why fantasizing about rage-quitting is so universal

by Alison Green on March 9, 2020

There’s a common dream that unites workers across fields: the Spectacular Resignation Fantasy. (Well, that and more paid vacation.) Anyone who has ever had a terrible boss or toxic coworkers or who has been overworked and under-appreciated has almost certainly fantasized about quitting their job in a blaze of glory—a dramatic, vindicating exit, usually involving profanity, a dismayed boss who suddenly realizes how devastated they’ll be without you, and a triumphant flounce out the door.

At Slate today, I wrote about these fantasies and why they’re so common. You can read it here.

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  2. Mel_05*

    I’ve never rage quit, but a coworker did.

    It was amazing and satisfying to see her explode at everyone. Because she was CRAZY and had been making me miserable for a year and a half.

    She was doing it to other people too, but a little more covertly. We all felt so much better after she was gone.

    1. JessaB*

      I sort of rage quit once, my boss asked me to get him a file, I could not find it, I walked into his office to tell him it was nowhere it was supposed to be, and he grabbed what I was holding and yelled at me that it wasn’t what he asked for. I looked at him and said “My father doesn’t get to talk to me like that, you sure don’t. I quit.” cleaned out my desk and left.

      I later found out the file was locked into the file drawer of the other, more favoured, secretary and that’s why it wasn’t available. I never had a key. I got a job the next day.

    2. Bookworm*

      I was laid off.
      We had remote access to our email and our IT did not shut that off quick enough because no one told them about the lay offs. I lived very close to work, went home, logged into the system and sent a very short “Goodbye and good luck and here is my home email if you want it” email.
      I heard later that the VP RAN to IT to make sure my access was cut off. I still chuckle at the image.

    3. Bagpuss*

      I have seen one person effectively rage quit (although their behavior meant they would have been fired had they not been so busy flouncing out – throwing a full-on temper tantrum with screaming, stamping and throwing thing because they had been told to do the part of their job they had been neglecting, and didn’t want to)

      I think that on some level they thought that their rage-quit would lead to them being persuaded to come back and being allowed to do only the bits of the their job they fancied, as they were very deflated when their quitting was met with “OK, let me have your keys and we will work out your final pay”

      A few years later they applied for a job with us…
      They were not invited for an interview.

  3. Teekanne aus Schokolade*

    THIS exactly! I thought I only fantasized about this because I’m young and inexperienced and pretty much don’t know what behavior from management should be tolerated or not (as I should always be grateful for a job and never burn bridges and ALWAYS make everyone happy). Thank you for this article! So cathartic!

    1. ThisColumnMakesMeGratefulForMyBoss*

      The bottom line is that a manager should always treat you with respect. Even if you screw up. As we see every day on this blog that often does not happen, but nothing less is acceptable. People aren’t perfect of course, and someone can have an off day, but a good manager will apologize if they ever lose their cool.

  4. TimeTravelR*

    I have rage quit. Well, not rage exactly just finally-had-enough quit. I was on the phone with my boss and he started bitching (AGAIN!) about another dept. I actually thought the ppl in other dept. were good ppl who tried to do a good job. I’d had enough, I guess, because I laid down the phone received on the desk, got my purse and went to my car and drove home. I guess someone else picked up the phone and told him I’d left.
    He called me that night and begged me to come back. Interestingly, it was near the holidays so I’d already secured another job, albeit seasonal. So I worked two jobs for a while!

    3. ThisColumnMakesMeGratefulForMyBoss*

      Love it! After college I had trouble finding a job so I was still working at my minimum wage college job, with a boss who was so cheap he wanted us to hang up paper towels we used to dry our hands on in the bathroom so we could use them again (ew) and flip the register tape over to use the other side (yes I’m old). I was tired of putting up with his BS so we got into it one day in the back, and he said if I didn’t like it I could leave. So I did.

      1. littlelizard*

        >he wanted us to hang up paper towels we used to dry our hands on in the bathroom so we could use them again

        AAAAAAA

        1. I'm just here for the cats*

          OMG! that sounds like a boss my mom had! When I was in middle school she worked part-time at the diner down the street. The owner charged for water(!) and demanded that they reuse the styrofoam cups used for shakes. Not the ones that customers drank out of but they had a “spill cup” that was used to catch the drips from the ice cream machine. There were a bunch of other things that were totally messed up too. She yelled at me once because I was waiting for my mom. She had like half an hour left. I was a paying customer, and another person had checked me out.

      2. boop the first*

        Huh. Buying paper towels and hanging them around the bathroom seems like a weird choice when regular cloth towels exist. Your boss wasn’t the most efficient person, eh?

  5. Junior Assistant Peon*

    An idea I’ve been toying with rather than rage-quitting: seeing how long I can keep getting paid after ghosting. I’m confident my boss would be oblivious for weeks.

    2. Tidewater 4-1009*

      It’s a really fun idea, but in real life the employer can make you pay back the excess pay.
      So if you do it, don’t spend it! Have fun watching them jump through legal hoops before giving it back. :D

      1. Database Developer Dude*

        But do put it in an interest bearing account…you know, just in case they take a longer time to realize it…

    3. Bostonian*

      I laughed out loud so hard at this, probably because I could go a solid week or so depending on what’s on my schedule (not that I would, I like my job!).

  6. Bunny Girl*

    I worked at a law firm where almost every single legal assistant rage quit. It was really fascinating. It was a complete toxic dump. The attorneys were horrible, the HR director had no spine. It was totally common for the entry level assistants to just burst into tears and go into HR’s office and tell them they were leaving, but we had one woman who did the whole stalk out in the middle of the day saying “F*** you” to everyone she passed. She was considered a hero among us all. I was younger then and I left a note on HR’s desk and left one Friday and never came back.

      1. Bunny Girl*

        Me too. I hope her spunky, sassy self has an amazing job with full benefits and casual Fridays.

      2. TimeTravelR*

        Not the same but I did tell a supervisor to go F himself once. Surprisingly, I did not get fired. I was also very young and doubt I would do that today. Especially loud and in front of a customer as I did that time. For Customer’s part, she was very nice and when I realized she was there I apologized. She just smiled and said, “I’ve always wanted to do that.” LOL

        1. anon24*

          I told my head manager to go F himself once too. I worked there for years afterwards and was later promoted to assistant manager :) Despite this one incident, he was one of the best bosses I’ve ever had and I really miss working with him.

          In my defense, he had me standing outside in the rain in 40 F weather for almost an hour doing nothing watching him and the current assistant manager work and every time the assistant manager would ask if I could just leave even though my shift wasn’t over my head manager would pointedly ignore him. Finally he looked at me and said “why are you here, you could have left an hour ago.” I was soaking wet and shivering and told him to go F himself. I stalked inside, punched out, stalked back out and on my way to my car stopped and told him if I got sick I expected to be paid for that time (I worked part time and didn’t get PTO). I was a teenager at the time and to this day do not regret it. I… would do it again.

          2. Iron Chef Boyardee*

            Standing outside in the rain watching them work? What kind of job was this?

        2. Doctor Schmoctor*

          At a previous job there was a woman who had to endure a horrible boss. He would expect her to do certain admin tasks that she wasn’t authorised to do. She would calmly explain this every time. Then one day he send her an email asking her to do something. He copied a whole lot of people in this mail for some reason. She replied-to-all, saying “no problem”, because this was one of her actual tasks. So boss replies (to-all), “Thank you. It’s good to finally see you doing your job.” So she replied “Graham, please fuck off.”

          Of course it caused some waves, but she kept her job, and Graham was forced to apologise to her.

    3. Michelle*

      I love it. One of our security guys quit during an all-staff meeting , told the department director is was her fault because she was too uptight and controlling and told her she needed a good, old-fashioned grudge f*ck to loosen up a bit and walked out. Yes, people still talk about it.

      1. Database Developer Dude*

        While I applaud rage quitting on an a**hole boss, I’m very uncomfortable with a man in the workplace telling a woman in the workplace that she’s uptight and needs a good f*ck. That’s not at all cool…. it’s sexual harassment.

          1. Mimi*

            It would still be completely inappropriate, but there’s something about the power dynamics that make it seem way less likely to me, and like it would not have nearly the same (alarming) oomph. In much the same way that many cis men don’t understand why women get so upset about street harassment.

    4. whistle*

      I really hope she pointed at just one person and said “you’re cool” instead :)

  7. Sunflower*

    There’s a reason why the song “Take this Job and Shove It” was so popular when it came out.

    2. Seeking Second Childhood*

      Ha! I should have searched on lyrics and not just the singer’s name! (I commented below.)

      1. Polaris*

        I quit one temp job in the middle of the day after my boss made an extremely gross & ableist remark to me. I waited until lunch, walked down to the temp agency, and told them I wasn’t going back. Once I explained why they were fully behind me. At the agency holiday party that year I learned that company could barely keep a temp longer than a month.

    3. CupcakeCounter*

      I actually purchased that song on iTunes at an old job and would listen to it anytime I got the desire to rage quit – so about 12 times a day. Still have it and put it on occasionally too.

    4. Kathlynn (Canada)*

      was popular? I’d say it’s still popular. :) I personally have a play list named after it, with the song being the first entry. I listen to the playlist while washing dishes at work, lol

    5. anomalez*

      I rage quit from a pizza cooking job because the owner grabbed my wrists from behind me and slammed him into a pizza pan because I was using too much cheese. I decided then and there to quit and I left her a note that quoted the lyrics of a song by 7 Year Bitch: “You can kiss my ass goodbye, you can sit and watch me cry, it don’t make no difference to me.”
      I was 23.

  8. Cute Li'l UFO*

    At one job I hated for many reasons (including finding out someone was sabotaging my work) I wrote a list of all the ways I could just… leave. I wanted to, but I needed the money. They went from the banal (just leave!) to the ridiculous. I never could do any of them but it made me feel better.

    Things like, I leave for lunch and come back to work only to find out a meteor has squashed the place flat.
    I bring an area rug into work, roll myself up in it, call some friends who are dressed in “pesky area rug removal specialist” jumpsuits and they take me away.
    I could stack boxes and chairs to escape through the ceiling (it was a converted warehouse) and the mental image of scrambling to stack up enough stuff to reach the hatch was funny.

    My art director and immediate coworkers sympathized with me. I said I wanted to shake every soda until it was spherical in the drinks fridge and all said they would not blame me after how I was treated.

    It took every fiber of restraint in my body not to shout “SAY GOODNIGHT TO THE BAD GUY!” and listen to it echo when I left.

    I did peel out of the parking lot and apparently the tire marks were still visible for a bit.

    1. Dragoning*

      At one retail job I quit with the worst manager I have ever had, I was picking out clothes and soundtracks to drive off in/listening to.

      No one else thought it was dramatic, but it made me feel some modicum of power.

    2. Cute Li'l UFO*

      Because of -impeccable- timing on the conflict avoidant and totally awful hiring manager’s part, she passed by me, said good morning, and then I got an email that hit my watch before I even got to my desk that my last day was the next day.

      I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t getting ready to set up garland and pass out party hats. I was seeing a then-partner that same night and told him that I had been freed. We celebrated with a tequila shot, Godfather II, and white wine. I had brought a favorite shirt to wear to work the next day that just happened to say “Broken Dreams” across the front. I was pretty hungover the whole day and minced no words about what happened.

      I check their glassdoor every now and then and I see they keep spiraling. Everyone is so miserable.

      1. WellRed*

        I briefly wondered what was in a Godfather I I and the realized you probably watched the movie.

        1. starsaphire*

          I don’t know what’s in it either, but if someone offers you one, you can’t refuse…

    3. Archie Goodwin*

      Your “area rug specialist” fantasy sounds like something I read recently in one of Karel Čapek’s stories.

      Although in Čapek’s case it’s a method for body disposal, so not QUITE the same. Although possibly apposite, depending on the circumstances…

    4. Putting Out Fires, Esq.*

      First, love the user name (those darn things kicked my butt every time). Second, sometimes just making the list is cathartic, you know?

    5. Serin*

      Just slip out the back, Jack … put down the phone, Joan … no need for HR, Dar … just get yourself free.

  9. HailRobonia*

    I fantasize about hiring one of the campus a capella groups to come in and sing a farewell song when I leave.

      1. The Worst*

        Okay my rage story where I wish I just quit but it was more drawn out than that. I worked at a tech company and was physically assaulted and lightly blackmailed by a man who presented as gay. When I finally brought it up my only request was that they create and communicate a sexual harassment policy to our 20ish employees (because at the time I felt that showed I was a big girl who could handle stuff.) They didnt for three months but tipped him off to apply for different jobs and then HR threw him a going away party. I tripped out that they should have communicated that policy prior to his leaving. They made a policy the next day but it has TLDR at the top as if people may not have the stamina to read one page. I wrote “disgusting” beside it on the corkboard and the next time I was in we were discussing my exit. It was a nightmare. I also had to sign an NDA but this is anonymous AF and this type of shit happens in tech companies to women across the world so yeah.

        2. Random IT person*

          You had to sign an NDA to not tell about being harassed / assaulted / blackmailed ??
          Or just about the usual and boring ‘company secrets’ ?

    2. Grey Coder*

      Tell them to check out the end of the Nylons’ version of Kiss Him Goodbye. (Start at about 2:15.)

  10. embertine*

    It’s still my dream to spell out my resignation in cod, but as I work in construction I fear it’s never going to happen.

        2. That Girl from Quinn's House*

          Leave the cod message in the basement next to the master HVAC intake. They’ll have to go looking for it eventually. Mwahahaha.

          2. Cobalt Collector*

            I read about a woman whose husband had cheated on her. She kicked him out but under the terms of the divorce, he (and his new honey) ended up with the house.

            Just before she handed over the keys, she put shrimp inside the curtain rods being left behind.

            As the shrimp rotted, the odor wafted throughout the place but the husband and his honey could not figure out the source. They went nuts looking for the source of the stink while the ex-wife had a good laugh.

            2. MassMatt*

              I read that story, it was epic, though I doubt it was true, it was too perfect.

              They try to sell the place but no one will buy it. The ex husband and shiksa can’t stand the stench so they move anyway… taking the curtain rods with them.

              The 1st wife buys the house for a song and moves in after leaving the windows open for a few days. The shiksa winds up leaving the ex husband for a younger guy.

            4. TardyTardis*

              It was rotting lobster and the canes of the Venetian blinds in the story I heard, but yes, that’s food for thought. Right up there with leaving the phone on time and temperature in Tokyo for a month…

    3. pentamom*

      I was literally scrolling through these comments looking to see who would mention the cod lady first.

    6. Indigo a la mode*

      OMG I am SO excited that the Slate graphic artist depicted this. I can just imagine them getting the brief… “You want me to design……what now?”

      1. Adric*

        Yes, kudos to the graphic artist who included a fish “I QUIT” in the graphic.

        Although, as I envision it, they got a draft of the article and realized, “OK, the picture HAS to include ‘I QUIT’ in fish somewhere.”

        1. DCGirl*

          Allison actually published a photo of the cod and tilapia as part of an update. It was awesome.

    7. Fikly*

      I mean, honestly, will anything ever top spelling out your resignation in cod?

      I aspire to be as amazing as that teen.

  11. (Mr.) Cajun2core*

    Just once I would love to be able to do the look the boss in the eyes and say very calmly and straight forwardly, “You know, I don’t deserve this, I don’t need this, I quit.” and then just calmly walk back to my desk, type up a quick resignation letter, and then start packing my things. Nothing fancy, nothing dramatic, just something that the sheer calmness of it might shock the boss (or her boss, or so forth).

    1. (Mr.) Cajun2core*

      and/or put this on my desk and see how long it takes people to figure it out:

      Eye Quiet – e
      or
      (a picture of an eye) (A finger over mouth emoji) – e

    2. Annie on a Mouse*

      I like this. Dramatic in its understatement. Short, to the point, effective. The final mic drop in the midst of an unhinged rant: your cool, unruffled self refusing to be abused without losing control like your ranting boss. The perfect quizzical look, as though you’ve weighed the options and, on the whole, you prefer not to work for screaming babies… Yes, I like this very much indeed.

      1. (Mr.) Cajun2core*

        Thank you for the most elegant and uplifting compliment I have received in a long time and possibly ever.
        I don’t have the words to follow your compliment.

      2. Triumphant Fox*

        I don’t know why I found the phrase “prefer not to work for screaming babies” so funny.

  12. Archaeopteryx*

    I wanted to tapdance out belting “Don’t Rain On My Parade” – with perfect pitch, of course.

    1. Elsie432*

      Right musical, wrong song. It should be “So Long Dearie.”

      Wave your little hand and whisper so long dearie
      You ain’t gonna see me anymore
      And when you discover that your life is dreary
      Don’t you come knockin’ at my door
      ‘Cause I’ll be all dolled up and singin’ that song
      That says, “You dog, I told you so”
      So wave your little hand and whisper so long dearie
      Dearie, should have said so long, so long ago

      Because you’ve treated me so rotten and rough
      I’ve had enough of feelin’ low
      So wave your little hand and whisper, so long dearie
      Dearie would have said so long, so long ago
      For I can hear that Choo Choo callin’ me on
      To a fancy new address
      Yes, I can hear that Choo Choo callin’ me on
      On board that Happiness Express

  13. Mama Bear*

    I had a summer job cleaning up after a rage quitter. This was back in the days when more things were on paper than electronic and he literally threw the papers of documents in the air and let them fall wherever. He also sabotaged the electronic files so there was much that had to be redone or recreated. The company wisely used the opportunity to put everything in a documentation management database which was backed up regularly. If I recall, he failed a drug test, and when confronted left in spectacular fashion.

    1. Mama Bear*

      I guess he wasn’t a rage quitter so much as rage leaver of the building. This time change has left me a little slow.

      1. Rob aka Mediancat*

        He’s at least a first cousin of a rage quitter. I doubt anyone’ll complain.

    2. Marzipan Dragon*

      I had a similar summer job in a file room. Giant room the size of a mid-sized grocery store full of eight foot tall filing racks. I was there to help refile everything as they had someone spend the last two weeks of his notice putting file folders into random places. Not just filing them incorrectly, which was a nightmare in itself, but sticking them in the light fixtures, under and on top of the file racks, under that ripped part of the carpet, under the elevator. Millions of file folders and every one had to be looked at.

      2. MassMatt*

        I had a temp job one summer that was ALMOST like this.

        There was a wall of file cabinets, full of invoices that were supposed to be filed by number. I started filing and pointed out “you know, most of these aren’t in any order, AT ALL. They were flustered, every agent (there were about a dozen, and there’d been turnover) was supposed to file their invoices each day. Wellll, at least some were just stuffing them in whatever drawer.

        So I pulled all these out, they were piled a in my cube several feet high, I became legend, people would point at me in the lunch room and say “that’s the guy that’s refiling EVERYTHING in accounts receivable! You should see his desk!”.

        So it was boring, but I could do it listening to headphones, and what was supposed to be a 1 or 2 week gig lasted all summer. They’d have kept me longer if I didn’t have to go back to school.

        I didn’t rage quit, but I found out multiple temps they brought in To finish my job didn’t last a day!

        1. Mama Bear*

          Funny. I got offered a job, too, but I also wanted to finish school and it was too far to commute. They gave me a great reference, though!

      3. Mama Bear*

        That’s impressive. The fact that no one caught him right away probably says a lot about that job.

  14. annakarina1*

    Not a rage quit, but I had gotten fired after a few months at an art museum for making too many data entry mistakes. I had trouble staying focused in the job and it wasn’t a good place for me. A couple of months later, I got a volunteer job at a very famous, prestigious art museum, where I got a lot of encouragement for being good at my work, and I so fantasized about showing back up at my old workplace to brag about it. I did not do that because I knew that it would go so wrong if I tried showing up unannounced at a place that had fired me, thinking I was a danger to them. So I just gloated in my head about getting work at a way better place, not minding that it was volunteer work.

    1. Rebecca in Dallas*

      Oh, I used to have a similar fantasy. I worked at a high end department store where the sales were all on commission and let me tell you, my coworkers were CUT THROAT. I hated it so much, one even brought me to tears when she accused me of sabotaging her sale. I got through it by fantasizing that I got offered a much better, very high paying job and that I would come back to shop and they’d fall all over themselves wanting me to buy my fancy clothes from them. In reality, I got a new job but not well-paying enough to come back to shop regularly and also I never wanted to see them again. But still, in my head I got to do a Pretty Woman. “Don’t you work on commission? Big mistake! Huge!”

  15. CatHerder*

    I did what I call rage quitting but was just quitting without notice. I went home on a Tuesday, wrote an email to my boss that said I would not come in the next day or ever again. I had prepared all my files and put detailed instructions, called clients (social services agency) to let them know to reschedule with someone else, and done all the prep work so it wasn’t a disaster for anybody. But my boss was a bully and a bigot and lazy. She had harassed multiple people when they left (giving 3 or 4 months notice and she reminded everyone at every meeting that they were not to be trusted because they were leaving). She often slept at work (naps, not overnight) but was fanatical about no one leaving early and that everyone must “look busy.” HR told us that there was nothing they could do as she “got everything done and we’ve had no formal complaints before this.”

    Three coworkers reached out and I told them why I made the decision. They understood, though some still told me it was unprofessional. Which I agree with now, but at the time I was just burnt out, angry and so very tired. The rest of my department except one person quit within two months and the boss was asked to leave.

    1. Gig-less Data Analyst*

      I recent quit with no notice for the first time in my 25+ year career. After a layoff from my previous job of 5 years, I took a temp to perm position at a very small company (less than 25 people) that was completely owned and operated by the CFO who hired me, and the CEO who thought that Data Analytics was a bunch of unnecessary woo and wasted money that should have been spent hiring more salespeople. My chain of command was a Sr. Data Analyst, our boss the VP, and then the CFO. Everyone walked on eggshells around the CEO and her sales and customer service teams, who had a propensity for both screaming and unattainable deadlines. It was one of the weirdest places I’ve ever worked, but I was gaining experience in a new industry and loved the actual work I was doing, so decided to at least hack it out for a year or two. I was supposed to have become permanent at 3 months but 6 months in I was still a temp despite following up with both the company and my placement agency.

      Last month, I came into work on a Friday only to find out that everyone in my chain of command was gone – the CEO had bought out the CFO, and my boss and the Sr. Data Analyst were both fired and told to clean out their desks ASAP. I asked if I should leave as well, but was told to go to my desk and keep working. Over the course of the day, not a single person came to explain who I would be reporting to going forward, or how I was possibly going to do the work of two DAs when I’d only been there six months. I interacted with several people on the sales and customer service team who acted as if nothing had happened, like these employees had never even existed. Like I said – WEIRD.

      I called my placement agency, who were rightfully horrified and understood when I told them I wasn’t coming back on Monday. I cleaned out my desk five minutes before quitting time (which went unnoticed because everyone else left was *celebrating* the buyout in the break room), ran out to my car and never looked back. I’m unemployed for the first time at nearly 50 years old, but luckily my husband backed me up on getting the hell out of dodge.

      As it turns out, a few other key people quit in the aftermath, leaving the company with approximately half their staff, most of which are salespeople who have no experience with day-to-day operational logistics. I still have some contacts there and am looking forward to updates on how this will all pan out for them. My guess is not well.

      1. CatHerder*

        WOW! That’s a situation that makes no sense and they really shot themselves in the foot for no reason. Also, “data analytics is a bunch of woo” is a weirdly common thing for people to think and I cannot understand it. Good luck! Keep us updated (probably on how they fall apart).

  16. Anna*

    One of my friends was working during college at at a large chain department store. Her manager was a jerk. One day my friend said she had to run to the restroom and she just left the building. It’s been 15 years and I still love that story.

    1. Bunny Girl*

      It’s really annoying but I kind of love people who just leave and don’t come back. I used to work at a sandwich delivery place and during our lunch rush we had a delivery driver just never come back after leaving on a delivery. We didn’t notice (we were really busy) until we got a phone call about an hour later from a customer complaining they never got their food. Sure enough, this guy just took off with the car topper, the sandwich, his delivery money…. I just had a vision of him riding off into the sunset munching on an overpriced ham sandwich with the car topper riding shotgun.

      2. fposte*

        Heh. I was out with colleagues and our waitress did this mid-meal. It was a small, slow place anyway and the manager didn’t really notice until we had to hunt for our placed order. I think we put the pieces together before they did.

    2. Panthera uncia*

      My first post-college job was a “chew ’em up and spit ’em out” book compositor. They hired batches of fresh liberal arts grads and just worked them to the bone, as long as they would tolerate it. I should have known it was going to be bad when the long-timers in the art department told me that they always ran a pool on New Hire Day to bet who would actually come back after lunch.

    3. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I worked for a phone survey group for like, an hour. Then I looked at my phone, made a dramatically concerned face, told my supervisor I’d just gotten a text that my house was on fire, and left, never to return.

      (Eight months later, they sent me a W2 for my one hour, bless them.)

    4. New Job So Much Better*

      I had an employee run out to her car “for cough drops” on her first day, about 2 hours in and never return. I hadn’t even assigned any work yet, just gave her a manual to flip through.

      1. BadWolf*

        Ha! Maybe we need a best “ghost quit” thread.

        I remember one comment where an employee left their empty purse when they snuck out — like, removed their phone/wallet/etc and left the purse.

    5. BadWolf*

      One summer, I worked at a factory filling beauty products (classic semi-automated assembly line). There were full time employees and an arbitrary number of temps from the temp agency. During lunch towards the end of summer, one full timer lamented that they enjoyed summer time because they usually had students working as temps and we generally stayed the whole summer so there was less churn of new faces. They commented some temps were so bad they didn’t even last the day. My naive self couldn’t believe it.

      Then a few days later, I was working a part of of the line where there were two of us. It was actually one of the easier spots I’d been in, speed wise. The other person asked to go to the restroom. Speed was fine, so I could do it myself for a bit. They left the line. 20 minutes past. The line lead came to check on me. I was still fine (not because I was a speed demon…it was an easy spot, lucky for me). The person left and never came back. I’m not sure they even made it to the morning break time. So I got my personal experience in ghosting on the line.

  17. Perfectly Cromulent Name*

    We had someone rage quit last year. He went to his boss and gave two weeks notice at noon, left for lunch, and literally never came back. He was an instructor, so he was teaching classes. Big mess to clean up, but I kind of loved him for it. He was truly living the dream.

  18. Red Tape Producer*

    I’ve commented before about how I rage quit a particularly bad job I had in the private sector before, it was an open plan office and it was incredibly gratifying to watch it all unfold before my (and all my co-workers’) eyes. But I was INCREDIBLY lucky to get another job lined up shortly after in a totally different field, and that only happened because my previous manager retired shortly before I quit and I could get a reference from her without having to go through my old employer.

    Did it feel amazing? Yes. Did I sleep through the entire night for the first time in months afterwards? Yes. Would I do it again? Never, the risks are way too high. It’s like finally getting that pony you always wanted for your birthday but at the age of 45, when you really can’t afford the vet bills and you’re too big to ride it.

  19. Slow Gin Lizz*

    I once dreamed of being an attitude problem. I played in an orchestra (I’m a free-lance musician) and the conductor of this particular orchestra got on every bit of my nerves, and he was also very rude to my stand partner. When I got to the point where I didn’t need the job anymore, I thought it would be extremely satisfying to see if I could be a PITA to the conductor by mouthing off, asking him dumb questions, etc. In the end though, I realized that while it might make me a hero to some, others would see me as really being a PITA (I usually try not to be) and so I decided not to stake my reputation on trying to bring down a jerk. And it’s not really my style; I try to avoid confrontation wherever possible.

    Still, it would have probably been a lot of fun, were it something I could have pulled off. I wonder if anyone has actually tried it? I know he’s still the conductor there, over 10 years later.

    1. Fluff*

      Years ago when I freelanced there was a violinist who rage quit (or maybe more annoyed-quit) during rehearsal. This conductor would really pick on any player who happened to be yawing. Rehearsals got long and yawns happened – he took a yawn as you were too bored or didn’t know your stuff. We often tried to hide yawns behind our instruments and act like we were picking at something – (I played cello and everyone knows there is really nothing you can adjust or pick at on the back of a cello). Well this second violinist guy yawned once too much and got called out by the Maestro. The guy got up walked to the stand, violin in hand, pointed his bow at the orchestra and said, “This is how you DO A DOWN BEAT.” and proceeded to give us a most excellent downbeat. Then he waggled his eyebrows at us and walked off stage. He never played for that orchestra again while I was there. I did see him at other gigs though so he did fine. The eyebrow waggling was priceless.

  20. QuestJen*

    Ok, so NSFW, but the video for “I Could Be The One” by Avicii vs Nicky Romero is one of the best examples of this you’ll ever find. It’s amazing.

    1. Dreamer*

      Yes! I used to watch this daily when I was fantasizing about leaving my last toxic position. It kept me going.

  21. Zona the Great*

    I did once spend an entire morning gathering my belongings and stacking them in a way that I could easily grab it all under one arm and bail. My window of opportunity was tiny and I knew I had to take it. It was very suspenseful and felt a little like I was about to commit a crime or escape a scary situation. My boss even commented on my stack of things saying, “preparing for a break-out, Zona?”. It was right before the holidays, my bosses were not abusive but were unreasonable, and I was very young. I loved every second of it.

    1. Sharon*

      What I’ve done is discreetly take my stuff home, one or two items at a time, starting a month or two before I give notice. I’ve never rage-quit but I do usually stay in jobs longer than I should so I’m more than ready to run screaming. Planning how and when I’ll give my two weeks notice and sneaking all my things home for a couple months allows me to stay patient enough to not quit without having something new lined up.

      Interestingly it seems to work as I’ve never been questioned about why my cube’s become so sparse and undecorated!

      1. CupcakeCounter*

        I did this too but I replaced my person items with some company swag junk that was always around so no one noticed that my personal “Why I want to be a Mermaid” mug was now a company branded mug or that the multiple pics of my family were now just one small, recent one and the rest of the space was a collage of a small flag, hat, and some pins.

      2. Windchime*

        This is what I did, too. I just told people I was “rearranging” when they would notice things like my bookcase and books all being gone. They were too stupid to notice that I was basically all moved out by the time I quit.

    2. Math and Taxes*

      I managed to move out: a 10 gallon planted fish tank, 7 potted plants, all of my art, a coffee maker and paraphernalia, and all of my knickknacks, spare sweaters, etc. Yet everyone was SHOCKED when I put in my notice.

      Reason for leaving? It was clear that A) the company president didn’t understand the difference between cost accountant and graphic designer, and was frustrated with my inability to do “good design work” while also managed the cost accounting and inventory functions. B) Being female was a serious detriment. C) It was FINE for a coworker to spray her perfume IN MY CUBE despite an asthma attack due to her applying it at her own desk only days prior…because she “thought I had left for the day”.

  22. AndersonDarling*

    I accidentally had quit-revenge. I worked at a toxic company where my boss was constantly demanding more and more improvements to our reports. I was just an admin assistant making little more than min wage, but it was all my problem. So I created more and more complex reports in excel to get the guy to stop yelling at me. Before long, the whole department was running off of these kludge reports that required multiple steps to load and run. I eventually walked off the job, but I kept in contact with some of my co-workers. One co-worker reached out to ask about running the reports and I directed her to the binders that I left that had all the step-by-step instructions on how to wrangle the reporting nightmare. Through everything, I was still a decent employee and documented my processes.
    Turns out all the instruction binders where in the corner of my living room. I forgot that I was working on them at home and never brought them back to the office. Suck it, toxic workplace.

    2. everlong*

      Oh my god. On the one hand, bravo, this is amazing. On the other hand, I have been someone who had to clean up after like that.

      But quite frankly, if they were running everything off of kludged reports that an admin put together because no one else would bother to, and it wasn’t your job anyway, they totally deserve it. Your coworkers perhaps did not deserve that, but, well, did any of them bother to train on them in case you were on vacation?

      So on the whole, bravo :D

      But I did once spend 3 months cleaning up after something like this. I hope your ex-job put together better systems after you left. But I doubt it.

  23. Kelly White*

    I had a job where I was just fed up.

    Among other things- I had gotten in trouble for handing my boss my time sheet, rather than putting it on his desk. Mind you, when I handed it to him he was sitting at his desk, I said, “I have my time sheet”; he held out his hand, sooooo.

    I gave my two weeks notice, and when I left, I looked him in the eye and dropped the office keys on the floor in front of him, turned, and walked out.

    Not my finest moment, but still satisfying.

  24. ThursdaysGeek*

    Decades ago I worked at a local city. Like all computer people, if we were laid off, we were asked to leave immediately, because of the danger that we would destroy something. (As if I had any rights to do that! As if they didn’t have backups!)

    It was especially galling because a few years before someone in Planning had left, and during his final two weeks, he quietly destroyed documents, documents that were not computerized and did not have copies. For years after, they had to deal with not having some original plats and other vital planning documents. A non-computer person can often do as much or more damage than any computer person.

    1. WS*

      I got a part-time job in the aftermath of someone doing that! They did have copies…but they were on microfiche and shoddily photographed, so every single one had to be rotated to the correct angle and brought up to the exact, correct size before printing at A2 size. It was a painstaking but interesting job!

  25. Antilles*

    Rather than delivering righteous justice, these exits more commonly get the employee labeled as the problem—with their dramatic departure taken as evidence of that.
    Exactly. If you’re doing something dramatic and noticeable, the company will immediately write it off as ‘exactly why we let her go, good riddance’. Not only are they not learning a lesson, they’re going to double down on their decision as the correct one.
    Or, if it’s something more subtle (a’la the sabotage post), the company might not even *realize* anything had happened. Sure, they’d eventually recognize that they don’t have the base files for the artwork or whatever, but it’s so common to have some knowledge-loss when an employee leaves that they’d likely just shrug it off as “oh well, we probably needed to revise those anyways”.

    1. Jennifer Thneed*

      The thing is, there’s “the company” and there’s the actual human beings who witness the departure, and who might learn something from it.

  26. Half April Ludgate, Half Leslie Knope*

    I have a former coworker who saw the writing on the wall (our toxic boss had a habit of firing people for no reason), so she took a day of PTO on Friday, came in over the weekend to drop off her computer and collect her stuff, then sent an email first thing on Monday announcing her retirement, effective immediately.

    It was amazing.

  27. Not always right*

    I have always wanted to leave on a payday Friday dancing and singing “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

    1. fposte*

      I think my version would have to be “So long, and thanks for not microwaving fish.”

    2. Gig-less Data Analyst*

      When I quit my job in 2007, I sent a goodbye email to the many employees I’d worked with (this was typical in our office if you were leaving voluntarily) , and I actually signed off with “So long, and thanks for all the fish.” I think only a handful of people got the reference, but I found it very satisfying.

      1. MissMaple*

        Haha, I also used that sign off for the last time I left a job. It was fun to get a few emails with nods to the reference :)

    4. #startuplife*

      True story: On the last day of my previous job, I brought in a dolphin-themed ‘So Long and Thanks for All the Fish’ cake.

  28. Liz*

    I wasn’t there so not sure if it was a rage quitting or not, but it related to my being fired. I had been doing two separate jobs, without any extra pay, etc. It was my first job so I didn’t know any better. I hated it, was stressed out, and wanted to be fired. So when my co. bought another smaller one, and, as it was explained to me, had two people but only one position, I was let go. My replacement, the person from the other company started the following Monday (I was let go on Friday).

    She apparently came in, was handed all the tasks that needed to be done ASAP, given little direction, and promptly walked out at lunch, never to return. My previous boss, who I had worked for first, and was NOT told of my firing, called to gloat and let me know. I SOOO wish I could have been there to see it all unfold but being told was good enough at the time.

  29. Admin in Arkansas*

    This was a DAILY dream in my former job for Big Red Telelcommunications Provider. That job was so soul-sucking (though the highest compensation I’ve had to date).

    The scene: Floor, large call center, two desks back from the aisle facing the elevator. “One day, a customer with just the wrong tone/volume/accusation/cracker eating in my ear and I would just slowly and deliberately push my chair back, calmly and tidily place my headset on my monitor, press End Call on the phone, then… I’d yank my keyboard up with the repressed rage of a thousand hot burning Suns and smash it against the monitor with the might of a Norse god until either the keys were all over the place like glitter at a pride parade or building security arrives, whichever happens first.”

    So cathartic. Would never happen in a million years, but cathartic.

    1. Jedi Squirrel*

      When I worked nights in a call center, we would transfer belligerent callers to loss prevention.

      Loss Prevention had a seven-minute (no joke!) outgoing message. They also closed at 4:30. It was so….damn….satisfying. As in “damn, I need a cigarette now” kind of satisfying.

      I also had one old man whose first sentence was “Why the hell should I have to press one for English when I live in America?” I immediately hung up on him. No regrets. (FWIW, Spanish has been spoken here longer than English.)

      2. Deejay*

        “English? Who needs that? I’m never going to England”

        Homer Simpson (who of course turned out to be wrong about that in “The Regina Monologues”)

    3. Jessen*

      My last call center day I was kind of hoping creepy caller guy would hit my line so I could tell him exactly what a sad, pathetic pile of scum he was. Then again, the manager on the floor would just have laughed and said she hoped it worked. He wasn’t even a customer, just someone who’d keep calling us from different numbers so he could harass women.

      So I don’t think that was even a bad fantasy. It’s not like I was planning on telling an actual customer what I thought of them.

  30. Tidewater 4-1009*

    I still want justice though, and look for legal and professional ways to do it. I once reported a former employer to the government for gender discrimination.
    I don’t believe in the idea it’s “unprofessional” to tell the truth about an employer. If I saw them doing unethical things or discrimination, I will tell anyone who’s interested.

  31. Aggretsuko*

    This kind of thing is why we love it in movies….also, people in movies don’t have to figure out how to pay rent.

    1. Seeking Second Childhood*

      People in movies usually meet Spunky Sidekick in the next scene and together they win the world.
      Not so much in real life, huh.

  32. Panthera uncia*

    My boss is an amazing, supportive women in a company that is a toxic waste pile of misogyny, so my rage quit fantasies are more about running into former colleagues, post-professionally quitting, and telling them off. “Hey Mike, so glad I don’t have to pretend to like you anymore! No one actually wants to hear your revolting come-ons, because you’re a disgusting piece of **** and I wouldn’t **** you with someone else’s *****!”

  33. Anonymooose*

    Nothing tempers the desire/fantasy to rage quite like being a manager/department head watching someone rage quit.

    They think it’s fabulous, shocking, and completely riveting but really, it’s usually awkward, slightly uncomfortable and then, 20 minutes later, back to donuts in the break room. You kinda just shrug your shoulders and are relieved that the little princess is gone or are left wondering, “who dat?”

    The best ones are when everyone, including the quit-ee, take great, GREAT pains to ensure it’s quiet, “nothing to see here and everyone go about your work coz really, nnnno-th-th-thing happened”

    Then a week later you hear that that sales VP got promoted to publisher in another state because he was having an affair with a sales rep who was *shockingly* getting assigned the best clients. When aforementioned VP’s wife and mother of this two teenage daughters found out, contacted the corporate head of news AND the sales rep’s husband of 1 year (I YEAR!!!)…the poo proverbially hit the fan and everyone involved got promoted (lol) so that the sales rep who was technically a victim of sexual harassment wouldn’t sue, the VP- who knew about the former publishers own infidelity- wouldn’t tell, and the VP’s wife, who must have known her 5’6″ balding husband had little person syndrome and was humping what he could…would agree to a quiet divorce because her alimony potential just skyrocketed and they would ship her sooon to be ex from Phoenix to Wisconsin…

    now THAT is a quitting story (all fictional of course) that would rival the girl who quit via fish…

    1. Not a cat*

      Goodness! At my old software company, the SVP of Sales was having an affair w/ the #1 rep (interesting how she became #1). His wife called the founders to let them know. Chaos ensued. He ended up getting promoted and he and his wife stayed together. #1 rep was terminated. I have NO idea why she didn’t sue.

    3. Give me a break*

      Any time I hear someone repeatedly rail about all the toxic” “abusive” “workplace from hell” situations they have inexplicably been stuck in, I silently roll my eyes and look forward to the inevitable months of covering for their bullshit that will occur before they stomp off to another “nightmare” situation.

  34. Stormy Weather*

    Story from a different job: One of my favorite co-workers just hit a breaking point. He called his wife, checked his bank balance, and just walked up to HR and quit, citing management as the reason.

    Our boss was working remotely. He didn’t bother to tell her. He gave his people a round of hugs and walked.

  35. pleaset AKA cheap rolls*

    My partner apparently quit on the spot at a job – a pretty toxic workplace and HR was giving her some BS, so she told them she was done and walked out. I write “apparently” because she had another job lined up but hadn’t told her managers – they tended to force people who gave notice out right away, so she was keeping it quiet.

    The upshot was we missed a couple weeks of income, but she also got some props from others who were suffering there for her boldness.

  36. anon24*

    My last job refuses to give any references, just confirms date of hiring, and the supervisors all hold to that. I have no intentions of ever going back and don’t intend to ever return to that industry, so I don’t care if I burned the bridge there. I hated that job passionately and my biggest regret is that I gave 2 weeks notice and left professionally. I wish I would have… not rage quit, but given my notice and left on the spot. What a wasted opportunity. *shakes head* I did feel quite a bit of malicious glee when my co-worker messaged me 6 months after I left and told me that they still hadn’t filled my spot, considering this was an entry level position that was supposed to be easy to hire for and one of the main reasons I left was because we had far more work than we could handle with our current staffing levels and my leaving left only 3 people to handle the work of about 6.

    1. MassMatt*

      I have to wonder whether companies that refuse to give references expect to GET references on hire. Quite hypocritical if they do. I hope to never job hunt again but if asked for references I would definitely ask if they give references. If not, then no, you’re not getting any.

  37. SpecialSpecialist*

    In high school I very briefly worked at a very small, family-owned restaurant in a very small town. The owner could not make a decision and stick to it. Were we an order-at-the-counter place or an order-at-the-table place? No clue because whenever I did one, he insisted it was the other. His elderly mother also didn’t like the way I swept the floor. Also, he was paying me in cash, so yeah…real up-and-up business owner. I was so tired of seeming to never do anything to anybody’s satisfaction. He finally brought me back to his desk to talk to me, but I was done. I took my timecard out of the holder on the wall and tore it up right in front of his face. Then I got in my car and drove home. My mom was mad, but not because I rage quit (I think she may have been proud of me for that). She was mad that I left without my money and made me go back with her to.

    2. Alexandra Lynch*

      That, but working as a maid in a hotel.
      The housekeeping manager was okay. Problem was, the owner’s mom would come down and hang around the housekeeping office/laundry room and would “help”.

      So I would wind up writing up paperwork because apparently the people in the room I was working on had (and people do do this) taken the sheets and all the towels with them when they left. I went back to turn it in and get more sheets and towels, and said to the manager, “I’ve had four rooms today that I found stripped!” only to find out Mrs. Johnson had been there and had helpfully gone in and stripped the rooms. It would have been nice to know before I wasted time filling out the paperwork. Or getting told I was getting written up for hanging the bathmat on the side of the tub. Because Mrs. Johnson had decided we should hang it on the shower curtain rod. Of course, no one bothered to TELL me. Fortunately it was only a summer job during college.

      (Worst room ever, by the way, was four Christian homeschoolers traveling for an away game with a church softball team.)

  38. Dan*

    Aviation professionals world wide have deep respect for Steven Slater, the Jet Blue flight attendant who made national headlines for jumping out of the aircraft and sliding down the emergency exit slide.

    The press touches base with Steven from time to time, but unfortunately he has had trouble distancing himself from his profound exit, and as such, post-exit employment has been tough for him.

    1. 30 Years in the Biz*

      Sorry to hear that! I consider his amazing exit the best “rage quit” ever! I’ve always felt that flight attendants and nurses have the toughest jobs of all. Tons of responsibility, unending contact with stressed customers, and little recognition for all the things they do to keep people safe and healthy. Maybe he needs a Go Fund Me page started.

    2. Not a cat*

      Didn’t he have champagne or something with him? Or did I just urban legend that out of thin air?

      1. Dan*

        Media reports agree that he jumped out with “beer”, but reporting is mixed as to whether it was one beer or two beers.

  39. Roses Angel*

    Im a vinictive soul. I know I shoukdnt be and I do try hard to be a better person. I didnt rage quit but I was definjteky a vindictive cow when I left Toxic Job. Long story real short I had a semi serious health issue. While having this health issue my boss decided to write me up repeatedly for things that were going on as a result of my health issue. She knew what was going on the entire time and knew why I was having problems with my work load. It all worked out (she got egg on her face in the end). But when I left I told the whole office gossip train what had happened. I went into more detail about my health that I likely should have with coworkers but her reputation (which wasnt that good to begin with) tanked. I also
    encouraged my former coworkers to speak with HR often. I dont know how shes doing but I hope shes getting what she deserves.

    1. Tidewater 4-1009*

      I don’t think you’re vindictive here. If you are I am too, and as far as I can tell I’m not.
      I think there’s a difference between being vindictive, which is to punish a person disproportionately to what they did (if anything), and being assertive.
      This woman was punishing you for no reason and you let others know about it so they could be forewarned about what kind of person she is. IMHO that was a good thing to do and I would have done the same.

    2. Tidewater 4-1009*

      Or to put it another way, I think it’s good to take an opportunity to give justice to a bad person.

  40. HS Teacher*

    I rage quit once and have absolutely no regrets about it. My boss was a complete and utter bully. One time, she sent a text to me complaining about me; the text was intended for my coworker. It was such a toxic environment that my hands would shake as I sat in my office listening to her losing it over one minor thing after another.

    She was also a food bully and would criticize me if I ate any sort of fast food, as if I’d asked for her opinion. She used to walk around the office telling people she was a MILF. Like, WTF??

    Anyway, I packed up the things in my office, typed up a quick letter of resignation, walked into her office, and slammed it in to her inbox. She ran out after me screaming my name and begging me to come back (because she hadn’t allowed me to train anyone to do my job and knew she was screwed.)

    The office closed about 3 months later, and I couldn’t have been happier. I changed careers and moved into education, which also has its problems. But I am so glad to be out of corporate America.

    1. (Mr.) Cajun2core*

      That sounds so wonderful! I hope I can do something like that one day! I envy you being able to do that!

      1. HS Teacher*

        Thanks. It helps if you are leaving the industry and don’t really care about torching bridges.

  41. Jennifer Strange*

    Honestly, my best mic drop was leaving my last job where I was suffering burnout while constantly having more shoveled onto my plate. It wasn’t a big to-do — I politely gave my resignation and spent my last couple of weeks closing up loose ends and documenting things — but I also happened to be the third person leaving my department in two months (one had her last day the day I went in for the in-person at my new job and the other had her last day the day I got the offer from new job). What gave me a sense of satisfaction was watching old job spend 6-8 months trying to fill three positions on one team, as well as hearing that my former supervisor (who suddenly had to do my job and suddenly saw how much I really had on my plate) gave her notice (with no job lined up) 8 months after I left. I still get a twinge of schadenfreude sometimes.

    1. CupcakeCounter*

      My boss figured out I was leaving and decided he couldn’t handle the department without me so he turned in his notice of retirement the day before I gave my notice. His boss freaked slightly and didn’t talk to me until my last day (in his defense he had been our grandboss for about 3 months at that point and now needed to find 3 people since the reason I was leaving was that they never backfilled my old, critical role when I was promoted and since my new role relied on the old role I couldn’t just abandon it). Boss initially gave 6-months notice but ended up shortening it to 3 months not long after I left.

  42. Marie*

    This wasn’t exactly a rage-quit but it did cause a lot of gossip. One lady had worked for our organization for 22 years. One day she got a call from her daughter and just left without saying anything to anybody. Her direct supervisor (our COO) asked me to come to her office. She said “I need you to help me find all the places Jane’s name appears. She left a note saying she wasn’t coming back, ever.” I started laughing because I thought it was some kind of joke, but when the COO never cracked a smile I knew it was for real.

    To recap: a lady who had worked here for 22 years, said she loved working here was always complimentary of the organization and had plentiful PTO and flex time, quit by Post-it note.

      2. Marie*

        Turned out her daughter called her in hysterics because she found out her husband had been cheating on her. She could have taken PTO and gone to be with her daughter, but she just decided to quit and walk out. It honestly is baffling. She had a very good relationship with management and could have really taken as much PTO as she needed. Oh, and the daughter ended up forgiving her husband, they went to counseling and appear to be happy.

        1. Another freelancer*

          What an OTT reaction on the mom’s part. In the daughter’s shoes, I’d think it was strange if my mom felt she should quit her job. There must be way more to the story.

            1. Another freelancer*

              Right?! Especially if the mom was close to retirement age. Like, she shouldn’t have to leave a job she clearly liked.

      1. Bostonian*

        After walking out, the woman who quit then got arrested that night for smoking a doobie :-)

  43. So Weird*

    My old job had a bunch of toxic, sexist, condescending men (I was the only female left). One day I just couldn’t take it anymore, wrote up my resignation letter, walked into my bosses office, slammed the paper on his desk and told him I’m out in 2 weeks. He was completely caught off guard. All he could say was ‘so weird how all of the female employees keep quitting’ which I responded back with ‘yeah, SO weird huh’.

    Also, best decision I ever made in my life. I didn’t have a job lined up (but I got one within 3 months). Ended up relocating, changing my career, and I am much happier now. The grass is greener sometimes :l

  44. SDSmith82*

    I did it. Sort of. My boyfriend (now husband) was in the ICU and his doctors asked me to be there because he was responding better when I was. My boss (there were other underlying issues due to him being a spawn of satan) said that if I went back to the hospital, even with the notes from the doctors, I’d be fired.

    It was a no-brainer. I wrote my letter of resignation on the spot, and left. He called while i was driving back to the hospital offering me my job back (with restrictions because he’d over reacted but it was still “my fault for always pushing him” ) i said thanks but no thanks, and came back only to pick up my final check (which he shorted me on by close to $1000) and had to threaten him with legal action to get that done.

    This was the same boss that hated me because I reminded him of a former employee. The only thing we had in common was that we were both brunettes. I was his top employee, and was responsible for 75% of sales for the time I was there. But I had brown hair, therefore was the same as his “bad” employee. So call it rage quit, call it regaining my own strength- but it was one of the best moves I’ve ever made.

    2. Penny Parker*

      Wow. I had to quit a job, too, right on the spot due to my boss not allowing me to leave to take my son to the hospital. He had bad asthma, was about eight years old, and the school called me and told me to come immediately and take him to the emergency room. My boss told me that if I left right then I would be terminated, so I loudly told him off as I walked out the door. This was back in 1989 and in a telemarketer phone room where I was the top sales person. I also trained other sales people. I left noisily, very loudly. I made a racket which anyone on the other side of any phone line would have heard. I ranted about the facts of the matter — school called me to get my kid to the emergency room — and that I was the top seller in the room, and that he could Take. That. Job. And. Shove. It. if he thought for a moment I would not leave to save my child’s life!

      I am astounded there is more than one evil boss who would keep a needed family member away from dealing with a medical emergency. Sad part is, there are probably more than two of them!

    1. ArtsNerd*

      Ah! I remember this video but didn’t know it was that Joey. TIL Downtown Boys got its start because Joey and Victoria Ruiz met while working at that hotel. Thanks for the throwback / trivia!

  46. Alexel*

    Not so much a rage quit, if only because my team lead didn’t deserve it. Upper management was a joke, and my grandboss frequently had ideas that not only didn’t work but often made (literal) messes that we were expected to clean up while also making sure that every single customer need was met despite being understaffed. One day, understaffed and slammed, a customer started yelling at me for something that was company policy (not only was she in the wrong, what she had done was technically illegal), and I called one of the floor managers, walked into the back, took several deep breaths, and told my team lead that I was sorry, but when my coworker arrived, I was taking my break and not coming back from it.

    I felt a little bad for her, but I didn’t feel bad at all walking into Management’s office and just dropping my name badge and those pieces of my uniform I could part with on the spot on their desk before walking out. I threw the rest away and let them take the shirt out of my last paycheck rather than even go to that place again.

    (Also, before I left, I had a coworker legitimately bring in cookies specifically for staff of our level, and everyone except management knew that they were goodbye cookies. Management was shocked when he just stopped coming to work.)

  47. Jean*

    People used to rage-quit so often at a former toxic workplace that we had a name for it – we called it the “forever lunch” and it happened very regularly. New person would leave “for lunch” and not come back. When I quit I gave 2 weeks’ notice, but I did have a very frank exit discussion with the director of my department about how it was the worst company I had ever worked for. They’re still a nightmare brew of shadiness and ethics violations, from what I hear from the few people I know who still work there.

    2. pope suburban*

      People left my previous employer that way all the time, or would walk out midday because the environment was untenable. I really, really wanted to walk out the day I got my current job- just pack my shit and leave, have a nice life, let’s never talk again- but I couldn’t afford to because the pay was lousy and we only got a handful of vacation days a year, so the cash-out wouldn’t have covered expenses before the first paycheck from my current job. The boss, who treated me like garbage, was shocked that I resigned. He had no self-awareness whatsoever, and I don’t expect that the company has changed from the cesspool that had me wishing that every cold I got would me mono, so that I could have time off in the hospital where no one there could reach me.

      One guy in the shop brought in donuts one morning, and when everyone was gathered around, he told them that they were all terrible people and that he quit, and walked off flipping the double bird. I regret that I did not get to personally witness this, and he’s the only person I worked with there who I’d ever want to see again, even in passing.

    3. Seeking Second Childhood*

      There was a classic story from a university archive where I worked a million years ago. The department head’s secretary got up for lunch, pulled on her coat, and declared to the room at large “I’m going now.”
      And just didn’t come back.

    4. Quill*

      I should have taken a forever lunch long before I got fired from my job in the pig lab from hell.

    5. Deejay*

      “In fact, Lig never formally resigned his editorship—he merely left his office late one morning, and has never returned since. Though well over a century has now passed, many members of the Guide staff still retain the romantic notion that he has simply popped out for a sandwich and will yet return to put in a solid afternoon’s work.
      Strictly speaking, all editors since Lig Lury Jr., have therefore been designated acting editors, and Lig’s desk is still preserved the way he left it, with the addition of a small sign that says LIG LURY, JR., EDITOR, MISSING, PRESUMED FED.”

      ― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

  48. Extroverted Bean Counter*

    I got to see a bunch of rage-quits when I worked in the restaurant industry! They ran the spectrum from “full on spontaneous walk out” to “planned last day leaving in blaze of glory” to “fired, but made a scene on the way out”. We also would very frequently talk about the ways in which we would quit in epic fashion if we won the lottery.

    My favorite rage-quit was a server at the chain restaurant in a major city. A man called her a racial slur an hour or so into what was already a very stressful evening and she just got very still and quiet and took off her apron right at the table. She folded it up, set it on the table, and walked out the front door without saying a word to anyone. I watched her throw her uniform shirt into the city garbage can just outside the front windows.

    2. WellRed*

      I’d like to dream here that her manager then confronted the customer about driving away his best server and get the hell out of his restaurant.
      But that would be silly.

    3. CountryLass*

      I remember being told of someone who did similar at a theme park I used to work at. I didn’t see it, but the buzz was that he was fired, so he walked into a customer area, started to strip off all of his uniform and thrown it in one of the customer bins. I think they managed to stop him as obviously there were kids around and he could have been arrested had he got as far as his underwear!

  49. Island girl*

    I think this could be the start of a new business, like an escape room or a smash it room (people pay to wear safety equipment and take a baseball bat to pottery, old tech equipment etc), people would pay to re-create a work scenario and do a rage-quit with actors…

    1. SDSmith82*

      might I suggest it be a virtual reality set up- work tensions could be so high that it might lead to actual violence towards the actors.

      Otherwise- I think this is just about the best possible therapy for so many of us.

    3. Wendy*

      My high school used to do this during their school fete/fair/fundraising day. They would buy an old beater of a car from a wrecking yard and borrow a sledge hammer and it was $5 for five minutes beating the hell out of it on the school oval.

      2. Rebecca in Dallas*

        Haha I just remembered my school had something similar! I’d totally forgotten about that.

  50. JPVaina*

    A legend in my non-profit world is this IT guy who didn’t rage quit, but who, at his going away party decided to start calling people out for being terrible people/terrible at their jobs 1 by 1. He had to be escorted out of the building, and then from there, sat on his iPad sending emails along the same lines. Including telling them they were idiots for not immediately deleting his account. Truly legendary, and I think about this a lot.

  51. Reality Check*

    I was a bar tender at the time. A drunk belligerent customer called me the C word. I told the boss I wanted her kicked out, but he said no, and she sat there gloating. I simply collected my tips and walked out. It was a Saturday, it was packed, only 9 pm, and a ton of food orders had put in. My leaving meant boss had to do all the cooking AND take care of that packed bar. By himself.

  52. Lora*

    I didn’t exactly rage-quit my first job in my field, I just walked out after sending an email that I would be using the 2 weeks’ vacation they owed me to pursue other opportunities. I had a couple of interviews and a temp agency promised they had jobs they could put me on right away, was pretty confident I’d have something lined up. I’d been working there a few years when this happened, had gotten good reviews, good raises.

    Company was in the middle of an especially damning audit over things they’d already blamed a salesperson and a low level QC lab staffer for – those two people had been fired and the company was trying to present it as, “we solved the problem by firing those pesky rogue sales / lab people” even though we all knew those people had been told by their management, do this or be fired. Their reward for doing what the company told them to do was, they got fired anyway and then were put on the debar list so they could never work in their field again. The sales guy bought a bed & breakfast ski chalet and presumably lived happily ever after, the lab staffer had to move back in with her folks and I don’t know what happened after that.

    Their file fell on my desk, with instructions that I was to sign off on the (falsified) testing. I said, I will not sign it until it has passed third party testing. OK, sent it for third party testing, which failed. Sent to another third party testing lab, it failed again. I said, it fails, sorry. “You’re expected to approve this.” Tell your boss then, I am not signing away my career. “You don’t HAVE a career, aren’t you recently married? You can go home and have babies for your husband, that’s all the career you need.” (This was the 90s. Not that long ago.) Nope, you go tell your boss and we will escalate. There was a meeting with the EHS manager and HR manager. I explained again, I will not sign off on falsified results for purity testing of drug excipients. “It’s not the drug itself!” I don’t care, you don’t know if that 7% impurity is arsenic or cyanide, so I will not sign. “The CEO is personal golf buddies with the CEO of the vendor company, I’m sure they wouldn’t be friends if something was wrong.” If you’re so invested in this, get one of the managers to sign it, but I will not sign. Got a hand-written note stuck to the paperwork one morning that if it wasn’t signed by EOB that day, my job was at risk. And that’s when I sent them the email that I was leaving to pursue other opportunities.

    Found out later, the lab manager did indeed sign, in the middle of the audit, and was promptly caught red-handed by FDA auditors…and the company blamed him, fired him, and he ended up debarred too.

    1. Turtlewings*

      Wow. Not only were your bosses utter pieces of crap, but this makes quite the cautionary tale about sticking your neck out for a shady employer.

    2. Tidewater 4-1009*

      In the last 3 years I’ve had to get my tylenol, benadryl, phenylephrine and omeprazole from a compounding pharmacy because of the “inactive ingredients” making me sick. I don’t know why mfgs started adding calcium to all their pills, but it’s a bad idea! Not to mention lactose and phthalates! Vinyl, which is known to cause allergies, in the allergy medicine… hmm…

      So I really appreciate that you didn’t approve that mystery 7% ingredient. It may not have been arsenic or cyanide, but it probably wasn’t anything good.

      1. Arts Akimbo*

        Heck, calcium is directly contraindicated to be taken with one of my meds! That would be a mess of a decision.

  53. Rintoul*

    So not really a rage quit but a ghost one. It was almost twenty years ago, in an industrial area 20 miles outside Barcelona. We had this young Englishman who was in his second or third day in our export department. We had not even had time to issue him a labor contract (which is something you need to do in this country). He came from the city by train and then a rode a bycicle to reach the plant. Apparently he did not like the job because he disappeared leaving the bicycle behind. Later I was told he had made good use of the previous evening, however, as he was seen going with an attractive Russian customer to her hotel room.

  54. Retail not Retail*

    I don’t dream of rage quitting but everyone does have a list of things to do on their last day of the notice period.

    I was supposed to ride my bike through the store after my last shift but alas. I also didn’t want to get banned as a customer!

    This current one would be idk smacking people In the legs deliberately with rakes instead of accidentally (it’s been months! He’s gone! It was an almost smack). Or hopping into the restricted places with the things we know aren’t dangerous and taking selfies hashtag employer! (Saturday that came close to happening – oh no your child’s sock is in there well let me find someone with the right tool after all we can’t go in there! when it would take like 30 seconds to hop in and the danger would be asleep)

    I did storm out of a corps conference because I found the non-profit to be grossly unethical and undeserving of the corps support. It involved shouting at the deputy director. Nothing happened but it did nicely lay the grounds for quitting professionally 3 months later.

  55. Sled dog mana*

    I believe I’ve posted about it before but I nearly rage quit a few years ago. I had given my 6 weeks notice as is standard in my industry and it was the Thursday before my last day (Friday) at the site (I worked at two sites and my last week would be wrapping up at the second site) management had also approached me about continuing the second site remotely on a part time basis to allow them to get appropriate coverage in place. My actual Boss had been out on medical leave a few months prior and an interim was brought in to cover site 1 during that time, interim was a contractor not an employee. While boss was out it became clear that the client at site 1 was not going to renew the contract (part of why I was looking) so the higher ups made the decision to keep interim supervising the site until the end of the contract.
    So on this Thursday we were in a meeting reviewing a monthly QA report (absolutely pointless, it was a here’s this test it passed…repeatedly). In the middle of my presentation interim interrupts me and asks “By the way when is your last day?” By this point I had had enough of this guy treating me differently than my male colleagues so I replied that the question really didn’t have anything to do with the topic of the meeting and I’d be happy to talk about it after the meeting with him (it had never changed that the next day was my last day at that site). He raised his voice and replied that “that was s$&t and when he asked me a question he expected a direct answer.” I walked out and immediately got on the phone with the awesome HR person who was shocked to find out I had reported his behavior multiple times (there were records of this). She managed to wrangle me a day of PTO for Friday (Company had a no PTO during notice period policy). Management called me later that afternoon to ensure that I would still be willing to wrap up at site 2 the next week and do the part time coverage for them.
    When they realized how bad things had gotten, how sexist Interim was and that real boss hadn’t escalated my concerns when I reported it they blacklisted interim and paid me double the rate for the part time coverage. I heard real boss also got disciplined for not escalating when he was unable to do anything about interims attitude.

  56. MuchNope*

    I rage quit once and it was glorious.
    Company owner and her husband were Canadian and seemed to think American laws didn’t apply to their American location. They lied, cheated, stole, defamed everyone they did business with from the sad part time warehouse gal to the banks who financed the mansion they were having built on the American side of the border to their red carpet couture-making clients.
    Owner marched in one day to yell at me for explaining overtime laws to a coworker and to tell me they had been spying on me. That was enough. I was furious and let her have it with everything I had on her at top volume. I threatened to turn her in to every agency relevant to her misdeeds, and did let her top customers know how much she had cheated them over the years, resulting in her going out of business.
    She tried to challenge my unemployment claim but my documentation and account of being physically threatened were enough to prevail.
    A month later I got a million-percent better job.

    1. it's-a-me*

      – A month later I got a million-percent better job.

      Damn I read so quickly I thought you got a million dollar settlement. Not that the better job isn’t great as well!

  58. Annon today and tomorrow*

    When I was in college working at a Block Buster, the only thing that kept me going back was the knowledge I could walk out at any time. The store manager was horrid and no one liked her. I did manage to put in a formal notice before leaving for my next job but so many fantasies were over how I would just walk one day.

    Years later, same lady is now selling office equipment and had come into the office I was working at. Strange day. I really don’t know if she didn’t recognize me or just didn’t want to acknowledge me. I also did not feel like saying hi to her first so we didn’t speak.

  59. yup yup*

    The best rage quit I ever witnessed: we had a weekly all hands staff meeting with mandatory attendance. If you were on the road you were required to dial in. “Mike” called in, and when it was his turn to speak he delivered a scathing tirade that was the stuff of quitting fantasies — absolutely A+ stuff. The big boss was so stunned he couldn’t respond at first… but then he pulled it together and hung up on Mike. But Mike was a step ahead — he’d dialed in on TWO lines, so he was STILL on the call, and got another couple of killer lines in before he got disconnected for good! Mike was a company hero for months after that.

      1. BadWolf*

        Maybe not literally? Sometimes “on the road” for business just means you’re not in the home office.

      2. The Great Octopus*

        my ex had mandatory but all the company vehicles were equipped with the hands-free blue tooth that is through the stereo so you’d call in and mute yourself through the trucks (usually the assistant would do this as there was always 2 of them in the vehicle)

  60. Anon for this Thread*

    I think it is universal because it seems there are never any consequences for bad management or owners, and reasonable human beings can only take so much before they just can’t any longer.

    1. Anna Maus*

      That’s a really good point. I once worked for a manager who was very close to the company CEO and they could be as big of an extra-narcissistic psycho as they wanted. Multiple people complained to HR, but it did no good.

  61. Seeking Second Childhood*

    Johnny Paycheck is now ringing in my ears: “Take this job and shove it!”
    (It becomes a lot more sorrowful than rage-filled when you really read the lyrics : “…I’d give the shirt right offa’ my back / If I had the guts to say / Take this job and shove it / I ain’t working here no more / My woman done left and took all the reasons / I was workin’ for…”)

  62. SheLooksFamiliar*

    I only rage-quit once, when I was tending bar at a beer garden to pay for college. I didn’t know it at the time, but the manager was running the place only because her husband the owner – her husband – was in prison. He got caught laundering money for a local, um, independent money lender. She had no experience in restaurants and, therefore, no idea how to manage schedules or teams. She was just as bad with customers. She’d yell at us in front of customers for little stuff. One time she saw me top off a blended drink with what was still in the blender. She accused the customer of paying me under the table, and called me a thief because I let him. Lots of stuff like that…I knew she was under a lot of stress and kept my mouth shut for the most part.

    My breaking point came when she wouldn’t let me take a day off for a friend’s wedding. I’d gotten someone to cover my shift, but she still refused. I reminded her how often she’d asked me to cover shifts when others asked for the day off, and that I already had someone lined up. All she said was, ‘I’m the boss here, not you, and you’ll work when I tell you.’ It wasn’t the worst thing she’d said to me, but I was done: ‘Not anymore, you won’t!’ I clocked out and left.

    Yeah, I totally cut off my nose to spite my face, jobs were hard to find in the early 80s. But it was a relief not dealing with her anymore.

    1. WellRed*

      Please tell me you were in the middle of a busy shift! Seriously, you had coverage, she was just power tripping.

  63. FaintlyMacabre*

    The closest I’ve gotten was rage putting in my two weeks notice. Though the rage was all internal, it did really surprise and inconvenience my boss, so there was small satisfaction there.

  64. Schnookums Von Fancypants, Naughty Basic Horse*

    Reading this made me think: There MUST be fifty ways to leave your workplace.

    You can:

    A: Just slip out the back, Jack
    B: Make a new plan, Stan
    C: You don’t need to be coy, Roy,Just get yourself free
    D: Hop on the bus, Gus,You don’t need to discuss much
    E: Just drop off the key, Lee And get yourself free

    And….uh….45 other ways.

    2. Flight*

      Well, Carol Brown just took a bus out of town…but her new company is hoping she’ll stick around.

    3. iglwif*

      Write it in cement, Brent
      Shut off your webcam, Sam
      Log out of Outlook, Brooke
      Hop on the train, Shane
      Put down your pen, Jen

    4. WellRed*

      Hearing this song in a whole new light. Jobs and job hunts really are like relationships and dating.

      1. Schnookums Von Fancypants, Naughty Basic Horse*

        Ah, you peoples did not disappoint. That was glorious.

  65. What She Said*

    I knew a guy who quit and erased everything on his computer (he was not an IT guy but apparently knew a lot about computers). It took IT several weeks to find some of the documents but last I heard they believed many were still missing. It was hilarious watching them try.

  66. Pobody’s Nerfect*

    YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HIGH I CAN FLY.

    I really want to pull a Michael Scott one day.

  67. XyZ*

    I walked out of a restaurant job once when I was in high school. I got home and had just told my parents I couldn’t take it any more when my manager called. (I left a note on his desk stating I quit.) It had been an insane night with extra management staff and no one would help us. I was finally on break at 9 and I ate, wrote the note, and went home. Standing in our dining room listening to him try to convince me to come back I stood there yelling at him that he couldn’t organize a panty raid and he was the most useless human being on the planet. My parents got a kick out of it so no problem. Manager literally didn’t know how to respond so I just hung up.

    1. Turtlewings*

      “Standing in our dining room listening to him try to convince me to come back I stood there yelling at him that he couldn’t organize a panty raid and he was the most useless human being on the planet.” I don’t know why this is SO FUNNY to me but I am losing it!

    2. WellRed*

      I love that extra management staff was part of the last straw. Bad management really speaks for itself.

  68. Uncanny Valley*

    At my first IT job. (Terrrrrible climate BTW) Anyway, at my first IT job, front line tech support 18k per year, salaried!! One of my coworkers had been sick for I believe two or three days, so he comes in on Thursday and was told he had to make up the hours he missed before the end of the week, which I believe would have been over two double shifts. It was an open floor plan with pods that had three work stations each, and even we were shocked that they told him this. Imagine the Scooby Doo sound being made by a dozen people or so :-) Needless to say, the young man was having nothing of this and was like (full disclosure: G rated translation). “later for this” I have XX Thousand dollars saved up, I don’t need this job, y’all crazy! (this is in the south) They then took him to a conference room to talk more about it, but that was his last day. He was a cool kid as well. They were wrong for doing this.

    On the other side of the spectrum was a lady who quit at another company I worked for. I remember doing the IT portion of the onboarding for her. But one day into the first week of her job, which if I remember was in the accounting department, we went to her desk and there was nothing there but her badge.

  69. Outta Here*

    I did this once and only once… but man was it worth it.

    My breaking point was when the CEO pulled up everyone’s calendars with all their projects side by side and said if we thought we were busy, we should consider how she feels because everything we are working on she was also working on. The woman used to come in at 10, leave at 4 and had us doing things like parking her car and paying her bills for her. She was the most abusive boss I have ever had (she would tear up things people were working on, change her mind then scream at you, over charge clients and bill before contracts were signed… basically a conglomerate of all the bad AAM posts. My favorite was when she called me manipulative and accused me of taking advantage of her for insisting she pay me the salary that she had ALREADY AGREED TO).

    Anyways, I talked it over with my husband, went in the next day and typed up my resignation letter. I didn’t sabotage any projects, but I did put in a snarky line about “since you are working on everything I am working on, I trust the short notice won’t have adverse effects on our client’s projects.” She was so verbally abusive and I was so young in my career that I couldn’t stomach handing it to her in person. I figured I would just leave it on her desk that night when I left and not come back. While I was finishing up, the Creative Director, who I supported on a lot of projects, realized what I was doing and freaked out. She was basically like, “I’m not doing this shit alone.” It was after 4 and the CEO was already gone for the day, s0 she rushed to type up her own resignation letter. Then the head Account Supervisor realized what we were doing, had the same reaction and typed up her letter as well.

    Mind you, this was only an 8 person operation (minus the CEO), and the three of us made up her entire client facing/account service team, with the exception of 1 account executive who worked maybe 20 hours a week. The other 3 people were creative/designer types.

    She walked in the next morning and apparently had a complete melt down. She started by yelling at everyone because we weren’t at our desks, progressed quickly to crying, and then on to calling the Creative Director and begging her to get us all back. One of the web guys live tweeted the whole thing. To this day I wish I had screen grabbed them because he ended up deleting them a few months later.

    All three of the creatives ended up turning in some type of notice over the next couple of days. None of them walked out, but they had all been making contingency plans and figured they would just rip the band-aid off. One guy was taking his family on a missionary trip in a couple of months, one was planning a cross country move (also in a few months), and the third was just like “this is bat shit and I’m outta here” and turned in 2 weeks. In less than a month the entire agency turned over.

    I should note this was a really small operation, and we were also planning a cross country move in a few months, so I wasn’t super worried she could impact my career at all. The CEO tried to connect with my on LinkedIn a few years later when I made Brand Group Director at a big agency in NYC (apparently I was worth her time again at that point?) To this day, she blames the Creative Director for us all leaving. Apparently the idea that a lowly account executive could lead the mass exodus was just too much for her to handle.

      1. Outta Here*

        It was a wonderful once in a lifetime moment that still makes me warm and fuzzy when I think about it lol

        Plus it’s put all my other jobs into persepective. Nothing has ever been quite that bad since, you know?

  70. Anon PhD*

    I want to rage quit very badly, oh so badly, after constantly being told “oh no, we can’t promote you still, event though, yes we know, you are the most educated and have the most years of relevant experience, but you know money is tight and..ah well…you know, let’s check in if you meet the promotion profile and also..let’e figure out how you can give the company 120% in 100% of the time”….arrgh!! The only comfort is that most other very qualified ppl cannot get prompted either and I am actively job searching..and those other hard working folks are too. Job searching has been tiring and sometimes I need a break from it, but gotta keep at it, because rage quitting fantasies are a daily occurrence for me.

    1. Jedi Squirrel*

      OMG! That one was marvelous!

      Imagine the sound of a 100 mics hitting the floor all at once.

  72. Catabodua*

    I don’t have a rage-quit story, but I have an awesome story of how someone left after being fired.

    They did it at 3pm on a Thursday… I have no idea why they didn’t wait until the end of the day.

    As she left the conference room she loudly yelled “I JUST GOT FIRED!” Que everyone popping up out of their chairs like meerkats to see who it was (it was a cubicle farm, so no privacy at all). She walked towards her desk to grab her personal belongings, but on the way she stopped by each cubicle… “Did you hear, I was just fired!” “Lovely working with you, won’t see you again because I’ve been fired.”

    Her manager was trailing along behind her with his mouth just hanging open and eyes wide. He had NO idea what to do. HR ran off, I think to get someone else higher up to help. But I never saw them come back.

    People were laughing and cheering for her. It was talked about forever. Randomly someone would say “I’m fired!” from behind their cubicle wall and everyone would laugh.

    She took about 30 minutes to gather her things, say goodbye to everyone, then finally leave. It was spectacular.

  73. Alex*

    I got to watch my abusive sister rage-quit both work and her housing. We both got data-entry internships at the family business in another state, and found an apartment together nearby. Our dad is the CEO, but we reported to a different manager to keep a semblence of professional boundaries.

    Did I mention she was abusive? Every day, she’d find a new thing to scream at me for, like using the shower at the wrong time or chewing food too loudly in another room, or staying out too long (she got scared being in the apartment alone).

    Anyway, one day she had enough. I was making a bagel before work, and it was *unacceptable*. (In her language, I was blocking the kitchen so she couldn’t use it.) So she came in, marched to our dad’s cubicle and proceeded to scream and sob something like “I CAN’T TAKE IT. I CAN’T LIVE WITH ANYMORE. HE’S SO HORRIBLE. HE KEEPS MAKING ME SO ANGRY. I CAN’T WORK ANYMORE BECAUSE OF HIM. BLAME HIM FOR THIS, NOT ME. I WANTED TO WORK BUT I CAN’T”. I was embarrassed for her.

    After trying to talk her down, our dad gave up and let her quit and move home. But she still had to pay rent for the months that she’d signed a lease for, and I don’t think she’s getting a good reference from the manager.

    1. Blueberry*

      ” I don’t think she’s getting a good reference from the manager.” ahahahaaha and neither from you her coworker, I’d bet!

  74. irene adler*

    I witnessed as a co-worker returned from maternity leave and gave same-day notice.
    As in, “Hi, I’m back. And, by the way, today is my last day working here. Buh-bye!”
    Management was livid.
    Management still talks about how this upset them.
    This was fun to witness.

  75. learnedthehardway*

    I rage-fired a client once. This was someone who – when things were good, was over-the-top complimentary about my work and the project. Mostly, this had been my experience with him, until about 1 year before, when a project had an issue and he over-reacted. I chalked it up to stress, and he was apologetic.

    The second time he did this – again after a sudden challenge in a project – he got really personal and nasty. Very Jekyl&Hyde stuff. So, I went up one side and down the other, told him that he was abusive, that I wouldn’t put up with it, and that he was on his own, and not to ever contact me again. He was fairly speechless – just spluttered. Refused to pay me for the work I had done to that time, so it cost me something, but it was SO worth it.

    I also told a select number of gossips in my industry what he was like to work with. I’ve had calls years later from people on his projects, asking me if I really did this, telling me what they were going through, etc. etc. I like to think that I’ve saved a few people from doubting themselves or succumbing to psychological abuse.

    1. Jedi Squirrel*

      In the old days of web design, some of us (not me, but some) would leave HTML comments in the pages of particularly nasty clients.

      I still view the source code of a lot of small business web pages, looking for those. Haven’t found any in a while though. Damn CMSs!

      1. Quill*

        Well, better than the day I walked into my job at pig lab to discover that somebody had hacked our website and my boss expected me to deal with it.

        I qualified as IT over there because I knew how to run a virus scan and disassemble the printer to get melted labels out of it.

  76. irene adler*

    There was a scientist, Chinese national, who was not kindly treated at a biotech company. Lots of verbal abuse, slights and just not given the respect he deserved. He was a polite, extremely intelligent and very productive gentleman who was integral in many of the successful products for this biotech company.

    One day he was fired by management-no advanced notice. Don’t know the reason why. Just escorted out of the facility. He was in the middle of developing several, very promising, new products.

    Someone was sent in to gather together his lab notebooks pertaining to all these new products. They were handed over to other scientists to review and continue developing these products. Only no one could understand them. Every single notebook was written entirely in Cantonese.

    1. Lyudie*

      The best part about this is it was (probably) not at all malicious. Makes sense he’d write his notes in a way that made sense to him.

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        I agree. That’s so cool it makes me wish I could speak/write a foreign language better than the language of the country in which I am living.

    2. iglwif*

      … and they couldn’t find ONE SINGLE other employee who could read Cantonese? That’s … wow. (Unless it was a really, really small company, I mean.)

      Although that does shed some light on why the company treated him badly :/

      1. MJ*

        The company couldn’t find another employee to read Cantonese because there’s no written version of the Cantonese dialect. Cantonese speakers (such as Hong Kong people) tend to use traditional Chinese characters (as do Taiwanese), while mainland Chinese use simplified Chinese characters.

        People who learnt to read traditional Chinese characters can usually also read simplified Chinese characters. But people who learnt to read simplified Chinese characters typically can’t read traditional Chinese characters without specifically learning how to.

    3. Quill*

      Wow, this one’s great. And just the natural consequences of companies firing people at random, because obviously he’s going to make his notes in his first language!

    4. WS*

      On the opposite side of this, my dad worked with a terrific guy named Albert who was Chinese, and the only Chinese person in the company (rural Australia, so it was uncommon to have even one non-Anglo co-worker at the time). He was a very hands-on manager, always up to date with everyone’s projects and the complicated government tendering process involved. Eventually Albert decided to retire, and the company asked him to stay on a bit longer to train his successor and make sure everything he did was documented. Albert ended up staying another 6 months because, you guessed it, he’d written his notes and manuals in Chinese for his own use, and he was such a capable manager that nobody else had needed them up to that point!

  77. That's MY basket*

    I once worked at a fairly large financial institution. The receptionist had a little wicker basket of balloons on the desk and with the parents permission would give them to children who came in. The receptionist was having some performance issues and was let go by her supervisor. Instead of leaving through the back door (which was in close proximity to the supervisor’s office), she marched through the lobby, went to the receptionists desk, dumped the balloons on the desk and left via the front door, taking the basket with her. Apparently, it was a basket she had personally purchased from the dollar store next door.

      1. That's MY basket*

        It was pretty mild compared to many but was highly amusing at the time! From that time on, when someone would get frustrated or have a problem we would say “I’m taking my balloon basket and going home!” Or we would say to someone “Just take your balloon basket and go home!” It was much funnier than it sounds here!

  78. HS Teacher*

    Wow. The Slate commentariat is very different from here. There are so many people over there calling people names for having quit in such a manner. Is it usually a good idea? No. But I can empathize with people who are driven to extreme measures by some of the craziness bosses put their employees through.

    I’m reminded of our Leap Year boss, who wouldn’t allow birthday celebrations for employees born on Leap Day because it wasn’t their actual birthday. I’d totally rage quit on that guy.

    1. Jedi Squirrel*

      Yeah, the Slate population don’t seem very much like people I’d like to hang out with.

      Except for the guy that thought it was “rage quilting”. He would get an invite to my party.

      2. TiffIf*

        Except for the guy that thought it was “rage quilting”. He would get an invite to my party.
        LOL

    2. Stormy Weather*

      I noticed the different tone over on Slate. Lots of self-righteousness, much lower on compassion than here.

    3. Indy Dem*

      It’s funny, the only reason I found this site is because of Alison’s articles on Slate. I’ve quit reading Slate on and off because of the comments, but can never imagine rage-quitting this site.

  79. DCGirl*

    I once worked at a company where the IT director was deeply wedded to the idea that everyone did all their work on the file server, not their hard drives, and that there would be exactly one server, located at the company’s first location. Among other things, this meant that if the network went down that we literally couldn’t work because our laptops were configured so that we couldn’t save to them. It also meant that if I wanted to print something, my request had to spool from a server in another city to the printer that was located six feet from my desk.

    I’m a proposal manager. Ten copies of 150 page proposal took upwards of an hour to spool. We’d send jobs to print and go to lunch while we waited. My boss complained mightily as the time to print and burn CDs meant that we came very close to missing proposal deadlines on more than one occasion. The building that housed that server was back in the woods in rural Virginia and lost power during every thunder storm in the summer. Thunderstorms seemed to happen around 4:00 every freaking day in July and August.

    Well, finally, the CEO who enabled the IT director in his madness retired, and the new CEO directed him to put a server in every office, give us access to our hard drives, and stop doing things liking randomly surfing into people’s work to makes they weren’t misusing company equipment (you’d be typing along on a proposal, suddenly everything slowed down, and you knew Larry was looking at your work). Control freak barely begins to describe Larry.

    The IT director was just absolutely furious about this and, when it became clear that the new CEO wasn’t going to back down, he rage quit. He blasted an email to the entire company to announced he was going to go to do missionary work in Africa rather than work with the “godless heathens” he’d been subjected to on a daily basis while at the company.

    About a month after he was gone, and the new servers had been installed, there was a power outage in our building. Over the cube walls I heard one of my coworkers say, “I guess this is what every convert in Africa has been praying for.”

  80. Airport Song*

    I’ve always fantasized that I’ve won the lottery, but I continue to come to work and just be so so soweird. Bring in tons of plants so that my office is a literal jungle, like I would be in a little nook and the rest is plants and have rain and bird noises and such, and do all kinds of weird things. Part of it is that I think people get away with A LOT before anyone does anything and it would be funny to see.

    Also, I would like to respond to my brokers with the way I really feel.
    “If you actually read my email Brunhilda, maybe you would know”

    If you never needed another job, rage quitting would be the best and you wouldn’t have to worry so much.

    1. Faith*

      I love this idea. If I win the lottery, I’m totally going to see how crazy I can get before someone says something to me.

  81. EasyPeasyLemonSqueezy*

    I call this an under-the-radar rage quit.

    I had been a full-charge bookkeeper and office manager for 25+ years, at this particular company, a law firm, for nearly 7. Managing a law firm is a whole ‘nother animal from any other type of business, and law firm accounting is different from other businesses in that you have to follow state bar rules, specific laws, trust laws, etc. It’s complicated and it MUST be done right or you put the firm at risk for grievances and sanctions.

    I had given a very generous 30 day notice at horribly toxic job, thinking horribly toxic crazy boss would want me to train my replacement. But no, her response to me when I had 8 days left of my notice was to say, and I quote, “I think you can just show my husband what you do. After all, it can’t be that difficult.”

    O.O

    I spent 4 days giving him the most long, drawn out, tediously detailed and difficult explanations of EVERYTHING I did for the office, ESPECIALLY anything that had to do with the financial matters. He sat there looking at me like a deer in headlights and furiously scribbling on legal pads. I spent the last 4 days telling him to review his notes if he had a question and reminding him that “it really isn’t that difficult.” LOL LOL LOL

    I heard later he quit after about 3 weeks.

  82. Essess*

    I didn’t rage quit, but I changed my login password to “If**kingquit” (replace the asterisks for the real password) so that I could type that every morning until I managed to get a new job.

  83. Kathlynn (Canada)*

    I have many dreams of rage quitting. But I haven’t. I did give 5 days notice instead of 2 weeks, a week or two after a coworker left with no notice, and they lectured me about how I had to give 2 weeks notice (I don’t know why they only pulled me into the office, but that’s what happened. Maybe she said something IDK *Shrug*). They waited to post the next schedual until my last day, 2 days before I left they decided to say that they were refusing my notice because I didn’t give them enough time. Like nope, the law doesn’t require me to give you any notice. And I’m starting my next job in 2 days, so too bad.
    I have refused to do a job, when my temporary manager decided to assign me 14 hours of work to do each day, when I’m scheduled for 8. Still had 12 hours of work on my list, but still only did the 8 I was scheduled for. He lost the company sooo much money in the 6 months he was at the store. By the time I gave up the assignment I would walk down the relavent isle, and want to shove everything off the shelves. As soon as I said that they weren’t my responsibility, that urge went away. They only good part about having a boss who doesn’t respond to your written notes. lol
    Now I have an issue where the bosses do something that really angers me, and makes me want to just walk out. I’m only at my current job because I’m struggling to get the driving experience I need to pass the driving test. And my Boss’s boss had the nerve to tell me a couple weeks ago that the reason I, and all the senior staff are still there is because they treat us well. They do the bare minimum, and hire shitty managers. Their HR knows less about labour laws, safety laws, and humans rights then I do, or at least she’s willing to lie to employees about their rights (to be clear I said “boss is doing this thing that could kill me by causing me to stop breathing” she told me I still had to do it). The only reason I haven’t left is because they do offer health benefits, which I need. (not that 2k dental goes far). And I finally have my anxiety in control enough to seek dental treatment. Plus, my other health issues have made it extremely hard to find a new job I’m physically capable of doing. (physical limitations plus an inability to make phone calls, with only a high school education. Not a lot to choose from outside of the largest cities like Vancouver)

  84. CastIrony*

    I silently rage quit once over a slice of tomato. Just walked out and thanked my boss after the umpteenth time he took something right out of my hand instead of letting me fix my mistake.

  85. Chronic Overthinker*

    I heard about a former co-worker who rage quitted in a very professional, yet completely not way. They wrote a scathing two page single spaced letter calling EVERYONE out. From their peers, to their boss and to the great-great-great grand-boss. I heard it was glorious. Talk about testicular fortitude!

    1. Kathlynn (Canada)*

      As a very critical person, I could do this. (To be fair, I’m very critical of myself. And I’m willing to change my opinion about a person’s performance if I see evidence of a change. Got myself assigned a coworker people were using as a scapegoat that way.)

  86. ReadyPlayerThree*

    When I quit my last terrible job, I left right before a major product release and the majority of the management team and staff quit with me. Apparently, a few of them were only hanging around until I was able to get out. The whole place has been in management shambles since. I know the company probably didn’t care in the long run but it was still satisfying to cause them some inconvenience after all the mistreatment they caused us.

  87. Niniel*

    I haven’t rage-quit, but I did hand in my 2 weeks notice at my old job. I was then told it was “unprofessional” to only give 2 weeks, and that others in this industry give a month or longer. Not sure if that is true or not. Needless to say, I needed no more validation that my old job was a toxic dumpster fire. I still fantasize about telling people who know the owners of my old company how awful it was to work for them. I won’t, but it is so tempting.

  88. Serin*

    I had a part-time job working for a tiny little newspaper that was part of a tiny little regional chain; I was looking for a full-time job and had had a very promising series of interviews, but no offer yet.

    I had a co-worker who was on a late shift and wanted to switch to days. Our boss decided that she had a great idea — she would give my hours to him, and I would go and work for a different newspaper in another town. It would be perfect, she said, since I wanted to work full-time.

    I investigated. It would have changed my commute from 5 minutes to 40. The boss over there particularly wanted me to work evenings, and he wouldn’t commit to a job description or a schedule — “We’ll work it out when you’re on board,” he said.

    I went back to my original boss and asked her if it would be possible to keep the job I currently had, and she said no. I said, “Then this will be my last day,” and went back to my desk to finish up my tasks.

    She was so shocked and hurt! She had come up with this wonderful plan where everybody came out a winner! (I mean, she hadn’t asked any of us what we wanted, but she didn’t see why that would be an issue.)

    It was the beginning of Memorial Day weekend, and I didn’t have another job lined up, and I was terrified, but Promising Interview People called me on Tuesday and made me an offer, so it worked out for me.

  89. MassMatt*

    This isn’t quite a rage quit, but it’s close enough and a good story.

    My brother in law was a manager of a fast food restaurant. He came in early one morning to find the place had been emptied out. All the tables and chairs, the food, the glassware, everything. The owners had decided to close the restaurant and move it to another town and ghosted both him and the employees. And it was payday!

    He called the owners and got machines, then noticed they had forgotten to take the very expensive cash registers. He loaded them on his truck and took them to an undisclosed location and basically held them for ransom.

    Once he did that, the owners were falling all over themselves to get in touch, claiming it was all a “misunderstanding” and checks would be mailed. He said no, the checks had better be delivered here, by noon, and I am going to drive everyone to the bank to cash them before I remember where your cash registers are.

    So many sleazy restaurant owners screw their employees, it’s nice to see it can backfire.

  90. Gina Linetti*

    Back in the 90s I worked as the office administrator for this law firm in Pasadena with a boss that… well, I guess I can say he’s the first true Jekyll-and-Hyde personality I’d ever met. I honestly think the man was certifiably mentally ill. His moods could change within seconds – I personally witnessed him going from falling over laughing to a full-on, frothing-at-the-mouth rage more than once.

    Everyone in the office, including the other attorneys, was terrified of this guy. (He was one of the partners, and my desk was right outside his office.)

    As I worked directly under him, I got the brunt of his bad temper practically every day. I used to come home at night and burst out sobbing at the thought of going back the next day.

    One time, a few months after I started working there, I took a bad fall on the weekend that left both my legs sprained and badly bruised. When I called in sick the following Monday, the attitude he gave me… it was obvious he thought I was faking. He even asked me (in what I’m sure he thought was a joking tone) if I was secretly interviewing for other jobs. (The turnover at this place was astronomical – nobody on staff ever lasted more than a year.)

    I barely lasted there a year myself. When I handed in my notice, he got mad. He actually treated it like a personal betrayal. For the first few days, he ignored me – man, was that heaven! – then I guess he decided he only had another week to get his last licks in, and he started raking me over the coals for every little thing he could think of. He took me to task every time I left my desk, even when it was for lunch or my scheduled breaks. He criticized every phone message, claiming I wrote the names and/or phone numbers down wrong. He yelled at me for talking to other members of the staff.

    Finally, on the Monday of my last week there, he tore me a new one for “losing” a piece of paperwork that I’m absolutely, positively sure I put in his inbox the previous Friday. (He was always misplacing stuff and blaming it on me.)

    By noon, I’d had enough. I wish I could say I flamed out of there in a blaze of glory, but I just waited for him to leave for lunch, then I picked up my stuff and left. No note, no explanation. He kept calling and leaving screaming rage-messages on my answering machine at home (I didn’t have a cell phone way back in 1991). I finally had to change my phone number.

    Just remembering all that is making me tremble a bit. Working for that guy was truly one of the worst experiences of my life.

  91. Batty Twerp*

    I have a rage quit fantasy, only it’s not me doing the quitting – it’s my husband’s idiot boss. And the fantasy comes closer to reality every day.

    (The company has two sites – the main HQ (~250 staff) is located in northern town, while the satellite office(~30 staff) is located about an hour down the motorway. Idiot boss lives just outside the satellite office town, so has ‘chosen’ to make that his base even though his job, the majority of his team and his internal customers are at HQ. If they’re lucky, they might see him once a week. Otherwise he prefers to go to the satellite office where he can dictate his team’s requirements from afar. The rage quitting will come because a) he has just got a new boss who isn’t a ‘mate’ like his previous boss (and is, by all accounts, actually making him responsible for his team’s performance – as opposed to his preferred approach – I’m not doing this complaint justice; think takes all the credit, but assigns all the blame), and b) the company are going to be closing the satellite office in about 8 months when the lease expires, so he will *have* to actually go where the job is really based. I realise this makes it sound like I’m having a go at a remote worker, but he’s actually paid a substantial amount to compensate for travelling to HQ. He just ‘prefers’ not to – on days when hes been required to go to HQ by his new boss, he’s mysteriously come down sick and decided to work from home instead.)

    I have no idea whether or not he knows about the plan to close the satellite office, which is what makes the fantasy so alluring. Especially since he can rage all he likes – he’s been useless and will only be missed by the other useless members of his team who have been enjoying a free ride. Maybe they’ll rage quite too!

  92. Kc*

    I didn’t exactly rage quit…it was more passive aggressive.

    I was getting married and was due to move to another country. The gov org I worked for was undergoing a merger with another org and were offering voluntary redundancies. I knew once I left my role wouldn’t be continued under the new structure as it was a bitsy catch all role anyway. So knowing I was leaving anyway (kept this quiet), I applied for a VR, cos why not? This was in the October…I was due to leave in the January. They kept everyone who applied on the hook right up to and beyond Xmas. Meanwhile I’ve had to tell my immediate boss what was going on. He was happy to support my VR application but at this point I just needed an answer. Anyway, by Xmas I was sick of waiting so just handed in my resignation. My boss really wanted me to stay into the new year for at least a month (keeping in mind my new husband would have already left the country) and told me he’d try push the VR process along in my favour. So I agreed and made plans to stay a bit longer in to the new year.

    By the middle of the second week, it was apparent nothing was going to happen (I didn’t really care if I was given a VR, I just wanted an answer so I could go be with my husband and get on with my life) so on the Friday, I stayed until 5pm, all the while quietly packing my things. At 5pm, I left my access card, corp credit card and keys on my bosses desk with my original resignation letter dated back in December and left. For good.

    I got a rather sheepish phonecall from him the following Monday asking me if I was ok and when we could have a farewell lunch. He’s a good guy but was put in a really shitty position with all that stuff. We’re still mates now.

  93. Sharpie*

    I haven’t actually rage-quit, but I had a job cold-calling to sell double-glazing – it was supposedly self-employed but we all worked the same hours in the same office using their phones. I wasn’t bad at it, but it was one of the worst jobs I’ve ever had just because of the nature of it. Had one morning with nothing but bad calls, got no leads or anything and signed the sheet at lunch-time, packed my stuff, walked out and didn’t bother to go back. Maybe not my best day, but it was a sketch sort of place and I honestly have never regretted leaving.

  94. SusanIvanova*

    James May’s final layout for a car magazine got him sacked, and it seems pretty likely that that was his intention: the capital letters spelled out “So you think it’s really good, yeah? You should try making the bl**dy thing up; it’s a real pain in the a**e.” You can find images of it on the net, just google “James May car magazine”

  95. Ms. FS*

    This is so timely. I got an offer letter TODAY that doubles my salary and total comp and I’m like ‘I”M OUTTA HERE”!!! My job wasn’t toxic per se but my manager is a micromanager and we’re all really overworked so yeah looking forward to having that nice meeting that says see ya later! Bonus: I have enough time to give them three weeks notice AND I can take two weeks off before the next gig. Best rage quit is the one that puts you in a better place.

  96. Brooklyn Nine-Niner*

    Wow, ironic since I’ve actually been fantasizing about it quite recently. Not gonna do it of course, but just thinking about rage-quitting is nice. Unfortunately, this is real life, not a video game, so rage-quitting is highly unfeasible.

  97. Checking it out*

    My friend told me about a rage quitting (or firing) at a loan company she worked for. Apparently it was an office that had the middle open cube area and offices surrounding. The woman being fired was drunk and walked through the office screaming and kicking over trash cans. To this day I refer to rage quitting as “kicking cans over”. I also love the flight attendant from JetBlue. After the last bad day straw he cracked two beers, pulled the emergency slide and said adios.

  98. patricia*

    Offer letter on new job came today! And while I’m not planning to rage quit, there are a few clients who I cannot WAIT to see the back of. And I’ll be staying in the same industry but won’t ever be doing this same thing (law practice) again, so I have no issues at all telling these awful clients to Peace Out.

    I may sleep well for the first time in a long time. And I’m scheduled to go on vacation right after my notice ends- it will be the first time in 5 years that I won’t have to work while on vacation, won’t actually have any work to do. I…don’t even know how to act. I’m so HAPPY!

  99. Dave*

    I had a part time job working for the Pennsylvania State Store system (state run liquor store, no private liquor stores in PA) as a stocking clerk and cashier. The Saturday night before Thanksgiving a “gentleman” ran into the store, grabbed a $38.00 bottle of cognac threw $40.00 at me and ran out the door.
    At the end of the night my cash drawer was $2.12 over. The manager told me that he was writing a warning letter and should I have more than a dollar overage I would be terminated. I said, “Do what you have to.” after describing what had happened. He replied, “See you tomorrow and be more careful.”
    I replied, “You do what you have to, I’ll do what I have to. You will not see me tomorrow or ever again, I quit.”
    Needless to say, this was an extremely busy time and he was suddenly screwed, but I walked out the door with a smile and got home to my phone blowing up. I didn’t answer it (pre-caller ID).

  100. MAC*

    My friend and used to joke about this, although it was more of an “insolence” quit fantasy than rage. Our plan was to win the lottery, then we envisioned not telling anyone and continuing to work (for a short time) with that freedom. I don’t remember the specifics of hers, but mine included bringing my Cosmo magazine and nail file to meetings with my internal client and kicking my feet up on his desk and filing my nails and flipping through the magazine while simultaneously “Yeah … uh huh … OK”-ing him while he hammered nonsense at me.

    1. irene adler*

      Yep!

      My post-lottery-winning plan was to purchase the company (note: entirely doable as it is a very small company). Only, not tell anyone I was the new owner. Continue to go to work, as usual.

      Then, whenever someone did something I didn’t like, issue instructions from the ‘owner’ to have that person disciplined.

  102. numbercruncher.gov*

    A friend of mine retired from his federal job and didn’t tell anyone. He gradually took things home, explaining “I’m tired of the clutter.” No supervisor approval is needed for the job, and the HR-type people didn’t have his permission to disclose. The fateful Friday rolled around, it was just “have a good weekend” and home he went. He said it was three weeks before he got a voice mail from his (former) supervisor asking, “so how long were you planning to be on leave?” A couple weeks later my friend called them back and explained that he wasn’t coming back, he’s retired now. I kinda want to be him when I grow up.

  103. Rexish*

    My bf used Excel to build a Basic tool that would save time when processing data. Something that according to him was something that everyplae he had worked before used except this Office. The boss was not very moody and passive aggressive in general. Bf voulanteered to show team members how to use the tool but manager was not interested until months later she realized that the tool would actually save tons of time, When my bf had quit she insisted that the tool was left there for them to use. My bf didn’t want to and it turned a bit nasty so he set up a timer so hat the Excel file would self delete when it was next opened. He was so happy with this Small victory.

  104. Case of the Mondays*

    Someone at my company recently rage-quit, and I have to admit it was the best day of our work lives. Sally had a long history of pettiness, vengefulness, manipulation, trying to get people fired, daily emotional outbursts (usually crying at her desk or in the bathroom, but sometimes yelling), and other things. She may have gotten some satisfaction out of it, but all it did on our end was confirm that her leaving is the best possible outcome for all and give us a reason to celebrate. It didn’t make anyone other than my boss, who tends to be quite hard on herself already, wonder what could have been done to stop Sally from leaving. The answer? Nothing. This is a person who is going to have the same problems no matter where she works. In fact, Sally got hired at a company into a department a former coworker of mine, Jane, manages and she’s already seeing problems–and it’s only been a month! (Jane told me that at her company HR checks references, not the hiring manager, and half the time HR doesn’t even do it. So I assume this is how Sally was able to get a job so quickly. Or she used the one person at our company she hadn’t managed to alienate to be a reference for her.)

  105. ainnnymouse*

    I almost rage quit my job after a customer threw a fit in the store and caused a scene about us not having potato wedges. I decided not to because I didn’t want to that customer the satisfaction of seeing me quit that night. That happened the week before I quit for real. The week I quit I came home every night crying. They wanted to know my the department I was working in was doing terrible sales. My supervisor kept getting mad at me because I kept using the “u” word “understaffed”. That was the glaring problem. But they denied it. Everyone above me kept telling me I sucked and the whole department did. My last night there (a Friday) my 2 coworkers both vanished for over an hour and left me to clean and take care of the whole place myself which is impossible for one person to do. My supervisor told me I couldn’t leave at 10PM when I was scheduled to leave. And yelling at me as I clocked out. I couldn’t take it anymore! I cried all the way home.

    I really wanted to show up that Saturday morning and give a reason you suck speech to my terrible coworkers; Airing of Grievances Festivus style. Then sing a few lines of the song “Everything Counts”. Or even say something cool and witty. But I chickened out and quit over the phone on a Saturday morning when I was scheduled for an 8 hour shift. When that same supervisor asked why I quit I said it was understaffed among many other obvious problems I did not mention. She denied it again and said there were plenty of people there. It was a Saturday nobody ever showed up on a Saturday. After I hung up I said “I wonder who is going to unload the rotisserie? Doesn’t matter I don’t there anymore.” The only reason I didn’t give a two week notice was because I didn’t know that was a thing. I’m pretty sure I’ve been blacklisted from that store chain.

    1. Rob aka Mediancat*

      To quote Harlan Ellison re your blacklist: “That, my friends, is roughly as imposing a threat as telling someone who has just crawled out of the Gobi Desert on hands and knees that they may not have a peanut butter sandwich.”

  106. CountryLass*

    I had a Saturday job at a girls clothes store when I was 16. It was great, then we got a new manager, and I ended up spending lots of time on fitting room, whilst her favourites did tills and stock etc. I also got told off for leaning on the wall when waiting for people to show up to use the fitting rooms, apparently I was supposed stand like a soldier on parade for 8 hours?!

    Lots of the staff had issues with her, one day she insisted I get down on my hands and knees and wipe down all of the baseboards behind the clothes racks. I asked why I couldn’t crouch down and use the mop to wipe them, and demonstrated it would work, but she said no. I refused, and she didn’t raise it again.

    I came in one saturday and 830am to be told that everyone else scheduled for that morning, including the assistant manager, had quit with no notice, so it was just going to be the two of us til 1pm and because of that I would need to take my lunch break at 1030am then work til 6 with no break… I managed to call my parents, crying, and they told me to use my discount to buy whatever clothes I needed, then quit at the end of the day and they would support me til I found another saturday job. So, a couple of friends came in later and I whispered to them to come back when I was on my lunch as I was going to use my 30% discount to get their stuff too. My manager rang me up at the til and commented it had been ages since I had bought myself any clothes!

    At about 3pm, I told her I was going to be quitting as I was not happy, I was always on fitting room even though I had been there longer than some of the people usually on tills. She asked how much notice I was going to give, and I told her until the end of the day, then refused to budge on that. I pointed out that everyone was unhappy and that is why most of us had handed their notice in, and she had a week to replace me!

    Then all of us that left met up to discuss out plan of action for submitting a formal complaint to head office.

  107. Rachel Morgan*

    When I was much younger, I had a job as a security guard. My original boss knew I would be returning to school, and had made me a deal where we would work my work schedule around my college schedule. When he left, the replacement boss refused to honor that deal, stating that “he wasn’t the one who made it”. Because of him, I had to drop multiple classes, costing me no small amount of money.

    I applied to a school for my master’s degree and was accepted. It would begin right after the new year.

    At the time, he made the schedules a month in advance, and made every employee sign it as acknowledgement of receiving them.

    He posted the January schedule in late November. I didn’t sign mine for over a month. Finally, with just a couple of weeks before the schedule would start, he told me to sign it.

    I sent a long diatribe, beginning with something like “I can’t sign the new schedule, since I won’t be here for it” and ending with a nice, long letter about why he was a shitty boss (he played employees against each other, had no management experience…and a lot of other shit) and how he could improve.

    Two months later (March, I think), I received a letter from the parent security company, thanking me for my two year anniversary. I contacted them, and it turned out that my boss never turned in my resignation. When they tried to charge me for my uniform, I turned him in to the parent company for that as well.

  108. SweetestCin*

    Not a rage quit, but a moment of absolutely silent fist-pumping glee about karmic justice in the universe:

    Been job hunting in earnest for six months at this point; there had been a near 100% changeover in upper level management, and I did not agree with the new management. My boss-boss is still in the picture, but he’s been tucked into a corner on the org chart by new management. I’m his report, he’s not allowed to give me assignments. (Yes. I still have that look on my face about this.)

    Going round twelve with the two in charge of the project, both a part of this new upper management. Neither has a background in XYZ work. XYZ is what I do, I know it well, and it is a construction trade that has related licenses for tradespeople and contractors. Its also permitted work (i.e. an authority having jurisdiction verifies it meets applicable codes) just about everywhere.

    The two in charge want me to tell them how much to do XYZ work that they describe to me.
    XYZ work as described is against building code requirements and I’m not doing that.
    They want me to have a subcontractor quote me an hourly rate, and they’re going to apply it to how much time they think XYZ will take, which is irrelevant, again, because its against code and it would cost the installing contractor their license.
    I’m not doing that and I tell them why.
    Then they want me to just come up with an hourly rate based on published wage rates from the union.
    I point out that their plan isn’t going to fly and should not be used in the project.
    Lather, rinse, repeat…

    In the midst of this, I see a notification on MY personal phone from MY personal, professionalish email account, that I have a new email. Remember how I’ve been job hunting? Yeah. Its my offer letter from a company that really wants me on board. Its also The Week Leading Up to American Thanksgiving, and I know my boss-boss is not going to be in until the following week. Further, as I am technically his report, even if he’s NOT allowed to give me assignments, I’m not turning my notice in to anyone else first. I know that the background check that my letter is pending upon will take two weeks, putting me solidly into December before I hand in my notice.

    I proceeded to sit through the remainder of that project meeting with great glee and an evil smile on my face, knowing that I am about to be done with this chaos, and that the two in charge in this room are going to be absolutely gobsmacked that I’m leaving.

  109. Kathy Morris*

    I thought my boss understood my workload because most of my budget products/projects were shared at least weekly with her and the other senior execs. I had also taken on some additional duties that the HR dept could just not seem to get done right or on time, and these were also discussed at least weekly and were the basis of major hiring decisions. I was working long weekends in addition to 9 -10 hr days (salaried of course). After I gave my notice and quit she decided that the job could be done part time if she gave the HR duties back. She went through 2 employees who told her they could not do it part time and that they weren’t sure they could even get the main duties done full time. She finally advertised and hired the position as full time without a number of the duties I had been doing exclusive of the HR stuff. I felt very disrespected when I found out she was filling it part time. Note: my performance reviews were always great, and mentioned my exceptional output, but I guess she really didn’t believe what she had written

  110. Exit Strategy*

    I didn’t really rage quit, but I did go out in spectacular, albeit, low-key hit-em-where-it-hurts fashion. I was working at a place for 15 years and had a terrible manager. We eventually got a new director (YAY), turns out she was worse than the terrible manager. My first meeting with her (after her being the director for THREE weeks) included getting my ass handed to me and the phrase “we can discuss your exit strategy” multiple times in that meeting. I had zero performance issues in my entire 15 year career. Time to go….

    As I started job hunting and interviewing, I also consulted The Google. I figured someone as nasty as this lady had to have skeletons. And skeletons she had. Her husband was up to some major shady stuff and she lied about him, his job, his education, you name it. So basically as I gave her my 2 week notice I told her our interactions were the most unprofessional I have ever had in my career and acknowledged she was probably under a lot of stress due to her husband’s legal issues with XXX workplace. Then told her I would like to discuss my exit strategy.

    The look on her face as I let her know I knew all of her dirt made her treatment of me well worth it. I ended up being let go that day, with 2 weeks of pay, which is exactly what I was angling for. Good riddance. She lasted less than one year in that job, and lost 5 of 7 people in her department during her short tenure. She was terrible.

    1. Backintheday*

      This may sound made up but it is just a crazy outcome of working in as a bartender/ manager at a go go bar way back in the day. My boss the owner decidedafter about 6 months (after he hired me away from another bar and I had set up his business for success) that my salary was too high for him to keep paying me that amount.
      I disagreed with that option and he fired me – handed me my final check and told me to get out. I gathered up my stuff and hit the street/ walked a few blocks to the bar I had been hired away from. Once comfortable and with a drink in my hands / I tore each page out of the schedule of dancer bookings for the coming months which I had compiled as I worked for the jack hat that had just fired me. Tore them into thin strips / tossed them into a small bucket and burned them ! Yep – right there inside my old bar and among friends / I screwed the jackhat by leaving him with no dancer info ( phone # and real names and dates they were scheduled to perform ) **it was massively satisfying when he called the bar I was at – asked for me to be put on the phone and screamed
      WHERE IS THE !% BOOKING CALENDAR and I was able to say I BURNED IT YOU JACKHAT.

      ** the whole mad max episode at the bank when I went to cash my check and found out he had canceled it … was even more crazy and also very satisfying when he after I had the bank call him and hand me the phone (on that phone call he learned that he might not want the info I had on his finances being given to the tax man by me )
      The LOOK
      on the bank manager’s face when that jackhat showed up at the bank in record time ( I had told them he was on his way to the bank but they doubted me ) with a NEW larger check and cashed it and handed me the money was the best look ever.

      There were bosses in that go go bar business circle that I would never have had the nerve to face off with – but this particular owner wasn’t going to cheat me that day !

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