I worked at a horrible restaurant almost 30 years ago run by an obnoxious Spanish man who would not let you have butter for bread, and once when a guest sat on his crappy plastic chair and it broke turned around and put it on his bill. He would follow you around and fuss at you for stupid things, and he liked to follow one waiter named Ken around and criticize his table wiping. “Meestar Ken, that ees not how you do it, first you spray, DEN wipe”.

Finally he did this one too many times, and Ken looked at him and said “get fucked you fat Spaniard, I already got a new job”, and left just before the dinner rush.

This is how I left my first job. Literally the day I planned to hand in my notice, I had an email from the secretary of my boss’s boss. Big meeting with lots of management - also a pre-meeting beforehand to chat. I waited until management went over in the big meeting that we were deep in the shit, but Forgottengoldfish is going to go over there and fix everything.

“Um, well - I can do a few things in the next two weeks.”

Next job tripled my salary - never looked back.

Are we posting quit stories?

Here’s one of my favorites. I used to work in a metal fabrication shop running a specialized piece of equipment. Another person was hired to run the same machine on another shift. I had to come in several times when I was supposed to be not working, just to help this new guy run the machine or fix some problem it was having. I come to find out, our nearly helpless new guy is being paid more than I am.

I took a day off, ignored my phone, and pursued a couple of opportunities. I got lucky and was hired as a draftsman. The next day at work, I gave a two week notice, to great gnashing of teeth. Day two of the two week notice, they decided to just let me go.

So I hit the e-stop, which shut the machine down, requiring a half-hour of time to re-start, and causing the loss of the part it was working on. My now former boss asked what I was working on, and I said “I don’t work here sir. I don’t know what any of this does. I’ll get out of your way.”

I deleted all of my notes. Pages of information I used to run the machine and how to solve various issues. How to set it up. How to take care of it. It was on my phone, because they wouldn’t spring for a notebook and certainly wouldn’t let me use a computer to make nice organized documentation. All of it, gone. New guy gets frustrated and quits a week later.

And now instead of moving heavy things around all day, I sit in a climate-controlled office (in a building I designed) and draw pictures, and some days I fly a drone and take pictures.

Oh gosh, i did that a couple years ago. We had some people leave, including my manager. I was a lead engineer. I was also leaving, I was promised a position at a 27% increase in salary. But it is a big, international company and their HR was painfully slow at getting me an offer letter. It ended up being 3 weeks from interview to offer. In that time, I just had to sit through several rounds of meetings with the COO, restructuring our group. I was a pivotal part of this plan. Finally, he had the plan finalized. And I got my letter. Handed in my two weeks the same day. No regrets. Love the new place.

Also, that COO wad not an insignificant factor in people leaving.

now a boss

I once interrupted a conversation where I was about to be promoted in order to give my 2 weeks’ notice.

Zero regrets, 10/10, would do it all over again.

I posted about this last week :

https://lemmy.world/post/42963753/22068707

reminds me of the time I went on sabbatical just around the timeframe of the annual reviews.

I went into the meeting with my manager, let him know I fixed the automations I committed to fixing, and that I wasn’t coming back after my holiday, and that I was going on a sabbatical. His face was blank, silent and still for a bit, and felt like in his mind he had a stack of paper he was going to talk about, which he then threw into the air.

Felt good man.

My last week at one employer saw me sitting in an empty cubicle all week because they took my gear. So I called up my new boss, told him I could start early (remotely). Next day I had a laptop and docs to read while I waited out the week.

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