14 Times Employees Handled Toxic Jobs Like Absolute Pros

Quitting a job can feel terrifying, but these 14 employees made it unforgettable. Some left quietly, some with flair, and some even got a little revenge. One thing’s for sure, they all finally said “I quit” and took control of their lives.

• Was a senior designer at a company, and was making 120k, and they said that was market rate. Asked my boss for at least a 10% raise. He said no. I was doing all the work and staying up late at night. A company found me and poached me. They paid a whole 80k more. When I took the job, my boss was pissed. Told him the company only exists because I was there. 3 months later, my boss got fired. He didn’t know how to do the job when I was gone. © Historical-Cut-202 / Reddit
  
  

• Wrote a normal letter of resignation before I got in the shower one morning. Nobody. Got into the office and was straight ignored by management. Oh well, told you when my last day was.
  Fast forward 3 days they pull me into a conference room to ask what it would take to keep me. I say nothing but don’t want to ruin them (sole IT manager for a staff of 70), and would be willing to consult part-time. They liked that idea and said they’d be willing to pay me my current hourly rate as a consultant. I was prepared for this and told them that wasn’t what I said. I said that I would consult, and my consulting rate was $200/hr. They were flabbergasted and insulted (I was making about $18/hr).
  They thought it was insane, even though they’d pay a consulting firm $600/hr when I was on vacation. Needless to say, having planned to quit it was no skin off my back and I laughed about it. They didn’t take kindly to me laughing about their anger and told me to pack my things. I did so, got an extra 10 days vacation paid out of it. © Cypher1710 / Reddit

• I worked for a photographer, and we were on a tight deadline schedule. Most of the office had been let go for the summer, so it was just me (the head of my department), one coworker, and the owner. I come in to discover the owner left town with his family on vacation. I hit my breaking point. I put my letter of resignation on his desk while he was gone. My only coworker left with me. The owner had no idea what had happened until he returned home to the letter, unfinished work on the counter, and zero employees. © radarsteddybear4077 / Reddit

• My father had surgery for his cancer, which we found out was way more advanced than we or the doctors had thought. Spent two weeks traveling back and forth out of town to be with him. Got a call he had fallen and went into the ICU, and we needed to get there now, mind you, the hospital was 2 hours away.
  I call my boss and tell him I can’t make it, and that my father’s situation is bleak, and he tells me that that’s on me, and I have to figure it out because I can’t leave them hanging. All I could say was, “You gotta be kidding me, did you not hear what I just said?” Hung up, waited for the next manager, and called back to tell him “hey, so and so said this, but uh, my dad’s dying and I have to make the decision the pull the plug. So and so can get wrecked, and I quit”. He apologized, could tell he was baffled, and gave me two weeks’ pay. © Remote-Ashtray / Reddit

• I got told I wouldn’t be getting a raise because I asked for the raise. But apparently, if I hadn’t asked, I would have gotten it. My boss then said I was on the list of the higher boss (for asking) and that I wouldn’t get a raise for at least a few months. Yeah, I quit right there lol.
  © darkenough812 / Reddit

• Worked at a chain pizza place. The manager didn’t approve of how well we cleaned and prepped for the next day. So we all came in to a note saying something to the effect of “you are all replaceable,” so we all said ok, took off the uniform, and left. We didn’t even lock up or close up shop. Just walked off. Phones were ringing for orders, and people were coming into the dining area, but nobody was working.
  Once she realized nobody was there, she was calling everyone, going nuts, telling us to come to work or we’re fired. One person went back and tried to save it. I just reminded her that I was replaceable, and so was the person who signed my check, then hung up. They had to close for about a week or two to replace the staff. The location was completely closed and filed for bankruptcy less than a year later, at least partly due to her leadership. © Titan_Uranus_** / Reddit

• My boss fired me to save herself after she broke company policy. She didn’t even let me pack my things, just said, “Don’t touch anything! We’ll send them to you.” 3 weeks later, the box finally arrived. I opened it and instantly froze when I saw my stuff treated like trash. Some things were missing, others broken. I knew her paranoid mind had gone through my things, searching for evidence. HR never apologized or offered to fix it. They just shipped the mess and acted like nothing happened. Since I’d already moved back to my hometown 600 miles away, I chose peace and let it go. Last I heard, the company was close to bankruptcy.

• I worked at a KFC in the ’80s. We had a really cool manager. I was an assistant manager along with another, and lots of other great young people worked there. Our manager was hired to turn around the store and he was given a budget to buy new equipment. He also saved money on paper products and got the store really clean with our help. At the end of the year, he was fired by the upper management for “spending too much”. They then brought in a new manager who immediately set about giving us all a hard time. Everyone walked. The store had to shut down for several days and the new guy brought in his family to help run it.
  The store shut down permanently a few years later. The district manager offered me a job in management, but I just didn’t trust them at that point. © EurassesDragon / Reddit
  

• Fresh out of college, I worked with kids in an after-school program for about two years. I was dedicated, hard-working, and everyone only had good things to say about the work I did. A full-time employee (administration during school hours, then worked directly with kids in the afternoon) was getting ready to retire, and I clearly expressed how I wanted to fill the full-time position when they left. My manager would dangle it in front of me, ask me to do extra tasks, like working an outside-of-normal-hour dinners, saying things like, “This is usually what the full-time employees do.” So I did, ready to show how I could handle what the full-time employees did.
  After doing this for a few weeks, the announcement came: They brought in someone from another branch to take the full-time position. I went back to my classroom and sobbed. Nothing was said to me about the situation. But, within the week, a friend of a friend said she needed a nanny, and in fact, if I could meet them in the Bahamas (first-class travel paid for) in about two weeks to watch their toddler, that’d be great. I put in my notice at work, and lo and behold, they suddenly had a full-time position for me! But the damage had been done, I was gone, and I got paid to hang out in the Bahamas for almost a month with the chillest toddler I ever met. GoodGooglyGarlic / Reddit

• My boss ignored me for 5 months (cancelled every 1:1, never followed up on anything I sent, never set any work). Then my first day back from vacation, I got put on a PIP. Apparently, I’m not meeting expectations despite never having had any expectations set or even a job description.
  I interviewed for a much better job, got it, and quit the terrible manager. I managed one person, and she quit two days after finding out I was going. Said she didn’t want to stay in that place if I went.
  My final day came, I left, then two days later, a former colleague messaged me to say that the boss who tried to fire me himself got fired in a team meeting in front of everyone. So yeah. Karma, I guess. ©Teddybear88 / Reddit

• This happened last year. At my last job, I was having personal problems, I had a “check-in meeting” with my boss, hr lady, and the director of change because I was not acting like myself. I told them I went through a personal tragedy and was finding it hard to care. Then it turned into professional problems with my boss and with my co-workers, especially after I got back from vacation. Then, I went to lunch, and once I was out of the parking lot, I emailed my letter of resignation.
  About an hour and a half later, the hr lady calls and asks me what happened. I said, I get no help when I ask for it, that I have to stop what I was doing to help everyone, dealing with managing attorney, 2 coworkers that could deal with the managing attorney, emailing them telling them to mail stuff out, the week I was on vacation. A co-worker who started being demanding. And I got a new job. © Slowkey7466 / Reddit
  

• At my job, I led a big project, handling nearly all of the work while my manager had no clue how the software worked. During big presentations, she would thank me for the slides as if that was all I had done. She always made me prepare detailed speaker notes for her, because she couldn’t present the material on her own. I spent months quietly picking up the pieces, making sure everything ran smoothly while she got the credit.
  Fed up, for her next spotlight, I planned it. I removed the notes she relied on, leaving only the slides. During the presentation, she stumbled over every point, muttering and babbling while the room grew awkward. I quietly let the moment unfold, then uploaded the full timeline and everything properly labeled in my name. A week later, I handed in my notice and left for a new job where my work would actually be appreciated. Soon after, she was fired, unable to lead even a single project without the notes I had always supplied

• I worked as a project coordinator, basically doing half of my manager’s job because she didn’t understand the software we used. When a big presentation was coming up, she told me to “polish her slides,” even though I’d built the whole thing.
  She presented my project to upper management, got a round of applause, and didn’t even look in my direction. So I quietly uploaded the project timeline, all in my name, to the company’s shared drive where executives could see who actually did the work. Then I handed in my two-week notice and took a job with a competing firm.
  Two months later, my old manager called asking how to access the reports I’d built. I told her to check the shared drive, where the executives had already seen the timestamps.
  She didn’t last the quarter.

• ​I was covering the workload of a recently departed colleague, and my team was stretched thin. When I approached my boss to ask for extra pay to compensate for the added responsibilities, he just laughed in my face and said: “HR will simply find a replacement who will do it for the existing salary. Everyone is replaceable.”
  ​His arrogance was the final straw. Instead of arguing, I immediately contacted the Human Resources department and requested a complete copy of the company’s severance policy. I didn’t tell anyone, but the tension in the office was thick as I calmly went about my business for the rest of the day.
  The entire office was stunned by my next move: I didn’t resign. Instead, I sent a certified letter to the CEO. In the letter, I used the official severance policy terms, combined with the cost of recruitment and training, to create a detailed financial forecast of what it would cost the company to replace me and my overworked team if the current toxic management continued.
  ​I made the case that the cheapest path was to fix the management problem. My boss was not happy. However, the financial warning hit home with the executive team. The next week, the only person who was “replaced” was my boss, proving his little philosophy wrong.

Quitting a job can be bold, satisfying, and sometimes even fun. If you loved these stories, read “I Asked My Colleague to Wear Deodorant, and Things Blew Up With HR” for another wild workplace incident.