I’m Outta Here!
“Steven Slater, a veteran flight attendant, announced over the plane’s public address system that he had been abused by a passenger and was quitting his job.
He then grabbed two beverages and exited the plane by deploying the evacuation slide and sliding down it.”
He Had Enough Homophobic Remarks From That Juiced Up Biker
“One time, we went for breakfast at this little restaurant and seated in front of us was a biker guy who kept harassing the clearly gay waiter.
The waiter was going out of his way to be polite to this dirtbag who had already returned his food three times, once just because his toast hadn’t been buttered. It was obviously done just to irk the waiter. Finally, everything went so bad.
The biker guy made a comment, ‘Why are you swinging your butt like a girl? You’re NOT a girl! Let me take you out back in the alley and I’ll show you how to act like a real man!’
I gasped and couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Suddenly the waiter, who was carrying a tray of water glasses and pitcher to another table, took the pitcher of water and dumped it on the biker guy’s head.
The biker jumped up and threw his breakfast plate full of food at the waiter, hitting him with eggs in the face.
The waiter then took the whole tray of water glasses and threw it at the biker and the biker gave chase; the waiter ran into the kitchen, using his arm to knock into the biker’s path anything handy (ketchup bottles, silverware tray, napkin holders) with the biker slipping and sliding but still on the waiter’s heels.
Suddenly, the front door opened and in walked five cops who grabbed the biker dude and handcuffed him, during which the waiter came out flailing his hands in the air with great theatrics, screaming, ‘THIS IS BULL! I QUIT! YOU CAN’T FIRE ME! HE STARTED IT! I’M FROM NEW YORK. YOU’LL BE HEARING FROM MY ATTORNEYS! YOU ALL SAW HIM DIDN’T YOU (pointing to all of us)! HE STARTED IT BUT THEY FIRE ME! I DON’T THINK SO! (as he bobs his head and snaps his fingers in the air ala Rue Paul) NO, NO, NO! I THINK NOT!’ Then with great drama, he yanked off his apron, flung it at the kitchen door, and sashayed out the door.
I’d give anything to have had a camera, but this was before cell phones.
Everyone in the diner that morning got their meals free as an apology for the chaotic scene.”
“Having A Bad Day?”
“A co-worker of mine came to work at the auto parts store with a severe hangover. A customer got smart with him and made the comment, ‘Having a bad day?’ My co-worker punched the customer right in the mouth.
Another customer said, ‘Hey, you can’t do that,’ so my co-worker punched him, too. Then he walked out of the store. I’ve never seen him since.”
What A Coincidence
“I worked at a fast-food restaurant in high school. Paychecks were technically handed out on Saturdays, but our manager usually tried to show consideration by getting it out to us on Thursdays.
One week, the paychecks got delayed somewhere higher up than my manager. She apologized and most people were disappointed, but she was genuinely sorry even though it wasn’t her fault, and hey, getting it early was a perk anyway. Most people said, ‘Well, that sucks,’ and were done. But not a girl I’ll call Crazy. You see, Crazy had put a down payment on a TV and if she didn’t get the MegaCorp the other $200 that day, she would forfeit the deposit. Why a 16-year-old needed a TV that badly was never properly answered.
She spent a good 30 minutes arguing with the manager about how it wasn’t fair, paychecks were given out on Thursdays, that she was going to sue as if needing to buy a low-quality TV in installments puts someone in the position of hiring a lawyer. God bless that manager for not strangling her or firing her on the spot.
Finally, the worker stormed off to do some cashier work. The end of her shift came and oh my God, isn’t it just the craziest coincidence, her till was $200 short. The manager said, ‘Well?’
The girl said, ‘Oh, really, I don’t know about that. But while we’re talking, I quit.'”
Well, That’s Certainly One Way To Beat The System
“A nice young lady, who was a connoisseur of smack, was finally about to get tested.
It started as a normal day. I was on the first break with some fellow hard-working laborers when suddenly A WILD ADDICT APPEARED! She started acting funny. Talking to imaginary people. Then she leaned against the vending machine all lovingly and sweetly said to the machine, ‘I love you, but I just can’t afford you.’
We asked if she was ok. She said, ‘Yeah, but I can’t find my earplug.’ Earplugs were standard PPE in the plant. We noticed that she had both earplugs in and we tried to inform her. She found a ball of chewed up gum on the ground and said, ‘Here it is,’ and tried jamming it into her occupied ear. She then realized it was gum and ran away out of the break room.
She was nodding off on her machine. A supervisor noticed and decided it was time for a test. Upon realizing this, she ran away. She started running all over the factory. All the supervisors were looking for her. A rather hefty female supervisor found her huddled by a press. The junkie looked up and saw her.
Junkie: ‘Who are you?’
Matilda: ‘I’m a supervisor.’
Junkie: ‘Oh. Sorry.’
So the junkie decided to cooperate. She was walking ahead of two supervisors to a break room. They were escorting her there to calm her down. Little did they know, she had a trick up her sleeve…or rather, up her crotch. She pulled a vial of urine out from her womanly cavity. They noticed she was doing something weird but didn’t know what she was doing. She ended up sneaking the vial into the microwave, not realizing that the microwave was unnecessary, as the urine was inside her and already the proper temperature.
The supervisors finally caught on to what she was doing. One used a napkin to remove the vial of urine that was slathered in crotch fluid. What a trooper!
Then the junkie freaked out again and started cursing profusely as she walked out of the break room. She wasn’t paying attention to the fact that she was in the forklift aisle at a blind spot and gets lambasted. Not to worry my friends, the driver was going slowly around the corner as he should have and the hero of our story appears to have not felt a thing, probably thanks to those delightful chemicals in her body. She got up, unscathed, and kept walking away, swearing like a sailor. Or rather, a stoned sailor.
She then started dogging out ALL the people she knew who shared her recreational activities, whether it was speed, smack, or weed. If it’s illegal, she was saying your name. This almost caused an angry mob and some supervisors had to control those people now.
I don’t know how, but management accomplished baiting her to the hospital where she was examined for any injuries sustained by the forklift. Turns out she had broken her ankle, but she didn’t feel a thing. Then came the test, where she once again, became belligerently violent and the hospital security had to control her.
In the end, we never saw our hero again. The company decided to throw out the microwave and get a new one. But like a renegade army of Xerxes, she left an impressive path of destruction on her way to whatever destination awaited her.
Godspeed, Junkie!”
Aw Man! Now I Have To Go Work For NASA!
“During college, I was working at some mediocre Japanese restaurant just to pay the bills. I was about to graduate with my Bachelor’s Degree in Physics and had just landed a position at Jet Propulsion Lab (NASA), but hadn’t told anyone yet.
One day, I called in sick for the first time in two years. The manager evoked his godlike power and commanded me to come in anyway because he, in his infinite wisdom and might, didn’t want to find someone to cover for me. This was the same manager that told me I didn’t wear enough makeup, that I couldn’t have personal conversations in front of the restaurant, and usually made me deal with homeless people near the storefront (I’m a tiny Asian girl in heels).
Naturally, I didn’t go in that day. During my next shift, I was called into the office for a stern talking-to. He lectured me on work ethic, citing as an example the time he gallantly overcame a 103-degree fever, and against all odds, made it to work, where he bravely locked himself in the office and browsed Facebook for hours. This was his reasoning for writing me up as ‘no-call, no-show.’ He expected me to cower and apologize, but instead, I laughed and gave him my two-week notice. Over the next two weeks, I saw a very refreshing shift in his attitude.”
“Regrets Aside,” It Was Worth It
“I worked at a car wash when I was a kid. A friend and I happened to be the only people that showed up for work on the first sunny Monday of the summer. The line was around the block for the car wash before we even opened for business.
We called our manager and said, ‘Hey, it’s just us and there are like 100 cars to wash.’
The manager said, ‘There’s two of you. Wash them,’ before hanging up.
Now, this was a full-service automatic car wash in a nice area. Each car got a full scrubbing in the front of the machine, a full wipe-down when it came out the other end, and about half of them paid for a few minutes at a hand wax station.
After an hour or so of running back and forth, servicing cars at each station, taking money, running cards, and explaining why the wax station is only getting about 40 seconds of love per car, the line was so long we couldn’t even see the end of it. This was normal for a day like this, and tough, hot work for the normal crew of six.
We called for help again. The manager turned her phone off. She knew what was up. She was probably at the same party as the rest of the crew.
We both said forget it, took off our car wash-employee-monkey-suits right there in front of everybody, put the big machine on ‘GO,’ and walked away – smoking and joking.
We wandered by a few hours later, the line was still there. We laughed.
In hindsight, that job paid well for what it was and where I was in my life at the time, and sometimes I kind of wish I had stuck it out that day. Life got a lot harder for me after that.
Regrets aside, that was one of the most satisfying workdays of my life.”
They Should Have Known Something Was Up When They Heard The Laughter
“One night, when I was caught in a weird spell of not being able to sleep, but being too tired to do anything worthwhile, I decided to go to Walmart to shuffle around for a bit.
I heard this girl when I came in – she was laughing hysterically in the produce section while she and another associate tossed spoiled fruit into a trash bin. It’s the only time I’ve seen someone on their night-shift be happy. I went about my business – circling through pharmacy, makeup, toys, hardware, electronics, housewares, infants, then made my way to the chips and drinks aisle. As I was debating between the different potato chip options, I suddenly heard the tumbling cascade of everything falling off a high stacked pallet. The shelf next to me quivered like it got hit by a case of suddenly needing to pee, and I heard glass hitting the ground on the other side.
In the middle of this, I realized this was the result of the two people stocking the aisle – the night manager who yelled ‘DANGIT KIMBERLY!’ while Kimberly whooped with glee and started singing, wasted, at the top of her lungs:
‘It’s going down, I’m yelling Timber! You better move! You better dance!’
I peeked around the corner and Kimberly, whose Pitbull impersonation was almost as good as her Kesha one, was dancing a jig, twirling around her angry boss while she decorated the entire aisle in a whirl of toilet paper sheets.
Angry boss was turning red and sputtering and Kimberly was plowing through the song with hysterical mirth while her fellow employees came to see what was going on.
About the time she hit, ‘I’m slicker than an oil spill,’ Angry boss got his words back.
He yelled, ‘YOU’RE FIRED!’
Kimberly giggled hysterically and said, ‘FORGET YOU, TRAVIS. I QUIT. YOU DANG FUNSUCKER’
‘At least I don’t show up to work wasted, you bimbo,’ he hollered as she threw a toilet paper roll in his face and started stomping to the end of the aisle so she could leave.
‘MAYBE YOU SHOULD, JERK!'”
We’re Going To Shut Down Until You Two Play Nice
“I used to work in a factory as a lab tech. The process involved these large furnaces. Once every two weeks, they needed to be shut down and relined. It shut down the whole facility. There was a guy that pretty much only worked every other week to reline the furnace.
One evening, someone managed to damage the lining to the point it needed to be replaced. It was a full week ahead of time, though. The bossman called up the guy who installed the lining and told him to get there right away. They argued for a bit and finally, the guy agreed to show up.
He was absolutely plastered but the bossman didn’t care. The guy just looked at him and told him that he was not working: ‘I’m wasted and wasn’t scheduled for tonight.’ The boss fired him for coming in under the influence.
They proceeded to have a screaming match about the boss man telling him to come in or be fired and then firing him for coming in.
It all ended up going to HR and the plant sat shut down for a whole two days until they sorted it all out.”
His Escape Was Only Part One Of His Revenge
“I used to work at a pizza place in Tallahassee. The chef was really fed up with his pay and the heat, so during the middle of a Friday night shift, he just went out to the back of the restaurant, pulled a ladder against a fence, and hopped over it without telling anyone. The waitresses thought he was on a smoke break for about a half an hour.
He kept up his vengeance by calling the restaurant a few times a month, ordering complex requests, and then never coming to pick them up.”
The Bad News Wasn’t All That Bad To Him
“Knowing I was giving my two-weeks notice that day, I went in two hours early to get all my files off the work machine and clean up anything I didn’t want them to find if they kicked me out (as sometimes happens when you give your notice).
It turns out that the handful of people who were in the office that early were all worried about two company-wide emails that were sent out. Everybody wanted to know which email I received. You either got called to a 9 am meeting on site or off site. Everyone knew this meant layoffs.
I got the on-site meeting, which I thought meant I was not going to be laid off. I got my computer cleaned up and my files stored offsite with five minutes to spare.
The 100 of us in that meeting were told we could not return to our desks. We were handed severance checks and walked out of the building. Mine was for $7,000.
The hardest part of it was looking sad, in a room full of sad people, hugging and crying and exchanging contact info. I waited until I was in the car and the office building was in my rearview mirror to let out a shriek of pure joy.”
Tales From The Limo Driver
“My friend Jon worked part-time for a limo company back in the late ’80s. He liked the job okay, but the boss’s son was a huge loser.
After putting up with the son’s nonsense for months, Jon was assigned to drive him to a city an hour away for a concert. The loser and his girlfriend were in the backseat, snorting coke and yelling at Jon about anything they could think of, from not driving fast enough to having the radio on the wrong station.
Finally, at about the halfway point, at least two miles from the nearest exit, Jon suddenly slammed on the brakes. The son, his girlfriend, and the ‘party favors’ went flying all over the backseat. Jon got out, tossed his uniform cap to the loser and tossed the keys into the ditch on the side of the road, and said, ‘Drive yourself!’
He then walked to the other side of the highway and hitched a ride home. Called the boss when he got home, told him what happened, and quit. No regrets.”
Horton Hears A Hypocrite
“I worked the night shift at Tim Hortons for a couple of months. They had all these plaques and certificates saying how they ‘help starving children’ and ‘care about the community.’
So anyway, at the end of my shift, I was to throw away all this perfectly good food, but I said forget that and brought them to the school my father teaches at (it’s a very poor school where most kids are on that free lunch deal for low income). I would bring cookies, donuts, muffins, and other discarded items. And the kids loved it. Then one day, I was leaving my shift and this lady I worked with (who up until this point was fairly kind) told my manager I was taking a small bag of cookies.
The next day, my manager (who was a 300-pound neckbeard) called me into a glorified broom closet that he called an office and told me I was fired for ‘stealing’ food meant for the garbage. I knew it didn’t matter what I said, so I basically went on a rant about how they advertise their ‘involvement with the community and helping fight hunger’ for customers to see but in reality are total hypocrites. If they wanted to actually fight hunger, they shouldn’t throw away a hundred plus dollars worth of perfectly good food just because they won’t sell to paying customers. I swore to never work in fast food after that.”
Is This Why They Went Under?
“I was an assistant store manager at a Blockbuster in Ohio. I also was in undergraduate school in my junior year. I wanted to only work 25 hours and split the time with another manager there. Our store manager worked it out and it was approved by the district manager.
It was great. I worked about 20-25 hours depending on the season and went to school. I took a lot of credit hours, about six classes, so I stayed busy.
Well, one night I got gallstones and needed to be out of work/school for about three weeks while I had surgery to remove my gallbladder and to heal up from that. So I healed up and came back to work and everybody was fired but me.
At Blockbuster, you are allowed to rent five movies/games per week for free. Everybody but me at my store rented five on their account and if a co-worker didn’t use all of theirs, they would lend it to someone else. Well…I guess this is ‘stealing’ and HR fired everybody. Cleaned house. I was the only one left. I told the District Manager I could only work 25 hours, he said to just hang in there a couple weeks until they found a permanent replacement for Store Manager. So I ran the store and worked 50 hours a work, 10 hours of overtime they had no problem paying me.
We had another SM on loan (as well as some new hires and CSRs on loan) to help out. I believe at one point, he was going to take over our store but he was terrible. I didn’t like the way he treated our female co-workers, he wasn’t good with customers, and he took shortcuts. He also frequently forgot to settle at night. Settling the computers allows for all the money and data to be updated from the day’s purchases and rents. If you don’t do it the night before, you have to do it in the morning when the morning person comes in. The problem is it takes about six hours for it to be completed. So the morning person would get there around 8 am to take the deposit to the bank and set everything up for the morning shift. Well I got there and he didn’t settle, so I couldn’t open the store until around 2 pm. This is problematic and people GET ANGRY when they can’t rent or buy movies that early for whatever reason.
It really blows when someone does this…but accidents happen.
So I let it go. Problem was, it happened three times in a week. I was working 50 hours a week past when the DM said he needed me to. I didn’t want my grades to fall because school was more important. So, by the time two months came around, no solution had been set, which my DM said he would do. Then I came to work in the morning and the dude didn’t settle…AGAIN. So I said forget it, wrote a note about why I quit and why I left, and I locked the store up and left my keys in the dropbox. Well…no one got there until the evening shift around 3 pm and since he didn’t settle, they couldn’t open the store until 9 pm when we close at 10 pm. I thought it was hilarious.
I had been there a good three years when I quit, so I felt justified. I should have given my two weeks but forget them. It was a great job for me because I was in film school at my college, too, so I had a lot of film knowledge for customers. I love talking about movies, so it was a dream college job. Little responsibility- talk about movies. Well, it gets stressful because retail is always stressful, and when you get terrible co-workers, it’s worse. So I finally had it and quit.
You might be thinking: Did I cost them a few thousand dollars in sales that day? I’m not quite sure. I don’t think so. I would say yes, had the SM on loan from the previous night had settled, but he didn’t.”
