Ever quit a job in protest/anger?

[Tuckerfan]

Two, in fact, within months of one another. The first one was a book warehouse I’d been working at for nearly seven years. The company had really started going downhill after about my second year and things just got progressively worse. They went from nearly 3,000 retail outlets to less than 1,000 in five years, and I kept telling my bosses what was wrong, but they’d never listen to me, and when I’d give them a suggestion about how things could be improved (Gee, you know if you guys computerized all this like everyone else, it could be done waaay faster.), their response was that it was “technologically impossible” :rolleyes: Then they’d “target” me (i.e. follow me around zealously notating any mistakes I might make), this went on for years. Things really started going downhill the last couple of months that I was working there. They began cutting everybody’s hours back and I took a second job as a bullet-catcher in a stop-n-rob to make ends meet. At the warehouse, I was one of the few people who’d been there for more than a year, so they began tagging me for shitty jobs and bitching because I couldn’t get them done in time (mind you, these were jobs that I had no training in and no one else had ever done them either, so its not like you could really say that I wasn’t doing them in a timely manner). Finally, they put me on one too many warnings and I told them that I quit. They couldn’t grasp what I meant and didn’t “get it” until I didn’t show up the next morning. (I got lots of cheers and hugs from my fellow coworkers when I said “goodbye” to them on my way out, though.)

The second job I quit was being the bullet-catcher. There were these punk kids who thought it was fun to come into the store and cuss me out in front of the other customers so I told them that they weren’t allowed in the store any more. The assistant manager had a crush on the punks and told me that I “couldn’t bar anyone from the store.” I said, “Excuse me, but I’ve been told from day one that I can bar anyone I so choose. You can tell the manager I quit.” I was planning on quitting anyways as they were supposed to promote me, but never did, and the assistant manager just gave me the reason to finally do it.

[Nymysys]

Having quit my catering job in SmallSouthernCollegeTown, Illinois, I was lucky enough to find another one. I didn’t really need to work while going to college (I was already making money doing the acting/modeling thing), but I really, really enjoyed catering. Finding a second job in such a small area population-wise was a boon.
Or so I thought!

After working there for two weeks and listening to umpteen “nigger” jokes, I started to plot. Finally, my day came. Standing around at a wedding, the whole crew was there. It was the lull between serving the dinner and cutting the cake. I was ready for chicks to do what chicks do during this time. Yes, they started talking about their men. I piped up, just as perky as you please, “Hey, my boyfriend and I just got our pictures made! Who wants to see them?” Of course, the sounds of affirmative quacking filled the back kitchen. As the picture of me and my 6’9" 250lb BLACK boyfriend circled the room, you could have literally heard a pin drop.

I waited until my picture was returned, then suddenly remembered I’d forgotten my apron in the car. Never went back. Sometimes satisfaction is so, so sweet.
Boyfriend and I had a good laugh about remembering from then on to preface “boyfriend” with “black” so as not to confuse the rascists.

[Ennui]

Just last summer. I hate doing roofing, but my neighbor is a roofer and almost always can use an extra set of hands. My main job was slow but my neighbor was taking the week off, he did however know a guy who could use me. Before he gave me the phone number he warned me this guy was a major A hole. I wanted the money so made the call.

The guy was happy to have me and set me up for the next day, he was pleased that I had my own pickup and ladder. I met him at the job, a two story home, full tear off and re-shingle. First thing was, he didn’t have a truck and wanted to use mine to get materials while I started tearing off the old roof. He pitched a fit that I wouldn’t let him, a stranger drive off with my truck. Turns out he blew his credit with all the supply houses and had to pay cash for materials (red flag #1). We drove together to get the supplies.

We get back and get ready to tear off the old roof, but he doesn’t have a dumpster for the old roof (flag#2), or tarps to cover any land scapeing. We pull it off anyway and dump the stuff right on some nice bushes. There’s some roof rot but he tells me that at the price he bid for the job, they don’t get any wood work. I was about to start ripping out the old flashing and he freaks because I wasn’t trying to save it, it was rusted crap and shouldn’t have been reused. But he wanted to save a few dollars by keeping it.

We start laying out the roof felt and he tells me to only lay it around the edges, which is a rip-off to the customer, and the stuff is cheap. That was the final flag, I reminded him he agreed to pay me in cash, he starts yelling that I hadn’t finished the day yet. I told him I wanted to be paid for the time I’d spent, then I’d finish the day, and he tries to pass me a check. If no supply house would take his check why should I?

I climbed down from the roof and dropped my ladder (the only one we had). He was screaming at me while I loaded my tools in my truck, I was nice enough to make sure he had his cell phone and I put a bottle of water in the tool bucket where he could pull it up to the roof. I left his ass up there and drove away.

I got home and went next door to apologies to my neighbor who got me the job, told him what happened. He just laughed and handed me a cold one. Asked me why did I think it was that the guy didn’t have anyone else working with him. It was strange, you don’t want to be two story’s up with no one around to call for help if you fall. Turns out I was just about the last person in town willing to work with that guy.

I wonder if he had anyone to call to help him down, or if he had to break a window to get the house.

[soulmurk]

Unfortunately, I do it a little too often.

Few years ago I worked as a laborer for a concrete company. After a few months on the job they implemented a rule stating all workers had to wear hard hats.

My beef with the new rule was that it was summertime and considering that the only danger to my head was an 80+ pound bag of concrete mix falling on it, a hardhat was more than just uncomfortable, it was downright silly.

Out of spite for the new rule I wrote in permanent marker on it something to the effect of, “This is my hardhat. I have to wear it because some pencil pushing prick deemed it necessary. Have a nice day.”

Turns out that the pencil pushing prick was my bosses father.

He had a hissy fit but I stubbornly held firm to my right to free speech and wouldn’t give in and cover up or otherwise erase my statement. He would not relent his position, so I threw my hardhat and proceeded to walk home to NJ from Staten Island.

Ah the impetuousness of youth.

You’d think I’d learn. Just recently I quit my job driving long haul trucks in much the same fashion.

After going about 36 hours with only 3 hours of sleep, and still running late for a 1am delivery, I pulled over and went to sleep rather than kill someone or drive off the road.

Waking up 8 hours later to the satellite message receiver in my truck I called my dispatcher as requested, and he proceeded to yell and moan about my being late.

His berating pushed me over the edge of tolerance for the job, so I got a cup of coffee at the truck stop and ended up dropping the truck off at a safe spot, packing all of my things and catching a bus from Los Angeles to Spokane via Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Butte.

But that’s a whole other story.

I think I need to learn to quit when I’m closer to home.

[Badtz_Maru]

My first job, actually.

My Dad knew a woman who managed a local truck stop. She told him they would hire me as a cashier, but they wanted me to work Friday-Sunday doing janitorial-type work, mopping the store, cleaning up oil spills on the parking lot, mowing, etc. It wasn’t what I wanted to do but I wanted a job, so I managed to get through 24 hours of it. I showed up on Monday morning ready to be trained for the cashier position when the manager tells me they don’t need any more cashiers, that I was to remain a truck stop janitor. I never came back and the bitch complained to my Dad about me, but he understood where I was coming from.

[Hugh_Jass]

I’m glad I’m not the only rash person in the world. I quit my job last April. I worked in technical publishing as an editor. Long hours. 12 hour days as a regular thing. Saturday’s too. We were approaching our deadline. Actually, we had passed our deadline. Our books were supposed to go to the printer in late March, but hadn’t. Not really our fault. Not totally. We still didn’t have all the information we needed to make the books complete. But my boss, a classic type A personality, kept coming up with bright ideas on how to lay out the books. So I spent most of my time reconfiguring and relaying out books that should have already gone to the printer. If you are in the publishing world, you know that massive changes that late in the game can only mean mistakes. So, it was no surprise that I made some mistakes. And my boss let me know how bad I screwed up. Then she complained about how I only sworked for 4 hours on Saturday. That was the final straw. I quit. Packed up my things and walked out.

It was too rash of me. I couldn’t seperate my work life from my personal life, so all these little nagging things took greater significance. And the economy is in the toilet, now, so I’m having a hard time finding another job.

Ah well.

[bdgr]

Several

First, I worked as a dayshift manager for Dominoes. I had pissed off one of the other store managers, because I asked him to leave my employees alone(he worked at another store, but would come into our store during the day, and boss people around.) I wound up working for him, and he fired me for some bullshit reason. My old manager re-hired me. I come in one day, and find that they have made the guy who fired me manager of my store. I quit on the spot.

I worked for Tandy for a while, as tech on thier Xenix machines. I was doing three times the work of all the other techs(they had figured out that nobody cared how much work we did…I still thought it mattered). They had promised me a raise after 90 days(the starting pay was really low), and then when the 90 days was up, they told me I was not getting a raise because I was 3 minutes late a couple of times and I had a bad attitude. I stewed over this for a day, and then at break time the next morning, me and one of the only other techs who new what we were doing got up and walked out. The supervisor hit the roof from what I hear.
The last one really doesnt count, because I gave a few days notice. But…
I worked for a fairly large company that does Aircraft training and builds flight simulators.(the big emperial walker looking ones). I took over a position that basically handled shipping computers all over the world to thier training centers, and repaired the machines that broke in the field.(they would ship them in,and I would cross ship them a working machine. I also did purchasing. In the first six months I doubled the productivity of the dept, and saved them over $250,000 by finding cheaper sources for thier hardware. My boss, however, was recently divorced, and had gotten in the habit of only promoting females…incompotent females(there were plenty of competent women who worked for this company, but for some reason he seemed to favor certain ones who were less compotent, but nicer to him). He put one over me who absolutely hated me. She tried her best to get me fired, even tried to set things up when the boss was out of town so it would look like I was stealing from the company(luckily I kept very accurate record of where everything was shipped). Eventually, I got sick of it and left, but I did give a couple of days notice.

[Gatopescado]

terminal hot head, me. i’ve done this at least 4 times that i can think of off the top my head, and there may be a couple more that i can’t remember. the only one with a short enough story is this:

took a part time, evening job as bartender (pay close attention to that title). went okay for a few nights, but then the nightly clean-up duties expanded from the bar area to moping the kitchen and finally to cleaning the toilets! i told the boss that i dont even clean my toilet at home, and she certainly couldn’t afford to pay me what it would take to clean public ones. no one ever mentioned quiting or being fired, but i stopped going, and she stopped putting me on the schedual.

related strange story: the building this took place in went out of business and was damaged by fire. the new business that opened up after the rebuild/remodel hired me and that job didn’t last either. got fired when a married friend of the owners complained about me (she made up a bunch of crazy shit) after i rebuffed her sexual advances during a poker party at her house!

okay, one more: was working at a fucking radio shack (oh, the shame!) and was always being transferred to different stores to fill in when managers quit. (this happened alot when they changed the way bonus’ were paid) i was always stuck in the shit places, never made a dime and worked 50-60 hours a week. ended up in a mall store (usually good $$) during a remodel, basiclly doing construction at min wage, building the damn store. as soon as it was ready for a grand opening (potential for killer bucks) they transfer me to Butt-Fuck Ghetto Town. i said, “no way!” and never showed up ever again! they ended up having to pay unemployment through a loophole in the rules!

i’m alot older and wiser now. now i don’t work for assholes so i don’t have to walk out! (wait a minute! I’M an ASSHOLE!)