We've all had a bad job, bad boss, or bad coworker at least once in our lives. Sometimes they cause us to lose our minds but rarely do they actually make us snap. However, when they do, it's a memorable experience, to say the least. We see it in movies when people quit in a dramatic fashion, but we never hear about it happening in real life.
But it definitely does happen, and it's typically more intense than the scenes in the movies. We wanted to hear the best and most insane "forget this, I quit" moments, so we looked throughout Reddit and found the best stories there are. This content was edited for clarity.
The Quitting Story We All Needed To Hear
“Years ago, I worked in a restaurant and it was Christmastime. This place was supposed to function with four waitresses, a busboy, dishwasher, manager and two cooks.
However, only the manager and I showed up. He did the cooking, I took orders, served, bussed tables washed dishes and so on.
During this, I accidentally dropped two bread plates and they broke. The manager said to me, ‘I’ll have to take those out of your pay.’ I told him that was funny, thinking he was joking. He wasn’t.
I turned around and grabbed a stack of dinner plates, threw them on the floor and said, ‘Take those out of my pay, too,’ and walked out to leave him with the whole mess.”
The Five Minute Freakout
“I was five minutes late and was chewed out because of this, but they were so keen to forget that I filled in for them the previous day because someone quit on the spot. I, too, quit on the spot.
I would often stay an extra hour past my schedule or I would come in on my days off, but apparently, the extra effort was a one-way street. The same place scheduled me on a day I had class; I told them I couldn’t go unless they wanted to pay for the class that day. They told me it was my job, I told them it was their job to write a better schedule. They were always short staffed so I could get away with stuff like this. Needless to say, the restaurant industry can be fun.
I know being late is disrespectful, but constantly requiring me to fill in for their scheduling errors or their consistent lack of staff is also disrespectful. I’m so tired of people seeing respect as a one-way street, where the employer will try to pull stuff over you all over your time, either expecting you to stay later, or cancel your entire day just because they’re disorganized, while an employee can’t be late after covering a shift the previous day. Sure don’t be late, but if you can’t look the other way then I won’t be there when you need me.”
They McQuit Thanks To The Boss AND The Customers
“I used to work at McDonald’s. Opening usually involved me at the front counter with a headset on so I could do drive-through orders and handle making coffee/putting orders together/taking money at the front from the little old people that came in at the crack of dawn every morning. We would also have a manager who was there to be important and one person in the kitchen. We’re a small rural town so usually, this would be fine but we were on a major highway so sometimes it would get busy out of nowhere.
Depending on the manager, the amount of help we had would vary wildly. One morning, we got super busy and I started cracking under the pressure. I’m a fantastic multi-tasker but my drive-through line was backing up since I was trying to juggle them and all the walk-in folks from my front registers and when it gets packed…well, it’s fun. I glance around trying to find my manager for help. I see him on one of our cameras — he’s outside smoking around the side of the building. Mind you, this is like his third trip out to smoke this morning. I’m absolutely dying trying to get caught up. Customers are being passive aggressive, saying they will come behind the counter and get their own coffee and stuff. I have people yelling at me in my headset from the drive-through. I end up having to remove the headset just to try to get the frontline sorted. I start making progress with the front but I basically had to sacrifice the drive-through customers for two minutes.
Apparently, the cars outside started yelling at my manager and interrupted his smoke break so he came in, saw me with my headset off and goes berserk. He said, ‘WHO’S TAKING THE DRIVE-THRU ORDERS?’ I was in the middle of trying to get a fresh pot of coffee going so I sort of auto-responded saying no one and to hang on as I continued to dash around behind our counter to grab a fruit and yogurt parfait for an order. He got in my way and started giving me crap, loudly talking to me like I’m a dog. I pointed to the camera and yell, loud enough to disrupt the entire inside of the restaurant, ‘I’m covering these two registers, first window, second window, and I’m bagging. I’m like FOUR PEOPLE and you’re out behind the building, not doing A THING!’
His eyes went wide. I could tell he knew I was holding on by my last thread. He sighed. He said, ‘You’re in a ton of trouble but we can talk about this later.’ No. Forget him. I was done. I was all riled up from random customers yelling at me.
I tossed him the headset, ‘You want to give me crap for not being able to run four stations with no support? Run five. I’ll watch.’ I removed my name badge.
He went to say something to me. I turned away, facing the one girl working in the kitchen who was watching this all play out. I remembered telling her that I’m so sorry and then I dropped my name badge, toss my hat on the counter, grab a water cup, put on and zipped my jacket so my uniform was covered up. I went to the drinking fountain, filled my water cup, and then I went to sit on the far side of the seating area and watched him go down in flames. He ended up ALSO taking off the headset and picked up the phone so he can spam call the whole workforce one by one, trying to call for help. It was like 5 am, so no one was going to accept a call from their work number. About ten minutes into his struggle, he ended up very loudly pleading with me to come back from behind the counter. I couldn’t even see him on the other side of the sea of people swarming the counter at this point.
I called back, ‘I need a smoke first!’ and I went outside.
I don’t smoke. I’ve never smoked. I drove home.
He ended up losing his job.
People really do treat us like crap. I had a guy come in one time that had just come through the drive-through and I guess the drive-through team had messed up his order but I was front counter and it was lunch rush so I’m not really sure what’s going on in the drive-thru.
He walked up to me, threw his bag down on the table and loudly declared, ‘WRONG.’ I just kind of stared at him, expecting him to say something or produce a receipt give me ANYTHING to go on and when it was clear he didn’t intend to do that, I asked him what he ordered and what was wrong with it.
He went crazy. I said, ‘Dude, I didn’t make your food or take your order. I’m trying to help you. You want your order right. I want your order right. We’re on the same team here.’ I used the team line a lot on irate customers. Usually, that helped. But not that day. The guy told me I’m an idiot and I get paid too much and other things along those lines. My manager came over to intercept him because we were getting rowdy. He almost immediately called her a dumb jerk. We ended up telling him to just leave.
People crap on fast food workers a lot. Honestly, that was the most stressful job I’ve ever had. I’ve worked in hardware, I’ve worked in a garden, I’ve been a landscaper, a wedding photographer, a tour guide, I’ve done ALL kinds of stuff. Stuff that I hated sometimes. But the fast food was the absolute worst as far as the way you get treated and you get paid nothing.
Whenever I see people insist that fast food workers always deserve minimum wage, I think to myself that I’d love to see them hold the front line through ONE busy morning. I’d sooner go back to any other job I’ve ever had than open that place ever again. They could pay me double what I made. Never again.”
A Promotion No One Wants
“My previous workplace gave me a promotion to ‘Sales Lead.’ Buried in the fine text was a line that read something to the effect of, ‘If there isn’t an actual manager around, you become the manager on duty.’
Didn’t think anything of it until they conveniently fired my direct manager a week later, didn’t replace her, and expected me to do all the work she used to without a promotion or pay raise.”
When Tomorrow Feels Like Forever Away
“I got hired at K-mart to work in sporting goods. I was told to wear the traditional black pants and a red polo.
Day 1 came around and they said, ‘Sorry, we can’t train you for sporting goods today, we need you to help unload trucks.’
It was summer in SC. It was 100 degrees and 80% humidity. I was wearing black pants and a thick polo with no change of clothes.
At the end of the day, they said, ‘Sorry about today. We’ll start training you tomorrow. Come to work in uniform again.’
Day 2 – same thing
Day 3 – same thing
Day 4 – same thing
Day 5 – same thing
Day 6 – same thing
Day 7 – I came in on my day off to quit.
If I wasn’t dumb and 17, I probably would have just wised up and brought a change of clothes. I didn’t mind unloading the truck, although the sweat-drenched clothes weren’t ideal. The real reason I quit was the obvious lack of planning and management.
After a few days, it became evident that I was hired to unload boxes. If they’d told me that up front, I’d have happily showed up in shorts and t-shirt to unload trucks all day. What drove me to quit was being lied to at the end of every day saying, ‘We’ll definitely start training you tomorrow.'”
No Potty Time For You!
“I quit after working for four hours at a sushi restaurant. I asked where the bathroom was and I was told: ‘We don’t really get bathroom breaks.’ I left right then and never came back.
It was pretty sad the manager said he understood and wasn’t mad at all.”
“You’ll Never Work In This Mall Again!”
“I worked at a mall retail store in college for a couple years. When I was just a lowly peasant, the manager was great to work for. Once I became a key holder is when things changed. I learned very quickly why the other key holders didn’t last. The manager would make rash decisions that would then be blamed on everyone but her.
The last straw was when the evening shift didn’t change out some signage and I got in the next morning, having no idea there was new signage to be put out. She came in and berated me about the signage not being updated. I walked in the back, dropped my keys off, told her I quit and went to walk out. She grabbed me and told me I need to give a written notice and fax it to corporate.
‘To whom it may concern,
I, Mike, terminate my employment effective immediately due to the manager’s inability to properly treat staff.’
I faxed it and walked out. She read it after I had already sent it and chased me out berating me more, claiming I would never get another retail job in this mall again. Three weeks later, I started at another store in that mall and always made it a point to smile and wave at her when I saw her.”
All They Wanted Was A Bit Of Training
“When I was 14, I wanted a summer job with my best friend. We went to the fast food shop at the beachside. It was quite popular since it was the only fast food around. We got there on a Friday afternoon and we meet the owner, a 50-something man with a big belly from probably the fast food he served. He told us we can get there the next morning and people would show us around.
We got there at 9 am like he told us and there was no one. The first employees arrived at 10:30 to open. They had no idea we were supposed to work. They tried to help us the most they could but they were cashiers with no training for the food. Both their ‘cooks’ left that week and the owner was doing all the work.
We finished our first day without any trouble, it was a slow day overall.
Sunday arrived and we were not prepared for the sheer number of customers. We still had about no idea how to cook the food and how the equipment worked. The owner arrived with a bunch of his friends. We were swamped with people but he shoved them around a bit and asked us to do six hot dogs, six fries and six Diet Cokes, fast. We knew it was for him, so we told people to wait and we finished their order.
Not 30 seconds after, the owner came back behind the counter and began to tell us we were terrible at our job and that the fries were not cooked enough and that we messed the condiments on the hot dogs.
Mind you, there were a lot of customers waiting for their food at that point and they were all looking at us getting yelled at by the owner.
I looked at my friend, he looked at me and we both knew what to do. We took our aprons off and told him to forget it. We left him with all the orders right there and then, never went back there. They closed down about two years after.”
The Scariest Shots Situation
“At my job, we got a VIP contract to vaccinate a bunch of elite clients. The people working rushed, they brought on some extra nurses barely vetted them and began. Virtually no breaks and piles of paperwork. They didn’t finish ordering and setting up the computers and there was only one computer to chart on >100 patients a day. Not all the nurses got their clearance for the computer yet either.
The scariest part was I had to stop someone from reusing a needle that she didn’t realize she used on a previous patient. She told me she only primed it by pushing the air out but I told her, without alarming the patient, that it was not suitable.
I told her to go away and cleaned up her area, vaccinated the patient and never went back. I was already sick of them only thinking about the bottom line.”
“Forget You, Jason”
“I asked a month in advance for time off during a Friday. I was approved. The fateful Friday came around and everybody I worked with (four of us) were also approved for time off since we all had the same event to attend. The manager called me the night before and told me that I needed to come in. I told him I had already made the plans and that I was approved months ago with emails to show for it. He responded by telling me if I didn’t show I’d be fired. I just didn’t go. Forget you, Jason.”
He Said This Right Before The Son’s Surgery?
“The HR guy called on Friday at 6 pm: ‘Hey, I’m really sorry, the insurance company won’t cover you until you’re an employee for 60 days.’
Me: ‘That’s…a shame. Since you promised that you’d cover me and children right away, that you’d arrange the 60 days going to not apply to me, and I told you that was a condition for me accepting this job. Also, my son’s surgery is literally on Monday, in two days.’
And then he was shocked that I quit the next week. He was totally livid that I gave a week’s notice.
Him: ‘You know this means you’ll never work here again!’ Yeah, Jorge, that’s the freaking point.
I died laugh while I said, ‘Oh I know, I’m aware of that.’ He got so mad that I was literally laughing about it. He also did that thing where someone who is obviously visibly angry denies that they’re angry.
Luckily the surgery was covered by my wife’s health insurance, but they failed in their promise to me and I wasn’t covered for months. The look on his face in the exit interview was just delightful. My resignation letter was a two-page missive throwing him right under the bus.”
No One Can Be Happy!
“I used to work as some kind of ‘aid worker/rescuer’ in events with a large gathering of people like concerts, festivals, and more. The boss/owner always put her head down for the clients and allowed them to exploits us. One of the regular clients was the event manager of a popular stadium. They would ask us to be in the stadium three hours before the event to clean and stay afterward to clean. The manager wasn’t paying more money for it, but the boss didn’t want to lose the client so we just had to do it.
So, there would be events with that took 16 hours to complete, with a menial pay, no food or beverage AND with the client expecting us to do more work for free. As a side note, I never did that, and always encouraged my partners to leave since it wasn’t our job to clean.
But the moment that made me say forget this, was when the boss called me saying that the client emailed her with a complaint about me. I thought it would be about me and my team always leaving after the job was done and not staying for cleaning, but no,
He said: ‘They told me that they always see you chatting with your partner, and with a smile. They don’t want the attendants to see their workers distracted and/or laughing, they want to show that only professionals work with them. So they are asking that you turn down a notch your positive attitude and keep a poker face all the time.’
That’s when I quit.”
A Bitter Bartender Stood Between Her And Her Tips
“I worked as a server at a bar during college. The head bartender each day was in charge of assigning tables to the server. There was one bartender who really didn’t like me and every time she worked, she would give me the worst tables so that I wouldn’t make as much in tips. She also did the scheduling. She started only scheduling me for slow times early in the day, like during lunch when we would have 50% off lunch specials. It sucked, but fair enough, she does the scheduling and I needed the money. Well, it just got worse and worse until I was barely making minimum wage even though I was making close to $20 an hour when I started.
One day, during a slow lunch, I was working with a different bartender. When the bartender’s shift ended, the other bartender who did the scheduling came in to take over. I was serving a large table of probably 15 people, probably the best table I had had in a week or so. She saw this and decided to ‘reassign’ tables and work as a server as well as a bartender. She, of course, took my table and said it was now hers, even though I had been serving them for about an hour and they were almost done with their meal. This wasn’t the first time, but it was it the last straw for me. I went up to the table, explained the situation, and instead of just transferring the table, I cashed them out, which they were happy to do. So I collected the cash tip, told the bartender ‘Forget you. I quit,’ and walked out with the tip from the table and never talked to anyone at that bar again.
I found a better job the next day.
It was years ago, but it was worth it. It wasn’t even about the money so much as the principle. Luckily I am in a much better place now.”
Well That’s A Slap In The Face
“I was working 70 hour weeks alongside two other people at a video game gig in California. The other two people quit because of the work hours. I was working 110 hours a week for several months to keep things going. I was told there was a hiring freeze, which was why they couldn’t backfill my two coworkers. Eventually, they moved two junior people in under me and gave me a promotion on paper only. with no raise to manage them.
I quit when I found out that each of them was making $20k more than I was.”