The Art of the Rage Quit
I’ve been enjoying this thread on Twitter.
It’s a torrent of stories of workplace woe (from offices, kitchens, media outlets, grocery stores) and how the worker abruptly walked out one day, leaving a ball of fire in their wake.
There are some funny stories here but most of them just make your blood boil. It begins by marking the three-year anniversary of a positively scruptious “rage quit”:
3 years ago, I was late to work b/c a man set off a bomb in the subway. Most of my team hadn’t arrived when I got in, but my boss YELLED at me anyway. I let her finish, smiled, then told her I quit b/c I was starting a job at The New York Times. […] There is nothing unprofessional about making fun of managers who disrespect you or your work. Silence around abuse only allows it to propagate.*
That’s the way to do it!
Hundreds of other people have chimed in with their own rage quitting storiess. Here are some highlights:
I can top that one! 9/11 was on a Tuesday. My office was closed Wed, Thurs and Friday. We all came back Monday. On our next paycheck we were all docked pay for the missed days.*
Can you imagine? Docked for days not worked during 9/11!
I rage quit 3 years ago. I was laughed at in a meeting for asking for help & told that if I didn’t have things that were back filed put away I would be fired. Immediately walked to my desk, wrote a resignation, and told them I quit. Moved to a new city & started over the next week.*
My personal favourite:
A job colleague did a planned rage quit. She left a whole side of raw salmon in her locked desk drawer, crazy glued the lock, locked her office and crazy glued that lock. After a week they called the hazmat team. The office never really smelled ok after that.*
As much as I dislike going to work, I never had bosses as bad as those ones. There was the coffee shop manager, I suppose, who threatened to fire any team member who went home for Christmas (and thus be unavailable to work as usual on Christmas week) but I’d been planning to quit anyway so it didn’t exactly come to a rage quit. I enjoyed how this manager passive-aggressively failed to reply to my notice letter in any official or unofficial way though: I was just gone.
To counter the idea that bosses have to be awful (i.e. because being awful is a choice) here’s a nice one:
my best friend died a few years ago and my workplace gave me a week of bereavement leave. “But we weren’t related” I said. “You were friends for 22 years. Close enough. Go be with the family” said the boss. It’s possible not to be a jerk, bosses!!*
About Robert Wringham
Robert Wringham is the editor of New Escapologist. He also writes books and articles. Read more at wringham.co.uk