Most spectacular way in which you or a coworker has quit or been fired from a job

In My Humble Opinion
81

I had one of those. I was working retail and gave my notice. When the next schedule went up, I was still on it past my last day. I went to talk to my manager. Not only had she scheduled me, she scheduled me when I couldn’t possibly work because it was finals week and I had tests scheduled - so I couldn’t have helped her out if I wanted. She just kept saying “but I need you” and I kept saying “but my last day is Tuesday - and I have finals those nights anyway.”

So my last day I was still on the schedule. I later learned I’d been fired for not showing up.

82

I can’t believe I forgot this one:

Doug was my coworker and, for a very short time, my roommate. I was a cook and he was a dishwasher at a chain restaurant. I don’t think he was actually retarded, but he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.

Doug was one of those people who believed that every time anything went wrong for him, it was somebody else’s fault, or he was being harassed, or it was a conspiracy. I’m pretty sure this had more to do with his upbringing than any honest-to-goodness paranoid disorder. His older brother also worked with us, and some of the things he told me gave me the impression that, because he was a little slow, their mom was very overprotective of Doug and anytime somebody got upset over something he did, she would defend him with “It’s not his fault!”

If his favorite team lost a game, it was because the officials were cheating for the other team. If he performed poorly at work, it was somebody else’s fault. If he was playing a video game and things didn’t go his way, the game was “rigged”.

With all that, he had very poor impulse control. Why would he need it? If he screwed up it wasn’t his fault, and therefore there were no consequences.

Which leads me to how he finally got fired.

The company from time to time had “performance incentive” contests, and would hand out trinkets as “awards”. Doug managed to earn enough incentive points to be awarded a baseball cap with the company logo on it, and he took to wearing it while he worked. He worked swing shift and the manager of that shift never said anything about it. That went on for a few days, and then one day he was scheduled to work the day shift. The general manager saw him wearing the cap and told him he wasn’t allowed to wear it while he was working (which I’ll concede was stupid and made little sense, but if it’s company policy then it’s company policy).

Doug’s response to being asked to remove his hat was to walk out of the restaurant during the lunch rush, stand in front of the front door, place the hat on the ground, and set it on fire.

Yay, immediate termination and arson charges!

83

That reminds me of the brother of a friend of mine, a guy who never could really fit into society – he’d been in and out of prison a few times for non-violent crimes such as larceny. He got by by doing handyman-type labor like light construction and landscaping. My friend told me about one time when his brother was doing some sheetrock work when the lady of the house started complaining about the workmanship.

He just said, “You don’t like it huh? Here, let me fix it up for you,” and proceeded to tear down the sheetrock with his hammer. He then walked out of the house.

On the one hand, his work history was spotty at best. On the other hand, God knows I’ve felt like doing something like that before.

84

Nothing really spectacular on my end, but my last job, the whole department got laid off. I was in software QA, and they decided to relocate the entire operation to a different country. They let the manager know a week in advance, but he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone until the last day. Except that he and I carpooled together, and we got along well, so the day they told him, he told me on the drive home. It was an interesting week. The highlight was when my team lead stopped by on Thursday and asked how the testplan I was supposed to be working on (and hadn’t done anything with all week) was coming, and I told him, “I can guarantee you I’ll be done with it by Monday.”

More recently, at my current job, they laid off two of the team leads who had been there the longest. Our new manager had a farewell lunch for them. I’m sitting in the meeting room where we’re having lunch, and there’s a young guy sitting next to me, wearing a suit, whom I’ve never seen before. I ask him who he is, and it turns out, he’s being interviewed that day for a new test position. Inviting the recent college grad you’re interviewing for a new job, to the farewell lunch you’re having for your two most experienced employees? Classy!

85

I recently worked for a place that forgot they let me go! :smack:
I was let go about two months ago, and this week they’ve called me three times to ask if I can pick up a shift for someone who called out sick. The first time, I said, “Uh, I was let go back in May. Maybe you should ask manager if you were really supposed to call me.”
The dispatcher put me on hold for a few seconds, came back and apologized. Then they called me Wednesday - same conversation.
They called again this morning, and I repeated that I’d been let go some time back, and the Dispatcher (different one each time) claimed that no one told her. I couldn’t help myself - I commented, “Nice to see that nothing’s changed. No one knows what the hell is going on!” and hung up.

86

I had a can’t accept you quit employer.

I quit a full time day job because it was time to start work. The next week on a Monday night I get a call asking why I wasn’t showing up at work. I told the owner who was calling I quit last week and have been in school over a week. He told me I had to come into work because they need me. I told him attending High School was more important to me. The next Monday night we had the same conversation.

Somewhere in there I got told they employed me all summer so I had to keep working there and wasn’t allowed to quit. I had better be there the next day.

87

I had one of those too.

Late 70’s, in high school, working weekends at the Poppin’ Fresh Pie Factory (one of the companies that eventually got bought out by Baker’s Square - they recently closed that very store when they went tits up.)

I’d be there every Saturday and Sunday morning at 4am and work until about 5pm, doing weekend custodial work in the back where they made the pies. I started while they were still there, then they left at 7am and I cleaned up the place and recieved shipments.

Owner or Manager (I forget which) of the place was a real piece of work. Every freaking afternoon he’d come in, berate me for how I’d mopped the floor the last time I’d worked (never any complaints about anything else, just how I’d mopped the fucking floor) and demonstrate a new way for me to do it, then watch me do about 1/3 of it before leaving with threats and abuse. Always some new bullshit ‘pattern’ of mopping, different from the last time he showed me.

Finally, I got really sick of it and quit.

Two weeks later I got a call from the weekday custodian. He was getting tired of being made to come in 7 days a week and tried to make me come back. Would not take no for an answer, would not accept that I could and did quit. Accepted that the manager was a world class dick, just kept insisting that I had to come back and put up with it.

No.

88

I quit a full time day job because it was time to start work.

Should be.

I quit a full time day job because it was time to start school.

89

Interesting ways to leave a job? Yeah I have seen a few.
My 6th grade teacher used to ask some of the boys to stay after school. Yup he was a kiddie diddler.

I worked for Montgomery Weird back in the day. Our store had a personnel manager that was a self important little prick named Irv S. He would walk around the store before opening looking or so officious and make sure that there was someone in every department. On Saturday, he noticed there was no one in cosmetics. He picks up the phone and says “This is Mr. S give me an outside line” (no direct outside lines, we had a switchboard) (I was standing nearby talking so someone so I got to see this one)
He calls the department manager Alma who was scheduled that AM The conversation went like this
Mr. S Alma, this is Mr. S, you are scheduled this morning, why aren’t you here>
Alma: Or Mr. S, didn’t I tell you, I quit yesterday.
:eek:

There are others, but I will save them for later.

90

You know, it’s the strangest thing, but I just can’t seem to muster any sympathy for you.

91

I could see your point about some of those, but are you really not allowed to use the word “retarded” as a clinical-type (rather than insult) word anymore?

And why is it a problem to refer to the lessened intelligence and capabilities of the developmentally disabled? Isn’t that kind of the definition? Or were you objecting to her tone?

(I also think taking exception to the descriptors “hot” and “50 year [old]” is a bit ridiculous. Your point would have been better made sticking to the actual insults.)

92

I think this needs details.

93

Oslo: I think it’s all pretty self-explanatory. Just imagine that niblet_head is on a primetime sitcom and it all makes sense. Everyone was having sex with everyone else and eventually real life caught up to them and all the dominoes fell like a house of cards. Checkmate.

94

Is there a way to see what is actually written on the cake?

95

I was curious as to what kind of business Niblet was referring to. I had a very similar situation when I worked for a minor league sports team. Everyone in management was adults employed there full time, but obviously the people doing the grunt work were part time high school students who were looking for a summer job. Then color me unsurprised when there was an oddly disproportionate number of hot blonde teenage girls among those chosen.

Our radio announcer even mentioned once when they were hanging out together "What the hell is this?!?!?! Blonde teenage vixen night?!?!?"

96

There’s a link under the picture. From there:

"Dear Mr. Bowers,

During the past three years, my tenure at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard has been nothing short of pure excitement, joy and whim.

However, I have decided to spend more time with my family and attend to health issues that have recently arisen. I am proud to have been part of such an outstanding team and I wish this organization only the finest in future endeavors.

Please accept this cake as notification that I am leaving my position with NWT on March 27.

Sincerely,

W. Neil berrett"

97

niblet_head said in this post that it was a credit card customer service call center.

In the case of a minor league ball club, don’t discount the extremely likely possibility that applicants for the available jobs were disproportionately hot blonde teenage girls. Just look at how many pro ballplayers have hot blonde wives. A large percentage of whom they met at the ballpark while they were still in the minor leagues. If you want to hook up with an athlete, getting a job at the ballpark is a good way to increase your chances.

98

Because it has become so associated with the pejorative use for anyone who does anything stupid, retarded is not considered a polite term for someone who is developmentally or neurologically impaired/disabled. And the noun form (“a retard”) is never acceptable.

The way that it was used in that post was pretty clearly as much about the pejorative as the descriptive.

99

A couple years back at NBC studios a group of people found they had been laid off when they came back from work and their badges wouldn’t open the door. Supposedly there had been a mixup with security being informed too soon. However I heard from someone who worked there that there was a vendetta between a couple producers and one got the other’s staff fired, and this little stunt was a twist of the knife.

I work in on-air promo for TV networks, which involves your work being reviewed and approved by a VP before it goes to air. The VP at one place tended to avoid conflict, and if you were on the outs with him it could be hard to get time with him to get stuff viewed and critiqued. That can cause problems when there is a deadline to meet and you can’t get through that step in the process.

One producer was fed up and determined to quit. He decided to see how long he could sit and do nothing before someone said something. He and his editor spent 3 days surfing the internet before his VP sent another manager in to find out what was up.

100

I worked at a company doing tech support a long time ago. One of the guys on a different team got a job at Microsoft. So this guy has to quit the job he still had.

He did this by having every called format the drive on the computer. ‘Hi, I’m BOB*. Oh, I know how to fix that error. In dos type in format c:\ /y and press enter. Once that is done you’ll be good to go. If you have any problems just call back.’

He got through about 10 customers and finally got someone who knew enough to not format the drive. That customer called back and got a supervisor. The supervisor tracked down Bob and he was escorted out of the building.

I ended up working on one of the cases, helping a lady rebuild her system. That sucked.

Slee

*Not his real name though he apparently told the customers his real name multiple times.