let alone give me the full time I’d quit my other job for.

    So naturally I started job hunting and took a new job. SIX MONTHS later, I had to swing by the old job to pick up some paperwork and the front desk said “oh we’ve been meaning to call you. Can you come in Thursday?” They seemed legitimately surprised that I wasn’t sitting around for half a year waiting for them to call.

    1. Lenora Rose*

      I had stuff like this happen as a temp, but in the nearest equivalent with a permanent role, they did the full lay off process complete with Record of Employment. (The whole process had been more like a quiet firing than I like, but the role I had been moved to was dependent on a person who had just rage-quit, so there legitimately wasn’t anything for me to do until they hired a replacement and the replacement was ready for the project.)

      1. Happy*

        Many many moons ago, age 19 or so, it was the last day working at a grocery store. As I was saying my good-byes, my married, older manager said “Oh, i have something for you in the office.” You guessed it, he backed me up to the wall and planted a wet sloppy one on me.

        Folks, I was so shocked and naive, I just said uh, bye and hightailed of out of there. Ewww!
        Wish I could go back and react differently!

  28. Casual Librarian*

    I was working an entry-level job right out of undergrad as I worked on my master’s program. As I finished my master’s program, I began applying for jobs that had the Masters as a minimum qualification. At this point, I now had a graduate degree and 4 years of professional work experience. When I resigned, my manager declared to all who would listen that I was an ‘entitled millennial brat’ for wanting to move beyond a barely-above-minimum-wage entry-level job.

    1. Panicked*

      My sister worked in business as she was earning her MBA. She graduated and got a really fantastic job offer. Our mother told her that she should turn it down because she should gain more lower-level experience before taking a job like that and that “someone else more deserving” should get the position. My sister not only took the job, but excelled and was promoted several times. Neither one of us take work advice from our mother.

      1. StarTrek Nutcase*

        I had a coworker become angry with me for not retiring upon my 30 yr work anniversary (full pension date) – because everyone should retire as soon as possible to clear the way for younger workers. I would have loved to because I preferred anything but working, but was smart enough to know I needed to wait for Medicare. To her credit, she lived her (warped) viewpoint because she retired at 55 (30 yrs) to clear the way. (Though she ended up eventually working elsewhere so….)

  29. Medium Sized Manager*

    I gave three weeks notice at a veterinary office and offered to continue working Saturdays since I knew they were shortstaffed. I had a bunch of unused PTO, so one of the office managers agreed to pay me out for it. The other manager found out and accused both of us of “stealing from the company” and refused to pay it. I changed my last day immediately and did not work Saturdays for them.

  30. Silence is golden*

    This was my first job out of college – I resigned my extremely entry level job with 2 weeks notice. I explained I was leaving for graduate school and had enjoyed my two years with the organization. My manager looked at me and said “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me, I can’t even talk to you anymore.” She walked out and for the rest of the two weeks gave me full silent treatment and only communicated with me by email and post it note. What made this even more awkward? We were a small nonprofit and shared offices (really small rooms like a bedroom) and so for two weeks my manager refused to speak with me and sent emails for every single request/put post it notes on my desk, all while sitting right next to me but still talking to the other colleague that shared our space. It was a painful, but quiet two weeks!

  31. noname*

    This might be in the opposite direction from some of these, but it was always interesting to me. I spent 8 years as a contractor at a large company before I got hired permanently at the site, which made my manager and I the people who had been there the longest in our contracting company.

    I put in my notice, and he said “wow, that’s great! I actually got hired permanently too!” We high-fived, he said, “let’s get out of this dumpster fire” and we both put in notice for the same day. The following Monday, we were in the same orientation class for new permanent employees.

  32. are ya kidding me*

    I extended my notice for an extra month and offered to stay on part time. Despite an inability to get meaningful raises (even though I am apparently so comptent that I eliminated the need for a second person on [program]), apparently I’m important enough that [program] can’t run without me. Management was flabbergasted that I would give standard two weeks because how on earth would the program continue without me/someone in my role? Hmm well maybe invest in your employees if they’re that necessary. Not that deranged of a reaction, I guess, but it certainly has me deranged.

    Have they posted the job to try to get applicants and get someone in the role in the meantime? No. Lmao.

    1. goddessoftransitory*

      Ah, yes, the “You’re Irreplaceable and Worthless at the Same Time” minuet so many bad managers love to do. Performed to the dulcet tones of “How Can You Do This To Me?”

  33. JE*

    I gave notice at my small family owned firm. My boss promptly gathered everyone else in the office to tell them I was leaving but it was okay because I wasn’t a “real” office manager and actually didn’t have the experience to do the job that I had been doing for a year. He ghosted me for the entire two weeks until my last day in which he silently walked into my office and tossed a bouquet of flowers at me! The “real” office manager he hired to replace me quit three weeks in. He never did fill that spot and just took on the role himself.

  34. Agile Phalanges*

    It’s not that bananapants, but I quit my last job because it was stressing me out, and the boss wasn’t very communicative so I couldn’t do my job well, but then he would storm in and demand stuff. When I told him I was quitting, he ranted and yelled at me for over an hour. Another employee IMed him during, but he didn’t notice (of course) but had a chat with him after and he came and apologized. But yeah, dude, you’re just reinforcing my reasons for leaving, not convincing me to stay.

      1. I'm on Team Rita*

        Staying there for an hour is also bananapants, though I understand why someone might do it.

  35. good riddance indeed*

    The only interesting story I have is of that one time I left a horrible internship (paid, full-time, 6 months). I exited through the back door to not have to say goodbye to my manager, who had been truly awful for that entire time.

    He was just behind said back door, taking his smoke break, and I ran directly into him. We stared at each other, stayed silent for a minute, and then he said, in a questioning voice: « Well. Good riddance, then, huh? »

    I nodded, went to my car, left the place and moved to another country (…that was unrelated, but was very satisfying still).

  36. crochet all day*

    An attorney I worked for had custom postage stamps made with HER FACE on them specifically for mailing folks their last paycheck after they were fired or (usually) quit. There was a LOT of turnover there.

      1. Silver Robin*

        same; is it unhinged? Yes. And that also lets me detach from it enough that I kind of respect the level of petty. What a wackadoodle

      1. Seeking Second Childhood*

        I’m just disappointed that I learned about custom postage stamps after they had been discontinued by the USPS!

    10. SKULL RING*

      That’s impressive. If I had received one of these, I’d actually laugh about the level of delusion this person had, and it would reinforce I made the right decision.

    13. Captain Vegetable (Crunch Crunch Crunch)*

      I would frame that envelope if I had worked there! The bananapants are strong with this one.

    17. Ex-Teacher*

      I’m genuinely curious as the motivation here- is she trying to intimidate the quitters? Is she trying to make them sad about what they’re missing? Is she trying to imply she’s more important than the quitters because her face is on a stamp?

      Baffling.

    19. Pdxer*

      This kind of reminds me of those little yellow cards the church of scientology used to send out to people who left the church. You were supposed to carry them around so the practicing scientologists knew they weren’t allowed to talk to you.

  37. Be Gneiss*

    When I left OldJob, one of my 6 (six!!!) bosses called me repeatedly – from her cell phone to my cell phone, so I could clearly see it was her – and hung up. She forbade everyone from getting me a cake for my last day. She ignored me for two weeks, then scheduled 1 hour on my last day for me to “teach her my job,” and showed up 20 minutes late…
    The icing on the cake is that it’s a very small town, and her daughter and mine have been friends since kindergarten. Her last order of business when I walked out the door was to tell me “it’s not personal” and then uninvite my daughter from her daughter’s birthday party the next day.

      1. Be Gneiss*

        I split my time between 2 sites, and it was a family-owned business. I had one actual boss at each site, which made sense, and then a bunch of family members who liked to be the boss of an assortment of things and random times, and would decide on a whim what I was allowed/not allowed/expected/encouraged to work on….and who never agreed on what those rules or priorities were.

      2. Bitte Meddler*

        At my last job, I had five managers and one grand-manager. BUT we were project-based, so even though one of the five managers was actually my direct-line manager, at any given time I could be reporting to and being evaluated by a couple or all of them.

    4. Cyndi*

      I hope, since you said “have been” and not “had,” that your daughters’ friendship at least survived this. Poor kids.

      1. Be Gneiss*

        Yep, still friends! Thankfully now at the age that requires very little parent involvement to plan their social lives.

    6. Observer*

      Her last order of business when I walked out the door was to tell me “it’s not personal” and then uninvite my daughter from her daughter’s birthday party the next day.

      I feel bad for her kid.

  38. Snarkus Aurelius*

    In the days before cell phones, I had a terrible boss. She was suuuuper sweet, but she always found an “innocent’ way to get people to do work on nights and weekends. She’d either manufacture an emergency or pretend to lose important papers so you’d have to come only to find out from other people she had what she needed all along. She once made me come in at 9 PM on a Tuesday to redo her schedule to reflect all her rebookings for a work trip only to learn the next day she decided the previous week she wasn’t going at all.

    BOSS ONLY ACTED LIKE THAT TO UNPAID INTERNS, WHICH I WAS!

    When I gave notice, my workload increased and increased to the point I couldn’t pack up my apartment because my boss kept calling me with “just one more question” and “we really need you so can you come in just one last time?” The day I left town, she told me I had to come in and work a half day before my flight or else she “didn’t know” if she could write me a letter of recommendation. So I did because I thought I didn’t have a choice.

    As I packed up my apartment and did a last minute check, my boss continued to call me and leave messages on the answering machine. (My internship gave us furnished apartments so that’s why it stayed plugged in.) I never responded. A couple of years later, I found out from an ex-coworker that my boss was asking her staff to call DC’s National Airport to have me paged so I could answer more work questions before I boarded. Apparently, you can’t use the paging system for that.

    2. Momma Bear*

      Hindsight is always 20/20 but I would have mentioned this to the internship coordinator. That’s…wow.

    3. Observer*

      A couple of years later, I found out from an ex-coworker that my boss was asking her staff to call DC’s National Airport to have me paged so I could answer more work questions before I boarded. Apparently, you can’t use the paging system for that.

      Gee, I can’t imagine why not!/sarc

      What a loon. Also a petty tyrant on a power trip.

      Agree with Moma Bear. It would have been nice to let the internship coordinator know, if there was one. But I can also see why you would not have realized that you could do that.

    4. Lizzo*

      When I transferred internally at my first job, it was to work for a manager (Awesome Manager) who I greatly admired, but then the vacant manager position on the team was filled by Terrible Manager, and I was to support both but report to Terrible Manager. The role I was in was supposed to be a growth role, and Awesome Manager had been treating it as such in the few months I had worked for solely them. But then Terrible Manager decided it was more appropriate to treat me like an admin. It sucked, big time, and my mental health took a tremendous hit.

      I lasted 18 months and finally gave notice with some job opportunities on the horizon but nothing officially lined up. I worked my first week of notice in office, as well as the Monday of the following week. Monday night I took my laptop home because we were expecting a storm on Tuesday, and my commute was quite long. I continued working at home, and then sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday became VERY ill. Fever and other terrible symptoms. Despite this, I kept working, trying to wrap everything up. I worked through serious illness on Wednesday and Thursday. Both managers left Thursday for a work trip.

      Friday morning–my scheduled last day–I wasn’t feeling better and contacted a respected colleague in the executive office who had worked there for a LONG time and had both respect/authority and building access. I was in no position to be upright for long periods of time to pack up, much less make the long drive to and from the office. She agreed that she could meet me and my spouse at the office on Saturday and help me clean out my desk and also take back my badge, laptop, etc. I conveyed this to my managers via email, and received a reply that stated I HAD to come to the office on a regular business day to deliver those items, and furthermore, I was expected at the office on the following Monday because I hadn’t done any work that week. (WTF???)

      Well, I dragged my feverish self off the couch, went to the doctor where I was diagnosed with whooping cough*, and then went straight to my office and proceeded to pack things up and be done with it. A very nice team member had brought in a cake for me, but she and EVERYBODY I saw at the office said, “Why are you here? You look like death.”

      That was my last day. I’m sure Terrible Manager still thinks that I was faking illness. And I still hope I have an opportunity to some day apologize to Awesome Manager…or at least acknowledge the impact of all of that drama on her.

      (*Yes, I know, I shouldn’t have been anywhere near my office with that kind of illness. It was different times then.)

      1. Pdxer*

        If there’s been one good thing about Covid, it’s that people now know coming to work sick isn’t the honorable, laudable thing managers have been making it out to be all these years.

  39. Yup*

    Not me specifically, but when I worked in advertising, if someone left to go to another agency, management would have security come to escort them immediately out the door. They were walked from their manager’s office to their desk so they could get their coat/bag/purse, and that was it. Any personal items had to be picked up at night after everyone left, also escorted by security. The absolute public shame-based tactics to make sure people were reluctant to ever leave for the competition were astounding.

    (When I left for a non-profit agency, not considered competition, the president told me I was being fair to the agency in return for what they’d invested in me. Meaning I wasn’t “stealing” the knowledge they’d passed on to invest it elsewhere. We were all paid peanuts. We were not allowed to freelance as it was considered “stealing” and working for the competition [many did anyway]. I still wake up thinking about how we’d all been brainwashed into working long hours for thin pay under threat of being banished and shame-walked out the door.)

    1. Richard Hershberger*

      I honestly don’t understand why, if you know they will perp shame you, you don’t pack up all your stuff the night before and leave a resignation letter behind.

      1. Momma Bear*

        Agreed. Or I wouldn’t bring in anything I cared about.

        My industry is small. We trade people like playing cards, depending on which company is doing best. Depending on the role, if someone *doesn’t* go to a competitor, it’s unusual.

    2. PassThePeasPlease*

      This happened at an ad agency I worked at as well! They always said it was procedure set by the clients but I’ve never seen it since. My favorite was a coworker who grabbed a pizza slice from the team lunch that was happening in one of the weird hallway meeting spaces on his way out while being escorted by security. I left during COVID lockdowns when everyone was working from home (and I was regularly having panic attacks about my workload) so thankfully was spared.

  40. VPCommonSense*

    My position, along with 10 others, was eliminated as a result of the 2008 recession the week after my honeymoon. HR gave me the option to transition my clients and skip an overseas trip, or take the overseas trip and not transition my clients. I made the decision to skip the trip, also figuring I could hit the ground running on searching for a job. The president of the company cornered me and told me I needed to dress appropriately and “comport myself accordingly” during my final weeks, as if I ever DIDN’T do those things. He proceeded to trash talk me to other colleagues in my remaining weeks, and told people afterwards he fired me. I ended up at a competitor six weeks after my last day, which was amazing given my line of work. Coincidentally, he used to work at that competitor. From time to time, it would get back to me that he said something disparaging about me to colleagues. Not entirely sure why but hey, buddy, live your life.

  41. Legally Brunette*

    I resigned without a firm job offer lined up, and at my going-away party, high-powered boss asked if I was planning to ski instruct (a side gig) until I found something full time. It was August in the mid-Atlantic US…

  42. Dr. Rebecca*

    Not the day of, but a few months after they called me up and asked me to do a week of work for them off the books. I’d left to go back to college. That’s a no from me, dawg, and I told them to lose my number.

    Note: this was an employer who *hated* me, and made no bones about it. The only person who liked me was the general manager, and he was the only person to say a kind word on the day I left them, the rest just acted like it was any other day (ignored me unless they were complaining about me). Even I had been available (I wasn’t, because classes), I wouldn’t stand piss on that building if it was on fire.

  43. A Penguin!*

    I turned in my two weeks notice and a day or so later my grandboss (who was probably 85% of the reason I was leaving) came into my office, slammed the door closed, and proceeded to yell at me for a good 20 minutes about how stupid I was, what a terrible decision I was making, what a great place the company I was leaving was (ha! – most toxic environment I’ve ever been in), and how my career would never recover. He was standing in front of the closed door so I couldn’t open it/leave until he yelled himself out. He then wouldn’t look at or talk to me for the remainder of my notice. That part was more than fine by me.

    With about two hours left in my last day my boss came to me and asked me to teach him how to do my job. I was the last person in the company who knew how. I did what I could in those two hours, and then left and never looked back.

  44. Former EA*

    Honestly, the most deranged thing a boss did when I resigned was…nothing. I left because she was truly deranged (among other things, she tried to ban me from leaving my desk. Like, to go to the bathroom.) She did complain to a coworker that she was astounded that I was able to get a job without anyone calling her for a reference. (I have SO MANY stories of my time there. Some of them would be pretty identifying, but just to say that she was a former professor at a university and ran two centers there. Her husband was the former university president, and she was accustomed to a certain level of…everything.)

    Anyway, given everything I was pretty shocked she didn’t try to make my life miserable in my last week–bc I only gave a week’s notice before I took a week off to recover before starting my new job.

    1. Former EA*

      Oh no wait! She did get really mad at me bc I “promised” when I started that I would stay through until her retirement (which was 2 years from my start date, 1 from when I resigned.) Which, y’know was coming off a year of unemployment and burnout from job hunting and before I realized just how cuckoo bananas she was.

      1. Michelle Smith*

        I will never understand employers that get mad about stuff like that. I’ve had jobs where I had to sign agreements saying I committed to working X number of years without a corresponding promise from them that they wouldn’t lay me off or fire me except for cause, and to me that’s bad enough. But to not even have more than a verbal assurance at the time of hiring that the person plans to stay for a couple years and then take that as if it’s a contractual agreement is just bizarre. People have lives, situations and circumstances change, and even if the job had been amazing in every way, it still wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for someone to move on in the time frame you did.

  45. Bookworm*

    I didn’t resign (sigh) but the employer told me the reason I was being fired was because I refused to answer calls that were not emergencies outside of business hours. The job didn’t involve emergency services or life-dependent services in any type of way (boring office job that also didn’t have clients who wanted answers at all hours), employer refused to set “core” hours expected to answer and would call/email at all hours/weekends/when people were on their excused and official PTO, etc.

    While I’ll own to not having handled this better, this person was also completely closed to perhaps thinking about that this was not a healthy way of working and maybe this was a management issue that could have been addressed if they were willing (they weren’t, obviously).

  46. BnT*

    My partner worked his job for 12+ years, and left due to an industry shortage of work, trying to maintain professional (and some social) relationships. They told him to leave immediately (he gave 2 weeks notice), so he asked if he’d be paid for his notice, no. They didn’t plan on that (illegal where we are). He declined, and kept doing his job as per usual (quality work and normal workload- he wasn’t slacking off). They told him to work his two weeks. Two days later they approached him, said they are not firing him but they are concerned he was a liability and would become injured during his notice period. Please leave now (and they would pay him his wages required). No goodbye, no company announcement (longest employee there aside from the owner). Nothing.

    1. milkdudsnotdrugs*

      I’m not sure what industry your partner was in, but this almost reads like a personal threat to safety. I can’t imagine a scenario where an employee who, presumedly up until that point was operating/ performing their job in a satisfactory and safe manor, could possibly be at sudden risk of serious injury without an outside influence. Did your partner get the sense that they were in danger from another person, or did they believe this was just a convoluted excuse to get them them to exit the facilities quickly and voluntarily? I can’t wrap my brain around this!

      1. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

        It was a lie. That’s all. It was a believeable thing to say (if you knew nothing of the context). It was a way to back down and pay BnT’s partner out for their notice period without ever having to say they’d been wrong. (People in general are REALLY BAD at admitting they made a mistake, and so will come up with stuff like this to avoid it.)

  47. Stunned Silence*

    Not necessarily deranged but when I resigned from a job a few years back, my manager launched into the usual “follow your dreams” speech. Strangely, the speech devolved into how she’d wanted to get breast enhancement surgery in her early twenties and that she should have followed her dreams and that she might just do that now. The speech was complete with hand gestures of approximate size and lift. I just sat there, smiling, for over an hour. I can only imagine what my colleagues were thinking when they walked past her office. I hope she followed her dreams. She really was a lovely person.

    1. HugeTractsofLand*

      What a, uh, titillating conversation. Resigning really gives you the strength to smile and nod through anything!

  48. Carrots*

    At my previous job, my manager would micromanage me, bully me, and tell me how she would give me “doesn’t meet expectations” ratings on my reviews. She seemed shocked when I resigned. On my last day, she escorted me around to say goodbye to my colleagues and walked me to the door. I was supposed to work the full day but they had me leave at 10am. It was weird. I’m surprised that she didn’t walk me to my car in the parking lot.

  49. not salty at all*

    A few years ago I gave three and a half weeks notice, timing my exit to the beginning of a new month for health insurance reasons. The CEO, to whom I was reporting because my (VP/Head of Department) boss had also quit, froze me out completely even as I was trying to work to ensure a smooth transition — and then a few days before the end of the month let me know that my services were no longer needed, effective immediately (thwarting my scheme to have health insurance for the following month). This is, I’ve learned, a common move — my partner also left a toxic work environment for a much better one last year and had their notice period cut short 2 days by a vindictive boss attempting to grab the upper hand at the last minute.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      I hadn’t thought of this consequence of the US not having state health care: a real opportunity for a vindictive boss to hurt someone leaving.
      I suppose you could time giving notice so you have 2 weeks only to the beginning of the month, but I gather they could still shorten that to deprive you of benefits.

      1. Artemesia*

        With COBRA you can get up two two months of coverage as a bridge to the next job and not pay for it if you don’t actually have to use it. We did this when I retired and my husband who was already retired and on my insurance was not going to be eligible for Medicare for a couple of months. (obviously find out current regulations on this if you need to do it. But basically you apply, and get enrolled in COBRA and defer payment for 60 days. If you by then have other insurance you can just let COBRA go and not pay. COBRA is incredibly expensive — you basically pay both sides of the employer provided insurance — but it can give you that peace of mind and safety during brief periods of unemployment.

  50. should have ordered a plain salad*

    When I left for a wayyy more prestigious company and twice the salary, the HR person and my manager took me out for lunch. They spent the entire meal explaining that I really wasn’t that interesting of a person and that I would miserably fail with the high expectations of the new job, since it “required someone with social skills”.

    Then, the HR lady paid for herself and my boss, leaving me to foot my own bill.

    (I’ve been at said new job for 5 years now. I can tell you that my first years were an absolute dream and that I exceeded expectations at every yearly review. Turns out the “absence of social skills” was mostly due to the fact that I just didn’t really like my old team. Sorry, old team.)

    4. Sister George Michael*

      This is hilarious to me because my MAGA brother has always told me that I don’t have social skills. Nope, we just have nothing in common.

      1. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*

        Yes, my mum has told me I am “not good with people”, not an opinion shared by anyone I work with (I’m a people manager and handle complaints among other things)

        1. StarTrek Nutcase*

          Yeah, I’ve had a few coworkers say that to me too. I’ve been quick to point out that I recognize I’m not good with people whose crappy work is foisted on me to fix nor do I respect their supervisors who are either too stupid or lazy to fire those employees. Apparently, that’s just another example how I suck with people.

          1. JustaTech*

            As my high school fencing coach told my mom “JustaTech doesn’t suffer fools gladly”.
            That was after some random dude tried to tell us we weren’t allowed to practice on the grass outside because you can’t stand on the grass in a public park (we were on the grass to be out of the way of everyone on the path). “Really? Where is that rule?” “It’s written on that sign!” “That sign is a memorial to the firemen who died in [X historic fire].”
            “Oh.”

  51. TalesFromTech*

    My manager questioned why I was resigning “before talking to him” about it. Dude, what you you think every 1:1 we’d had the previous 6 months where I told you the toxicity of the team was unacceptable was leading to?

    Then he told I should give 4 weeks notice instead of the 2 I gave because 4 weeks is what was standard in India, where he was from. You’re not in India anymore bud, and I don’t really care what is standard there. We are having this conversation in the US where 2 weeks is standard so 2 weeks is what you are getting.

    Finally, he told me he’d “get back to me” about my resignation. I actually laughed at him at that point and told him he was welcome to “get back to me” but in 2 weeks I wasn’t going to be walking in to the office.

    2. I Have RBF*

      Oh, my, the Indian manager who thinks that they are still in India. Why do these people expect to manage people in the US like they were in India? Different cultures, different norms! I know this is sometimes the problem with other non-US born managers, but I’ve seen it the most often with Indian managers whose first management experience was in India.

      OTOH, an American manager who went to someplace like Germany would probably get the same type of reaction.

      1. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

        OMG, I can imagine a US-trained manager trying to fire (and walk out the door) an employee in Germany!
        I was told that the US Government had to give 3 months notice (and pay for retraining) for all the local-hire employees that were terminated when they closed US bases in Germany in the 1980-90s.
        (I worked as a contractor from the US on a US army base in Germany in the early 1990s. My German friends were astonished when I told them that I had been layed-off and had to move back to the US with only a month’s notice.)

      2. Clodagh*

        My father had an American manager, who had transferred straight from the American arm of the company. The guy was appalled at everyone’s holiday entitlement and tried to strong arm them into not taking bank holidays off. Obviously none of them complied because, hello this is Ireland not the US. The flipside is that all the Irish employees got to take Juneteenth off when the head office in the US made it a holiday for the company, so that was weird.

  52. Usuallyalurker*

    Resigned and gave my contractual 2 months notice (I’m in the UK). One of my co-managers, same level as me but responsible for allocating work, received a phone call from the boss telling her to take me off the schedule from June and she had a massive temper tantrum in the middle of the corridor in front of clients saying I had done it to give her more work, that she had never liked me anyway and that she hoped my dog would die. She then did not speak to me for the remainder of my time there, save from sending me passive aggressive emails telling me she was sure I wouldn’t mind picking up various bits of crap that no one else wanted to do given that I would be leaving them with all my work soon. On my last day, she came to my leaving do, ignored me and ate cake. I was relieved to leave a job I had genuinely enjoyed. And my dog is fine.

    2. Seeking Second Childhood*

      To borrow a phrase, she’s a villain in a Reese Witherspoon movie. I literally laughed out loud at the dog comment… And was heartily relieved that your dog is fine.

    3. goddessoftransitory*

      Anybody who said something that heinous about one of my pets should take to checking their brake lines.

  53. Oryx*

    Not the worst reaction, but I had a manager in a group setting with colleagues announce I was uninvited from the holiday party taking place a week after my last day.

    1. allathian*

      Did you actually want to go to the holiday party or did you coincidentally time your resignation to have an excuse to avoid going?

      1. JustaTech*

        Weirdly, I had a boss ask a coworker, repeatedly!, to come to our holiday party after she’d quit.
        Like, yes, she’d worked there a long time, but that year the holiday party was literally take out in the sad lunch room during the work day, not a real party somewhere interesting.
        He was astonished that she wouldn’t take time off her brand-new job to eat mediocre sandwiches with us.

  54. It's Marie, Not Maria*

    Not Deranged, but Very Odd: I had two Managers. I copied both of them on my resignation email, which spelled out the reasons I was leaving and my concerns moving forward. For over a week of my two weeks’ notice – neither acknowledged I had submitted my resignation! Neither acknowledged my efforts to transition my (unique and very important to the program) duties to someone else. (For context, I work in Human Resources, so this behavior was even more strange) Finally, one, then the other, set up meetings with me when I had about three days left. One passed on kudos from our very important client in the meeting, but asked very few questions; the other was just weird and awkward. Neither wanted to discuss my concerns, which could seriously impact the company’s relation with very important client if not addressed. It was just bizarre.

  55. Brian*

    This happened to a friend of mine. We were Americans, teaching English in another country. My friend, who had never missed a day of work, asked if she could return to the US a week before classes ended, so she could begin a master’s degree program. She would told she could, though she’d forfeit the pay for the work she missed. She agreed, thinking they meant a week’s pay. Just before she left they dropped the bomb: not only would they withhold the week’s salary, but the entire two month’s summer pay as well as the sizeable bonus we all received for completing our contract. We’re talking the equivalent of four paychecks for missing one week. She took her case to a local attorney who confirmed this was BS and the school didn’t have a case. The school’s response? ‘Take us to court.’ They knew she was leaving the country and couldn’t.

    2. Brain the Brian*

      I can see forgoing the bonus (which, after all, was supposed to be only for people who finished their contracts), but skipping time paid before then is definitely out of line (and illegal!). I hope they got caught. I know of overseas language schools that have been caught billing clients for teaching hours that they never paid out to teachers.

    3. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      That’s evil. I’d have thought the attorney could continue the case without the plaintiff being present though (Video conf, EM etc)

  56. Second Deputy, Third Class*

    I’ll never forget the time a colleague resigned and accepted a counter-offer. Boss said they wanted to retain him, made a verbal counter offer for a significant salary increase, and my colleague stayed… but never got anything in writing and, SURPRISE, never got the promised raise. Boss was always “working on it with HR.”

    Six months later my colleague finally gave up and resigned again.

    2. Betsy*

      Do these idiots not realize that people actually talk to each other? And that their bad behavior will be talked about?

  57. SquarePizza*

    Fairly mild, but once I left a financial industry job to go do something fairly similar in an unrelated (smaller but more creative) industry. One of the project managers said “interesting life choice” and walked away, like I’d done it to spite him. He didn’t acknowledge me in meetings for the remainder of my notice period.

    He was let go like eight months later. People are weird.

  58. Anne Elliot*

    Mine wasn’t bananapants but just bewildering. I had a terrible job where absolutely nothing I did was right, the boss was impatient and contemptuous (a lot of sighing and eye rolling) and the only other employee, the office manager (his wife) was openly rude, like she thought I was after her husband. (Girl, no.) I was there only maybe a month, flailing around trying to do a job I didn’t fully understand, when I received yet another critique from the boss about how useless my work was and when I asked for guidance he said, “You’re doing it wrong, and I don’t have the time to teach you how to do it right.” That statement flipped a switch in my head as I realized I was never going to be even minimally competent in the job, nevermind successful. So I quit on the spot. (“Look, it’s clear this isn’t working out for either of us . . . .”)

    I was quite shocked when he immediately shifted to saying how unprofessional it was to quit without notice; that I was leaving him in the lurch; and demanding that I give him at least two weeks notice. After all I’ve heard is how shitty and incompetent I am? I answered with the mid-’90s version of “Naw bro” and drove home to celebrate my escape.

    1. Burned Out and Ticked Off*

      This is what I am experiencing now. Tried to give notice after all of my contributions for the last 7 years where utterly devalued and they begged me to stay. Took some time off and returned to work to collect my paychecks and am phoning it in as I am now looking for my next project.

    2. Luna*

      ‘It’s also unprofessional to treat your employees this way.’

      Though this guy’s words make me think of my last job’s supervisor, who was not doing a very good job teaching me the office-side of the job (but was great in telling me how to CLEAN.) And one time, I was trying for a while to get a certain date-range of invoices to appear.
      I tried everything I could think of, seeing what parameters I could manipulate in the program to see what I needed, but no.

      I told her that I wasn’t able to get those invoices to show up and she said, “I can’t hold your hand all the time, you need to figure this out yourself”.
      Well, genius, that’s what I’ve been trying to do and it’s not working. And I didn’t want her to hold my hand, I wanted her to do her dang job as a supervisor and *instruct* me on how to do something that was apparently my job.
      …I’m so glad I’m away from that center.

  59. Bexy Bexerson*

    This wasn’t full bars deranged, but it was super disrespectful.

    I gave notice by email rather than face-to-face or phone call because my manager was on PTO the day I needed to give my notice. In the email, even said “I would have preferred to tell you in person, but that would be less than a full two weeks notice, and I want to adhere to a standard notice period” or something like that.

    The next day, as soon as he’d read my email, he asked to see me in a conference room. He asked why I hadn’t told him in person. Like, screw you man…I already explained that. So I explained again. He then proceeded to lecture me and tell me how disappointed he was that I gave notice that way. Ugh.

    A few minutes later, he sent out an email announcing my upcoming departure to the entire department. The normal thing at this company was for the employee to do that themselves, or for the manager to do it if the employee preferred. he didn’t consult me, he just did it…and I was immediately inundated with emails, instant messages, phone calls, and desk drop-ins from my colleagues. I was not ready to have all those conversations yet!

    On my last day, he insisted on walked me out. I know this is normal at some companies for security reasons or whatever, but it was not something normally done at this company.

    He just wanted to try to control me as much as possible up until the very last minute.

    Yes, he was always an asshole and he is 100% the reason I left that job.

    1. HugeTractsofLand*

      Yeah, it sounds like he was really overinvested in your relationship? Like how DARE you not tell me in person like the close personal friends we are, and of COURSE I’ll tell everyone on your behalf and walk you out like there’s a heartfelt farewell to be had.

      …Either that, or he knew exactly how much you disliked him and didn’t want anyone else to guess!

  60. urguncle*

    I got a full-time job on the other side of the state from a summer job right out of college. The GM asked me if I could “commute back” for weekends. She was very cranky when I said no.
    No, I will not be driving 6 hours round trip for a seasonal minimum wage job on my weekend.

    1. LifeBeforeCorona*

      I left a job and was asked to drive 40 minutes twice a day through rush hour traffic for a 3 hour shift until they filled the position. No thank you.

  61. are ya kidding me*

    Management was flabbergasted that I would give standard two weeks because how on earth would the program continue without me/someone in my role? I extended my notice for an extra month and offered to stay on part time. Despite an inability to get meaningful raises (even though I am apparently so comptent that I eliminated the need for a second person on [program]), apparently I’m important enough that [program] can’t run without me. Hmm well maybe invest in your employees if they’re that necessary. Not that deranged of a reaction, I guess, but it certainly has me deranged.

    Have they posted the job to try to get applicants and get someone in the role in the meantime? No. Lmao.

    1. are ya kidding me*

      Whoops, sorry for the double comment. The textbox was still showing for me with all the text so I assumed I forgot to click submit.

  62. alferd g packer*

    My boss, who had previously been pretty solid, completely checked out due to personal issues — not responding to time-sensitive emails, generally being unavailable for basic office operations — and started raking all her senior people over the coals for not doing things she hadn’t actually told us to do. The last straw was when she pulled a “you can’t quit, you’re fired” on our favorite teammate and promoted her own sister’s boyfriend into that position.

    I had been accepted to grad school and promptly gave two months’ notice, because at that point our team felt it was time to go over our boss’s head, and I was in my early 20s and had nothing to lose. Nothing came of it, of course. And my boss fully iced me out. For two months. Wouldn’t make eye contact in the hallway. If this was the 1800s, it would have been the cut direct.

    So I completed my dwindling case management worklist every day — even after she’d reassigned everything to sister’s boyfriend, because she never told me things had been reassigned — and thoroughly enjoyed getting paid to read old stuff on Project Gutenberg for 7.75 hours a day.

    Three months later, I was sitting in a seminar class and checked my phone on break. My old teammates had all texted me to tell me that boss had been marched out of the building. According to sister’s boyfriend (who was a nice guy), she was able to get a new job in the industry… which required a seven-hour one-way bus ride to work, and she lived in a community college dorm during the week, and got less than 24 hours at home on the weekends. I cackled.

  63. Former Manager*

    I received an offer on a Thursday morning for a promotion in another department at my institution and immediately began trying to let my manager know. I put multiple appointments on her calendar (she ghosted them), texted her a few times and said we needed to meet urgently, and did everything else to proactively give her notice.

    I then tried to reach out to our administrator, who was on vacation. Finally, after 3 days, HR told me I had to sign my letter in our online system. I told my manager that I needed to speak to her by 4PM that day (our system notifies the manager when a transfer document is signed, so I had to alert her). She didn’t call, so I sent her an email and cc’d the administrator and outlined the times I’d tried to reach her. I gave them 6 weeks notice. They didn’t have an exit interview with me, had no idea where I was on multiple projects, and then got upset that I didn’t tell them (I sent them links to all of my documents with a detailed outline for each item).

    My new department and manager are amazing and lovely. I’m very happy here!

  64. BecauseHigherEd*

    I’ve told this before but: I was working for the owner-operator for a small organization. She had wanted me to do somethings that violated certain federal regulations. I’d been telling her for weeks that that was something I just couldn’t do, and she kept putting me off. Finally, after a heated exchange, she said, “If you can’t do what I say, then I’ll find someone who will. And if you consistently can’t do what I say, then maybe this field isn’t for you.”

    I cried, went home, and wrote a resignation email saying, “After reflecting on what you have said, I’ve decided to tender my resignation.” I gave two weeks’ notice to help with the transition because, truthfully, there was going to need to be a SIGNIFICANT hand off.

    She wrote back and said, “It has been a pleasure to meet you and to have you as an employee. I have just pulled your access to [work systems and email] immediately as opposed to waiting until the 30th., therefore, you won’t be able to perform any of the tasks that require access to the system. HR is checking how much PTO you have available so you can use that during the next two weeks.” She then listed all of the things she wanted me to do during my final two weeks of…PTO?

    I wrote back and told her I’d like to make my resignation effective immediately.

        1. BecauseHigherEd*

          Ironically, I recently talked to some people who are still there, and they said that she recently gave the managers unlimited PTO. At the same time, she keeps blowing them up with phone calls, Zoom meetings, and emails when they use their PTO because, “How else will you learn and grow?!?!”

          So, yes, I think she may literally not get what PTO means.

          1. BecauseHigherEd*

            Adding that her having to pay out my measly PTO made her think she didn’t want to have to pay anyone out ever again, hence creating the unlimited PTO option and never letting anyone use it.

    2. Mister_L*

      “She had wanted me to do somethings that violated certain federal regulations.”
      Please tell me you reported her to whoever oversees those regulations.

      1. BecauseHigherEd*

        The issue is that it was kind of a gray area. It didn’t EXPLICITLY say anywhere that we couldn’t do The Thing, and she wanted us to do The Thing because it pressured people to continue to use our business services. However, I had talked to reps from the government agency that oversees those regulations *three* times and they emphatically told me that she was wrong–we should NOT be doing what we were doing. I immediately told my boss, “Hey, this is a big issue–Uncle Sam said to not do The Thing!” I prepared several reports for her showing that while it wasn’t explicitly in the regs, it was clear that the regs weren’t written for her to do what she wanted to do. She kept saying, “I’ll think about it.” The fight arose because I had a situation where she wanted me to do The Thing and I did not. She said it was insubordination. I said I had been trying to tell her for over a month that we had been told explicitly to NOT do The Thing by *three separate government representatives*, which prompted the comment.

        After I left, I joined a professional organization for people in this field. They have a best-practice professional manual and–lo and behold!–it explicitly said what I had been telling her all along: that we should not have been doing The Thing, citing the federal code of regulations.

        The unfortunate truth is that this falls in a weird area where there is little oversight for organizations/companies that mistreat people. Think something akin to social work. There are all sorts of mechanisms to detect if someone is committing recipient fraud with food stamps, but fewer mechanisms to catch organizations or companies that take advantage of people on welfare.

  65. ithinkanonymous*

    Right out of college, I worked as a veterinary assistant at a practice close to my house. I learned somewhat later that the vet was a very, uh, devout practicing Scientologist. I had a lot of customer service experience and a nice phone voice, but the doctor tried to make me memorize very long scripts for when I answered the phone that I had to use, word for word. When I kept going off of the script because I was speaking like a normal human, he told me that I wasn’t a “team player” and put me in a room with a self-help book written by L. Ron Hubbard.

    When we weren’t busy, he handed me a list of folks who had brought their animals in once but never went back, and I had to essentially cold call these people and tell them that their animals might be in danger of serious diseases xxx and yyy without routine vet care. I wasn’t comfortable with this, or the book, and I was getting ready to walk out; he referred back to the book and spent almost half an hour convincing me that all I needed to be a great employee was to learn about myself through Scientology and that I would never be a good employee anywhere if I didn’t “start practicing.”

    2. Old Mutha' Hubbard*

      Can so relate, ithinkanonymous; I had a banana pants Scientology boss, too. So sanity-genic to watch the recent YouTubes from ex-members and allies occupying the sidewalk and warning people away in LA right now.

    3. The OG Sleepless*

      Scientology roped in a lot of veterinarians and dentists in the 90s under the guise of management consulting. I never worked for one of them, but oh, the stories.

      1. Artemesia*

        Medical profession contains a lot of people who have a lot of advanced schooling and high incomes but little education; lots of conspiracy theorists and such. I have a relative who runs a scientific lab very successfully and yet believes in young earth creationism. Boggles the mind. I used to work with a lot of dentists and saw a lot of that too.

  66. Ann*

    I’ve heard various bizarre comments when leaving multiple jobs over the years…the boss who offered my male non-degreed replacement a higher salary, the boss who said I’d used the company and made me sign another copy of my non-disclosure agreement on the spot (though the project folded after I left), and the boss who said she’d worked long enough to be able to handle the toxic culture. I replied that I’d worked long enough to know I shouldn’t have to. But the real head scratcher was the HR team who wanted to avoid paying my last 2 weeks, then in what I can only imagine they thought was camaraderie, started divulging confidential HR complaints about my same manager from other employees! And then the COO emailed me offline wanting to speak privately after my exit interview was already completed. Hard no.

  67. Abogado Avocado*

    Got admitted to grad school after a rigorous application process and, of course, resigned with notice to begin my fulltime coursework. On my last day while on my way to goodbye drinks, another manager — not mine, but at the same level as my manager — pulled me into her private office. Although she was less than five years older, she patted me on the hand maternally and said, “Good luck. And, you know, if this graduate school thing doesn’t work out, I’m pretty sure you can come back to work here.”

    Thanks. Wait. What?!

    Fortunately, grad school did work out, the old workplace regularly threw freelance work my way so I didn’t have to subsist (entirely) on peanut butter sandwiches, and I got a good job afterwards.
    I have no idea where that manager is today.

  68. Jinxed*

    When I left a previous job two managers decided to tag team. One of them went the guilt trip route saying stuff like “But aren’t you going to miss us? Think of the friends you made here! Do you really want to leave all your friends?” The other said things like, “This is the best place to work. Everyone who leaves here realizes everywhere else is awful and ends up coming back so just don’t leave.” And my favorite, “You’re not going to do well at your new job. It’ll be too hard and you’re going to wish you never left here.”

    The guilt tripping and the seeds of doubt didn’t work. Eight years later I still love my “new” place and am thriving. Neither of my old managers is still at the old place.

    1. Jinxed*

      Edit: the deranged part is that the guilt tripping and chipping away at my self-esteem weren’t isolated to one conversation. It was every day of my two week notice. Sometimes it was just quick comments in passing but every day I was pulled into a conference room for 30 minutes or more to listen to all the reasons why I shouldn’t leave.

  69. Strict Extension*

    I once took had a service industry job request to shift me from daytime to evening hours. I told them I could do that for a while, but I am a freelancer in the performing arts, and as soon as I had a gig that conflicted, I would be leaving since that is my more important line of employment. When that time came, I let the owner know that I was giving notice and what my last day would be. Her response was “Well, if you’re not going to be able to work evenings after X date, then when the time comes, I’m going to have to fire you.” I clarified that I wasn’t expecting to stay on and that what I had just told her was a resignation with a notice period. She just kept saying it was a shame she didn’t have daytime hours available and would have to fire me. Finally one of the bartenders who knew her better than I did told me not to worry about it because while she’d probably tell people conversationally that she fired me, she most likely wouldn’t say it in a reference check or anything. I still have never used her as a reference, just to be sure.

    To be fair, she was very used to firing people. I worked there two and a half months, and there were only three people there when I left who were there when I started. Highlights included a bartender who was hired for her “following” who decided to let her friends behind the bar to make their own drinks, another bartender who thought it would be funny to leave a screenshot from a porn movie with the staff’s faces photoshopped in for the openers to find, and a busser who tried to sell hard drugs to the resident crunchy granola health nut.

  70. Another Kate*

    In grad school, I had a part-time job working retail. I got my degree and decided to move to another location where the pastures were greener; gave my notice well in advance, and the owner immediately cut my hours in half. When I asked her what was going on, she expressed her disappointment in me and told me I could ask around to see if I could pick up other people’s shifts if they would be off, but she needed to give the hours to people who would “be there.” She also was very disappointed in the person who referred me for the job, a mutual friend, requiring a serious heart-to-heart between the two of them to clear the air. I really needed the money, too.

    1. Kristin*

      I bet if you’d resigned with no notice she would have complained about that until the end of time!

  71. Oh my*

    My very strange boss told me it was standard to let your current boss know you’re looking and he was dissapointed I didn’t feel comfortable enough to tell him. Nah!

    1. Brevity*

      It is truly bizarre, isn’t it, when bosses come up with something like this? A former coworker of mine told me that, when she won an internal transfer to a different department, for a higher title, higher salary and more responsibility, after she went to his office and gave our mutual former boss something like two months’ notice in person, he pouted, then said, “You didn’t act like you were unhappy here.”

      ???

      I guess this was a necessary clue he needed? She was supposed to mope around for a few weeks, instead of not letting emotion take over and being a consummate professional to the end?

  72. CSRoadWarrior*

    Not totally bizarre, but my dad’s coworker (both under the same boss) gave two weeks’ notice because he found a job with higher pay and more flexibility. But this boss was a jerk. He expected you to be on call 24/7 and answer emails no matter what time of day. Didn’t matter if it was a Saturday afternoon, 3am in the morning, or even if you were sick. If you didn’t answer and complete a task within 1 hour (yes, you read that right), you would get reprimanded and be told you were not dedicated to your job. This wasn’t an industry where you did not need to be on call 24/7. And standard two weeks’ notice is the norm.

    When the coworker gave notice, the boss went nuts. The boss refused accept the resignation. But the coworker stood his ground. This went with a conversation that went in circles for maybe about 5 minutes. Also, it was probably in December when it happened. The boss eventually gave him an ultimatum that he will give the coworker until the end of February to decide if he should stay or by then he could resign.

    The coworker did not have it. He just worked his two weeks and then left. He started his new job as expected.

    My dad has since retired too, but not because of the boss; it was just his time to retire.

    1. CSRoadWarrior*

      I meant the industry was not an industry where you needed to be on call 24/7. Completely worded wrong lol

    2. Mad Harry Crewe*

      Employee: I’m leaving
      Boss: I’ll give you until Feb to decide if you’re leaving or not!
      E: … ok I’ve decided. I’m leaving.

    3. Luna*

      What is it with bosses that think a resignation doesn’t work unless they ‘accept’ it? It’s like breaking up with someone. It’s done. Your compliance isn’t a factor.

  73. Hanna*

    one of my leaving presents was a notebook to record sexual harassment because it was a running ‘joke’ that one of the managers often made inappropriate comments to me

  74. ZK*

    Not really bananapants, just a bit funny. I finally quit a toxic workplace (I had a heart attack on the job, y’all, and they refused my sick pay request after. It’s only because my manager went to bat for me that they “let me” take unpaid leave.), and when I put my notice in effective immediately because oh my, I just couldn’t take it a minute longer, I got the, “Well, you know this will make you ineligible for rehire, right?” comment. My reply was, “Thank you! That’s the best thing this company has ever done for me!”

  75. Duckling*

    I resigned during Covid and offered to give 4 weeks because I was the only person in my department and was coordinating a big event in 3 weeks. Well, my boss let me know that my 5 weeks of vacation would be forfeit (unfortunately legal in my state). When I tried to argue that didn’t seem fair, he really told me that it was my responsibility to use up my vacation hours, even when the entire world was shut down. I even asked if I could take two weeks of vacation and come back to manage the event, but was told it’s unprofessional to take vacation during your notice period. So I told him that, with all that in mind, I thought a traditional 2 week notice was more appropriate. Oh boy, did that make him mad. I was told that I was being petty (true), unprofessional (false), and that this would reflect badly on my career overall (also false). Then he threatened that my benefits might be affected and said I would regret my decision when I needed healthcare in between jobs. Despite all that, I held firm on my end date, and he ghosted me for the entire notice period. I documented as much as could, sent him regular updates, and logged off on my last day with absolutely no acknowledgement. I later heard from a friendly coworker that the event had to be postponed and they lost a ton of money on various deposits, definitely more than my 5 weeks of vacation was worth.

    1. Luna*

      I would have said that I was taking my vacation time immediately then. I ‘have’ to use them before leaving? Welp, notice period has become vacation time for me.

  76. DeskApple*

    Upon resigning from my (then 22F American) Au pair contract in Europe when I found out my employers were keeping my Ukrainian co-nanny’s passport from her, they told me they would inform INTERPOL that I was a fugitive and I would be barred from the country. Terrified me at the time.

    1. DeskApple*

      but as an update, not only did I return, I married their neighbor and have permanent residency and never did get contacted by interpol, though I think they should have…

      1. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

        Wait… are you their neighbor now?? How did they react to that? I am imagining a very telenovela-esque exchange of fraught looks when you returned.

        2. DeskApple*

          I actually was their neighbor for about two years and interestingly only saw them once at a distance, when they literally grabbed their mid by the arm and fled into a building. By that point I had realized that neither of them were actually citizens of the country we were living in, though EU citizens and had probably realized I had seen/known too much about their employment practices. They can look me up if they want but when I left them they also told me I would NEVER work in this country again. Not only have I had a few different employers in the last decade, I’m actually up for citizenship this year and have since moved to a very lovely village far far away.

          1. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

            Dang! It has to be satisfying when terrible people flee before you, though.

      1. DeskApple*

        the other nanny wrote me and said that once I left they freaked out and gave her the passport. she took off and married a local in another city – so it was worth the initial terror!

    3. Observer*

      my employers were keeping my Ukrainian co-nanny’s passport from her,

      You were smart to get out. People like that are very bad news (even if they don’t do things that wind up in the news.)

  77. JadziaDax*

    So this isn’t necessarily overly dramatic, but still makes me shake my head.

    Many years ago, back when I worked part-time for my department, I held two part-time positions – I was the administrative assistant for the department, as well as a training instructor and assistant. When most of the Affordable Care Act went into effect in 2014, the university I work at put a limit on how many hours a week part-time workers could work. Those limits made it impossible for me to keep both roles I was working in, since together they roughly equated to a full-time job (but with no benefits or paid time off, of course). I had to decide which job to keep – and since the training instructor position was in line with what I wanted to do for a career, I decided to quit the admin assistant role.

    Two months before the 29-hour limit on part time employees went into effect (and probably a week after the limits were announced in the first place), I went to my boss and told him that due to the upcoming hourly limits, once those limits went into place I’d be resigning from my admin assistant position so I could focus on the training role I was in.

    He was not happy. He barely spoke to me the rest of the day. Because I only really interacted with him in my admin assistant role, he really only saw me as the admin assistant – at one point he said “I want you to keep being the admin assistant until I retire, and I’m gonna retire when I’m 80”, if that tells you anything about this guy. He didn’t understand why I wanted to focus on training, and the assistant manager had to explain to him that I was much more useful as a trainer and content author than I was as the admin assistant.

    The big thing that drove me crazy is that even though I gave him TWO MONTHS notice, he didn’t even start looking for my replacement until two weeks before the hourly limits were enacted – and he expected me to train my replacement on top of my training duties once we finally found someone to replace me… a month after I’d resigned from the role.

    Oof. I’m glad he’s not my manager anymore.

    1. DeskApple*

      what a creepy drain of a man! does he think you’re the household loyal maid to stay with him as he ages?!

  78. FrivYeti*

    A very different sort of bananapants that the above, but the accumulated effects were similar!

    I quit my first job after two and a half years to embark on a very ill-advised plan to become a full-time writer, based on the general vibe in the company deteriorating, increasing unpaid “volunteer” overtime, and having gotten a few writing contracts in a row and thinking they were going to turn into full-time work.

    When I talked to my manager, he managed to convince me to tell him what the per-word rate of those writing contracts was, then sat in front of me with a calculator crunching out what he believed my expected salary would be based on a certain number of projects at that level per year. His numbers were, even to my inexperienced eye, *very* generous, and he produced a number that was almost twice my salary at the company, then told me he was very proud.

    Then he convinced me to extend my notice period from two weeks to four weeks because “there was a big project we were crunching for” in the pipeline and it was wrapping in four weeks.

    Those four weeks were *rough*. Everyone was working unpaid overtime, we were rushing to hit milestones, and I was increasingly regretting having said yes, but finally the last day came, and the big project was revealed.

    It was a merger without another company, including immediate massive layoffs without severance. Twenty percent of the company, including nine of the twelve people in my team (and I was told that it would have been ten if I hadn’t already been leaving.) My manager was one of the casualties; he was walked out the door at 9:30 AM before anyone else even knew the layoffs were happening, and didn’t get to either say goodbye to me or the team or give me the reference letter he’d told me he would write “just in case”.

    As icing on the cake, because I wasn’t on the layoff list, I *wasn’t* walked out with everyone who was laid off, and I had to spend two hours of my last day sitting through the all-hands meeting afterwards in which the company’s management explained to the remaining people why these layoffs were actually great for the company and would make us very profitable and effective.

    The meeting was not well-received. When I left at the end of the day, a lot of the people who hadn’t been laid off congratulated me for my foresight.

  79. Sharp-dressed Boston Terrier*

    PreviousJob was a nightmare for numerous reasons (family-owned companies, am I right?!), but the cherry on the sundae was about a week into my notice period when I was trying to make up a deficit of hours so my final paycheck wouldn’t take a bigger hit.

    Alone in the office with the wife/co-owner, who came up and asked me if I’d be available for consultation on evenings and/or weekends. Short answer: no. Long answer: [Redacted] no. At which point she – a native of Lebanon, married to an Iraqi – said that co-workers had complained about me being bigoted against Arabs. Conveniently forgetting I had actually referred people of Middle Eastern extraction to the company for jobs.

    I told her how ridiculous that was, citing the above example as well as having Middle Eastern members of my extended family, and immediately shut down my workstation and walked. Finished out my notice period and never looked back.

  80. Anonymouse*

    Several years and jobs back, I told my boss in August that I was thinking of leaving in January (due to a planned job change and cross-country move for my partner), and they repeatedly asked me for a specific last day for several months. Like I am giving you nearly 6 months notice, of course I don’t have an exact last day yet.

  81. Becky S*

    To those who are getting anxious reading these horror stories – it often goes just fine. I had at least 12 FT & PT jobs over the years (sometimes overlapping) and all my resignations went smoothly. I have a friend who was planning to resign from a job about 10 years ago and was beside herself with worry. She was sure her manager would yell at her, would talk about her behind her back, would make things difficult, would try to get her to stay. None of those things happened. The manager in question was disappointed to lose a good employee, but was professional. My friend btw, wasn’t an inexperienced kid, but in her 40s!
    Enjoy these stories but understand most of the time resignations go just fine.

    1. higheredadmin*

      Yes! As a manager, people come in to tell you and are so pensive and worried, they cry, they feel guilty about leaving the team. This is a normal part of being an employed person and building your career, and also people leave or change jobs for a million reasons, from personal to big life decisions like deciding to move city. When someone is getting a promotion, I always make sure to tell them how proud I am of their achievement. It’s OK!

  82. Space Woman Spiff*

    This may not be fully in the spirit of the question, because I was laid off rather than leaving by choice–but my manager did so many odd things after the layoff! The organization I worked at was undergoing national layoffs, and my manager laid off me and my coworker–his entire team of 2. A few days later the new org chart was emailed out to the office, which is how I learned that my manager was…hiring for two new roles, with very slightly different titles, that would be responsible for the projects my coworker and I had started. Because the layoffs didn’t take effect until TWO MONTHS after we received notice, we had to keep coming into the office while he interviewed our replacements.

    The weirdest part, though, was that our manager seemed to reframe the whole thing as us deciding, voluntarily, to quit. He kept setting up social events that we absolutely did not want to be a part of, like a brunch that was just him and the two of us he’d laid off. He hosted a good-bye happy hour where he waxed poetic about how wonderful my coworker and I were, and how sad he was to see us go. We were not leaving by choice! It was all so bizarre and made the last months at that job needlessly hard, because I had to put so much energy into carrying on polite conversation with him; but it also all fit with his management style, which was to be entirely non-confrontational in the moment but let you know of a problem 9 months later, when he wrote it up in the annual review to justify not giving a raise. (In hindsight, I’m glad he laid me off.)

    1. The New Wanderer*

      When I was laid off, I happily accepted the half-hearted offers of a going-away cake party and last-day happy hour (two different events) specifically and solely to put my manager and grandboss on the spot. (Okay not solely because I do love cake and free drinks!) By most accounts, it was a really unpopular decision to lay me off and several senior people went to bat for me more than once to try to keep me, so I knew management had heard allllll about it. I obviously wasn’t leaving by choice, but I liked and appreciated my coworkers and felt they supported me as much as they could.

      The only bit of weirdness during the lay-off conversation was my grandboss saying he had tried to get me (a senior SME who is also a woman) reassigned to a different non-technical role as a way to keep me… The different role was one that only women ever seemed to fill and paid roughly 30% less and had a definite ceiling. I said gee thanks for trying but I wouldn’t have accepted the move.

  83. Elsewise*

    I quit my worst ever job after five months. I had repeatedly told my boss over those five months about specific things I needed to be able to do my job. He ignored every single one. When I quit, he scoffed and said “I don’t understand. Is there something you were unhappy with?” At this point I didn’t want to deal with him arguing every point I made, so I just said that the other job was an opportunity too good to pass up. He scoffed again, said “wow” and hung up on me.

    I quit on a Thursday and my last day was the Friday after next. He completely ignored all attempts to get in contact until the following Wednesday, nearly a week after I quit. It wasn’t until Tuesday of my last week that he even told my coworkers that I was leaving. (He’d forbidden me from telling anyone, and at this point I didn’t care enough to bother.) I had, with much effort, scheduled a training for him and one other coworker on my final day. He hadn’t told the coworker I would be training her, and showed up two hours late. While we waited for him, I asked if she wanted me to show her how to do some other parts of my job. She said “not really. If I know how to do it, he’s going to make me do it, and I don’t get paid enough for that.” Fair enough.

    When he eventually showed up, I walked them both through parts of my job. He visibly had no idea what I was talking about. When the coworker asked him if he understood, he got very hostile and snapped at her that of course he did. When she asked who would be doing which parts of my job, he said “we’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about it.” She said she didn’t have capacity to do my job. He repeated that she shouldn’t worry about it. He also added that we could “just put [my job] on pause while we figure out how to recruit someone who will stay.”

    Readers, I was this nonprofit’s only fundraiser.

    2. Ama*

      WOW. (Also, as a nonprofit employee myself I’m laughing at him thinking a fundraising employee would stay anywhere that horrible … fundraising staff are always in demand.)

    3. Pickwick*

      I think we can imagine what happened next, and I hope you got some feelings of vindication from it!

      My dad worked for a small teapot display company that relied heavily on public support, as tickets to the teapot hall barely covered the cost of the space. Additional fundraising events were needed to support the skilled artisans involved even though much of the labor was performed by unpaid and barely-paid interns, and the centerpiece of the tea set was an annual gala fundraiser. Dad spent a few months each year planning this event, reaching out to teapot enthusiasts and local business owners for donations of items to auction, and it brought in a third of the annual budget in its last year.

      But the old leader retired to contemplate the mysteries of oolong, and the two new heads wanted to balance the ledger on the other side. They canceled the gala and stopped reaching out for local support; instead, they cut expenditures by the breathtakingly direct method of no longer paying taxes or sometimes even wages. The Board of Teapot Directors had gotten used to the old tea service, which brewed and poured itself without much reference to them, and didn’t notice there was a problem steeping till after much of the small staff had departed, replaced by a stack of increasingly stern letters from the IRS. (My dad had read the tea leaves and found another job involving local outreach, though he stayed on part-time till the very end, at which point the new heads withheld his final paycheck.)

      Of course, the collapse of the sole local teapot performance space left a hole in the community. The Board investigated, ousted the heads, and tried to put together a plan, but they’d somehow run up a debt of more than $400,000 in a few years’ time and needed to commit to an IRS payment plan, etc. The plan went up in steam.

      So the two heads started a new local teapot dome. Some artisans refused outright to work with them, but they must have found others: several years later, I still drive past its sign on the way to work. Someday, I expect to see dramatic headlines in the paper about its collapse, but I’ll wonder till then how they’ve kept it going so long.

      1. Dr. BOM*

        A smidge off-topic, but I wanted to congratulate your excellent use of terrible puns throughout your story.

  84. melissa*

    Mine is not bizarre but— my manager cried when I resigned. Cried and begged me to stay, promising everything would be better. And I almost caved! I called my husband for advice and he said, “That’s what an abusive spouse does when you try to leave them.” And he was 100% right. I pulled up my socks, went back, and told my manager it was final. I am SO glad I did.

    1. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

      Good job, melissashusband, and good job you! It’s hard not to cave to those sorts of tactics; that’s why people use them.

        1. linger*

          [Explanation for the uninitiated: it’s the title of Murderbot’s favourite soap opera (The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells; I’m currently reading the series following commenters’ recommendations here last month).
          Had to wonder if another serial name mentioned, Lineages of the Sun, was a deliberate inversion of Days of our Lives.

        2. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

          Thank you! I can only hope that some TV executive will see my username and all the people who compliment it and decide to make the show (my pitch: Murderbot TV show with RAFOSM as a show within a show).

  85. lizjennings87*

    I resigned and went through long, protracted convos with my boss, grandboss, and great grandboss to get me to stay. I was burned out and great grandboss in particular kept misstating the problems and offering bad solutions. When I finally got on Zoom with all three of them to say thank you but no, grandboss was super gracious and said I was always welcome back if anything changed. Great grandboss waited a beat and then said, “I hope you hate New Employer.”

  86. he made his point*

    I gave notice at a job that was full of craziness; it was so bad I was leaving without another job lined up, and everyone there that I told that (with a single exception) just nodded like they got it. (They did; turnover was high.) After I gave notice, my boss’s boss, who I had very little to do with anyway, made a point of walking past my desk, when he always used to go the more direct route from Point A to Point B, while very obviously ignoring me. It was both weird and kind of hilarious.

  87. Callie Stenics*

    I was working in retail right out of college. I told my manager I’d be leaving at the end of the month to move closer to my family. She paused for a moment, laughed out loud, and then said, “This is the sign I’ve been waiting for. I hate this place. I’m quitting too.”

    1. Ama*

      Ha. I have this theory that some of these managers who have bad reactions it is because they know they also should leave but decide to get defensive about the fact that their employee left first — yours is like the flip side of that.

  88. Gibby*

    I worked as the office manager for a small company for about a year and a half. (A year and a half too long! But we won’t get into that!) My boss was the owner, when I gave him my resignation, he was furious, he yelled “how could you do this to me?” The next day, as sweet as he could be, offered me 20k to stay, shortened hours and extra PTO. I politely declined but he became furious again and told me “I insist you stay!” It took everything I had to stay for my 2 week notice.

  89. Jo*

    This is barely deranged by the standards of this site but it still made me laugh. I worked at the same place for the better part of a decade. For most of the time there I’d been managed by Kayla, who had been really supportive and a great colleague even after I moved to being managed by Noel. Since Noel hadn’t managed me for very long, he suggested Kayla might like to do the speech at my farewell. Kayla really wanted to do this, but she wasn’t going to be working on my last day as it was right before Christmas. I said hey, no problem, I’ll just have my official farewell the day before I leave. But Paul, who managed both Kayla and Noel, said that wasn’t allowed and I could only have my farewell (literally we’re just talking about a five-minute gathering at my desk to say a few words and open a gift) on my proper final day. Turned out Noel wasn’t going to be there either, so Paul gave the speech, but he had never worked closely with me and didn’t know anything about me, so he literally just read out a list of what date I started and what dates I had moved teams and that was the ENTIRE speech. So awkward.

  90. Psammead*

    I actually have one of these! I told my manager that I wouldn’t be continuing in the role once my contract expired (academic postdoc role, he was trying to get funding to extend the contract). He’d already derailed my internal redeployment attempts by causing people enough hassle that they decided to pull a role that would have been great for me instead of hiring me for it. This was after he’d casually gone “so if they offer you that role, you’re turning it down, right?” He was not delighted with my response on that one.
    I’d anticipated trouble because he was brilliant but also awful at interacting with people in general, and had already had a chat with HR complete with paper trail of his bad behaviour and let them know I wanted out. I emailed over a resignation and then when he said he wanted a face to face meeting I told HR about the meeting and then went in prepped with a strong message of “this is happening so how do we want to handle the hand over?” Instead he spent the meeting trying to persuade me to stay and ignoring what I was saying until I just left the meeting in tears because he wouldn’t listen.
    The next day HR got in touch to say that he’d contacted them to ask them to send me to the university counselling service because I was “making rash decisions”. Thankfully they’d already realised he was not a rational human being about this, and let me handle it how I liked, and gave me a HR contact I could use as a reference for job hunting. I’m now in a role where I’m much happier and can use it as an exciting anecdote….

  91. PricklyPearOverThere*

    When I was working retail, I got a promotion to a different location in our region. At the end of my first week in the new role, I attended a work party for the old location to celebrate our success during the busy season. Several of my old coworkers asked how my new job was and if I liked it, and I made some small talk to the effect of “It’s been a week in a brand new role and things run differently in the new location, so I’m excited to keep learning and growing.”

    Imagine my surprise when three days later, my new boss pulls me into her office to ask if I had anything I’d like to share with her. I was baffled, and said I wasn’t sure what she was referring to. She then picks up a multi-page email she had printed out from one of the managers at my old location. She had written to my new boss saying that I had come to this event and trash talked my new job, saying that “they didn’t know what they were doing” and “things are run poorly over there”, as well as alleging that I had insulted several members of my new team (some of whom I hadn’t met yet because of my training schedule). I was so upset, and tried to assure her that whatever they claimed I said was untrue.

    Later that day, the manager who had sent the email made a comment to one of my old coworkers about how crazy it was that I had said all of those things at the event, and it quickly made its way back to me that she was talking about it. I kept it to myself, not wanting to feed into the drama. The next week, the director of my old location called me to apologize for that manager’s actions and told me that she had set the record straight with my new boss, but I feel like the damage had been done already. I ended up leaving that role after about six months due to other life circumstances, but I still wonder why my old manager went to such lengths to try to tarnish my reputation in my new role.

    2. Cyndi*

      Oh God, this is rough. It’s so unfairly hard to get out from under this kind of crap once someone pulls it on you.

    3. Mister_L*

      Two possibilities: Old manager wanted your new job or old manager had to start actually doing their job after you left.

  92. Jo*

    I didn’t leave the company, but a department…. Got a new boss who was banana pants. Second week, I was HOSTING a conference off site and he was furious I was out of the office. Called me repeatedly on the WRONG NUMBER and then screamed at me for not returning his calls (after we figure out he had transposed the numbers). It went downhill from there.

    Within a couple months, I’d had it and found a position in another department. When I notified crazy boss, his response was about how disappointed he was that I was leaving because we worked so well together, how he had great plans for my development and all his previous employees loved his mentorship which I would now miss, and he was sad that I was letting the company “prostitute” me by taking this new role.

    WTF? Luckily, I didn’t have to interact with him much after that.

  93. Heffalump*

    This didn’t happen to me personally, but still. I was working as a typesetter for a publisher of scholarly journals. I’m going to call the owner Anna, because she really was about as bad as Anna Wintour. She was known to fire people immediately when they gave notice on the theory that they’d commit some form of sabotage, which struck me as a case of judging others by herself.

    It had been known for a few years that the parents of “Bill,” one of the other typesetters, owned a print shop in Alaska, and the plan was for Bill to move to Alaska and take over the shop when they retired. The time had come, and at his exit interview Bill made the mistake of criticizing the way Anna ran the company. I don’t know what his exact criticisms were, but I could certainly have given her an earful in Bill’s place. Anna fired him on the spot. The hell of it was, there was so much workload that we had mandatory overtime, to the point that it was affecting the health of one of the other typesetters, and Bill was an excellent typesetter. The issue was that he’d criticized her, not that he’d given notice, but still.

    I lasted roughly 10 weeks at this company, and when I was fired, it came as a relief. I stayed in touch with my immediate supervisor, who was a thoroughly decent person. When she gave notice a couple of years later, she was told, “You can’t quit, you’re fired.”

  94. Alex*

    I resigned a retail job via a letter left for my boss. It was the only way I could, really, because since it was retail, we didn’t have emails or phone numbers or one-on-one meetings, and I only rarely worked at the same time my boss did.

    He never acknowledged my resignation to me, ever. I know he got the note because he told others that I was leaving, but he completely stopped speaking to me during my notice period, even the two times that he was in the store with me. Whatever, ok. Fine.

    This was a corporate company, with a central HR, and so when I didn’t see my vacation pay show up in my last paycheck (according to law, where I live) I contacted them and asked about it. Turns out my boss had just not told them I was leaving. He was supposed to submit paperwork, etc., but just…didn’t. They had no idea I’d quit weeks ago.

    Another job I quit once was where I was a bottom-rung worker in an office. It was extremely toxic and so I went out and found another job. I gave my 2 weeks notice to my boss, who begged me to increase my notice period. His reasoning? It will be so hard for him to find someone who does as much work as me with so little pay. Way to say the quiet part out loud! Why did he think I was leaving???? And why would that MAKE ME STAY LONGER?

      1. Mouth Money*

        Yeah; I quit after I told my boss I just wanted to be paid what I was worth. He literally said; “Oh, we couldn’t afford that!”

    2. Cathie from Canada*

      In my first real editorial job, in the 1970s, I was in a small unit of an academic dean’s office — the unit was just my supervisor and me, both women. The academic dean to whom we reported once proudly told my supervisor that he had always hired women for these two editorial positions — because, he continued, no man would work for the salary he was able to pay us.
      Ummm . . . thanks?

    3. Mister_L*

      For some reason your second story reminded me of a comedy movie I once saw.
      The antagonists main henchman had finally enough and switches sides, at which point the antagonist asks him: “You have worked so hard to ensure I have a comfortable life. Do you really want to risk that?”

  95. JimP*

    After I gave my 2 weeks notice, I recommended that we have a meeting with the CEO, Operations Manager, and the person assuming my responsibilities (which was everything IT for this small 40+ staffed org – sysadmin, website development, hardware and software support, etc.).

    During the meeting, the CEO screamed at me to move my chair out of their way as they were trying to squeeze past me to literally print out my cloud document of instructions (which had probably 50 or more hyperlinks to other documents). Everyone else in the meeting had their laptops open. I tried to explain printing it out would be useless. I even tried to loan them my laptop in the meeting so they could follow along. Nope, they wanted to print it out (OK Boomer). That was the last time I would be screamed at for such nonsense after 5 years. I quietly left the meeting, went back to my desk, adjusted my resignation letter from 2 weeks to 1 week and handed it off. I indicated that I would keep shortening the time for every screaming incident. Worked like a charm, and left after one week. I now have my own successful freelance IT business.

  96. Anon for this*

    Not so much bananapants as passive aggressive, but when I left my last job (in no small part due to a bananapants response by my boss to my documented request for a medical accommodation,) she sent out the most bare-bones announcement possible to the staff email list, just that I was leaving and when my last day was. But then the heartwarming thing was that several of my colleagues replied-all to say nice things about me and what I’d contributed to the organization. Almost two years out (in a much better job,) I’m still very relieved to be away from that boss and still really miss getting to work with those colleagues.

    1. No longer jumping through hoops*

      I also quit a job mainly over medical accommodations. I was first hounded over officially handing my notice in so they could hire my replacement (I had to tell boss I had an interview and then an offer, for Reasons. I would t recommend it usually!)

      Then I was forbidden from telling a certain client I was leaving as they didn’t deal with change well, which meant that none of the clients could be told in case word got around.

      The boss never actually sent out an announcement to staff either. On my last day, she called an all-staff meeting, and still didn’t tell everyone I was leaving. As I left the building, the receptionist called me back and gave me a bunch of flowers. I got an email in the middle of the next week from the boss apologising for not having said goodbye in person but she couldn’t find me.

      I had worked there for nearly 15 years (10 years longer than boss had!)

      But I’m much happier in my new job, and as a bonus I no longer have to jump through hoops with my medical accommodations, just a quick word with the boss and it’s sorted.

  97. Nea*

    It wasn’t deranged behavior from a human, but I was given a Workday link and temporary code in my personal email to do some kind of tasking after I left. I just stared at it for a while then deleted it, because why am I going to use personal time doing work for a company I don’t work for?

  98. Cheese Tax*

    I worked at a hospital doing data entry for ED charges. My boss was also my co-worker who complained incessantly about how she didnt need me and could do the job twice as fast without me. Alright bet. I was hired away by our parent hospital to take on a benefits role and my boss went banana pants when I gave my two week notice. Screaming at me, throwing patient files at me, tearing down the artwork her kids made her, crying in the hallway about how ungrateful I was and how she couldnt do this job alone…
    This was 20 years ago and it still stays in my mind.

  99. smt*

    I gave my resignation once and she said, “I knew you never liked this job”. For once I had a good response and said, “No, that’s not true! I just do not agree with some of the decisions my manager has been making.” She was my manager. I was a Membership manager and she was the Ops manager. I was hired, internally, for this role before she was hired, also internally, for her role.

    After that she went around to all staff pretending she really liked me and gathered donations to get me a giftcard and they me a cake for my last day.

    Several of the staff let me know and we discussed and I decided to call in on my last day. It felt really good. The rest of the staff also enjoyed it. I’m usually very professional but that place….no regrets!

  100. iantrovert*

    2008: quit a retail job (still with two weeks’ written notice!) because I was going back to college and had a new student job; the store GM had been verbally abusive as well as actively undermining my work (pulling me away from tasks to speak with me about her own personal matters for long periods of time, repeatedly, then penalizing me for not completing those tasks). Because I was leaving for school, I quit at the end of the summer, which was the busiest time of the year and just before Labor Day weekend, the busiest event (even more than Black Friday) for that store. I had been job searching for a while, and gave notice on the day I was offered a new job, and while I knew it was inconvenient for scheduling, I didn’t feel any particular obligation to be extra accomodating to someone who treated me so badly that I was having multiple panic attacks every shift.

    The GM’s response was to pull me into the office and tell me that I needed to work an extra weekend past my notice period because she needed the coverage, and if I didn’t, she’d give me a bad reference going forward. (Yes, this is quite obviously illegal retaliation.) Luckily for me, one of the assistant managers was also in the office and witnessed this. I reported it to the corporate HR and mentioned that the AM was a witness; HR was appalled and apologized profusely to me, and told me that my last date was fine and that they’d handle the GM.

    I worked through my notice period and left. I later heard that the GM had been demoted all the way out of management, and transferred to another store. A few years ago she tried to friend me on FB; I laughed as I declined the request.

  101. pally*

    I worked at a place with high turnover. Employees giving notice was a regular event.

    I gave notice to HR, and even corrected a mistake with the PTO I’d accrued. They did not subtract 16 hours I’d taken a few months prior. She thanked me for my honesty. Then, it was explained to me that my final paycheck would be paid through my last day. Fine by me!

    However, beginning with me, they would be starting a new final paycheck policy: final paycheck will be issued at the end of shift. I was not going to receive my final paycheck at the beginning of the shift like we are normally paid.

    Reason: some of the people who quit, never returned after lunch break as they’d been paid through the end of the shift. To be honest, the thought of doing something like this never occurred to me.

    So I work my two weeks, receive my paycheck at the end of my last day. And I’m gone.

    A few weeks later, another employee gave notice. Seems the “final paycheck delivered at end of shift“ policy had been rescinded. This person received their paycheck at the beginning of their final shift and did not return after lunch break.

    So much for honesty.

  102. Irreverend*

    I used to work as the head of marketing at a rock climbing gym chain (a notoriously bro-y type male dominated environment, if you’ve never been to one), and reported directly to the owners. When I gave my two weeks, the head routesetter (who also reported to the owners) took me aside and begged me to reconsider, saying that if necessary to keep me there he would fire the setters he managed who had been making rude, misogynist comments, interrupting/obstructing my work, and generally making it very unpleasant for me to work there as the only woman in a professional-type role there.

    I was leaving to start a fully-funded grad school program, not because of the jerks. But dang did it feel good to have someone acknowledge how bad it had been (and it was so tempting to tell him yes and then leave anyway).

  103. aebhel*

    Not me, but when my spouse quit his toxic old job to work somewhere else, his former employer called his new boss threatening to sue them if they didn’t fire him. He claimed it was a violation of the non-compete agreement that Spouse had signed when he started working there (which was completely unenforceable anyway: think ‘you cannot take any job in the same field anywhere in the US for ten years after you leave’ kind of unenforceable), despite the fact that it was a completely different field. He said, and I quote, ‘Either [spouse] can work for me or he can spend the rest of his life flipping burgers’. We ended up having to get a lawyer involved to get him to leave us alone.

    (Also, this happened a couple of weeks before Christmas)

    The topping on the cake is that his old boss eventually lost most of his clients and sold his company, is still working for the new owners in some sort of managerial capacity, and recently texted my spouse to tell him there was a new job opening there and they’d love to have him interview for it. The absolute gall of it was astonishing.

  104. AlexandrinaVictoria*

    I gave 4 weeks notice at my job because I was moving cross-country to go to grad school. My manager basically shut me out for the entire month. This workplace had a custom of fairly eloborate going away parties, with collections being taken for gifts and a potluck. My going away party consisted of an ice cream cake (I’m lactose intolerant) and my gift was a paper map of the city I was moving to. My manager had forbidden anything else.

    1. Expelliarmus*

      That’s so petty, and not even in a funny way. Better to give someone no gift than to give them a “gift” that they obviously can’t use.

  105. nycnpo*

    Me, me, me!!!

    I recently resigned and gave just under three weeks notice. Super toxic work environment and frankly the most inept senior staff I have ever worked for. I HAD to leave because I was starting to learn some really bad behaviors.

    Anyway, I quit and here’s what happened.

    -Since me and my coworker were leaving at the same time we scheduled a farewell lunch. Super informal. My boss cancelled the lunch the day of and told my other colleague “I’m not paying for people who are leaving, that’s a waste.” So, we rescheduled for the next day and paid our own way. Cut to getting back to the office and my boss was crying saying he couldn’t believe we would not include him on my coworker’s farewell lunch (completely ignoring it was mine too).
    -Cut to no one speaking to me again for my last week UNTIL it turns out my boss brought on a consultant to “handle my resignation and transition” since he did not want to.
    -My exit interview. I was berated for twenty minutes. I was told it was extremely unprofessional to give only two weeks notice (I gave more) and that these people run in “powerful circles” and I should be very worried to be out in the real world with how I left things. I was also torn apart for mentioning my departure to my good friend before “the organization could message my transition and since so many people had left we had to be very careful not to hurt my boss’s feelings.

    Miserable notice period but I am SO HAPPY to be out of there.

  106. AdminLyfe*

    I’ve never had a bad reaction, exactly, but there was the awkward time I went to our one-woman, very sweet but not very professional HR to make an appointment to resign (I wanted to tell my managers first, but I also knew if it got back to HR before I sat down with her she would have been hurt). Alas, the HR person was so convinced that I was going to tell her I was pregnant that I ended up having to admit the truth on the spot. It was awkward as all get-out but it ended fine.

  107. Roams*

    When I was 23, I was an office administrator for an accounting firm where I was underpaid and just treated terribly. When I finally decided to quit after two years, I walked into my boss’s office, to tell him I was resigning and that my last day would be in four weeks. He said he was sorry to see me leave, and said: “Can I give you some advice? Freeze your eggs. You never know, you may have trouble conceiving when you decide to have kids.” He spent another 5 minutes talking about why I should freeze my eggs, before I walked out.

    1. EMP*

      wtfffff
      how long was he sitting on telling you that!?? “OP is leaving, better give her my wise wisdom about freezing her eggs”

  108. CherryBlossom*

    A slightly weird resignation story: I was working through a temp agency to find a temp-to-perm position, and they suggested an on-call assignment while I found something. I needed the money, so I signed up for shift notifications. Shifts were first come, first served.

    Unfortunately, shifts were always snatched up within seconds, so I never actually worked for them. Three months later, the notifications were bugging me, so I asked the temp agency to take me off the on-call assignment so I could focus on finding proper work.

    Instead, I was blacklisted from the entire temp agency. No warning, no discussion, just a very formal email telling me that if I was unable to “work to the level they required”, it would be best to part ways immediately. My bad for wanting a steady job with steady hours.

  109. Emm*

    For two years, I worked and took online/weekend/evening community college classes to finish my degree. I took two classes per semester. By the time I had all of my prerequisites complete and I could transfer to a 4-year university, I realized that taking two classes at a time cost about just as much as a full semester (flat fee.) My partner and I talked, and we decided that it made more financial sense for us for me to quit my job, go to school full time plus extra classes, and finish as quickly as possible.

    There was some turmoil at my work at the time. My (administrative) boss had just quit, and so did my dotted line (technical) boss. I had to talk to HR to give notice. My grandboss then called me into her office to try to talk me out of it. She tried to convince me that my plan with my partner was not sound because we weren’t married, (grandboss and I were not close. This is the longest conversation we’d had besides a few exchanges in meetings,) and that she had a niece who just graduated from college and got a full time job for $15 an hour, so it wasn’t like I was going to do much better. I was making $15.10 at the time after working there for 6 years. This niece that she was referring to was in her first job ever.

    She also tried to tell me that when she finished undergrad and grad school, her jobs never confirmed that she actually received those degrees, so it wasn’t like they were all that important anyway. Part of me felt like she was implying that I could just lie about it for future jobs, but maybe that’s just because this whole conversation tasted so bitter to me, and I was thinking the worst things about her.

    It was the most un-valued I’d ever felt, and it reaffirmed my decision. I finished my two-year curriculum in three semesters and met amazing colleagues and professors with whom I’m still in touch. I also got to study abroad. My first job after graduation paid $25 an hour, four years later, I’m now making $37.

  110. LindsaytheEngineer*

    I have two. First situation was an independent study that was supposed to turn into a paid research position in college. Lasted one semester, and decided over summer break that I would not be returning. This professor simply did not acknowledge my resignation (invited me to the group Christmas party though?) and never spoke a word again until shaking hands at graduation.

    One of my chief complaints with my first job out of college was the fact that everything was overly rigid, but extremely disorganized. This was highlighted perfectly after I received an exit interview via questionnaire that was required to finalize my paperwork…..one week after serving out my two week’s notice.

  111. DramaQ*

    When I resigned from a job back in 2018 I had to give them only a week’s notice because I ran into a situation where I would have a gap in our health insurance. I covered my entire family at the time including small kids. Not having coverage was just asking for it.

    My manager at the time was 6’3” and I am 5’0”. After we had the meeting in his office he proceeded to come back into the lab and tower over me with his full height and get very close into my face. I was told that me resigning was unacceptable and that I was to call my new employer back and tell them I was not allowed to start until I had given him two weeks. If I lost the job it didn’t matter because I “owed” him for hiring me.

    I walked down to HR about an hour later after I stopped shaking and quit outright. They told me I would be blacklisted from ever working there again if I did that. I said okay I don’t want to work here ever again if that is the type of people you hire.

    Apparently I made an impression. Research is a small world and this person worked with a collaborator of mine at the new job. Former manager apparently spent the entire meeting complaining about his employee who dared to walk out on him without finishing her two weeks.

    Current collaborator’s technician did the math. He told me good job. They hated working with him too but since he was paying for services the university required they continue to deal with him. Technician said he wished he’d been a fly on the wall to see the guy’s face when I stood up to him.

  112. A Paralegal in a Mid-Size City*

    The most bananapants reaction to my leaving to go somewhere came not from my direct supervisor, but one of the partner attorneys at the firm I was leaving. I am a career paralegal, but for a few years, I tried my hand at being the mailroom & copy room manager at a large law firm in town. In the end, I decided I preferred working at smaller firms and preferred paralegal work to managing people, so I found another paralegal position at a smaller firm, and gave my two weeks’ notice at the large law firm. My direct supervisor, the Director of Operations, gave me the standard, “Sorry to see you go, good luck at your next job” line. But a few days later, while I was working out my notice period, one of the partner attorneys asked to see me in his office. I assumed it was for the usual reasons I would have 1:1 meetings with partners – either they had a special project they wanted my team’s help with or someone on my team had made a mistake that they wanted to discuss with me. But, instead, he proceeded to say, “I understand that you are going to work for Attorney A.” I said yes, and he said, “Oh, I wish you had asked me before accepting a job there.” (He did practice the same area of law as the firm I was going to join, but at the large firm I was currently at, it was very much not a thing that a low-level manager such as myself would go speak to a partner attorney for career advice.) He went on to tell me that Attorney A was a drama queen, a pathological liar and a bunch of other unflattering stuff. After what seemed like a ten-minute diatribe about how awful the attorney I was going to work for is, he stopped and there was just an awkward silence as I picked my jaw up off the floor. I had no idea what I was supposed to say, so I just said, “Thanks for that input,” and got up to leave. He said something to the effect of “Good luck, you’re going to need it.” (For the record, the attorney I went to work for was quirky, but mostly lovely to work with. I never told her all the awful things Large Firm Partner said about her, and she seemed to have a generally good opinion of him, so to this day, I have no idea where the animosity came from.)

    1. Bast*

      Also worked in multiple law firms, and I have NEVER heard anyone say anything good about anyone else that I have left for. I think the branch of law I work in has earned a very deserved reputation of being particularly catty. They almost all have something nasty to say behind each other’s backs, but most will smile at each other in the street or the elevator. It’s ridiculous. During my last switch, when they didn’t actually know the place I was moving to but knew it wasn’t quite the same branch of law, so told me, “It looks bad for you to switch like this, you know. It looks like you can’t commit.” after the whole speech about how much they did for me, and how I was betraying them, etc. They only went this route because they couldn’t say anything personally bad about the new firm.

  113. Jolly One*

    About 5 years ago, I resigned as a manager to a very small local company. I did basically all of the front-end work and had been there several years. When I started, I was a single mom, fresh out of a toxic relationship where my partner was cheating on me with his best friend’s wife. My boss was the owner, had seen me have quite a few hard days. He did mentor me and taught me a lot (a whole lot) in a niche industry. The work environment was toxic though, and he really took advantage of me. I rage quit one day, after an emotionally grueling doctors’ appointment for my kid. He was upset because I had left the office cell phone at work while I was at the aforementioned doctor’s appointment. There was a lot of screaming and cursing.
    The next day, when I came to collect my things and final pay, he had actually hired the “best friend’s wife” the ex from several years before had cheated on me with, in my place.
    I never spoke to him or took any of his calls ever again. Sad, as I did think of him as “friend”.
    I did go to work for a competitor and now have much better pay and working conditions/terms. The ex-boss friend did not take it well and called my new employer 5 different times attempting to sway the owner to fire me.
    I still work with the competitor. Happily.

  114. Justin*

    Three jobs ago (it seems like so long), I was working a terrible, no insurance adult ed job – I still work in adult ed but it’s well-paid professional development work now – and they cut my hours because it was always fluctuating, and my boss didn’t seem to like me much.

    So, I had to get a new job because I was about to be out of money. I interviewed at a place in mid-December, found out my hours were being cut, then had a second interview that I was really excited about while trying to ignore how many days it would be before I ran out of money and couldn’t pay my rent.

    Holidays happened, so I just stressed while everyone went dark. (My job closed over Xmas weeks but we didn’t get paid for it.)

    Got called back in for a third interview and it went well. They called and said they wanted to check my references, so I gave them the best people I could find but my most prominent job had been in Korea, so it was really only “colleagues who had been senior to me” as options. They didn’t like that – this was going to be my first standard office job ever – and asked if I could ask my then-current supervisor. aggggh

    So I asked her. She said she’d do it.

    The next day she said, eh, no. So I told the new job and they were finally like, well, we’ll just confirm you did work there when you said you did. And they did. So I got the job. And my first paycheck hit my bank account 5 hours before my rent was due the next month.

    When I told my boss I was leaving she wasn’t surprised, and then told me, “Try to be more professional next time.” I had done nothing unprofessional as far she’d ever told me, so it just felt like a knife twist when I just needed enough money to live on.

    In retrospect, she’d commented a lot on my undiagnosed neurodivergent traits (my clothes, my speech patterns), stuff I was used to so barely noticed by then.

    I got really really lucky getting out of there, making 19k/year in NYC without health insurance is Not Ideal.

    I saw that

  115. Art of the Spiel*

    When I was a clerk for an insurance company, I told them I was looking for another job, so we started cross-training a couple of people on my job. Four months later, I gave three weeks’ notice.

    I had three weeks of vacation and four personal days. I’d used the personal days, but none of the vacation days. My supervisor and the EA went back through payroll records and changed all the personal days to vacation, because vacation was paid but personal days were lost if you left.

    I discovered this about a month later when I got my vacation payout; I called my supervisor’s boss (who replaced the long-time grandboss the same week I left) about it. I explained that a) vacation days had to be used in a block, and personal days had to be taken singularly, and those days had been used one at a time, and b) I had my supervisor’s signature on approval for individual personal days, spelled out as such. He apologized and promised to get it corrected, and I received the balance shortly thereafter.

    Reader, this is back when voicemails were actual tapes, which only held about 15 minutes of messages. After I had my check in hand, I timed out my supervisor’s VM with the longest string of profanity I’ve ever spit out. I was also happy that his new boss was mortified by this behavior.

  116. Josie*

    During peak Great Resignation times, I was in a super toxic job. I got into a screaming match with my boss via Zoom and decided to quit the next day. I was remote in another state but the rest of the team was in person. I sent an email at 9am the next day outlining my reasons and that I quit, and they could decide if today was my last day or if they wanted a weeks notice.

    I heard NOTHING in response for hours. It was wild. I had copied HR so I finally reached out to that contact individually to confirm receipt. I finally heard back by 2pm or so that today would be my last day. I sent the handover materials I had been collecting all day and then logged off and poured some wine.

    When I called the only coworker I liked to tell her, she was like “ohhhhh….that’s why they’ve all been running around panicking all morning.”

  117. Small*

    This one is very small compared to what I’ve seen here, but I called my grand boss to tell her I was accepting an internal job offer, which she had known that I was interviewing for for the past month. I said “I have some bittersweet news” and she responded with “well, that news certainly is bitter” and then proceeded to rant to me about her own leadership failings. Then she didn’t speak to me for the rest of my transition period. LOL

  118. Kelly*

    My last toxic, micromanaging, gaslighting boss told me I was “stabbing her in the back” when I quit after almost four years. She was known to be very aggressive and angry when anyone quit, even with a prolonged notice period. She also was angry that she wouldn’t be able to hire replacements for me and the other staff member who quit at the same time because it was the “wrong time of year.” She got more angry when I pointed out we were both hired at the same time of year she was complaining about and that we had already worked our busiest season.

    Did I mention at a meeting to discuss our poor morale (I call that meeting “the beatings will continue until morale improves”) that she told us if we were unhappy, after we all “anonymously” rated our morale as poor as well as the person standing next to us at her demand, that we could quit?

    1. Kelly*

      I forgot to mention that we were working a bare minimum of 50 hours a week year round, up to 70+ for salary plus small after hours bonuses. I was making under $20/hr at times as a professional with a graduate degree. She made us beg for our paychecks and wouldn’t use direct deposit because then she wouldn’t be thanked for paying us.
      My new job pays twice as much for half the hours and doesn’t threaten us with more work if we bring up being exhausted and overworked.

  119. Nicosloanica*

    My boss started crying in the restaurant. He was a mid-sixties man and it was my first job out of college – I was maybe 23 or 24, female. I was horrified and didn’t know what to do. In retrospect he was probably under a lot of stress, but whew … what an introduction to the working world. I have always had trouble keeping work and personal separate ever since that job.

  120. Cookies for Breakfast*

    I used to work at a family-owned startup where the secret to success was getting in with a small circle of people the owners trusted (predictably, those who had joined very early on). All was well for me while I was in their good graces, then it became clear that the house was full of bees and it was time to leave. Here are a few things that happened at that point.

    1) The owner, whom I reported directly to, changed my line management twice. Both times, to people who had no oversight on or understanding of my work, and looked after completely different business areas. It was as ridiculous as if, say, the engineering lead was appointed as the receptionist’s manager. “No longer worth my time, must offload employee” is the clear message I got.

    2) I was one of few people they allowed to work from home, with the understanding it was a great privilege they didn’t bestow upon just anyone. But at one point, they changed their mind and started denying my requests. This must be when they realised I would start job hunting at some point. I had many doctor’s appointments and half days off scheduled in those months. My commute was 1.5 hours each way on good days, and even so, on the “appointment” days I was usually able to carry on from home, they always wanted me back in the office for the remaining hours.

    3) My reference process with the new employer took a long time, because the senior managers kept playing “pass the parcel” with it. The owner promised to give me a good reference, then decided he didn’t have time for that and his second-in-command should do it. This guy agreed to it, then never replied when my new employer got in touch. When I followed up on it, he passed the task on to a third manager, who finally gave the reference. I was being gently nudged out the door (not leaving on bad terms, but clearly no longer needed), so it was slightly surprising that they’d delay things. Or it wasn’t, if I remember how much they enjoyed their little power trips.

  121. Jake*

    I have kind of a reverse version of this. I informed my boss that I was going to start looking for another position because of reasons. He pushed back pretty hard trying to get me to drop it and stay.

    He turned in his two weeks notice a week after trying to browbeat me into staying.

  122. Anonymous Reader today*

    HR had no interest in an exit interview beyond covering final paychecks, reminders on NDAs, etc. That is until I had been gone for over six months. Then they wanted me to do a survey or schedule something. I deleted the email. I would have been happy to share my thoughts while being paid for my time. I wasn’t doing it for free.

  123. Middle Aged Lady*

    When I told her, she looked tragic and sais dramatically, “I knew this day would come.” Barely spoke to me for the last two weeks, then, as soon as I was gone, sent me a friend request on Facebook. I ignored it.

  124. Dewey*

    My boss immediately walked into an open, public-facing area and loudly announced my departure to everyone. To which my coworker responded, “I wish I could be happy for you.”

    Still, I gave a very long notice to help finish a project at a different location. Boss and Coworker would disappear to the other location, leaving me behind, even though, as I say, I was staying to finish that project. Boss was just a jerk–she’d snap at me, or pointedly say thank you to everyone but me. Needless to say, I was not sorry to leave.

  125. GD*

    In my first real job after getting my teaching license, I gave my notice in March – teacher contracts are typically offered around spring break, and I accepted a position at a different school. I had been a teacher and a sports coach, building a brand new athletic program over the years I’d been there. Out of all the coaches in this particular program, I was the only one who had played the sport before, and as a result my teams did well in our region.
    My principal was fine and understanding when I told her I was leaving to go teach and coach at another school. My athletic director, on the other hand, was a different story. Our athletic season didn’t end until May. He made up a reason to transfer some of my best players from my primary team to his team (that happened to have a losing season). In May, I emailed all team parents to let them know I was leaving the school and wouldn’t be back next year. The AD followed up with his own email, stating I was “no longer associated in any way” with the school’s program – and he added a few other jabs at my character. He made it sound like I had been fired when in fact it was my decision to leave! I would have never thought someone could be so persnickety about teenagers in a less-popular sport! I ended up having a meeting with the big big boss and talked about slander/defamation. I think we left on neutral terms.

  126. anon for this*

    Asked me on a date!

    I guess my boss had been thinking there was something between us but wanted to keep things professional while they supervised me. They asked me on the date at my goodbye happy hour after my last day, so it was technically not during work time and after I stopped working for them. They had always been a kind, level-headed, and reasonable boss, so I didn’t feel any pressure to say yes to the date. I was able to turn them down in the moment and they took it well, but it was kind of a bananas thing of them to do. They give me good references, I’ve felt comfortable reaching out to them to network, so it’s fine, but it was def weird!

    For added context, I am a woman and was in my 20s at the time. They were in their mid-to-late 40s– I did not see them as a romantic prospect AT ALL. Not that age gap relationships don’t exist or are inherently negative but I was so caught off guard that he was interested in me romantically. I don’t want to ruin any straight man’s fantasy, but if you are an older man considering asking out a younger woman, would keep in mind that it she seems super comfortable with you, it might be because she sees you as a dad-like figure, not because she’s at all romantically interested.

  127. AC*

    My first year out of college, I taught at a small private school. In the spring, I successfully secured a new teaching job with higher pay and closer to home, so I went to the Head of School to let him know I would finish out the semester, but wouldn’t be returning in September.

    Me: 5’1, 23-year-old female. Him: 6’5, man in his 60’s.

    He stands up, towering over me, and proceeds to scream about how by “quitting” I was “ruining my future” and “sabotaging my career.” According to him, I “should have told him that I was looking for a new job, so I could call the new job and tell them I wasn’t able to work for them, because you work for ME!”

    Oh- this is the same guy who would go on to push out a beloved division director and replace her with his own wife. Classy.

    1. BlueSwimmer*

      Here’s another quitting a small private school story. I started my teaching career at a small religious school. We were a FAMILY and had to be at every school event and live and breathe the school at all times for a very, very low salary (for comparison, when I left and went to teach public school, my salary more than doubled). I stayed for three years out of guilt but when my now spouse and I were deciding where to buy a house, we chose a community too far away to stay at the school. I found a public school job and let them know in plenty of time to hire someone else for the next school year.

      My department chair and most of the administration and front office staff would not speak to me during the last month of school and acted like I was betraying the school by leaving. I was the cheer team coach and had to store 80 uniforms and boxes of pompoms at my parents’ house (because the school would not provide storage for them). When I drove them all to school to return them, no one would help or tell me where to put them so I silently carried box after box of uniforms into the main office and piled them up while everyone stared at me. It was the lamest send off from people whose children I had helped with college applications and who were supposed to have been my friends.

  128. Anon-ish*

    Accused me of engineering the downfall/resignation of a long term “missing stair” employee I’d been butting heads with by reporting some comments they made regarding our management team to HR, and then also quitting, to nefariously leave the company bereft of senior employees at this location.

    Didn’t know that they had constructed this narrative, so when I submitted a very respectful, appreciative resignation letter (coincidentally on the last day of Missing Stair’s notice period), I, unlike Missing Stair, was not allowed to work out my two week notice and given a send off happy hour. Instead, I was marched from the office and told by my boss (who literal weeks before had been a happy guest at my wedding, to give you an idea of how friendly I thought we were) to never use him as a reference as he’d only have negative things to say. I was not graceful (cried, wanted to know why he’d say that, etc) but heard later from former colleagues that my crying was reported as me throwing a screaming fit and having to be removed from the premises for that reason. (!!)

    Happy news is my new position was a major pay raise, a major promotion, and has opened many doors professionally. Additionally, working in a sane environment made me realize how true Alison’s saying that working in toxic places will make you toxic. As this company was my first position out of college, I had no idea that their norms were absolutely bananapants. In hindsight, I also felt bad for Missing Stair- she had been a long term employee that instead of having a manager that addressed issues, told her she was doing fine and was supported while complaining about her behind her back. She wasn’t given a chance to grow her soft skills (which were the issues) because our boss never let her KNOW there were issues. Would just commiserate with anyone who complained about her, told me my position would be to take some of those soft skill responsibilities off her plate “since we both know she’s not suited for them” while turning around and telling her he had NO idea why I was asking her to assign XYZ to me, but to assign them to me if she thought I could handle it. We were both gaslit (and I know that term is used liberally and wrongly, but very literally in this case) by our terrible manager. I see my old boss sometimes at industry events, and we coolly ignore each other, but I can’t help but wonder WHY he thought I’d try to orchestrate some great downfall for Missing Stair if I was quitting myself.

  129. I'm new her myself*

    When I left my 1st professional job to go back for my master’s degree, the boss was quite firm that she would not give me a sabbatical leave as was rather usual in our office. A don’t go, but if you do go, don’t expect to come back. OK. Well, I came back after my 18 months in school and got a job down the street and she spent the next five years trying to convince me to come back “home.” And yes the pay would have been better, but, I’d have had to work for a very difficult person, so, no.

  130. juneb*

    Not me who resigned, but I worked for an awful manager who loved to tell everyone that she was hired to make us more “professional” (this was completely untrue. like, a complete lie, as later confirmed by the director). After many formal complaints and resignations from her staff, the director gave her the option to resign or be fired. She resigned, went back to her office, packed her things, and left without saying a word to any of the staff she’d managed for two years.
    Almost everyone in management was thrilled with this outcome, except for one person: Emma. Emma is the reason we know about the “quit or be fired” option, because Emma loudly paraded around the building telling the story, nearly tearing up about how “unfairly” my manager had been treated, how she’d been “silenced” for having different opinions than the director (I like to imagine that one of her opinions is that her staff were peasants, desperately in need of a heroine to guide them to civility). This went on for quite some time, and we got pretty tired of hearing how our horrible manager was such a victim in the situation. Emma’s behavior was brought to the director’s attention, and Emma was later given a similar choice.

  131. sequitur*

    I was working in a customer service role in a call centre facility, though not on the phones. I was ready to resign, and asked my manager if we could have a private conversation somewhere away from the call centre floor.

    This was a place where anyone with even a hint of a brain rapidly got promoted to supervisor, a role that did not come with any additional management training, which I suspect is why the conversation went the way it did.

    First, he refused my request to have the conversation privately. I pushed back at least once and he insisted that whatever I wanted to say, I could say on the open floor (extremely glad in retrospect that I was merely quitting, and not disclosing a medical or personal issue). Then, when I told him I was leaving and when my last day would be, he said “biiiiiiitch” in an extremely weird falsetto.

    10/10 quitting experience, would quit that job again in a heartbeat.

  132. CampusStaff*

    I quit a job in a very small office because of relentless bullying by another employee. I gave detailed examples in my resignation letter, attached research about bullying in the office, and met with the director and the board to make sure they knew why I was leaving in no uncertain terms – not because of the bullying alone, but because of office policies and practices that allowed this employee to get away with it. In retaliation, they refused to pay out my earned vacation time (based on a recommendation from the bullying employee).

    I cut a deal and was happy to just end that period of my life.

    A year or so later, my former boss emailed me asking for a copy of the resignation letter because that employee was, lo and behold, convincing the entire board that he was incompetent and should be fired, and he wanted documentation of a pattern. I sent him the documentation (seriously, he didn’t even keep it in his files?!) and a very healthy dose of schadenfreude. He was forced out shortly afterward.

  133. Daisy-dog*

    I quit my job with no other job lined up which I thought clearly indicated burnout and my inability to maintain the work that I was expected to do. I quit specifically when I did to avoid leaving in the middle of many time-consuming projects – some of the projects had started, but it was a stage where someone else could reasonably take over. My manager had the audacity to complain about how I was “leaving at a really crucial time for your role.” As if that wasn’t the entire point.

  134. Funny Story*

    No resignation but a layoff. The small family-owned company I worked for laid off about 25% of their staff, and that included me. In the separation agreement, I got two weeks severance ( I had been there a year +). They gave me the option to come to work for those two weeks and get paid severance or not come to work and get severance pay. If I came to work, they would be “flexible” if I needed to leave for interviews.

    Me: So, you’ll pay me two weeks’ severance if I come to work or not?
    Old Boss: Yes
    Me: If I work in the office for two weeks, will I get two additional weeks of severance?
    Old Boss: No

    So, they wanted to pay me two weeks of severance but have me work those two weeks. I declined, took the severance, and happily collected unemployment. A friend told me that people stayed and worked out their severance pay. I’m not even sure that is legal.

    1. Mad Harry Crewe*

      I guess on the principle that “if you don’t ask, the answer is always no” – shoot your shot, you might get two free weeks of work out of people.

    2. AcademiaNut*

      It’s common to offer a severance package to employees who work out a specified period, particularly when it’s something like a business closing, or jobs moving to a new location. It’s to encourage employees to stay until they’re not needed, rather than leaving right away, in situations where they can’t hide the fact that there will be layoffs. Of course, if you can get a new job before the end of the period, it makes sense to forfeit the severance in exchange for continued employment.

      It sounds like this employer misunderstood that concept.

  135. CTA*

    This is on the mild side.

    Many years ago, I was working in visitor services at a museum. My only job was coat check. I didn’t have any other responsibilities such as ticket sales or gift shop sales. At that specific museum, there was that separation in visitor services: you either worked coat check or ticket/gift shop sales. After almost 1.5 years, I successfully applied for and received an offer to work in the museum’s library. It was a lateral move, but it was to a less stressful environment (museum visitors can be cruel).

    My department head really dragged out my notice period. Let’s call her Susie. Susie told the person who would be my new supervisor (let’s call him Bob) that she didn’t know when she could allow me to start my new role because her department was short staffed. First of all, it was summer. Sure, visitors still have items to leave at coat check, but that’s the time of year when the museum only needed 2 people there instead of 4 because there wasn’t a lot of visitors that time of year. Second, her department had needed to repost the job since the spring when other staff had resigned. They just didn’t start the hiring process right away because she didn’t need more staff until autumn/winter. And if she needed staff for the coat room, there was precedent for asking the ticket/gift shop staff to work at coat check.

    I thought that she would hold me for max two weeks due to the whole 2 weeks notice courtesy (I’m in the US). Oh, no. She held on to me for THREE weeks. My co-workers in coat check kept asking me when I was leaving so I could move on. Almost three weeks since Susie had been notified of my offer, I happened to bump into Bob (who would be my new manager) in the employee cafeteria and he told me he was glad that I would finally be starting the next Monday. Susie never told me this info. Not even her direct report Steve (my manager when I was in coat check) told me and he was in charge of my schedule at the time.

    IDK what Susie was sour about. Maybe she just wanted to feel powerful.

  136. Pink Hard Hat*

    I resigned from a company that I had worked for for 10 years, and gave them a standard 2 weeks notice. During my notice period they had me working on a project that was just getting started, rather than work on the project I was currently on that was wrapping up, because the CEO was so sure he could convince me to stay during these 2 weeks (I did not).

    The icing on the cake was that my manager, who had been my manager for all of those 10 years, made absolutely no acknowledgement of my last day. He wouldn’t have even spoken to me if I hadn’t gone up to his office to say goodbye. Let me tell you, they did a really good job of making me feel valued.

  137. mp44*

    I once had a manager hysterically sob on my last day. It was kind of flattering but mostly just bewildering to see someone react that way in a professional setting. Despite the big feelings, I have not seen or heard from her since leaving.

  138. missy*

    I quit the job from hell that I somehow had stayed at for 5 long brutal years. this place was absolutely hell. you were paid for 8 hours but worked 10+ a day, you were made to feel guilty and like a criminal if you took your vacation time which you absolutely had to take to keep your mental health.. you were openly berated and yelled at in front of everyone if you made even a minor mistake..and they never trained you. it was just pop you in front of a computer and figure it out. it was horrible especially considering we were doing complex work that involved the federal government and if we made a mistake they’d penalize us tens of thousands of dollars.

    I finally had my fill one day and went for supper with a friend who had escaped earlier in the year. I told her if she found a job at her place to let me know and low and behold there was a current opening. I applied and got the job right away.

    I worked a non standard M-F schedule so I purposely didn’t say anything to my manager until I sent an email saying I was putting my 2 weeks in, at 8pm on my last day for the week. my boss was in the next day and from all accounts went absolutely bezerk when she read it.

    I got called into a meeting on Monday where I was told that they were shellshocked I quit and that I didn’t seem like a “disgruntled employee” and that if I dared to steal any clients that the owner was going to sue me to the ground. I never signed a non compete and I was moving into a completely unrelated industry so I honestly didn’t care. they then told me that I was expected to stop doing any work lest I try to sabotage the business and I had to make process docs instead.

    I had already made process docs for all my responsibilities so my last 2 weeks were spent doing absolutely nothing

    my manager kept trying to make my life hell. she kept trying to get it out of me where I was going but I refused to say anything. she kept telling me how absolutely useless I was and how the new company was going to regret bringing me on and that I’d come crawling back.

    then came the exit interview with our gossip monger of an HR person. I knew there was no point airing any grievances because the company knew what their issues were. we had such high turnover I’d stopped learning people’s names. if you lasted a year you were a long timer.
    so I just sat and grinned like the Cheshire cat to HR all while she tried to grill me or get information from me. I didn’t give her a morsel other than I tested her and she asked my new salary at the new place and I told her they’d never match it
    she pressed again and I told her 100k which was WAY over what I was getting.
    low and behold I found out a week after I left that “somehow” everyone knew I was going to make this 100k.. so yeah.. happy I didn’t say anything of consequence to HR.

    my manager kept being a cow, telling me how awful I was for my entire two weeks and then my department manager came to me on my last day and told me they were surprised I showed up. they apparently had bets on if I’d stay the full two weeks because pretty much everyone just quits and leaves. but I’m stubborn so I stayed.

    I skipped out of there at 4pm drove off giving them the finger the whole way. my mental health has improved a million percent since leaving and even my physical health has improved.

    and to this day they still have a high turnover and the only people left from when I was there are management because they’re so stuck and beaten down they feel they cant leave.

    I now work for a dream company who treats me like gold and pays 2x what I got at the hell hole.

  139. Scintillating Water*

    Pretty minor compared to some, but when I quit my part-time barista job, the boss repeatedly demanded I explain. I just kept smiling and saying “it’s personal” every time she asked. Finally, she called me at 7 AM, demanded that I come over immediately if I wanted my final paycheck, and before she handed it to me said “so you’re really not going to tell me why you’re leaving?”

    Of course, I was quitting because she was constantly yelling at me. I actually expected her to be relieved that I was leaving, because based on her constant criticism.

  140. Happily retired in VA*

    I was working for a company that had a habit of burning out employees — lots of overtime and lost weekends. It was so bad that I rethought my whole career and decided to go back to grad school. I had to be at school in the fall; I had lots of savings; but I wouldn’t be vested in the retirement plan unless I stayed until June 6. I planned to stay into July but I wasn’t sure when I was leaving so I didn’t tell anyone yet.
    My boss came to me in mid May asked me to lead up a horrible project which would have meant a lot of overtime for me and my team through the fall. I really didn’t want to do it but there was no option to refuse. However if I went on the project and then resigned, the chance of the project succeeding were going to be greatly lessened; so that it would be better for the company for someone else to lead the project. I thought about it overnight and decided the risk of being asked to leave immediately was very small so I told her the next day that I was a poor choice for that project because I was going to grad school in the fall. She offered me a large bonus if I stayed through August and successfully led the project. Based upon past broken promises, I asked for the bonus offer in writing. She said great and put me on the project but didn’t give me the written bonus offer. I asked about the bonus offer twice and she said she just needed Grand Boss’s signature.
    On June 6, still no written bonus offer. The project was shaping up to be as awful as I expected and I decided I’d rather have a free summer for once in my life. I put my 2-week resignation in writing and took it to her.
    “But we had a deal.” she said.
    “Based on a written bonus offer which hasn’t appeared.”
    She blurted out: “You know Grandboss doesn’t like you and was never going to sign off on that bonus!!!”
    No regrets and graduate school and new career was the best thing I’ve ever done professionally.

    1. Mad Harry Crewe*

      Good for you! So many people would hold out hope for the bonus to come through anyway, good for you for having clarity about the situation and the people you were working for.

  141. Bluebell*

    At one job, I received a fantastic job offer the night before a midyear review. Not only did I get a better title than I had been requesting for the past year, it also came with a 25% raise. Went into the meeting, and before my boss could launch into my shortcomings, presented her with the letter, which said that my end date could be negotiated. I had only been there for three years, but I offered to stay six weeks to finish up an event I was working on. Her response was “we’ll see” – implying that I owed them longer. She also added that she had been about to announce that they were going to hire someone over me. I went for a walk to cool down and so that she could tell some of senior leadership; when I got back she conceded that timeline would be ok. Luckily, I never had to go back to answer questions from my replacement, because it took them over a year to get a new person in.

  142. Anon Poacher*

    Recently we hired 3 people from a competitor in our industry. That company sent the CEO/Owner of my company a cease and desist letter. LOL. Nothing was illegal, none of the people had non-competes- we made sure before hiring the. Treat your people and they won’t jump ship to a better company.

    1. I Have RBF*

      I’m very glad that in California it’s unlawful for employers to enter into or attempt to enforce noncompete agreements. As of September 2023 noncompete agreements are void in California regardless of where the employee worked when the agreement was entered and/or where the agreement was signed. The big tech companies used to use those, mutual blacklisting, and illegal wage fixing agreements to stifle competitive wages and mobility for employees.

      1. Gumby*

        Wait, really? My company has been honoring a non-compete for one of our newer employees (not that she can’t work for us but that she can’t do certain types of projects for a certain amount of time). Headed to find more details to see if we can start ignoring that now. OTOH, it’s a small industry and maybe we’ll honor it just to not anger people which… is unfortunate.

  143. Elle Woods*

    My friend worked as an account executive at a small consulting firm. She had grown tired of the toxic culture at the firm and had been quietly looking for a new job for a few months when she got an amazing offer from a larger firm with an excellent reputation. She accepted the offer and put in two weeks’ notice. Her boss proceeded to throw such a temper tantrum (yelling, throwing things at the wall), that the occupants of the office suite next door called the cops. She wound up packing up her desk and leaving immediately. She used the next two weeks to decompress and enjoy the beautiful summer weather.

  144. Lauren*

    It was my very first non-seasonal job in college at a retail store. I worked morning shifts in the weekends and night shifts after my classes ended. I purposely took the job during school because I had signed up for a college guided trip to Europe and I knew I would need a couple thousand dollars to do so.

    Well, I went to Europe at the end of spring and summer started. I gave the retail company my two weeks notice because my seasonal employer (think greenhouse) had offered me back my summer position and it was too hard trying to juggle multiple schedules.

    My manager was sad and said they had enjoyed working with me and were sad to see me leave. Well, later that night I got a call from the owner who screamed at me that he never liked me anyway and that I was fired! He said he’d mail me my final paycheck and good riddance. I was young and had never had an adult yell like that before so I was VERY confused! I even asked him meekly “so you don’t want me to work tomorrow morning?” (Haha, I was so naive) He said “NO” in a ‘are you nuts’ tone. I was so shell shocked and cried to my mom about it. But am so grateful looking back. I hadn’t realized it then but he was a very miserable person and ended up in the news years later for under paying his employees!

  145. Someone*

    When I recently left my remote sales job for a competitor, they had me locked out of my computer and all software within 10 minutes, no joke. I was impressed. But they paid me my two week + end of week notice period, and all my PTO.

  146. Brain the Brian*

    I was not the one who resigned in this situation, but management here once forced an employee to work an all-nighter the night before his last day to finish a major client proposal on which he had been the lead designer. (I was the staying employee who stayed up all night with him to double-check and proofread.) In fairness to everyone, the final round of feedback on this proposal took the client three months to provide — so the whole thing should have been long done. Still, an all-nighter right into your last day is pretty awful to be forced to pull.

    1. Brain the Brian*

      (And we can’t forget the time when someone was fired on the spot and perp-walked out of the company picnic for incorrectly setting up portable grills on which a VP was going to cook hot dogs and hamburgers. That one wasn’t really mistreatment *post-firing*, but it’s still pretty horrid.)

  147. Pink Orb*

    At my small nonprofit, a new executive director was hired at the beginning of 2022. He was a disaster—rude, dismissive, hostile, with no background of any kind in the work we did. We did a lot of lobbying and government relations/legislative campaign work, which he had apparently never even heard of before taking the job—he didn’t know a single thing about that aspect of the organization. The Government Relations Director and the new ED obviously ran into serious issues because the GR director was being managed by someone who was an active detriment to her work.

    Eventually, they had a meeting which escalated to the GR director giving her two weeks’ notice. She was a department of 1, so there was no one else in the organization who could fill in the institutional knowledge or crucial relationships with state legislators that she carried. When she tried to log in to her email after that last meeting, the ED had already deleted all of her organizational accounts.

    So she couldn’t wrap up her work, couldn’t create an exit document, couldn’t conclude her external relationships professionally, couldn’t provide a transition plan for the organization’s advocacy and government work, etc. The organization is now doing no advocacy work at all and is a statewide embarrassment.

    I quit a month or so after the GR director did and not a single person who worked there at the time I did is still working there.

  148. Ghost in the Corporate Machine*

    I was a part of an organization that did great work, but the management was chaotic, the workload untenable, and I finally decided to leave. I put in my two week’s notice, which happened to align with another colleague’s last day (She gave several months’ notice, due to different circumstances. We had similar tenure). A few things happened – first, I was told by my HR that two weeks is unprofessional, that it should have been 4 weeks minimum. Then, I was asked not to share the news of my departure widely, that my management would do it for me, but they never actually did from what I heard. Several directors didn’t talk to me again, for the whole two weeks.

    But the weirdest thing is that the whole organization held a wonderful send off party on my and my colleague’s shared last day that was only for her, with food and wine, gifts, and adorable powerpoints which I was invited to attend. To be clear, my colleague deserved every bit of celebration! But during the entire event, no leadership talked to me. I might as well have been invisible. No one mentioned it was also my last day, but since several folks did know, it was a very large elephant in a very small room. Still the strangest departure from a job I’ve ever had.

    1. nycnpo*

      ARE YOU ME?! lol

      I was told the exact same thing about two weeks, ignored in favor of a far junior colleague who was leaving the same week, and also instructed “not to tell.”

      Whew boy, happy to be out of there and glad you are too!

  149. Wounded, erratic stink bugs*

    Not actually deranged at all, but I was just thinking this morning about how surprised ExBoss was when I quit. It was simultaneously super-satisfying and a bit frustrating, since she was clearly oblivious to how bad things were, despite my attempts to diplomatically point out how she was the problem.

    The department didn’t get funding to fill the vacant position I left. Also simultaneously satisfying and frustrating — I want that org to do well, but my boss made it really hard for me to get my job done.

  150. Green Goose*

    I worked in South Korea for about 3.5 years with two different employers. Employers and employees have to pay into the Korean pension plan, and if you are a non-Korean who is leaving the country permanently you are entitled to that pension pay when you leave. We were paid about $20,000-$24,000 annually so the pension money was very welcomed, about $2k per year worked.
    My first employer did the pension matching (as required by law) but my second employer had told me and the other English teachers that they did not participate in the pension matching and told us it was because their school was so small. I believed them because my first employer was a huge chain with hundreds of employees and all the docs were either in Korean or poorly translated.
    When I was finally leaving Korea and collecting my pension from my first employer the guy at the official pension office told me that the second employer had lied to us, and actually forged our signatures on official government documents saying that WE were opting out of the pension matching. One of the teachers had worked there for years so she was losing out on thousands of dollars. She was furious.
    We had a really tense meeting with the director of the school where she acted like we were the ones being awful for being upset. Then she offered to pay us a small portion of what she owed us to just leave it alone and not press charges. We agreed and then when it was time for her to pay she said she changed her mind and would be paying us even less. I was the only one that pushed back and said she needed to pay what we agreed to and she was so angry. She yelled at me, and talked about how awful I was and then refused to speak to me the last week of work. What was particularly stressful was that as part of our contract she was paying for my flight home, but I was so worried she was going to cancel my flight out of spite.
    Then on my last day she brought me a phone number for the airline and said “since we won’t be speaking after today, you can call them in anything happens” which felt like a veiled threat. I asked directly if anything was going to happen to my flight and she made more weird cryptic comments. In the end my flight wasn’t canceled but I spent my last two weeks in Seoul feeling really uneasy and unsure until I actually arrived at the airport to leave.

  151. Js*

    I had a toxic boss who worked at two different offices and sometimes was hard to get a hold of so I emailed him to request a meeting to give my notice. He called me to ask what the meeting was about (which defeats the purpose of a meeting) so I just gave him my notice over the phone. He apparently freaked out because he decided to take the rest of the day off. So I went and shared my news with my coworkers since I knew it would add to their workload and we were all friendly. Boss comes in the next day and announces dramatically to everyone that I’m leaving. He then seemed disappointed that everyone already knew!

  152. Bella ciao*

    When I gave notice because I was moving abroad to live with my foreign long-distance boyfriend, my manager (the general manager) called in the operations director. He was a recently divorced man whose ex-wife also worked for the company and their separation was messy. He gave me a lecture on how love doesn’t last forever and I’m making the wrong decisiom.

  153. Thunder Kitten*

    When people resigned from my old company, the owner would absolutely penalize them. Our role required travel across multiple states, tho most of our work would be in a fixed region of about 40-50mi radius. Those last 2 weeks the resignee would be sent from one end of our region to another (think one day in CT, another in DE, then back to NY the next day, for someone who lives in eastern PA).

    Folks eventually smartened up and decided it was easier to be “fired” by dropping their supplies the morning of, and calling out that they quit.

    This was on top of a 2yr non-compete (yes I know it’s non-enforceable in many situations but the hassle is a deterrent)

  154. VP of Monitoring Employees' LinkedIn and Indeed Profiles*

    Are bosses actually allowed to “ban” you from telling others that you’re leaving? How can they enforce that other than by firing you?

    1. Mad Harry Crewe*

      I mean, there is still (potentially) a relationship to maintain – you want to get good reviews and stuff. It’s not actually enforceable, but why cause extra drama with someone already that dramatic?

    2. Annie*

      People generally aren’t motivated to pursue a wrongful termination case against an employer they planned to leave all along, want to avoid a “fired for cause” or “ineligible for rehire” in their job history, and don’t want to lose out on any pay for telling, so bosses usually get away with it either way.

      Whether or not they’re legally allowed to do that depends on if this crosses the line into “papering” or restricting discussion of working conditions, both of which are definitely illegal.

  155. Elevator Elevator*

    Not deranged, really, just petty and shortsighted – I was a senior team member who singlehandedly trained half the department, and I was poached by another department after a period of being on partial loan to them. When my manager (who hated me) announced to the team I was leaving, she framed it in terms of how I wasn’t contributing much anymore anyway so they probably wouldn’t notice. (Yes, I was in the room for that.)

    She never liked me, and she was always trying to look good to management by volunteering the team for things we didn’t have the bandwidth for, which I suspect is why she chose not to hire someone to fill my position when I left. I think she really did convince herself I hadn’t been doing anything.

    Well, that created a staffing deficit they still haven’t recovered from four years later – nearly everyone I trained has quit or transferred out, every year they seem to be more and more overworked, and without me handling training they’ve gone from an ~85% success rate on training/retaining new hires to under 50%. People have washed out, people have quit from the stress, I’ve heard stories about people bursting into tears in one-on-ones and on routine phone calls with coworkers, and they’ve had several will-we-fire-you-or-if-we-wait-long-enough-will-you-quit-first hires who haven’t worked out.

    I guess I was contributing after all!

  156. Sara*

    While I was still in college, I was working a full-time office job. My manager was a complete nightmare and as soon as I graduated, I was ready to get the heck out of there. Luckily I quickly found a new job and excitedly put my two-week’s notice in. I put together a nice letter of recognition and met with my manager to break the news. I am not sure what I was expecting, but he actually tried to tell me that I was not allowed to quit. Wait, what? He literally refused to accept my notice and said without his acceptance, I was not permitted to resign. I told him that this was not the way this worked and that I was leaving on X date whether he accepted it or not. He was also irritated that he wasn’t contacted for a reference when I was interviewing and demanded to know why and even accused me of applying for jobs and interviewing on company time. He was so angry with me that he refused to acknowledge me for the remainder of my notice period. If I didn’t need that money so bad to pay my student loans, I would have left sooner.

  157. SP*

    This isn’t so much bananapants as it is weird. In 2021, I resigned from my in-person (1.5 hour round trip commute), low-paying, benefits-less job at a very small business for a fully remote higher paying gig at a significantly larger company. I’d worked there for nearly 7 years and ran the office in my state while the business’s owner (my boss) ran operations several states over. I had a good working relationship with my boss, so I was upfront about why I was leaving (no commute, better pay), gave her 3 weeks’ notice, and told her I’d wrap up my projects and document everything as best I could. She seemed stunned, but handled it pretty well. She didn’t make me any sort of counteroffer (which I did not expect and totally understood).

    On my last day there, I was having lunch with my two local coworkers and one of them mentioned she was a little surprised I wasn’t staying despite our boss’s generous offer. I asked what she meant, and she told me our boss had told the two of them that she’d offered to double my pay and let me work from home 4 days a week and that just wasn’t good enough for me! I told them this was the first I’d heard of that offer and that I might have taken it if our boss had thought to mention it to me.

    1. BellStell*

      OMG. Would you have had the strength to call her on speaker phone then and there to ask her about this? I would have.

  158. Catwhisperer*

    I applied for and accepted a position on another team at the same organisation, but had yet to officially sign my contract because there was a freeze in the system during performance review season. My boss, who was hired after I was and who I knew did not want me on the team, knew about this and was supportive throughout the process (because hey, we were both getting what we wanted). The role change also involved moving to another country, so before my move I took some medical leave to take care of a few things with my current doctor. Despite being super supportive during most of the process, my boss did a complete 180 the week before I was scheduled to go on medical leave and started pressuring me to keep quiet about my move, going so far as to tell me I shouldn’t tell my friends and family I was moving or announce the move on social media.

    I found out part-way through my medical leave that this was because he’d decided to give me a performance rating that potentially jeopardised my move since my new contract hadn’t been officially signed and couldn’t be until after performance ratings came out. He also pressured me to come in during my leave for my performance review, though I was on FMLA and I’m pretty sure that constitutes FMLA interference.

    I logged on to our system the day reviews came out because I was suspicious that something like this was going to happen, and found out that not only did he give me a rating that jeopardised my transfer, his justification for doing so was full of inaccurate information that was easily provable to be false (think: saying I didn’t finish a project when I had screenshots of the announcement I made in our internal system). Even though I was still on leave, I contacted my future boss and HR right away to find out whether I could still take the new role. Thankfully I could and it all worked out, but I also found out later that my boss had told my coworkers they weren’t allowed to throw me a goodbye party like we had for all other people who left the team.

    To this day I still don’t really understand the rational of trying to force me to stay on the team when neither of us wanted me to be on it.

  159. AnonyMouse*

    My last job I quit with little notice because I’d been on medical leave and was out of FMLA but the medical issues were not resolved enough for me to return. I was in communication with HR with my current boss CC’d about this and everyone was in agreement that my resigning was the only option. The day after my last day (when I returned my equipment), I get an absolutely unhinged email from my last boss about how I was “betraying” her, how she had done so much for me (including acting as a mentor), how my leaving was going to delay her plans to retire. The cherry on top was that I’d been promoted shortly before my illness so I’d worked for this woman for approximately 3 weeks before I’d started medical leave.

  160. BellyButton*

    It wasn’t me, but my colleague. She had just returned from FMLA after having cancer. She was still recovering, there were complications, and things weren’t great for her. She decided to resign to focus on her health. She was well respected and well loved in our company. Our boss was so mad he told her she didn’t need to work her 2 weeks and to get out. When she walked out of his office he got up and slammed his door.

    She couldn’t pack her office, she couldn’t lift anything, she wasn’t even driving yet. I had her go sit in my car and I packed up her office while she called her husband to come get her. There was NO reason for our boss to that. We didn’t work in the area of the business with sensitive records or client lists she could steal. It was pure pettiness from a petty petty stupid man.

      1. BellyButton*

        2 months later when he announced he was retiring, I did get a little dig in and said “Oh is grandboss letting your work your notice period?” All innocent and wide eyed. I can be petty too. ;)

    2. nycnpo*

      Thank you for extending such kindness to her. That’s truly heartbreaking. I don’t understand where people get off bringing such unhinged and cruel behavior to a workplace.

      I hope she is doing well and I hope you are too! <3

  161. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

    Okay, this is school and not work, and I never would have thought of it except that it came up in my personal life recently…
    I had a lousy time in High School, and in the beginning of my Junior year I found a wonderful college that would accept me early, at 17, with a General Equivalency Diploma. Just to give you an idea of what it was like, I’d taken enough classes that my senior year was going to consist of Gifted and Gym, but when I told the guidance counselor I wanted to leave early, she said, “but you’ll miss prom!”
    For some reason the Vice Principal was deeply personally offended that I was leaving HIS special school. First he told me I was breaking state law (I wasn’t), then he said I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone my plans (I did), and finally he said the decision required his explicit consent. Since he wouldn’t give consent, I was still going to be considered a student and would be expected in class.
    Y’all, this grown man sent report cards to my family saying I was enrolled in classes and failing them. For a whole year. While I was 8 hours away studying Mandarin and anarchist philosophy, and thinking about him not at all.

    1. Rowan*

      As if your family would be unaware that you were at college, and force you to stop to focus on high school??

      1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

        “Now, Raisin, I’m sure the Indigenous Dances of the Americas class is fascinating, but apparently you haven’t been attending the, uh, Spanish I class… that you already took 3 years ago…”

    2. Rhamona Q*

      How did your parents not respond to that VP like “We did not enroll our son/daughter in your school this year. Please refrain from sending us confidential grade information that clearly belongs to another student, who actually attends your facility. Any further information unrequested by us will be provided to the school board” or something along those lines? LOL

      1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

        I think my parents homeschooling me in 8th grade and seeing just what passed for education made them see the admin there as malignant buffoons. I’m sure the school board couldn’t have cared less- they didn’t care that we learned about the American Revolution every year instead of progressing to other topics, why would they care about the Vice Principal being a bully?
        My dad apparently wanted to send the report cards back after wiping his bottom on them, but cooler heads prevailed.

  162. I AM a Lawyer*

    Two of my managers cried, one of those two would not let me tell my clients I was leaving because I had mentioned my new job was a “good opportunity” and she heard “it is a better opportunity than you’re giving me” (it wasn’t, it was just different) and she didn’t want me to tell clients the thing that she had fabricated that I said. They were totally normal managers before I gave my notice.

  163. Jackalope*

    This is mild compared to the others, but… I was working for someplace that had given us an absolutely insane schedule, and I’d finally burned out. So completely that it took me a couple of years to get myself back on track. I gave my three month notice, which was normal for this employer, but gave it to one of my supervisors since I wasn’t entirely sure who to report this to (fuzziness in the reporting structure because the employer had gone from tiny to slightly less tiny and was still figuring things out). The head bosses had a week-long staff retreat for us a month later, and wouldn’t discuss me leaving until after the retreat was almost finished in the hopes that it would convince me to stay (they did say this directly). Unfortunately for them I was already so done that there was nothing that could have convinced me to change my mind (although I did enjoy the retreat with everyone( it was nice to have a week of not planning or working on stuff).

  164. Penny Pasta*

    My job was slowly laying off all the people in my department. As people left, work was redistributed to make up for the missing people, so we all got bigger workloads. I knew eventually I would be let go as well so I found a new job. I put in my two weeks and the head of my department called me back to her office to ask me why I was leaving. After picking my jaw up off the floor I told her because I wanted to leave ahead of being laid off. She told me that she had a list of the order in which people would be laid off and I was at the bottom. So my job was safe for now. my question was, what happens when I make it to the top of the list and how am I supposed to handle all the extra work in the meantime?

  165. Apples*

    I once had my boss tell me that he was so upset by my resignation that when he went home that evening his children asked him what was wrong. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that comment. He then told me during the notice period that I was dead to him. I promptly responded that, unfortunately for him, I was a very loud ghost. He called me at my new workplace every year for several years after that to see if I was willing to come back yet. He wasn’t normally that dramatic, but I think some people just take resignations personally.

  166. EngineerLady*

    I had 19 years at my last place of employment and had a horrible manager, I’d been warned but had never had a bad manager so I had no idea what I was in for. When I turned in my resignation to go to a competitor he was shocked they would pay me more than I was getting because “we’re paying you the top end of what we would pay someone off the street” which was fascinating since I had almost TWENTY YEARS of experience at that site and obviously was worth more to the competitor. He also was gone the last week I was there. The admin for our department arranged a cake as is customary for people leaving and he called her up to berate her about setting up a going away event because he wouldn’t be there for it…. okay. I told her to just cancel it and ended up having lunch with some well liked colleagues, they kindly paid. No regrets about leaving that place. My new employer is awesome and I get paid more!

  167. Llama Llama*

    The only bad experience I had was when I worked at a fast food restaurant. Somebody stole like $50 from me (basically our purses were left in open areas). I hated the job anyway and the $50 stolen didn’t even cover my shuts for the week. I told my manager that I was turning in my two weeks notice because of the theft. He asked if he could look into it and me not resign. I said no and he got pissed at me. Yelled at me and told me to leave then.

    I was a young 18 girl bawling on my way home because of his hatefulness. I wasn’t even going to pick up my last pay check until the other manager randomly saw me one day and was like ‘You need to come and get your paycheck’

    1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

      I’m so sorry- his response makes it seem like he knew who took the money!
      What are ‘shuts’ that you needed to cover for the week?

  168. Carole from Accounts*

    I once reported in to a CFO whose disrespect and abuse escalated to screaming “NO” and “GO AWAY” when I would come to his office to request tasks that only he could perform, like international wires of bills that urgently needed paying (and I had to go to his office to follow up because he would just ignore my emails). Like, he would scream “GO AWAY” at me before I could even say “hello” or ask my request.

    I was so relieved when I got another job and gave my notice to HR. When HR informed him I had quit, he marched into the group accounting office, and screamed at me, demanding to know why I hadn’t simply come to talk to him if I was so unhappy.

    2. Luna*

      “demanding to know why I hadn’t simply come to talk to him if I was so unhappy.”
      ‘Go away.’ =)

  169. AnonQuitsHurrah*

    I resigned because the stress of the job had literally made me sick – I have crohns and I had been in a flare up for nearly a year, mostly caused by the stress at work.

    So I resigned, citing health reasons, and as per my contract (am in the UK), I gave four weeks notice.

    Two days after I had turned in my resignation letter I was dragged into a meeting with my boss and HR and they did their best to convince me to stay. Cute comments like ‘you can take unpaid leave until the health issue is resolved’. Ummm… no? If I wanted to stay I wouldn’t have resigned, would I? I ended up almost shouting at them that the job was what was making me sick but they were either not hearing or didn’t want to hear what I was saying.

    Anyway at the end of the meeting they graciously accepted my resignation and I spent the next four weeks doing basically nothing, and I think I burned the bridge, nuked the remains and salted the earth when I turned in my exit interview questionnaire. I was brutally honest, but I hope that some of the things I said actually were read and maybe looked at, if only to improve things for the poor souls left behind.

    I couldn’t give a fly, though. This was June last year, and my health has improved immensely. I said to my therapist that it seemed to me like I wasn’t actually depressed and anxious, it was that job.

    So yeah, they tried to make me stay. No sir. I am OUT. I blocked all my former coworker’s numbers and life is a lot, lot better now.

  170. Rainy*

    My first “professional” job was in a small family-owned and -run business that was basically a money-spinner for the owner and also deeply, profoundly dysfunctional and toxic in every possible way. Her niece “managed” the business, mostly via the occasional phone call from a nearby casino, and I kept everything running.

    When I gave multiple months’ notice for my December 24th last day (I would absolutely never do that again) to go back to school, the conversation happened over the phone, because I’d spent a couple of weeks waiting for her to come into the office for more than a couple of minutes so I could resign in person. It went something like this:

    Me: Hi Boss, I was hoping to do this in person, but I haven’t been able to pull you aside for a conversation, so–
    Boss: Rainy, why are you calling me? You know I’m busy! [muffled poker sounds] I don’t like how you have to call me for every single thing, I really need to see some initiative from you or I might have to let you go. [She covers the phone with her hand to say that she’s calling an opponent’s bet.]
    Me: I’m leaving at the end of December to go back to school. My last day will be the 24th.
    Boss: You…what.
    Me: My initiative will not be a problem anymore. My last day is December 24th.
    Boss: How can you possible leave me in the lurch like this? You know I depend on you! What am I going to do?
    Me: …
    Boss: Well, at least you have plenty of time to train your replacement! That’s the least you could do! Write up an ad for your job and put it in the paper–have them send the invoice to the shop and you pay it. Run it for two weeks starting next Monday. Interview at least five people and pick your top two and set up a phone call with them so I can talk to them. We want them to start by November 1st so you have plenty of time to train them before the holidays–set up a training schedule, half days, you know the drill, mornings one week, afternoons the next, start them full time by Thanksgiving so you can oversee their work and correct them before you leave. Great. No, deal me in, I’m playing this hand. [click]

    1. Rainy*

      Oh, and just for context: I was in that role for 3 1/2 years and lasted the longest that anyone ever had–before me, most people lasted about 8 months, basically just long enough to realize it was a radioactive garbage fire and find another job. My replacement made it six weeks before putting the phones on hold and walking out in the middle of the day, quitting via post-it stuck to the middle of her desk.

        2. SUE ELLEKER*

          I did something similar. I worked PT in Asda (UK) and had been off after a knee replacement (work injury) When I came back, I was told I could ask for help pulling stock onto the shop floor, to save the strain on my knee. One evening I asked a new supervisor for help, and was told if I couldn’t do the work I shouldn’t be there. So I walked out mid-shift, leaving my resignation on the office desk.

  171. Kath*

    My last team didn’t react in a deranged way but they were unkind and I find it cathartic to share the fact that none of them spoke to me on my last day – except for one person, who called me at 4.50 to ask me to do more work.

    I did not do the work. Instead I got on the phone with HR to do my pre-arranged exit interview, which ended up taking two hours. I had a detailed list of problems I had experienced and had had no help in trying to fix (a major one was working what I was supposed to be doing, as neither my manager nor my peers could tell me).

    A strange end to a strange experience

  172. I don't mean to be rude, I'm just good at it*

    I was young and dumb and wanted to make a good impression on my “bosses” so I worked my butt off, did piles of overtime and mastered every skill needed in the department. I was given additional responsibilities and became the go to guy.

    A new manager was appointed to our unit and was annoying most everyone, but I was oblivious to office politics and did my thing.
    One hectic day, I got to work at 6:30 am, but didn’t get to my desk to sign in until 9:00 am. The new boss red circled and crossed out my sign in and wrote 9:00.

    I picked up my jacket, walked to his office door and loudly said, “I quit”, and left.

    The division vice-president chased after me and caught up to me a couple blocks away as I was about to go into the subway and begged me to return. I told him to call me later that day with his new plans for my continued employment.

    I got a raise and was made his “personal assistant”, with the same duties but no longer reporting to jerk manager, who disappeared 6 months later.

  173. FATWO*

    I worked somewhere for 19 years in various roles, the last five as the director of one of 3 divisions. We got a new executive director at year 17. I gave it time but we didn’t jive and COVID just made it clear that I didn’t have to suffer with someone who was so out of touch with my division’s purpose and needs. Handed him my resignation letter which he opened in front of me (who does that) and then said “Very well. Do you know anyone that could fill the position?” This was actually in line with his absurd thought processes but I was so shocked. It’s been 3 years and that is still resonates as a traumatic experience for me.

    1. Charley*

      I’m not sure I understand. When I’ve resigned in person the letter was just for documentation, so it never seemed to me like it mattered if they read it in our meeting or not since I was sitting in front of them telling them I was resigning and there wasn’t really a mystery what it said.

  174. Ally McBeal*

    This one’s deranged, but in a sweet way. When I quit my corporate-admin job to take a nonprofit gig at a college, I told my direct-line managers first and then told the CEO’s admin, who was de facto the head of the admin team and also a devoted alumna of the college I was about to work for. We grabbed an empty conference room in the middle of the office. She and I were very close (hung out after work, etc) so she immediately interrupted me to share how bummed she was, then realized I hadn’t told her where I was going. About 5 seconds later, THE ENTIRE OFFICE knew I was leaving because she screamed with joy. I think that might be the nicest send-off I could’ve asked for.

  175. Ex Auditor*

    This maybe isn’t as extreme as others but it still irks me to this day. I worked in a corporate office for an insurance company doing premium audits for work comp policies. I had worked there for a few years and didn’t love it – not exactly thrilling work. I waited until after our busy season was done to notify my supervisor that I was leaving and gave a standard two weeks notice, citing that the new opportunity was something I couldn’t say no. She said she understood but was clearly upset, on the verge of tears. She quickly ushered me out of her office and stayed behind a closed door for the rest of the day. The next day when I came to work I was locked out of the building (one of my teammates let me in) and locked out of my computer. When my boss arrived later that morning she looked shocked that I was there. She put a box on my desk and said to get my things and leave. Wouldn’t look me in the eye and fairly ran away. She then locked herself in HER supervisors office without explanation. I was stunned, my team was stunned, and all I could do was quickly box up my things and say a tearful farewell to the great people I thought I had two more weeks with. While I guess I’m not entitled to work that full notice period, it sucked to have the rug pulled out from under me!

  176. Alex in Marketing*

    When I left a previous job, the Chief Heart Officer (someone who was supposedly there to be an intermediate for interpersonal problems, help employees with professional development, and act as an on-call therapist who ACTUALLY was just a spy for leadership) threatened to tell all of my “secrets” that she exploited from me during our sessions together.

    I deadpan told her if she she broke confidentiality that I would drown the company in lawsuits.

  177. Fishsticks*

    I left a job where the head boss was a nightmare to work for – self-aggrandizing but also inept and incompetent, took credit for others’ accomplishments but constantly blamed his own failures on everyone else (and there were SO MANY failures), repeatedly stepped all over the toes of everyone else, treated grown adults like children, had a personal vendetta against my direct boss that led him to purposefully and consciously try to ruin her career, actively followed me when I went on walks during my lunch break until I had to go to HR to get him to stop, etc.

    I left on more or less good terms, professionally speaking, although by then the work environment was one of tension and distrust where my coworkers and I were having to waste half our work time just trying to keep the boss from wrecking everything around him. Gave my resignation, worked my two weeks, walked away.

    A few months later, my father suddenly died of a heart attack.

    I received an “anonymous” card in the mail telling me my dad’s death was me getting what I deserved, using some… choice phrasing.

    I knew immediately who had made that card, and why. I had to call the police and file a report because of certain threatening statements within the card.

    Thanks to coworkers who were still working at my old workplace, we were able to prove that ex-boss had made the card, at work, using workplace materials and the work copier, to send this anonymous threatening card to a former employee who had left because of him and his mistreatment of us.

    1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

      It’s amazing the way some people in Christian-dominant cultures think “karma” is a synonym for retribution. Gross.
      I’m so sorry you went through that.

      1. Fishsticks*

        Always fun to call the non-emergency line to the police department, explain your situation, and have the person on the other end of the line go, “… he wrote -what-?”

    2. nycnpo*

      Oh my goodness, I am so sorry you went through that. And sorry for your loss.

      I hope that ex-boss is now an ex-employee and behind bars (if this was a perfect world)

      1. Fishsticks*

        He WAS fired, but they kept it quiet as to exactly why and he made up a whole series of increasingly fantastical stories that locals absolutely believed because he’s a local and the rest of us weren’t from the area, and therefore immediately suspect.

        But honestly, by then I didn’t really care. I had escaped, and he could no longer do harm to my old coworkers who remained.

    3. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

      Wow, that is deeply unhinged and cruel. I am so sorry! My eyebrows were already off my face from the following you on your walks at work, and they entered orbit about the card. I hope he got extremely fired and you never had to hear from him again.

    4. JustaTech*

      OMG. I just stared at this with my mouth hanging open.
      I am so sorry.

      I’m glad you got away, and I’m glad he was fired.

  178. Lemon Squeezy*

    At one particularly toxic job, the owner of the small company would ask people who were resigning to not mention that they were resigning so that she could make the announcement herself. Except she inevitably just… didn’t make the announcement. Sometimes she would tell us one or two people at a time, and sometimes she just wouldn’t say anything. Because of this we would learn about resignations as furtively whispered rumors around the office. She was very controlling in other ways as well, so I think this was her way to control the flow of information. A lot of people resigned from that job in a very short span of time (it was a toxic job that had only gotten more so with various staffing changes) and had mixed experiences with her reaction, but when I resigned she was perfectly pleasant– though she did ask me to stay on for an extra week past my two weeks notice, which I declined.

    1. VP of Monitoring Employees' LinkedIn and Indeed Profiles*

      My approach with an inept or toxic boss:

      (1) Draft an office-wide email announcing my departure and any other details.

      (2) Sit down with the boss to discuss the fact that I’m leaving.

      (3) During meeting with boss or immediately after, hit “Send” on office-wide email. This way, I have technically told the boss before telling anyone else while still retaining control of the message.

      1. ICodeForFood*

        Oh gosh… you just reminded me. Many years ago (1980s) I resigned by telling my boss, and then spent an hour walking around the department so everyone would hear it “from the horse’s mouth,” rather than through the grapevine. What were they going to do about me “wasting” an hour like that–fire me?

      2. Artemesia*

        And before she can forbid you from announcing. ‘Oh, I just sent the message to colleagues; I of course waited until I told you, but it has already gone out just a minute ago.’

  179. Michelle Smith*

    I quit the same month as one of my coworkers who was new to the team (I’d been there 4 years and was the most senior person on the team, she’d been there ~6 months). Neither one of us had any performance problems and were well liked by our colleagues, but boss resented that I had disability accommodations allowing me to work from home and would frequently try to make my life difficult by trying to convince me to take non-urgent meetings on Saturdays, purposely messing up court assignments forcing the half of us she didn’t like to do elaborate swaps with each other, etc. Anyone who wasn’t anointed one of her favorites had to pay.

    Boss got coworker farewell flowers and had a dessert party for her. Boss refused to speak with me after I put in my notice (including ignoring me in meetings) and pretended not to see me when I went back to the office less than a year later for someone else’s retirement party. Honestly, I prefer it that way. She was monstrous and I can’t keep flowers alive more than a couple days anyway. But it confirmed that I made the right decision to jump ship when I did.

  180. Zandie*

    Years ago, I accepted a job that I had some reservations about, but was overall excited about. While I learned a lot and met a wonderful woman who became a great mentor, for various reasons, including being shunned (as in you don’t exist) by a co-worker, I knew I could not stay there long. I was offered a job and needed to give my manager as a reference. She was happy to (by now, I had figured out she never really wanted to fill the position, but was told to). She frequently asked if I had the “official” job offer. When I received it, I went to her office (just a few steps from my cubicle) to let her know I had the official offer. She thanked me. By the time I got back to my desk (literally seconds), she had sent out a team wide message announcing my departure.

  181. Ariel*

    When I was ready to quit my last job, I reached out to the company that made one of the programs we used. I got hired and put in my two weeks. Our CEO (who had recently demoted me for being too emotional after I found out my best friend died while I was at work) found out where I was going, called the company’s CEO, and not only threatened to terminate their contract, but to sue for poaching their employees.

    It’s been six years. My original company is still using the program of my new company, but their CEO refuses to interact with me.

  182. Dry Erase Aficionado*

    At a previous job I was friendly with my boss, and shared an office space with a coworker, who along with me, was the other senior member of our larger team. We weren’t hang out outside of work friendly, but more like, “what are you ordering for lunch today? Can I jump in on it?” or, “let’s get blahblahblah for lunch today.” Every day. And someone would place the order for the 3 of us, and everyone paid for their own.

    After I gave notice, and she never talked to me again. About work and transition plans or anything else. But still, every day, she would come into my office and now say pointedly to Coworker only, “what should we get for lunch today?” To his credit, after she left he would always turn around and say, “that was weird. Do you want anything?”

  183. Nonprofit Survivor*

    I put in my notice at a toxic job where the three top execs – CEO, COO and CFO – were frenemies. The supposed BFFs were always undermining each other to staff, then blamed said undermining on whichever employee had recently pissed them off. Because I worked closely with all three, that person was often me. I gave family reasons as my excuse for leaving to minimize the drama that always came with an employee’s departure.

    Despite my efforts, the CEO – my direct supervisor – alternated between ignoring me and being extremely passive aggressive. The COO just became aggressive. The CFO tried to organize a goodbye dinner for me, but it was quickly shut down by the other two. After the longest two weeks of my life, I left at 11 a.m. on my last day because I completed all my tasks and, frankly, couldn’t stand to be there anymore (I had started having panic attacks due to work stress). I promptly blocked all three from my personal Facebook (it was an unspoken rule that you had to be friends with them while working there) and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

    That evening, I got a message on LinkedIn from the CEO saying she wished me the best and noticed I blocked her from my personal social media. I didn’t respond. Over the next two weeks, she viewed my profile no less than 10 times. In the few months after I left, she would continue to view my profile every now and then, which sometimes sent me into an anxiety spiral. I finally blocked her there, too.

  184. Emma*

    This is actually happening to me right now. In my country I am entitled to a tax reduction for all work travels the employer hasn’t paid for. And since my boss never approved my expense reports on time, there are a lot of travels I haven’t gotten reimbursed for. So on my last day at work I saved my plane tickets and travel related docs and some other stuff (my contract, my performance reviews etc) to the cloud. This altered IT who reported me to the legal office who is now threatening me to sue me for stealing confidential material. I have explained that I need it for tax purposes and they have now threatened to go to my new employer and say that I have stolen material and ruin my career, and threatened to sue to new company as well.

    I have offered to delete all the files and instead let the tax authorities audit my old company. They said they would discuss the situation and now I haven’t heard from them for a week.

    Ironically, a colleague form development reached out asking for contacts at my new company as my old company would love to get some funding from the new company.

    I also just discovered that they haven’t paid my social benefits for the last 6 months either. They are just awful people.

  185. The no days off job*

    I gave notice on a Thursday morning after having worked for 37 hours straight during an inclement weather event. It was an office job that involved putting on events, I was an exempt employee and in the year and a half I worked there I wasn’t allowed a sick day or a vacation day. My manager actually showed up to my apartment one day when I had a fever and told me I had to come in.

    In my two weeks notice, I said I was taking Friday off since I had been working for 37 hours straight, and then would be back Monday to get things in order for the transition. I turned my phone off, got in my car, and drove to another state to see some friends for a mental break.

    When I returned I had ten voicemails telling me I was not allowed to take Friday off, it was a regular business day and I didn’t have the authority to make that decision. And my roommate said two of my managers stopped by our apartment to try and bring me to work that Friday!

  186. ProducerNYC*

    In my first job in TV news, I resigned for a job in another state (making 22k to 45k, and moving to a state with no income tax). My News Director was so upset I was ‘abandoning’ them that she refused to come out of her office on my last day. She kept her door closed and blinds drawn. As people came out to say goodbye, as we had goodbye cake and snacks, after I exited the control room for my final show, during all of it she stayed holed up in her office. I thought it was weird and honestly, a bit hurtful, but I was still very young and non-confrontational. About 6 months later she sent me an apology for her behavior that day. Of course I still have the note!

  187. BookishMiss*

    It didn’t happen when I resigned, but on my last day. My boss, who always left early, stayed late “to help me carry my things out to my car.”

    I did not comment on the sage stick sitting on her desk, but one of my buddies confirmed that she did in fact sage the office after I had departed. And no, she has no Indigenous heritage.

    That job was a struggle, and I made it through literally by reading AAM religiously to stay sane. Ugh.

  188. SansaStark*

    When I quit my first job, I thought you had to do a type written letter and hand it to the boss, so I did that (maybe on company letterhead? I don’t remember…) and handed it to my beloved boss. Who promptly laughed out loud, ripped it up, became horrified at his reaction as he realized that it wasn’t a joke and that I was terrified, and offered to put the ripped up one “in my file”. I loved that guy.

  189. Angrytreespirit*

    After six months of unemployment I joined a small consulting firm. I was promised a raise in three months. Then I was told I would get raises if I brought income to the company. I was being paid a starvation wage for the area we worked in. the straw that broke the camel’s back was that he made me in charge of a huge report that was not only several years overdue but not in my field (say I am a giraffe expert and this report was about the Amazon). I started looking for other opportunities and after a four months long process was offered a job at about $30k higher than what this guy was paying me. He was super butthurt about me leaving and had the gall to ask me to stay on part time to finish the stupid report. I declined. I still work in circles with him and to this day he still asks why I left. It’s so ludicrous.

  190. ticktick*

    When I was in my first long-term job, my boss was fairly toxic – intentionally leaving team members out of coffee runs when they’d displeased her, having her assistant do her laundry, hiring her sister and her friend – the list goes on and on. I finally couldn’t take working in that environment any more, knowing that I’d always be considered “junior” while actually carrying the burden of a senior position, so I resigned – but since I wanted to leave on good terms, I gave plenty of notice, prepared detailed transfer memos for every one of my files, and attended meetings where she tried to guilt trip me into changing my mind as “she wouldn’t be able to replace me” (and in fact, she hired 3 people to take over what I’d been doing) and where the CEO told me I was crazy for leaving. I also took the conciliatory step of drafting up a contractor agreement for them to sign in case they really got stuck and needed my services after I’d left, even though I didn’t really want to continue working with them. I printed it out in duplicate, put sticky tabs indicating where to sign, and left it on my boss’ desk before I left.

    The week after I left, I received a message on my home number from my ex-boss’ assistant, telling me that my boss wanted me on a call with a customer of the company, and also asking me to contact one of my co-workers to walk them through all my outstanding files. I took great pleasure in calling and leaving a return message stating that I didn’t feel comfortable being on a call to represent a company that no longer employed me, that they needed to sign my contractor agreement if they wanted me to do this sort of work, and that every one of my files had a transfer memo attached with all the necessary information, so there was no need for a walk through. I never heard from them again.

  191. Skinnamarinky-Dink*

    Please note: this was a retail job. I started job hunting because they wouldn’t withdrew their approval of my planned vacation time, in spite of the fact that I had been promised it by multiple levels of management for a year and a half. This was the last straw in a series of incidents of mismanagement that had been increasing over the course of the previous year, and at the time I actually thought it was part of an ongoing campaign to get me to quit.

    It wasn’t.

    My manager was, it turns out, extremely upset. To the point where he wouldn’t talk to me about any of the things I was handling, even though I was the only person handling them; to the point where he would only communicate with me via coworkers, even if they refused to pass on the messages; to the point where he would literally run and hide in a back office with a locked door if he saw me walking towards him. Yes, this sometimes meant that this grown man was sprinting across the sales floor to escape having to walk past me.

    He wouldn’t even look at me on my last day, but that isn’t the bananna-pants part of the story.

    The bananna-pants part of the story is that he threw himself a little party, complete with cake, that he claimed was for his (months-past) birthday. And he invited every department but mine.

    My department which, just to add some flavoring, was forbidden from throwing any parties (we had a farewell party at a nearby diner, anyway)!

    At the time I was deeply insulted. Now, I just say: how many people do you know who drove their manager so crazy that they threw a party on their last day?

  192. SPB*

    I’m a teacher, and in my country we have a last date we’re “allowed” to announce we won’t continue the next school year, and schools can let teachers know they won’t be asking them back.
    For a week I tried getting a meeting with my principal and she avoided me, so on the last day possible I left a formal letter of notice with her secretary. Then all of the sudden she had time, and stopped to read the letter while I’m standing there, near the secretary’s desk. She then yelled at me because “she just finished setting up the team for next year”, even though she fired another teacher on the same team the previous day, and was interviewing replacements that whole week.
    And then she gave me the silent treatment until the last day of school. As in turning her back to me when I said good morning silent treatment.
    On the last day of school, over a month later, we had an end of the year party for all staff where, in front of everyone, she personally gave me the end of the year gift everyone got and saying how much I’d be missed.

  193. Tinkerbell*

    I had a summer job in the psychology lab in college, throwing rats in a kiddie pool full of paint. (Really.) I had originally told the grad student I was working for that I’d stay through August. Over the course of the summer, he got more and more grumpy about me not doing specific things despite a) he was never there, b) he never told me to do any of these things, and c) I was an undergrad and thus lacked the background to actually do any of the data analysis he wanted. I spent two months stressed out until my then-SO-now-wife told me if she was working in a job she hated for money she didn’t need for a man she couldn’t stand, she’d tell him to go fly a kite. I left on August 2nd.

    Last I heard, my ex-boss was complaining to anyone who would listen about how he should have known better than to hire an undergrad and strongly hinting that hiring a “little girl” was a mistake. (I was 21.)

  194. Elsa*

    I’ve never had a manager behave badly when I resigned. But when I left my previous public sector job for my current private sector job, they threw me a goodbye party in which my manager and others gave short speeches, and each speech was basically: “Elsa was great, we’ll miss her, but we know she needs to go make more money now.”

  195. No Longer a Bookkeeper*

    I was so nervous to resign from Toxic Job because my boss was a nightmare – a total micromanager who enabled the owner’s sexual harassment, yelled at a coworker for taking a package to the “wrong” post office, and kept a hidden camera in the pantry to make sure no one took “too many” free snacks. She was a total creep.

    I was relieved when she was semi-normal when I resigned – but she and another manager took FOREVER to pass on the outstanding contracts for me to set up in billing, so I was rushing to enter contracts in the last 3 days of my notice period. When I was getting ready to go to my goodbye lunch on my last day she had the nerve to ask if I had finished everything, as if she would force me to skip lunch if I hadn’t! I told her I was finished in the snottiest voice I could muster and left. As my mom would say, I wouldn’t help her if she fell in a pit of vipers. So glad to be out of that nightmare!

  196. RJ*

    I’ve done exactly one exit interview in my career and it was one I relished. When the HR specialist went through the standard questions and got to what they could do to improve the role, I said nothing except get rid of the manager as she was about to cost them a department. I then went over a list of things she had done to disenfranchise the accounting/finance folks I worked with. One person aside from me had already given notice to leave after I did. Roughly 75% of the department left within six months and the manager who thought she could do all of our jobs was left holding the bag with upper management not happy at all. Finally, one manager had enough of her blaming A/B/C, had a public yelling session where he blamed her for each of us leaving and why. Finally upper management made the call and asked her to resign. That department is still in tatters five years later.

  197. Ruby Soho*

    I had a hard time finding a job after grad school, and took the first one that came my way with no intention of staying any longer than necessary. I gave my 2 weeks’ notice the day before my control freak boss was going on a week vacation. She left me a long list of things to do, including things like cold-calling potential clients for the 100th time. Obviously, they’re not interested and I did not call them. The Monday she was back from vacation/my first day at new job, I got a scathing email about how I clearly did absolutely nothing the last 2 weeks I was at old job and demanding an explanation why. FWIW, I actually did plenty during my notice period. She tried calling a few times, too. I just ignored her and after a week or so, she gave up.

  198. Blanked on my AAM posting name*

    Called me in for an exit interview with HR, who spent 20 minutes quizzing me on why two members of a different team had resigned a couple of months earlier. I politely expressed my ignorance (I was young and fairly new to the world of work – I probably wouldn’t be so polite and patient now!), and six months later the whole department was closed down for being a toxic dumpster fire, which it absolutely was.

  199. Dogmama*

    It started out well, with my boss saying, “I figured this would happen sooner or later” (I’d been there almost 20 years) and wishing me luck in starting my own business. He even agreed to let me take design files from 2 clients, who he wouldn’t retain after I left. I promised to send production to the old company, we all got drinks to the end of an era.

    A week later he told me not to come in for my second notice week. A month later he’s talking to my clients about “theft of intellectual property” and threatening to bring his (big city) lawyers against me. Never said a word to me. Two months later he’s lost one those clients’ production because his new rep went over my contact’s head to her boss to plead his case against me. He retired the following year.

  200. Mishakal*

    I loved the company that I worked for but the department I was in was very toxic (bro’s club vibe). Being female and standing up for myself got me labeled as a Problem. Since I was considered a Problem, the standard operating procedure within the department was to make your life so miserable that you would quit. One big thing example was that they told me that I couldn’t get promoted unless I train on something different (but slightly related) to what I was currently doing, thus taking me years to qualify for the promotion. I started looking for a new job but was kinda bummed that I would have to leave the company. Out of desperation, I reached out to a different department in my company and they made a opening for me rather than me quit (and losing 7 years of domain knowledge of a number of processes). When my director found out I was transferring he went on a loud tirade at the end of the day in full hearing of the entire department. Once the VP found out I was leaving he decided not to talk to me or acknowledge my existence for at least 6 months. I wound up transferring a week early due to lack of work and them just wanting me to leave. My old manager later asked my new manager about how I was doing and old manager was genuinely baffled that my new manager had nothing but great things to say about me. I still work at the company and have no regrets.

  201. Misclassified*

    I quit a law firm which had been misclassifying me as an independent contractor. I had reported them to the IRS while I was employed, and they didn’t fire me for some unknown reason. Got the determination letter in my favor while still working there. A few months later, I quit to move with my partner at the time to another city after her job relocated her. Upon quitting, the only comment I got was “well, you left us with an office full of employees.”

    Post quitting, I had to apply to be admitted in other states. That required past legal employers to attest to my ethical ability to be an attorney. The firm refused to return these forms, so I had to prepare to truthfully answer questions to state bars about why the firm didn’t respond. Their pettiness really just did them a disfavor.

  202. Acanthus*

    My prior PI was bananapants in so many ways. She hosted a dinner at her house where we were expected to cook. Told a co-worker she couldn’t wear high heels because then she’d be more attractive than her. Stayed out on fieldwork and expected said co-worker to cover her classes because her flight was canceled due to bad weather…the weather that day was fine.

    She had her job because her father was a politician, apparently.

    But, most saliently, she claimed that she was too busy to read e-mails. (While, I might add, producing exactly zero work.)

    And so, when she called for my resignation over something completely bananapants (I was trying to tell her that the data a project would need did not exist out in the world, was completely unobtainable, and we’d need to change the project accordingly, like any good researcher), I decided to see this as a sign, and took her up on leaving.

    I sent her a resignation e-mail.

    The subject line read: My resignation.

    SHE DID NOT SEE OR READ THE E-MAIL.

    Apparently she only found out from the admins, who were pestering her in person to sign the official form. And then she sent me a lengthy unhinged e-mail about how my resignation could actually be the best thing, honestly!

    Even though, you know, I was the sole subject matter expert on this project, without whose knowledge it would surely fail. And there only exist, what, maybe, five of us out in the world. And we all know each other. Oops.

    But the best part was this!

    Since she never read my resignation e-mail, she never saw the part where I asked what she wanted me to do during my notice period. I got no mention of it in the long rambling e-mail, so I took that as evidence she didn’t care, and considered it permission to take a paid two-week vacation. In the country I was living in, the one where the postdoc was based, this extremely aspirational historic European country known for good food, good wine, and plenty of museums.

    After all, what point was there in pestering her about it again, if she didn’t read e-mails?

    Bwa-ha-ha.

    1. Acanthus*

      Just wanted to add in the final grant report she got my job duties and accomplishments completely wrong and I refused to sign off on it.