let’s discuss final F-you’s to jobs or bosses you hated

by Alison Green on March 13, 2025

Most of the time when you leave a job you hated, you do it professionally — you give notice, you transition your work, you move on, even when there’s malice deep in your heart. But sometimes you get the opportunity to go out with a bit more verve — for example, the person who quit with two hours of notice the week before a big project was due … exactly the same way they treated him when he’d been demoted four months prior. And obviously we must never forget the person who spelled out “I quit” in cod.

Not all final F-you’s are so visible. Some are more discreet, perhaps known only to you. But all are satisfying.

Have you ever left with an F-you to a job or a boss, subtle or not-so-subtle? Or seen it done? We want to hear about it in the comment section.

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{ 407 comments }

{ 407 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. CherryBlossom*

    Tomorrow’s my last day at a job that’s been absolutely miserable… I may or may not be here to take notes!

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    2. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Hahaha, best of luck and congratulations!!! And of course fill us in if you do anything you learn about here!

      Reply ↓
  2. Anonychick*

    Not me, but someone my mom worked with: after their tiny company got bought out by a different, awful company, someone—who, like basically everyone else, had been tossed aside by the new bosses—made sure the last public document under the OldCompany name contained the words “F**k [NewCompany]” hidden somewhere within.

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  3. Katydid*

    I worked for an insurance company call center and one of my co-workers just went to lunch on her last day and never came back. It was a small thing but we all thought she was a hero at the time.

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    1. Clisby*

      I’m curious – would it really reflect poorly on *anyone* for leaving a call center job at the drop of a hat? Maybe it would if the employee tries to get a new call center job, anywhere else? Or maybe I’m an outlier in thinking working in a call center is the worst. Worse than retail, worse than restaurants, worse than grocery store cashier, etc.

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      1. Brooklyn*

        I worked for a university call center one summer – calling alumni and asking them for money basically. The pay was awful, the hours terrible, and you just felt slimy the whole time. Everyone I know who worked there just walked out at the drop of a hat once they had enough. But I think there’s a difference between cold call sales call center and, like, customer support call center, where you sometimes feel like you did something productive.

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        1. SprawledOut*

          Agreed. Having worked in a customer support call center for a couple years, I can say that I at least sometimes left that job feeling like I’d really helped someone (even if that was usually just making a lonely old person’s day by chatting with them for longer than I should have about the weather and their grandkid’s achievements in school).

          FWIW, I did give that call center two weeks notice, but it was still mostly because I got that job through a friend and wanted to reflect well on him even as I left.

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        1. Bruce*

          Some exceptions: my sister works in customer service for a medical device company, she works from home, literally keeps people alive with customer support, and is well treated by her employer. It helps that she has a medical background, and being able to work remotely is good for her own physical disability.

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      3. Names are Hard*

        I worked at a call center for 7 years, but I was not taking calls, I was in the back office doing reporting. People just walked out all the time. We had people on their first day just leave at break or lunch and never be heard from again. It was common that if you tried to give a notice that they wouldn’t schedule you anymore so most people quit with no notice.

        I don’t blame anyone for just quitting without notice there. They got what they deserved when they essentially let you go if you tried to give notice, and no, they did not offer pay in lieu of working the notice.

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      4. Your former password resetter*

        I’ve had decent call center jobs. But those were government support desk jobs, with reasonable managers and a focus on actually helping people instead of making sales or pumping through as many calls as possible.

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      5. NigelsMom*

        I has 2 jobs in a call center during college. One was an outbound collections-type role where people came and went all week—the company (a national bank) was so tired of it that they used only third-party temp agency employees to start, and each week, a supervisor came through the cube farm and asked everyone if they wanted a permanent job. He never made eye contact and I don’t think anyone ever said yes.

        The second place was an inbound call center for a national investment firm. It was a dream job: the company sponsored your professional licensing, we had a sushi bar in the cafeteria, and had our holiday party at the fanciest joint in town with an open bar. They were obsessed with making us feel loved. But the MINUTE you hinted you were resigning, you were escorted out, do not pass GO, no exit interview or transition-out time. Looking back on it, it was like the mafia. When they loved you it was the best job ever, but you can’t leave without being disowned if not worse.

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        1. Always Tired*

          It’s not uncommon to not be able to serve out notice in the financial services field. Too much access to sensitive data. If you’re higher up the food chain, they usually pay you the two weeks as they escort you out.

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          1. RunShaker*

            came here to say the same thing. If you have your series 6/7 brokerage license (and other financial services areas), it is very typical to not to finish your 2 week notice due to what @alwaystired said.

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        2. Sweet Fancy Pancakes*

          I wonder if we worked for the same national investment firm; we didn’t have a sushi bar when I worked there, but everything else sounds familiar. They even provided massages and gift wrapping at the winter holidays to help alleviate stress. I worked the graveyard shift W-Saturday, and on Saturday nights was when all of our systems updated and we couldn’t access customer accounts, so we could easily go an hour or more between calls. We called it free-money Saturday.

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        3. Curious*

          Well, hopefully, they didn’t invite you on a fishing trip or to take a ride on a boat that they’re thinking of buying on your last day. See Godfather II, Sopranos S2E13.

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      6. Sharpie*

        I walked out of a cold calling company at lunch and didn’t go back. We were supposedly self-employed but using their equine their office keepiyrheir hours, and as far as I know, nobody was informed about how to pay taxes or anything. I’d been there maybe three months and it got to the point I’d had enough. Packed my stuff into my bag, went ‘to lunch’, got in my car and went home.

        Didn’t hurt me a bit, I’ve had other and much better jobs since

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      7. MigraineMonth*

        I had a friend who was incredibly embarrassed that her job after college was working retail at a mall. (I’m not sure why she thought I would judge her; I’d spent the last year making pizzas at a place that was one health inspection from being shut down.) She was really excited to apply for a job she considered much more prestigious… at a call center. *scratches head*

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        1. Justme, The OG*

          Having worked retail… at least you can sit down in a call center when people are yelling at you.

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      8. froodle*

        I go back and forth on whether call centre or fast food work is the worst, but they remain the two industries I would literally never consider going back to.

        I’ve waited tables, cleaned hotel rooms and office buldings, tended bar, worked on a production line, manned a cash register in various retail environments, and worked a variety of office jobs, and no other industry has ever sucked like those two.

        Individual jobs have been worse, but in terms of “this entire sector is a nightmare of low pay, poor treatment and shitty environments”, nothing gave me a worse experience than fast food and call centres.

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    3. Violently Purple*

      I also worked for an insurance call center right out of college that was notoriously strict and had a reputation of moving the performance metrics every month so that you could never advance into higher roles. I only lasted a little over a year, and during my last week I purposely misused the off-phone “modes” so that I barely took any calls. I think I got called into my managers office like three times that week, but I didn’t care. I take a moment of gratitude every day that I no longer work there.

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    4. Pool Noodle Barnacle Pen0s*

      I worked for a company years ago where this was so common we had a name for it – the “forever lunch.” It wasn’t a call center but it was a stressful, dysfunctional workplace.

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    5. NotmyUsualName*

      I had a coworker in toxic office next to mine who went out to “grab something from her car” in the middle of the morning and then when she was in her car she texted a coworker to look on her desk where she had left her badge and key

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      1. RunShaker*

        this was waayyy back in the day. I worked on banking side of inbound call center for a very popular bank, “C” known for their credit card and for suckering incoming college freshman back in mid to late 90s/ early 2000s. I was on bank side, not credit card side and ended up moving to an area in which you had to have your brokerage license. There is another awesome employer, “X” in town that had better everything which a lot of employees in brokerage area of company C would leave and go to Company X. It got to point of so many leaving, we had to sign a contract to repay company C for them paying for our brokerage licensing if we left less than 2 years from passing the licensing test. Company C (crappy bank) had multiple buildings on campus and due to number of people leaving to go to Company X, we ended up referring to Company X as building 4. I too left and went to Company X and I never repaid the cost of brokerage licensing. I spoke to an attorney and confirmed Company C wasn’t enforcing the repayment for most people so it would be easy for me to fight it and Company C found out I spoke to an attorney. They ended up making me work my 2 weeks and my manager told me if I didn’t finish my 2 weeks it could affect my future due to bad reference. It turned out to be total crap, managers weren’t allowed to gives references. All they would do was confirm employment dates and salary. I doubt most call centers would mark you for not giving 2 week notice.

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    6. My cat is the employee of the month*

      I worked at a contract lab (science equivalent of a call center) and someone didn’t return after lunch on the first day of orientation. I worked at a sketchy biotech start up where someone left at lunch without telling anyone.

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  4. Wounded, erratic stink bugs*

    I so wanted to give a big F-you to my last boss, but couldn’t afford to — it’s too small a field.
    My tiny F-you was to give the scantest two week’s notice possible (the following Friday when I gave notice on a Monday, and there was a holiday weekend in between). When I met with her to tell her I was leaving, I started by telling her when my last day would be, rather than announcing my exciting news that I had a new job I was looking forward to. She got to hear all about the place I was moving up to when she asked, but I had the tiny satisfaction of the look of surprise on her face when I told her I was leaving.
    So small an F-you that she probably didn’t even know that’s what it was, but I needed more than plausible deniability about it, so I snuck in what I could.

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      1. Amy Purralta*

        I did this back in 2006, I had booked 3 weeks off over Christmas to house sit for my parents. I’d found a new job starting on 2 Jan. I sent my notice via postal mail to say I wasn’t returning.

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  5. Amber Rose*

    My example is pretty boring overall. My boss blew her lid at me over a mistake in a document and demoted me on the spot. I sat at my desk and processed that for about an hour along with everything else, and then went down to her office and very politely and professionally said that it would be best if we parted ways and this was my two weeks notice.

    Then I called in sick for the next two weeks straight. In my defense, I was a little sick, since my roommate found me on the couch that first night and (glorious friend that he was) provided me with a substantial amount of alcohol.

    The more subtle part of this F-you was the other, more time sensitive document I’d also made a mistake on. I’d been thinking about how to fix it prior to demotion, but nah. I just sent it in like it was without telling anyone and opted to let them deal with the fallout.

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    1. Amber Rose*

      I realize I’m making myself look a little bad here, like wow what’s with all the mistakes? But I had a good reason for being basically unable to concentrate and I wasn’t the only one struggling.

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        2. Amber Rose*

          She had her reasons for being crazy too. I hated her, but I also pitied her. It was such a toxic vat of awful by the time I left.

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  6. Count von tshirt's phone*

    I (queer F) quit a job where the manager (M) kept making subtle religious misogynistic remarks. A meeting, I quietly picked up my things, went downstairs, dropped my equipment at HR and left.
    I had been home for two hours before I realized I’d left my lunch in my desk. Eggsalad.
    I probably could have messaged someone on the team, but hey, no one had the courage to stand up for me so…. yeah. I heard through the grapevine they found it two days later.

    Reply ↓
    2. Juicebox Hero*

      Sometimes, the universe just gives the jerks what they deserve. Accidental stinky egg salad sounds about right.

      Reply ↓
    5. Clisby*

      You might be a contender for the annual resigning by cod award. You cannot, of course, top the original, but it would be cool if like the annual bad boss competition, we had the annual badass resignation competition.

      Reply ↓
    9. CaseyJD*

      I once also accidentally left an egg salad sandwich at my last day of a job where they laid me off – must be some sort of subconscious revenge seeking in your brain when you’re making lunch!

      Reply ↓
  7. Katrine Fonsmark*

    I spent only 6 months at a job with the MOST horrible boss. The place was run terribly but I did have some great co-workers (I think everyone but one person has now left). I was professional, gave my 2 weeks, etc., but the Chief of Staff also hated my boss, so he hatched a plan whereby we went over my exit interview questions together in excruciating detail (nice to get them in advance). He knew exactly what I should say to paint her in the worst light – it was all the truth, but he knew what she’d been up to for years, so I emphasized certain things, including some pretty egregious stuff that the CEO didn’t know about. I had my exit interview on my last day, my boss tried to hug me on my way out (ew), then my co-workers and I headed to a nearby bar for a little farewell party (paid for by the Chief of Staff with the company card haha).

    I found out 3 months later that my boss was fired while we were at the bar.

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  8. Kowalski! Options!*

    This is pretty small potatoes, relatively speaking, but back in the 90s in Toronto, when you could make enough money from temping to have a decent-sized apartment and decent holidays, I got placed with a highly dysfunctional three-person marketing firm staffed by a fifty-something guy who was getting very loudly divorced, a twenty-something hotshot who thought he was God’s gift to marketing, and the future divorcé’s neighbour’s daughter, who – I honestly don’t know what her deal was, but she had to have her cat with her at all times and had a minimum of two full-on meltdowns a day. No one had their eye on the ball at that joint, and I asked for a different assignment after about a month.

    On my last day, the neighbour’s daughter screamed at me for (I don’t remember exactly what) for fifteen minutes, so I slipped a marketing report (which was supposed to go out to a client the next week) waaaay under the laser printer and left for the day, never to return.

    Je ne regrette rien.

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    4. Busy Middle Manager*

      I wonder if you watched Melrose Place at the time and how much the drama but also just the client work match what you lived through!

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      1. Kowalski! Options!*

        Oddly enough, when I lived in Toronto, I didn’t have a TV or cable – I had a second job working in a theatre at night, so I only ever heard about TV plot lines from my coworkers!

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    5. Heffalump*

      “Je ne regrette rien” was tugging at my memory. I had a hunch it was an Edith Piaf song, and a search engine tells me that it is.

      Reply ↓
  9. Yes, yes I am*

    I worked for a software company that unbeknown to me was run by religious zealots. I brought a huge customer to them, that they wouldn’t deal with due to it being a LGBT dating app. I
    left due to this and not making enough money.

    as I left, I said “right, I’m off, I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure, but you’re all wankers”

    and walked out.

    Reply ↓
      1. Education Mic*

        Lolol tomorrow is my last day at a job where my boss has been the WORST and this really resonated.

        Reply ↓
  10. Eggstra Anonymous*

    I haven’t done it yet- still looking for a new job- but my fantasy is to quit the day before a shipment of chickens.

    This year. When we’re selling chicks as fast as we can put them in boxes.

    Reply ↓
    1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      Alison, can we have a collection of the greatest single sentences ever composed in the comments?
      “When we’re selling chicks as fast as we can put them in boxes.”

      Reply ↓
      1. Rage*

        Honestly the “my fantasy is to quit the day before a shipment of chickens” is pretty epic as well – because we don’t know at that point if they chickens are going out or coming in.

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        1. Irish Teacher.*

          And it leaves open the possibility that the person’s work doesn’t even relate to chickens but they just have random shipments of them show up at the office.

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        2. Eggstra Anonymous*

          Technically, it’s both – the chickens arrive, we take them out of the shipping boxes, put them all in holding tanks, and then so far this season have been immediately taking them back out and boxing them up for customers.

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            2. Distractinator*

              I remember when we used to talk about binders full of women, apparently things were much more organized then, now just toss the chicks in a box LOL

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  11. Shove It*

    Way back around the turn of the century, I quit a call center job without notice, along with two of my coworkers (there would have been four of us, but one backed out at the last minute).

    We planned this for a week or two, slowing removing personal items from our cubicles (a couple items per day) so that we’d be ready to make a swift exit on our secretly planned last day. We hoped nobody would notice our cubicles and desks getting increasingly more bare. I don’t think anyone ever noticed.

    Right before we quietly dipped out, I left a note on my desk for my boss to find. The note outlined all the reasons I was quitting. I can’t remember everything I wrote, but at the bottom I signed off with “In the words of Johnny Paycheck, TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT!”

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  12. Mouse named Anon*

    My example isn’t super thrilling but it felt good none the less. At my former company our senior leadership was changed. The new senior was awful. A tyrant, gas lighter and all around horrible boss. She had close to 8-9 staff quit from her departments in less than a year!

    Our team lead though was wonderful and we loved her. She couldn’t deal and quit. One by one we each quit leaving our dept completely empty within a matter of 2 months after she left. They were scrambling trying to find coverage. There were so many delays because of it. Everyone single one of cited our senior manager as the reason.

    Reply ↓
  14. Bird Lady*

    I worked for a “luxury brand” retailer and had the worst general manager ever. We reported him for multiple instances of sexual harassment and, during the investigation period, he retaliated against the assistant management staff. He would tell customers that I had went insane and was a danger to myself.

    I had already been planning a vacation with my family for some months, so I already had PTO scheduled. I had also agreed to work a specific shift for him when I returned. Before I left for vacation, I told him that my last day would be the day I had agreed to work for him. I would open and he would close.

    It was an awkward shift to say the least. And then a customer tried to pin me in the fitting room with him. I went to my manager, handed him my keys, and walked out without a bag-check. He was in the middle of a meal break and I was the only one on the sales floor. He told me I would never be able to work for the company again. It’s been over 15 years, and I haven’t even considered going back.

    Reply ↓
      1. Rage*

        It’s like when you’re breaking up with someone and they say “You’ll never find another person like me!” and you’re like, “Isn’t that the point?”

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    2. Lurker*

      I think it’s hilarious that they think this is a credible threat. As if there are zero other places to work or we would ever want to go back.

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    3. Slow Gin Lizz*

      “He told me I would never be able to work for the company again.” Don’t threaten me with a good time.

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  15. Eric*

    I once worked with a boss that made my life hell. “Gaslighting me during live TV” kind of hell. So when I found a new job, I gave the requisite 2 weeks notice and worked on transitioning everything, trying to get a meeting with her to go over my work.

    My second-to-last day she pokes her head into my office and says “We’re going to meet today at 5PM.” ….okay. Then she follows up with “And did you just wash something in the sink? There’s water on the counter. Go clean it up, I’m not your mother.”

    I immediately marched into HR and informed them that actually today is my last day and actually I’m leaving right now. Then I left without saying a word to any of my coworkers.

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      1. Mallory Janis Ian*

        At all, periodt. Every time I’ve left a job, I’ve had plans to meet coworkers at a bar immediately afterward and even if not for that, I wouldn’t stick around for a late, after-I’ve-already-quit meeting.

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  16. Judge Judy and Executioner*

    My partner was fired by text message for missing 3 days due to a planned family reunion vacation. The week before this, there was an all-hands PLUS spouses meeting where the owners talked about how important family was and how they wanted to take everyone, including spouses and kids, on a European vacation. I took half a day from my own job to attend this meeting.

    While working there, my partner was illegally declared a 1099 contractor instead of an employee. He tried to address this with the owner but didn’t get any results. So, after the firing by text message, my partner reported them to the IRS for classifying him as a contractor instead of an employee. According to one of his former colleagues, the owner was angry and had to pay fines due to his illegal actions.

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    1. Allornone*

      *so happy that I will never have to attend a meeting at my partner’s job, nor he mine.* That’s just bananacrackers.

      Reply ↓
    2. pretty purple unicorn*

      If her employer wants me at my spouse’s meeting, they can hire me. My rate for consulting at spousal meetings is $800 per hour.

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      1. Judge Judy and Executioner*

        This was 10+ years ago, we were young and didn’t know how weird this was. I would never do that now!

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  17. PDB*

    I used to be a staff recording engineer making music and records. One of the things I did was make master phonograph records, a process too complex to explain here. What used to happen was my boss would take the client’s raw work, give it to me to do, and then take credit for my finished work. As with all such arrangements the clients found out and encouraged me to go free lance, which I did and took all the studio’s clients with me. Not so unusual, you say? Get this:
    I was working in the same studio. I literally quit on Friday and came back Monday as a client because I was now buying time. It was very satisfying because I was there every day as a reminder of how badly my boss blew it.

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    4. Anon for this*

      Years ago my office hired one of our interns to join us full-time. He was a great guy and we were all looking forward to having him on board in part because we were significantly understaffed. He took one look at the contract and said “not signing anything with a non-compete.” We knew he had other offers and admin actually listened to us and took the non-compete out of his contract. Which meant they had to take it out of ours as well but that’s not the point of the story.

      My boss was a rigid, bigoted jerk. He was also my grand-boss’s favorite so we never even tried to get any traction. New hire had two little kids and a wife with a completely inflexible job, so when the kids got sick, he stayed home. We had plenty of sick time but Boss thought this was inappropriate because 1) mothers should stay home with sick kids, not fathers and 2) it showed a lack of dedication to the job. Finally he called new hire into a meeting and told him he should hire a nanny.

      New hire gave notice the next day and opened his own office across the hall because he had no non-compete.

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  18. Matt*

    In a former job I was working for a contractor to the US government and was a very high performing technical engineer in a niche field. There was another guy I worked with (I’ll call Jake) who was also good but was very quiet, shy, and afraid of conflict. At some point our old manager left and we got in a new manager (Tarzan) who I would describe as very macho-assertive. This new manager liked to bark orders and be short with people. This didn’t bother me because I knew I was indispensable but it did bother Jake and he tried to avoid Tarzan as much as possible.

    After a few months, I was lucky enough to score a conversion to civil servant and become a government employee directly, working in a different branch of the same agency. I had planned to notify the manager and his manager separately by email, but fate intervened. At our next weekly team stand-up, Tarzan was in a terrible mood and chose to leap on a small and inconsequential mistake Jake had made and gave Jake an over-the-top dressing down in front of us all, including “This is F–king unacceptable on my team”. In the awkward silence that followed, I simply said “I can’t work on this kind of team. I quit effective next Monday” and left the office.

    I filled in Tarzan’s manager more fully about the situation and he understood and congratulated me on the move but I heard from others who remained in the team meeting that Tarzan was truly shocked, and his apology to me later in the hallway made it clear that he spent a day or two wondering whether he was going to face repercussions for “driving me away”. Hopefully he reconsidered his approach in a more lasting way after that!

    Reply ↓
    3. HugeTractsofLand*

      Truly wonderful! You used your transition to stand up for a good coworker and call a bad one out, I love it.

      Reply ↓
    4. It's Marie - Not Maria*

      What is it with these awful managers on Government Contracts driving Top Performers away? And then being shocked when the Top Performer transfers or leaves? There needs to be a catchphrase, it happens so frequently.

      Reply ↓
  19. former paralegal*

    When I was a paralegal my department experimented with hiring college-aged interns to help the overworked paralegals with basic admin tasks. We had two great interns and one terrible one. (He thought he was very intelligent, but he either was incorrect about that or allowed his arrogance to get in the way of actually doing the job, so we were constantly reiterating details that seemed tiny but that were actually crucial to our workflow, each of which he adamantly refused to either perform correctly or even admit he’d done incorrectly.)

    At the end of his internship the terrible intern sent the usual goodbye-and-thank-you email to people he’d worked with. But there was one sentence that made me think he’d hated being there as much as we hated having him: “This summer taught me a lot about what I want and don’t want in a job.”

    Having him had also taught us a lot about what we wanted or didn’t want in an intern.

    Reply ↓
    2. XX*

      At my last engineering job, we had an intern one summer who was clearly a few rungs lower in talent than the other interns. They were all between their 2nd and 3rd years of college, which is when you finish the general engineering courses and get into your degree’s intensive courses. This intern was a good worker but just could not get into the hang of things. At the end of the summer she told us she was done with engineering altogether, and switched to CS even though she would lose most of two years’ worth of courses.

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      1. Rainy*

        Sometimes it’s the right thing to do. I dropped out of college because I despised my major (my parents picked it, I was really good but found the people toxic and hateful), and when I went back I declared a different major and burned most of three semesters of courses as a result. The only courses that counted once I declared my new major were a couple of distros and the required history of the discipline courses. Worth it.

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  20. Tall Broad*

    Not my boss, but the C-suite person two up from him in the hierarchy. I started looking for a new job once I found out that said C-suite person had said I wasn’t ready for a promotion after five years. (I didn’t hear this directly from him, but from my boss.) After I handed in my resignation, he called me to say that I’d be missed and ask why I’d chosen to leave. I told him that I’d been working hard to get promoted, and if I wasn’t able to be in five years, that meant I was a bad fit for the company, so I was leaving for a company that I hoped I would fit into better.

    I have no idea if he was planning on making any sort of counter-offer, because I mentioned I was going to work with someone who he’d fired before he could get to that. I wouldn’t have taken it anyway, because this wasn’t the only reason I was disillusioned by the company. And I wasn’t interested in a raise/promotion that only came due to me walking out the door.

    Reply ↓
  21. anonymous amateur programmer*

    I automated about 3 FTE worth of their business and wrote programs the quality team (such as it was) leaned on hard, and handed it all over as well as I could, with detailed documentation, knowing that I was the only person in the company who a) knew or b) understood the well known fact that Excel for MacOS and Excel for Windows have different default epoch dates, or how that interacted with the CEO’s (also well known) preference to use a Mac and have everyone else use a PC.

    Reply ↓
    1. Iranian yogurt*

      This got me to look up what default epoch dates are! I’ve been working on an experimental Excel workbook on my home computer (Mac) that could hopefully streamline the work I do on my office computer (PC) and knew there were some compatibility issues, but hadn’t looked at them in detail yet. Maybe I should.

      Reply ↓
      1. Hello, Nurse*

        No, that’s because of a bad choice on default values for fields that aren’t being used for the current case (apparently, there are multiple places for DOB).

        It was an especially bad design decision, since at the time SSA got their first computer in 1955, there were almost certainly people in the system for whom that 189whatever date was their actual DOB, meaning it was *designed* to corrupt data.

        Reply ↓
    3. Strive to Excel*

      That is diabolical and I salute you.

      Time & Date problems in Excel are particularly vicious beasties to detangle.

      Reply ↓
    4. Alan*

      As someone who has had to write software for this sort of stuff, there are a ridiculous number of epochs out there. I keep thinking that I’ve seen them all then another shows up.

      Reply ↓
  22. Disillusionedentrepreneur*

    I’m the person who wrote a 7000 word letter to my c-suite team about why I was quitting. Alison and everyone on here told me not to, and i would have said the same to someone else. The situation was much more complicated than I discussed in the letter, but the important thing is that a year later I have no regrets. Some things need to be said, and gross disrespect and mistreatment of staff is one of those things. I was in the unique position to not need a reference from them (and yes, I know life is long, just trust me). So I said what I said!

    Reply ↓
    1. Employee of the Bearimy*

      I’ve been on the other side of one of these letters, and I can say that it was definitely not received the way the staff person hoped it would be. We were already in the process of managing them out at the time and it both reinforced the correctness of our decision and saved us the trouble of documenting their poor performance.

      Reply ↓
    2. Standing Ovation*

      My hero. By the time I left old job I had made it my mission to make plausible deniability impossible for anyone above me.

      Reply ↓
  23. Bella*

    The “Senior Vice President” (even though he was the ONLY Vice President) would just complain that “everyone always leaves the water cooler empty” instead of refilling it himself. He also frequently left it empty when he used the last bit. So during my notice period, I used the last of the water and I purposely left it empty (which I never do) just to piss him off.

    Reply ↓
  24. Snarkus Aurelius*

    This is very petty, but I can be petty if pushed.

    I had a boss who always had to have someone to target. The person was always a woman. For two years, it was me. I couldn’t do anything right. If I said one thing, she said the opposite. She once blamed me for the weather. If I needed her to do something, I always advised her to do the opposite.

    This same boss always prided herself on being close and in touch with her employees’ personal lives.

    So when I got engaged, I told everyone but her. I invited everyone but her. (It was an office of 15 people.) I kept the whole thing secret, and everyone else was scared to tell her. My wedding occurred when she was on vacation. Everyone also knew I was moving to be with my husband after I got a job where he was. For at least three months, everyone knew all of this information except her.

    When she got back from vacation, I put in exactly two weeks. I told her I’d gotten married. The look of shock on her face was all the revenge I needed. Then, at the going away party I told her I didn’t want, I gave the staff a professionally framed picture of all of us at my wedding right in front of her.

    On my last day, my boss was out. She tried to call me, but I let it go to VM. She told everyone else, “I will never get over this. I can’t believe she did this.”

    I’m sure she did though. In the future, don’t ever tell me what you pride yourself on.

    Reply ↓
    3. soy katalina*

      I 100% hope that the “going away party [you] didn’t want” was another example of you telling her one thing so that she’d do the opposite. It’s beautiful that you orchestrated the party by manipulating her.

      Reply ↓
  25. AttyAtLarge*

    It was unintentional timing, but the day I put in my notice at a particularly odious law firm helmed by my notoriously cruel supervising partner, I was entirely unaware said tyrannical boss planned to be out that day for extensive dental surgery. There was no hiding my intention to leave until his return – having witnessed the sort of treatment other departing employees had received, I’d packed up my office completely the night prior to ensure I didn’t need to make a humiliating return trip to accept my personal effects.

    Needless to say, the cat got out of the bag that I was on my way out, and the news made its way to him in his dental chair, prompting him to make an unscheduled appearance that afternoon.
    When he showed up, his eyes were still teary, cheeks still packed with bloody gauze, and he was entirely unable to berate me at top volume – as was his typical custom. Instead, he attempted to scold me, sotto voice, lisping through the gauze, and I still don’t know to this day how I managed to keep a straight face. Here was the guy I’d had frequent nightmares about, the man who’d made me question my ability to practice law, and he was absolutely ridiculous.

    I am now thriving at a far superior law firm, working in the same highly specialized field of law, and five years in now I have more trial experience (and wins!) than this supposedly incredible trial lawyer had in his entire career. His firm folded a few years back due in no small part to his inability to retain associates, and he now works at a much less successful firm that he used to sarcastically refer to as “The Isle of Misfit Toys.”

    Life is good.

    Reply ↓
  26. animaniactoo*

    My dad’s story – centuries ago when there was no such thing as desktop publishing and he worked as a typesetter and fonts were stored on disks to be loaded when needed for printing….

    He was laid off but asked to wrap up projects. He knew the company had a history of shady dealings towards laid off employees… so, he made a copy of all the font disks and took them home. Then when he was told he would not be getting his final paycheck, he carefully inserted prepared slivers of magnets in all of the disk boxes on his way out the door.

    When they called him for help, he told them he just so happened to have his own copy of the font disks and he’d be happy to sell them… for the cost of his final paycheck.

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  27. Bettyboop*

    ok I have to tell this one. I had been on long term sick due to a major incident at my workplace that badly damaged my health. finally I admitted to myself I couldn’t go back and arranged my last day to hand over everything. well my boss refused to tell anyone I was leaving. I got back and people were having a go at me for being behind on work that I had been signed off from doing my boss refused to put new people on the work! anyway I went to say goodbye to all my service users and they were so happy to see me and someone in my team had told them I was leaving and the service users had baked me a cake. maybe not a big eff you but it felt like such a win after everything I’d been through

    Reply ↓
  28. Mother of Corgis*

    Unfortunately, I was the innocent party caught in the crossfire for this one. Back in the olden days, McDonalds had a special day where you could get a hamburger for 20 cents, cheeseburger for 30 cents, limit of 20 each. One of my coworkers was fired the day before (he genuinely deserved it. He just wanted to collect a paycheck, and cursed out anyone who tried to force him to actually work. Being cursed at by a teenager surprisingly did not go over well with management). He came in and bought 20 hamburgers and 20 cheeseburgers and paid entirely in a bucket of change he brought in. I was the only cashier when he chose to do this. And because our managers were such sticklers about the drawers being right, I had to count up all the change to make sure the amount was correct.

    Reply ↓
    1. Juicebox Hero*

      That wasn’t even getting revenge on your manager, it was just being a jackass to an innocent coworker who had nothing to do with his firing. What a dillweed.

      Reply ↓
      1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

        Yeah, that piece of crap sure showed them!
        I only wish that, other than on this site, OP told nobody at the place that it happened.
        “ha ha, did you hear what I did to that place?”
        Nope.
        “Oh, Mother of Corgis didn’t tell you?”
        Nope.

        Reply ↓
        1. KateM*

          Yeah, it sure showed the manager when one of their customers (swearing coworker) had to wait longer than normal until all his change was counted! Mother of Corgis’ time was paid one way or another, it was actually the teenager who brought all that change whose time was wasted.

          Reply ↓
        2. Mother of Corgis*

          Oh, the manager knew without me telling them because they saw the line piling up behind the jerk. But they couldn’t be bothered to actually come up and open another register either. That place was awful even for a fast food place. He did get banned after that, for all the “punishment” that was for him.

          As a slight consolation, when I complained to my fellow marching band friends about it at school, they offered to mess with him in the hallways, trip him or something, but I didn’t want them getting in trouble too (he was definitely a dish it out but can’t take it type).

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  29. Beth*

    In my last job, I managed to time my departure such that over half my team left in the same week. It went from a 7 person team to a 2.5 person team basically overnight. We served a core function that brought in over half of the company’s annual revenue. I’d been hunting and was leaving for a better offer, but most of the others were leaving with nothing lined up out of sheer frustration with leadership and how badly our team had been managed over the last year. It was so satisfying that my job hunt happened to pan out just in time to run off with everyone else and leave leadership to sleep in the bed they made.

    Reply ↓
  30. MM*

    I’m not the hero of this story, but back in college, I delivered pizzas, driving a rinky-dink Nissan which I did not maintain adequately. One night, as I barreled down a dark country road, my car threw a rod, severing the gas line and causing a fire to start under the hood. Panicked, I pulled into the nearest driveway and ran to the door to ask for help extinguishing the flames before the whole thing exploded. The residents were stoners gearing up to have a party, and they weren’t as anxious as I was about the whole predicament. The chick just stared at my shirt, which was branded with the logo of the pizza restaurant, then said, “Hey, my car blew up when I worked for that place! I don’t have my shirt anymore, though.” Then she laughed like a maniac, and I realized she was the actual stuff of legend: the still-celebrated former employee who, before my time, had one day rage-quit, stripping off her branded pizza shirt in the dining area, throwing it on the floor, stomping on it, and storming out the front door onto the street wearing just her bra and two big middle fingers, a Valkyrie with no regrets. I am sure they still tell her story there. As for me, I finally got the stoners to help put out the fire once they realized my car was in the way of the incoming keg delivery, and I kept on working for that pizza place for years. It’s still my favorite job I’ve ever had.

    Reply ↓
  31. WavyGravy*

    Very minor but I had a project that was due to an awful boss (who regularly screamed at me). I kept getting calls and emails from her and once I ignored her, HR, ensuring I would complete it.
    I said yes yes of course, I will turn it in by the time I leave. So I waited until 5p on the dot of my last day to send it and then immediately blocked her number from my cell. I also did a fairly meh job – it was technically fine and complete and honestly wasn’t terribly important since it was for internal use not something to be publicly filed, but it was nowhere near my usual standard and I heard she threw a fit once I left.

    Reply ↓
  32. had to do it to em*

    I worked in a restaurant that had a host of issues, as restaurants do: we had a mean dishwasher who hassled the women on staff, we had a line cook who not only frequently made mistakes during service but who also spit dip in the linen hamper and stunk to high heaven, and our pastry chef was slapped on the ass by another cook. Our FOH manager was serving out his notice because he’d gotten a job at a new restaurant opening across the square, but something happened and the company fired him before his two weeks’ were up.

    HR didn’t lock him out of his email before they fired him, though, so all the staff got an email about how if we wanted to work with people who didn’t sexually harass us and that would actually bathe and furthermore if we wanted to not get yelled at by dishwashers, he would be happy to see us over across the square at his new job. It was hilarious. He went over every piece of drama we’d had over the past week and I’m sure I am forgetting some other detail. He got banned from the property after that, but he would occasionally send someone over with a box of fried veal-stuffed olives. I do not miss anything about that city but I do think about those fried veal-stuffed olives sometime.

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  34. Box of Rain*

    Not mine but one I participated in. My then-boyfriend, future-husband and I worked together at a TGIFriday’s-style restaurant in the late 1990s (so before pictures on social media might have confirmed what happened). We were both scheduled on a Sunday morning, and with the plan to drive to work together, I’d spent the night at his place (an apartment in his parent’s basement) on Saturday night.

    Around 8 am on Sunday, I stepped out of bed to start getting ready and, as I stepped down, my foot touched something wet. Something wet enough to soak my sock in about two seconds. Turns out the basement was flooded–and flooded BADLY. He called in, and the manager was really crappy to him, definitely assumed he was calling off due to being hungover, wanting the day off. etc. Now, my future-husband wasn’t a manger per se, but he was a keyholding floor supervisor (basically a fill-in if a manager wasn’t available to work), a trainer, and sometimes a fill-in book keeper for the restaurant–so not someone who casually calls off work.

    He pulled up a 4′ piece of dripping wet carpet, stuck it in a trash bag, and sent me to work with it. What followed became so iconic that when my cousin started working at the same restaurant more than 3 years later, it was still a story being told to new people. Luckily (for me, not them), the manager who was crappy on the phone was standing at the host stand as I walked in the front door. I dropped the huge, lawn-sized trash bag at their feet and said, “Mike thought you didn’t believe him when he called earlier. He wanted me to bring you this proof and to tell you he quits,” then walked away to clock in.

    Calls were made to Mike, and the resignation stuck. When the manager asked me to clean up the trash bag, I refused saying it was a gift for him, not me. Still not sure how I didn’t get fired for that.

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  35. Chi*

    Oh wow, I have one. It’s not a mean one. I worked at a certain mall store that reeks of cologne in my early 20s. In addition to the strong cologne smell, the music was so loud and annoying. I heard the most annoying songs over and over. Finally I heard a song for the third time in less than 4 hours, and I just walked up to my manager and said, I am done. If I hear this song one more time, I will lose it. Handed her my badge and walked out. Have never set foot in that store again.

    Reply ↓
    1. ReallyBadPerson*

      Ha, if it’s the mall store I’m thinking of, I remember taking my then-tween daughter there to shop and lamenting the fact that they didn’t have a bin of hazmat suits and earplugs for the poor adults whose wallets were financing all that noise and perfume.

      Reply ↓
      1. Jay (no, the other one)*

        Oy. Yes. My husband is allergic to strong perfumes so I only took my daughter there once when she was a tween. I had to strip in the laundry room, wash my clothes twice, and shower because I reeked of the stuff. I refused to let her shop there with my money. She found a winter coat she LOVED and I let her order it online thinking it would come from a warehouse – and apparently they either shipped it from a store or they piped that horrible smell into the warehouse as well. Ugh.

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  36. Former Retail Lifer*

    My boss had it in for me after HR revealed EVERYTHING I told them in an investigation into him. I was a retail manager and we were preparing for the annual store inventory, which was to start when we closed at 6PM on a Sunday and generally took about 6 hours. I was in charge of preparing for it. I had detailed notes, a store map marked with what had been prepped and the schedule to finish it. One of the things HR was investigating were complaints that my boss didn’t do anything all day, and preparing for inventory was included. He took no interest in anything I was doing and I managed the process myself.

    One of the cashiers had left a roll of quarters out at the end of the night on my closing shift. My boss took that opportunity to immediately fire me for “unsecured funds” the next day. I left in tears. This was technically policy, but for $10, unlikely to be enforced unless someone had a grudge.

    One of my employees called me on my way home, as she noted I didn’t go in back to collect my things. In addition to the energy drink and my lunch in the fridge, I asked her to grab the inventory map and my notebook and erase a to do list on the whiteboard, which she happily did. There was no other record of what had been done and what needed to be done for the inventory, and since he had not participated in the prep work at all, my boss had NO IDEA what to do.

    The inventory went horribly. What normally took 6 hours took 11! I felt bad for the hourly employees who were there that long, but at least they got a nice paycheck and none were scheduled to open the next day. My boss was salary. He not only had to stay there for free until 5AM, he had to open the store at 7AM. Since they were short-handed due to losing me, he had to work his full 10 hour shift.

    Reply ↓
  37. guy*

    When I left a very unpleasant job as a manager of a small store (only the two owners above me), I reported to Square that they were falsifying their transactions to make them appear legal under Square’s terms. This was a cannabis dispensary (at the time, very hard to work with banks for electronic transactions), and square thought we sold herbs and spices. One of many illegal and unethical things we did that led to me having a very bad relationship and eventually leaving.

    Within 2 days I saw a post on their instagram that they no longer took cards (huge selling point), and within a month they closed.

    Reply ↓
    1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

      Genuine question: didn’t your customers know? When dispensaries opened here, that was the FIRST thing I checked because I had heard about all the trouble with dispensaries not being able to process credit cards.

      Reply ↓
        1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

          Apparently not- but I don’t know if there are repercussions on the customer end (ie: is it legal to buy cannabis products with a CC) and so I’m just not going to take that chance. To be fair, I don’t normally question the legality of most things when I shop- I assume the shop/business is doing things legally- but in that instance, I’d definitely side-eye it and question it.

          Reply ↓
          2. Artemesia*

            Given the world we are living in now, cash seems prudent since past transactions are being used to persecute people. Although it is legal where I am, the federal government is now going after people based on nonsense from their past — maybe not have a record of this in your name.

            Reply ↓
            1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

              I can’t speak to everywhere else, but in my state, when I went to the dispensary, they registered me with my driver’s license (presumably to verify my age and open an account) and then my purchase was linked to that. They only accept cash and everyone else went through the same process. The purchase information was printed on a label that was put on the product AND the receipt had all the same info on it, stapled to the bag. I’m not real worried about it, but it is highly regulated and I guess everyone could be rounded up based on purchases, but it’d be tough going, considering how popular it got pretty quickly.

              Reply ↓
        2. guy*

          Yeah, customers did not care. There really isn’t a chance of customers facing blowback – payment processers lean on vendors to ensure that transactions are being completed under the terms of their agreement.

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    2. Strive to Excel*

      In the US specifically where it is still federally illegal but legal by state, it’s still very hard to get anything electronic for cannabis dispensaries. None of the federal banks will work with them directly.

      An amusing sidenote is that they also file taxes showing they gained income through illegal means, because that is in fact something you can indicate on your tax forms.

      Reply ↓
      1. Testing*

        Where I am, companies have to register a main sector. Many also choose to register the additional sector ”and all other legal business”, so that they don’t have to change anything if they later pivot into other activities.

        I always found it hilarious that you’d have to specify ”legal”, and hoped there would also be the category ”oh, and some illegal business, too” to pick.

        Reply ↓
      2. Raechem*

        Yes. Though one may not deduct work expenses on a USA tax return if the occupation is illegal. Prostitutes who work outside of Clark County in Nevada may deduct the cost of condoms and whatever else because their occupation is legal; sex workers in Las Vegas may not do so, because prostitution is illegal there.

        Reply ↓
    3. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

      I am fortunate to live in a state where I can enjoy legal weed on occasion, and I appreciate that, but there certainly are some questionable businesspeople operating in that space.

      Reply ↓
  38. Peanut Hamper*

    My last job was at a small company run by an alcoholic nepo baby in his fifties who still asked his dad for advice on everything. He ran the full gamut from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde (or rather, Dr. Jekyll and Everyone Hide), and had tantrums, yelled and screamed, broke things, etc. He was also sleeping with one of my coworkers. (Both of them just happened to be married to other people at the time.)

    He and said coworker took a three-hour lunch on my last day. (Um…yeah.) I had about 50 business cards left, so I took those three hours as an opportunity to go all over that office and warehouse and tuck them into little places here and there, where I knew they would eventually find them. I figured they would spend about the next ten years before they uncover them all. I hope he thinks about how he let a good employee get away because he couldn’t act like a grown-ass responsible adult.

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  39. an alleged professional*

    I don’t know if this really counts because the boss in question has never realized it, but…he had a verbal tic, a very distinctive way he started all public facing messages. He was and is a toxic hot mess who had to start his own company because after he was fired for sexual harassment/assault, he couldn’t get another gig as a CEO and felt he was too good to take anything else. I am a communications person who has spent the last twenty years using his quirky opener for any messages in which I want the readers to understand that the content is errant nonsense and I’m being paid to say it. Customers in our industry who used my product twenty years ago and are using my current product know exactly what’s going on and find it hilarious, even though this post is the first time I’ve ever publicly admitted that it’s intentional. While I am slightly ashamed of being this petty…I have a mortgage on a house that needs a new roof, and he has a paid for mansion and four cars because his firing came with a golden parachute, you know?

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  40. Joeb*

    Back in the early 2000s, I worked at a hotel. Our hotel was negatively affected by 9-11 because of the decrease in travel. We were eventually foreclosed on by the bank and were owned and operated by the bank for 3 years until it was sold. The people that bought the hotel came in and let almost everybody go and staffed it with their family. They didn’t lay off the front desk manager yet because she had information they needed. The night we all got let go, I went over to the front desk manager’s house and she proceeded to log onto all of the hotel booking sites we sold rooms through- hotels.com, Expedia, Priceline, etc., and changed the rates to $1 per night and then called all of her friends and told them to book a room. The new owners got in the office the next morning and saw all the confirmations for the $1 rooms (the hotel had 400 rooms so probably 100+ were booked this way) and freaked out and started calling her, begging for the login information so they could get in and stop the bleeding. She didn’t answer the phone.

    Reply ↓
  41. Michael Was a Crap Boss*

    Boss that I hated actually quit himself before I found a new position. Some of our staff were Stockholm Syndrome loyalists and thought we needed multiple gifts and parties. I signed one card and wrote “WISHING YOU EVERYTHING YOU DESERVE”
    On the surface, well wishes, but in reality…

    Reply ↓
    1. Resume Please*

      I had a truly awful, evil coworker tht retired years ago, and I wish I wrote that in her card! Instead I wrote “Good luck in your retirement.”

      Reply ↓
    2. Jonathan MacKay*

      It’s the sort of phrase that most people won’t think about and take only at face value.

      And in some cases, it could very well be meant as a compliment!

      Reply ↓
    3. froodle*

      I once signed a retirement card that was doing the rounds, and noticed someone had written “may you have the retirement you deserve”.

      Not sure if it was intended to come off as threatening as I read it (the person leaving was generally well-liked as far as I know, was individual-contributor level so no hierarchical power to make other people’s lives miserable, and had a job where he worked alone and in the field most of the time) but I did blink when I saw it.

      Reply ↓
  42. ChurchOfDietCoke*

    In my last job I managed a small and very lovely team of trainers. We were THE experts in the company’s bespoke systems and processes, and we worked hard. Sadly, the company began to treat its employees badly – no pay rises at all, shitty and inflexible hybrid policies, dreadful IT systems, crappy hotdesking, got rid of the canteen and gym and stopped lots of benefits like bus season ticket discounts, and did I mention no pay rises AT ALL? Ugh…

    I resigned (giving three months notice, as per my contract – I’m in the UK) and moved to a new company the next town over to a pretty good pay increase to set up and lead a brand new Training and Learning department there. My FIRST task on Day 1 in my new job was to advertise for trainers to join my team.

    I BET you can’t guess where three of the four new team members I recruited came from, can you?

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  43. mother_of_hedgehogs*

    I’ve got one. I worked for a smallish company and had three bosses with three different agendas (two owner/founders, one GM, all three micro micro managers). Every damned day there were three people on my ass all day about their pet project that I had to do, and why hadn’t I done it. Which of course was not really possible while managing several locations already.

    So, I had frustrated words with the GM. A few days later she called me into a meeting with the head of HR wanting me to sign something about my inappropriateness. I refused. We had a big event coming up, I knew they needed all hands on deck, so I stood my ground.

    After the big event, I was called back in to continue the meeting, and pressured to sign the thing.

    All I said was “Let’s have another conversation, and this conversation is called I don’t work here anymore”, with a big smile on my face. HR dude said “well, I’m not needed here”, and left. M, the annoyingly nit-picking GM was flushed. She didn’t see that coming at all (I had relocated for this job and I assume she thought I didn’t have options).

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  44. yams*

    Once upon a time I had a terrible boss, she was a micromanager and a tyrant who had fired more than half of my department to hire her college buddies. After working 14/16 hour days for months on end I finally landed a new job and in my exit interview I provided HR with information on all the shady dealings I was able to gather as well as evidence of harassment she used as a tool to get people to quit. I didn’t really expect anything to change since HR in that company was notoriously ineffective, I just wanted to vent.

    An hour later I got a call from one of my colleagues asking me just what the heck I had said, since one of his friends in the management team was freaking the heck out about that exit interview. Turns out there was an open investigation into my boss and with the info I provided they were able to make a case to fire her. I had my exit interview on a Friday and on Monday morning she was walked out of the office by the security team after being fired.

    I know I shouldn’t laugh at others misfortune, but the mental image of her being perp-walked off into the sunset carrying her coffee machine in her arms is too damn funny.

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  45. Sans Serif*

    A long time ago, I quit a job with a fully psychotic director. Mean, racist, spiteful, incompetent. I happened to have a good work relationship with one of the VPs and before I left, I met with him and gave him about 10 pages of examples of his actions, several of which could get the company sued. (One example, saying a certain Black manager “dressed white” as a compliment. He also complained about all the people on welfare his taxes supposedly paid for and that’s why he couldn’t afford another boat. Yeah, he was a treat.) I still remember the eyes of the VP get wider and wider as I spoke. About six months later he was fired. That was a satisfying feeling lol

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  46. Jennifer K.*

    Oh I’ve got a good one. I worked as the only developer at this tiny startup for 4 months. The CEO treated me like trash and would constantly say things like “Airbnb does this all the time, how hard could it be?” Well Airbnb has hundreds of developers and you have just me and you are asking me to do this in under 2 weeks. At one point, she called a coworker to tell them how mean I was (I just told her that I was working on something else and needed to push a minor change to next week). And honestly a bunch of other just general crap. I finally cracked when she let me know that they hired another developer to work with me but told him that I “didn’t like her and also didn’t like the product” (if I didn’t like the product, why was I working hard for well below market rate for no equity? But whatever). The next day, I went in early, left my laptop completely wiped, left my keycard, and sent an email to the other cofounder saying to call me when they get in. Then I told her that, while I had done good work while I was there, I was done being treated this way and that she could consider this my resignation as of right now. They had all the passwords but I didn’t give a crap about anything else. If they cared, they maybe shouldn’t have mistreated the person who was keeping their application up and running.

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  47. SicktomyStomach*

    O I love this thread! I’ve got a good example. I got a job in a different industry than my normal environment, but I was desperate. The interviews had gone well and they definitely needed someone with my skillset. So I start the job and find out that our work space is a huge room with 150 to 200 people in it, all at little desks, all in the open. Horrible. My group of 5 sits in one corner of the room, in the back. Among the things I find out when I start working there is that all of them speak Russian to each other and make no effort to include me at all. So I’m sitting in a room full of people with team mates that talk around me. There is more, but I will spare y’all.

    So after 3 months, I get a fantastic job offer via a friend and professional connection. I come to the office with all my stuff and I wait until I get the signoff on my new job. Then I go up to the HR department and find a rep. I handed her my laptop and badge and told her this is my last day. The look of panic on her face is something that I relish to this day. She asked me to do an exit interview, so I proceeded to tell her ALL of the crap that these people put me through. She seemed a bit horrified, but I didn’t care anymore. I waltzed out of there and down to the subway. Sadly, I never made any contacts there so I don’t know if there was any blowback from my exit.

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  48. Jane Bingley*

    My spouse worked a truly miserable job in parking enforcement. He and his supervisor were left in charge of a massive hot mess of a parkade. Any requests for help were met with “it’s fine, Spouse and Supervisor can handle it.”

    Upgrades for the finicky tech that required regular manual override? Nope, they know how to fix it by hand. New gates that didn’t risk damaging cars? No, they can just perform mechanical repairs to it regularly. PPE for cleaning up wildlife waste and pest control to prevent the problem? No way, they’ve cleaned it up before. Upgrading the automated POS to take card payments? Nah, they can take payments in person.

    Spouse and Supervisor became close friends in the trenches and both were looking for other work. One day, Spouse goes in and tells his supervisor that he’s gotten enough contracts to be self-employed full-time. Supervisor just had a promising job interview. So… they quit. Together. They give two weeks notice but the company spends that time trying to hire instead of having them train anyone else. The giant parkade was a hot mess for months afterward, enraging their daily customers, and eventually cost the company nearly a million dollars in overdue upgrades, repairs, and pest control. It’s now staffed by a team of three (so generous).

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  49. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

    This doesn’t 100% fit, but it’s a fun story, so I’m telling it anyway.

    Years ago, I sold cellphones by the seashore. (In a mall that was close to the harbour in a city with lots of tourists). My coworkers were great, but the company sucked and the job itself was vaguely soul-crushing. The silver lining is that it was excellent motivation to study for the Graduate Record Exam and apply to grad school. When I got an offer and accepted, I gave my boss months of notice, since I would be moving across the country. He was a generally good dude. And I was correct in my assessment that there wasn’t any real risk in doing so.

    Still, I wanted to have a little fun when I left. At the time, I was also swing dancing a lot, so I decided to dance my way out of there, with a dozen of my friends. I arranged for my last day to have the opening shift and when the clock hit 6PM, my friends turned on the music – Bye Bye, Love by Ray Charles. I threw off the (horribly ugly, ill-fitting) uniform shirt (that I hated) and we started dancing. We were courteous and made sure we weren’t blocking the entrance.

    Fortunately, my boss was amused by this and security didn’t get involved.

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    3. Lynn*

      This is my favorite. Not the pettiness, not the most F-U. But it’s the one that put a huge smile on my face! :-D

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  50. Meow Meow*

    This is small potatoes, and requires a bit of backstory.

    At the beginning of January one year, my boss put me on leave restriction, which meant that if I took sick leave, I needed a doctors note for anything, and if I took vacation time, I had to basically plead my case as to why this was necessary for me to take time off and hope he’d approve it. All because I’d supposedly taken too much time off in the THREE YEARS prior, and I was hired to be full time blah blah. Never mind that this time off calculation included 3 weeks of FMLA where I was in outpatient treatment for depression and anxiety. I’d also never been denied time off, nor had I dipped below zero on any of my leave balances. I still had over 200 hours banked when I got this notice.

    So I didn’t take any time off. For 5 months. I handed him my resignation stating my end date. He was literally speechless. Like what did you think would happen??? The best part was was that instead of allowing me to take time off and having that “paid” by the head company, they now had to pay me for all my time off from the local office’s funds! Over $15,000!!

    Also, they never hired a replacement for me when I left, even though that was supposedly part of the reason why I was placed on this restriction.

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  51. Alf*

    A legendary story at the first restaurant I ever worked at was the kitchen manager who went out in a blaze of glory. There were all kinds of problems with that place – it had a tiny kitchen, it was understaffed, the hours were super-long, dishwashers and servers would frequently no-show, and the owner had no boundaries with her messy personal life – but for some reason this guy had gotten fixated on the smallest of irritants: customers who ordered egg whites during the brunch rush. Whenever that happened, he would have to get a little bowl and manually separate the eggs and yolks, and egg whites needed more attention so they didn’t get overcooked, so it messed with his flow. Over time, he got increasingly grouchy about this – grumbling and moaning to the other cooks, giving the servers a hard time when they brought orders with egg whites, ranting about it for half an hour after an order. Finally, one day during Sunday brunch, he decided he’d had enough. An order for egg whites came in, and he snatched the chit, marched out to the table, and slammed it down in front of the customer. “Buddy,” he said, “you can cook your own f&@$# egg whites!” He threw down his apron, walked out, and never came back. Weird flex, but okay.

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    1. Strive to Excel*

      If it bugged him that badly, he should have added a couple quarts of Egg Beaters to his inventory order!

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  52. Bunny Watson*

    I was working retail in the 90’s. My boss was the absolute worst and constantly lied and played favorites and despite promising me more hours, I kept getting fewer and fewer. One day she yelled at me for something that I did not do, but her favorite claimed that I did. So, I told her to kiss my a$$ and walked out. That was a Thursday and by Monday I was working full time at another place. I only wish I had quit sooner.

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  53. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    I resigned from the job with the company that put me on a PIP for daring to have bad health (“you wouldn’t be disabled if you weren’t obese and you need to put in effort to lose weight. BTW we won’t pay you for any more days off ill”) after a major car crash.

    My boss called me the day after I left telling me that I hadn’t closed all the calls in my queue and therefore I had to come into the office and do that.

    So that’s how come I once said ‘fuck off’ to a manager and hung up.

    (Note: I knew I wasn’t going to get a good reference from that place after they treated me like dirt anyway)

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  54. So Anon for This*

    I don’t know if this counts, but I had been working well above my pay grade doing analysis in a call center as a support lead (for the whole site, not a single team). My boss and her boss had been trying for quite a while to get me a promotion for a while without luck, and I had lined up a new position as an actual analyst in a different field. My exit interview was with the site manager, where she told me that she had been actively blocking attempts to get me a promotion because ‘everyone thought too highly of (my) work.’ Joke was on her though- without the analysis I was providing, site performance dropped and she was fired less than three months later. Her replacement called in during their first week and asked if I would consider coming back to the old position, doing the above pay grade work. That was a big nope!

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    1. froodle*

      “My exit interview was with the site manager, where she told me that she had been actively blocking attempts to get me a promotion because ‘everyone thought too highly of (my) work.’”

      What on earth goes through the head of people like this?! “Oooh, this person is a really good worker, I’d better make them feel trapped and unhapp- wait where are you going?”

      Utter buffoonery.

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  55. Lorna*

    I was the only person with IT knowledge at the office, yet got treated like a dumb blonde, who apparently didn’t know her arse from her elbow ( original quote from the boss)

    Turns out I didn’t know my way around a computer, when he fired me 1 day before my probation time was over, because it’d be cheaper to hire his niece.

    Clumsy me changed the admin password to random gibberish, promptly forgot what it was and walked out the door. Oh well! ;)

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    1. Hlao-roo*

      Haha! If you don’t know your arse from your elbow, how could you possibly know the admin password from random gibberish!?

      Good for you for giving the boss exactly what he deserved!

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  56. a fever you can't sweat 0ut*

    not the biggest, but my boss was unhinged and the workplace was severely toxic. i had been bullied and yelled at by a coworker and was pretty much told to suck it up. On the day my bonus paid out i put in my one week notice. she told me i would be ineligible for rehire and i laughed. several years later they went under.

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  57. fka Get Me Out of Here*

    This is pretty small potatoes: At my last job, the one with ToxicExBoss, I timed my resignation so my last day was the Friday before the Monday that the person who was ostensibly supposed to take over the bait-and-switch part of my role started – a year after I got bait-and-switched and eight months after I’d started complaining that I wasn’t doing what I was hired to do and was promised “help is coming soon.” Also ToxicExBoss was on vacation when I gave my notice and my grandboss was two time zones away on a business trip, so grandboss took my resignation over the phone. I was unemployed for two months, but have been at the subsequent job for 2.5 years and couldn’t be happier.

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  58. Stuart Foote*

    This wasn’t really an “F you” because I left on good terms, but once during an exit interview I persuaded the HR rep to call my now former boss and tell him that she needed to discuss certain things I’d revealed during my exit interview with him immediately. However he had a similar sense of humor so he found it amusing.

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  59. LTR FTW*

    I’ve told this one here before, but it’s so good. It happened like 15 years ago and I still think about it regularly.

    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.

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    2. LabManagerGuy*

      These “person who is a company hero due to quitting spectacularly” stories are interesting to me: At my current job, someone who did something like what some folks described in this thread did would be remembered with bafflement or secondhand embarrassment, while at one of my former jobs, the reaction would have been highly mixed (some would consider it shameful while others would call it awesome). My current workplace is pretty much functional and professional, while the former workplace was at least moderately toxic. (Believe me, if my professional community was not so interconnected, I would have strongly considered doing something… bold… for the benefit of one particular snake of a manager when I left that job.) I wonder if that’s sort of a good mental test for how well your workplace operates: How positively would the rank-and-file take a grand, departing F-y’all gesture?

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      1. LTR FTW*

        Well, in this particular case, all of Mike’s “constructive feedback” was absolutely on point. It was a terrible workplace and the big boss was a terrible person. Mike was saying all the things we ALL wanted to say, hence his heroism. Trust me when I say that not one person felt baffled or embarrassed, other than the boss.

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  60. Anonymouse*

    Since a group of employees at my work were being transferred to a new manager, I had my annual review with both my former manager and my new manager. While I was frustrated with the amount of support and compensation I received, my annual review was full of glowing comments from both of them.

    A month later, I was left without support on an urgent, last minute project. I shared my frustration with my new manager… and was surprised to be fired without notice shortly afterwards in a cloak-and-dagger fashion. I made sure to use all of the benefits I could before they expired, but what gave me the most satisfaction was what happened later.

    While the new manager kept targeting other employees to get them fired, HR had them complete a much longer process first. I’m hoping my EI claim, which stated I was fired without notice, was a factor. I felt very satisfied that the increased paperwork helped some of my friends leave on their own terms.

    And in the pettiest victory possible… later on I discovered a fork marked “Floor5” in our utensil drawer. The director of our department had been engraving the kitchen utensils in a vain attempt to keep them from disappearing and I had accidentally brought one home before I got fired.

    I’m still really satisfied when I use fork “Floor5”.

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  61. Orange Cat Energy*

    At my former employer, I gave notice during our busiest time of the year (Christmans and New Years). It was an online retailer. Granted, I gave 3 weeks notice, which is longer than the standard notice period. I was still leaving them in the lurch because a lot of my colleagues had resigned and left over the past few months and we were critical employees for keeping the website working. My employer actually tried to get me to extend my notice period by another 3 weeks because they wanted the coverage for the busy season and they wanted me to train the contractor they’d have to hire to replace me. No other incentive was offered. I said no.

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  62. JohnnyBravo*

    They say the best revenge is a life well lived and it’s true. But if you can also screenshot their desktop, set the screenshot as the background, delete their desktop shortcuts, and hide their start bar before you leave that’s just a nice little bonus

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  63. Jonathan MacKay*

    This was less quitting and more being fired, I think – because what happened that day was strange.

    We were unloading a container of its contents, and my supervisor kept asking me to grab the ‘two-stepper’ (which was literally just a two-step stool) and I didn’t understand what he was talking about, so in his frustration, he started aggressively throwing boxes around – not towards me, but he was clearly frustrated. I ended up commenting, matter of factly – “I’m starting to think that maybe I should start considering today to be my last day.”

    This was taken as an immediate resignation, to the point that I was asked to write a quick resignation letter…. AND TOLD WHAT TO PUT IN IT. I typed it honestly, and was told ‘Delete that – Say this.’

    I did so, because I just wanted out of there at that point.

    The weird thing is, I was packing my lunch that morning, and I was struck with the strangest feeling of “I’m not going to need this today”

    I was home by noon.

    Three months later, I land the job I’m at now – having been able to use it to fund a certificate in Human Resources management, membership in a professional organization, and I am due to write the first of two professional certification exams in May.

    The best revenge being a life well lived has never felt truer.

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  64. ThatGirl*

    Just last month, we had a product engineer quit in somewhat dramatic fashion – he was totally fed up with how things were going, but waited till our annual bonuses were in our bank accounts on a Friday, left his laptop and badge on his desk, and on Monday morning called his supervisor to inform them that Friday had been his last day.

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  65. itsupport*

    I left my job a few years ago, the new big boss was a jerk, told me my position was useless and unneeded.

    I was their entire IT support, btw.

    I knew he was going to fire me or push me out, so I found a new job and peaced out. I wanted to be nice about it, I offered to show me some basic IT things he’d need to know since he said he wasn’t replacing me because he could do everything I could (reader, he could not).

    One of the things I tried to insist on was a 2FA that was for a major software admin account, that was tied to my phone (we had to use an app, no choice). I explained that someone else needed to download the app and set it up before I left since the day I did, I was deleting my account/app. He declined (srsly, was like no it’s fine) and wouldn’t you know two days later he tried to get into something and was declined because I wasn’t there with my phone. He texted and called me about it and I just sent him a single email saying I was no longer an employee and had no access. Then I blocked his number and ingored all other attemps at communication. He didn’t need me after all, he could handle anything!

    I don’t feel bad one bit.

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  66. Grasshopper Relocation LLC*

    I worked for a subtle bully for a year (examples include saying “You take no responsibility for your work” because I used passive voice in a scientific paper and saying he had expected I’d be better since I had an MSc).

    I also had a great colleague, who showed real management potential. Best employee in the team. He’s now my line manager at new company, because I sent him the listing when the job came up, and put him in direct contact with my skip level.

    And I know, for a fact, that he told my old boss that he was joining me at New Company when he resigned.

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  67. Llama Manager*

    I once took a job as a level 1 with the explicit assurance that if I performed well in the first several months they would promote me to a level 2 within a year because I didn’t have specific experience in llama grooming (but had vast experience in alpaca grooming). I joined, and within three months my manager was talking about how impressed she was because not only was I llama grooming, I was also now handling Camels and Sheep as well (level 3 work). When I brought up the timeline to move to a level 2, she informed me that despite her advocacy, the toxic Director wouldn’t even consider promoting me to a Level 2 for at least 18 more months.

    So, I applied for another role in Llama Management (because I had previously managed Alpacas) within the same Department that reported directly to the VP and got it. This meant that in terms of reporting structure, I was above him. The best part, for several months he had to sit in meetings where we were treated as equals. This only lasted a couple of months though because that Director was fired shortly after.

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  68. Definitely not me*

    Not super creative, but satisfying in the moment. Back in the mid-90s my spouse worked for a small, family-run insurance business whose owners paid low wages and had many weird ideas about things (e.g., when a coworker returned after a brief maternity leave and said she needed to pump, they said she couldn’t do that at work because it was gross). It was not the kind of organization that had written policies in place, either, but when their most experienced employee got fed up with some decision and told the owner he was done, she declared it was their policy that resignations had to be in writing. He leaned over her, grabbed a Post-it note off her desk, wrote “I QUIT” on it and walked out.

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  69. Bugs*

    My wife’s good friend was asked to resign from the company they both worked at with 2 days notice and told that the two day notice was “policy”. So when my wife (who was the star performer) quit, she gave two days notice. Suddenly, that isnt the policy any more…

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  70. Not Australian*

    Well, there was the time I booked my annual leave and then submitted my notice to end on the same day as my leave, therefore I clearly wasn’t coming back. I was heading off to the opposite hemisphere and I booked my flight, too, for the same day: finished work at lunchtime (I was mornings-only), got picked up from the office, changed my clothes and caught the train to the airport. I’d made my plans pretty clear to anyone who would listen, but it was really no surprise when my oblivious idiot of a boss turned up with a huge bunch of flowers and thrust them into my hands as I left. I later had the satisfaction of writing him a thank you note which included the words “I enjoyed them so much in the three quarters of an hour before I left for the airport” … and no, they weren’t wasted, my daughter-in-law inherited them. (In case anybody’s wondering, they were ridiculously short of work at the time and I’d been sitting around counting paperclips for weeks… replacing me definitely wouldn’t have been a problem!)

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  71. anonymouse*

    This isn’t the hugest f-you but it felt like it, and it’s too bad I can’t include a photo here (because yes I absolutely took one) but when I left academia, I found a little old-fashioned “Will Return At” sign that had the hands pointing to the word NEVER at the top of the clock, and posted it on my office door.

    Funniest thing is that apparently they just left it there and quite a while later another professor was leaving the department and emailed and asked if she could move it to her office door.

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  72. Veryanon*

    Mine is pretty boring, but personally satisfying. I left a toxic job by giving notice ON MY BIRTHDAY and then I basically peaced-out of there.

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  73. No Coverage, Sorry*

    I worked for a nonprofit that provided recovery and intermediate housing that also included detox and pych units for incarcerated men. I was hired as a grant writer with my own office in a different building away from the clients and inmates (this matters). My office was given away and I was slowly edged out to a reception desk in a residential building. I ended up being given more tasks and ended up being a receptionist, personal assistant, and residential aide for one of the main dorms. They had me driving clients alone to medical appointments, saying I could take my laptop and work on grants from the waiting room, passing out medications without state certification, tried to leave me alone for twelve hours (a 25 year old woman) in an all male psych unit without guards because they didn’t have overnight staff. I was scheduled every weekend and holiday, denied time off, and if I called out sick one of the residence staff that lived near me would literally come to my door and check that I was sick.

    When I filed a complaint I was told I wasn’t bringing in enough grant money to justify my salary so I needed to “pick up slack” in other areas which was illegal. I was young and didn’t have the money for a lawyer and was also in a town where I didn’t have a lot of support. I bided my time, found another job closer to family and friends and I waited until a holiday weekend when I knew the residence director along with almost all the other staff had big plans for parties, weekends away, ect. There needs to be at least two employees in a residence but they didn’t care and left me alone all the time. I was by myself when I saw him come into his office for some last-minute thing. I stuck my head in, made small talk, handed him some paperwork and left.

    The paperwork was my resignation. With the help of some friends, my apartment had been packed up and shipped to my new place closer to home. I blocked every number that came up on my phone and hit the road to have a lovely weekend with my friends and family before I started my new job.

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  74. DPQ*

    A legal secretary at the Big Law firm I worked at knew she was going to be fired so the day before she went into a bunch of partners emails and sent their wives evidence of infidelity, printed out confidential employee evaluations/communications about bonuses/pay and left them in everyone’s desk, and then cleaned out the swag closet (company branded shirts/hats/bags etc) and dropped several thousands worth of merch with Law Firm’s name and logo off at a homeless encampment.

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    4. SicktomyStomach*

      Whoa! That is impressive. And law firms do not generally go after someone for things like this because they don’t want the negative publicity.

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  75. SpecialSpecialist*

    When I was 16, I worked at a local family-owned/operated restaurant in my tiny town that only paid in cash, so you know things were totally on the up-and-up. It was my second job ever, and it was a big ball of contradictions.

    If I stood at the counter and waited for the customers to come up to order, then I was yelled at to take orders at the tables. If I took orders at the tables, then I was yelled at because customers were supposed to come up to the counter to order.

    If I stood around waiting for a customer to need something, I got yelled at to sweep the dining room floor. If I was proactive and started sweeping, I got yelled at because customers were in the dining room.

    I never did anything right, even after I did the exact thing they just asked me to do.

    I probably wasn’t even there a whole month before my boss took me back to his desk in the back to berate me yet again. I was absolutely fed up.

    The last thing anybody could accuse teen-me of being was ballsy or rebellious, but I reached over, took my timesheet out of the holder, tore it up in front of his face, and walked out the door.

    My mom tried to get me to go back to get the money I was owed, and I tried to convince her it wasn’t worth it, but she did get my $20. :D

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  76. Debby*

    Not me, but my Hubby (with planning done by me). He was working pest control for a company, as the only employee. They treated him badly, went back on their promise to provide insurance and PTO. They even asked him to decrease his pay-to which he said no way. He also had the pest control licenses needed.
    My Hubby subscribed to a pest control magazine, and one day I was reading the latest edition. In the back I noticed a Pest control business that was for sale-and it sure sounded like the one my Hubby was working for. We had been saving to start our own pest control business, so now seemed like a good time to do that-But, I told my Hubby to first collect his paycheck (along with his bonus) and go to their bank to cash it. Then he could go and quit (without notice).
    I wish I could have been there when he went back and told them he quit. They were shocked that he had beaten them to the punch! They were so surprised, they admitted it was their business they were selling and that yes, he was going to be let go. To this day, I hoped that they tried to put a stop payment on that last check of his (it is illegal, but they didn’t care). Then they would find that he had cashed it, not deposited it!
    Small win, but felt so good!

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  77. Alianne*

    I may have told this story before. I worked in a little shop, the manager and five or six staff–helped it set up and open, then there for three months. The manager was a continuing frustration. Paychecks were consistently late, replenishment orders were put off and put off until we hardly had anything to sell. Their repeated catchphrase whenever we complained about issues was “Figure it out!”

    One Friday night it all came together in a massive clusterf***. Our shelves were practically bare and I was due a paycheck while still not having received the previous week’s. Manager and I were scheduled to close, and this time they were definitely absolutely 100% going to walk me through the closing process so I could look to becoming a keyholder. Around 6pm, a coworker arrived, and Manager immediately said “Oh, I’m going to go pick up some restock and get your paychecks, I’ll be back before closing,” and vanished in a puff of smoke. Coworker and I chugged along, doing our best. At 9:30pm, a half-hour to close, Coworker answered the phone, mmm-hmmed a lot, then hung up and said “Manager went to dinner with friends, says they’re not coming back tonight so it’s on you to close, figure it out.”

    I did my best with closing out the register–made a hash of it, I’m sure, but I was so angry I didn’t care–then went into the back room, where the schedule for the next two weeks (written in pencil on notebook paper) was pinned on a bulletin board. Apparently I was scheduled for one day off, then to work for ten days in a row, including two clopens. I pinned my nametag just below it, along with a note that said “I quit–figure it out!”, and walked out the door. It took three more weeks for me to get the last two paychecks I was owed, but I did get them. Never been back.

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  78. Happymarketer*

    I told a very persistent and irritating sales person that my boss was the one to speak to… and gave him her number.

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  79. NCA*

    Two jobs back, the workplace I was in was obnoxious and terrible. My team was contracted employees, not in the independent contractor way, but in the ‘Company A hired Company B to pay their workers barely above minimum wage to do crucial ongoing support work for us’. The workplace was miserable and smelled like vomit, we were timed for every single bathroom break, they illegally withheld overtime payments because there were times we weren’t taking calls (wish I knew about ‘paid to wait’ and labor laws – they didn’t post those!), and we were routinely punished for things 100% out of our control. The only reason most of us stayed was a coveted full time offer with the parent company, which had /amazing/ benefits.

    A coworker got a better job and gave his two weeks – he was immediately and promptly walked out, unpaid. Word got around to be prepared for that.

    A handful of the coveted permanent spots opened up, and myself and the rest of my 2nd shift applied. We all got them, only to find out that these spots paid minimum wage exactly, because ‘benefits’. But we would /not/ get the benefits that the rest of the company got but a separate, significantly worse, benefits package with not-ACA-compliant healthcare, 3 whole annual days PTO, priority bidding on shift assignments to try for a single weekend day off, and usage of an unpredictably timed company feature at half price as a “perk”. Oh and it was take the permanent position or resign, we couldn’t “go back” to being a contractor. We had all been searching elsewhere on the side, and within the week we all had better jobs. And we knew that people who gave notice were walked out immediately. So we all resigned, one after another, in successive shifts, with no day notice. I was the last, and my swine of a manager was so dejected and worried about what they were going to do. They just “didn’t understand” why all of their best people had left in a week.

    It was amazing.

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  80. No Longer Gig-less Data Analyst*

    I worked on contract for a small, dysfunctional wealth management firm for 6 months, owned and operated by two people who hated each other. One Friday when I came in, they announced that Owner 1 had bought out Owner 2 (my grandboss), fired every single person in my chain of command and made me sit there while everyone cleaned out their desks, most of them crying. I was the only one not let go. No one came to talk to me about who I would be reporting to, or how my job was going to change come Monday. The only communication was and email that I was not invited to the pizza party that the remaining managers and employees had that afternoon to celebrate the new structure.

    I somehow made it through the whole day mostly just pretending to work, totally numb. When no one had spoken a word to me by 4:30pm, I gathered every single personal item at my desk and left. From my car in the parking lot, I called my placement agency, told them what happened and that I would not be returning on Monday. It’s the only time in nearly 30 years of various jobs that I’ve ever quit with no notice.

    When my placement agency called them on Monday morning to say that I had quit, they were apparently shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you. The expectation apparently was that I was to pick up a 4 person department’s duties – some of which I had never done before! I’m honestly not sure what happened after that, because this was a company handling millions and millions of non-profit and small government funds, and being finance it was heavily regulated. Our department had tons of required deliverables every day that no one else knew how to do. Absolute madness.

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    1. Busy Middle Manager*

      I quit a “real” job with no notice back in the day. The thing is, sometimes they burn the bridge first, so there is no bridge to burn when you walk away. I did what you did too, just sit there stewing all day waiting for someone to tell me anything about our reorg.

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    2. Zipperhead*

      The whole thing is just egregiously rotten, but the bit about barring you from the pizza party is especially low.

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  81. Inflatable Unicorn*

    So, my contract is transferred to a new company. I like the work and I like the people, so I also transfer to the new company.

    Strike One: They tell me to tell my old company I’m leaving in the first week of a month. I say the old company won’t pay a month’s health insurance for less than a week’s work. Company insists it’s fine, I’ll be fine. Old company cuts me off at the end of the month and new company acts like it’s a HUGE favor that they’ll extend my health insurance to the beginning of the month I come to work for them.

    Strike Two: they didn’t honor the leave I’d negotiated and received in writing. It takes a few pay periods to realize this; when I figure this out and pull up my contract, my boss blurts “You should have said something sooner!” She acted like it was a HUGE imposition that I wouldn’t just let it go.

    Strike Three: Assuming that this dysfunction is the particular branch I’m working for, I try to transfer to a new branch of same company. The new boss told me a start date. My current boss acknowledged the start date. Me? I try to shift the start date because it was in the middle of a planned vacation. But new boss INSISTED I be there, I absolutely HAD to cancel that vacation, it was IMPORTANT…

    So I cancel the vacation. Current boss replaces me. I train my replacement. My move date comes… and goes. Not a single peep from new boss. When I call, she just says “Yeah, I’ll give you a new date.” Not a word before that I could go on my vacation. Not a word of apology.

    Now I’m job hunting in earnest and pulling in every connection I’ve ever made. I have a new offer in 2 weeks.

    But crappy company and its equally crappy bosses get exactly 2 days notice… just enough to make sure they’ve covered my health insurance for the rest of the month. Current boss threw a fit in the office that it was SO UNPROFESSIONAL to not give 2 week’s notice.

    I point out that by then she’d had an entire 12 weeks of notice and if we wanted to talk about being unprofessional, I had some news for her…

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  82. Valerie Loves Me*

    Not my finest moment. But after being put through the ringer for a year — which included delaying my performance review for 6 months and then putting me on a PIP — I landed a great new job. Gave two weeks and just took care of whatever was in my inbox. When any email or task was completed I archived it on our server (this was about 10 years ago and storage was still a thing, so we sometimes had to archive old emails if you’re email was too full). The thing is most staff didn’t know how to archive — because it was a weird process using a different server. But, everyone had access to it. So I archived all my emails. After I left, they went looking through my emails and didn’t see any. And an old colleague reached out to ask where they were. I told them they were archived. But they didn’t take the extra step to ask IT how to access the server. Oh well.

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  83. why me>-*

    i worked for a small law firm, wealthy ish clients. my one co-worker, Karen, was very toxic, along with Wendy the co owner and Nicole the office manager. I won’t go into all the toxic behavior, apart from this: i gave my notice, they convinced me to stay, then Nicole put me on a PIP the next week, citing my lack of work etc.
    AFTER the pandemic, when I chose to leave, I left googly eyes in odd places, put my screen saver and password for my work station as “i love ‘my name'”
    I returned the favour by not writing passwords down, just like they did to me. I had to ‘guess’ them, I had to call former employees at their new workplaces and find work arounds, even though the entire time Wendy could reset them.
    When I was called at home I explained I was never given them, and they could reset them or guess.
    not epic evil, but it was enough for me.

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  84. AAMLurker*

    This is less a rage quit and more about karma. In the 2000’s, I (a “Yankee” female) was working at a mid-sized law firm in the Southern US for a real jerk of a partner (shocking I know). At one point, he told me that every time I spoke it made him angry (what lovely actionable feedback!). He also warned me not to “lose Jesus” when my very religious husband cheated on me and I got divorced (I am, and have always been, agnostic so Jesus’ whereabouts have never been concern to me). Essentially, I had the wrong genitalia to ever succeed at that place. So, after being deeply depressed and physically ill over work for months, I decided that my newly single self was going to quit. I ran the numbers, figured out exactly how much money I’d need to pay the mortgage and feed myself and the dog. I was the third female associate to quit in 3 month. When I gave notice, the partner asked if it was because he was an asshole. I said “yup.” Then, not one day later, 13 new plaintiff’s filed claims against our client in a large litigation I was handling for my boss. I was the only one who knew enough about the case to continue handling it without losing the firm tons of money. So the firm had to offer to pay me to continue working on the case as a contractor. I negotiated an amazing hourly rate, finished my two weeks notice, then worked on that case (at my leisure, from wherever I wanted, without having to speak to my boss) for a year. It paid all my bills and then some. I have since moved on and am very successful as an in-house attorney – where people don’t get angry when I speak (shocking). I wish that old man partner everything he deserves.

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    1. Dr. KMnO4*

      “Jesus’ whereabouts have never been concern to me” is a fantastic line! And as a Yankee who also worked in the South for a short time while presenting as a woman, I feel your pain.

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  85. Sally*

    I worked in a toxic environment where the manager/owner micromanaged everyone and went through a weekly rotation of each employee to hyper-focus on, questioning their every task and action.

    Twice during my 2 years there, I had a snagged fingernail and whipped out my nail file to smooth it out. TWICE IN 2 YEARS. Both times the manager happened to pass by my office door, stop and stare and watch me in undisguised dismay. The second time she said, “You’re filing your nails. Again?” Months after the first “incident.” She assumed the worst of me, that I sat around all day filing my nails.

    I found another job and didn’t plan to give any notice. I took a black sharpie and wrote I QUIT on a big pink nail file, tucked it in an envelope addressed to the manager and left it out on my desk. I didn’t bother coming in the next day or ever again.

    I heard from a former coworker that the manager actually thought it was funny. Nice. Got a sense of humor AFTER I quit.

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  86. Space Cadet*

    Classic rage quit, in the form of an email to HR detailing all of my grievances against my verbally abusive boss. I don’t think they cared — the company has a reputation for promoting abusive people into management positions — but it felt good to finally stick up for myself after 11 years.

    I decided I’d never kowtow to bullies in the workplace ever again, no matter the consequences. So far, I’ve kept that promise to myself.

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  87. Becky S*

    I worked for a school district in a professional but non-teaching job. We got a new superintendent who after a couple months told me I was being let go and he wanted to hire someone without a degree for that position. He was probably right but then he told me I had to write a handbook about my job so they could ‘hire someone off the street to do that job’. Insulting, yes. I wrote the handbook but it would help no one understand the requirements. When he was hired he negotiated a 3 year contract. A few months into his second year the Board of Ed bought out his contract to get rid of him. I relocated 2 hours away and don’t know what happened to him after that but the consensus was that he was an arrogant jerk.

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    1. Alan*

      Not a school district, engineering firm, but someone at my employer many years ago got the same idea, for everyone to document their job in a notebook so that any fresh-out engineer can come in and do any engineering job in the business. There was a huge rollout, everyone took training on how it would work, the day came for all notebooks to be done, no one had done anything, and it was never spoken of again.

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  88. MsM*

    Not a boss, but one of the more pompous, aggravating board members I dealt with on a regular basis (and believe me, the competition was stiff) made the tactical error of offering on a professional listserv where he held court that if anyone had a problem with his opinions or attitude, he’d refrain from posting for a day in exchange for a certain level of financial contribution to the listserv hosts (who didn’t deserve the drama he invariably brought with him, either). As far as I know, no one had taken him up on it until I and a couple of other departing colleagues who’d had enough of having our contributions dismissed and weren’t going to need to stay in his good graces where we were headed pooled our resources and bought everyone a month of silence.

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  89. Constance Lloyd*

    Maybe not quite an F you, but I worked at a non-profit that was part of a national network. We were located in a city with a high cost of living but were among the lowest paid in the country, despite being among the top performers. Every year, we were told about all the extra money in our budget and every year the board refused to issue raises greater than 1%. After a few years earning under $40k, I quit. I gave 4 weeks notice and made sure all of my cases were either closed or completely up to date with detailed transition notes for my coworkers. Then, during my exit interview with HR, I sang the organization’s praises. I heaped on sincere compliments about leadership, the mission, the dedication of my coworkers, and said unfortunately, I just couldn’t afford to keep working here. There had been above average turnover but this was during the height of the pandemic, so I think they had attributed it to that.

    Within a month, the board approved mid-year raises. I’m told they were significant.

    Reply ↓
    2. Alan*

      Yeah, my employer announced one year that everyone was overpaid, based on some report they commissioned, so they announced no raises. Critical people left. The next year, surprise!, they gave everyone a *huge* raise based on some *new* report they had commissioned. They simply couldn’t afford to lose any more people.

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  90. SpatulaCity*

    I don’t recall if my co-worker quit, or was fired. while gathering up his things, he went to the shared computer in our lab, said he had some personal files he needed to copy before leaving. (it was around 2000, no user accounts/passwords, or centralized data storage, most things stored locally.) he was there a while, and left with a few floppys. we did other stuff while waiting for the computer to become available. after he left, another (older) coworker tried to find his project’s paperwork to print out, but it was missing. I was the young, just out of college recent hire, so the older coworker always asked me for computer help. Seems that the quit/fired coworker had spent his time deleting every work document off of the computer as his final F-you. but he forgot to empty the trash/recycling bin, so it was very easy for me to restore it. (after letting our supervisor and manager know what was done)

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    1. Bruce*

      I’m glad you could recover the files, this one crossed the line from a personal “F-You” to sabotaging everyone’s work.

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  91. Notasecurityguard*

    Back when I WAS a security guard at a university there were 3 events that were always “Charlie Foxtrots.” By far the biggest of these was commencement day. My immediate supervisor liked to pretend we were in the military, had a loose understanding of labor and OSHA laws, and was just generally, to use the technical terms, a GAPING asshole. So when I found a job I handed in my 2 weeks notice, which had me leaving RIGHT before graduation. Told my boss my new job needed me right away, actually just wanted a month off

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  92. Tilly*

    Not super dramatic but 90% of our team quit within four months of getting a new manager. I inherited the majority of their work for what was supposed to be interim, but we know how that goes. Boss gave me minimal bonus bc I wasn’t being “engaged or innovative” enough rather than acknowledging I was doing four times my usual workload.

    I went on vacation. Told her upon my return I was giving my two weeks so I could spend the summer in Italy. She panicked and offered me a sabbatical option instead. I said no thanks because the thought of returning from a long vacation to her team was too depressing. It was an awkward two weeks.

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  93. NameWithheld*

    Not me, but I know someone who bought one of those intermittent beeping devices and hid it in the ceiling of the tiny server room closet at their company.

    I also know someone who had setup a countdown that would execute if they didn’t log into a security system at least once a month, but I don’t remember what it did. I think it disabled all the door locks? He disabled it before he left though.

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  94. Hyruseki*

    Back in the mid-90s I worked for an environmental firm. As a new hire, I was supposed to have 9-5 hours, but they were changed my third week in. I was now told to report at 5am to test buildings for environmental compliance because this was a big project and the client could not open doors every day without showing that they were following the rules.

    After a week of this, I talked to the big boss, was talked over, and told “this is how it is.” So I started interviewing, landed another job two weeks later and just…didn’t show up to the environmental firm. No notice, nothing. Apparently, the client called the firm FUMING because they couldn’t show they were in compliance that day and lost a ton of money. Environmental firm left a 5 minute rant on my answering machine about how they were going to ruin me and it turns out that they lost the client because no one else wanted to show up at 5am. The firm was out of business in under a year (not due to me, that was just one of the many things that was wrong with the place, but that’s a whole other story.)

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  95. WonderCootie*

    Stuff of legend at my husband’s department: a low-level employee (think mail room or similar) sent a flaming email to EVERYONE in the agency (thousands of people). In the very long email, he described in excruciating detail exactly what he thought of the agency, the agency director, his manager, his job, and people in general. Let’s just say that it was less than complimentary and used a wide variety of four-letter words. He finished by saying he was resigning to become a pizza delivery driver.

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  96. Carole from Accounts*

    I’m only a witness to the Quitter in this story but it’s too glorious not to share.

    I worked at a large multinational company that was a wholly owned subsidiary of a much larger international brand based in Japan. Our NA HQ had this gorgeous lobby that contained a zen garden, then you would go through the doors to the manufacturing facility and offices. We paid a Zen Master several hundred dollars each quarter to rake the zen garden before the big bosses from Japan came to visit.

    We had two systems that never talked to each other and never equaled each other, let’s say System 1 reported teapot contracts and pipeline, and System 2 reported teapot sales and costs. There were whole parts of the organization that just built reports around the two systems and there was a substantial percentage of management who didn’t understand why System 1 March contracts didn’t equal System 2 March sales. We answered questions about this constantly, and spent more time explaining the differences than actually doing any cost analysis. The effort to bridge the two systems was immense, and one of my coworkers was leading a project to automate the bridge files and improve reporting.

    At the grand presentation meeting for the Bridge Project, halfway through the presentation, a member of the C suite asked my coworker why she didn’t just make the numbers in System 1 match the numbers in System 2 instead of building this Bridge. Coworker attempted to explain they’ve tried everything, the bridge is the solution. C Suite insists she didn’t try hard enough. Coworker just calmly sets down the laser pointer, picks up her bag, announces that she’s quitting and walks out of the meeting room. Based on what we were told from the receptionist, she then walked out of the office area, into the lobby, opened the door to the zen garden and proceeded to make snow angels all over the freshly raked garden before security removed her from the premises.

    The zen angels remained for about 48 hours while panicked calls were made to the zen gardener to restore the zen before the big bosses arrived.

    The garden was fixed before the visit, Coworker could not be tempted to come back and finish the Bridge Project, it took another year to finish it without her technical expertise, and she was a legend for years after (I overheard someone telling a new employee about the angels five years later).

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  97. Clown Eradicator*

    YEARS ago, when I was in my early 20s, I worked an hourly + commission high end retail sales job. I cut down to weekends and holidays only, because I found a day job in an office, but the store still needed the coverage. I went in one day after a couple of weeks off to see that the manager at the time took a $20,000 sale from me. He was to finalize the sale while I was out, which was typical, but he assumed that since I was there sporadically, that I wouldn’t notice. That would have been a minimum of $300 commission, so yes, I noticed when it didn’t come, and that’s when I investigated.

    As soon as I saw that, I said to the manager “I quit, F— you, and don’t call me at Mother’s day or Xmas.” and flipped them off as I walked out. Stupid? Yes, probably. Vindicating? Absolutely.

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  98. Marion the Librarian*

    I had been out of work for a bit after a move and accepted a job at a nonprofit that I thought I could stick out for two years and then move on. Unfortunately my boss turned out to be a walking harassment case and I started looking after 2 months.
    My boss treated my teammates pretty horribly (guilt tripping one of them for taking sick time to go to their chemo treatments, making comments to me and another colleague about how a pregnancy would never be welcomed news to her (we are both women of childbearing age). We finally made our cases to HR and things went from bad to worse as my boss retaliated against all of us.
    When I had started, I had negotiated a two week paid vacation as I had a family reunion planned about 4 months in (the company only gives 2 weeks accrued and it is use or lose). Well, I accepted a job offer the day before my vacation and waited to give my notice the day I returned. Given my boss’s volatile nature, I gave no notice and told HR I was done that day and what did I need to do to wrap things up. My boss never said a word to me and I’m told didn’t announcement my departure to the rest of the org because I had been “so f-king disrespectful.” Sure, Jan. I was the disrespectful one.

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  99. not nice, don't care*

    Ah yes. Left my job by threatening to have my vile criminal boss deported back to Canada for her multiple schemes to defraud banks, insurance companies, customers and employees. She made the mistake of physically threatening me while attempting to fire me for informing a bullied coworker of her federal & state rights as an employee.

    It was so epically satisfying. I unloaded every last ounce of disgust for her as a person and an employer, loudly and emphatically. My parting shot was letting her cheated customers know how much she had stolen from them.

    Last I heard she had to close her business and was selling remaining stock (she was a fabric supplier to red-carpet-level clothing designers) out of her garage.

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  100. Vacation Gamer*

    Not so much an F-You but a way to play the system on my way out. I worked for a large organization for over 15 years. They restructured my department and received a new boss who was quite toxic. It became very apparent that I needed to find a new job. I was offered the perfect next step in my career two weeks before the end of our fiscal year. At this particular organization, vacation and sick time were granted at the beginning of every fiscal year not accrued through the year. New job told me to pick a start date so I waited until after the start of the fiscal year to give my two weeks. Walked out with a check for 4 weeks worth of vacation (all granted 3 weeks before my last day). Pretty sure it messed with his staffing budget…

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  101. Everything Bagel*

    Almost 20 years ago, my boss “Frank” bought a bar as a fun side business, shortly after starting to date “Mandy,” one of the bartenders there. As you might imagine, this was a bad idea, and within a couple months they had broken up pretty messily.

    Frank didn’t want to fire her because it would look bad so he took the chickenshit approach and just stopped scheduling for shifts in the hope that she would quit. She did, but….

    The way he learned this was that in the late afternoon on a Friday one of the other bartenders called him at the store and said “if you want the bar to be open this week you should probably come down here and run it,” because the entire staff was quitting alongside her.

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  102. Lisa K.*

    My mom worked in an office that had grown very toxic —and she was the only person who knew how to adjust the thermostat (don’t ask!). Literally on the way out the door on the day she quit, she jacked it up all the way to 90.

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  103. Momma Bear*

    I once had a temp job cleaning up the “f-you, I’m out” tantrum of an employee who was fired. He literally threw documents in the air and let them fall down scrambled, and destroyed most of the soft copies (some of which were on disks that he corrupted or mangled in various ways – yeah, that old). I spent the entire summer finding the pieces, filling in the gaps, and putting everything into new content management SW. It was such a mess I couldn’t fully fix it, even after weeks of FT effort. The company offered to keep me on but I wanted to finish my degree. One of the best summer jobs I ever had, though, so I guess thank you to whoever peaced out like that.

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  104. nora*

    When I was in college, I worked at a movie theater. I sprained my ankle severely and had a doctor’s note ordering me to sit at work. I brought the note to the GM and he refused to honor it. I went home, dejected, and had a message on my answering machine (this was approximately a million years ago) offering me a job at a theater box office. All sitting. I turned around, hopped back on the bus, and went back to the theater. GM: “Oh what now?” Me: “I quit.” At the end of my last shift I scratched the eyes out of a photo of a manager I particularly disliked. He was ANGRY.

    Fast forward 6 years and I was in his wedding to my best friend. The world is a strange place. We remain cordial, but not friends, to this day.

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      1. Hlao-roo*

        From the Wikipedia article:

        Since completing community service, Slater has moved to Los Angeles and kept a low public profile. “It’s a before and after. My life was completely transformed, for better or for worse, after that date,” he recalled. “I mean, it wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done but it sure felt great … I just hit like a crescendo of frustration.” He has since been able to recover from his drug and alcohol addictions. Despite some job interviews, he has had difficulty getting hired because of his history, which he does not hold against prospective employers. “If I’m going in for some sort of a customer service position, I’m kind of like your worst nightmare.”[37]

        37. Wang, Amy B (November 3, 2017). “He quit JetBlue by sliding out of a plane. Now he has advice for the rogue Twitter employee”. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 6, 2017.

        Sounds like as of 2017 he was doing OK.

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  106. Generic Name*

    Mine was a more belated F-you. You know the saying, revenge is a dish best served cold. I used to work for a tiny consulting firm, and they thought they were The Shit. I had worked there for a long time, and I finally screwed up the courage to leave after years of being treated poorly. I got a job at a huge company that was a big client of tiny firm. The CEO of tiny firm was buds with a VP of big client, so I can only assume management of tiny firm thought that they had things locked in for continued business at big client. The thing is, that VP has no actual authority over the subsidiary and department I work for, and it’s actually me and people at my level who often make decisions on which consulting firms to bring on for jobs. So when a job came up for bid, my old tiny firm submitted a proposal, along with several others. I reviewed all the bids, and theirs was by far the highest, and quite frankly, missed the mark. I sent them an email letting them know that their bid was not successful and they asked for a debrief. So I responded with a high-level list of their deficiencies. The most satisfying deficiency I got to point out was in a discipline that I am a widely-known expert in (in my industry). They were just flat out wrong about a regulatory change I was heavily involved in. Best part was that the person who asked for the debrief is the same person who when I resigned said that they weren’t worried about my many years of industry knowledge leaving with me. I guess they needed my industry knowledge after all. :)

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  107. Muskisarat*

    On my last day at a job I hated I created a series of Google calendar invitations scheduled for random times weeks and months out for a couple of coworkers who had been rude to me. The title for each was, “Discussion of Why (I used my real name) is Fantastic.”

    I heard from other coworkers who I liked and stayed in touch with that this had the desired impact.

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  108. Zona the Great*

    YES! I had a terrible job as a bank teller in a gross drive-up only branch on the outskirts of town. It was in the parking lot of a nearly abandoned mall. They refused to hire enough people so I had to work split shifts with a break of 3 hours in the middle of the day. I lived 45 minutes away and the others lived down the street but I was still the one who had to make an 8 hour payday into a 12+ hour day. My boss couldn’t understand my anger about it and told me to go window shopping in the abandoned mall where two stores remained. FOR THREE HOURS EVERY DAY.

    Right before Christmas I suddenly lost all will and motivation. They had just hired a part-timer who was only scheduled in the morning. Not to help with lunches. I carefully gathered my things in a pile near the door over the course of the day and when I had enough courage, I ran over, grabbed my things, and shouted, “Hey Karen! I quit! Merry Christmas!” I can still hear the panic in her voice as she called after me. While I now think this was dramatic and silly, I can still feel how young me felt in that moment so I don’t really feel bad.

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  109. Dancing Queen*

    I sang a chorus of Take This Job and Shove it in front of my manager and the entire team, with accompanying dance moves, on my last day right when I was leaving the office for the last time.

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  110. T. Belsen,*

    As of March 1, my job of 18 years was eliminated. I don’t have it in me to be so upset to want to give them a big F you in a blaze of glory. I hope they find the crappy person that they deserve, though.

    Reply ↓
    1. T. Belsen,*

      Oh I know why I feel no need for a huge F you. I have enough to stay in power that I knew my time was limited with the company. I waited long enough until they finally decided that they didn’t want me around anymore and I am currently enjoying the nice severance package. If all goes smoothly I will have a good passive income for quite a while.

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  111. Big Shrugs*

    I’d been asking for a raise for months at my last firm, mentioning that while I had no plans to leave, I was seeing recruiters in my inbox with comparable roles offering 20%-30% more than I was being paid. I was asked what more I would be taking on to justify a pay increase, but the conversation turned a bit when the quiet part got said out loud—there really wasn’t any more growth opportunity for me at the small company. I said “that’s a good point” and ended the call.

    The owner set a meeting for three weeks later to discuss a number for a raise (he spent about half his time vacationing and that always took precedence). In that time I found another job paying 30% more with lots of growth opportunity and new challenges to take on. At the raise meeting, the owner said after a lot of thought, he was happy to offer me a raise—to the bare minimum number I’d discussed. I got to say thanks but no thanks… I actually have another job lined up. And since we live in a state where accumulated PTO is paid out at your current salary, I wouldn’t want to take a raise when I’d be leaving so soon. The mic drop moment and the look on his face was so worth giving up that bump to my payout.

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  112. Sparkles McFadden*

    I worked in a department in a job I loved for more than ten years. Over time, I became one of the go-to people in the department, and was even asked to serve on various ad-hoc corporate and industry committees. My boss didn’t like that and things went downhill very quickly. She was told she could not fire me, so she did everything possible to get me to quit. I stayed with the company but moved to another department. My boss tried her best to stop the other manager from hiring me. She tried to get me removed from my committees. She called business contacts outside of the company to tell them not to contact me because she had fired me. Eventually things settled down, but she stayed angry over the fact that I got another job before she could figure out how to fire me.

    That boss was let go five months after I changed jobs. It was dressed up as a voluntary departure, complete with a going away gathering in a conference room. It was not well attended, but one friend did go and called me to jokingly say “I went to her going away thing to see if you’d be there.” I replied that I had been there in spirit. I suggested that he go back to the conference room when it was empty and take a look behind the lowered projection screen. On the whiteboard behind the lowered screen, I had written GOOD RIDDANCE!!! in giant block letters.

    The best part was that my friend had raised the screen to expose my message, and no one erased it until someone need to use the whiteboard for a presentation about a week later. I guess I wasn’t alone in feeling the way I did.

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  113. nerak*

    I worked for a bookstore chain at a mall over Christmas in the late ’90s, and they kept making me staff the little crappy pop-up stand by Santa’s Workshop. It was so boring, I’d maybe make one or two sales an hour, but there was NOTHING to do there. I was there for 8 hours, alone, and had to beg coworkers to come down so I could use the bathroom and take my lunch break.

    After this happened a bunch of shifts in a row, with no one else being made to work there nearly as often as I was, I just flat-out refused to go staff it again. The manager finally sent someone else to work the pop-up, and I had a great time working in the actual bookstore, but when it came time to clock out, the manager fired me for insubordination.

    I begged her not to fire me, and she reluctantly agreed to keep me on, but before my next shift a day or two later, I decided she was right and I should be fired. So I came in and let her know I was quitting, which left her short-staffed for the day, but I didn’t care.

    I know it wasn’t the most mature thing to do, but I was 23 and my grandmother was very sick and ended up passing away a few days before Christmas, so I regret nothing.

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  114. Gingerbat*

    I left a toxic non-profit (IYKYK) job after a little less than a year. My boss was an incompetent (she once asked me to sort an excel sheet that had 2 names on it) petty tyrant who was rude and abrasive to everyone she deemed less than (which was everyone except the org president). I scheduled an email announcing my departure to hit her inbox after I had left for the day letting them know my last day would be when she was conveniently on a work trip. I also called in sick a few times so I only had to see her once more before leaving. When I did see her, I made sure to let her know I was leaving for a job that paid 50% more and that I would “never forget all that you taught me about management and human connections.”

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  115. Lab snep*

    I used to do graphic and web design. We had a client which was a CHURCH and they stole images off the internet all the time.

    When they asked why I said it was no good, I looked at them and said “thou shalt not steal?”

    Anyway. The company I worked for wasn’t great and when exporting some images for the church site before I left, I noticed a setting would make them all 666 bytes in size.

    I did that. Nobody knew. It was cathartic.

    Shortly after I left I checked on the website and it was full of stolen images again.

    But all my 666 byte site images still existed.

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  116. YesPhoebeWould*

    Back when I was a manager, I worked for an utterly incompetent Director and an even more incompetent VP. They made my life very difficult for several months. I gave my boss verbal notice of my quitting, and she was very snarky about needing it formally in writing via email. Knowing I would never return to this company, I complied fully with an email saying “As you know, for a long time it has been difficult dealing with your utter incompetence and lack of ability, and even more so with an intellectual dwarf like {VP}. So, as requested, I’m quitting effective [date] to get away from such a useless pair of inept micromanagers with the leadership skills of a trained chimp.”

    I “accidentally” sent it to the company-wide distribution email address, and just to make sure she got it, I printed it out and taped it on the wall next to her office. Got walked out the next day. :)

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  117. Slightly petty*

    My former workplace was fairly toxic with a lot of power plays and bad feelings between different supervisors and higher ups that unfortunately trickled down to the rest of us. I stayed because it was well paying and couldn’t beat the work life balance (M-F day shift, no weekends or holidays). One day my supervisor called us in for a meeting to inform us we had to start working weekends and holidays (would work out to one weekend a month and 3-4 federal holidays a year). When we pushed back on the rationale for this (it was to cover an area of our company that we weren’t qualified or trained to run, and there were serious safety concerns with us suddenly being in charge of these significant duty changes), our supervisor said “if you don’t like it, you’re welcome to seek employment elsewhere.” So I did. A few months later in my exit interview when asked if there was anything that could have been changed or done differently that would have impacted my leaving, I took great pleasure in quoting him directly, along with sharing my concerns about the legality/liability associated with the shift change. I know multiple other people in my department left, and the people remaining are no longer being assigned to the weekends and holidays.

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  118. Lemon*

    Took 1.5 weeks vacation and returned the week I intended to put in my 2 weeks.

    Also, acting with extreme professionalism towards an extremely unprofessional and juvenile employer is really satisfying to me.

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  119. Sally Forth*

    I went back to school and started a new career at 35. My boss was horrible, well known in our local special libraries community for burning through her library assistants. After 18 months I had gone to HR twice for how she treated our volunteers.

    She had a day book where I had to enter the top 10 things I had done each day. She said it was to better communicate and eliminate duplicated effort but her feedback in the day book was often demeaning. Even the positive comments were of the cringeworthy “attagirl” variety.

    When I quit, I taped a bookmark in the day book with a quote from George Eliot “It’s never too late to be what you might have been” but I wrote her name in Sharpie after the quote.

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  120. a perfectly normal-sized space bird*

    At a particularly horrible job* that I worked at for three years (and leave off my resume despite the certifications I got from that job being helpful in my job searches), I knew the writing was on the wall and took measures to protect myself and give a big ol’ fork you to the company.

    – I moved to a new address without updating HR and had all my mail forwarded to a PO box
    – I forwarded emails and made copies of all incriminating evidence for all the fraud they were engaged in
    – I submitted said evidence with reports to the SEC, IRS, HUD, and the relevant state offices
    – I took all the office supplies they never reimbursed me for, from toner cartridges to paperclips
    – In a fit of pettiness, I tilted everything framed about 12 degrees off center and rehung all the posters so the ridiculous motivational images were facing the wall

    I never really followed up with what eventually happened to the company, but the president was convicted of bank fraud and now he delivers vending machine candy and his stint as the president of a national company does not appear on his resume. A coworker who worked out of the satellite office said it was about eight months before someone noticed the wall decor and the posters still hadn’t been fixed by the time he left the company.

    *They were engaged in tax and insurance fraud, plus doing a lot of illegal and unethical things to elderly, disabled, and poor people, the discovery of which is why my boss went underground for a month and then showed up in the middle of the night at my house with a giant file folder of evidence he wanted me to have in case he and/or his copies disappeared. It was a weird time.

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  121. Heffalump*

    After a week at my first summer job during my college years, I simply left at the end of my shift and never came back, never called to give notice, because of the abusive office manager. I should have told him off, but I was too much of a wimp. Not as dramatic a story as I’d like, but it is what it is.

    I’d gotten the job through the campus placement office. I told the nice lady at the placement office how the job had worked out, and she said, “Some offices are like that, and they have a lot of turnover.”

    Of course we remember the story of the flight attendant who hit the slide (which became a catchphrase) some years ago.

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  122. Anon for this*

    Ooh, reading all these has just reminded me of when I was working for a city council in Yorkshire, many years ago.

    Our department had been going through a reorganisation, and our key IT person, “Hermione”, had been assigned to report to the Admin manager, “Dolores”, whom she loathed. She found a new job pretty quickly and prepared her f-you to Delores.

    Although it’s common in the UK to give at least a month’s notice (often more in the public sector if you are at a certain level), Hermione had plenty of holiday owed which would count towards her notice period.

    Hermione waited until Dolores was on leave and likely to be on a plane to her holiday destination before submitting her resignation, knowing that she would be gone before Dolores returned to the office. This was in the mid-noughties, before smartphones or the ability to log into work email remotely, so there’s a good chance that Dolores didn’t find out until she came back to work. Though well before Dolores left for her holiday, I suspect a good 80% of the 50 or so people in the department knew of Hermione’s plan.

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  123. Alice*

    Here’s a dark one:
    Years ago, a friend of mine worked long term at a dysfunctional not-for-profit that had an important mission he cared about deeply, but that mismanaged everything and made my friend’s professional life extremely difficult and stressful. Then, while he was secretly planning to quit, he passed away suddenly.
    In his death announcement, his family requested donations to a different organization with a similar mission, as a deliberate final F-you to his employer.

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  124. Clam Condor*

    About 10 years ago I was working at a grocery store deli. My boss wouldn’t let me take a HALF DAY for my only child’s 1st birthday because “it’s too close to Christmas and we’re busy” BS we had plenty of staff and it was 3 weeks before Christmas .

    Our cold meal case had an on/off switch that was really easy to knock with your knee if you weren’t paying attention. I made sure I knocked it with my knee before I walked out…

    At another job I had a brown nosing coworker that had a huge crush on our boss and was super jealous and possessive. He refused to do anything about her passive aggressive behavior so in my exit interview I made sure to DETAIL each conversation she had about him. Might as well make it awkward for them bwahaha

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  125. Guest*

    One of the crappy retail gigs I worked after college was at a card and gift shop during the holidays. You haven’t lived until a customer walks up to you with 7 pairs of costume earrings and wants them all individually wrapped 20 minutes ago. My manager was always grumpy with me for no reason and I once heard her loudly trashing me to a friend on the phone. I wasn’t too upset when they didn’t keep me on after the season ended. Fast forward a few months to when I was working at a jewelry store – she came in and said she was desperate to leave the gift shop and were we hiring and could I please put it a good word for her? I smiled and said, sorry,we’re not hiring. After she left, my manager asked why I’d said that since we were about to advertise an opening. I told her how gift shop boss had acted at work and she understood.

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  126. NotmyUsualName*

    I honestly had not intended to leave with a flourish, I had given my 2 weeks notice and was faithfully wrapping up my 2 weeks. Typically this company either walked you on notice, or you were expected to work until 5 pm on your last day.

    This was pre any sort of shared drive system. All during the last week I had been collecting documentation for things I was the primary person on, making good training documentation, writing status reports on all my last projects. The intention was to email them to my group on my last day once I had final project status.

    I came in at 8 am on my last day and the IT Bob who had always had it in for me came in at 8:15. At 8:16 access to my company email was abruptly terminated. I went down to check if he could turn it back on so I could send out a few last things and he said no, it had all been deleted.

    I wiped my hard drive of all the files and when they asked for the updates I said they had all been in my drafts folder in the email ready to be sent that day and they should ask IT Bob for help. Things did not go well for IT Bob.

    Unrelated I was not sad a year later when I learned he had been arrested and imprisoned for being a sexual predator. He had always given me the creeps and it turns out for good reason.

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  127. SbucksAddict*

    It wasn’t me but when I was working for another firm, we were auditing a large client. They had me sitting in a room across from another woman who could help me if I needed any files or whatever. She had a happy meal looking Sponge Bob toy on her desk and I remember mentally chuckling about it because this was a very traditional and staid workplace where you didn’t even see photos on people’s desks.

    Middle of the audit, I come back from lunch to find an envelope on my desk chair. We weren’t allowed to leave papers when we left the room so I thought it was for Sponge Bob Lady and was given to me by accident. Figured I’d give it back to her after lunch. Hours went by and she never came back. Looked closer at the envelope to make sure it was hers and it had my name on it. Inside were some irregular invoices that I’d asked about but she couldn’t find.

    I went to thank her and noticed Sponge Bob was gone. She never came back to work – I think she gave me the invoices and dipped. I had no way to contact her to thank her but it definitely helped in the audit and I could go to my AM with evidence instead of “This just doesn’t feel right.” So thank you, Sponge Bob Lady!

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  128. Box of Rain*

    Weeks after starting a new job as a Teapot design Trainer, I quickly realized that the job description I was hired for was not the job they wanted me to do. I was being asked to be a Teapot Processes Technical Writer. My title was the same, but the job description with the posting was revised once I was hired. Luckily, I still had the job posting description saved because a copy of it was included with my offer letter.

    Around the end of the first month, I started to ask my boss for help with process documentation. I asked him for help in every 1:1 or status update meeting. I asked him for training so I could do what he wanted (even though it wasn’t what I was hired for). Training continued to be promised to me for the next two months, without him actually coming through on it. I had no team members to lean on either, and to top it off, I was completely by myself 95% of the day. As in literally alone in a desk in an all but abandoned area of the building, too. There were at least three times that I didn’t see another person for 3+ days.

    How do I know it was at least three times? I documented it. Initially, this wasn’t with the intention of quitting, but it became that after I called my state unemployment office several times to ask about the legality of the job description bait-and-switch. If I quit because of this, could I get unemployment? The answer was, “Maybe.”

    Fast-forward to about 8 AM when I receive a call that my 7 year old didn’t stop running in time and slammed head first into a concrete wall while playing at daycare that morning. The school was calling because they sent him ahead to school on the bus (WTH), and as soon as he got there the school nurse did a concussion check. I am still so new I don’t have any time off available, so I decide right then, while sitting in my car facing another completely miserable day alone doing a job I wasn’t qualified or trained for while my child needs me, that I am never coming back to this place.

    I went to my desk, grabbed anything I didn’t want left behind, including the documentation related to me asking for help 500 times, the bait-and-switch job descriptions, and some personal photos. I wasn’t prepared to do this, so I was carrying everything in my arms. I was sure someone would ask what was going on, but again, there was no one in this area of the building.

    I picked up my kid and took him to the doctors. Around 3 PM, I emailed by boss my resignation. No surprise he hadn’t noticed I was missing. The company initially protested my unemployment claim and called for a hearing, until I turned over the documentation I had going back two months of me asking for training/help and the job descriptions. The hearing was immediately cancelled, and I got my unemployment.

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  129. ferrina*

    Way, way back when I was working at a daycare that was contracted to a corporate client. The daycare director was a non-entity to the point of awful. She let all kinds of things slide, and the center had some serious bullies among the teachers. I finally got sick of the bullying and quit. The head of the PTA had a kid in my class, and we had a strong rapport. When I told them I was leaving, the parent asked where I was going.

    “I don’t have anything lined up.” I said. An entire silent conversation happened with eyebrows.

    Apparently that had been the final straw for the PTA head. She had a list of grievances against the director and rallied the PTA. They had the leverage to threaten the corporate contract, and the director was forced out.

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  130. Sabrina*

    My old office was a dysfunctional disaster of cronyism, my groups managers wouldn’t put me on projects unless they had too because one manager hated me. To be fair I had made him look like an idiot, he had publicly accused me of doing something fireable that was so easy to disprove I did so. In an office wide email.

    Anyway, after that the only way I’d get projects from my mangers was when every other person was unavailable or my coworkers had all screwed up enough that the clients refused to work with them anymore. (Shockingly that happened! Multiple times!) The way that job worked was I needed to stay billable or I’d be made part time and loss my benefits. However I had a network of excellent people in other offices and outside my immediate group who wanted to work with me. This worked out great for my managers, they didn’t have to piss off the one angry guy by giving me projects and I made their numbers look good by having more billable hours then the rest of the group. By the time I was ready to leave I was the only person being managed by them working full time, everyone else had been made part time due to lack of billable hours. My managers also weren’t winning more work or keeping clients, can’t imagine why.

    Once my new job had a start date I gave 24 hour notice, which I felt bad about but they needed me to start immediately to get into a training class. My manager, suddenly realizing she was about to lose the only person who was reliably billable, told me she needed a list of all my projects so she could reassign them. I got to tell her that I’d already found coverage for every single one. In other offices. The new job had a very slow process to get me start date and I knew better then to give notice without one. So I’d spent a month calling people I’d worked with and finding out if they had time and the right experience, then contacting managers all over the country with cheerful emails explaining I wouldn’t be able to work with them in the future, but I knew someone who was perfect in another office who would be happy to take over. I even reached out to people who had yearly work I’d help with that was way out to tell them who to contact, not an hour of work went to my old group.

    Funny thing was at the time I didn’t think of this as a F you. I really did like these projects and I wanted the best people possible to take them over. Sadly that wasn’t anyone in my office. But when I saw my managers reaction I realized exactly how much this was going to screw her over. Also as I type this out I’m realizing that not one person contacted my office and warned them I was leaving. Feel all warm and fuzzy knowing they had my back!

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  131. JAnon*

    I knew something was up at the agency I had been working at where I essentially operated as a one person traffic team with a background in design. My boss was odd that day, he kept wanting to talk, was asking about some projects. My assumption was that with the loss of a client, we were letting the designer who worked solely on that client go so I was being very diligent about moving work around and seeing what I could take on to have everything happen seamlessly the next week and show my strengths. I saw the designer be let go and then my boss came to get me, and I was ready to tell him we were good for the next week. Until HR was in the office also. When I went back to my computer afterwards to pack up my things, the schedule for the next week was open. It’s a small thing, but I deleted it. If they didn’t want me there, they could figure it out themselves. It didn’t create a ton of havoc for them, but I sure wasn’t giving them any help for that next week!

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  132. soontoberetired*

    this question reminds me of my former co-worker DB. DB was working on some technical infrastructure with a vendor, and that vendor kept insulting DB. DB’s complaints to management went nowhere. One day, the vendor said something particularly bad, and DB went back to his desk, filled out the retirement paperwork (DB was old enough to “retire” from the company and get his pension), set the date to be immediate, sent the paper work to management and HR and walkd out the door.

    The infrastructure project was delayed 8 months. They needed DB. DB had a lot of money saved, and the last I knew, never worked again. DB was 52 at the time.

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  133. Fenella Lorch*

    Served in the Navy with an officer kicked out for performance reasons. On his last day, all the officers gathered to give him the traditional sendoff given to a departing shipmate.

    As one does, he wore his uniform. But he put on gym shorts and a rock band t-shirt under his uniform. He left with a backpack secretly containing a ballcap and set of flip-flops.

    The officers gathered and saw him off. Departing the ship for the last time, he stopped at the foot of the gangplank and stripped off his uniform, boots and all. He slipped in to flip-flops and his baseball cap and strode off down the pier to his car, leaving his uniform in a heap at the foot of the gangplank.

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  134. Anon for this*

    I wrote a very nice resignation letter. Except the first letter of each sentence spelled out F–K YOU B—H. Each word was a different paragraph. Absolutely petty, and I don’t think anyone ever noticed.

    My terrible boss told me it was the nicest resignation letter she’d ever received.

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  135. Lentils*

    A few jobs ago, I worked with a team that provided onsite parking for corporate employees of [major online retailer with significant physical presence in my nearby metropolitan area]. We were all laid off kind of abruptly, because Retailer decided they wanted to switch to a cheaper parking lottery system.

    Background: the system we used to assign parking worked on sometimes months- or years-long wait lists to get parking in an employee’s chosen buildings, with less secure “temporary” spaces also available at less optimal garages. Parkers were supposed to reach out to us with issues they encountered with their access fobs. One of the people using a temp garage, “Percy,” wrote us silly poems about his access woes whenever he had to reach out, and quickly endeared himself to the entire team that way. He happened to be on a wait list for a building that was notoriously slow-moving and difficult to get parking access in, but he was always upbeat and kind in his emails, which was a nice break from the usual for us. He became legendary in our office even though we were only there about a year and a half.

    On our last day, a couple coworkers and I realized that because all our emails/inboxes were getting deleted, nobody would get in trouble if we just… gave Percy parking access to his preferred garage. So together the three of us penned a little thank you note to him for always brightening our days and got his new access fob sent out before we left. I hope if he’s still there, he’s loving his parking access.

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  136. Saint Elmo*

    Not the most interesting or dramatic, but it was certainly satisfying to me. I worked as a Team Lead under a horrible micro-manager at my last retail job at a clothing store, and one of the things she was incredibly nitpicky about was the radio station that we played.

    For whatever reason she always kept it on this station that was essentially all children versions of popular music. Think Kidz-Bop, but even younger children. So rather than customers hearing the top 40s in the store, they were instead greeted by the shrill voices of children doing their best to compare to Ariana Grande. (Where she found this station I do not know, but it must have been broadcast from the third circle of hell or something).

    Needless to say, this was awful and whenever she was away from the store we would change it to a regular station. Finally after two years I was leaving to go on a study abroad, and I wanted to get the slightest bit back at her. On my final day, I was one of the closers and I knew she was opening the next morning. So before leaving I turned up the radio to the top 40s we would usually listen to when she was away, so that when she started it in the morning she would be greeted with regular-people music instead of her shrill little angels.

    i never got to see her reaction, but I do imagine it when i need some cheering up.

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  137. Kim Z.*

    At my previous academic position, my department had been shoved into an entirely unrelated and completely dysfunctional department.

    When I quit to take my current job, I went into a faculty meeting, said “I have an announcement. I’m leaving. And I’m leaving because of you people. I have never worked with a group of such unprofessional people. You are awful.” And I stood up and walked out of the meeting. According to a colleague who I am close with, the stunned silence was beautiful.

    I also apparently wrote a scorching resignation letter to the Provost. A few years ago, I found her response to my resignation, calling me unprofessional in what I wrote. I don’t actually remember what I said in the letter, but clearly it did not make her happy. :)

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  138. Lady Ann*

    I left my last job because my boss, to put it simply, was mean to me (and not to anyone else she managed, she just disliked me for no good reason that I could tell). The company published a weekly email newsletter, and a common thing to do for folks that left on good terms was to send in a goodbye note to be included. I sent in a note thanking all the people that had supported me and helped me grow over my more than 15 years there, including peers, support staff, and other supervisors I had had over the years, omitting of course my current boss. It was dumb, and petty, but satisfying.

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  139. Enaj*

    I took a second part-time job at a deli; the manager said she could schedule me around my other job so I gave her my hours there. I trained for 2 days and then was put on the schedule with NO regard to my scheduling request/needs. So on my first official day of work I walked in holding my work shirt with a note pinned to it saying “I quit.”

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  140. Jojo*

    I was not the main player in this story, but I did get to add the icing to the cake.

    I had worked a retail job for 5 years when a store manager position came open. I applied, as did this very unsettling guy who did not pass the vibe check. When I found out, I mentioned some concerns I had about him to the district manager. Because I was competing for the job, she blew me off assuming it was just sour grapes. He got the job.

    By the time the holiday season rolled around I realized I was never going to move up and put in my two week notice. On my second to last day, the regional director was touring stores with the district manager. They show up first thing at odd guy’s store to find the gates closed and the lights out. As they are standing there, odd guy and his assistant manager show up; announce they are a couple; and hand over the keys and quit on the spot. Hey, I warned the district manager, but what did I know?

    I mention it was the start of the holiday season, and they were now down a store manager and an assistant manager. The district manager called me at my store, gave a very brief summary of what happened, and then offered me the store manager job…on my second to last day. I was so done with retail at that point that I just apologized, rejected the offer, and reminder her that it was my second to last day. I don’t know what the fallout was for the district manager, but I can assure you I enjoyed not working on Black Friday forever after.

    There really was something off about the guy and I sometimes wonder what happened to his assistant manager when they started dating. She was pretty inexperienced with dating, and I’m afraid he may have manipulated her. But who knows, maybe they ended up having a wonderful long term relationship; just like my receiving clerk and I have had. (It was retail, what can I say?)

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  141. A Tired Queer*

    About 6 years ago, I left a job that had over the course of two years morphed from manager to personal assistant to a pair of very demanding professors. I gave them the required 2 weeks notice, I sat down with them in person to hand in my resignation, I left behind a detailed guide to do what I did… but only for the duties that had actually been in my job description. None of the sneaky undercover scheduling, none of the sleight of hand travel arrangements, and certainly none of the borderline illegal use of grant money for “work related” (actually personal) purchases. They sent me panicked emails for two months afterwards asking how to do all those things, and I placidly informed them that they should go through the department admins… just like they should have done when I was still there. It was a very mild F You, but I found it immensely satisfying!

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  142. Sigh.*

    Towards the end of my time at a famously red and khaki/jeans retail big box store, we got a Store Team Lead (STL) who was just the definition of the C-word. She was condescending, rigid in her direction, and prone to scathing emails to the whole leader team where she would nastily insult whoever her wrath was turned to. We had to email her at the end of every shift with a detailed list of everything we did, what our team did, etc etc. This was 2020, so height of the pandemic – but she didn’t want to hear ANY pandemic excuses as to why, for instance, I wasn’t paying attention to bed/bath (where no one was shopping) and helping food/household (where EVERYONE WAS SHOPPING in insane fashion). She was only there for three months, and she lost four leads in that time – the overnight lead quit with nothing lined up, the guest service exec decided her dream of going to grad school was going to happen like right now, and another team lead took a month-long leave of absence, whose end just happened to coincide with her retirement date. I was the fourth to leave.

    Once she arrived and proved herself to be impossible to work for, I began obsessively searching for a new job. In the midst of the search, I got put on a PIP essentially, and doubled my efforts – at one point I was putting in 30 applications a day, no joke. I landed a job with a financial advisor firm, and got my offer the week I was on a final warning. I put in my two weeks, and brought up my email, where I had a scathing email from the STL asking why something wasn’t done – despite me having spelled out in my end of day email that I would be working with another team lead to come up with a solution that very night. With my two weeks in the system and no fear, I literally was able to say “PER MY LAST EMAIL, I detailed how I plan to do X with person Y for these reasons. Thanks!”

    She never spoke to me again that whole week, and when my direct supervisor came back from vacation, she let me take the rest of my vacation and leave early. Later I found out she left the company the week after I did, because “headquarters didn’t value leadership at the store level.” Honey, you lost four leads in three months! YOU didn’t value leadership at the store level! Anyway, wherever you are, Mandee – I hope your pillow is always warm and your coffee is always cold.

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    1. Secret Poet*

      After an abrupt and clearly unplanned re-org of my division in a very large company, I read the writing on the wall and sought greener pastures. I’m not the sort to burn bridges, but I was so frustrated by the dysfunction that I left a very special goodbye email: an acrostic, such that the first letter of every sentence spelled out “ABANDON SHIP”.

      Nobody ever called me on it, despite the stilted wording necessary to make it work. I just wish more of my colleagues had taken my secret advice- following my departure that entire wing of the company was sold off, and much of it scuttled once the buyer understood what a mess they’d inherited.

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  143. Kupo*

    I worked as a store manager for a well known nationwide small footprint retailer. Every year was a BATTLE to be allowed to leave the store in the capable hands of my “has family local” staff to be able to get my 2.5 hour trip with a new baby in tow to see all of our extended family for Christmas Eve. Upper management insisted I had to stay until 6pm which ruined our holiday and put STRESS on my marriage.

    When I left I had the new job lined up to start on December 27th, giving me time off to actually spend with family for the first time in years. I put my last day as December 23rd, ensuring I got my holiday evening! It felt GREAT.

    It was even better when they failed to get the manger transition store-wide inventory before I left. Upper management called me on December 28th asking where I was, they were about to start the inventory. My dude, my last day was the 23rd, I’m in another state training for my new job. Have fun with the inventory!

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  144. cactus lady*

    When I left a job due to harassment from my boss (it was being investigated by the company and I heard later they were demoted, though I’m surprised they weren’t fired), I gave my notice to my boss’s boss. I didn’t think that was going to be a big f-you based on what had been going on, but boss LOST IT and yelled at me. “I am your boss, not Bob! How dare you!” It really cemented that leaving was a better choice than taking the promotion in a different department id been offered.

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  145. Caffeine Monkey*

    This one is from a coworker…

    Back in the 80s, he worked at a major industrial site that had just opened a new building on the same campus. Now, back in those days, there was very little standardisation in IT. Different providers had their own protocols. The provider for their IT said that running the same system across the two buildings would cost upwards of £100,000. And this was the 80s.

    So one of the IT Bobs had a think and poke, and ended up making two little boxes with amplifier chips, stringing some telephone cable between them, and getting the system working perfectly, thus saving the company £100,000 (especially as the chips were his own).

    The company had a financial rewards programme. If somebody saved the company a substantial amount, they got a hefty reward. Bob sat back and waited for his reward. Trouble was, as many IT people can attest, nobody understood just how important his work was. Bob got nothing.

    So Bob quit. On his last day, he went to the boxes, took out his chips, and went home.

    He ended up receiving a substantial contractor fee to come and replace the chips. Enough to buy a house. (Admittedly, back then, you could buy a house for £20 and a bag of crisps.)

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  146. A Significant Tree*

    When I got notice that I was being laid off, I made it widely known. We were subject to the WARN act so I had two months to wrap things up, job hunt, whatever, and I just cheerfully went about my business. It was 90% a front to make sure that the senior manager, who personally picked me to be laid off, didn’t get an ounce of satisfaction from it. This is the person who directly told me he wouldn’t have hired me (subtext: a highly educated woman) for my job. Because I was so open about it, people had a long time to process it. I had senior colleagues plead my case, other people openly said it made no sense (due to my role and longstanding excellent reputation), and it made him look petty and incompetent.

    My direct manager, a walking limp sponge, asked me if I wanted the traditional going-away cake and ‘party’ during work hours (none of the other soon-to-be-laid-off people wanted that for themselves, which I understood). But I was driven by spite so I said yes, yes I do, chocolate cake please. I had a great big piece of cake while colleagues said wonderful things about me and dug up some photos of my time there for a slideshow and it was all very bittersweet. There was also a happy hour for the handful of us being laid off and it was very well attended. I know being laid off was hard on some of the others and it was pretty rough on me too, but I made damn sure the managers got zero satisfaction.

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  147. It's Marie - Not Maria*

    I had a good one, and I didn’t even have to do it myself!

    My manager was an incompetent nepotism hire, who constantly tried to micromanage me. She did not understand the demographic of our Team Members, and insisted on dealing the mostly blue-collar Team like high level senior management. She changed I created Trainings from fun and targeted for the audience they were being presented to, to extremely boring, high level HR Trainings that would put people to sleep. She tried to implement policies and rules which were impossible to enforce in the work environment (which was in a very remote area.) The straw that broke the camel’s back came the day she told me it wasn’t my job to protect people – IT LITERALLY WAS A MAJOR PART OF MY JOB TO PROTECT PEOPLE. I submitted my notice to her Manager, the overall Director of the Program, outlining all the things this person was doing to harm our Government Funded Program. I made sure to copy her.

    Fast forward to an All Hands Zoom Meeting for the program, about two days before my last day with the organization. During this Zoom, the CEO of the organization shared with the entire Team (about 300 people) that the Federal Director of the Program we were working with had specifically told him what a great job I had been doing, and the CEO personally gave me a shout out for my hard work. Micromanaging nepotism hire manager had to listen to the CEO say this, all while knowing she was the reason I was leaving. It was truly glorious!

    I heard from friends within the program she suddenly transferred to a different segment within the organization a short time later. The Rumor Mill had it that this was not a voluntary transfer.

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  148. Spurs*

    When I worked at a grocery store we had a worker who was still in high school get fired for missing too many shifts. He seemed to take it well, but when he went to turn in his uniform, he passed through the condiment aisle and took every third jar of pickles and smashed them on the ground. That aisle smelled like pickles for at least a month afterwards.

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  149. Red5*

    It was my very first grown-up, post-college job. I was a military spouse at the time and was working on a military base for a military organization. I was working in the field I’d gotten my degree in, and had worked there for a couple of years when they hired New Guy. Not too long after New Guy started, I found a list of employees and salaries someone had printed out and left on the printer. I saw that New Guy made a decent amount more than me, despite me having more experience plus a degree. So I brought it to my supervisor, and said, “Hey, I know this wasn’t meant for my eyes, but I’ve seen it and I can’t unsee it. Given my experience and education compared to New Guy, can we look at bringing my salary more in line with his?” Supervisor’s response was, “No. New Guy has a family he has to support and you’re just working for shopping money.” (Which, yes, I know now is illegal; please see “first grown-up job.”) So I started job hunting and ended up getting an offer that paid a good bit more than New Guy was being paid. Supervisor was SHOCKED AND UPSET! when I gave my notice and asked why I would want to leave this wonderful job I had. I deadpanned, “They offered me more shopping money.”

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  150. Diana like the Princess*

    Not my story but my Dad’s. Dad was one of the last people, along with one other guy, left without an assignment after his stint at Officer’s Candidate School while he was in the Army during the late sixties. He and the other guy spent their days riding the bus around camp while they waited, attempting to avoid the higher ups, who would immediately put them to work doing terrible jobs if they were seen. Well, they got caught one day, and a higher-ranking officer gave them the job of re-flooring the mess hall with vinyl tiles. They were both annoyed, hot in the Missouri summer, on their knees scraping and gluing for several days. Dad and his companion played the long game with a subtle yet literal “F-You” to the Army by spelling it out in dimes in the glue under the vinyl. They figured that the message would be revealed by wear long after they were gone. We always wondered if it actually worked!

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  151. ThespianAccountant*

    I was laid off from my bookstore job as a shift manager, along with about a third of the staff nationwide, right at the beginning of the pandemic. I was notified *on my 6 year anniversary with the company* (this was my first job out of college and I truly thought would be where I retired from.

    So I packed up a big bag of every single company shirt I had and dropped it on the desk when I came in to get my stuff. Only I knew I was commenting about how long I’d been there, but it helped a little.

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  152. Hush42*

    Not me but I work for a company that services copiers. The way our service contracts are structured clients are billed based on the number of pages they print. So the more things they print/ copy the more they pay each month. We had one client call in years ago stating that their bill had to be wrong because they never make anywhere near as many pages as they were billed for. They called back a few days later and let us know that they had figured out what had happened. An angry employee who was leaving the company came into the office the day before she was quitting, after everyone else had left, and just printed off hundreds of pages (If I recall correctly she went through more than one ream of paper) just to run their bill up.

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  153. Groundhog Trainer*

    I took a job at a well-respected animal shelter to be closer to family. I knew shelters can be stressful, but it turns out that the respect was not deserved, and I was not prepared for the toxicity. I could write multiple letters about it, but it boils down to their euthanasia policy was not what was advertised and they treated animal care staff poorly. After five months I put in my two weeks, and the only reason I gave notice at all was out of respect for the rest of my team.

    I was halfway through my first week and newly frustrated because I realized that I was actually getting paid less for working a holiday the day before than if I’d not worked it, I ran into our team lead, who asked how I was doing, and when she asked “why” to my “eh”, I just said I didn’t really want to be there. Well, within the hour I was in the director’s office, along with my manager and the new assistant manager (literally her first day). Apparently they’d heard I was going around saying I didn’t want to be there (implying it was multiple times), and since that wasn’t helpful this could be my last day and I could be paid out for the rest of my notice. I of course accepted.

    They then had the audacity to say they appreciated all I’d done, to which I replied it didn’t feel like that, that they had serious morale issues, and if they didn’t fix them they would lose more people (wonder how that new assistant manager felt hearing that). The director then escorted me out like I was being fired. She asked what I had lined up next.

    “Nothing,” I replied.

    “Oh, well, nothing can be nice sometimes.”

    I looked her in the eye and said, “No, I need you to understand that I would rather be unemployed than continue working here.”

    That shut her up, and we walked out in silence. Good riddance to that place.

    (I felt vindicated when two more people quit within the next few weeks. I did tell them.)

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  154. Not The Earliest Bird*

    We had a manager quit by driving his company car to the office parking lot on a Sunday afternoon, and then throwing his keys over the wall into our back lot. His computer and all other company issued materials were in the car’s trunk, in a box, and on the top of the box he wrote “I QUIT. LOVE BOB.” We never heard from him again. I’d like to think he won the lottery or went into Witness Protection.

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  155. Long-Time AAM Lurker*

    It’s not quite as dramatic as some of the stories in the comments, but nearly a decade ago I quit a job in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week with no notice. Since my first job right out of college it became apparent that while some people can be really good at what they do individually, some people are not meant to be managers. This particular manager had at least 3-4 people in my role quit prior to me being hired (that I know of, at that one company), and shortly after that I realized it was a conflict both in personalities and with their management style and it said a lot that no one would stay long-term. There was also no room for any internal moves, or even much upward growth.

    After a couple of stressful years, I had gotten yet another email expressing disappointment and dissatisfaction with a project I was working on. And for whatever reason, that day I snapped. Everyone else had gone out to lunch, and I loaded up my car with my belongings, blocked all company/coworker phone #s, left my laptop and key fob on my desk, and sent an email notifying HR that I was quitting effective immediately.

    I had no other job lined up, so not my best life choice. I had been put on a PIP that set me up to fail as they were gearing up to fire me, so at the time it felt like a huge F-you to my boss. I did feel guilty about any extra burden it might have put on the rest of the team, but since that incident I have reconnected with some of my former coworkers and there are no hard feelings – actually some laughter and “good for you” because everyone was aware of the various issues with this manager. We’ve revisited that day and the aftermath over drinks since then and a lot of the team members/management involved have moved on to other jobs. The manager has and will remain blocked on all channels and is unable to contact me.

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  156. Not on the Marketing Team*

    A coworker who had been around awhile without a promotion realized that she wasn’t going to be given the opportunity to advance so she found a new job elsewhere doing something completely different. She made it clear that it was her chance to spread her wings, and she might hate it, but she had to give herself the opportunity for growth.

    A week before her departure we had a huge public event. Each year for the event we purchase branded shirts and sweatshirts from a small, local vendor for our staff to wear. We love lifting up his work because he is a great guy with a small side-business. This year, our screen-printed logo on the items was slightly off in color—neon green instead of a bright green. To the average eye it looked a bit odd, but not egregious. To our marketing team it was horrendous. They were up in arms and asked the vendor to provide the items at a discounted price. The head of marketing also emailed all staff about the importance of maintaining brand consistency and that no staff could wear the off-branded color items out in public. Several staff members were upset about how the marketing team handled it. It felt like they went too far, especially to have a small, local vendor eat the cost when it was just a minor (to us) color mistake.

    On her final day working here, my coworker came to work wearing the off-brand logo sweatshirt. The marketing team was silently fuming about it but stayed quiet. At first, I thought she just didn’t remember the edict that it couldn’t be worn in public. But right before she walked out for the day, I asked her about it. She gave me a slightly evil laugh and said it was intentional, and she just wanted to piss off the marketing team. I had so much respect for her in that moment.

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  157. Prev LW*

    Hi. Years ago, I wrote in with a letter entitled “my employer makes you wait 3 years for a raise and is staffed by lunatics” (Alison’s wording, not mine, lol) describing how my company wouldn’t give me a raise* until I was there for three years (up from the two years when I was hired) and had submitted a packet of information proving that I deserved it.

    Thanks to AAM, I got a new job. Serendipitously, my last day was the week of my three-year anniversary. I had submitted the whole packet and everything to hide that I was job searching, and then didn’t stick around for it to go through. When I told my manager I was leaving, he had the audacity to say “Is there anything we can do to make you stay?” and “Aww, we were just about to get you promoted*!” I just stared back at him with an empty smile. Incidentally, he also tried to convince me that four weeks notice is standard, but thanks to AAM, I knew that wasn’t true, and stuck to two weeks. All in all, it became clear to me that that company was out to pick up recent grads with no work experience, convince them the way they did things was standard for the industry, and lock them in with golden handcuffs.

    The company I moved to hired me in at a higher level, then promoted* me within less than two years. The handcuffs are shinier, too.

    *There was some confusion in the original letter about whether I meant raise vs. promotion vs. COL increase. I work in STEM, where moving up means going from e.g. Junior Analyst I to Junior Analyst II, etc. You do the same work, just at a higher level, so I called it a raise. To me, a promotion meant going into project management or a PhD-level role. But I’ve since learned that this may be a structure unique to tech fields. Regardless, I maintain that an arbitrary three-year requirement for this move is lunacy.

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  158. whomp whomp*

    When I left my last job, I was leaving for a lateral position technically within the same large organization, just whole different team and reporting structure. I still got an exit interview… and I squealed like a pig.

    I talked about the fact that my team bullied me to no end for my entire tenure there, and worse than that, the manager I had for most of my time there knew about it and did absolutely nothing. I was constantly criticized and made to feel I wasn’t capable of anything. I reported it several times to several people, and nothing ever happened. I talked about how I was blacklisted from projects, that same manager was very clearly colluding with the team set on keeping me on the outside of everything, and was very clear that I would have stayed if it had not been for that team. The HR(ish?) person doing the exit interview was horrified.

    Months later we had a massive restructure because my old team screwed up very badly and they ended up… on my new team.

    Since the merge they’ve (apparently) continued to tell anyone who will listen how terrible I am at everything I do, but no one listens anymore. In the year I’ve been in this job I’ve accomplished a lot of really awesome things so my work speaks for itself. I’m also a finalist for a national award right now and I bet they’re sooooo pissed. And I kind of love it. :)

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  159. Education for all*

    I worked for a small charter school run by a director and his son-in-law, who had no educational experience. It was a pretty toxic work culture- the director liked to stir up drama among staff and students, hide in hallways eavesdropping on private conversations, spent hours every evening sending emails to teachers chastising them for various perceived failings etc. His son in law was not much better, he was the type of manager that would send you a text when you called in sick yelling at you for doing so.
    I haven’t worked at that school for about 4 years, and it didn’t end on a good note. I was looking for jobs and my director got a call from another school looking for a reference (their school policy stated a reference was required from the direct supervisor) and he immediately fired me. Fast forward 4 years later and the son in law sent me a text asking for a google document. I sent him a link to a google document that said “Screw You” in size 96 font. Haven’t heard from him since

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  160. Bird Law*

    I had a boss that cycled through someone (largely minority women) to torture until they left the company. Eventually, she picked me. It was made worse by our open office plan where I was sat right in front of her. She left the company before I did but, when I did leave, my career really shot through the roof.

    I got one prestigious job in our field, excelled there in a visible way, and then I moved and got another prestigious job.

    Although it took a while for me to recover from that workplace and re-center my workplace norms, I very rarely think of her. And I don’t think that’s mutual-she’s been looking at my LinkedIn.

    But now she’s blocked, and she will be blissfully forgotten again. :)

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  161. Torange*

    Why is there an apostrophe for ‘you’ but not ‘boss’ or ‘job’ in the post title? That isn’t how pluralizing works. You can’t pick and choose which plurals an apostrophe is applied to.

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    1. Peanut Hamper*

      I can answer this. (Recovering English major here.)

      The reason is because both “boss” and “job” have standard plural forms. “You” does not. Thus, the apostrophe to avoid it looking like a misspelling.

      You can’t pick and choose which plurals an apostrophe is applied to.

      Yes, you can. There is no official organization tasked with standardizing English. (And all those folks who complain about people who don’t speak standard English don’t speak standard English themselves.) The key is to be consistent.

      I find no problem with the use of this apostrophe. Pedantry for the sake of pedantry rarely serves a purpose when it comes to languages, especially the English language.

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  162. Ako*

    I unfortunately wasn’t there to witness this myself, but at the fast food joint I worked at in college one of the high school aged employees leapt out of the drive thru window and shouted “I QUIT” as he ran across the parking lot.

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  163. Dr. KMnO4*

    In grad school I had a main advisor, and a secondary pseudo advisor (the two were best friends and the two research groups were treated almost as one group). Both professors were pretty awful people, especially in regards to their treatment of grad students.

    The most egregious incident, and the one that precipitated my later F you ending, came mid-way through my time in grad school. I started having pain early in the Fall semester, and despite multiple trips to the ER and seeing specialists to try to diagnose the issue, no one could figure out what was wrong. For SIX MONTHS I was in pain all day, every day. And not like “minor headache” pain. We’re talking “there is no comfortable position for me to exist in with this stabbing pain in my back”. As grad students, we had no official sick leave, so no matter how I was feeling I went to work, pushing myself to get everything done. I left a week early at the end of the semester (I was lucky that my finals were all on Monday) and went home to see a different doctor, who ordered a test that diagnosed the issue (my gallbladder had stopped working, and the doctor suggested that stress was a contributing factor). I needed surgery to remove my gallbladder, and I ended up having it a few months later.

    I missed THREE DAYS because of my surgery (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday). I was back to work the same week I had an organ removed. My boss made me make up those three days by working on three consecutive Saturdays.

    So here’s my F you moment to my boss: After my successful dissertation defense, the research groups, the professors, my mom, and my friends all gathered for a short celebration. My boss asked me to speak to the current grad students and give them advice. My advice to the other students was, “Grad school can be stressful, and that stress can manifest in a lot of different ways. The most important thing is for you to take care of yourselves – mentally, physically, and emotionally. Your work is important, but you as a person are more important, so don’t burn yourselves out by pushing yourselves too hard.”

    My boss was standing behind me so I couldn’t see her face, but my friend reports that she looked quite upset at my advice.

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  164. TokenJockNerd*

    this one took lots of set up.

    my niche youth sports activity got taken over by an owner who knew no things about the sport or its industrial conventions, and he instituted a “when you leave all your notes, drill, & progressions belong to the company” policy.

    kay.

    I had a whole binder bc lots to keep track of. I am also very good at alphabets and syllabaries, so when I resigned 2 years later and he demanded my binder, it was full of notes transliterated into hiragana.

    (this may also be malicious compliance

    I of course could not transliterate it back for them, I no longer worked for the company, everything was confidential and company property.

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  165. Holy Carp*

    Back in the olden days before technology, I was working at a place where we ordered new stock by handwriting it on a form that used carbon paper to make a copy. We would snail mail the original and store the copy in a file box.
    It was a hideous place to work for many reasons (mainly my boss’s condescending attitude) and I was looking for a new job. The district boss pulled me to one side a couple days before my long-scheduled vacation to inform me that I was being transferred to another location, effective upon my first day back.
    I went through the orders file and trash-canned about a third of the open order copies before I left. I went on vacation but neglected to call the store later to tell them I was not coming back for them at any location ever. A friendly co-worker later told me the boss continued to be mystified about all the stock that was delivered without an open order in the file.

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  166. OrdinaryJoe*

    A co-worker attended an out of town week long work conference – there were about 50 of us who attended for meetings, classes, expo, etc. – and called in sick the entire time. Occasionally this would happen to other staff and so it didn’t initially raise a red flag other then concern that the flu was going around and other staff would get sick. No one saw him for the entire week until the flight home … He gave his notice the following Monday. Turns out he was moving to the town we were just at and that his wife flew in separately the day before. They spent the week house hunting, meeting with his new employer to do HR stuff, and generally planning their move LOL

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  167. Quill*

    It was not awesome, but here goes:

    I got fired… uh, encouraged to resign… from a job that had been miserable for the last two years. The final straw for my boss was that I hadn’t picked up the phone immediately on a Saturday to answer his questions. (Readers: I was in a pool!) I was not, and never had been, on call.

    I left notes about all the things only I did, and where things were, because I needed at least a neutral reference, right? I did not trust my boss to not answer “oh yeah, Quill sucks” if someone asked if I’d ever worked there, prompted or no. He gave me like half an hour to do so.

    Two weeks later he called, and because I was already searching for another job, I picked up without checking caller ID.

    “Quill,” he said “Where the hell did you put the temperature logger?”

    “The temperature logger?”

    “Yes, THE TEMPERATURE LOGGER!”

    “You should find everything I was ever responsible for in my wrap up notes” I said, and hung up on him.

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  168. An Australian in London*

    Not really a F U, but probably angered them far far more than a FU would have.

    Worked at a small firm. They paid salaries by cheques drawn on a bank branch nearby. One day I went to deposit a salary cheque, at that branch (I was a bank customer). The teller wouldn’t accept it because there wasn’t money in the account to cover it. I told the two owners they were paying me cash right then and there, and if they ever missed payroll again I was out.

    Readers, they missed payroll a second time, some months later. They also took the opportunity to gaslight me and tell me it was my fault that they never wanted to hear about an issue I knew would come back to bite them.

    Rather than storming out, I gave them four weeks’ notice, urged them to start hiring my replacement immediately, and that I’d start documenting everything needed for a handover. Three weeks and four days later they hadn’t hired anyone and begged me to stay longer.

    I said sure, I’d stay a second month… if they gave me a 40% raise, and agreed in a written reference and all reference checks that that was my salary when I left. They only had to pay one month of it, so it didn’t cost them much, but I heard teeth grinding when they accepted my proposal.

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  169. Tilly*

    In an internal communications role, the main role objective was to develop retention strategies as most of our nurses were quitting within a year. It was a terrible culture from the C-suite down. On my mid-year performance review, I rated myself 50% for that objective and wrote “Could not meet objective as there are too many barriers to overcome. I personally have only made it six months and will be leaving effective xx date.” And that’s how I gave my two weeks.

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  170. CzechMate*

    I worked in adult education for a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad school director. Student complaints were common and the school was poorly run, so the school director decided to create a character named “Marianna” to field all student grievances. Her incredibly odd rationale was that if complaints could only sent by email to a person who didn’t exist, then students couldn’t barge into the office and demand to speak to someone. In reality, the Marianna emails were written by whichever member of office staff had time to check them. As a result, Marianna’s tone, message structure, and responses varied wildly, making the students think that their complaints were being taken by someone who was truly unhinged. I always thought it was bizarre and gaslight-y, but it was what the school director wanted, so we had to go along with it.

    A few months after I left, a former student emailed me to say she’d been trying to transfer to a university but had missed an important deadline because of some confusing communications with the school. She forwarded me a string of emails from Marianna as proof (and, yes, they were bizarre, confusing, and unhelpful).

    I sympathized and said that I wished I could help her, but there was unfortunately little I could do as I no longer worked at the school. However, I did suggest that she set up a video call or in-person meeting with both the school director AND Marianna so that the three of them could talk through what happened.

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  171. Blarg*

    In the summer of 2001, I was working at a restaurant/bar/place with arcade games (yes, that one) while in college. I got off to a rough start with my fellow waitstaff because I had a lot of experience and was good at my job, and got employee of the month … in my first month. This was not appreciated by anyone — including me, cause people got mad. I started having issues with coworkers swiping my drinks or intentionally messing up orders as they came out.

    I asked to be transferred to another department, and they agreed — but then kept delaying when it would take effect. I was getting so anxious going in every day, because these mean girls were messing with me so much. One day I called in for a shift because I was so stressed out . The manager was just such a jerk about it on the phone that I heard myself say, “actually, I’m never coming back.” I immediately felt a flood of relief come over me as he sputtered about my being the best waitress.

    I then had to tell my live-in boyfriend that I’d just unexpectedly quit my job, but fortunately, I easily found another one without toxic bully co-workers.

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  172. Didi*

    I worked with an old guy who was famous for having quit a job in our small industry many years ago by mooning the boss and walking out.

    He was a young hippie at the time. By the time we knew him, he was a grizzled veteran of many many years.

    We always wanted to see the young guy come back for a final hurrah. But he was a lot more (though not totally) profesh in his older age. Boo.

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  173. anonymouse*

    the stories of people quitting with no notice reminded me that once I quit a vet tech job with an awful boss after about two weeks *by phone.* didn’t even go in to do it in person and pick up my box of tea bags and mug. And in retrospect I feel like everyone ought to quit a job with no notice once in their life – it really teaches you that you ARE the captain of your fate etc and life will go on if you do this shocking “unprofessional” thing when the company deserves it.

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  174. TheActualA*

    This was someone I used to work with, NOT me, who we’ll name Sally. Sally struggled with getting along with most folks in the accounting mostly because she thought she was god’s gift to accounting and would pick arguments and lecture folks on the team. Sally was an accounts payable person who had been hired by Bob when she started. When the company hired our new boss, Mary, Sally had to start reporting to her.

    Sally HATED Mary. Mary set very reasonable expectations for the changes she wanted Sally to make, like keeping her invoices organized and filed instead of in random piles. Sally chafed and argued and Mary was measured, firm, kind, and clear. Mary was doing some coaching with me as she knew she was going to want to promote me to manager at some point and I knew as a result of that that Sally was set to be managed out.

    I was in Mary’s office one day when Sally saaaaailed in and gave three weeks notice. Mary gave the gracious and appropriate responses and it was clear that Sally expected to be asked to stay. She was not. Mary told me that it wasn’t great timing but that she was relieved that it resolved this way.

    Sally worked nearly two weeks more and mostly stopped arguing with folks but there was quite a bit of stomping around and sighs of exasperation from her until a Friday when she came back after lunch and told the receptionist she was looking for Bob. The receptionist informed her that Bob was out golfing with the bankers but Mary was available.

    No. Sally would talk only to Bob. No. It did not matter that we did not know when he was back. She would continue to sit in the front office instead of going to her office. Every half hour or so, the receptionist would come back and tell me and a colleague that Sally was still sitting there in a huff.

    After nearly three hours Bob came back from the golf game and Sally pounced on him and told him that she was not staying out the three weeks and SHE WOULD BE LEAVING NOW. Bob asked why she didn’t talk to Mary about it, Sally said that SHE WOULD NOT. Bob shrugged and said something like, “okay, good luck, we’ll send your final paycheck on Monday.” Sally then stomped/swirled out in a flurry of scarves.

    Mary was the best boss I’ve had my entire working life and the person she brought in to replace Sally was phenomenal. Sally’s replacement spent the next several weeks cleaning up her mistakes then accounts payable went quite smoothly. Every six months or so for the next three years I was there, Mary would receive calls asking to be a reference from companies Sally was apparently interviewing with. Sally had never asked Mary if she was willing to give her a reference. Even if there had not been a company policy against giving references, Mary would not have given her a reference.

    Mary and I are still in touch, I’ll have to ask her if all these years later Sally is still requesting references! I picture her leaving every job this way and wonder if she has story upon story about how her talent is not appreciated anywhere.

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  175. Queen of the Introverts*

    This wasn’t on purpose but I had an okay job at a small firm that just wasn’t a good fit. I was going to quit anyway, but there was also the fact that my married boss and the alcoholic creative director weren’t speaking because they’d recently ended an affair. After I told the owner and my boss I was quitting, my boss told me she was putting in her two weeks the next day. As we were having this conversation, the owner was finally firing the creative director. Three people down in one day–a quarter of the entire company.

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  176. Stephanie*

    I once told a very shitty boss on my way out, with finger pointing, “YOU ARE NOT A MAN OF INTEGRITY!”.

    I hope every word echoes in his head as he’s trying to sleep at night; a bridge burnt well and proudly.

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  177. Anon for this*

    A bunch of us got laid off from a startup in the early 2000s after our VC brought in a bunch of their own dudes to run the place. It was common knowledge that the new CEO, who had brough along his longtime executive assistant, was using the company card to charge afternoon outings to the local Schmarriott for the two of them to engage in extramarital shenanigans… and expensing it to the company.

    The day we got let go, another colleague indicated that they were planning to forward copies of alllllll of the proof to the IRS to report the CEO for failure to report the income (the hotel charges for personal sexytime use that were reimbursed to him out of company coffers).

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  178. Occasional Commenter*

    I’m in the UK, and many years ago I worked at a job where the manager turned out to be the absolute worst. I was only there 6 months and spent the entire job stressed out. Pretty sure I came home in tears at least once. Everything came to a head one Friday night and I knew I needed to get out of there, even without another job lined up. As I was still so new I was only required (by company policy) to give a week’s notice. As it happened, I was due to go on holiday the following Wednesday and to be away until the Monday. At the time, there was a law in place (might still be, I don’t know) where if you’d booked and paid for a holiday before starting a new job, that time off was legally protected when you started (I think it was known as pre-arranged leave). I discovered a legal loophole which allowed this pre-arranged leave to be included within a notice period. As the holiday I’d booked was pre-arranged leave, I worked this out in my favour. I decided over the weekend to hand my notice in, handed it in on Monday morning, worked the Monday and Tuesday and then disappeared off on holiday. The last day of my notice period was the last day of my holiday, so I never went back after that. ‘Working’ out the majority of my notice on holiday was the perfect end to one of the worst periods of my professional life so far!

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  179. Happy to be gone*

    I emailed askamanager with how horrible my boss was. It got published. I shared it with my colleagues

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  180. CarCarJabar*

    The (many multi-million dollars) grant funding for my position was ending, so I started looking for a new position. It was a long, frustrating search, during which the grand funder decided to give us a one year extension, after previously assuring us there would be no extension. Now, in addition to my job search, I had to write a narrative and budget for the extension year. I had 20+ Principal Investigators who were all clammering for the last little boost to their individual budgets and no one was willing to compromise so that the overall budget could be, ya know, within budget. My boss was unwilling to assist me in finding a solution. So, I gave all the other PIs what they wanted and cut my boss’s salary out of the proposed budget before submitting the application and starting my new job.

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  181. Saraquill*

    OldBoss was bad enough that I wrote in to Ask A Manager regarding his behavior. The short of it was, he and his wife reaaaally tried hard to get me to quit, such as bullying me hard enough to make me sick, reducing my hours, and a physical threat.

    My fork you was staying until they laid me off. I did not want to leave without making them pay for my unemployment.

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  182. David Levenson*

    My first Summer off from college I took a job at a cabinet manufacturer. My role was to clean excess glue spots with paint thinner. They decided I could operate a forklift to empty garbage. I never operated a forklift, plus it was standard shift which I also had never used. They said I’d figure it out, and to be careful I didn’t tip over. That was it. I wrote, “I quit” on a piece of wood, left it on the seat of the forklift and drove away, never to return.

    Reply ↓

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