August 2, 2010
Dear Clusterflock
Have you ever been fired from a job? Have you ever (as the wording on applications goes now) left a position after finding out that you would be terminated? What about quitting in a heated way?
The only way I have ever left a job is with plenty of notice, voluntarily and on good terms. Am I missing something?
comments
Leave a Reply
I’ve never been fired; probably because I’m terrified of doing a bad job. did I say that out-loud?
You’ve never been fired for the same reason that I don’t undertake a lot of undertakings. Also probably for the same reason I’ve never been fired.
it’s funny, I never think about the first part, until I’m doing the job.
the only time I was fired was for an unpaid internship. I was never sure what to make of that. I guess I just wasn’t too excited to do slave labor.
I got canned from a job. Mostly because my boss was insane and her boss was afraid of making things right. It was during an at-will probationary period. Once my boss’s insanity started to synergize with my own depression, I gave them a legitimate reason to ask me to leave and that was absenteeism.
you know, Dave — do you trust the ones who aren’t terrified? I was just thinking about that.
I’ve never been fired (I mean, really–this is me we’re talking about). I did quit one job dramatically, though. I was a manager at a local chain of bookstores.* The owners brought in some people from New York to handle a “reorganization,” despite the fact that we’d just had the highest profit year ever. Said reorganization involved the firing of my wonderful general manager, along with other excellent employees. A guy from corporate took me into the office to tell me how great they all thought I was, that I had the potential to move way up in the organization. I told him, essentially, to go fuck himself (but not before I asked him just how long he thought he would last in an organization with no loyalty to its best employees). I left, and about half of the staff followed.
Corporate guy was canned 4 months later.
*One of the stores in the chain was the bookstore Dignan and Anthony held up in Bottle Rocket.
Oh Cindy I love to hear that story. I can just see you wearing that long gray dress and standing so tall with that fire in your eyes.
I have been laid off (made “redundant” as they say across the water) several times, and I suspect some of those times may have been about the same as being fired. But I’m talking about jobs at the bottom of the market. I have left a few places in dramatic fashion, too. Here are two short accounts of Bad Bosses; the second one is the one that involves actually quitting a job suddenly.
Daryl! Do you have time to find and post the photo of me on the day I quit that job? That was one happy day!
Cindy, when they called you into the office did they expect you to pretend you liked Michael Bolton?
This was in 1983. They didn’t know about music back then.
Most of the jobs I have done I am little more than pond life – if they get rid of me they’ll have to get them some immigrants! I mostly do mundane jobs quite well – unless of course people fuck with me then I can be a tad disruptive.
I always take great joy in telling people how they wouldn’t like me if they fuck with me – that unsettled air is quite empowering. Us pond life wield more power then we realise.
Phil, you and Daryl would do great working together. The stories.
Cindy, I like that idea.
Must pen how my PC was recently taken over by Romanian radio – not sure if they had an agenda!
Yes, we need that story!
I think the dishwasher in my new place has been taken over by Romanian radio. Seriously.
No, I think maybe it is Egyptian radio.
I once quit a job rather dramatically – I think I could have been fired, if I had hung in much longer. The strange thing is, objectively, I was doing a great job: I was meeting all my targets on or ahead of time, etc. In fact, they gave me a raise – not much of one, but I was just out of college and barely squeaking by, so $500 a year was better than nothing. But these people hated me, and took every opportunity to let me know it. Near the end of my tenure, they had me cleaning carpets by hand – I was so desperate for any positive feedback, I was doing anything they asked – crying the whole time. I finally left because it was a choice between leaving my job and jumping out a window. I told them their behavior was ruining my health, and I walked out of the office with all my belongings in a handbag, and a half-eaten lunch on my desk. I doubt this is a usual situation – I was working with many middle-aged women in a dark basement, and I was a 21 year old girl just out of college; I think there was all kinds of resentment there.
Two times I’ve left jobs with only a couple days’ notice. One was a startup which was sputtering and was trying to get me to accept “no pay” in exchange for “no guarantee that I would ever receive compensation” and the other was just a job I completely hated.
I got let go from a temp staffing position once when I fell asleep at my desk. It was a data entry job, and I had come home from a gig at 3am that morning.
I once gave two weeks notice to a hell-hole (non-funeral) job, just because I figured that’s what a stand up guy did. Owner and his two underlings started giving me shit for being “unloyal” and deciding to quit after all they had “invested” in me. I asked them politely to re-think what they had just said, as it was unkind and unfair in both tone and content.
They declined.
I said they could mail me what they owe me for vacation pay and the current pay period up to that day, and that I was leaving as it was lunch time anyway, and that my new employer was quite happy to have me start earlier. They sputtered “but we have a huge production run to get out this week and we can’t do it without you.” I told them they should have thought of that before they decided to be assholes with me, grabbed my coat and umbrella and walked out.
I’m not sure I’ve had a more satisfying moment at work.
Mary N.–My heart goes out to you, dear. I know what it’s like to work for people who, instead of communicating, just start in with the crap chore assignments, hoping you will quit. The good part of it is: They are assholes, and the sooner you get out the better. I hope all went well for you after that.
Walt–that’s a great quit! I love it when jerks like that think that they are fully in control of the time frame management, and then discover that there is a price to pay for being a douche bag.
Yeah, it’s like Phil said: “Us pond life wield more power then we realise.” Not that Phil, nor anyone, is pond life.