Tuesday, August 10, 2010

This week in leaving a job suddenly, and with great flair: David Allan Coe would be proud

I only ever give two weeks notice, clean up my space and pass on relevant information and contacts to my boss so the person who follows will have a leg up. But for years when I waitressed in various jobs I would dream about untying my apron and throwing it at various managers before storming out. I saw this once, and all that happened was that I had to work longer filling it for the girl who did it. The closest I came to this sort of behaviour was when I told the total jerk in a bar I worked for I would not be finishing out the weekend - oooh, rebel.

But I have always admired people, while not personally knowing any, who go bigger. I have a friend who recently lost her job after pouring not one but two pints of beer over her boss's head while out after work. I knew someone else who text-messaged his boss in the middle of the night, while drunk, some choice words about quitting. I recently worked with someone who began sending witty – and inappropriate – responses to spam and eventually, press releases in his final days. He also walked around when everyone was busy saying "I'm bored" a lot. I also once heard tell of a chap who leaked an entire office worth of salaries, ran up a bunch of debts, stole an office laptop and abandoned his car at the Abu Dhabi airport before booking it in the middle of the night - but I am pretty sure that was just a rumour.


Thechive.com reports the inspiring saga of Jenny (no last name yet, probably 30 seconds or so for that) who on Monday morning emailed her fellow employees 33 pictures that outline her reasons for quitting, most of them to do with her highly-suspect sounding boss Spencer. (She overheard him calling her a Hopa, whatever that means.) As the piece de la resistance, she outs him for spending 19.7 hours a week on the lame-ass Facebook game Farmville. 



The same day Steven Slater, a 38-year-old flight attendant for JetBlue in the US, reportedly had it with a passenger, so he told off the rest of the aircraft, grabbed a beer and pulled the emergency chute. While he is out on bail and awaiting a court appearance next month, he has become a sort of national hero. I will enjoy watching the Saturday Night Live sketch this fall and reading about the job offers, book deals and talk show appearances that are pouring in, likely several hours from now. Facebook tells me someone has already recorded The Ballad of Steve Slater, including the line "some lady took her bag down and hit Steve in the head and here's where it lead".

Something tells me that they'll both be just fine. Also, they should totally hang out.

Anybody have good tales of quitting? Or can remember big movie scenes where people say Take this job and shove it?


Update: As anonymous points out, the plucky upstart assistant Jenny is a hoax. Instead she is aspiring actress Elyse Porterfield. Nice meme! (is that the right way to say that? I've heard it from the kids) 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/11/elyse-porterfield/

Ann Marie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Essam Al-Ghalib said...

Here is my best quit.

I was working for Wells Fargo Bank in California as a telephone banker in customer service. Got a call from a woman that was outraged at being charged $25 a check for bouncing four checks. She was livid. I tried calming her down and started reversing her fees, the entire $100. She continued her tirade which I put up with until she said, "You are all thieves, all of you. You should all burn in hell, even you. You think reversing my fees is the end of it, you thief."

"You know what lady, why don't you go fuck yourself," somehow came out of my mouth.

She was flabbergasted. "What did you say?", she asked.

"You heard me, go fuck yourself," I said again and disconnected the call.

I then walked into my supervisor's office and quit after telling her what I had just said to a client of the bank. My supervisor didn't try to stop me.

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