... HOPA?

[filkertom]

There are ways to handle problems. Here's a classy one; another, not so much.

(As shsilver links to below, the job-quitting is apparently a hoax. Still a good one, and if she's auditioning for a Playboy shoot, well, damn. I'd certainly be interested in seeing it....)

What's your best quitting-a-job or food-service story?

Comments

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

Apparently the job-quitter may well be a hoax.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Bwaha. I'll amend that. Thanks, Steven.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

And now my story...

When I was in high school, I worked for Baker's Square, a restaurant and pie place. As we approached Passover, I told my manager I would need time off as my family was traveling from Chicago to Cleveland for the Holiday. He told me I couldn't have the time. They would be working with a minimal staff that week because it coincided with Spring Break. If I wanted the time off, I would need to find someone to cover my shifts. I asked for a list of people who would be in town and he smirked and told me that everyone who would be in town was already scheduled.

Later, he came up to me and asked me if I would be able to pick up additional shifts for the week. I told him that I would be quitting at the end of my shift.

As we were closing the restaurant, I was responsible for putting away the pies. There was one pie that appeared to me to be at its end of life date, but I asked the manager to be sure. He looked at it and told me to toss it. I did. The sight of the pie running off his face and onto his shirt was memorable, even if I couldn't really use the place as a reference in the future. I did have another job within 48 hours.

[jannyblue.livejournal.com]

I never quit a job in a spectacular fashion, but I did work the evening (cleanup) in a grocery store bakery for a while...

One night a couple of guys came in who seemed a little out of it. They bought ALL of the brownies in the case (I think there were about 12) These things were HUGE, so most people only bought one or two at a time.

I think someone had the munchies... :-)

[sydb42.livejournal.com]

I thought the dry erase thing was too good to be true, but it's a story you really, really want to believe.

I've always quit my jobs the boring way...with two weeks notice and on good terms, so no good stories here.

[ericcoleman]

The last year I ran games at Windy I walked into the bitch session Sunday and threw a "THAT'S IT, I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE, I QUIT" hissy fit. Everyone on the concom broke up laughing (cause they knew I was leaving), most of the rest looked on in a mixture of fear and amazement.

[ladystarblade.livejournal.com]

I was assistant manager for a bookstore; when the mall it was in closed, I was transferred to the next nearby company store...where the manager had been there for 25 years, one assistant manager for 15 years, and the other assistant for over 5. Yeah, I was going nowhere fast. And I went from complete autonomy (my awesome manager was sent to yet another store) to a micro-managed environment with several regular employees who didn't like me because I came in senior to them.

Anyhoo, after a few months of this...and getting bitched out for requesting *gasp* two weekends off in a five-weekend month...(and this by the manager who took every Fri and Sun off)...I went looking for and found another job. In December. I gave my notice on December 7th, and the manager yelped, "You can't leave me during Christmas!!" And I said, "Yes I can!"

But I felt bad, so I pulled working 2 jobs for the rest of the month. My last day was Christmas Eve. That manager tried so hard to keep me on as consignment, but I was completely and totally done with that job. Loved parts of it (oh hai book discount!), but couldn't handle the retail anymore.

So yeah, that's the best I've got, LOL!

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

BOOM! Headshot. :D

[virtualvirtue.livejournal.com]

I have walked off one and only one job.

I was cleaning bathrooms and other parts of a large manufacturer in my college town during the summer for a temp agency. There had been an accident that day or sometime before my night shift but after the previous night shift I did. To put it mildly, the medical area I usually would clean up looked like a shambles (blood everywhere). I asked for gloves to clean things up. I was told by the nurse that I could not have any. This was after he told me he wouldn't come help pick up some of the medical stuff they had on the counters so I could clean. I explained I'd been cleaning toilets all night and I didn't want his clean (or so I thought) medical stuff potentially contaminated....yes, open gauze and stuff like that. I picked up my stuff, put it in the closet...clocked out...and left right after that. Called the agency the next day and actually got told I did the right thing...had a job in a week or so after that through some other group.

(If you're wondering where the client boss was...he had broke his foot the first night I was there and was off on medical...leaving us shift boss-less.)

[ldydragon7.livejournal.com]

Not excatly an 'I quit' story but:
I briefly worked for a school photography company that would hire extra photographers to cover the September through November busy season. They had a really high turnover rate and probably only about half of the people they hired in Sept actually stayed through to November. My dad was one of the permanent photographers they had which is how I found out about the job and knew that quitting before November was pretty common. I was very open and up front about the fact that I was only taking the job until I found a library job (the field I wanted to make a career in) from the very beginning and my supervisor was cool with that.

I didn't mind the work, but a lot of the situation of it - long hours never knowing if I would have a lunch break that day since the schools came up with our schedules, contending with the worst parts of rush hour traffic, driving to a new school in an area I was unfamiliar with every day with dubiously reliable directions (something I find very stressful) plus some non-work related stress that due to working in the same place as my dad I couldn't escape by going to work-just made me very stressed and unhappy. So I was very happy and relieved when I got a library job in mid-October. I gave them as much notice as I could, which was about a week and a half.

On my last day as I'm turning everything in to my supervisor, the big boss stops by and makes a snarky comment about two weeks notice. I just shrugged it off because it was generally known he was a jerk, it was my last day and I had hardly ever had to interact with him before this anyway. Later I was sitting in my dad's car waiting for him and my supervisor came out (in the rain) and apologized to me for how rude his boss had been.

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

If it's real, would she really rather have heard her boss commenting to another guy something to the effect of "If all that was left after the bomb fell was her, me and a chimpanzee...I'd be trying to start a family with the ape?"

I can understand her being annoyed about the boss wasting time on the computer while strictly monitoring subordinates (although RHIP), but getting indignant about that sort of thing has long since lost its novelty.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Hey, at least that JetBlue flight attendant is for real. Now THERE's the classy way to go out!

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

To some, but not to others. You have to take these things in context, keeping in mind that it may have been the last straw from a general bosszilla.

I'm trying to imagine how I'd feel if I was doing a lot of underappreciated clerical work for someone who snooped on me and generally let it be known that she regarded the employees as potentially dishonest people; and then overheard that boss commenting to a colleague or customer about my cute, firm ass.

Never mind that I'm not in the top 10,000 list in the "America's Sexiest Men" division and would ordinarily be flattered if someone cared to compliment me on my looks or notice that I work out or whatever. Under *those* circumstances, I would be pissed off. Now imagine if my gender was stereotypically reduced to being valued more for appearance than for brains or actual achievements, and I was actively trying to overcome that baggage and work twice as hard as others in an effort to be noticed in my career.

If being indignant under those circumstances has long since lost its novelty, the more shame on people who still haven't gotten the hint and continue to evoke indignation with their sexual comments at work.

[ldyerzsie.livejournal.com]

It started with the drive home. I almost hit someone in a really nice car that cut me off--and was in fact cutting off semi's. I flipped the car off. Turns out it was one of my co-workers who threatened me early the next day. The rest of the day--out on the manufacturing floor--was hell. Not nice practical jokes including something put on the stearing wheel of my scooter that caused a really bad reaction on my hands. That was Friday. I had itchy swollen hands the rest of the weekend and quit on Monday. I can only hope I took the bitch down when I gave my reasons for quitting on Monday, and this was right in the middle of making sure everything was just right for a big ISO audit.

[sveethot.livejournal.com]

Back in the '80's I did the "it's been fun but it hasn't been real fun" (it was an '80's phrase - I'm old) leave at lunchtime and never come back thing.

Hijole, I wish I was independently wealthy.

[infinitemorning.livejournal.com]

It's a hoax, or seems to be, but...

When you call someone a "hot piece of ass," you're not just reducing them to their appearance -- you're reducing them to a thing that's there for your pleasure, not even worthy of basic human respect. It is not remotely acceptable language for the office, and if I were trying to become a broker, working hard at a shit job for a boss I hated just to get my shot, I would be damn pissed at basically being described as a piece of meat.

Even supposed compliments can constitute harassment.

[jss]

Well, he did say to toss it. It's his own fault for not being specific.

And now for a total downer.

[juglore.livejournal.com]

My worst quitting a job story was when I was working at Voicestream. I was working at a call center. I was on the 5AM-1:30 PM shift. I was eating my breakfast, on my lunch break at 9:15. When one of the people I had seen around, working there, walked up to my table and said. "You're lucky, my son was born without any fingers." (I have birth defects and a very twisted small right hand.)
I looked up at her and said. "Are you usually this rude?"
She said. "What?"
I said. "Are you usually this rude?"
She mumbled an apology and ran away.
I walked out to my car and cried for an hour and a half. Then I snuck back in to the building. I sent my boss an email saying I couldn't work there anymore. Then I drove home trying to figure out how to tell my parents I had just quit the best job I'd ever had. My parents don't understand about birth defects.

[jenrose]

I got a temp job with a company that called for donations for child abuse prevention.

Sounds great, right?

Okay, so I show up at this place, and they are apparently 100% dedicated... to producing an anti-child-abuse pamphlet. And they get all their phone numbers from a list of old ladies who gave money to the Shriners. In Texas.

And everyone in the office smokes continuously, the one nonsmoking room has inadequate filtration.

I spend three days making phone calls, in a Texas accent that passes very well with the locals. I do a great job, get lots of donations...

And quit on the third day, saying I couldn't in good conscience continue to make phone calls I would, myself, hang up on.

They offered to give me a great recommendation.

ETA: The Texas accent took a week to get rid of.

[jenrose]

It is 100% inappropriate to objectify the office help that way in a business environment. Had it been real, she would have had every right to be pissed.

I was fired from one job because the bosses were a husband-wife team and the husband kept flirting with me. I was 17. There's a reason sexual harassment is illegal. That kind of treatment from someone in a position of power is just completely not okay.

And so would the kind of comment you're talking about. Simply because it might be preferable to overhear someone saying you're attractive, doesn't mean that women want to hear that in the context of a boss talking to someone outside the company (or in, for that matter.)

Glossing over sexual harassment has lost its novelty.

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

Here's the formal reveal of the hoax.

[jenrose]

I love you.


And you know I like your ass, but it's certainly not the thing I'd use to define you... ;)

[jenrose]

Oh there were other good ones, too. I worked as a postpartum doula helping new moms with housework and such, helping with the babies, that kind of thing. I was a single mom of a young child, and it was the way I was supporting myself. So I'm called out to this mom who parents with the Ezzo method, which is diametrically opposite my whole parenting philosophy. I was good, I didn't criticize, I didn't try to change her parenting, I just did my job and helped.

When I was getting ready to leave, I mentioned my daughter. The woman looked aghast, and expressed her shock that I was leaving my child in daycare to come help her. I told her I didn't have any choice in the matter, as I was a single mother, and this was how I was paying my rent. She just seemed so appalled... and I was appalled at her parenting methods (she was feeding her children on a rigid schedule, even the little baby, EVERYTHING was regimented. There are scientific reasons why little babies need to be fed when they are hungry, this method ignores that) but didn't say so.

Apparently I was good enough at leaving my feelings at the door about her methods that she actually asked to have me back to help her. I refused. It's the only doula job I ever turned down. Don't criticize me for working outside the home and then ask me to come help you parent your children badly. Cry it out? I don't think so. Not for a young baby.

Working for that same company... they were up and coming in the community... and got a big contract that paid a chunk in advance.

And the business owners took the money and ran, stiffing their employees.

All together now... CLASSY.

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'd deal with the problem differently, were I an employer. I just wouldn't hire women, full-stop. And I can think of ever so many interesting things to say if I were called on it:

"My girlfriend's possessive as hell and has a really nasty temper, and I like my head the shape it is, thankyouverymuch."

Or:

"The voices in my head don't like her---they say she's making derogatory comments about me where I can't hear them."

Disproving either one, particularly the second, in court would be the very devil. How do you prove that I don't hear voices in my head? Insanity, even paranoid schizophrenia, is not a crime in-and-of-itself. And some such people can and do function in society.

As far as "sexual harassment" goes, my own definition of it would be something along the lines of "put out or get out." Comments not even meant for her ears do not count...and I've also always said that them what eavesdrops sooner or later hear things they wish they hadn't.

[gorgeousgary]

One of the engineering firms I worked for was actually headquartered in TX and had a bunch of small offices up and down the West Coast. Shortly after I got my engineering license, they decided to actually use me as an engineer (for a while I'd been more of a head drafter) by sending me on a pair of assignments to the West Coast operations.

The day before I left for the second one, a two-week run helping set up a new office in Seattle, I got an offer on another job. Flew out to Seattle anyway and proceeded with my assignment.

The middle weekend was Orycon, which I attended, taking the train down. jhitchin gave me a ride back to Seattle. Before he dropped me at my hotel, we stopped by his apartment where I used his computer to write up and fax my resignation letter. (I had accepted the other job offer just before leaving for Orycon.)

So yes, I pulled the trigger in the middle of a business trip.

In a way, it made sense. It was the only way to do it that avoided my having to lie to both the CEO and the division head for the West Coast offices, since they were both pressuring me to tell them when my next two-week stint would be.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

I don't really have any good How I Quit stories of my own, at least none that I can recall off the top of my head, but here's one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ-Sy11mvZU) I've always liked.

[newjerseybadger.livejournal.com]

Eric, do you have a woman somewhere -- wife, daughter, good friend -- who you can talk to about this? 'cause I don't think there are any women anywhere who will have _any_ sympathy for your position. And I think you're so far wrong that you need to hear it, repeatedly, from people whose opinion you trust.

[infinitemorning.livejournal.com]

Agreed, wholeheartedly, on every point.

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

Before I allowed that anybody at all has the right to tell me who I must hire, I'd shut my business down.

And I wouldn't tolerate any employee whom I had to treat like a field full of land-mines. I've been fired for faults hardly worth the speaking of, or even for doing my job as I'd always been instructed to. What this creature had to deal with would have looked like paradise on earth to me.

[rickvs.livejournal.com]

I worked at a screenprinting company in Houston while still attending college. It was basically a paid internship, and I made it clear to my boss that I'd need a raise once I graduated.

Said raise, it turned out, was not in the cards -- and during the review while this information was being given to me, I was asked if I had any plans to take another job. I answered, truthfully, that I'd be keeping my eyes out from that point forward, but didn't have any offers right then.

That was at nine in the morning. During my lunch break, I accepted an offer over the phone from a previous interview ...and gave my boss two weeks' notice, six hours after I'd given him the strong impression I'd be staying for a while. Too bad, so sad, buh-bye.

To his credit, he didn't suddenly change his tune about being unable to pay me more ...but he did act like sort of a jackass later, when I was already at the new job and trying to pick up my final check. He started pestering me about some stolen company resources that *I'd* brought to his attention weeks earlier, to which my response was basically A) if I'd had anything to do with that, I wouldn't have told him about it in the first place, and B) what sort of leverage did he imagine he had to compel my cooperation at that point?

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Let me guess.

Have you become a wee bit bitter over a lifetime of having those crazy women, everywhere you go, getting all aggravated at you every time you open your mouth? Like, all the gorram time? Is it amazing and frustrating and coincidence-defying how that always seems to happen around you?

Also, would you really want the word to go out to your suppliers and customers that you hear irrational voices in your head?

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Have you ever owned a business? Most people who have spend a lot of time, money and sweat building their dream. And yes, sometimes they *talk* about how they'd be willing to throw all that away over taxes, or regulations, or some rule that requires everyone in their shoes to do or not do certain things. I have never seen anyone smart and patient enough to build a business who actually *did* throw it all away "on the principle of the thing". Anyone who has has failed already.

Seems to me, a good way to avoid having to treat someone like a field full of land mines is to not act like Stampy the Elephant in their presence.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Either comment would be completely unprofessional and inappropriate. And don't start whining about how "men can't help it, they're just made that way" -- you may not be able to not THINK it, but if you're a grownup you should damn well be able to not SAY it. It's called impulse control.

Re: And now for a total downer.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Jayzus. [hugs]

Re: And now for a total downer.

[juglore.livejournal.com]

Thanks. (hugs)

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

As it happens, I HAVE! Until last year, I was running a rental real-estate business...and one big factor that helped drive me out of business was women tenants who trashed the place, got 'way into arrears on rent before disappearing between-days, and whom I could not even sue for the money either because I couldn't find them or because they were judgement-proof. Years and years of being de facto legal to steal from have embittered me somewhat, for some utterly strange reason. If I so much as got caught stealing a stinking candy bar, I'd be off to the cop-shop in the latest steel bracelets, but these bimbi can vandalize my property and steal thousands of dollars from me with utter impunity!

And before you say that I shouldn't have rented to them---the kind of nice people I'd like to have rented to generally want houses, not apartments, and around here, they can afford them. It took me years and years to get through to my brother on that point...he thinks in terms of where he lives (Southern California, for his sins, the poor wretch) and out there, a house I could buy here for under $40,000 goes for nearly half-a-million, even in very bad shape. I wasn't given a choice about the rental biz, and I was stuck with it for years.

[violinsontv.livejournal.com]

Eric, if them what don't want to be eavesdropped *on* don't keep their voices down, it's kinda hard to turn ears off. I think in the context of this script (since that's what it was) the implication was that in the immortal words of MST3K, ol' Spence Just. Didn't. Care.

And then there's the tricky matter of Technology Awareness, i.e. is the call transfer complete? Is the mute button on? Am I talking on my cell phone on camera to another potential employer while waiting for a videoconference with my *current* company branches in UK, Germany and Australia with the sites up and the mute *off*? (The latter *is* a true story; I was an eyewitness. More along the lines of "how to get fired" though.....

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

Not really, no. More a wee bit bitter after years and years of emotional and verbal abuse from my alcoholic, mentally-tweaked mother. Even before she hit her head (brain injuries are seriously nasty, folks!) she had a serious drinking problem and unresolved anger issues, and I was one of her favorite scratching posts, because she knew I didn't dare fight back. That, and feeling that many women abuse their privileges.

It's a pity you never read Black Beauty...if you had, I'd just tell you that I really grokked Ginger.

In my own experience, as long as I kept up my business obligations, my suppliers and customers wouldn't care if I was going around in a Napoleon costume or dressed up as an aardvark. Business people are generally pretty practical.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

By "rental real estate business", do you mean you were a landlord, or a property manager? Renting property you own is generally not considered the same as a commercial business, and property managers tend to answer to owners, not tenants. Either way, I expect your decision not to continue had more to do with not making money than with anyone telling you you were forced to follow some rule you didn't like that applied to everyone else in your position.

Regardless...yucky tenants, I can believe, especially if your units included a lot of Section 8 or drug rehab programs (my spouse was on Section 8 for a while, and I've learned from her experience both that these programs do attract more than the usual number of dysfunctional people, and that it also attracts and rescues many model tenants who do phenomenal jobs caring for their space and making do, even thriving, with very little. You may well have gotten a bad draw)

What baffles me is your statement that these bad tenants were ALL women. Are you sure the damage wasn't done by their kids? Did you not *have* any male tenants for comparison? No couples that skipped out together? Sexist comments are a dime a dozen; you're the first person I've encountered anywhere who has claimed that single women are more sloppy housekeepers, worse budgeters and poorer credit risks than single men of the same socioeconomic background. Not that they aren't equal, but the stereotype usually goes the other way.

Another aside: my experience is that shoplifters are cited and released, and usually get big fines but no jail. The only ones who get cuffed and taken to the cop shop are the ones who fight with store security when caught and thereby become guilty of assault or robbery charges.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Practical enough that they tend to get skittish around people who don't dress according to the usual protocols. If you want to wear strange clothing to work, you'd better be the only one in the office who understands the computer system.

At least you only grew up to jump to conclusions, instead of biting others like Ginger did. Seriously, a childhood like that shouldn't happen to anyone, and I'm sorry your mother treated you that way. It wasn't your fault. Where was your dad during all that?

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

Where was my dad? Often drunk as well. (Unlike Mom, he did sober up and stay that way for about a decade, but he fell off the wagon and eventually drank himself to death). However, Dad was a quiet drunk. In general, he'd just hole up with his bottle of vodka. Mom, OTOH, would sit up drinking and feeling sorry for herself and if she heard me stirring around, even to go to the bathroom, even late on a school night, she'd haul me downstairs and expect me to sit there while she poured out her bile. Hour after hour after hour, and my pleas to be let go were ignored. And that was before her head injury. Afterwards, she was hypomanic and kept right on drinking, even though she'd hit her head after falling down our cellar stairs while drunk. A few months after she came home from the hospital, she'd driven away all her old friends. She had a hair-trigger temper, worse than before (which was bad enough) and was quite unpredictable.

As far as wearing strange clothing to work---if I'm the HMFIC, I can do as I please in that department. There was a very successful used-car dealer in (I think) Southern California who made a ton of money wearing a Napoleon uniform---something like "I'm Crazy Eddie, and I sell used cars for CRAZY prices!"