When I went back to school to get my teaching degree, I worked evenings as a food delivery driver. At the end of one shift, I got cashed out, and I told them, “Thanks. This is my last shift.”
But it’s only sort of fitting the OP. See, the delivery company didn’t hire deliverers as employees. They called us “independent contractors,” and by so doing could avoid having liability insurance on our cars, guaranteeing us minimum wage, covering social security, etc. The fiction was that they would call us during certain hours and offer us delivery trips, which we were free to accept or reject.
It was probably an illegal arrangement; if I’d had the time or energy to file a complaint, I probably would have been entitled to back wages and social security and the like. But it wasn’t worth it, so instead I took them at face value and told them that, as an independent contractor, I would decline to take future contracts from them. No quitting involved!
I worked for three days once operating a pug mill - a device that looks like a big meat grinder where you pour clay powder and water into the top, and the machine grinds out potter’s clay at the end. There was a bonus level of production you could achieve to actually get above minimum wage, but, though I was young and strong at the time, I could never even get close. After three days of going home with my nose full of clay, I went to the boss and told him the job wasn’t for me. He understood, and gave me a job managing the comic book store that he owned instead. Bonus!
Later in life, I had been laid off from a route sales job with no projection as to when or if I might be called back. So I took a greatly inferior route sales job (more hours, harder physical work, less money) with a company in a completely different industry. On a Friday after I had been with the new job for a couple of months, the original job called and wanted me to start back the following Monday. I went to my boss at the end of the day and told him I was done. I felt kind of bad about that one, because he wasn’t a bad guy.
Then there was the time I gave a two-week notice on a job, and the boss called to inform me that the following day would be my last day, but they would pay me for the term of my notice. No problem there, and we parted amicably. They even called me a few years later to see if I wanted to return, and I was interested. But when I pre-interviewed, I expressed some of the concerns that had led me to leave in the first place, and I got the sense that those weren’t things they wanted to hear. Never heard back from them, which was OK. I still respect the company and would recommend them as a place to work, just not for me.
Back in 1998 I worked as a Warranty Claims Officer for a heavy equipment dealer. I worked in the service department along with the mechanics and parts people. The inventory system they used looked like something from the 70s. You couldn’t correct errors and had to notify the chief accountant to do it.
We rented out Rock Teeth, attachments that go on excavator scoops that break up rock. We had no way of accurately keeping track of them in the inventory system if somebody was actually renting them. One day the company president called me up and berated me because the counts didn’t match. No matter what I said in my defense, it was the wrong thing to say. I eventually said “I’m confused as to what to do when items are rented out.” Rather than help me with the problem, the prez said “Well if you’re so confused, maybe we should let you go.” I said “You better let me go then, because I’m not working here anymore. Fuck off.” I hung up, left the office and never came back.
The only guilt I felt was leaving my coworkers in the lurch. Nobody else knew how to do my job. They even called me later and offered to pay me to show somebody how to do it. I said no thanks.
Yes, but there were extenuating circumstances, and the job was peripheral to the central issue. Otherwise, No, I never walked off a job without notice just to be leaving the job. I have, I suppose, left on very shot notice, but not without explaining the circumstances to my employer to mitigate any harm to his business…
As a kid working nights at the candy counter at the local movie theater, the boss took a disliking to some of my friends who were picking me up after work. Late 60’s and my friends were a bunch of long haired hippie freaks with motorcycles. Weren’t we all? The reason my “friends” were picking me up is that one of them was my brother. Boss told me he was going to call my Mom and tell on me. Seriously, “tell on me.” Threw the keys to the candy counter at him and walked out.
No
That said, I am (moderately pleasantly) surprised that so many of my fellow Dopers did as I did. I always thought that I was a lone rebel (or petulant teenager, hard to tell the difference sometimes) and no one else did things like that.
I will not feel guilty when I quit without notice tomorrow…when I win Powerball…
but seriously- yes- three
Worked at a credit card company - had already been there 7.5 years and I was late to work- I was handed a write up. Management had changed and I HATED the vibe that had overtaken the department like a curse. I worked too hard and did too much to be written up for being late since I was exempt and was on call through 3am at times!!! So I went straight to the AVP and said I was leaving. I moved my stuff first, took me 4 trips to my car to load all my crap since I had been there so long.
the other two times were after I figured out the jobs were not for me, receptionist for a gutter company and skip tracing for a vehicle location company- too shady.
I was pregnant with my first and wanted a part-time job to pick up a little money for baby expenses. I was offered a bookkeeping job at an appliance repair shop (yup, I’m that old). It was easy, the money was ok, and I thought I’d made a sweet landing, until the beginning of the third week when the owner called me into his office, pushed aside a rug, pulled up a floorboard and showed me the ‘real’ books.
Yup, he was laundering money like crazy. Never found out for whom. Didn’t ask. Just packed up my handful of personal belongings at the end of the day, left and never went back.
Sort of. The summer after college, I got a part-time admin job at a translation agency/language school (I wasn’t looking for a FT permanent job because I was leaving the country in the fall for a study abroad program). When I arrived for my first day, I was handed a noncompete agreement that would have prohibited me from working for any language school or translation agency for five years. I was told that if I didn’t sign it, I couldn’t work there. Considering that my career plan at the time was to be a professional translator/interpreter, I considered that a little limiting for a PT receptionist job. I walked out and never went back.
I worked a job at a park that I hated. Basically everyone hated it, and we always made jokes about when we would quit. One day the shift manager (who was a giant bitch) just walked out, got in her car, and never came back. I think there was kind of the idea that if she could do it, anyone could.
Anyway, I got myself lined up for a new job but the new job didn’t start for sixty days. For context: Everyone lived in these shitty little trailers in the park, and because they gave us food and housing they paid us next to nothing. Anyway, I was up late one night listening to people party and being loud and it was very obnoxious, and eventually I just realized: Why am I here? I have enough money, I have a new job on the way, I’m not friends with any of these people… So why do I keep showing up for this?
That night I drove off and never came back. This was my first year away from home, but I still had a room in my parent’s house and visited on weekends. They were surprised to wake up that morning and find me sitting there eating cereal.
I did feel guilty about it later. I knew that they were short-handed to begin with, and me taking off would only have made things worse. On the other hand, I wasn’t very good at my job to begin with and didn’t care about it, so they might have got somebody better suited for it. Anyway, it took me a few years before I finally got over it.
I once had a terrible job in AM radio news (which also included babysitting the automation) at a station which had incredible turnover, even for radio, thanks to bad hours, low pay and an exploitative boss. After I was turned down for a couple days time off to see my family around the holidays, I gave them three days notice and left.
I still feel regret - for not having just walked out at the end of a workday.*
:eek::eek::eek:
Oh thank god. :smack:
*I worked there a few months before "WKRP in Cincinnati"began airing. Weirdly, we had a sleazy sales director named Herb, and the boss was known around the station as “The Big Guy”.
Well, I did quit one job with very little notice, and no other job lined up. Only time I’ve ever done that. It would take to long to explain, but it’s the only job I hated so much I couldn’t tough it out for two weeks. Not the work, it was some of the co-workers.
That I would have had access to client lists and that sort of thing. The agreement as written would have prohibited me from even working as a freelancer. I decided that for a job that paid not much more than minimum wage, it wasn’t worth arguing. And I had a better job in less than a week.
Years ago, after a long-running dispute with a supervisor. I had moved to a new subdivision within the company, after quitting once (with proper notice and stuff. The supervisor had made me fire someone who, first of all, wasn’t even my employee, and more importantly, shouldn’t have been fired. It was bullshit. I cried while I delivered the news to the colleague, and then went directly to the supervisor’s office and gave my 2-week notice.) About a year later, I got a phone call offering me a new job with that company, with a raise, promotion, and different supervisor. Got another promotion within a few weeks. Loved my colleagues, loved my job.
And then the former manager got a promotion that made him my grandboss. I stuck it out for a while, but one morning, as I was doing the end-of-month billing, the grandboss stuck his head in my office - which was really just an alcove off the back hall - and commented that the area really needed to be vacuumed. I grabbed the radio and told our Houseman to come vacuum after he finished with the public areas of the hotel. A little while later, my direct manager came to me and told me apologetically that he’d been ordered to write me up, because I didn’t jump up and find a vacuum when the district manager mentioned that the area needed cleaning. I told Charlie to go ahead, and finished the paperwork. Hobbled back to his office about 45 minutes later - I had a serious foot injury at the time - and handed him a stack of invoices to go out, plus my keys and a schedule for my department for the next 2 weeks.Told him to call me personally if he needed help with the accounting program or the property build program, because I was the only person in the company who knew how to run either. Asked for my write-up, so that I could add my notes and sign it. Wrote my response: [Grandboss] can kiss my ass." Signed, and left. Cried all the way home, because I loved my job and hated to leave it, but I still feel justified. The CEO of the company called the next day, asking whether I’d reconsider, and I told him with real regret that I simply couldn’t do it again.
The manager who accepted my keys put in his own notice the following week, also because of the grandboss’ micro-management. The other 2 key managers quit within 2 months.
When I was a kid, I had a job at a drive in. I was the “grill boy”, frying patties. The boss’ son was the “bun boy” who was supposed to have all the buns lined up with the correct condiments and so on. We were super busy one day and were getting more and more backed up because bun boy was slacking off big time. Boss came back and started yelling at me to pick up the pace. I pointed out the piles of patties ready without buns and he yelled louder. I took off my apron, tossed the spatula to him and said “It’s all yours chief” and left. Never felt better.
Couple times, both of which involved sales calls (one telephonic, one door-to-door) for companies that turned out to be not exactly honest with us new hires.
One time. It was a temp job. I had been hired to sell tickets at a music festival out of a booth. Me and three other people sold ticket for about 6 hours. Thousands of tickets at $10 a pop. I offered to gather up all the cash and take it to the manager’s trailer. One of the other 3 people I had been working with yelled at me to hurry and get back. I got pissed off, said fuck it, and just got in my car and drove home.
Once. It was a crap dishwashing job and I was 17. Every single person who held that position prior to me did the exact same thing, and I suspect all the subsequent ones did, too. It left me with life-long zero sympathy for anyone who ever uttered the phrase “You just can’t get good help these days.”
