Best walk off the job story

[Franklin]

So fun to remember these. My friend and I were 16 year old "buss boys" at the local Holiday Inn. We had a job that paid $1.65 per hour and worked 12 hour shifts to pad our account. We had worked all summer and the banquet
manager (Wayne) had ridden our tails all summer (he was a real doozy who only cared about Wayne). So, we decided to quit in style on the last day of summer break. Wayne instructed us to prepare the banquet hall for a 150 person event (this meant setting up tables, chairs, vacuuming the carpet etc.....allot for 2 people). Then we were to take out all trash that was loaded in 4 massive trash cans on rollers. After that we were to place table cloths, glasses, silver ware ,etc at each table. Well u probably know where this is headed. The banquet was to begin at 7:00pm and we hid the vacuum, locked the supply room door, and filled the trash cans up full of water. We waited for Wayne to appear just in time to inspect out banquet preparations. He took a quick look and exploded! We were in our Chevy within minutes and never came back for our check!! Thanks for listening, I'll need to holler at my partner in crime to remind him of this.....today he owns several Hotels in the Denver area (not Holiday Inns).

[travelover]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom52 ...........So I didn't lose my job, and in fact the next paycheck had small raise included. From that day forward and for the next 10 years this VP never once had a harsh word for me. In fact, he made it a habit each day to come into my office and sit down to just shoot the breeze for 15 or 20 minutes.

I had a similar baffling experience. We got a new manager who was a real PITA micromanager and I'd had enough. I confronted him and told him basically that I'd been doing this job for a long time and to get off my a$$. I expected to be kicked to another department (back then no one got fired from Mega unless caught red handed stealing). To my amazement, he became my biggest fan and constantly berated other supervisors to be more like me. When he retired, he mentioned me in his going away speech, even though he'd been elevated several notches higher in rank since the incident.

[JoeWras]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dixonge I've always just ghosted any job where I quit in frustration or anger. First morning break, usually. Just keep walking and go right out the door to my car. Mostly I've been either fired, laid off or did a normal notice period.

I didn't have enough jobs to encounter enough problems (over a lifetime, 5 different W-2 sources). I even worked at the same place part time from age 14 to 20. I'm a very loyal person and my jobs were loyal to me, until my last Megacorp which became a bleep-show. Still, I didn't ghost, but I kind of wish I did. I didn't have any retirement to worry about.

[superdave]

Working a job post retirement is tough when your bull**** bucket is very small.

Had been doing a software gig for about 2 months. On a Friday afternoon Boss mentions a manager who was unhappy with my work. I had never met the manager, but figured I was being made a scapegoat for his missed deadline. Boss huffs and puffs and threatens that we will have to have a big meeting about this next week. I suggested we save all that time, and resigned. Crisis avoided

[Morgan22]

Quote:

Originally Posted by superdave Working a job post retirement is tough when your bull**** bucket is very small. Had been doing a software gig for about 2 months. On a Friday afternoon Boss mentions a manager who was unhappy with my work. I had never met the manager, but figured I was being made a scapegoat for his missed deadline. Boss huffs and puffs and threatens that we will have to have a big meeting about this next week. I suggested we save all that time, and resigned. Crisis avoided

Awesome!

[livingalmostlarge]

Not exactly FIRE but we just knew we were done. So May 2014 new VP for DH's department onboards. They fire the old VP by calling him back from vacation to "part ways"/FIRE. He is mean and threatens everyone in department. Tells people you are lucky to have jobs. About 30 people.

March 15, 2015 DH comes home and says all my friends got laid off today. We were hoping to move and get the 1 year severance but he got kept (damn it!). But he was one of 4 people kept from department. DAMN. He says "well we might as well move and leave. I have my one month sabbatical in July 2015 so let's do it." I say can't wait.

We decide that night to sell our house and move cross country without ever visiting our city, without a job, not a firm plan. Just decide we live super cheap and we have a big savings. So I prep the house in 30 days to sell, sell in 1 weekend and we have a closing date 7/5/15.

Coworkers ask and he says we're looking for a rental. They say why not buy. He says we aren't ready. We go on an epic cross country road trip with the kids, our stuff in a upack, and we live out of our subaru outback and camp and hotel as we drive as we feel daily. We don't have a plan for driving either, we drove out of town 7/4/15 independence day. That's what it felt like.

Anyway 3 weeks later we arrive and search for a rental for a week. We get something that is available 8/15 so i take the kids home to see the parents for a month and DH flies back to our old city. He stays with friends and on monday 8/3 he walks into the office and says "thanks for the sabbatical here's my two weeks notice! I moved out of state. Peace out. " He also said a few more things about the management and how the layoffs affect the feel of the company. Since he had nothing to do he spent the next two weeks eating lunch with multiple departments and friends (he worked there about 10 years), and caught up with everyone. Wrote a few reviews and patents and signed off with HR.

The VP was pissed and changed the sabbatical policy after he did this. They were considering firing him but didn't want to pay him severance and they wanted him to leave nicely after the bloodbath that was his department in March. So DH came to work, ate and chilled for 2 weeks seeing our friends in and out of work. It was very epic. Everyone hated the VP and high fived him for giving the department a big finger.

Then he drove off 10 days later the next saturday back cross country with our second subaru and laughed the entire way. We timed it for an extra month of health insurance and cashed in all our vacation days and had a stock vest and espp to boot in July.

To this day his friends back where we work talk about the guy who walked in and caused the company to change their sabbatical policy (you now have to work a year after taking it or pay it back).

[Magus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom52 The people in the office would normally pass around an envelope for flower donations when someone had a death in the family. Most everyone would throw in a couple of bucks, no big deal. For some reason my VP didn't like this practice, but most of the people didn't report directly to him so there wasn't much he could do to stop it.

This has only happened to me a handful of times in my career, but either myself or my company has always made sure the company paid for flowers, etc. I'm always amazed at how idiotic some folks are. Is it worth losing a good employee and $20-$30k in turnover/training cost vs spending $100 bucks on some nice flowers and make a good impression on the whole team?

[travelover]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magus ........ Is it worth losing a good employee and $20-$30k in turnover/training cost vs spending $100 bucks on some nice flowers and make a good impression on the whole team?

Never underestimate the depravity and malice of a really bad boss.

[Octogirl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by superdave Working a job post retirement is tough when your bull**** bucket is very small.

Agree - I only work part time -12-20 hours /week to help out during COVID crisis but when someone challenges me (not often), I find I have no patience.
I am only working now when it is personally rewarding.
If that ends, its great to know I am FI.
I have SBS. Small Bucket Syndrome .

[braumeister]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Octogirl I have SBS. Small Bucket Syndrome .

Great line!

[KarenF]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmm99 This thread makes me want to get a job, any job, just so I could do what the OP did! No, seriously, all joking aside, I did fantasize about doing something similar at my last j*b before I retired, but I didn't actually do it.

I wanted to do this too, but I am too conscientious. I gave them 3 months notice and then they asked me to stay longer. They showed how much they appreciated me by giving me a full time project to do, in addition to my "job". I did get it done, but that really helped me realize why I wanted to leave. They have called me 4 times to come in a consult for them since I left last summer and I have turned them down 4 times. I am not sure they will call again.

[BubbaChris]

Now that I'm FIRE'd I still find it hard to believe I only held 2 jobs for more than 5 years in my career. Some moves were just to keep moving along in my career, and some were RIFs and related. One time, I can say I was proud to have been terminated.

My jobs in the tech industry were rarely mainstream ones, not directly important to the product or customer. One time I was working in the California division of a Long Island-based company. They had a big SAP migration in the works so I spent a long winter commuting weekly to HQ to cover the Calif portion of the required manpower.

My first week I arrived at was pitched as the Corporate Apartment to learn it was a condo owned by one of the executives, the last long-term resident had a cat (I'm allergic), and they probably never hired professionals to clean the place (if you're living there, you're responsible for cleaning). The next morning I call my VP back in California and inform him I'm going shopping for bedding, linens, and anything else I need to de-cat the place and he needs to clear the way for the expense report to get paid promptly. He was a good guy and had my back.

I stuck it out and completed my multi-month assignment. About 6-weeks later a team from HQ visits California and fires the VP, every single Director, and little ole me. I wasn't even a manager. My insistence on decent living conditions made that much of an impression with HQ! So if you're getting fired because of a regime change, you might as well go out the door with one of the best teams you ever worked with.

Best regards,
Chris

[sroby2020]

Some Great stories here.
Here's mine.
I was in a small satellite office for the company and getting a nice production bonus on work which I completed. Well, management changed both locally and at the main office and I got gipped out of about $25k of the bonus. I was furious. I complained to the VP of my division and even the President of the company, but it landed on deaf ears. To top that off, they had brought in a consultant for me to train to act as my helper. I think it was then that I could read the writing on the wall. I sent out some resumes, had a few interviews and nothing happened for about 3 months. Then I got a tremendous offer and took it. In my exit interview, I stated my reason for leaving was management changes and the $25k that they owed me.
A couple of years later that company had to file for reorganization and eventually was acquired very cheap. Then about 5 years after that they were acquired by the company I was then working for. Only a few of my previous co-workers were still there. I heard from them that it never got any better than the times before I left. So sad!
Anyway, leaving was the right choice for me at the time. I had secured a 15% increase in salary with the new, bigger company. I had a team of 12 to manage and great support staff. I spent a mostly awesome 12 years there before I was "retired" at the age of 56. At the time, I hadn't heard to the FIRE, but I was already there, just didn't know it.

[Alectoris]

I just didn't show up for work one day.

While I liked my co-workers quite a bit, the ownership was onerous.

I feel a bit bad about what I might have done to my co-workers, but I did have a light step in my feet that morning when I didn't show up!

[marko]

My story is more about how I didn’t quit but made them pay anyway.

When the new company acquired us, they also acquired my seven figure employment contract that said as long as I behaved and didn’t quit, they’d have to pay me if they fired me, cut my pay or responsibilities.

They didn’t want to fire me due to the contract but I was also very expensive salary-wise so they came up with a plan.

At 1AM one night a ‘drunken email’ showed up in my new company mailbox, addressed to me but withdrawn shortly after. (they had accidentally put my name in the “to” instead of “subject”). What they didn’t know was that I had my company emails forwarded to my personal Yahoo email, so despite rescinding the original, I had a copy.

What it said was “Joe, I like your idea. We’ll offer to move him to our Paris office. But if his wife is anything like mine, she’ll love it for about a week but will soon want to move back home and he’ll have no choice but to resign”.

So they offered me a ‘no show’ job in Paris, and a fully paid $70K apartment and cola, after a ‘one month trial’ period. (to see if my wife liked it)

What the idiots didn’t know:
We had lived in Paris for a number of years prior, were both fluent in the language, had friends there and my wife had been going there twice a year on her own since college.

We spent the next two years sitting at sidewalk cafes, drinking wine all day and just enjoying the scene; I had very little to do, visited the local office once or twice a week, maybe a few business day trips to Switzerland or London. It was the best time of our lives! HR would call every few weeks asking how my wife was getting along! Every time they'd call, I'd be ecstatic about how much we loved the place!

They even tried a few times trick me into insubordination but I wasn't going to bite on that worm! "Yes, boss! No problem"

Eventually they came to their senses and after two years decided they’d fire me anyway, paid my contract and here I am today.

[reawilliams]

These stories are great! Mine is not that exciting but has a happy ending.

My division of a fortune 500 was nearing sunset so I applied for a job in another rising star division. Soon after I was called into HR thinking it was for the new job. Instead I got laid off and was given 7 months severance pay. About a month later the new division's HR called me with the new job offer. I worked two more years before retiring. In hindsight the company gave me a very nice paid vacation and a glimpse of what retirement was like.

[BubbaChris]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marko What it said was “Joe, I like your idea. We’ll offer to move him to our Paris office. But if his wife is anything like mine, she’ll love it for about a week but will soon want to move back home and he’ll have no choice but to resign”.

That is EPIC!

[casole]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marko My story is more about how I didn’t quit but made them pay anyway. What the idiots didn’t know: We had lived in Paris for a number of years prior, were both fluent in the language, had friends there and my wife had been going there twice a year on her own since college. We spent the next two years sitting at sidewalk cafes, drinking wine all day and just enjoying the scene; I had very little to do, visited the local office once or twice a week, maybe a few business day trips to Switzerland or London. It was the best time of our lives! HR would call every few weeks asking how my wife was getting along! Every time they'd call, I'd be ecstatic about how much we loved the place! They even tried a few times trick me into insubordination but I wasn't going to bite on that worm! "Yes, boss! No problem" Eventually they came to their senses and after two years decided they’d fire me anyway, paid my contract and here I am today.

This sounds like a movie!!! Amazing I Iove this so much!!!

[marko]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BubbaChris That is EPIC!

The best part was that they didn't know that I knew "the plan"! They could've moved me to Mars before I'd quit.

[JoeWras]

So now we hear marko's back story. It's great!