Working under poor management can be a nightmare, and sometimes a single brain-dead decision can be the final straw for an employee. We asked workers to share the most ridiculous or frustrating thing their management has done that made them quit on the spot. From senseless policies to absurd demands, here are some of the most outrageous stories of workers who just couldn’t take it anymore.
All content has been edited for clarity.
That Came Back To Bite Them
“Our salon lost our manager to having a new baby and becoming a SAHM. It was sad to see her go. So our DM comes in and says he’s hiring from within the salon. He’s been looking at our sales, client retention, and whatnot to pick.
Meanwhile, for a month or so, we had no manager. So Becky took the role and did great. (We still had paperwork and orders that needed to be done) She set up a cleaning schedule. She fixed a lot of simple issues that our old manager just didn’t see issues with. Our schedule was written out for the entire month. Basically, she stepped up and put in a lot of work she didn’t get paid to do. Becky also had a really bad back, was 45, and did hair for 27 years. If anyone needed to be a manager it was her. Her client list had gone down a bit, but she was still very busy.
Tara had worked their six months at this point. And Tara was not a team player. She would put your sales commission on her account ‘accidentally.’ She would say things like she’s paid to do hair not clean. Not to mention, she weight-shamed everyone. Skinny, fat, all in-between. She found hurtful things to say about everyone. But she would be loud and laugh and be goofy. So we kinda just rolled our eyes and moved on. She was 23 and had a decent client list and remained ‘busy.’ But here’s the thing. She wasn’t busy. Her friends would come in, hang out, and whatever. Sure, she would do a wash and blow dry. But that’s $20. No cutting no coloring. When her actual clients came in, she would do their hair and after they left, she and her friends would laugh about them. Our old manager had to tell her if her friends weren’t there to get their hair done they don’t need to hang out.
So DM comes in and sees all these clients/friends waiting on Tara. His dumba*s thinks that Becky overstepped her role and Tara should be managing.
The best part. We all looked at each other and started packing our bags. 6 people walked out. Tara crying that this isn’t fair she earned this and we are just jealous b*tches. We went as a group and rented spots at a different salon. The old one shut down a month later. Because we took our clients with us. And washing your friend’s hair doesn’t keep the salon afloat.”
What Did They Think Was Going To Happen?
“I led an IT team that supported a new version of a proprietary application. The team was a mix of corporate employees and contractors.
Most of the customers who used our app were located in the Western hemisphere, so while we provided 24×7 support, the vast majority of customer issues were during the typical North American workday.
We had a couple of contractors who liked working overnights, so they covered the evenings and did a handoff every AM.
This worked very well. So well, in fact, that our corporate overlords decided that the app should be expanded globally. We noted that the current team couldn’t handle the additional support load without more team members.
Instead of doing that, management decided that we should just move a bunch of people from the day shift to the night shift. Since no one liked this idea, management implemented a mandatory ‘rolling’ schedule, in which you might work 9-5 one week, and 3-11 the next. There was no predictability, and personal preferences/needs were not taken into account at all.
I pointed out to management that this would make our well-seasoned support team unhappy, and would technically violate the contract that the contractors were working under (which specified work hours).
Nobody in management thought that this was a problem.
I immediately wrote letters of recommendation for everyone on my team and started applying for other jobs. In about two weeks, I had a better job lined out and gave my notice.
Within about a month, all of the contractors had been moved to other contracts (with different companies) when they reported the contract breach to their handlers, and about a half dozen of the long-serving corporate folks had found other jobs, as I did.
Support for the app got moved to India, and my understanding is that the dealers (the people who used the app) staged something of a revolt, and the app had to be shut down and reverted to a previous version that cost the company a lot more money to maintain.”
He Played Himself
“I worked for a landscaping company. We were already stretched to the breaking point because the owner would never hire enough help. Then he decided it was a perfect time to take a new project over two hours away from where anyone lived. Multiple people quit after this announcement. I stayed for another few days and then quit.
A few weeks later, he was calling everyone and begging us to come back because the property owners were furious with him over the work not even being started. I told him I’d already gotten a new job. He swore at me and hung up.”
Turns Out It Was A Pretty Important Position
“Management laid me off. I was the manager of a team and I still got laid off. In 6 years, I had 1 turnover. After they laid me off, all 6 of the guys reporting to me had their two weeks’ notice in. It’s a long story but basically, the new management had no clue what they were doing and it showed when they ‘eliminated my position.'”
Always A Bold Strategy
“CEO announced to the company, amid concerns of being overworked, that other people have it worse and ‘if you don’t like it you can leave.’ So everyone left.”
It Really Took Them That Long To Figure Out The Problem
“They hired a manager who was vicious. Then did not stop her behavior. And long-term employees just quit one by one. I held on longer than most. At my exit interview, they asked why I was leaving and I just said her name. Finally, two years later they let her go but by that time they had an entire turnover of staff.”
That’s A Great Way To Lose All Of Your Employees
“Private company (1924-1988) single owner dies of old age. Family sells Connecticut-based company to French corporation.
The French company says we are moving you guys 500 miles north to New Hampshire. You can move at your own expense and have equivalent pay for 1 year after which it may be readjusted.
They were expecting about 125 people to relocate with them; they got 3.
They got desperate, but in the end, all they could get was people promising to stay until the Connecticut site closed, for an additional 6-month bonus at the end. (I took this, I was the last one, signing papers with HR on the loading dock and driving away with a few nice checks.)”
That’s No Reason To Make Your Employees’ Lives Miserable
“The program director suffered an extremely sudden loss. When she came back from a month of grieving, she was suddenly putting everyone on performance plans for really sh*tty reasons (I was put on one because like six clients had been dissatisfied with me in my four years there and four of those six were just upset that I was a woman the other two were mad at the program as a whole and taking it out on me). She was also suddenly pushing us to bill for 100% of the time we were on the clock (we’d literally get yelled at for asking our managers for advice because it wasn’t billable). People started to leave at a high rate, and their clients would be dumped on the rest of us. The managers all refused to help with clients at all, so it was wholly on us. Between April and July of that year, the program lost 20 of the 33 employees.”
Who Thought That Would Go Over Well?
“PTO was earned the year in advance. So, you spend all of 2007 racking up your several weeks of PTO for 2008. Well, 2008 gets here, and they change the policy to you earning your PTO as you go throughout the year of 2008. That way, if you quit for whatever reason, they don’t owe you pay for unused PTO, should you have any.
Okay, nobody has a problem with this, except we already earned our PTO for 2008 last year. If they’d given us all 4/5/6 week’s worth of pay for the PTO we’d already earned last year, we could wipe the slate clean, and start with this new policy. Except they didn’t think ahead about that part.
‘WE’VE ALREADY EARNED IT, YOU CAN’T TAKE IT AWAY, PAY US, etc.’
Man, that was a severe company meeting. I don’t know how HR and upper management got out alive, and I mean that literally.
They ‘went back to the drawing board’ and discussed it (probably with their corporate lawyers) for a few weeks, and reneged on the new policy. The one employee who hired her own lawyer proceeded with a lawsuit anyway. I doubt she got anywhere with it, but whatever.”
Doing Homework Is The Only Thing That Makes Those Jobs Worth It
“I worked as desk clerk for my dorm building freshman year of college and came back during my sophomore year knowing we got a new housing director. Notably in our contract it stated we were allowed to do homework or watch tv/listen to music during shifts (one earbud only) as long as you were still checking cameras, sorting packages, helping students as they came to the desk, and checking people in of you worked a night shift. These tasks usually took around an hour of your shift (excluding shifts between 10pm-2am on weekends when students would constantly be coming back from parties and having to check in). The new housing director for the building I worked in decided that even though we all signed contracts saying these things were allowed it didn’t mean we should be doing them.
After about a week she started giving out warnings for doing anything besides homework during shifts. Then a few weeks later she decided that not even homework was going to be tolerated. Me and the other girl who I shared night shifts with and who worked after me during day shifts had both started looking for other jobs after the first rule change because not doing anything but the desk duties for 4 hours was a huge waste of time and was also the only job in the city still paying minimum wage. We both agreed that if we weren’t going to be allowed to do nonwork related things we may as well find better paying jobs that at least have tasks for us to do during our shifts. Once we got accepted for a new jobs her at a hardware store and me at a grocery store we immediately put in our 2 weeks and left.
A few weeks later I ran into a guy who I had worked with the semester before and he asked if I still worked for the dorm building. I told him I had quit a few weeks ago and he told me that he had also just found a new job and that about half of the staff for that building and the other one the new director was in charge of had quit within the past month.
So basically going back on the rules we agreed on in our contracts resulted in the loss of half the desk clerks for the buildings.”
I Don’t Think That’s How Contracts Work
“They pulled us into a group meeting to let us know our contract with company A had not been renewed so we would be moved to company B contract at the end of the month. We were told we would be going from 8-5 mon thru Fri shift to 2-11 with Wed Thursday off. 15 of the 22 of us put in our two weeks and left at the end of the contract with A. The rest tried it out and I heard 3 of them logged out and walked away without notice after the first week. Never did hear about the others though.
I applied directly to company A and got hired on in the same job with higher pay since I wouldn’t need training and already had experience. They didn’t renew their contract because they were building their own team to handle it so having someone with experience was a benefit to them and to me.”