It doesn’t matter if you work in fast food or a corporate office, or a place you’ve worked so many plus years. No one is safe from a toxic work environment. And in these toxic jobs, people tend to snap when they've reached their breaking point. These employees reveal the most savage way another employee quit on the spot. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
Executive Assistant
“Early in my career, I worked for an investment firm where one of the partners was quite simply a horrible person. She was very successful but treated pretty much everyone except for our investors like utter trash. The only pop-culture comparison I can make is Meryl Streep’s character from ‘The Devil Wears Prada.’ But we’ll call her Kate.
She was in charge of a particular niche of investing that took too much specific industry knowledge that most people in the firm didn’t have, myself included. So most of us didn’t feel her wrath other than her icy stares in the halls but the people who worked under her lived in misery.
One time, I got stuck doing a mini-project for one of her deals because I had a decent amount of particular knowledge in an odd niche that was involved in her deal. During that time, my grandmother died. I took one day off to go to the funeral, five states away. She knew I was at her funeral, but she called incessantly during the funeral mass and burial. I didn’t pick up or call back until we hit the reception. Knowing full well that I was at my grandmother’s funeral, she screamed at me because I didn’t call her back for an hour or two. This was around 2000, before the days of smartphones, the wide use of wifi, and even the ability to remotely access email without a VPN, but she somehow expected me to retrieve an email while I was standing outside of my grandmother’s funeral. She was screaming at me, calling me a stupid prick, and other less savory names all because I couldn’t forward an email while I was at my grandmother’s funeral.
That was my one time dealing directly with her but this was daily life for her juniors. She treated her executive assistant worse than anyone else. I’m talking subhuman treatment.
Kate had to travel to Toronto for a conference or convention and her assistant made all of the travel arrangements like she normally did. In the middle of the convention, the assistant cut everything off. She had access to everything: credit cards, bank cards, cell phone, and so on. All cut off and canceled. She canceled her flight home and her hotel and changed all of her computer passwords.
Kate called the front desk to collect on an absolute rampage. When the front desk person told the assistant that Kate was on the phone, the assistant stood up, walked to the managing partner’s office, and said it had been a pleasure working with everyone else in the firm but that she would no longer be able to work for Kate because she was abusive and generally a nasty person.
She didn’t wait for an answer and just walked out of the door, never to return. It was an ultimate mic drop.
She’d obviously been planning this because there was nothing personal at her desk and she hid the files, both physical and electronic, that contained all of Kate’s credit card, bank cards, and phone information so no one could get them turned back on. She was careful not to take them or delete them, just move them to places where people wouldn’t find them.
I forget how they ended up getting Kate home but it involved wire transfers that didn’t clear for a couple of days, faxing forms back and forth to allow her to stay at the hotel, our IT guy having to reset passwords, and generally making Kate’s life horrible for a couple of days while she was in a different country.
And the assistant landed on her feet with no repercussions. People in the business knew Kate was horrible so when they saw that her assistant had lasted a year or two, they knew she had incredible skills and patience. Ahe even got referrals from other more senior people at our firm.”
Security Officers
“Once upon a time, far far away, there was a secured facility. It wasn’t the most secured in the history of mankind but secured enough so that the security guards had serious combat skills, and all of them were army veterans. Some of them were from special units, and most of the security officers who ran the shifts used to be combat officers in the army and were still active in the reserve army. Out of all the security guards, there were about 15 security officers, who were charged on the guards and kept the security shifts running. If there were any problems, they were the first to respond.
They worked for several years together, and all became good friends over the years. When someone was sick, or couldn’t report to his duty for any reason, one of the other guys filled in for him. They were very skilled and did their job very well. It was a job, but a fun job with very good people.
The security officers had a boss, who was responsible for the whole security in that facility. That boss was okay; not very good, but not very bad. He was a nice person. He worked there for years and more or less got along with his security officers, who didn’t really like him, but also didn’t really hate him.
One day, out of nowhere, that boss got fired, and someone else replaced him. Someone horrible. The new boss was annoying, micromanaging everybody, spoke in foul language, tried to manipulate the security officers to turn on each other, and on top of that, a little bit dumb. Working on that facility started to be not so fun at all. But, the security officers stuck to each other and hoped for better days.
After a year or so, the new boss called to his office one of the security officers, and fired him, basically for no reason. It was a shock for the security officers, and they couldn’t understand what happened and why. They tried to speak with the new boss, but it was in vain. They called up an emergency meeting, and all of them participated. After few hours of debating on a possible course of action, they all decided: ‘Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno.’ Or in other words, ‘One for all, all for one.’
They all wrote resignation letters, walked one by one to the boss’s office, and resigned. They stated that they will draw back their resignation only if their friend’s dismissal would be canceled. The facility managers tried to convince them in various ways, starting with threats, up to promises a nice raise and better benefits. The security officers didn’t break and insisted on their one and only demand – keep their friend at work. They didn’t ask anything beyond that.
It didn’t work. They all left with their friend who got fired, and the facility had some rough couple of years until new officers were trained. The new boss got fired himself about six months after the ‘mutiny.’
Most of the security officers are still good friends, many years after that incident.”
Petunia
“I had a kid working for me, who hadn’t been there long and he wasn’t very good. He was always on his phone. We’d have the talk, and he would be good for a few days and then he wouldn’t. So one day, I told him to go put his phone in his car, and he did. He also put himself in the car, drove away, and never came back.
At least I didn’t have to fire him.
In college, I worked as a dietary aide in a nursing home. This was during the summer when I got called in one day just before lunch. They wanted me to come in so they could ‘discipline’ somebody. That somebody was Petunia.
So I was working the line at the very end. When the tray came to me, I added the hot plate, the plated meal, the cover, coffee or tea, and put the tray on the six-foot-tall stainless cart to take out to the residents. I was pushing through about three to four trays a minute.
All of the sudden, Petunia came running in and screaming. And the assistant supervisor was right behind her, and somebody else, who I don’t remember who.
Petunia was about two feet from me, screaming. Then she started grabbing hot plates and throwing them at the assistant supervisor. When she turned around, she tipped over the food cart. Almost 20 trays in there, and a lot of them were puree meals (essentially baby food). She flipped the trays of coffee and tea into the steam table before she went flying out the door.
We were all a little in shock at what just happened, but Petunia went and did other things in the building, like choking and beating the assistant supervisor. Apparently, she flipped over all the furniture in the lobby and threw all the potted plants out.
Back in the kitchen, we were trying to get everything back together, picking up the cart, salvaging what we could, stirring the coffee into the food, and hoping nobody would notice. It didn’t take long before we got going again. Once we started reloading a clean cart, here came Petunia again.
This time the administrator was on her tail. He was a mousey little guy and he didn’t last long. She knocked the half-full food cart over again and started to square off with the administrator. He had a backbone for a minute and tried to take control of her. He tried to restrain her, but Petunia put up her dukes and told the administrator to hit her.
She said, ‘Come on price! Hit me! Hit me! Hit me like this!’
Then she fought him out like she was Mike Tyson. She even broke his Rolex; we found it when we were cleaning up for the second time. Then she ran out.
She ended up going out back across the cornfield into the woods, but the cops were everywhere. They didn’t find her, they picked her up at her house a few days later. I think she got a year of probation. But that was the best way I’ve ever seen anybody leave a job.”
Overnight Grocery Store Team
“Overnights at a grocery store involved being overworked and underpaid. It was supposed to be nine-hour shifts but we were typically there for 11 to 12 hours, sometimes much longer. We were also short-handed, desperate for the need of more people, but daytime managers saw no need. And by the time they bothered to show up, everything was fine, so obviously there wasn’t a problem. The job was physical, high stress, high pressure, and zero appreciation.
Dave was an older guy who had worked there a while. Dave had a number of health problems and had the occasional ‘off’ night. It came to a point where Dave was more ‘off’ than on, and he said the doctors kept changing his medications and he was having trouble adjusting. We found out he had trouble adjusting because these medications weren’t supposed to mix with drinks and Dave kept drinking anyway.
The shift manager and department manager put up with it for a while in part because the department was short-handed, and Dave had been a good worker back when he stayed sober. But it became clear Dave was getting worse, not better, and had to be let go. The shift manager and department manager were very polite, but firm, and explained to him the why and how, and what exactly would happen with his insurance and benefits. Then they sent him home Friday night/Saturday morning.
By Monday afternoon, Dave came into the store reeking of bottles, utterly wasted. He loudly demanded to see the department manager, insisting they could work something out. The manager wasn’t there and wouldn’t be in for hours yet. The store director, who did little but eat doughnuts and read email, and the Human Resources manager, who did little but find excuses to not hire people, hustled Dave into an office, away from customers, sat him down in a chair, and tried to calm him down.
Dave continued to shout, as that was apparently the only volume he had at the time. He just wanted to talk to his manager but ended up telling the director and Human Resources that they were worthless.
Human Resources finally got ahold of Dave’s family and they said they’d come to pick him up. While the family was on the way, HR told him they’d have Dave’s manager call and talk to him later, okay?
He said, ‘Okay.’
Out of steam, Dave relaxed and slumped in the chair. Then relaxed his bowels, putrid liquid, all over the chair, spilling down onto the carpet. The Director and HR bolt from the smell, offices to each side found reasons to be elsewhere. The chair was thrown away, the carpet was steam cleaned, and we never saw Dave again.”
Who Remembers Trans World Airlines?
“I used to work for a security company, Integrated Access Systems (ISA) employed to Trans World Airlines (now defunct Airline) out of Heathrow Airport. One of the perks of the job was that you got a space available ticket round trip anywhere that Trans World Airlines flew after working with the company for six months.
Anyway, let’s call her ‘Sue’ who was a little outspoken and good-looking. She was disliked by some and she would call out anyone’s nonsense, but nothing too serious. I liked her and we often went out as friends and in groups.
Anyway, she had surpassed her six months of service and requested a flight somewhere in a major city like New York or Los Angeles. Something happened, which I cannot remember what, some minor infraction or whatever but management decided to revoke the ticket and advised her accordingly. Everyone knew about the revocation and was upset for Sue —it was no secret about her imminent travel plans and was known to everyone. She was upset of course and beyond ticked off. So what did she do?
She went to a travel agent (no online back then) and booked a ticket, paying the full price for the same date and same flight. I knew all this because she told me.
The day of the flight, she breezed into the terminal and the security agents happily processed her. We were happy and smiling; it made our day. Then we fawned over her, walked her to the gate, and had coffee. Now the higher-ups, on the other hand, not so much.
I remember one of them being perplexed, asking, ‘How come she is still traveling?’
After being advised that it was a regular, paid ticket and not a ‘comp’ ticket, they just had to suck it up and choke on their pettiness. There was nothing they could do, she was a fare-paying passenger. The smugness oozed from her that day, and I vicariously enjoyed it too.
She never came back to work after that.”
“Dear Manager”
“It was 11 am on a Thursday morning when my friend, Bravo came back to his desk after his fourth or fifth smoke break. His workstation was on the opposite side of his Manager’s area. After a short while, his manager came around and gave him an awkward smile.
Then he said, ‘I feel that you take too much time smoking nowadays.’
Bravo only responded with a gentle smile.
The next day, the manager came to the office and opened his Outlook. He read all his emails, one by one, and then paused at an email for a while with absolute shock. What was it?
The subject line had the word, ‘Resignation’ in it. The email said:
‘Dear Manager,
I have decided to resign from my position as of today. There are so many reasons why I have always enjoyed working under you and for this team, but everything comes only next to my privacy. I believe as long as an employee maintains his time and delivers his work with expected results, you don’t have any business in calculating how many times he smokes or how many times he goes for a bathroom break.’
Not only Bravo took his decision the very next day after he felt he was being monitored, but he didn’t have any backup jobs while he resigned.”
Engineer
“A manager at a well-known software company once publicly questioned my ability to finish work in front of the whole team in a weekly all-hands engineering meeting. Suffice to say, if he had a problem with me taking time to get the feature right, he could’ve brought that to me in the one-on-one meeting we had scheduled for the next day. He didn’t.
So I let him finish, then responded saying, ‘Hey let’s change our one-on-one meeting from tomorrow, to immediately after this call, and let’s change it from a one-on-one meeting to an exit interview, let’s include [his boss] too.’
The CTO (Chief Technical Officer) was extremely apologetic about the behavior of his manager, my boss, seemingly worried about my next move. Listened, told him that this wasn’t something I wanted to discuss anymore, but I did want to give him my reason for my immediate departure.
This company I later learned has high developer churn, so I can only imagine this kind of thing goes on more than once and a while.”
“What Do I Have To Lose?”
“My coworker left the company a couple of weeks ago and I did not expect what happened. Obviously, he wanted to leave a lot earlier than he did, but he had to get a few bills out of the way. After payday, he didn’t want to go through the trouble of putting in his two weeks so he thought to himself, What do I have to lose?
With this in mind, he went around letting all the managers know his emotions without holding back. Four out of five managers at the company were complete pricks and had trouble empathizing with the feelings of their workers. I kid you not, he went around and spoke out his mind, calling out how they were such bad people, and that did nothing but unmotivate the employees.
After some colorful words screaming in their face, he tore off his work shirt and apron and smashed them on the ground, making a scene in front of customers. Afterward, he walked out and drove off.
Copywriter
“My friend was a copywriter in a web development company in Delhi, India. He was ticked off due to the sole reason that he had to report to a woman who didn’t understand his job and bossed him around. She got paid for doing nothing and simply because she had a good relationship with the Managing Director, who was a cunning guy himself.
After one year, he realized that he was not getting any increment as the company started to go into loss. He took his lunch break, went out to play cricket, came back, and said ‘goodbye’ to his friends. Then he told his Immediate Manager he was quitting, and while going out, flipped the middle finger salute to the Managing Director, who was on a call, shocked.
Later, he wrote an article on the company’s work culture that became viral. The company’s management threatened to sue him. I also heard him telling all of them to ‘shove’ their lawsuits up their respective places.”
“Under Ohio Law, That Was Illegal”
“I worked in an industry in which, like many, everybody knows everybody. A co-worker used to work for a company (Let’s call them ‘ABC Inc’.) that was famous for not paying their suppliers and bouncing employee paychecks. They also did not pay for accrued vacation time when an employee quit. Under Ohio law, that was illegal but they did it anyway.
This guy, let’s call him, ‘Joe,’ took a job with my company but did not tell ABC Inc. He took his last week of vacation and was actually working with us that week, unbeknownst to ABC Inc. Joe went back on Friday, got his paycheck, took it to the bank, and cashed it. He then went back to ABC Inc. and informed them he was quitting. The owner began screaming at payroll to stop payment on the check.
Joe just smiled and said, ‘Too late.’
Top Performer
“This guy was a very hard-working, top performer and always did his best. Everyone on the team appreciated him. Since he was always slogging and was performing better, the manager gave him more assignments. I should say his manager was a total prick for a lot of reasons.
Eventually, this guy got tired and kind of started getting frustrated with his manager and everyone around. But his manager continued to give him more work. One day, he decided enough was enough.
He went to his manager’s cabin and said, ‘I’m done and I want to quit right now.’
Obviously, the manager was taken back and tried to calm him down.
The manager said, ‘Even if you want to quit, there is a process and you need to give it in writing.’
No problem, this guy went out of his manager’s cabin, went to a nearby break room, got a tissue paper since he didn’t find anything else, and wrote on that paper in very big font, ‘I QUIT.’
He left his badge, laptop, and everything on the manager’s desk and walked out.”
Contractors
“I ran a painting company years ago. We were painting a big house and the sheetrock contractor was the biggest prick I’ve ever seen. His guys were working hard when it was incredibly hot and humid inside the house.
The sheetrock contractor would stop by from time to time and scream and cuss at his guys. His comments were personal about some of the guys. The general contractor told the sheetrock guys that if they wanted to quit, they could work directly for him. He had a string of houses to build and he thought that their boss was a total prick too.
On Friday, the sheetrock contractor came and paid the guys off. Then he made the mistake of his life. He went into the porta-potty. His guys ran out and pushed the porta-potty over onto the door with him trapped inside. The blue water was leaking around the door and the boss was screaming and cursing like crazy.
They put concrete blocks on both sides of the porta-potty so it couldn’t be rolled onto its side.
Everyone left the job site with him still trapped inside screaming. No one knows how he ever got out, but on Monday, he was gone and we never heard from him again.
The guy deserved it.”