It’s been a while but I remember a temporary job where someone quit because they weren’t allowed to tie up the microwave for a long time by cooking Stouffers frozen lasagna. There were a lot of employees and thus microwave time was at a premium.
Those meals are pretty good, but I think you can find something else to eat for a 3 month summer temp job.
No kidding! Or they could have been a decent specimen of humanity and waited until eveyone else had nuked their lunch for the usual requisite minute plus change.
Friend of mine didn’t quit a job so much as turn it down when he discovered he would not get the job’s housing allowance unless he could prove he was renting a place. As he, his wife, and their kid were living with the wife’s mother, there was no rental contract. Also, China has a specific legal requirement for something to be considered your rental contract so there was no way of faking up a contract. It was a pretty good job, too. Silly!
I didn’t work with her, but I once heard about a woman who quit her job when she found out the company’s headquarters had “666” as the street number.
The job was set up that you had a time frame to take lunch in, staggered among 3 groups. So, all the microwaves were in constant use. No flexibility to take a different lunch break outside of peak time. But, yes, dumb hill to die on.
I guess this is more of a Freak Flameout than a silly quit, but someone in my (at the time) programming group was constantly pulling their own late night hours, coming in at 2 or 3 pm the next day, constantly missing meetings. Finally the manager firmly told him: I want you here by 11am every day. Dude lost his temper, threw his badge at the manager, yelled “I QUIT” and stomped off. It was a scene. The next day he came by the building (an 18 story edifice) asking to see that manager, presumably to apologize. The manager told security on the 1st floor to turn him away. Last I heard he’d left the industry. I don’t think anyone in my group shed a tear, he was a difficult jerk with everyone.
Thought of another, 2 gamers were working at a another temp job I had. They would be up all night and sleep during break and lunch times. Yes, your break and lunch times are yours, but I agree with the manager that putting your head down and sleeping on the break room tables takes it a bit too far.
dunno if this exactly qualifies, maybe more stupid/dumb/ well duh! than silly, but had a guy quit because we required him to, you know, actually do the job we hired him to do. He had been working for us all summer doing office moves, which are generally not too strenuous. Towards the end of the season we asked if he could do a 3 day out-of-town household move. He agreed and complained the whole time about everything. Job was Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Granted we work long hours those days but there wasn’t any specially heavy or difficult items. The following Monday he calls in, exhausted, he says. Ok fair enough. Comes to work that Friday and gets put on a small job with me moving a few bulky items up some stairs. Nothing heavy, just a few book shelves. We do the job, get back to the shop and he quits. Because I’d been making him work too hard.
Back in the early 70s, in Australia at least, it was really easy to get a job. I got 3 in one day in 1972. In 1970, during my school holidays, I was working on a building site. One of the other labourers was asked to do something and just threw down his tools, told the foreman, “Don’t talk to me like that,” and walked off the site.
I met up with him a couple of weeks later. He was working somewhere else and confirmed that his only complaint was with the foreman’s tone. “You can’t let people treat you like shit just because they pay you,” was his reasoning. The good old days.
Had a friend who was six months without a job and told me he’d take anything. My job was currently doing a hiring spree so I told him how to apply. He aced the interview, aced the tests and seemed like the perfect candidate until the day before he was supposed to show up and he wound up quitting by phone.
Apparently he had called his supervisor to “lock in” his vacation days for vacations he already had booked. He would get three weeks of vacation days after his 90 day probation period, but apparently this wasn’t enough since he has FOUR weeks of vacations he had pre-booked when he still lacked a job and refused to budge on them, and they were four separate weeks too so it’s not like it was crucial he needed to take all 4 weeks off. So he quit and spent the rest of the year jobless but still going on all those vacations he pre-booked, then when the new year happened he finally got a job somewhere else.
I agree with him on that one. Maybe not for a single incident, but I’ve left jobs at the first sign of a critical, negative manager. Reminds me too much of my mother.
“I left because of my mother,” makes it sound more interesting.
I saw a teenage girl quit a fast food job on the first day because they asked her to wash dishes in the back.
“DO YOUR OWN DAMNED DISHES!” She yelled, as she literally walked off the job.
I was working in a restaurant. The expo called down to the fry station that he needed fries. The guy on fries said, “I’m busy”. Expo said he really needed those fries. Fry guy asked, “Do you think you could do better?” Expo replied, “Well, yeah, I could.” Fry guy said, “Then do it yourself!” and walked out.
More stupid than silly, but I knew a woman that was working at a local grocery store during one of those times when the economy was good and it was easy to get a job.
Her manager scheduled her to work on a holiday, I think it was Christmas Day. She demanded time and a half. The manager told her that she couldn’t authorize any changes in the pay rate but she could get her paid for a 12 hour shift if she worked eight hours.
This caused the woman to quit, complete with tantrum about how she wasn’t going to negotiate this and the dramatic storming out. I can only imagine how absolutely flabbergasted that manager was in that moment, probably more gobsmacked then I was when the ex-employee called me and told me the story. My absolute silence caused her to realize what she had done…Whoops, it would’ve been the same pay, right?
She went out the next day and got another job in another grocery store. I’m assuming none of the local grocers gave a math test as part of their hiring procedure.
Woman I know quit her well-paid position as a hospital radiologist/radiology instructor. She refused to wear a mask as required by her employer when the plague restrictions started. She decided to put her money where her mask should have been and walked.
Now she’s a MLM queen. If you need cleaning products or fake fingernails she’s got you covered.
Summer job in college. Working on an industrial paint crew. One day, one of the best guys in the crew, Joe, just sat down and refused to work. Several times, the foreman told him to get his gear and get to work. After about the 3rd time the foreman told him he was fired and head to the office to get his paperwork.
I asked one of the long time guys why Joe did that. He told me that Joe knew the number of days that he would need to be eligible for unemployment, and today was that day. So he refused to work in order to get fired, so he could collect. They said he’d be back once his unemployment ran out, this was his 3rd or 4th time he’d done this.
I don’t think I want to be covered in either product.
About 10 years ago my hotel got sold. Corporate brought in people to handle all the HR stuff. The woman was explaining pay, etc. and that our checks would either be direct deposit or on a prepaid credit card.
A maintenance guy I didn’t know objected to this. He wanted checks. He was told no. He said - and I heard him - “But if my check is direct deposit the government will know how much I make!” You should have seen the look on the Corporate HR person’s face.
He quit a day later when he found out they weren’t going to change just for him.
I knew someone that quit when her on the job injury claim was denied. On a rare 90 something day in the Seattle area, she walked the half mile or so to the parking lot after work. Barefoot. She burned the bottoms of her feet and could not walk. She tried everything to get the injury categorized as work related. They were all denied so she quit. About 2 years later she came back to work as a new hire, she lost the 6 years she had earned prior to quitting.
We used to have a pair of neighbors next door, one career civilian employee at the Pentagon and one who couldn’t hold a job for a few months at a time. The latter would invariably land a job – typically security – go on a drinking binge in early December then be all Johnny Paycheck by Christmas.
ETA: I don’t know what specific reasons she used for quitting but you can bet they were silly, having been thought up when she was drunk. Pretty sure she never got fired from any of those jobs, otherwise how’d she keep getting hired?