We've all had a bad job, bad boss, or bad coworker at least once in our lives. Sometimes they cause us to lose our minds but rarely do they actually make us snap. However, when they do, it's a memorable experience, to say the least. We see it in movies when people quit in a dramatic fashion, but we never hear about it happening in real life.
But it definitely does happen, and it's typically more intense than the scenes in the movies. We wanted to hear the best and most insane "forget this, I quit" moments, so we looked throughout Reddit and found the best stories there are. This content was edited for clarity.
Shady Business Is Shady
“I was the IT department for a small company. A few times, I would go to the owners’ places and work on their computers there, like setup VPNs back to the office, and do things like that. It didn’t take long for that to morph into ‘come over tonight, my teenage daughter has an essay due and the printer isn’t working,’ and ‘little Johnny got his computer loaded with viruses again. Come fix it.’ I didn’t get paid extra for the house calls.
When I finally said, ‘Forget it, I quit,’ they wouldn’t accept my resignation, as though they had a choice. So I wrote a bridge burning letter detailing why I was leaving. House calls were the only point in the letter that they took issue with.
I remember the part that threw me over the top. The house calls were annoying but this was something else.
This was almost 20 years ago. We ran a lot of promotions and collected a lot of information about retailers. One of the company’s main assets is this thorough a list of small independent retailers in our market segment. We had more and better data than Google at the time. We started a new arm of the company which was only peripherally related to this. In order to get the word out, they wanted to contact this list.
Things like MailChimp didn’t exist yet and many of the retailers didn’t have email so we contacted them via fax. So I was asked to write a spamming program. The privacy policy under which we collected the retailer data explicitly forbade us from using the data in this way. One of the owners was also the legal counsel. He said to do it anyway. Shady business is shady.
This all came to a head around the same time as the house calls. I did write the spambot, but I did not document any of it before I left so hopefully they never figured out how to use it.”
No Raise, No Work
“I used to work nights as a cashier at a deli/convenient store. It was a pretty chill job. The manager who worked during the day quit so my boss asked me to switch and handle the manager’s responsibilities. I said sure, with a pay raise. He assured me it would only be for a week. So I said fine, I’ll do you the favor. So at that point, I would work 6 am-4 pm during the week and 6 am-11:30 pm during the weekends. The new times also involved A LOT more work. I would literally be running the entire store myself including orders, deliveries, inventory, a bunch of other things that I was not getting paid to do. I should also note that my boss didn’t even know how to work the register, let alone anything else that needed to be done.
Well, that week turned into a month. I went back into his office (which was a supply closet with a computer in it) to discuss a pay raise and he asked to take me out to dinner to discuss it. I said no. I told him he had another week to find someone. The next week went by and it was a Friday. I went up to him and asked him for either a raise or some sort of bonus for all that I’ve done. He asked about dinner again and I said no. He then said no to the raise or bonus.
So I told him I quit. He could show up Saturday and Sunday 6am-11:30 pm because I won’t be there. I was telling this to the man who doesn’t know how to open the register. I walked away and went back to the register.
He came up to me 10 minutes later, opened his wallet, and pulled out a $100 bill and gave it to me as my ‘bonus.’ I took it, put it in my purse and said, ‘Thank you! I’m still quitting, though.’ The look on his face was amazing. An hour later, I paid myself for the week and left.
I was still friends with one of the deli guys so it was a lot of fun to hear about afterward. Because I was so outgoing, we got some products that we sold for free (like an extra case of Pepsi or other drinks) and the customers would pretty much just come in for me so after that, a lot of people stopped coming in. His store was pretty expensive and the customers would come in and just chat with me for a bit and then buy something but always complain about the prices. So after I left, most of the regulars stopped coming in and he had to scramble to find someone else. He actually had to beg the old manager who had been there since the store opened and pretty much built the store but was only paid $9 an hour, to come back to help. It was terrible and I loved hearing about it!
He never came in on the weekends so I would just pay myself from the register on Sundays so I wasn’t doing anything illegal when I took out my last pay. There was a sheet we have to fill out for ‘Pay Outs’ and that was included in the sheet. All money was accounted for, no stealing. I did the same thing that day because that’s just how I usually did it.”
“Oh Well, They’re Getting Sued Now”
“The company promised a retreat in Banff because we hit our sales targets. Two weeks before the trip, they say it’s been canceled, with no plans to pay us out for the pooled bonus that would have gone towards that trip. On the weekend of the trip, a manager posted a photo of her and other managers in Banff. But oh no, it wasn’t work related! They said it was for a managers birthday (even though one of the managers that went absolutely hated the one who was allegedly celebrating the birthday). I quit shortly after.
I have so many horror stories from that place. They politely warned me about the owner and how he wasn’t always workplace appropriate. I never thought that meant he’d harass all of the women on a weekly basis. Oh well, they’re getting sued now.”
This Job Was A Waste, Literally
“I once worked as an air quality monitor. We would primarily get involved with sewage contractors. One day, we’re on a job and there was these huge cylindrical ‘digestion’ tanks with tons and tons of human waste inside of them. They were each around 30 feet tall. One of the contractors had to perform work on the roof of one of these tanks. I was to be harnessed and standing beside the guy monitoring for any VOC’s. There were concerns that the roof would collapse, and even though I was harnessed, I would literally fall into a huge pile of boiling, bubbling poop. I said, ‘Forget this, I quit!’
The smell was disgusting. It would just linger well after I got off the shift. No matter how many times I showered, there was a hint of that horrible smell. The only plus side to the job was that I would get the subway car to myself on the way home because I stunk so bad. I also got ‘sewer sick,’ and that helped me avoid catching a cold for around five years after I quit.”
Preschool Problems
“I worked for a preschool for a short while and the great thing was that I was allowed to bring my toddler with me. She was a little younger than most of the kids, but no big deal. She sat for story time, got to learn her letters and colors early, and generally did what the other kids did. The older kids loved her and pretty much made her the class mascot. Unfortunately, my supervising teacher had a problem with me bringing her. Not that I was focusing only on my child, or that she was a distraction. It was just that bringing a child to a work place, any work place, was against her principles. She’d insinuate that I was a bad mom for working in the first place and that I was neglectful for exposing my daughter to my place of employment, which, again, was a freaking preschool.
Finally, after she had had a particularly rough day, she went off on me for what a terrible mother I am and how I should have my child taken from me, and that she’d be making a call to CPS, and that I was fired. She didn’t have that authority. I simply handed her my keys, told her to never contact me again, and walked out. I called the director that afternoon, filled her in, and thanked her for the opportunity. The supervising teacher got fired the next day.”
“It’s About Doing The Right Thing”
“I was hired by a college to run their office where students got hands-on work in the field. When I discovered that they were ripping off students’ hours, I started providing students with copies of their hours and told them to keep a notebook with the copies for their records. The students were on a contract that stated if they didn’t graduate by the date estimated for completion, students were required to pay $200 every additional week it took to complete including suspensions, which in turn went against contract graduation date. The school also asked me to falsify reports of students’ absences so they could suspend them even though I had documented proof the student was in class. I decided to leave that job but not before telling students to report them to the state board and providing statements for the lawyer who the students gathered to represent their case.
It comes down to doing what’s right. I have two kids I’m setting an example for them. I had two bad absent parents who were toxic even in their absence. I told my daughter the hardest thing to do is the right thing. You don’t often see rewards of your action, but the lives you might change is greater. The world needs positive change right now, it’s hurting. I won’t lie, I’ve been unemployed for four months now, but I’m lucky I have a fiancé who stands by the example I set.
Ironically, I had friends drop by and they were there because they had issues getting their licenses because of their paperwork or diploma being messed up. I’m petty, I posted about it everywhere after I left, urging people not to go their or to complain to the board, had they. I posted on indeed for their review about their practice. I sang like a bird. Last I heard the student was going through with the lawsuit without me, my information was just confirmation of her allegations as a prior employee. She contacted me because like I said, I document everything. I had proof in emails I provided her. Emails I wrote to IT complaining about stolen hours, home office. I initially thought they didn’t know and I was doing the right thing in informing the school of my findings. It became clear real fast I was knowing too much and talking too loudly. They told a client I was terminated because I was getting too personal with people. This client no longer goes because she told them I loved what I did and who I did it for. Mind you she was a client that got harassed by a student every time she went in because they had personal family drama (it’s a small town, it happens) and kept them separate and informed the bosses and instructors, they even gave input in how I managed the situation. There will be a day I’m not here but if my kids hear about me for doing what’s right, I will rest happy!”
Choose The Punishment
“I’ve worked in retail part-time since I was 16. In my first job, they started introducing a ‘punishment’ system for when team members didn’t make their target.
Thankfully it never happened to me, but one day a manager posted a video on our staff Facebook page of them throwing a bucket of water over an employee who didn’t make his target, purely for everyone else to laugh at. This didn’t happen with any of the other ‘punishments.’
He had worked there for 10 years. He was a stockroom member so he wouldn’t even be on the shop floor to make the targets set for him as all targets for every member were sales-based (even if you weren’t a sales member, because if it was busy there was a chance you would have to go on the shop floor and help).
He had taken off his shoes and placed them to the side so they didn’t get wet. He did this because he had to get two buses to and from work every day.
That was my official ‘forget this’ moment and quit after that.
Everybody was too scared to say anything and when I outright complained as I quit, they wormed their way around it by saying the employees didn’t have to take part in their punishment if they didn’t want to.
Yeah, because when all of your managers are, let’s say, ‘strongly encouraging’ you to do something, and you know you’re probably going to be alienated if you don’t do it. It was also argued that the employee could choose their punishment if they weren’t happy with what the manager on shift chose. It’s safe to say the scheme didn’t last particularly long, but still. The fact it ever existed at all was ludicrous.
That workplace was a joke and that was just the cherry on top. The worst part is that the manager that orchestrated it didn’t even get fired – they simply got demoted to managing a smaller branch.
This isn’t even a small-scale or local store, by the way. This is a large-scale high street brand, it was ridiculous.”
No Breaks!
“The manager wouldn’t give me a 20-minute break despite having worked the past 13 hours with no break. Her superior swore at me when I asked to take the time so I called her a moron and walked out. I was 23 and they said, ‘Good luck finding a new job with that personality!’ Well, I already had one and I got a new one real quick.
I stand by it, she was a moron.”
The First Job Was The Worst Job
“I got my first job as a cashier at a trashy Circle K next to a shady bar. NOT A FREAKING DAY WOULD GO BY without some creep commenting on my then-very obviously underage appearance. I assumed it was normal. I had to deal with smokers having breakdowns because I didn’t have their brand, annoying gambling addicts clogging up the line at peak hours to validate and re-buy 20+ tickets a day, and hammered people coming in and eating things before paying. I was also expected to stay 45 minutes after my shift to sort recycled bottles. One day when I was about three months in, I was kept FIVE extra hours without prior notice because a coworker had an accident and my manager wouldn’t want to call someone else in. So I finished in the middle of the night and was set to start again at 5 am on Saturday. You can just imagine how a Friday night next to a bar looks like. I was just about to finish my soul-sucking shift when a kid threw up on the floor. I didn’t bother to show up the next day.
On the bright side, I got a job at a fast food joint and turned out dealing with harassment and theft isn’t all that normal in student jobs.”
“I Never Looked Back”
“I used to work at IHOP as a server, our manager was wildly incompetent. She would leave with the manager card (which was the only way to correct an order, refund something, and do things like that). She was spiteful and stupid, a deadly combination. So I was poor, and had a raggedy pair of the non-slip shoes you’re supposed to wear in food service. I also had a pair of doc marten work shoes that were slip/oil/electric proof. They were the same color and all. She made a big stink about me not wearing the correct shoes, I explained they were on their last leg, and that even though the docs were technically not regulation, that they fit the criteria. They even said it on the sole. So she threatened to fire me over these freaking shoes so I caved and wore the terrible shoes to work. Saturday night, packed to the gills, there was not a seat in the house.
Halfway into my nightmare understaffed shift, as I was carrying an appetizer sampler and a tray of drinks to a table, the sole ripped from the upper and I TRIPPED AND SPILLED THE WHOLE FREAKING SAMPLER ON THE TABLE. Ranch. Honey mustard. Marinara. 4 Dr. Peppers. All over me and a couple. Face and all. I freaked out and apologized, explained I’ll comp the food and go to find the manager. Guess who went home? With that almighty card you need to void checks or discount them. I also had about 5 other tables suffering who saw all this happen. I called her, she’s at home. She lived 15 mins away. I told her not to bother, asked her how she could be so freaking stupid to go home with the card for the 10000th time, screamed about the dang shoes, and said forget you. I took my tips out of the cash I had, told all my customers their meals were on the house and stripped down to my underwear right there in the parking lot.
I walked to my car and changed my clothes. I never looked back.”
They Weren’t Very Understanding
“Years ago, I was an assistant store manager at a Gamestop. My daughter was 5 months old. We were living with my in-laws at the time. I was scheduled to work a Saturday night. The only problem was my in-laws were going to a Christmas party, and my wife had slipped on some ice and had a hairline fracture in her arm. Hard to take care of a 5-month-old when you have a broken arm. So I put in a schedule change with our 3rd key (assistant-assistant manager) to swap morning and afternoon shifts for the Saturday. No problem, right?
Our District Manager blocked it. I reminded him I had to watch my daughter. He still blocked it. I was pretty furious. Saturday shift comes, guess what, we get an ice storm and I’m unable to actually get out of the driveway. I don’t even remember who had to cover what.
A week later, it was my birthday. My mom and brother were in town from out of state. I hadn’t seen either of them for a while. Great, definitely don’t want to be working my birthday evening with family in from out of town. Again, I asked to swap to a morning shift. Again, our District Manager blocked it. I appealed to our store manager, who said it was out of his hands. So I just set my keys down on a table and told him I was done. No grand speeches or moments. I was just furious. It’s literally the only job I’ve ever walked off. I was unemployed for another month after that before I found another job. I loved the people I worked with, but that District Manager was awful. I still hate him to this day.
We had just gotten a new store manager who, while a great guy, was a weak manager. I never understood why it required approval that far up the food chain.”