Ever quit a job in protest/anger?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Have you ever stormed out of a job, never to return? If you’ve got any good quit-your-job stories, why not tell them.

Me? I walked out on my first job, a fast-food place when I was 15, because I couldn’t put up with the exploitative conditions any longer. I just walked out of a shift and hung up on them when they called. I also had a job during college where the work was fine, but it ended because the boss and I couldn’t stand each others’ personality any longer (I think the problem actually was that we were too much alike, which can be a big problem sometimes.) So we basically came to a mutual agreement that I should voluntarily go before one of us strangled the other! (Funny, huh?) I heard he hired someone else afterwards who caused him all kinds of trouble through being incompetent. I didn’t know what to think about that.

But I’ve never quit a job with real fireworks. Does that really happen?

2

I had flown a friend’s airplane to Denton, Texas, on a Sunday, and the weather turned ugly before I could get back to Fort Worth. (Anybody that’s been to Texas can tell you how quickly conditions can change, and forecasting can’t tell what it’s going to be like in ten hours with great accuracy.) It got worse, and stayed that way. I wasn’t going to take off in dangerous conditions, especially after dark, and with no instrument license. TERRIFIC way to kill yourself.

I called my boss (worked for Tandy Corp. at the time) and explained why I couldn’t open my store in the morning, but told him I’d be in later that day. Could he get somebody to cover for me?

No, he couldn’t. “If you’re not in your store by 9AM, don’t bother coming in at all.”

Stunned. “Alright, I quit. I’ll drop off my keys tomorrow, and get my stuff out of the desk. Mail my check.” Hung up. Unemployed, just like that.

Next day, I flew home. I got in my door @ 9:30, and found a message on my answering machine from Pointy-Haired Idiot Boss (not really, but Dilbert’s manager reminds me of this guy): “Hey, I apologize. I didn’t understand what you were telling me. I didn’t want you to do anything unsafe, I just thought you were going joy-riding until you got around to going to work. Call me.”

I got my job back, and you have NO IDEA how much you can exploit something like that. I never lost an argument about how much merchandise I could order for my store after that. :slight_smile:

3

Do you mean walking out and never coming back, or quitting without putting in a notice? The no-notice thing I did for two of my jobs during high school. The first being Blockbuster. I couldn’t take it anymore. They were going to fire me, I think, because of a set-up by my supervisor (long story), so I just called one afternoon when I was supposed to go into work and told them I was quitting. Never returned my uniform and they eventually sent my check (it wasn’t that much to matter).

4

New pointy-haired manager gets hired. Fine, no skin off my back. He pisses off a couple of the other coders. I roll my eyes and shake my head.

He calls me into his office one day because he’s sure
the data that I collected was wrong. After about an half
an hour of explaining I convince him to highlight ALL
the columns he wants to sort in Excel, as opposed to just the one column that contains the primary sort numbers.
Suddenly the data looks perfect. Walk out, roll eyes, shake head.

Calls me into his office the next day, “You have to come in at 9am from now on.” Um, I often work until midnight. Can’t you cut me a little slack and let me come in between 10 and 10:30 like I usually do? I’m doing 10-12 hour
days most of the time, as opposed to everyone else’s 8 hours. I prefer the evenings because they’re a lot quieter and I can concentrate a lot better. This makes the code get written faster and have far fewer bugs. “Nope, come in at 9 or else.”

To quote from the Tao Of Programming:

Book Six: Management

Section 6.4

A manger went to his programmers and told them: “As regards
to your work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine
in the morning and leave at five in the afternoon.” At this,
all of them became angry and several resigned on the spot.

So the manager said: “All right, in that case you may set
your own working hours, as long as you finish your projects
on schedule.” The programmers, now satisfied, began to come
in a noon and work to the wee hours of the morning.
*

So, I walked back to my desk, typed up a quick “Seeya, assholes” letter, signed it, and put it on his desk. And walked out.

Two other programmers did the same the next day. About two months later the company fired about 80% of their workforce. The place is still around, but running on fumes. Their major source of income is a certain tire manufacturer in a bad spot because of certain SUVs having tire tread seperation issues.
It’s funny, I looked pretty smart getting out when I did. But I wasn’t thinking rationally, I was really enraged beyond all reason. I did a cold burn for a good couple of days afterwards, just continuaully incredulous that this guy was that stupid. Guess it was just Darwin in action. I try not to burn bridges, but in this particular case I got lucky and so it turned out ok.
-Ben

5

When I was a teenager I got in an accident that messed up my face a little bit - the area from the bottom of my nose to my upper lip was split open, and I had a nasty, deep gash on the side of my face. I had a job as a cashier at a drugstore and was scheduled to work the next day. I called my boss and told her that I was not coming in as 1) no one should have to be forced to gaze upon my swollen, semi-human visage and suppurating stitches just because they needed to pick up some Robitussin cough syrup and KY jelly, and 2) as a 17-year old girl I was not eager to be publicly viewed as an object of horror. I don’t know whether she didn’t believe me or whether she just had no soul, but she absolutely would not give me the night off. (It wasn’t a matter of being understaffed because I was always begging her to give me more hours.) I did not go in that night or ever. I hated that fucking job anyway.

6

… would you do it now with the job market in the toilet the way it is, or would you “suck it in”?

I live about 5 minutes away from work, have 10 years invested and like the people I work with. I work unsupervised and yes, I have had moments where I just wanted to tell my boss, “Well fuck you and everybody who looks like you!” But I held it in, and you know what? Somehow it dissipates.

That isn’t to say that some of you didn’t have reason to do what you did, just that if you have any time built up at all, ya gotta weigh the consequences. I don’t care how old you are, starting over nowadays is a damn big risk.

Quasi

7

I left my last job because I found the conduct of management to be morally reprehensible, and I told HR this at my exit interview. Several other people who left told them similar things. I didn’t leave on the spur of the moment, though; I had another job to go to.

The head of engineering (who is still there) is a lying, manipulative piece of filth. He sexually harassed a good friend of mine over an extended period of time. The company effectively did nothing, as his good ol’ boy boss protected him for unknown reasons. Two days after the investigation, he was back in the office teaching a business ethics class. Oh, the irony. He’d harassed women at previous jobs as well, as well as threatening co-workers.

My theory on why he was protected - blowjobs every day at lunch.

I would write more, but really, I don’t want to think about it.

8

My “job” this summer.

I got suckered in because I was told that I could set my own hours and could do under twenty a week, which I needed since I was taking care of my little sisters. I had specific times during the day that I was not available because I was taking care of people of my own blood who I would and have done all sorts of illegal things for. (Making my baby sister cry is hazardous to your health, mental and physical. I’m fully prepeared to go to jail for this one of these days because I go into full blown mama bear rage and have no reasonable way out of it.)

That said, I carefully explained this to my manager. He smiled and agreed. And then spent weeks scheduling things out of town and right over when I couldn’t be there.
“Hi, I need you to come in on Thursday night for the meeting.”
“I’m taking care of kids. I thought the meetings were not madetory anyway.”
“Yes, but not showing up will be deterimental to your future with us.”
“I told you when you hired me that I wasn’t going to be able to be there. I’m still not able to be there.”
“You can’t let them be alone for the night?”
“You don’t have kids do you?”
“This isn’t about my life, this is about your dependability.”
“I’m amazingly dependable. I’m so dependable that when I say I will be taking care of my sisters, I will be taking care of my sisters.”

He and I had totally different priorities with this deal. he wanted me to work full time, be there at the drop of a hat and shove my sisters to a back burner continuously. Including dropping my ten year old off an hour an a half before school in a neighbourhood that has several shootings a week. I told him I couldn’t do that. He said “Okay, I’ll see you then.” I hung up. All this after I had told him that they were my first priority and that his dealy-do was essentially a hobby.

He should not have hired me. Note to bosses who want to control the lives of their employees, when a person says to you “I’m looking for part time, short term work to fill out my day around taking care of my children.” Trust them. They are not being coy about wanting to work full time and go out with the co-workers on Friday nights. What a dickwad. But these people happen when you are fresh out of college with no clue about reality.

9

I was working as a waiter at the time. It was a very busy night, and I was working two stations because we were short-handed. The nephew of the owners had recently come in as the new manager. He was a tall, good looking young guy of Cuban extract, who the ladies were gaga over, with a brain like a rock.

At some point I overheard him asking somebody where something was. I don’t even recall what now (it’s been almost 20 years). I knew where this was and told him, then rushed into the kitchen to pick up two orders. On the way back out to my tables he stopped me and asked again where it was. I told him again, and said “look, its right there, but I am seriously in the weeds, and don’t have time go get it for you”. The next trip into the back there he was again, “you gotta show me, I can’t find it.” I’d just had it with this moron. I went over to where it was, exactly where I had told him, and said “I quit. I’ll finish out my tables (that’s where the money comes from) and I am never coming back.”

The next day when I didn’t show up for work he called at my house, “where are you?”
“I told you that I quit yesterday”, I reminded him.
“Yeah, but you didn’t mean it”, he replied.
“The hell I didn’t. Goodbye!”
“But you can’t just quit, what am I going to do, you…”
CLICK.

The funny thing was that I later learned that one of the servers had turned the restaurant into the Labor bureau since they were illegally charging the employees for breakage. This guy told the owners it was me, which it wasn’t, so they all hated me after that.

10

Last year I had 2 1/2 jobs. One they all let me know my hours about a month ahead, which was nice becuase I had to do a lot of scheduling to fit them all in. So one monday afternoon I get a call from the PHB at job #1 saying, “Hey, you’re working this tuesday (tomorrow).” I say, “No, I’m not, either, I’m working job #2. I’m scheduled to work this job on thursday.” He tells me that this is my problem to deal with and I had better be there tomorrow and get a replacement for job #2. I comply, being the wonderful employee I am.

Next week, repeat above event.

I go to my boss’ office and ask what the problem was. Why, for two weeks in a row, have I been mis-scheduled? Once again it is made abundantly clear that PHB is as pure as the freshly-driven snow and the fault (somehow) is all mine. I say, well, perhaps this is not the best job for me and storm out, smiling and waving at my ex-coworkers on the way out. :slight_smile:

Unfortunatly, job #2 must somehow have been conspiring with job #1 becuase I was fired from there recently becuse I had been “rude”. I was never rude. Ever. Now I don’t have any references for last year. Finding a job had been sooo much fun. :frowning:

11

Twice. The first time was when I worked at Tower Records. We were scheduled for two days of inventory, during which we were supposed to arrive at 6 a.m. Towards the end of the first day the manager decided we’d been making enough progress that we wouldn’t have to start the next day until 8 a.m. but he neglected to make sure all the staff were informed. So I showed up the next morning at 6 a.m. (dead of winter, pitch black outside and not a human being in sight anywhere). Pissed me off so much I quit.

The other time was when I was temping, so it isn’t exactly the same thing but … it was at a law firm and they told the agency they needed someone for “filing”. The job turned out to require taking files from one box, putting them into another box, writing down on paper what the files were and then labeling the boxes on all sides. Except … they gave these instructions one at a time, so only after stacking these boxes eight feet high did I find out I had to open them up and write down what was in them, and only after doing that did I find out I had to pull the boxes down to label them on all sides. By the end of the first day I had papercuts all over my hands and my arm and back muscles were completely spent (I am definitely not a candidate for a job that requires heavy lifting). It was supposed to be a five day assignment, I simply refused to go back after Day 2. Fortunately my agency was on my side for this one.

12

Oh, about twenty or so times, but that’s not unusual for an alcoholic. There was one place I worked where, over a 4-year period, I quit 3 times and was fired 3 times (6 different episodes)…but I just showed up the next day as if nothing had happened…and the boss never questioned my reappearance. He was an alcoholic, too. The last time I quit I swore I’d never come back…and I didn’t. But 3 years later I ended up working for the same guy at a different restaurant in a different town. This time I was only fired twice before it stuck.

Since then I’ve run into the guy a few times over the years and we always exchange pleasantries. We’ve both sobered (and mellowed) with age.

13

Not in anger, but I suppose “protest” would be appropriate.

Two of us were working directly as technical communicators for a corporate vice-president. It was a pretty good situation–he realized that we knew best how to do our jobs, and left us to them.

Then, for some reason we never knew, somebody in the upper echelons decided that we (and a few other functions; we weren’t alone in this) needed to report to a middle manager, and so they removed us from our VP’s department, put us in another, and slid a middle manager in above us.

This guy didn’t know what we did or how we did it, nor did he care to find out. All he knew was that we were going to do things as he said from now on, and his ideas were truly bizarre. Without going into details, let’s just say that they would have torn down the reputation we had worked so hard to build up with customers and our own staff.

I was first out, and I did it correctly: submitting the required notice and everything else necessary. My co-worker left within a few months. Each of us had years of experience, and we were each employed within a very short time of leaving. With hefty raises, I might add.

The kicker was that even though the company started looking immediately, they didn’t fill our positions for over a year. Eventually they did, but in the interim, they removed the middle manager who had ticked us off. Seems they eventually realized that he knew nothing about our function, and they also knew that he was the reason why they lost two good people.

14

Just once really. I was working fast food and I actually enjoyed it. I knew most of the people I worked with and all the bosses were cool except one. I was scheduled to come in at 9am on a Saturday. No problem here except that I find out my brother was in a car accident the night before and I don’t know whether or not he is ok. So I called in an hour before and explained to the bitch boss what happened and that I needed to find out how my brother is. She said I had two options come in or get fired. I chose the “fuck you stupid bitch my family takes priority over you” response. Needless to say it was kinda funny when I came in to pick up my last check.

15

I left the government last year due to politics, ethical reasons, lack of a promotion and inept management (trust me, that is the extreme short version). After 10 years it changed to something out of a bad movie. I took vacation, did an interview, got hired, and came home and wrote my letter of resignation with reasons. I then did the week long process of checking out, with nobody being the wiser and when all was ready, I hit “Send” on the email, mass sending my LoR to the world, turned off the computer, dropped a hard copy on the director’s desk on my way out and went home. My partner forwarded the mass amounts of confused and panicked emails to me and meeting notes. It felt so sweet, and still does when I get the occasional phone call from my old boss for information. But it was pure heaven to learn that they had to hire 3 people to do what I did, and the deflated sigh from the boss when I told him that I finally understood that not promoting me was so cost effective and was for the benefit of the government:)

16

Thanks, these are some dramatic/funny/inspiring stories. I’m glad I asked.

*“Take this job and shove it… I ain’t a-workin’ here no more.” *

17

I’ve told this story before, but here I go again: I had a comfy (but dead-end) part time job at a retail store. When I was hired, I made it clear (on my application) that I was UNAVAILABLE on Sundays. No reasons given, just that I was not available. (I go to church on Sundays, but that’s no one’s business.) I was working all Saturdays, and yukky evening hours all week, all I asked was that I could count on not working Sundays.

This went along fine for a while, until the Passive-Agressive Boss decided to not honor my Sundays off. She didn’t think going to church was a “good enough” reason. (This is the same woman who wanted me to leave my handicapped sister and friend alone at home - with unreliable phone service - on the DAY of the Northridge Quake. Needless to say, I didn’t go to work.)

P-A-B (Passive-Aggressive Boss) got her flunkies to question me about my weird distaste for working Sundays. I was even called “religious fanatic”. I just kept on saying, “Look. I was hired with Sundays off. I don’t work Sundays. The reasons why are not an issue.” Didn’t make any difference, they still thought I should work Sundays.

One day PAB just scheduled me for Sunday anyway. When I told her I couldn’t work it, she breezily said “This is retail. Work on Sunday, or find someone to cover you.” I thought about it for 15 minutes, and then gave my notice. She was really shook up. All her flunkies were really shook up. This was clearly not what they expected. But it was a good feeling. I heard that about a month after I quit PAB was fired. For what, I have no idea.

18

I worked at a groccery store. The owner was an extremely nice guy-a little cheap, but he treated us all great, was really understanding. Unfortunately, one of the managers was an A Number One Prick. We’ll call him Dickweed.

Well, Dickweed didn’t like me because I never let him intimidate me, or talk down to me like he did to everyone else. One night some customer came through my line, and bought some chicken, which was really badly packaged, as usual-over stuffed into a too small tray and wrapped very clumsily, with chicken juice dripping EVERYWHERE. Now, everyone knows what a fucking health hazard that is. And she said that to me, when I got out some paper towels to wipe it up-I totally agreed with her, had to sponge off my register, and everything-hey, I put food-plain unwrapped produce there-it’s NOT FUCKING SANITARY!

Dickweed heard me agree with her, called me over to the customer service booth, and preceeded to yell at me about what an attitude I had, and how DARE I badmouth the store to a customer. I left the office in tears, a customer asked me what happened, I told him. He left, and Dickweed yelled, “Kathi, get in the office!” And I lost it. I yelled, “Leave me alone!” I ran to the back, called my aunt to come pick me up, stomped back upfront, threw my smock on the counter, and yelled, “I’m leaving!”

Dickweed still works there-despite complaints that he’s hit on some of the female workers. Despite the fact that customers don’t like him, and that he’s an ass. I don’t know WHY the owner lets him do it! He’s such a nice guy, but the managers there all suck!
Yeah, that’s you, GEORGE! BITE ME!!!

God, do I hate that man. Sorry.

19

Yep. Didn’t set off fireworks but sure put down some lethal tripwires that did the job later.

I appointed interim acting director; in due course the new director was hired amidst great ballyhoo and public celebration. Background: I made it very publicly clear I didn’t WANT the job–privately, you couldn’t have given it to me on a silver platter–but that didn’t help. The new director was instantly hostile.

With a howling 2 weeks on the job, she reviewed a routine performance evaluation I’d done and ORDERED me to basically trash the employee. No grounds, no documentation and no knowledge. Her real problem? The employee was black. For those who scoff, her ingrained prejudice was more than amply borne out over time.

I refused. I was exempt–outside the union, management and totally “at will”. I told her than any changes she wanted would have to appear over HER signature. She wouldn’t endorse my version and I wouldn’t change a word, so the evaluation just hung in official limbo. Then the sabotage and harrassment started. It was unmitigated hell.

I sent out resumes the next day but it took 3 weeks to nail a new job, interviewing, physicals, etc. I gave the customary 4 weeks notice, took 3 of 'em out of unused vacation and BLEW. 5 minutes after I left official employment I clued in the employee she was trying to trash and offered to serve as a witness in any legal action. Then I quietly tapped every invisible but lethal contact, power grid, network I had access to.

Outcome? The neurotic amoral bitch treated almost everyone badly. Friends, co-workers, good folks. ::grieving:: I escaped; they were caught in hell. A lot left. But they banned together, kept decent lines and The Bitch was herself FIRED–amidst public ballyhoo–about a year later.

Would I do the same again? Absolutely. And no, I couldn’t “afford” it then either. My personal life was in chaos, sole breadwinner, medical and legal bills out the wazoo–very close to a crumbling edge. In some ways desperation helps–“the immenent prospect of being hanged.” What WASN’T affordable was the lifelong, 4 a.m.
I-hate-myself shame of playing along.

Veb

20

I walk off all the jobs I quit. I always either have a new job starting or don’t need one because I’m moving to another area.

They have never failed to get my final check to me.