There are countless reasons to leave a bad job. Horrible coworkers. Bad pay. Tyrannical bosses. Toxic work environment. We can try our hardest to grin and bear it, but eventually, you've got to pull out the silver bullet. Those two magic words that solve all of your problems in an instant: "I quit." There are few things as satisfying as high-tailing it out of a bad job, and these stories from Redditors are proof of that. Read on for the most epic ways that people have gone from employed to unemployed in an instant.
1. Day On
I once got called into work on my day off. I drove a half-hour to get there. Once there, I was told they didn’t need me that day after all, and I could go home. I did go home. And I did not come back.
2. Jerks Never Win
I was a cashier for a restaurant when I was 16 and a guy asked for an application. As soon as he left, my manager said, “Go ahead and give them applications, but we don't hire black people here. Too much of a liability.”
3. Which One Will You Choose?
A long time ago, I was working at a restaurant that was, to put it bluntly, absolutely freakin’ atrocious. The place was almost always dead apart from the owner’s friends, who would make it their life’s mission to be incredibly rude to myself and the other staff members. Somehow, I stuck it out working there for six months.
The final straw came at Christmas, when I wanted to travel back home to spend time with my family (as my grandmother was sick at the time); and their response was, “You’ll just have to decide what’s more important, your job or your family.” I decided. I told them that this was the dumbest and most insulting question I had ever heard, and walked straight out the door.
4. The Clock is Running Out
I had worked at a grocery store for about three years before moving from Courtesy Clerk (basically bagger + custodian) to Helper Clerk (stocker). The grocery department wanted to save costs on personnel but couldn't fire anyone or lay anyone off due to the union. So, they started cutting back hours and literally told us "when someone quits, everyone else will get more hours."
We were supposed to be 40-hour employees and they had us at 32 hours. Two people quit and we were down to 24 hours. A third person quit, down to 16 hours. I don't know what their plan was, but they didn't give us more hours as people left.
5. Projecting Gossip
I worked at a restaurant and the hostess was convinced I was sleeping with the owner. I was not. She was convinced the money I was using to take a vacation must have come from him and that I was hooking up with him behind his family’s back. She made things really weird and horrible for a couple of days. She told the new hires I was saying nasty things about them and made up really bad rumors about me. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore.
I walked out of a shift after she confronted me in the storage room demanding I admit I was banging this guy. This guy who I never interacted with outside of the occasional table transfer or inventory update was bald, fat, and married, and had hardly said more than a hundred words to me beyond work instructions. After I left, I found out the dark truth. It turned out they were sleeping together and she was crazy. I'm so glad I quit.
6. Mourning Event Staff
A friend of mine passed on nearly a decade ago. When I requested the day off for his funeral, my request was denied. I had to go to work after going to the funeral of my 21-year-old friend. I was an event captain, so I had to be the face of the staff for the contact of the event, I tried my hardest to put on a happy face, but I failed. My mood was terrible and the event contact complained to my boss after the event.
The next week I was scheduled as an event server for my whole schedule with less hourly pay, less tip percentage. When I asked my boss, I was told that I had been demoted because of the complaint from the prior event. I quit on the spot, I should not have been forced to work that day, and I should not have been demoted for being in a bad mood after burying one of my closest friends. Screw that place.
7. Health Standards
I was the lead for a fast food restaurant and I moved to another town. I transferred to a restaurant in this town but only went in as a cook since all the lead positions were full. Had this other cook come in for his shift wearing basketball shorts and was literally inside them gripping himself with both hands. He jumped right on line with me.
I was like "Bro, shouldn't wash your hands first?" He just smiled and said, "Nah man, we don't do that here." I walked out immediately.
8. Rolling Paper
Back in the 90s, I worked for a temp agency. I was told the job entailed assisting in an IT department, which happened to be my field. I arrive on said job to learn that the job actually consisted of using a rolling pin to fold reams upon reams of printed computer data that someone had loaded into the printer backward and would no longer fit back into the boxes from which it was fed.
As I was handed the rolling pin, I immediately handed it back and told them I was there for an IT position, not a baking lesson, and left. Total elapsed time: about seven minutes.
9. A Star Is Born
My wife was about to give birth, and I had just taken an odd job as a temporary thing. We had just moved to a new city and I had started this job less than three weeks earlier. The plan was for me to work there for a bit while I continued to search for an office job in engineering for the long run. Well, when the big night finally came, I called my supervisor to let him know that I couldn’t come in because my wife was having contractions and her water had just broken.
He told me to get to work and that the baby wouldn't be born till later anyway. I said, “No, I'm driving my wife to the hospital now.” He told me to get the you-know-what back to work, so I simply said, "I quit" and hung up on him. No more than 10 days later, I found a much better job and I have been happily employed here for four years at this point.
10. The Family That Fails Together
He canceled all raises and bonuses for everyone in the whole company...except himself (the CEO), his wife (financial and human resources), and his son (an utterly useless IT tech) in a year where we had record profits brought in almost double the clients...on top of announcing they aren't looking to hire more people when we were already overwhelmed.
Good part about it was when the majority of us quit, they lost almost every single client shortly afterward to their competitors and the company is now defunct.
11. Can’t Tie
All it took was ten minutes. As I was walking in for my first day, the manager yells at me to put on my tie, that I should be prepared to work when I walk in. I walk back to the bathroom to put on my tie but as I'm struggling in the mirror trying to figure out how to tie it, I decide forget this. If the manager is going to be this much of a jerk from the start, I don't need the job that bad. As I walk out of the store, I tell the manager, "I quit." The stunned look on his face is still with me to this day, 30 years later.
12. The Feature Attraction
I used to work at a movie theater in my hometown all throughout my high school years. When I moved away to start college, I was able to transfer to a theater owned by the same company as the one in my college town. The management at the new theater was absolutely terrible. They were demeaning towards the staff, they fired people for not selling rewards cards, and they scheduled mandatory all-hands meetings with less than a week’s notice.
At one such meeting, (at seven in the morning on a Sunday, by the way), some of my coworkers were starting to fall asleep. To wake them up, our managers forced all of us to stand up, do five jumping jacks, and sit back down. They did this every time that anyone fell asleep at any point for the duration of the three-hour meeting.
After around the fourth or fifth time that this occurred, I decided that I'd had enough. I didn't stand up for our "punishment" when everyone else did. My manager singled me out, asking why I refused to participate. I replied, "We're not children, don't treat us like we are." I was 20 years old at the time. My manager replied by suspending me for a month, right there, in front of everyone.
I promptly replied, "I’ll save you the trouble! I quit" and never went back. No regrets.
13. Three Strikes, We’re All Out
When I was 16, I worked in the concessions stand at a minor league baseball stadium. Minimum wage at the time was $5.15/hr, this job paid $8, and it was always in the evenings, so it was perfect work for a high school student. The only bad thing was our management was TERRIBLE. The main manager would throw toddler tantrums about once a shift over stupid stuff like not ordering enough of a specific beer (she did the ordering) or running out of pre-cut lemons for tea.
One night, the stadium was running a promotion and it was incredibly busy—easily 2-3x the normal volume of customers. We were all working our butts off handling multiple roles each with absolutely no downtime. Although we all cleaned as we worked, nobody had a chance to do thorough cleaning for the whole shift because of the never-ending horde of hungry baseball fans.
The manager showed up three or four hours late, as per usual, and throws the biggest freaking tantrum I've ever seen in my entire life, all over the unswept floor. Finally, she announces "Listen up you, lazy peons! Minimal work gets minimal pay. Everybody is being paid minimum wage tonight because you slobs won't clean up anything."
Both of our bartenders and the bar back quit on the spot, which caused a chain reaction. We all took off our aprons and hats to leave. She blocked the exit and was red in the face from screaming, so one of the cooks climbed out of one of the big serving windows where we served customers, so I did the same and most of the staff followed.
Bear in mind that this all happened in front of like 200+ customers. Of course, my final paycheck "got lost" so I had to file a wage theft complaint with the Texas Workforce Commission.
14. Itching to Quit
I worked four hours into a shift at a fiberglass ceiling tile plant. They offered no dust masks or any kind of protective clothing. I was itching like heck by lunchtime, so I just left and went home. I took several showers a day for weeks before I stopped itching. I got paid for three days, I guess they never realized which day I left and never returned.
15. Running Behind Schedule
I was in university working at a Pizza Hut franchise. The assistant manager was a jerk who was always way too touchy with the girls who were working there. I started dating one of those girls. He was still touchy with her, so we had a talk. After that, he hated me and tried to screw me over on scheduling at every possible opportunity he got, so I always had to get the supervising manager to fix the schedules for me.
Skip forward about six months or so and I was the next person to get off one evening, but he was intentionally keeping me for way longer than he was supposed to. I had friends who were going to see the movie Spirited Away in a theater that was about an hour and a half away from where I worked. It was probably the only chance I would have to go. I knew what I had to do.
So, I was just like "Can I go? No? Okay, then I quit. I'll find another minimum wage job tomorrow." Apron drop. I then left and never returned.
16. Let’s Dine Out
I was a line cook at a restaurant and the owner was treating us like trash. There were only three of us, the Executive Chef, Sous Chef, and myself, but we all picked up our paychecks on Friday afternoon and cashed them, then called individually to quit before the dinner rush. So satisfying.
17. You Leaving?
One day at some factory that made gauges for medical supplies. I knew that I was screwed when I was walking out to my car to grab my lunch while on break and the supervisor wanted to know where I was going and if I was going to come back. I quit then and there.
18. Sounds Like You Quit Two Jobs!
My old boss was a jerk who liked to rip off old ladies and low-income families. I got in trouble for doing my job right because it made him look bad. He expected me to do my job and his. So, one day, while he was yelling at me for some nonsense, I abruptly removed my work shirt, threw it in his face, and walked off the job.
The fallout was that I now had no job in a city I had just moved to a few months earlier, but knowing that I had just screwed this guy over made it all worth it. I ended up moving back to my hometown a few weeks later—and that turned out to be for the better.
19. So Go We All
I worked in a coffee and food place. One of the managers intimidated people on the job and would blatantly bash them when they were at work and within hearing distance. Everyone knew about it, but no one wanted to say anything until one day, someone spoke up to our boss and quit. Once people saw that she could do that, six more people came forward and quit—yet they never fired that manager.
20. Folding Artist
Fresh out of an art high school, I brought my portfolio in to a local print shop that did typical jobs like fliers, posters, t-shirts, etc. Without even looking at my portfolio, she told me to come in the following Monday to start. Yay, my first creative job! Monday comes and I'm sent to the dark back room, where I'm instructed on folding bi- and tri-fold fliers by a huge 350+ pound guy who looks like he'd just been released from prison.
After setting two huge stacks of many hundreds of fliers in front of me, he says "go" and leaves the room. About 30 minutes later I made up some lame excuse about a family emergency and me being needed at home. I noped the heck out of there and they never heard from me again. I felt pretty bad, but I was so naive and had no clue what I was in for.
21. Green with Envy
I had a job in a salad plant that produces those bags of salad mix that a lot of restaurants use. I was there for two weeks coring lettuce in front of a conveyor belt for eight hours a day. I would pick up a head, slam it, pull the core, put it down, and then move on to the next one. At a job like this, you basically have two options in order to pass the time—you either talk to your co-workers or you plot the downfall of Western civilization.
One really sweet lady had been there for 10 years—10 years on the lettuce line! She got called into the office one day and was gone for about half an hour. She then came back and said "I won't be here tomorrow. I got promoted!" I asked what she'd be doing. "Cabbage!" I wished her well, dropped my stuff, and walked out.
I feel bad about not telling anyone I was quitting, but I was young and disturbed by the idea of doing this for ten years only to move on to cabbage! That was 29 years ago. Had I stayed, I might be up to carrots by now. I sometimes wonder how my life might be different had I stayed, and in those moments I celebrate every decision I've ever made.
22. Let’s Go to the Movies
Was part of a mass-quitting at a movie theater in 1997. The manager started berating people one by one by whispering in their ears. One girl started to cry and left the popcorn stand and walked into a movie, then everyone working the concessions followed her. The ticket salespeople saw this and knew what was going on, so they went into the theater to watch the movie too.
Eventually, all the ushers migrated in there too and every employee was watching the flick.
23. The Burger Incident
I lasted two weeks at Wendy's. I dropped a triple cheeseburger on the floor just as the district manager walked by; he stepped on it, slipped, and fell. It was like a Three Stooges movie. I was only 17 and was so embarrassed that I just went home and never went back.
24. A Classic Case of Gaslighting
I worked at a gas station deli back in the day and, right before I went in for my shift one time, my mom called me up to let me know that my sister had been rushed to the hospital and that I needed to get there as soon as possible to be with the family. I called my manager, who told me that I had to find someone to cover my shift if I wanted to miss it.
I called a few people and one person said that they would come in and cover my shift. I called my manager back and let them know that so and so would be covering my shift. My manager said that was ok. I came in two days later for my next shift and the manager immediately started flipping out on me as soon as I walked in the door.
She was ranting about how I had screwed the place over because I didn't show up for my shift. I proceeded to remind her that I had to go to the hospital for my sister and that so and so was covering my shift. She then proceeds to tell me how so and so didn't show up, and how therefore it was my fault that they lost a bunch of money that night and whatnot.
I simply replied "Are you freaking kidding me? I'm sorry if you were too stupid to remember our call, but I had a family emergency so screw you and screw this place!" As I walked out the door, I slowly paused, turned around, and proceeded to shout, "Screw this place!" one more time.
25. When a Bonus Becomes a Minus (to Your Staff)
We were promised bonuses at the end of the year. Then, they suddenly told everyone they will not be giving out bonuses due to low company performance. The company had a successful year, but the boss was in the middle of building a multimillion-dollar home, and his brother-in-law manager just bought a nice home that year. I quit on the spot. Many others quit soon after.
26. Marine Vs. Cheese
When I was stationed at Cherry Point, NC, there was a Taco Bell that was right outside the gate. My friend, a fellow Marine, got a job there working evenings. If there is one thing that Marines can do, it's clean. There was cheese on the prep counter that he couldn't get off. He worked one shift and never even picked up his check. It was that foul back there.
27. It Takes Four to Screw Something Up That Bad!
I once told three out of four managers (as the last one wasn’t there that day) that my grandma had passed away and that I therefore wouldn’t be able to make it to work the day after tomorrow. I had to go to the funeral. I also left a note for the fourth manager and asked everyone to let him know. In the middle of the funeral, I got a call from the fourth manager asking where I was. I called him back to explain, and he said ok.
I went back to work the next day and they immediately handed me a paper saying I’d been written up for doing an improper call out. I handed the paper back and just walked away.
28. The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
I had been working 12-hour days for weeks on end. The day before Christmas, they came in and told us that even though the company gave everyone the day after Christmas off, my line still had to come in. I literally turned away from the meeting, grabbed my gear, and walked right out of the door the second I heard that.
29. Never Forget Who Got You That Vacation
Worked at a data-company. The guys in the sales department screwed around all day. They'd literally be in the parking lot drinking beer and racing RC cars. When it came to handling accounts/clients, they frequently gave away free accounts in order to "retain" customers (and make their own sales numbers look good), and somehow they got away with it.
Meanwhile, there were dozens of programmers and database nerds working tirelessly behind the scenes to integrate a bunch of complicated data and make it easy to access via the website. Yearly holiday announcements come around, and upper management decides to send the entire sales team to Hawaii for an all-expense-paid vacation.
When the furious developers asked why they were just taking the sales team, the confused CEO literally said, "Well... I mean... I guess we could ask the sales team to pick one person from each department who helped them the most this year, and take them too..." The programmers/engineers/database people were livid and walked out in droves.
Gee, I wonder why the company tanked.
30. Your Share of the Pie
A long time ago, I was working as a real estate agent. After spending over a month working on a $478K deal that I facilitated and eventually closed, my boss handed me a commission check for just $500. That was all I needed to see to never go back to that job. Shortly after that, I moved to Tampa, tripled my salary, and lived happily ever after.
31. Mom One, Jerk Boss Zero
After decades of working at a government service job, my mum finally got fed up with her managers one day and decided to retire. As soon as she informed them of this, they tried to screw her over on her payout amount because of an alleged error in their records from twenty years earlier. In other words, they claimed that they had been paying the wrong amount into her retirement fund after the rules had changed and forgot to update it or something.
Jerk Boss: "It can't be fixed. You would have to bring in your payslips for the whole 20 years to have the evidence to fix it." Mom: "No worries. I'll bring them in this afternoon if you'd like." Jerk Boss: "No, I mean all of them. Every single one." Mom: "Yep." Jerk Boss: "In chronological order." Mom: "Yes of course. I wouldn't keep my payslips in some other order, that wouldn't make any sense at all."
It hadn't even occurred to my mum that one would not keep all those documents in one place, and she never left the job so she just kept on filling up the box. That’s how you leave a lousy job in style!
32. Surprise! Mandatory Overtime
I worked for a logistics company where the client was Mars candy and Wrigley. Same company. They also own Uncle Ben's rice. No climate control and you had to ask to use the bathroom. The supervisors would stand up at their little station just watching the cameras. If you went into the lobby for water or to the bathroom, you would hear over the loudspeaker for your lead to go get you.
Also, mandatory overtime, they would tell you at the beginning of an already 10-hour overnight shift. All this for a whopping $10/hr. Boxes of Snickers cases get real heavy after eight hours. It was an interim job while my union papers and background BS was being processed for my current job.
33. Independence Day
I had a lawyer draw up an intent-to-sue-for-harassment after our new boss required me to work on the Fourth of July. There were usually 100-150 people in office, but that particular day I was the only one in the office. That was the final straw for me after six months of harassment. Result: $40,000 settlement. I still smile when I think of it.
34. Time Off for Good Behavior
I was working for my second job as a welder and booked two weeks holiday off of work. I paid for a trip to Canada to see my (now) wife's family. The day before we were set to leave, my manager suddenly tells me that he's going to have to cancel my time off as he's accidentally booked three people off for the same weeks. I explained that I'd already paid out thousands for this holiday.
He then said I had booked mine last, so I'd have to lose it. I spoke with everyone on site, yet no one else had a pre-paid vacation booked. I went to HR and he was called in to explain. He came out with the same garbage he had used before and HR just backed him up. I said ok, got up, and walked off site—with no intention of coming back.
I had 45 missed phone calls by the time that I had driven home, including one voicemail demanding that I get my butt back in or else I would be fired. I called the owner and explained that I had quit and my reason. I then turned my phone off and went on holiday without looking at it again until I got home two weeks later.
Then came the aftermath. I returned from the holiday to nearly 50 angry voicemails from my manager. They included telling me that I was in deep trouble and that I should watch my back when out in public. I sent them all to a solicitor and to law enforcement in case anything happened, along with sending them all to my former boss.
He was dismissed and I was offered his job as I'd been there longer than most of the team had been. I didn't accept the offer, as I had wanted to become self-employed for a while and I felt that this was the push that I needed to finally go through with it.
35. A Good Boss Is in Low Supply
I worked as the head secretary for a contractor and was in a small office with a few other girls. He paid us under the table (when he felt like it), did poor work, was consistently nasty and mean, and was all around a terrible, terrible boss. One day, when he yelled at me for eating regularly (I'm a type 1 diabetic and snack on occasion to keep my sugar up), that was the last straw, and I quit.
The next day, the other girls left too. Last I heard, the on-site employees also left, and now he is trying to manage everything alone. Because he also burnt his bridges with his suppliers, he has next to no business and is going to lose his house. Karma.
36. Slingshot
I used to work as a lifeguard. At one point, I had injured my shoulder and was in a sling, yet they forced me to come into work and threatened to fire me if I didn’t. I had to guard a pool while being unable to swim because, as I mentioned, MY ARM WAS IN A FREAKIN’ SLING. In response, I specifically did the pettiest thing I could possibly think of. I sent in my resignation very late at night, the evening before my morning shift.
Have fun finding a replacement, jerks!
37. Priorities
I had a primary job that gave me decent hours, but I wanted more money for the summer so I sought out a second job. I landed a spot as a hostess at a chain restaurant. A day into that job, my mother went to the hospital and was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Naturally, the news wrecked me. I was a teenager and already had a lot to deal with (as a teenager would) at the time.
I learned this news about half-way through my shift one day. The supervisor pulled me aside and commented on my attitude. He says I am not smiling much, that I seem down, etc. I was honest and told him about my mom. I told him I was trying my best. Then he tells me, rudely: "Your job is important and you need to be focusing on that right now. Your mom can wait."
I left on the spot.
38. Dance to the Music
My boss told me that we were going to be spending our breaks from now on doing mandatory Zumba. I immediately told her I was going home.
39. No Profession for a Predator
I was the tech director of a non-profit live music/theater venue with a pretty active board of directors. One night, a board member tried to dose and assault two of my crew members after a staff party (unsuccessful, thankfully). It was a fairly small college town, and the board member was a big deal and a major donor, so the whole thing got swept under the rug.
Myself, the director of operations, the executive director, and the entirety of the technical crew quit on the day we found out he'd just get away with it and the place went under less than a year after.
40. Canceled Due to Lack of Funds
I worked as one of those super annoying face-to-face fundraising people. You know, those who will stand in your way and use every trick in the book to shame you into sending them money every month so that they can continue their scam. Well, I did the one-day training session and was sent out the next morning. I quit after just two hours.
People hate you (for good reason) and treat you accordingly. I found out soon after how the money is really spent for the most part, and I am now super against this specific type of fundraiser—especially since they ruin the good name of actual charitable fundraising. So now I just ignore these kinds of people as much as possible when they come around, and I warn all my friends not to work for them either.
41. Long Weekend
I rage quit a job once because my boss wouldn't let me take off on a Friday for a wedding, even though I requested it nine months in advance. It was also MY wedding! So, I gave in my two weeks notice on Thursday, got married on Friday, and went on a two-week honeymoon. Take that!
42. You Seen my Piece?
A pizza place. Worked one shift with the owner/GM. He was kind of a dick the whole time and kept bringing up other staff's personal lives. Like outing a driver to me, and talking about another girl's open relationship. He randomly decided to close the store an hour early because it got slow, I was told that happens often. I couldn't afford to lose hours because he wants to close on a whim.
What sealed the deal for me was him misplacing his piece. As we were walking out the back door, he stopped and he had to look for his piece first. Then he remembered he left in his car. I called my old job the next day and got back on their schedule.
43. Can’t Take the Heat
The last straw came when the company had deadlines approaching and the terrible management staff was getting desperate, so they started cutting out everyone's breaks and harassing people out of filing first aid reports. Someone on my crew was starting to get heat rash (working in the summer in the middle of a heatwave) but the boss was standing in the shade glaring us down so that we wouldn't take breaks.
After my coworker collapsed, I stopped everything and ran to her side to help. The boss came up and said "Uh oh, heatstroke? Take five minutes, get water, and get back to work!" I exploded and told them to go to heck. I said they were as bad a manager as they were a person and that they had no right to treat people like that.
I helped my coworker gather her things and I gathered mine. Then, I drove her to the hospital and I never went back to work. I immediately filed a safety breach report with WorkSafeBC, telling them of every safety rule that the company had broken. Since then, I have heard that at least two others quit and the company is under investigation.
Then, another co-worker asked me to support him in filing a discrimination lawsuit against the company (as the same lousy boss was also very prejudiced towards Native Americans).
44. Roasted
I once had my hands full while working in a restaurant kitchen, so I asked my boss to grab me a container as I cut into a huge roast beef for a customer with blood dripping everywhere. For some inexplicable reason, my boss felt the need to literally roll out on his chair from the office to say, “You have two arms and legs, get it yourself!”
When I said, “Excuse me?” he replied with, “Oh, you didn’t you hear me the first time?” I replied “Yes, I did,” before taking off my apron, walking away from the bloody mess, clocking out right in front of him, and walking out the door. I was scared that my mom was going to flip on me for walking out on the job, but she reacted well and told me not to let someone talk to me like that.
45. Sometimes It’s Best to Keep Your Mouth Shut
Company consisted of something like 1,200 employees at the time, and rented out a big conference center for a Christmas party. At the opening of the party, the CFO was giving opening remarks, and asked—expecting cheers—if everyone liked their Christmas bonuses. He got booed. See, of that 1,200 people, a bit over a thousand were in customer service. No one in customer service got bonuses, only people in the "corporate" departments got them.
And our awesome CFO decided to rub everyone's noses in it, because clearly the Chief Financial Officer of a company would have no idea that 80%+ of his company didn't get bonuses. At the same party, the CEO made an announcement that the company would be closed on Friday (Christmas that year was on a Thursday), and everyone got a day off.
Now, he had literally just finished making a speech about how everyone was important, and everyone was part of the company, no matter the department. He had shoveled garbage hard, trying to make CS happier. The next day, we all got a memo that Customer Service still had to work on that Friday. We apparently didn't count as "everyone" and the CEO just hadn't realized that the announcement wouldn't apply to anyone.
January saw a 60% attrition rate.
46. The Brogrammer’s Paradox
Small web company in a small city where everyone in the industry knows everyone else. Shortly before I was hired, the two senior programmers quit at the same time to start their own business. Stuff went downhill pretty fast for the two of them, and their business didn't last long. The owner almost had a breakdown, having lost 2/3 of his geeks.
That man was the best boss I ever had; the guys who quit were just young and felt invincible, that having their own business would be a piece of cake! The junior programmer who was left got chummy really fast with the replacement programmer that they hired. Unfortunately, new hire turned out to be a jerk and was let go.
Proving that people tend not to learn from other's mistakes, the junior programmer quit to start a new company with the dude who had been laid off, saying there weren't any advancement opportunities at the company. Last I heard, junior programmer got another job because the jerk just disappeared; no one had any clue where he went.
All's well that ends well though! About four months after junior programmer left, the company was bought out by a larger one where there would have been lots of opportunities. One of the original dudes who left apologized to the owner for his douchiness and got re-hired and is an awesome co-worker.
47. Inheriting Trouble
The day I walked in to quit my job, a co-worker told me that she had just given notice, and so had a back-of-house staff member earlier that day. The new manager, who was really sweet and had taken over for the manager that led us all to seek other employment, was completely overwhelmed. I told her I would hang out and help her finish some data entry for inventory to soften the blow. I also decided I would wait a few days to break the news.
As I'm sitting there, the manager answers the phone. It's the new hire calling to quit. The manager turns to me with tears in her eyes and says, "At least you aren't quitting, right?" She figured it out with a look. I felt like such a jerk. The worst part about it was that the manager before her deserved the same-day resignations, but she had been promoted.
48. Let’s Get Away From It All
My boss refused to let me take a weekend off for my best friend’s wedding because a co-worker was already taking the time off for a dirty weekend away with the married guy she was having an affair with. The married guy was my boss, by the way. I was a bridesmaid and had booked the weekend off 10 months in advance.
I quit on the spot and told my boss’s wife he was cheating on her. My best friend’s wedding was lovely.
49. A Story You’ll Never Forget
I used to work at a deli counter in a grocery store. My last straw was getting yelled at for something that I forgot to do. I can't even remember what it was anymore, but it was a very minor thing and it was the first time I had ever forgotten an instruction. I was also the sole reason why my department had still been open and they were working the heck out of me, so they could have been a little more patient and understanding the one time that I made a mistake.
I had been working 10-13 hour days, not getting any help during rushes. After the yelling, I just walked out. The deli was closed for at least a few months after I quit.
50. My Way or the Highway
10 days. Was hired to sell cars for the main VW dealership, ended up being the showroom slave, doing all the jobs nobody else wanted to do. Speaking with the manager he said it was going to be like this for at least six months. When I asked why this was the case, the boss said, "It's my way or you can leave,” so I stood up and walked out. Don't hire people and make them do a different job!
51. I Know When I’m Being Frozen Out
When Apple decided to "let me go,” they lost about 15 other employees who followed suit. They quit on the spot, and we all walked out together gleefully. I use "let me go" in quotes because I've had enough of their corporate bureaucracy. It all happened based on an unproven instance. After a month of investigations, they deemed me not responsible nor having anything to do with what happened, but they still gave me the ultimatum: Turn in your two weeks' notice, or be fired.”
I turned in my two weeks notice and walked out right then and there (escorted by security). The other folks in my department knew what had happened, all wrote up their resignation letters, and we all left as a group. Went to a local pub, got schnockered, and I got paid out my vacation time, plus a few "bonuses," so I stuck around the city for my final month-long vacation.
Then moved back to the city I call home.
52. When the Cat Is Away, the Jerks Will Play
I started work in a bar in town and was told to be at work at 7 pm for my first shift with the manager providing me with a typed timesheet showing my new working hours. I went home and had a cat nap. At 5 pm, my new manager calls me asking where the heck I am and telling me I need to come in now. I referred him to my timesheet which stated I was to be in at 7 pm to which he told me, "the timesheet doesn't matter, you do what I tell you."
Hearing this, I politely told him that I would not be in tonight or ever, good night, and went back to my cat nap.
53. Bottoms Up
I "beer quit" this really horrible desk job at a bank. We had really low cubicle walls. You could basically see the entire room from your seat. So, one day, I came in with a six-pack and sat it on top of my cubicle wall and proceeded to drink. I also offered any who walked by a beer. I managed to comfortably drink four beers while doing some work before two supervisors and a manager started walking towards my desk. Needless to say, I was asked to leave.
54. The Gift of Knowledge
I worked at Spencer’s Gifts for a bit during university. I was working and saw that I was scheduled for an evening shift the day before a morning exam, so I asked the manager if I could switch. She said no, the schedule is already made up. We went back and forth trying to negotiate. She ended with, “You’re going to have to decide what’s more important, the shift or your exam.”
55. Mutiny
I worked for a computer company that had me train my replacements but told me I was eventually getting my own sales team to train. I was one of their top salespeople for the year way back in 1999-2000. Halfway through the two-week training, I found out they laid off my entire team and that I was going to be laid off after training.
I told my manager he could go screw himself and quit that day, but not before I told all the new hires and many of them quit too.
56. The Whole 9 Yards
The commute was over an hour, but I really enjoyed my job. I interviewed at two closer stores. I was told one store didn't want me. But the other store offered me a promotion and raise right there. I was ecstatic. A week goes by with no calls and no notice of transfer from my GM. I finally mentioned it and was told they turned me down. When I found out why I couldn’t believe it.
I found out my GM didn't want to lose me so she went above the other stores' management and to corporate to shut down my transfers. I spend 50 hours a month in traffic and it wasn't worth it to stay at that location. I really, really loved the company but when I found out the GM went above and beyond to have me turned down for a raise and closer commute, I lost it.
I hopped on the store radio and calmly announced what the GM had done to me and walked out in front of everyone.
57. Seeing Eye to Eye
I fractured my orbital socket in an industrial accident. Another employee lost focus at the wrong time was supposed to wait for a hand signal and didn't. We had been working over 90 days straight of 13-14 hour shifts and living in a dingy motel a 45-minute drive from our worksite. We were supposed to be on a rotation where we didn't work more than three weeks at a time.
It was a close call and could have been a lot worse. I'm glad I "saw it coming" and had time to at least try and get out of the way. I got sent away after a night in the ER while the rest of that crew continued to work. After spending two or three days at home, the boss called to say that he "needed me in Alaska" in two days and that my flight was already booked. I told him I quit right on the spot.
58. Brushed Off
I worked as a painter for a franchisee of a student painting company and he kept telling me that "he would pay me next week." This went on for about six weeks and the final straw was when I had finished several large projects that would give him ample money to pay me but he decided to hire on another person instead of paying me for all the stuff I had already done, which was like $1,300 worth of work.
Then he tried negotiating down what he thought he should be paying me despite already having agreed in writing what I would be getting paid right from the get-go. I was so mad that I didn't give him notice or even show up for the next day of work because I had bills to pay and needed to make as much money as possible during the summer.
I wrote him off as a lost cause and took him to small claims court for what he owed me and eventually got my money through the court. It was still a pain though, and as far as I know, he still works there full time.
59. Well Done
I worked at a restaurant and was treated like garbage with bad shifts, terrible sections, intimidation by managers, the whole lot. I worked hard to win the monthly sales contest to get better shifts and a bonus table on my section. Managers said I must have cheated, which wasn’t possible, and gave the reward to the regular guy who had previously won most months.
That Friday night at 8:30, I rang in 20 well-done filet mignon and sent them to the kitchen from several different waiter's numbers. I waited five minutes, walked to my jerk of a manager with my jacket on, and said to him, “I quit, see ya.” I never even bothered with my last check or asked what happened with the kitchen. The place has since closed down.
60. No Deliverables
Back in college, I delivered food. I worked all the time, picked up shifts, and was highly valued. Corporate wanted to have a front staff meeting and the managers didn’t communicate it to the employees, so literally no one showed. I was working at the time of the meeting so I saw the managers get reamed by corporate. They rescheduled the meeting for the following Saturday morning, which happened to be the day after my birthday and one of the few days I requested off.
I told them I wasn’t going to make the meeting and they got all huffy puffy about how they would have to “do something” if I didn’t come. This happened at the end of my lunch shift and I just said screw it, called a local pizza shop, set up an interview, and didn’t show up for my evening shift. They called and were all, “we can figure something out,” and I said, “nah, I’m good.” I probably could’ve just toughed it out because the managers typically only lasted four months or so, but I had enough of this dude by then.
61. Not a Minute More
I worked for a boss who micromanaged everything and was just a jerk about everything in general. I came into work at 6:56 AM and the clock in time was at 7:00 AM. Instead of clocking in then going to the bathroom, I went to the bathroom first instead of using company time. I clocked in at 7:01 AM and he went off on me for being one minute late. He saw me sit my stuff down and go to the restroom so he knew I wasn’t truly late.
This wasn’t the first time he yelled about something so small, but that day was the last. I didn’t say, “Screw this, I quit!” I said, “Screw you, I quit!” I reported him to Human Resources two days later for the ridiculous behavior. I come to find out this was not the first time he had been reported for creating a toxic work environment. My friend in that department told me he was fired that next week. It was a happy ending to my “Screw this, I quit!” story.
62. Teamwork
I worked at a call center on the same team as my girlfriend. She was fired, but it was for good reason. Rather than have the angry boyfriend on the team, they fired me too without cause. In the evening, they pulled my brother who was a manager there into a room and said they were putting him on a "Performance Improvement Plan," but they had no reason behind it.
He said, "You just fired my brother and his girlfriend, and you're building a paper trail to fire me too. Screw this, I quit." The office was super clique-ish. My brother's girlfriend who was also a manager there made it about three months before they started giving her written warnings for petty things and she quit too. About three months after that the whole place imploded and about 900 people were out of jobs.
63. Not a Dollar to Spare
After one year at my old job, I asked for a small raise of $1 more per hour to add to my current $20 per hour. I was underpaid and we all knew it. When they came back with the counteroffer, I was stunned. They offered me 50 cents. I showed them I was saving them $70-100k/year, they wouldn’t budge. I gave my notice right there.
I got my last check with no yearly bonus. I was owed $1,000. They told me they didn’t have to pay me since I quit. I said that’s cool, I’ll call OSHA later today and cited five big violations they hadn’t addressed. Suddenly I got my bonus.
64. Pointed in Error
The building where my job was closed down at 9 PM. Everybody except security had to get out so they could shut everything down. One of my supervisors, I had eight of them, kept scheduling me until 9:30 PM. I repeatedly brought this up at the end of the night and was always told, "No, that's just a mistake, you need to leave."
Fast forward three months, I get called into a disciplinary meeting. The reason? I kept "leaving early." I had like eight attendance points from "leaving early" because one of my idiot bosses who worked in the SAME BUILDING and definitely should have known when it closes couldn't figure out how to schedule. I explain my side, which was pretty obvious, and they say they'll hold off on any disciplinary action while they look into it.
A couple of days later they told me they weren't going to remove those attendance points. I told them to shove it, walked out, and went to a concert with some of my now former coworkers.
65. We All Scream for Ice Cream
I was working as an ice cream vendor at an amusement park. It was the kind of ice cream that comes in tiny little flash-frozen pellets. One time I was selling my tiny overpriced cups of frozen ice cream balls and had a line of a half dozen people. A manager came over and said he saw someone walk by with a cup that hadn't been leveled off. I acknowledge his comment and then continue preparing the ice cream cup for the next customer.
After filling the cup, I use the scoop to scrape across the top of the cup and level off the excess pellets because God forbid people almost get their money's worth. The manager said I didn't level it off well enough and snatched it from my hand, dumped it back into the bin, and made me do it again while standing over me. The customer and I were both now silent and uncomfortable. I filled the cup and leveled it off again the same way because that's the only way to do it. This time he apparently approved and said, "That's how you should have been doing it the whole time. It isn't hard!" Then he stormed away.
Well, the previous day I had worked my entire shift without a break because the manager forgot to send relief to cover my stall while I took lunch, so I was already annoyed at the company. But being yelled at and belittled in front of customers was over the line in my book. So, I hand the customer back his money and then similarly handed out free ice cream to the other people in line.
Then I simply left. I didn't lock the ice cream freezer or empty/power down the register, I didn't let anyone know I was leaving, I didn't stop to turn in my nametag or polo shirt, I just left. And I've never regretted that for a second.
66. Bin There, Done That
I worked at Subway. It was the first day of the $5 footlong deal, and there was a line out the door. Now, all of our veggies were cut that morning at the same time. The bin of onions was getting low, so I ran to the back and got another bin. Because I was wanting to focus on getting people their food, I dumped the new bin into the other one instead of switching them.
The manager came along, pulled the bin out, and threw it at me in front of everyone. I threw my hat down and walked out.
67. Official Resignation
I worked for a daycare center for a whole three weeks. I was great with the kids and it was a fun job, but I just couldn't stand my boss. She was awful all the time. She’d make me get her coffee on my lunch break and then get mad when I'm late from said lunch break. Or she would give me a bunch of tasks right after I clocked out then wouldn't let me leave until they were finished without paying me overtime. Against the law, I know.
She was always threatening to fire me because I didn't show up for work on a day that I took off that she approved weeks earlier. Anyway, just got fed up one day and told her calmly and politely, "I will not be coming back from my lunch break. I am clocking out and leaving." She says if I'm going to quit, it needs to be in writing.
I lost it, grabbed a giant Crayola marker out of one of the drawing bins and a sheet of construction paper, wrote "I QUIT" on it, and signed my name then threw it at her.
68. Break Away
We had just gotten a new boss who for some reason hated the friendships that we made. She said I had been stealing time from the company and "caught" me on video outside on breaks I wasn't supposed to have. She pulled me into the HR office and berated me for taking breaks. She had been cutting my hours slowly but scheduled me long enough to force me to take a 30-minute breaks.
The HR girl tried to correct her several times, telling her I was entitled to my breaks, but my boss wasn't having it. She said she had proof of me leaving, but never showed it to me. So, the next time I was scheduled, I clocked in, waited 30 minutes, and just clocked out without saying anything. Nobody ever called me for a no-call no-show.
About a week later, I went back to the store with my friend who was also an ex-coworker and quit the day before and they threatened to call security on us.
69. Not Under My Watch
I used to work for Regal Cinemas throughout high school. Having been one of the most reliable employees for a while, a management position opened up and I figured that I would apply for it because it would be more pay. Unfortunately, I didn't get it because I was planning to go to college and wouldn't be there during the semester and only be around for holidays and whatnot. I understood their decision, but the person they hired instead was incompetent.
Fast forward about a month, I'm in charge of our theater cleaning team responsible for 22 theaters on a busy as heck weekend. We pretty much have a set schedule of when theaters are supposed to let out, and thinking that everyone should be responsible enough, I would help out one team do one wing because we had several large kid movies, which always get really dirty, finishing at the same time.
After cleaning all of those kid movies, I find out that one of the male restrooms is flooded. I, being the only one over 18 at the time, don some rubber gloves, plunger, and a mop and go to battle with a poop-filled flooding toilet. Having successfully defeated the poop monster, I am greeted with the woman that was hired as a manager instead of me.
She starts going off on me because the other team I had set up to clean the other half of the theater apparently didn't do anything and couldn't be found. She also yelled at me for not being where I was supposed to be even though I was still doing my job and wrote me up for "being insubordinate" when I defended myself in a reasonable matter.
I later found those kids by the trash compacter stoned as heck and gave them a piece of my mind. I finished my shift, went to the head manager on staff, told him everything, and told him that I was giving him my two weeks' notice. He offered me more pay, telling me how much of a valued employee I was, how much I was respected among the management for putting up with all of the garbage I had to do before and always being available. It turns out that the manager who chewed me out still works there several years later, while I have moved onto an actual career.
70. Going in Blind
I needed a summer job while in high school so I applied at a local grocery store to bag/stock/clean. On my first day there, there was some sort of confusion as to what I was supposed to do or to whom I was to report. I was sent to the front counter where the customer service manager gave me a till and told me to open a register. Mind you, I'd had ZERO training on a register. I didn't even know how to put the till in it. I told the lady this and was told to go do my job.
Within about two minutes at the register, there was a line several deep and I'm just standing there with the till in my hands. The customer service lady comes storming over asking why I had such a line and I tried AGAIN to explain to her that I was supposed to be a stocker or whatever and that I knew nothing about operating a register. She called me stupid in front of the customers so I handed her the till and told her what I really thought of her. I walked down the street in my uniform and got a job at another grocery store.
71. Sitting On the Dock of the Pay
When I got a promotion with more responsibilities, I asked my boss for a raise. He told me that, if anything, they’re gonna dock my pay now because it was so rude of me to make that request of them. I went home after my shift that day and never came back.
72. Respect Goes Both Ways
I worked as a casual at a gift shop when I was just out of high school. The shop was owned by a lady that I had worked with for three years at a different location, and I had been working at this particular location for almost a year. I had a good relationship with the owner, but when she opened up the new location, she hired another lady to manage the store.
All the staff disliked the new manager because we had been working in the job for years and knew more about the stock and processes than this new lady, but we were teenagers and this manager was in her 50s and treated us like kids, so we felt that we weren't taken seriously by her. Anyway, I was meant to be working the late-night shift but was super sick.
Being casual, I was able to call in sick up to two hours before my shift at no penalty to me. So, I did this. The new manager lady answered the phone and said, "Yeah that's okay. By the way, I've done the roster for the next fortnight and you have no shifts." My reply left her totally speechless. I said: "No worries, don't stress about finding me a shift, I'm bringing my keys in tomorrow once I feel better. I quit."
The passive-aggressiveness from this lady was the final straw after months of being patronized. I'm still on good terms with the owner over four years later, so that's nice.
73. Forced Presence
I worked for a group home. We had a difficult group of residents, but the company policies were so much worse. Every resident was 14-22 years old. They had moderate mental development delays, they all had a psychiatric disorder from severe ADHD to schizophrenia, and they had also all been convicted of violent offenses. I worked the third shift. My normal hours were 10:30 pm to 9 am four days a week.
About six months into working there, they did a massive layoff. They went down to bare minimum staff to student ratio each shift with nobody extra to call in if needed. That meant if someone called out, a person on the previous shift was forced. It got to the point where I was being forced three out of four shifts per week. And not just a few hours. I was working 10:30 pm to around 4:30 pm the next day, and still having to come in for my following shift.
I had an hour commute each way. So, I'd get home at 5:30 pm from a 16-hour shift, and have to leave the house again four hours later. I managed that for about a month. Then one morning I was told last minute I was being forced. I told them I was done and walked out. That month took a huge toll on my mental health. Swear it took me like a year to recover.
74. How Thoughtful
After taking a few days off work while my father was having a brain tumor removed and I was still checking emails and attending conference calls from the hospital, my boss gave me a new project. On a Thursday afternoon, she gave me a Monday morning deadline for a project that would take 6-8 days to complete. I worked 16 hours a day to get it done. When we met on Monday, she asked how my weekend was. I looked at her and said, "I worked all weekend."
Then she asked if I got to visit my dad in the hospital and then I told her, "No, I didn't get a chance because I worked all weekend." A couple of weeks later, she pulled me into a meeting and said, "I feel like you were resentful because you had to work and I feel like I was really good when your dad was sick, maybe you're just tired. Are you tired?"
She'd also make comments when I would leave the office on time—not early, on time—like, "it's great that you just get up and go when your day is over. Like I have to go because I have a daughter, but you don't have any kids and you just leave at the end of the day." Um yeah, I don't live here. I don't go home and sit in a dark room counting the hours until I get to come back here.
I'm also not curing cancer. Nothing we do here matters to anyone outside of here. I give you 100% when I'm here, but when my day is done, it's done. I no longer work there.
75. Tight Schedule
I was 20 and engaged. My work as a book store manager was not letting me have any time off. I missed my fiancée's prom and other important events. I asked to have part of Christmas off, and I got denied. Then I was told because I didn't take vacation that year, I'd just lose it next year. The final straw came when my boss made a surprise audit of my store on a Saturday evening after I had left to go home.
He did not like my calendar display—and his reaction was truly disturbing. He came to my house to yell at me. He didn't just knock on the door and ask, he came into my house, past my roommates, and into my bedroom where I was in bed, reading. He then proceeded to berate me nonstop for five minutes about my display while I sat in bed. Then he left and told me he'd meet me in the morning and he'd fix it with me there.
I felt that was it. My boss came into my private bedroom to yell at me about a calendar display off hours. I called Amtrak, made tickets to see my fiancée, and the next morning, before I got on the train, I went into my store, met him, handed him the key, and walked out just a few days before Christmas to let him deal with it.
I felt great. I hung out with my fiancée for a week or so at my leisure and got another job a few weeks later. But what’s even better was that the next year, they let me work part-time to train new managers. Weirdest of all? My boss apologized to me and we were friends for many years afterward.
76. Technical Problem
I was getting screamed at in a meeting by some marketing jerk that was literally demanding my technical group perform magic on a completely unrealistic time schedule with almost no resources. Literally screaming at me in front of about eight of my peers, calling me incompetent, screaming at me to “just do your job” and all of that. I stood up, said I refuse to be talked to like that and left the meeting.
Normally if you just get up and leave these types of meetings, you’re fired. Boss scheduled a meeting with me later in the afternoon after hearing about it. Figured I’d be walked out, but I was told they fired the marketing guy. I was about to just say “Screw this, I quit,” but the company kept me on and fired the other guy. Pretty happy, it’s been a solid place to work ever since.
77. Cut Off Time
I'm a bartender and I was working in some terrible Mexican restaurant downtown. The tips were bad because the food was bad so we were barely ever busy. So already I'm living in NYC making barely $400 a week when I'm used to making more than double. At this point, I've been there for two months and I hate it more and more every day.
Around this time my mother gets really bad pneumonia and due to complications, it degraded her heart. So, she had to have open-heart surgery to repair a valve. It's a risky procedure and my mother is touching 65. When she gives me a date for her surgery I go to my manager and give her a basic breakdown of the situation and tell her I need four days off from X to Y so I can be with my family.
Now, let me state that staff turnover was incredibly high because in addition to us making horrible money the manager was a complete and utter moron, most staff left after a month. But she says no problem, and just to play it safe I send emails and texts to her confirming that I indeed do have these days off. She agrees. I think cool, no problem.
Well, I was dead wrong. Three days before the surgery the schedule for the week comes out and I'm scheduled throughout the entire week. I immediately go to my manager and ask what is up because I'm not wasting away behind this moldy, rat-infested bar in the West Village while my mom has surgery. No kidding, this woman has the nerve to say I didn't request off at all!
When I show her my paper trail stating that yes, I did put in a request she says "What difference does it make if you're there the surgery is going to have an outcome whether you're there or not." And starts to rattle off how I need to be a team player and I'm messing things up by requesting off and yadda ya. Her voice fades off and I literally see red. I say nothing and go back to work.
This is at 5 PM. Happy hour and our rush starts at 8 PM. I'm the only bartender on. Fast forward to 8:30, my bar is slammed, I have a bunch of drink tickets from the servers and it's a mess. My manager comes behind the bar and instead of offering any assistance she tells me to not bring "home drama to work." I stare at her in disbelief for a moment, truly stunned that such a tone-deaf moron could possibly be in charge of anything.
I laughed in her stupid face and walked right out the door and went to go see my mom.
78. Get Your Storey Straight
I used to have a really terrible retail job in a department store. I was making $7 an hour. I worked in the part that sells bedspreads and bathroom items and other boring stuff. One afternoon, some regional managers came for an evaluation. They determined that everything in the department, including floor display furniture, had to be moved all around AT ONCE! Like, this had to be completed within a day or something. Because, you know, sales will just pick up like bang snappity boom if we do this!
The store Assistant Manager who was second in charge orders some guys from receiving to start hauling merchandise to the stockrooms in order to get the displays moved. I'm hanging at the register since my only other duty is to tidy the department up, which I can't do because it's in shambles. Then, she ordered me to get the merchandise back from the stockrooms and put it back on the floor. It was towels and washcloths that the guys had taken into the back not 20 minutes ago.
I do. One of the stock guys comes back and is like, what the heck are you doing? I'm putting this out on the floor as the manager told me to. So, he goes and tells her. She comes back and lays into me for going against the program. I remind her that she asked me to do this specifically with detailed instruction. She gets confused and probably realized it was her mistake.
But instead, she tells me to hash it out with the stock guy. I decided this job wasn't worth the hassle, told her that, as store manager, it was her responsibility to delegate tasks in an efficient manner, and she was the one who ought to have straightened this out. I walked out. It wasn't my most mature moment, but whatever, no regrets.
79. Bottom Line
I worked at Best Buy and was a full-time employee in the home theater department. At the time we were four months into a new system that allowed us to see our sales numbers; revenue, services, margin, etc. I was a model employee, all my numbers were best in-store and district, I had a great return customer base and had scored two perfect secret shopper scores in the past three months.
It was time for my yearly review and I was prepared, awesome sales numbers in hand, ready to receive my well-earned raise. In the three busiest retail months of the year, November, December, and January, I had made $389,000 in pure profit for my store, not sales, but actual profit. After requesting a raise, I was informed that I had capped out in my position, at what must have been a bank-breaking 9.75 an hour.
I left that day devastated, after two years of busting my butt for Best Buy I was basically told to go screw myself. I returned to Best Buy the next morning and told them to shove it. My yearly take home after insurance and taxes was 12,900.00, 1/30th of what I made my store in profit in three months.
80. Asset Incognito
I worked for a big chain tire store in a very rich part of town for a while. I was overqualified for the job, but it’s what was hiring. One day I get a call saying another tech got fired for failing a urine test. I get in and our lead tech comes in with a torn bicep and has to be gone for a few months. I'm now the most knowledgeable person in the shop, taking on a ton of extra duties and extra hours.
So, working 60+ hours a week as the only tech with ANY diagnostic abilities I ask for a raise/promotion. I’m rejected, but the guy that was hired on a week earlier, amazing tire buster but can't do any mechanical repair past changing an air filter, got a double promotion and a dollar per hour raise. I put in my notice on the spot.
81. Coming Out on Top
I was working at a sporting goods/automotive store with a fairly large staff with around 35-40 people. One of the guys in automotive was gay, not flamboyantly, but it was pretty obvious. He was middle-aged, portly, but an extremely nice guy who was a genius in terms of cars. He had been with his partner for nearly two decades and they were quite happy. However, our new general manager was awful, and she made comments about his romantic preferences for nearly a month. He tried not to show it, but I could tell it was hurting him.
Then, his partner's company suddenly exploded financially, in a good way, massive bonuses, huge raises, very cool things happening. The two of them decide that they now have the money to move to Vermont, get married for real, and basically retire. So, at a store meeting, my automotive friend says he has an announcement. He tells us that after many years with our company, he's retiring, effective immediately. He thanks us all for being good people to work with and that he enjoyed his time here. He then took off his name tag, walked over to the GM, and stood there for a moment.
I held my breath and waited—it was utterly legendary. He then held his arm straight out in front of him, and dropped the name tag on the floor. His hand then rotated, arm still out, and morphed into the most perfectly formed middle finger I have ever seen. He spoke five words, very quietly. "Screw you, you hateful woman." He then turned, and walked out the door, head high, and with a "hater's gonna hate" strut. The rest of us were silent as the GM turned bright red and stormed off to her office. Then we laughed and cheered.
82. On the Hut
I was 19 and working for Pizza Hut as a manager. The store manager left me understaffed and with half a box of cheese in the freezer. We usually went through about 2-3 boxes a night. It was the middle of a busy shift and we're out of cheese and my dining room is full and I'm understaffed and furious having to deal with angry stupid customers.
I walk into the dining room and yelled "We're out of cheese people. Everything is on the house!" I ordered the one waitress to not clean a single table, finish up, and go home, the same for the one prep cook. The place was destroyed. The store manager opened with a nice letter from me. He called me and tried to convince me to come back.
83. Request in Denial
I was a manager at a company where the executives were ineffective. I worked 60 hours a week most of the time and had to do all of my director’s duties because he didn’t understand our systems. The work environment was also pretty hostile and passive-aggressive. People cried on the job daily in other departments, slightly less in mine. Managers and staff would snap at other departments the same way the executives did because of the stress.
I tried to take care of my department and make sure they weren’t being abused or taken advantage of. I had three days' leave for a passing in the family but had to work every day from home and the funeral itself. It was especially vexing because it was to re-do the same thing every day that my boss would just forget to complete and need to be done again the next day. I brought this to his attention, as well as all the other issues, and he said he would try to do better. Months went by and it got worse.
Finally, our team sat down with him and told him things needed to change. I told him that the environment was more hostile and aggressive than ever and the team agreed. He told me that was my perception and we needed an attitude change, then left for a meeting, which I had provided the data for him. I cleared out my desk and left after quitting with HR.
For me, the kicker is that he kept assigning me tasks and insisted that I was still working there for days. Never been more relieved to quit in my life.
84. Tis the Season
I was 21 working with UPS. I worked as a truck loader for the first year and became the fastest loader in the warehouse just because I like working quickly. Only wanted to become a supervisor because my manager was really easy to work with and always wanted to help with solutions to problems. Once they promoted me to a supervisor, they transferred my manager to a different warehouse and didn’t say why.
I worked as a supervisor for a year and once peak season arrived in November to early January, things were getting crazy and my manager was just a yes man to his boss. He never helped solve issues, just said “figure it out” or “just get it done.” Well in November, my best friend and I had won a World Series of Beer Pong satellite tourney to get free entry and stay at the Flamingo in Vegas for the Tournament worth $600. The tournament was from January 1st-5th.
Well during peak season, it’s nearly impossible to get time off and I looked at this tournament as a once in a lifetime opportunity with my best friend. Things were just getting so crazy and they weren’t approving any vacation requests. I wasn’t getting assistance from my boss with the workload so I just said whatever I’m out.
Come to find out my manager, his boss, and four other managers got fired for changing time cards to make their production numbers look better, which is why they shipped my cool manager away because he wouldn’t participate in the dirty deeds. My best friend and I placed 46th out of 500 teams. It was one of the best memories I have to this day. No regrets.
85. Terrible Management
About 10 years ago when I was working in retail as an assistant manager, I was transferred to a nearby store to essentially act as manager while the current manager was on leave for stomach cancer. There was no extra pay involved, and I wasn't terribly happy about having to do it, but I wanted to prove myself and played the part. Fast forward nine months, the original manager returns and re-assumes the position of acting manager.
Almost immediately, I didn't care much for the guy. He seemed shallow, petty, and had little regard for the well-being of his employees. Again, I played the part and was civil. Around three months later, my grandfather had passed, and my family was in the process of deciding what to do with my grandmother, as she wouldn't be able to afford their house. Talking to my boss about this, he mentioned that he couldn't wait until his grandparents passed because he would inherit all kinds of awesome stuff.
Especially because of what I was dealing with, but also in general, I was disgusted by him. My family had finally worked out on a somewhat short notice being able to move my grandmother and sort through her belongings because she was moving to a much smaller home and couldn't bring everything. It was expected to be an emotional affair for the entire family as the family had a lot of history and memories in that house. The date of the move was a scheduled working day for me. Things were typically flexible as far as having shifts covered, so I didn't think it would be a problem switching shifts.
When I brought it up to my boss, he showed absolutely no regard for my situation and told me that I couldn't switch shifts. There was no valid reason for this. It was just him being his manipulative self. I lost it. In a store full of customers and other employees, I blew up at him. I'm pretty sure I called him every name in the book as he sat there wide-eyed and mouth agape. When I was finished, I tore my uniform shirt off, threw it on the ground, and walked out.
When I returned from helping my family, my district manager requested we get together and talk. She listened to my story, and after having heard various accounts of what happened, pleaded with me to stay with the company by finding me a position at another store. I didn't expect that in the least. Six months later, my former manager had been fired for theft and I soon was promoted. Later, it was found out that he never actually had cancer, but just wanted to take a paid vacation at the expense of everyone else.
86. Lifelong Accomplishments
After working for 37 years, I requested leave from work to care for my partner who was dying of cancer. I had eight weeks of PTO time and was denied the request, so I quit to care for him in his last month of life.
87. Moment’s Notice
IT manager here. I was working for a company that didn't consider us a real department. Lots of things leading up to this, but the last straw was an announcement that a satellite office was being shut down and any employees that could, would relocate to our office. We, the IT department, found out about this at the same time as the rest of the company MONTHS after the decision had been made.
Nobody told us anything, and this would involve obscene amounts of extra travel, hours, and stress as we accommodate the moves, the infrastructure, and everything else involved with such a move. I left in the middle of the announcement. My boss, the CFO threatened me to fire me if I don't do the work. Well, you can't fire someone who's already quit.
Then the CEO calls me and asks me back to negotiate. I agree to come back for six months if I get a 25% raise for myself and my entire team. After six months, I left and they laid off everyone else.
88. Baked with Power
I worked at Walmart for a month in the bakery section. I was doing fine and getting along with the other employees, but then we get a new assistant manager. This woman has given other family members of mine problems at different Walmart stores. When she found out who my mom was, she started harassing me and would patronize me in front of customers.
The worst part was that she would have me work the bakery by myself until closing every night when everyone else got to leave at 2 PM while I would stay until 8 PM. She also made me work in the deli section, wouldn't let me take my breaks, and wanted me to clean the bakery every night alone. I had been working alone from 2 pm-8 pm for four days straight.
On the next day I came in, and right before the other bakery employees were about to leave, I tossed my vest, told another employee I quit, and left.
89. Shift in Tragedy
I quit my first job when I was 15. It was the summer, and I was a lifeguard at a pool where one of the best club swimming teams in the US practiced daily. I was good friends with one of the better swimmers on the team, but it was more of a relationship where I looked up to him in a major way. He was really kind and smart and funny, anyone you asked would have nothing but good things to say about him.
One day I was woken up by my mom who was good friends with the kid's parents and she told me that he had passed on in a car accident the night before. I was extremely distraught because he was one of the best people I had ever met, but I still went to work that day. At work, I couldn't focus, I would randomly break out in tears and start hyperventilating, I lost my faith in God, and it was overall a really terrible day.
About halfway through my shift, I went to my boss and asked him if I could go home because I was really upset. He told me, "No, you can't. Going home isn't going to bring back your friend, and your job should be your primary focus during the day." I replied with something along the lines of, "You can shove it. I quit," and stormed out. I didn't have any regrets after doing that, I felt like it was the right thing to do, and no one thought any less of me for it.
90. Hanging Up My Apron
A very long time ago, I worked at a Kinko's. Either the manager or the assistant manager was on duty every day of the week, in theory. Both of them were lazy. Neither stayed for more than an hour of their shifts and they trained me to do the daily paperwork. There was a deadline for when it had to be sent to corporate so that often had me leaving the front counter one person short during our busier times of the day. When it got slammed, I'd have to go through the whole procedure to stop what I was doing.
First, I had to wait for the safe to open, put the money in marking how far I had gotten with the counting and trying to resolve any cash vs receipts mismatches, and go up front to help after taking four minutes to pack the money in the safe. Then I'd have to reverse it when I came back. So, eight minutes shot every time I was called up front, and often that was as often as every 10 minutes during busy hours. 18 minutes gone for 10 minutes’ paperwork.
I'm in the middle of my final quarter of school when I get a scathing performance review. I was leaving the front unattended for too long. I pointed out that I shouldn't be doing the paperwork in the first place, but of course, that didn't fly. Apparently, the district manager had just laid into the manager for never being in the store when the DM came by and I was going to be her punching bag.
I don't get angry often, but blaming me for not being at the counter while I was doing her job made me livid. We agreed that I'd take the three-day paid "decision-making leave" where I would decide if I really wanted to continue working there. I would never have to do the paperwork again. I was two weeks from my portfolio review, and I had no time to be looking for a job.
My first day back, the assistant manager comes in for his shift. "Hurry up and go do the paperwork. I've got paintball in an hour!" I said, "Screw you." I rolled up the apron and threw it at him and walked straight out the back door. As satisfying as it was in the moment, I was freaking out about how I would pay rent all that night. I got a job right after my portfolio review, so it ended up working out in the end.
91. Low Ink Levels
My boss didn't do payroll before leaving on a business trip and left it to the poor office manager to tell people they weren't going to get paid on time. I walked out of the staff meeting saying I'd be back when paychecks arrived. By the time I got home, I was mad enough to call my ops manager back and quit. Why didn't the boss do payroll? The stated answer was printer toner cartridge at home was empty. Guess he'd never heard of writing checks with a pen.
92. See You, Motel 8-er
At my first job out of college, I was informed that it might involve some "light travel," which was fine. However, about two weeks into working there, this turned out to mean they wanted me to spend 6+ months in a cheap motel room with my slob of a boss in Arkansas. Now, I'm a young guy and can handle most types, but I think it's incredibly unprofessional to have to see your boss in nothing but his tighty-whities as he brings back trashy chicks from the latest dive bar and makes you leave the hotel while he screws them.
I'd have complained but the guy above the two of us was his longtime friend and fraternity brother—I wasn't winning any arguments. I spent three months there before they brought us back to the main office for a one-week stretch and I decided that this just wasn't for me and I couldn't go back. I walked into the main office and just told them it wasn't for me and gave my two weeks. I handled it professionally.
It was them who decided the next day to bring me into the conference room where about 20 co-workers were sitting only to have the boss make me stand while he called me a quitter and let them know that "This is what someone who isn't committed to their job" looks like. The next day I came in and my stuff was in a box and I was told that my two weeks' notice was not needed and they didn't want me to return.
Two weeks later I had an interview for a better paying job which I've been in for four years and haven't looked back.
93. On the Dot
I was working at a call center. My shift started at 10. I badged into the building at about 9:55 and logged on, but the decrepit PC I was using took so long to boot up that when I finally logged in, I was 15 seconds late. I told my supervisor and he said there's nothing he can do and since I was late, I was put on probation and wouldn't be eligible for a raise for another month. He then said that I should arrive 15 minutes early so that situation won't happen again. I handed him my headset, walked out, and have never worked in a call center since.
94. Selective Memory
My manager claimed to have called me to change my schedule, but my phone didn't show any missed calls from his number so he was lying. Then the same day, he scheduled me to work a shift that afternoon without confirming that I was free or willing to pick up the extra shift. When I came into my next shift, he asked why I didn't come in for my scheduled shifts showing me my work schedule that he'd printed out.
I told him I hadn't been scheduled for that shift, showed him the screenshot of my original posted schedule from two days after it had been officially posted that showed I hadn't been scheduled for that day. He said it was fine, smiled and nodded, and sent me back to my shift. Next week's schedule comes out, I have no shifts. I ask what's up, and he says that since I missed a shift and didn't call in to say I'd be missing, I had to lose two weeks of hours. I again asked why that would be happening if I had come in for my scheduled hours, reminding him we had talked about it, he had said it was fine.
He pretended that he didn't remember that conversation. He was absolutely shocked when I quit before the two weeks were over. I got a voice mail three days later asking why I didn't show up to my scheduled shifts that week, and when I called him back asking what about "I got a new job and will not be back" was unclear, he claimed that he had never called me or left a voicemail and I must have just been confused!
Yeah, sure, some guy with your voice took your phone, called my number, claimed to be you, and used my name in the voicemail, mentioning my new job and confusion over my new schedule, to benefit who? To accomplish what? That manager got let go a few weeks later. Found out he had been pulling the same thing with other employees. They erased his name from the front of the building and everything.
95. 4’O Clock Shadow
I worked as a stock boy in the back of Hollister. I never really had any interaction with customers but was still forced to buy their clothes to wear to work. They had all these rules about hairstyles, fingernails, and facial hair. One night I came in to start a shift at 2:30 am to do a floor change, which meant the shift would end around the time the store opened up. I had the slightest bit of stubble on my face, like a day and a half's worth of stubble.
My manager, at 4 am, told me she had a problem with my facial hair and that when the mall opened up, I better go buy a razor and shave before anyone saw me like that, or she would have to send me home for the night. I basically said, "Well lucky for me, I was planning on quitting anyway, good luck with the floor change," and walked out. I left, got a biscuit breakfast, went home, and got in bed.
96. Big Job, Big Attitude
I worked at Wal-Mart as a "stockman" for about a year. After the summer season was over, a supervisor asked me to move the 80-100+ lb. planks that went around bags of soil from the lawn and garden area in the parking lot back to their storage sheds which were probably a good 500 yards away. She told me to do this all myself and to have it done in an hour.
I went to the planks, and couldn't even pick one up by myself because of how long they were—I'm 6'2" tall and 230 lbs. I got on the walkie talkie and told her that I couldn't lift one by myself and would need help. She basically told me I was just whining and complaining. Anyway, eventually she sent help and after she sent another guy to help me, we were an hour deep in moving these things and only about 1/3 the way done with the job.
The supervisor herself and one more person decided to help us at that point. Anyway, it took six people two hours to move what she originally had told me to do within an hour by myself. At lunchtime when it was time to clock out, she decided to wait for me by the time clock so she could discuss my attitude. I told her there was nothing to discuss and said "Six people, two hours. Screw you, I quit!" and clocked out and left.
A couple of days later they called me to fill out some quittin' papers and for my reason for leaving I wrote "managerial incompetence and poor worker morale." About a month later I ran into a different supervisor who said the supervisor who did this got demoted because of it. Different supervisor begged me to come back but I found a better job working at a grocery store where no one was like the slave drivers at Wal-Mart after that.
97. Fatal Nepotism
My aunt got me a job as a tech in a chemical plant. As I was young and stupid, I told the guy who was supposed to train me that I got the job through my aunt. He decided to "haze me." After the first shift I already almost decked him as he would handily forget to tell me things and would berate and belittle me all the time. The second shift it continued and while I was working on a pipe, he didn't close it as he was supposed to do.
If I hadn't been aware of the rumbling and rolled away, I would have been blasted by a jet of boiling steam. I went to the team leader, he said I was overreacting but he proposed to move me to another shift. I quit. My aunt was pretty upset with me until she heard, through the rumor mill, that the guy indeed had done what I said he did.
98. Let’s Give Them Something to Taco About
I worked at a fast food place south of the border during high school and the summer afterward. I was planning on going to college in town, and asked to work nights so that I could attend classes. My manager told me that I was too stupid to go to college and that I should resign myself to working fast food for the rest of my life. She added that she would fire me if I went to college.
I threw my shirt and jalapeno-shaped name badge at her because I was mad, and mostly because I was immature. Either way, I never went back. Consequences: no more free tacos.
99. Cooking Up a Storm
First job ever. McDonald's inside a Walmart. It was a busy Saturday afternoon with a line going all the way out the door. The manager starts yelling at me to stop taking orders because she can't keep up with my pace. I was 15 years old at the time and therefore not old enough to work the grill, so I asked what I should do instead.
She rudely told me that if I was too dumb to figure that out, then she didn't need me there. So I was like, "Yeah, I guess you've got this covered then," clocked out, tossed my hat on the ground, and strolled out the front door as she pleaded for me to come back—leaving her to deal with that long lineup on her own. I wish 31-year-old me had the nerve that 15-year-old me had!
100. Facing the Music
I rage quit my job this past March. The new director of the orchestra that I’ve played in for 11 years decided that she was going to reaudition to replace around a third of the group, most of whom had been playing with the ensemble even longer than me and had never caused any issues or done anything wrong in all that time.
When she announced that, I walked out of the rehearsal, dropped my sheet music with the librarian, and left that jerk without a principal violinist for the last concert of her inaugural season. Take that!
101. Bathroom Break
I was working at a grocery store. While kneeling down to stock the lower shelves one day, I suddenly felt something landing on my head. I looked up and discovered that a customer was peeing on my head. That was all it took for me to leave that job and never come back.
102. Out to Lunch
I was working at an inbound cold-call transfer sales job, where you would get utility customers from all across the USA who would be randomly transferred to get a "confirmation number," but in reality were mostly being transferred so we could try to upsell them for extra cable services. I hated it and would always get pressured to sign callers up for Dish Network, even though no one ever wanted it.
One day, my supervisor sits down next to me, listens to every single call I'm doing, and starts questioning me on why I didn't try to sell an 80-year-old woman AT&T U-verse triple play when she said she doesn't own a computer and just uses an antenna. He freaks out and says I need to get my act together from now on.
I just give him a blank stare, continue to take calls for the rest of the morning, and ignore everything he's saying. He is storming around the room, fuming as I make no sales. When my lunch hour arrived, I grabbed my phone charger, headed out on my break, and never came back.
103. Freedom of Expression
I used to work at an inbound call center. My sales stats went up because I reversed the order of two upsell paragraphs. Nevertheless, my boss got mad at me for doing things my own way and told me to just read the script exactly as it was written. I handed in my notice right then and there. Maybe not fully a rage quit, but definitely a spontaneous one.
104. One Year a Slave
My first job was at McDonald's. I worked there for a year, and was basically everyone’s slave. The managers treated me like garbage, and I was extremely overworked at all times. At four months pregnant, I started having stomach pains one night and bleeding heavily. I was working the drive-thru at the time, so I couldn't just walk away.
I called for the shift manager, explained my issue, and said that I needed to leave. He told me I couldn't and that I needed to just suck it up. I cussed him out, took off my uniform, and left the premises.
105. Pay to Play
There were a couple of things building up to the last straw for me, mainly that I was the supervisor of my crew yet the boss was always just "getting around to the paperwork" that would confirm my title change and pay raise. In the interim, I had not received my proper salary for a full three months. I was also supposed to be getting full medical benefits, but the day I quit the benefits were "in the mail, so just wait"...for another seven months.
106. Following Up
My insufferable manager followed me after work to my second job because she didn't believe I had one and was just using it as an excuse to get out early. My manager at my second job said, "There's some crazy lady banging on the doors yelling your name." So, I grabbed my uniform from my bag, opened the door, threw it in her face, and told her to shove off.
107. Too Little, Too Late
I was working as a General Manager at a struggling restaurant—struggling despite excellent business, because the owners would do stupid things like take trips to Italy on the company dime to source the "perfect" panini press. They also wouldn't staff properly; I was the only waiter ever there, open to close, six days a week, on top of handling phone orders, inventory, and other managerial duties. I was wildly overworked, but I sucked it up because the base pay was good, plus tips.
However, to fund their lavish "business" trips, costs had to be cut at the store. They decided to do this in the most devious, underhanded way possible. They bumped me down to minimum wage for tipped employees—effectively cutting my salary to 1/10 of its previous level. Also, They were too chicken to tell me until I got my new teeny paycheck and questioned the mistake. "Oh yeah haha, forgot to mention that blah blah cost-cutting blah valued team member please work with us through this difficult time."
I had worked for two weeks at this new lower rate without my knowledge. Pretty sure that's against the law, but hey, a lot of bad things go on in the restaurant industry. That's not when I rage quit, though....a couple of hours later, I'm fuming and have decided that I can't work for the lower rate, so now I’m just waiting for the perfect chance to give my notice.
They called in a delivery guy who was fired a few weeks before, and they talk about hiring him to start doing our Facebook posts and handing out flyers around town. Whatever. Then I hear them offer him close to my old salary as "Promotions Manager"! What??? I was basically running the place for $2.13/hr and you're offering this dude almost $20/hr to walk up and down the street saying "Eat at (Name)"? And yet, it gets worse.
They bring up our negative Yelp reviews and this guy suggests asking friends to post positive ones. The boss starts laughing and says "Better not ask our waitress to post one, it'll be all boohoo don't eat there, I can't pay my rent this month because they cut my pay without telling wahhhh!" I don’t think I was supposed to hear that, but I was five feet away, so of course I did.
I RAGED! I quit on the spot, told them to screw their job, and wished them good luck keeping the place open without me. They quickly realized I was right, as neither of them knew how to do more than pick up the takings once a week. They begged me not to quit. They were so desperate that they sat there for half an hour and allowed me to bluntly tell them exactly what kind of huge idiots I thought they were in excruciating detail.
I went on and on as my rage burned, and they just quietly listened, nodding and apologizing. Once I had cursed myself back into calmness, I walked out, 30 minutes before the dinner rush began, leaving them with an unstaffed floor and no clue how to even open the cash register. God, they were morons. I loved that they actually listened to me telling them exactly how stupid they were. No repercussions on my side, as the restaurant industry isn't known for checking references.
The place closed down about 18 months later, and I was surprised it even made it that long.
Sources: Reddit, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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