I’ve heard several people who were critical of their supervisor suggest that they longed for the day when, after years of holding their tongue, they would tell their boss what they really think of him, in front of everyone. Presumably, this would occur on the day that they were laid off or they decided to quit.
So far no one has followed through on this, as most of the disgruntled employees I’ve befriended have resigned non-confrontationally, the stated reason being that they did not wish to ‘burn their bridges.’
Have you ever witnessed a coworker become enraged and throw a fit upon their departure-- ranting, swearing, spewing hatred and venom, hurling insults, and creating a huge scene?
Yeah, that was my first thought also.
While working at a power house in West Virgina in the mid 70’s the higher ups decided to set up another crew of laborers. So they picked this hard working, eager acting young guy to be the foreman. The first morning, at the shack where they all gethered he informed them that, “I’m not like the rest of you. I’m going places and this is just my first step up.” About a week later a guy got a job much closer to home and quit. Before doing so he kicked some serious shit of of young and eager.
I saw a woman dump out all her bosses files on the floor before walking out. She was nuts. The boss just stood there watching, then called security to take pictures.
I was working for a dotcom in 1999-2001, and we sublet part of the building to other dotcoms. One day the building was on a precautionary lockdown, because one of the tenants was laying off staff. Supposedly one guy’s response to the layoff was to rip the company sign off the front door, break it in half, drop it in the toilet and defecate on it.
Oh, hell, yeah. I used to work at a factory. Periodic breakdowns with people quitting, spewing venom at supervisors/bosses was a regularity. However, in a small town with nowhere much to run to, and certainly no jobs that paid as much, there were often whipped pups that came trudging reluctantly back, tears stinging their eyes, as they started back off at the bottom.
Most of my department believed the same would happen to me, venom, whipped puppiness, and all; however, I left quietly, with a low, unspoken hostility - and I stayed the hell gone. The trick with that place is to put 3000 miles between you and it. And stay there.
Haha. I worked in a pizza joint for years. Two memorable ones.
One was a guy that had worked there for probably six years. He was lazy because he’d been there so long and very sarcastic but good at his job when he wanted to be. It was like 5:30 in the afternoon, not too busy. He was sitting up front drinking a beer. (This was not too unusual there, just usually happened after 9) Our boss told him to get to work and somehow it escalated to a full-blown screaming match. It was hilarious. Screaming matches at work weren’t that weird, but this one was a doozy. We all just stopped and stared. It involved a lot of curse words and my boss’ face turned crimson. It was a I quit/you’re fired thing.
The other was pretty much the same, a girl that had worked there for seven years picked a fight with the same boss on the wrong night, a very busy Friday night. That one was really really funny. It got personal really fast. This was four or five years ago and I think she has picked up some shifts there because she went back to school and needed extra cash. You really have to do a LOT to not be able to come back.
These were only funny because while it was a real job as in it provided income they needed, but they didn’t need the particular job and went on to find better ones right away. And I didn’t really care for either of the people fired. The best fights were usually between the drivers though - man oh man. I missed a lot of those but always heard about them.
I threw what I considered “hush money” at the owner of the business and told him he could shove it up his ass because I’d never work for him again, and that I was walking out that very second.
So I guess I haven’t really witnessed a hostile departure from a workplace, but I did execute one myself.
A guy in my office got mad at the Big Boss over something personal that happened outside the office. He went to the BB’s office, started screaming at him and when the BB said “Get the hell out of my office” proceeded to turn the BB’s desk completely over. Then jerkass goes to his own office.
I called the police, they had to come and remove him, and we won a lawsuit against the guy.
And we’ll make appropriate callbacks and give ratings, of course.
The last place I worked at, I was out sick for a couple of days once. When I came back, I learned that I had missed a fairly dramatic departure. As I recall: A certain co-worker, known for his firey opinions and outspoken expression of his opinions, had called a meeting with a few first-line managers over a certain part of system design. He presented his case, and the managers said essentially, “This’ll take too long, it won’t go into the current version.” He argued his point for a while, escalating into his usual firey drama, and he ended with: “Well then, I quit!” And promptly stormed out.
Two days later he asked for his job back. (They said no.)
Hi-tech gets its share of stressed out crazy people who one day up and quit in a blaze.
I remember one guy in particular. He wasn’t that stressed out, but he was crazy. He was a trust fund kid who had delusions of grandeur. Lots of fun to work with since he thought he was the only person in the world who could write decent code, and in reality his code sucked because he’d do things like use the register instead of variable names “to speed things up.” Um, yeah. That GUI-to-DB subroutine really needs to be speeded up, since we all know that standard code functions slower than people can type.
Anyway, he’d been having problems with the bosses for a while, and one day they had the audacity to ask him for his social security number. No clue why they didn’t have it, since the guy had worked there for a couple years. He came storming out of boss’s office, screaming about how he didn’t need a fucking social security number and even if he had one it was nobody’s business but his own.
Well, dammit, all I get is the nut cases. Let’s see…
One who was escorted out of the building by the police after a gun went off when she dropped her purse. I still don’t understand how that caused the gun to go off. Plus, a pistol was found in her desk. That was especially scary because she did have a very short fuse.
One who was escorted out by the police because she refused to believe she was fired.
One who after being fired walked back in his office and locked the door. He came out after being told the police had been called and left before the policeman got there. He tried to come back later to get some of his stuff but was told he wouldn’t be allowed back in, that his stuff would be boxed up and sent to him. Umm… you sorta barricaded yourself in an office… no you can’t come back in the building.
One who was fired and we thought left but was found an hour later sitting in a storage area. She didn’t want to leave because she didn’t want to tell her family she’d been fired, so she was hiding out until her usual time to go home. Was she going to go hide somewhere everyday? Would not her family notice eventually that she was not bringing home a paycheck?
One who got into a screaming cussin’ fit with her immediate supervisor and announced she quit, only to come wandering back in the next day like nothin’ ever happened. Said she didn’t mean it. Was told we took it that she did mean it and she no longer worked here. (YAY!)
Oh, and the one who was fired who periodically reapplies for jobs with us. Ok, we will occasionally rehire somebody but this one was fired because he didn’t do anything he was supposed to the whole time he was here.
Ya know, we know who would win this thread hands down don’t we? I mean, could we really top Maureen’s tale of the crazy fired co-worker?
How about ‘a big scene for a quiet bookstore with very quiet employees’?
I had a former co-worker, whom everyone hated, who did no work, leered at the girls, whined and bitched all the time, told 30-minute tales about his marvellous former high finance positions, and peed on the seat. He left in a huge huff after chewing out the assistant manager because he thought not enough was made of his fantastic abilities. He couldn’t even use our 1992 computers properly.
I’ve witnessed a few. The best one was an executive secretary (I may have told this story here). She gave proper notice and on her last day some of the guys took her out for lunch. I don’t think they ate anything, but I understand that Jagermeister was involved.
This particular lady had had a relationship with an exec on a different floor (not her own exec). He dated her for a few months, she was convinced he was “the one,” he dumped her and within weeks was engaged to a woman he had dated a few years previously.
She came back and told him exactly what she thought of him. She then went to her boss (who was a jerk) and told him what she thought of him as well. One of the guys who had taken her to lunch decided it might be best if he helped her collect her things and poured her into a cab before security needed to come do it.
My office had one woman… very strong Christian, a bit of a Jesus Warrior-type, very feisty and sarcastic but nice to everyone and fun to work with. After the department supervisor announced some new productivity targets, she evidently took it as a personal criticism, marched over to the supervisor’s office, slammed the door shut and started yelling. It quickly escalated to “I hope you die and burn in hell and the devil takes your soul” and so on. As I said she was a somewhat prickly person but no one quite saw that coming. Really for no reason too-- as far as I know no one had any problem with her performance before that.
I had one directed at me. A recently hired storeroom clerk went nuts when he found out that I seriously expected him to take orders from the Stores Supervisor, who was a woman. He started shouting , “You crazy! You crazy! I no take orders from woman! You crazy!!!” I calmly told him to clean out his locker and go, and he did, all the while continuing his ranting.
I witnessed a melt-down during a Physics final in college. About 45 minutes into the test, one student started moaning loudly. Then he sprang up and released a volley of invectives at the professor, that this test was impossible, etc etc. He then burst into tears and ran out. Probably should have studied a bit more…
I have been a supervisor for many years. It has happened a few times but the worst was the woman who typed a five page letter telling me every single thing that was wrong with my company, every employee and what THEY thought of me and the company and a business plan on how it could be better.
The person was an intern and worked with us for three months.
Her notes attacked so many people that I gave exactly none of it any consideration.
Two weeks later I got a call for a reference on her.
