Just quit. I mean it
I jacked in a dreary, dreadful call centre job (which I was over-qualified for anyway) after getting turned down for a promotion- which the company instead preferred to give to others who had been there for less time than I had- some of whom I had actually helped train to do the job in the first place!

Upon being sent the email that told me I hadn't got the role, I immediately decided to hand in my notice, I didn't even care if I didn't have another job to go to. By the time my notice was up I still didn't have another job, so I spent a month living on my savings before eventually landing another job which paid £2k a year more than I would have earned had I got the promotion I went for in the first place, and ia a much less miserable and hostile environment.

So all I can say is- is you've got a job you hate, then don't wait for things to turn themselves around, don't meekly send off aplications in the vain hope you'll get an interview. Quitting a crap job is the best kick-up-the-backside you'll ever get, you'll be more determined to do better and job interviewers, believe it or not, will actually be impressed that you've got the balls to make your own decisions rather than spend your life muttering about your crap job but doing nothing about it.

Wow, there's a book there. I could make millions.
(Katabatic wasn't, and will never be on, Sat 24 May 2008, 18:34, Reply)

Corporates... don't trust them
In life the system is simple:

Low risk = low rewards
High risk = high rewards

Problem is... you only have to read the answers here to see what it really is.

A power exchange.

You start off with no power. We all take on jobs that are, frankly, crap. We have no power or control and are only doing something until management finds a cheaper way of doing it. Then they'll drop you like a hot potato. An Indian can do it cheaper? Then off your job goes. A computer can do it... well guess what?

And here's the horrible horrible truth - the management can't even change it. One rival does it, they cut their costs. We go to a shop and we see the rival company's DVD player at a nice cheap price and we think "oooh, cheap DVD player!" So if they don't do the same cost-cutting as their rivals, they're buggered.

So if we shop purely on price, we're messing up people's jobs, careers and lives. And the support we'll get will be crap because the employees will keep leaving and taking their knowledge away. Flouncing like so many people we're reading about...

The only way we get great jobs is:

Do hard stuff.
Do crap stuff nobody else wants to do (a reliable veg picker can make £30k a year and binmen do well too).
Do stuff that nobody else knows how to do.

But by god, I've just written the most boring post ever....
(clopinettes, Sat 24 May 2008, 16:52, Reply)

It didn't feel particularly good at the time
...but looking back it was undoubtedly the right thing to do.

II used to work at a care home for mentally handicapped people with challenging behavior. Not the most PC of sentences, but you get the idea.

My Dad was the manager, and he did a fucking good job. I am proud to say that his people skills were excellent, and he had a real rapport with the staff. He listened, he smiled a lot, and most importantly, he actually cared.

You'll have to excuse the sketchiness of the next paragraph. I'm not 100% on the details, but be assured it is true and it's enough to make my point.

Overnight the company changed hands. This was done without my Dad knowing. They had planned to get rid of him for ages, presumably because he was spending too much money, in their view. This new company ran the place like a business, not a care home, and within a week or so my Dad was made redundant. He did have a shot at a court case but a lot of official feet dragging made him miss some sort of deadline that made the case void.

The staff were up in arms, and were extremely hostile to the new management. Demands for my Dad to get his job back were ignored, even laughed at. To this, the staff threatened a walk out, which never happened.

I left pretty much immediately, because the place was falling to pieces. I don't think I went through any proper channels, either. I just...left. I remember one of the new managers trying to ask me something and I just looked at them, and the expression on my face must've said it all, because they fell silent and walked away.

None of the staff had the balls to stand up to them in the end, no formal complaints were given, basically after my Dad bent over backwards to make his staff happy, no-one helped him. He's never been the same since.

So I left.

Things are a bit better now, his new job on a building site has toughened him up lots and he's lost his flab, but financially we're not half as well off.

Apologies for the lack of cheer...
(oneltrchardonnay, Sat 24 May 2008, 15:43, 1 reply)

not me, my mate
my best mate(now sadly deceased) used to be a stripper. strangely, this is not as glamorous as you'd think.
she never stripped fully, just down to her knickers, although many punters considered this ridiculously over-dressed and attempted to remedy the situation. she was only small, about 5ft 2, so she was easily outweighed by the sweaty, hairy beer monsters she had to deal with.
bad parts of the job included:
3 attempted rapes
being hit with a chair/pool cue/bottle/table/fist
clothing torn to shreds
being spat at
being doused in beer
having sambucca poured on her head, which some twunt then tried to light
being picked up and flung across a bar
having a ciggy put out on her chest

as you can see, this job was not all it was cracked up to be. the money, however, was very good for her minimal needs. she was earning up to £300 for 2 days' work, which, as far as i know, was used to fund her boyfriend's phone-sex addiction.

she put up with all this with a smile and a cheery manner that i miss greatly.

the straw that cracked the dromedary's spine was having her handbag stolen from the boss' car. the place they were working that night had a really bad reputation, so her idiot boss had left the car unlocked to facilitate a quick getaway(he'd done a runner from a bad pub the week previously, leaving her there alone to deal with the shit until i picked her up in a taxi). my mate believed - and i agreed with her - that this meant the theft of her bag was her boss' responsibility. when she asked him if he was going to replace what had been stolen, he screamed at her "WHAT? you don't expect ME to pay for your shit, do you? YOU decided to bring the fucking thing with you, YOU can replace it yourself!"
my friend was so stunned, all she could manage to say was "fine, i quit."

the following week, he phoned her, all cheerfulness and sunlight, as if the handbag incident had never occured. "ah, *****, you've got a busy weekend coming up, i'll pick you up at 6 as usual."
"no, you won't" says she.
"WHAT?" he snarls
"well, in case you're hard of hearing, i'll tell you again; i quit."
"YOU CAN'T FUCKING QUIT! I WON'T LET YOU!"
"listen, you greedy, cowardly, money-grabbing cocksucker" she says, "even if i worked in a leper colony, it would be better than working for a fuck-up like you. now, take your shitty job, fold it sideways and SHOVE IT UP YOUR USELESS FAT ARSE! I QUIT!"
and, with that, she slammed the phone down on him.
i was so proud of her.

length? 12 months before he died of misdiagnosed stomach cancer
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sat 24 May 2008, 15:10, Reply)

Stalled




I got a job running a market stall selling shite diamante jewellery, studded belts, music tee shirts, with a small record & CD section and what have you.

The owner had neglected to inform me that I was the third bloke to be running the stall in two months. The first bloke had been scared off by a horde of minichavs who'd robbed the place blind repeatedly. The next bloke was still receiving medical treatment after the minichavs bigger brothers had beaten the shit out of him for having the cheek to put a stop to the chavlets robbing expeditions - thereby putting their fledgling criminal careers in jeopardy.

I spent my days being surrounded by scumbags who'd lean on my shoulders so that I was pinned to my seat while their siblings robbed the place blind - all the while the other stallholders looked on with a "Thank fuck that's not me" attitude. After they'd gone, I'd have to trudge up to a nearby alleyway and recover most of the stolen merchandise which had been dumped behind the bins. I'd shove it all back on display only to have to repeat the whole charade the next day.

Eventually, the joys of freezing my arse off in an unheated stall, being mocked by truanting chavs and ignored by punters of any description made me realise that a life on the dole was a far more attractive proposition. So, come the usual stripping of the store, I trudged up to the alleyway, picked up the dumped merchandise and.... dumped it in a large commercial bin, went back to the shop, picked up the remaining stuff and dumped that too. I then half-inched the CD collection, emptied the contents of the till into my pocket and fucked off.

I rang the owner the following day to say that I'd been threatened with a knife and was in fear of my life if I ever went back. In a rather nonchalant manner he enquired if I knew anyone interested in running the stall in my place and that was it. I spent the next couple of months flogging off the CDs for beer money.
(Fanta Menace Is tall enough to see over the fence, Sat 24 May 2008, 14:46, Reply)

Leaving Camp Spoilt Weasel.
Most likely no-one will remember my tale of Camp Spoilt Weasel in the US, but after having made it through the first summer there (I still have no idea how - seven days a week, 7 am - midnight, four days off in two months, blatant xenophobia and mild religious bashing, etc) I decided for some inexplicable reason to go back for another dose.
Well, I met a girl on the second day and we got on like a house on fire. by the next week, it was fairly clear to a lot of people that we liked each other, but, as she had a boyfriend back in Blighty, there was nothing happening.
Anyhoo, Conditions that year were pretty tought indeed. In addition to the heat (up to 45 degrees C for a couple of days) and the immensely long hours, the food was terrible. It had been palatable the year before, but this time it was foul. As such, we started losing staff - they were dropping like flies from exhaustion and malnutrition.
The camp realised something was happening, so they decided to send each one of them who passed out home, but told their company that sent them out that they had been sacked for misconduct, etc, anything to stop themselves being blamed.
Now, as much fun as I was having being paid to do archery and paintball, I started to get pretty worried about this girl. She was having trouble getting up in the mornings and would pass out in the evenings. As such, I took her to the on-site medical building and they but her in a bed for the night. The next morning, the camp owner had a word with her and told her if she didn't get herslf sorted, she'd be out. This wouldn't normally sound like a bad thing, but it meant that the company that sent you out there cancelled your flight home, visa and medical insurance.
A few of us took her out and tried to feed her up on stuff that wasn't cooked on the camp and she felt a bit better. The next day, she seemed ok, but they sacked her anyway.
Now, feelings for the girl aside, I really couldn't stand by and watch them dump her in the nearest dead-end town to make her way back to the airport on her own. So I marched up to the camp owner's office, told him where he could put the job and left with her. By this point, she really was no no state to try sort out a new flight home, or anything, really. As a parting shot, the camp told us they had informed the police and as such, we had seven days to leave the country before we would be arrested for visa violations.
We managed to limp into Philedelphia on a Greyhound bus (like playing sardines with unstable people) and holed up in a youth hoste while I tried to sort out a flight home for her. The company that sent her out (Camp America) tutted a lot at me, but eventually let her book one of their spare flights for £200. luckily, I'd organised my own flight and even luckier, I was on BA staff travel as Dad used to work in the cargo section at Heathrow. This meant I could get any BA flight whenever I liked. Just by chance, the flight home they booked her was on BA.
All so far, so good.
Things started to get better after that. We got to the airport and the checkin staff made a fuss of her as she still looked a bit peaky and as it was a very empty flight, we got to sit next to each other, too.
When we got home, she was picked by by her dad and I honestly thought that would be last I saw of her. I don't think I can say how sad that made me feel. I knew she had a boyfriend, so i wasn't really expecting anything, but it didn't make it easier.
As it turns out, we've now been married for nearly four years, have two kids and a house in Switzerland.
I don't think I've ever made as good a decision as to have quit that camp.
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Sat 24 May 2008, 14:02, 13 replies)

Hitting them where it hurts.....
Long time lurker, first time poster, big time loser.

As I was coming to the end of a job in a particular hotel/pub after 3 long, painful years (I had found much better employment elsewhere) I thought I'd go out with a bang.

When I was cooking in the kitchen (where else would one cook?) I gave much bigger portions to the customers (insert your own joke here) that I should have, when I was working in the bar, I purposely made mistakes (logic correction: yes, I know that if I did it on purpose, then it doesn't count as a mistake!) thus, costing the company more money. Some of favourites include, spilling half a bottle of vodka and scotch, breaking glasses and generally arsing around. Then, I went back into the kitchen and spoiled a lot of their food supplies (again, more money down the drain). Then, my coupe de grace, I short changed the customers I'd always hated. They were too drunk to care (or notice).

Yep, in one weekend, I estimated I caused about £500 worth of damage. That'll teach them to stiff me out of double time when they promised it!

Length? Ask the customers. They received my bigger portions.
(The Stig, Sat 24 May 2008, 13:17, Reply)

Not funny - to me - but...
...I just terminated my job as an act of revenge against my boss - whom was my love master for 6 months - when she decided to play away while I had a week off trying to hold my family together while my neice was stolen by social services, so I errupted & told her where to go, & now she has no supervisor. Unlucky. Cunt she is.
(Infernus Annoying board Nazis on, Sat 24 May 2008, 12:45, 5 replies)

Diesel and acid don't mix
As a young neighbour, I was prone to the proclivities of the under 20's, drugs, booze, sex, and staying up till all hours of the week. At this time I was working as an ice cream slave churning out bucket loads of said product for the princely sum of 4 quid an hour. The fact that an 18yr old tripper that had a predilection for the nitrous oxide tank used to whip the cream (bulbs) was responsible for the entire shop's livelihood was lost on the alky fuckers that ran the soon to be doomed ship. So they thought that I was a good and willing serf for their plans to dominate yuppie ice cream land. But alas for them, I had lungfulls of N2O and a head full of various chemicals and spent my time in a haze at work and at home. This behaviour was not lost on my employers, especially when after a 3 day non sleeping acid filled bender i set off for work in my car. The "Red Beast" was a little low on fuel so i swang by the service station and proceeded to fill my tank with oily goodness. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the strange metal cap over the nozzle indicated that the fuel inside was diesel, not very friendly to my petrol powered beast. So about halfway to work the car starts ghugging and producing a white smoke that obliterated sight in all 4 lanes behind me for the rest of the journey. I nursed the beast to work and pondered the strange situation when it dawned that i had spiked my own car. So as any drug addled soul would do i took the first logical thought that seeped into my head and tried to siphon the diesel out of my car. In n a drug addled state it probably wasn't the best of moves, I copped a lungful of stinky petrol/diesel, spilt it over my work uniform and staggered into work an hour late, red eyed , scattered and reeking of fuel which permeates the pristine environs of an ice cream shop like nothing else. My boss began a tirade at me and then the smell hit him and he asked what the fuck I was doing turning up to work in this state, I mumbled my predicament and his response was a chorus of denigration on my work ethic. So I said Fuck you, I quit and turned and caught the tram home to catch up on some much needed sleep. The next morning i was woken with a very subdued boss asking me to come back as i was the only person who knew how to make the very substance that the business depended on, so after a few minutes of ego boosting i agreed to come back to work albeit with a plan to do the worst job possible and empty the nitrous cylinder whilst on the payroll. I lasted a week. Then they sacked me. Ha
(neighbour of the beast 668 has watched you in secret on, Sat 24 May 2008, 12:30, 1 reply)

The M&S underwear crotch bulge game!
I worked for M&S over Christmas, helping out during the rush and getting some much needed funds, it was only for a few months so hardly 'I quit' material but towards the end I was doing a lot of long late nights where you're basically just waiting for the next lorry full of xmas goods to arrive at bastard-o-clock in the morning to be hurriedly unloaded, categorised and delivered and such, and then more idling about alone doing shop tidying, waiting.

So, in the interim lengths of inactivity, you get bored, and I'm one of those guys who really doesn't do bored well. Regular b3tans will know this makes me do increasingly extreme expressions of my sick sense of humour to keep me entertained, this usually comes out pretty creatively on here, but in a large department store on my own...

I started making stuff out of all the debris lying around, people would find 'foam dollies' behind me, same process as making a corn doll but with packing foam, and there was a lot of Xmas debris around too so little random Xmas decorations starting popping up in various departments for the staff to wonder about come morning. Most of my creations disappeared into the bins from whence they came pretty quickly, but some of my better ones stuck around a while. These are just examples, and I got increasingly creative and obsessive as the boredom started to get to me just from trying to stay sane.

One day early on I noticed the mens underwear department had four of those plastic models that were just legs and a torso, but they had no crotch! What kind of idiot tries to sell underwear to your average already insecure male with models that appear to be neutered I thought, 'Buy our underwear, as modeled by Eunichs!' (hey, it's how my head works). So I went around and added rolled up balls of foam packing (the stuff like white polystyrene sheeting) to them.

In a few days the underwear got changed and the packing got removed, so I added some more padding back into them, but having noticed this now the day staff removed it immediately, and so a contest was born!

I would try and time how long I thought it would take for the day staff to stop watching the models, then pack them out again, and see how long the foam balls stayed in there, and to make it more interesting I would slowly increase the size of them night by night, to see how silly-big they could get before they were removed. I once went for one whole week this way and I took a mate in to show him, we were giggling like loons amongst Xmas shoppers as he took pictures with his phone of these bulging underwear displays. You had to be there.

In my last few weeks I started doing 'Realistic Bulges ©' by actually making a sort of false cock out of the foam and packing tape, I actually got so good at it that by the time I applied them you could tell the religion of each dummy thru the underwear! Then I got really silly and had themes, like trying to give them characters (drawing faces on them & such). Christmas was an obvious one, two baubles and a small balloon, two sparkly fir cones and a bit of wire tree branch, you get the idea. I found myself picking up stuff that fell on the floor during work duties 'cos they looked vaguely male-genitalia-like and saving them for quiet moments of crude cock crafting. I do recall a few times of sitting on the loo during break and idly making one from the contents of my pockets. I'm sure Freud would have a field day but if you know me well you'll know I just aren't in any way squeemish about such things and it amuses me that others are.

Finally I went to see my friend Carol who worked at a sex shop around the corner, whom I knew as a friend but also from working there now and then cash in hand, and she had some novelty items called 'Sticky Willies'. They were small flaccid cock and balls made of that odd rubber that you can throw at windows and it'll stick and crawl down it (there was a big craze once for octopodes). They were a little smaller than your average cock but flesh coloured and quite realistic, and she let me have some cheap, one for each underwear model (4), and on my last day, after a few days of doing nothing in the hope they would forget for a while, they were applied.

I went in expectantly the next working day and they'd removed the underwear display entirely.

I wonder if I broke anyone's mind...

Length? Blaarb!
( ..wil, Sat 24 May 2008, 12:01, 11 replies)

Repost from aaaaaaaaaages ago
I knew the job was over when I was invited by post to a 'fact finding interview about my performance over the last six months'. I asked another manager for reassurance "This is normal right? This happens at the end of everyone's first six months right?"

He took the letter off me, glanced at it briefly then said "Um, no that's what we do when we want to sack people. Bye".

I knew another job (sorry, I mean bout of soul-less IT procurement drudgery) was over when I stopped responding to work emails, invoices, phone calls etc and started referring out loud to my dustbin as my "special cupboard" and the shredder as my "chamber of secrets". If you shred or bin all your work, you don't have to do anything right?

Therefore when managers came over to ask me where the invoices for their PC's, servers etc were, I could honestly say "Well, I don't seem to have them on my desk". It wasn't my fault, the three days training I had for the job was from a gibbering loon who told me nothing about the role, instead he said "I like buses" for three days.
(Wascally Weasel now with 100% fewer jokes., Sat 24 May 2008, 11:33, Reply)

Ooo
My current job - I work for Ahem, no comment - I left them in June 2006 which was something I was planning to do anyway. I'd been offered a job and was working out how to quit tactfully - I'd been stressed and pretty much pissed off about the job and was looking for a reason to go anyway.

Anyhoo.

I was always good with my expenses and generally kept on top of them - At one point, I'd been summoned to London for a 1 hour pointless meeting by "Mr A" - fair enough - but when I came to claim expenses, "Mr A" was my approver... The total expense claim was over £2k and "Mr A" rejected the lot as I "Hadn't put any narrative on the expense claim" and then laughed in my face - needless to say I was furious (I'd had a bad day anyway) and told him that "In that case, screw you, I quit" - He laughed some more.

I mentioned all this to my manager and said, I'm sorry "Mr B", but I've had enough of all this and "I quit" - I was polite about it all too.

On the face of it, it looked like I quit over the expenses, but I had the job lined up anyway :) - The whole truth came out anyway but the grandstanding was over and that was all I wanted to do anyway :)

Funnily enough - 14 months later, after getting "released" from a probation with company "Y" (Bunch of tossers) - I went back to the old job on more money and am still there now :)
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Sat 24 May 2008, 10:29, Reply)

and the reason is...
morning kids, been a long time since i last posted - good golly yes.
I had a wonderful 6 years working in that there London before being made redundant at the height of the dotcom tits up. So back up to Yorkshire with my tail between my legs to try and find gainful employment whilst using my parents house like a hotel. After a series of temp jobs working as late night security guard in a warehouse, I finally secured a full time position doing my real job - technical artwork. Now this was for a proper repro house instead of a nice cushy little design or marketing agency like i was used to, and I was starting on the bottom rung instead of going in at the top but - the money was ok and I needed the work.
As it turned out, the work was fucking awful. My line manager was a pug faced scrawny tart who was having an affair with the studio manager. We had a number of runins on points of process. But the Studio Manager was the worst. He used to walk around slow clapping to encourage people to work faster (it didn't work). One of his favourite lines was - if you're not looking at your screen, you're not working. He used to bark this at full volume. When the server went into meltdown and couldn't be restarted for 3 whole days he turned purple shouting at 40 plus artworkers telling them to find something to do. You're here to fucking work, not talk I think he said at one point. We couldn't access anything. He eventually started writing out hugely aggressive memos and printing them on A3 and pinning them to the wall with a flourish. It was like watching the Roman army posting edicts. We took to photocopying them, marking up the amends in red pen (he couldn't spell for toffee and his grammar was shit) and posting them over the top.
After 5 months, I had had enough. I asked for a pre appraisal meeting and presented my resignation letter. Steve (for that was his name) looked genuinely shocked. Im not enjoying it here - I said - and I don't think it's worth my staying. He asked what job I had got that was prompting this decision, and I told him that I didn't have a job lined up. I would much rather take my chances on the then flaky freelance market. He looked me squarely in the eye and said - we told you what the work was like at interview. I didn't even need to consider the response - Yes Steve, but you're an insufferable cunt. I stood up, cleared my desk and never looked back.
(kaptinkurtz, Sat 24 May 2008, 7:58, Reply)

My mistake
I used to run my own business, and I was pretty successful too. It was a freight-logistics firm employing 23 people. So, not huge but quite a substantial company and given the industry we focussed on it was quite lucrative. We worked with refrigerated goods and used RFID for logging and monitoring – so relatively high tech and there was always a time and temperature imperative. We were good at our work and so were able to charge a premium. Quite stressful though, keeping everything coordinated.

I was pretty focussed on my job, and to be honest I was proud of what I had achieved. I’d built this company up from nothing. But I guess it’s a familiar story – I neglected the other important parts of my life. To cut a long story short, my wife left me in ’03 and took my two daughters with her. I started drinking a lot and buried myself even deeper in my work. Worse, while I had always been a smoker, I now started smoking weed. That is when I really started getting into trouble, as it triggered a psychotic episode.

At first it was nothing too bad; just sometimes hearing things other people didn’t hear. I saw a doctor and got put on Fluanxol. That didn’t help. I tried some other pills and they were no better. My problems got worse and these voices really started to take control. Somehow they were, and probably correctly in hindsight to be honest, telling me that my business was the cause of all my problems and I should sell it.

Now that’s a big call. I had worked really hard, was living very comfortably thank you, plus I had 23 people relying on me for a job. But I was ill, and these thoughts in my head wouldn’t go away and they sort of eroded any form of resistance. So I sold my business. And for much less than it was worth. I must admit though, I felt a huge relief once that was done. Much less stress. I still had these reality distortions however and I tried various drugs like Etrafon and Haloperidol, but to no avail. I was sort of happier, but way off balance. At least I was cashed up, so that was good, or so I thought.

Turns out it was bad. I had been used to a healthy cash flow and now that was finished. I just had a bulk sum which would logically decrease over time. I started getting ideas for making more money. I’m sad to say that my deluded state, at that time (I’m better now), led me to think I could make lots of money through gambling. It was a strange thing – my rational brain was telling me that gambling is for losers, but these voices in my head kept drumming out the same message about the spin of a wheel being my salvation. I’d try and push these thoughts away, but they would come back. Always come back. I’d wake in the middle of the night with this nagging narration explaining how I should risk everything, or be nothing.

In the end it wore me down. I couldn’t shake it. I’d spoken to even more doctors about it by now; I even flew to the U.S. to get help, but to no avail. I just could not get rid of these voices instructing me that I could only redeem myself though spinning the wheel. Eventually, and to my eternal shame, I gave in. I just couldn’t fight it any more. My life was in tatters and I could see no way out. I started believing what the voices said. I started to believe I could gamble it all and, on one game of chance, be set for life. That is how sad things had become.

So, I headed to Las Vegas, hoping for some sort of release I guess. But as soon as I got onto the plane the voices got worse. You know how when you over exert yourself and you can feel the blood pumping through your head, almost hurting as it does so? That is what this was like, except the pumping was a voice, like a drum I could feel; sort of a physical mantra. It was so strange because I had moments of lucidity where I knew that this was, quite literally, madness. But there was this beating, a throbbing really, of ‘Caesar’s Palace’ pounding in my head. I spent the whole flight gripped by those two words piercing my brain - my whole body in fact.

When I landed in Vegas I got out of the airport in a sort of trance. Very hard to explain, but I wasn’t operating like a normal person anymore, even though I knew reality was still there. These voices continually instructing me, the same two words over and over, but at the same time they were sort of steering me too. If that makes sense... like, I had jumped in a cab and asked to be taken to Caesar’s Palace before I even realised it. I can remember feeling sweaty and scared, but at the same time really buzzing.

Anyway, I got to the casino and got out of the cab, and as soon as I did the auditory hallucinations changed. ‘Roulette, roulette, roulette, roulette, roulette, roulette, roulette’. Like a white noise, but with clear definition, if you know what I mean. And it got louder and louder as I walked into the place. My pulse was racing and I felt completely powerless as my feet marched me to the roulette table, but at the same time I was positively wired! I sat down, and as soon as I did the voices changed to ‘Black 24, black 24, black24, black24,black24black24black24’. By now I was so charged up and completely under the control of these inner instructors that I spoke to the pit boss and asked for the table stakes to be raised. To tell you the truth, this is where the bizarreness really gets to me these days, because somehow I, an unknown, got the ok. I won’t tell you how much the limit was but let’s just say it was set to a very large sum. And people knew it too, so a small crowd gathered to watch the drama. I was so pumped – and the voices in my head were chanting ‘black24black24black24black24 black24black24black24black24’ over and over, like super intense and so fast and blurred it was as if it was one word, one continuous order. It was all I could hear. And in truth, it was all I could see and all I could feel too. The voices had taken complete control. So I dumped what was left of my life financially down on black 24. The croupier spun the wheel and dropped the white ball. The wheel whizzed around one way, the ball the other way. The voices kept on with ‘black24black24black24black24’... and then things went into treacle motion as the wheel came gently to a halt and the ball bounced around the rim, ever more slowly, and then settled in a slot. Red 36. And the voices said ‘Fuck’.
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Sat 24 May 2008, 5:11, 3 replies)

oh yeah.
First 'real' job was working as a project engineer for a small firm that sold water/wastewater projects and equipment. Owner was a psychotic loon who expected you to work on Saturdays and Sundays even if nothing needed to be done. On 24 December he gave out Christmas hams and bonuses...on the last day of December I put my office key in an envelope with a resignation letter and walked. My friends there said he dug hard and deep to find something I'd stolen or whatever...of course there was nothing. Evidently I was the first guy to get the better of him. Hah! At that time he had 24 people working for him; two years later he had 3 employees and that's the way he is today, 18 years later. He has a shit reputation for being a crook too.
( HairyTwatter certified eel and sodium salesman, Sat 24 May 2008, 2:56, Reply)

Quitting my job was one of the best things I've ever done.
I had been working at this place for quite a few months, having transferred from a different branch from which i'd worked for a few years. My level of experience was well up there. I was basically doing the amount of work that 2 people would usually do.

My boss recognized this and pulled me aside one day when one of the other ladies couldn't cope with the amount of work she'd been given and she asked me to essentially swap with this woman, clean up the backlog and manage it.. and the next opportunity for progression that came up would be as good as mine.

So i took this all on with a big smile on my face, pleased to have been given this recognition and did my best to clean it up and manage it. It was expected that cleaning it up would take at least 3 months. It took me about a month to clean it up, which was a huge effort in itself with a considerable bit of overtime put in, and i was praised for my efforts blah blah blah.

Next thing we hear that a new supervisory role was coming up, that there'd be applications to put in and that we should all work really hard in the meantime. Most of the office were expecting that i'd get it no problems. I'd been doing it for the longest, i knew what i was doing and basically it was only natural progression. Plus my manager had given me the "wink wink" about it, so i was pretty pleased - hard work paying off and all that.

Next thing she calls us all together and announces that she'd given the position to someone else, who had absolutely no idea what she was doing, who only worked part time and would constantly have to leave early for a range of bullshit reasons. As she announced this to me and the rest of the team she wouldn't even look at me.. she deliberately avoided looking at me, and then she hurried off afterwards so i couldn't confront her about it.

As you could imagine I was fuming. I almost quit right there on the spot, but instead i gave it the weekend to mull over, with plans of asking for an explanation at the next available opportunity.

When i asked her she said stuff about "ohh well it was a quick decision and I completely forgot about you" and then it was "it has taken you ages to clean up the backlog of mess i assigned you" even when it took a third of the time she'd given me to do it, not to mention the fact that i'd complained about someone about a week previous for trying to bully me in the office, using this as a "conduct issue" when it was clearly a harassment issue. I mentioned the fact that she'd pulled me aside and promised me advancement and asked her if she never had any intention of moving me up the ladder, why the hell had she given me all of the extra work to do. I stood up, shrugged, said "ok" and walked out. She said she was sorry and that her decision had been made, that there'd be other opportunities later on and to keep my spirits up.

Keep my spirits up I did. I wrote my resignation letter straight after that and sent it just before leaving for the day. The letter pretty much outlined how disgusted i was at how this other girl had been chosen for the job when she couldn't even do her own work properly, disgusted at the fact that it hadn't even been officially advertised, and disgusted at the fact that she'd promised me the job, given me all this extra work to do and then didn't live up to her end of the bargain. I explained how hard I'd worked, how I'd gone about using my initiative to help the rest of the team, and how my experience doing this was well above anyone else's level and how it didn't make sense. I outlined that i was giving the job 100% and that it was pointless staying around if my efforts weren't going to be recognized. I had to give 2 weeks notice, so i basically said "unless you can offer me something better than this, consider this email my 2 weeks notice".

Well, the next day was interesting. Upon arrival to work, I noticed the girl who'd gotten the promotion was outside crying. Nothing new.. she'd cry about anything really. She saw me and gave me a death glare. That was new.. usually we'd have lunch together and talk about sex and boys. As soon as my manager saw me she called me into her office, and told me that she'd reconsidered her decision, taken the promotion off this other girl and said i was welcome to it. I asked her if she thought this was a better option, and she said "yes, of course it is, how could it not be? I don't want to lose you.. you're one of my best workers, you deserve it." I asked her how was i supposed to work under her and respect her when she'd taken the job off someone else just like *that* and given it to me, and how did i know she wasn't going to do this to me? I asked her that if i deserved it, why it just hadn't been given to me straight away? She couldn't really give me an answer and i said "sorry, i don't consider this a better option.. you've just compromised whatever integrity you had, and you've upset the entire office. My decision has been made. There'll be other opportunities for these other people to take over my job. My resignation stands. Keep your spirits up because recruiting people is FUN!" And walked out with a huge smile on my face.

She ended up giving the position to 3 people (who had no idea what they were doing) to share. Before I left she tried to ask me to teach these other girls how to do stuff properly. I laughed and said "perhaps you can get C******* to do it.. you did choose her over me, after all. Clearly she's much better at training than I am." I told her i'd do a handover, but that was it.

I left a bit more than a week later. She tried to ask me for a months notice but I said "sorry, my contract only states 2 weeks as the requirement". I didn't have another job to go to, and I had accumulated recreation leave and sick leave and decided to take that during my 2 weeks notice period and look for work. I found another job about a week later that paid considerably higher, that was in the city (big bonus) and was completely different to what i'd been doing, meaning a better challenge.

Quitting your job can be daunting, especially when you don't earn much to begin with and don't want to rely on your abusive partner to support you, giving them another means to manipulate you with. You just have to know what you're capable of and be able to leave somewhere without worrying about money and what could go wrong.

It may not have been a great way to leave, but I don't have any regrets.
(brotagaia, Sat 24 May 2008, 2:46, Reply)

Grease
I quit my school play, 'Grease' when I was fifteen because I was bored, busy and had been asked to wear a stupid costume. I was never a fan of Grease anyway, I'm not sure why I auditioned in the first place.
I was one of six backing singers, our costume involved an electric pink skirt with crochets and quavers all over it. It looked tasteless and tacky, it was as static as a badger that had been blow-dried and we were expected to make them ourselves, in the spare time we no longer had because it was all dedicated to the play.
I was given the soprano part which was straining my voice, so I could barely speak when it came to telling the drama teacher, a week before the opening night, that I was quitting. I could have said what I really thought i.e. that she was a dictator in the style of Mussolini, that the play made me retch and the costumes were disgusting.
What I actually said was "really sorry... Geography coursework...have to concentrate on my studies"
She wasn't even cross!
( Peapod Has returned to the fold on, Sat 24 May 2008, 1:13, Reply)

A long, but satisfying revenge.
Revenge is best served cold.

About 6 months ago I met my manager from the call-centre job from hell I did about 5 years back. She made a point of never speaking to me directly, always telling my supervisor what to say to me despite being three feet away from me, as if making eye contact with me was beneath her station. She referred to me as 'the temp' and never bothered to hide her complete contempt for me.

I could have called her names or whatever, but I simply asked whether she was still in the same job as before.

She was.

I said what I now did for a living, as a company director earning nearly twice what she does.

She asked me for a job.

I said no.

And that, my friends, is a million percent more satisfying than all the rants, all the vandalism, all the theft in the world put together.
(Axeman Jim, Sat 24 May 2008, 0:12, 10 replies)

Okay.
So I'm sat at the desk that I share with Vanessa, I'm typing away, looking things up, surfing the web, the usual really, she's bobbing her head in her own little world. Then she starts humming, only it's not to a tune. It's just humming, randomly every few seconds she makes a little noise. It's insanely irritating.

I've just started reading an interesting article when she starts tapping the table, I lose my concentration, I look to her and she just smiles back at me. "How can someone be so bloody irritating?" I ask myself. She won't stop, just a consistant thudding away at the desk.

I put up with it for a further 5 minutes before I just can't take it any longer, I push my chair back, stand up and tell her to "get out from under there.".

That was the worst 'job I ever had, and I'm glad I quit it when I did.
(Belgaer is, Fri 23 May 2008, 22:58, 2 replies)

A bit long, but reduntancy ...
Many, many years ago, I worked for a small web design company. Not many staff, but a good group of guys to work with. Eventually it came to pass that the owners wanted more money to invest in his other interests. I was asked to do some rather odd IT inventory auditing, which turned out to be for the due-diligence process of the buyout. One morning we arrived for work as normal to find some odd people hanging around the work area, dressed in suits and watching is shiftily. Once everyone had arrived we were all called around for an all-staff meeting. We just sold the company, don't worry, your contract/T&Cs are protected under TUPE regulations, here's the new owner, Mr. A R Sole.

His welcome speech did not go down well. He had bought us, and now we were his and would answer to his beck and call. He barked at us about how successful he had been in the past and this was a continuation of this, that our company would now grow and be so much better than before. He explained that he took no shit from anyone – he made his initial fortune working in the diamond mines in South Africa, and that apparently forbids anyone from disagreeing with him. The suited onlookers turned out to be his management team of yes-men who handed around some papers explaining some of the finer detail of the deal. My line manager noticed that the bottom page appeared to contain a spreadsheet of everyone's name and salary – new owners' too – and we were earning more than they were for equivalent roles. Not good.

At lunchtime, the technical and design guys decided to nip across into the city for a pub lunch and talk things over. I was in a meeting with one of the old directors at the time so they left without me. 5 minutes later Mr Sole came charging into the room, cursing and swearing. He was convinced that all the staff had just walked out and were trying to ruin him. I remember the phrase “communist bastards” being thrown around several times. We tried to placate him, mentioning that going to the pub for lunch hardly constitutes an attempt to subvert management, and eventually he decided he'd give them an hour. If they weren't back by then, legal action would be started. Luckily they came back just in time and by late afternoon word came round from our new HR manager that at least one member of the technical and design staff was required to stay in the office to “answer the phones”. I personally thought that the receptionist would do that, but there you go.

Things went downhill quickly from there. Our overtime policy was cancelled (not allowed under TUPE), training budgets were removed and refunds sought for already booked courses. Mr Sole met personally with all of our major customers to reassure them that the takeover didn't mean we couldn't complete our contracts. Due to his sparkling personality, several of our customers began to cancel work or not renew rolling contracts.

I was asked to do some overtime work, which was fairly unusual, but I didn't have a problem. I asked if I could have time off in lieu since that's what had happened before and was written in my contract. I was told no. I pointed out the page and line in my contract which said I was entitled to TOIL. I was told HR would contact me. Later that afternoon I got a call from HR expressing disappointment with my attitude – I asked what part of asking for my contract to be honoured was a bad attitude and was rewarded with silence – apparently no-one had ever questioned HR. I was eventually summoned a meeting with one of the old managers who had been told to “sort it out”. He agreed to my TOIL request and advised me that things were going badly and I should start job hunting.

Everyone in the office could feel the ill wind of change wafting its sickly scent through the company. Three people handed in their notice in the space of a week, but it didn't really affect things much as we had lost so much business from Mr Sole's “shock-and-awe” approach to customer relations we were all sitting around twiddling our thumbs between rounds of Unreal Tournament. Eventually the new owners declared their intention to close their office outside the city and move everyone into ours, much closer to the city centre. A rough calculation showed that almost everyone could fit in once the leavers had gone – one or two more would have to go.

Not long after, I was called into the director's office again. Reading from a script, he explained that due to significant overlap between my job and that of someone in the other office, I was to be made redundant or moved to another, lesser-paying role. He then put the paper down and explained that their HR people had an odd procedure – if I was to take redundancy, it would be exactly four weeks from today. I had to give them notice of my intention within two weeks, then work the following two weeks before leaving. He also noted the files showed I had two week's worth of pro-rata'd holiday owed if I left. Luckily, I had an interview for a new job that very afternoon, so between us we hatched a plan. I used my full holiday entitlement so that I would be on holiday for the last two weeks of the redundancy period. I then waited until precisely 4:55pm on the last day I had to give my notice before I told them I was accepting their generous offer of redundancy. The director smiled and shook my hand as I left the building, waited until 5:31pm and then turned in the paperwork for my leaving for HR to find the next day.

Later, I was told it was just an elaborate bluff to cut my salary – the person whose job I overlapped with so much had almost zero experience in my areas of expertise and they had never intended he should take over my work, for some reason they thought I'd be so happy at being offered an alternative to redundancy that I'd take it without hesitation. There was no handover period and no-one had ever so much as asked for a login to access the production systems. Ex-colleagues e-mailed me with glee to report a nice amount of chaos.

Epilogue :

6 weeks later, I'm happily in a new, better paying job. I get an e-mail telling me that the old company have declared bankruptcy. Management walked into the office just before lunch, told everyone they were out of a job and left again. Staff, understandably upset with this turn of events, staff took what they felt they were owed from the office and left.

Feeling a bit betrayed by the new company, the old owners who had sold out decided to see if there was any way to salvage what remained from the company from the administrators. It turned out that the new company hadn't been very good at record keeping and they had no idea what assets they actually had. I got a phone call from the friendly director asking if I had any “backups” of the asset inventory I had done before the buyout – by a freak chance (ahem) I had a rather complete set of backups on a stack of CDs. I was then invited to visit the old office to compare the inventory to what was left.

What I saw was a scene of carnage. Each desk contained a keyboard, mouse and power cable. PC base units and monitors were conspicuous by their absence. The very large software cupboard now contained the finest collection of empty cardboard boxes money could buy. All of the servers remained, presumably too heavy to carry, but the UNIX boxes had been destroyed by “rm -rf /” and the Windows boxes by good old deltree. The exiting staff evidentially were a tad upset.

But all was not what it seemed. A good friend who stayed with the company until its bitter end had seen the office just before it was locked up – no-one had been daft enough to steal PCs, monitors or anything so obvious, they'd stuck to stationary, office supplies, little odds and ends and such. It was alleged that the new owners turned up later on with a truck and took all the hardware away to their old, supposedly closed office. A few months later, one of the company suits starts his own IT business, and I wonder if I might recognise any of the hardware ...

(Crikey, that's more than a bit long - apologies for much hugeness)
(Ponder, Fri 23 May 2008, 21:32, 2 replies)

The Youth Work Experience Monkey
Many years ago, my department were given a break from ordering paperclips and playing with budget codes, and were given a youth of burgeoning years who was partaking of work experience to give pointless tasks to occupy their time and break their spirit.

Our youth this summer was a gangly creature, more arms and legs than anything else, downy hair and more awkward than a fart at a funeral.

We gave him the usual array of pointless shit to do, making beverages, fetching sweetmeats from the local baker, carrying boxes of nothing in particular from nowhere in particular to places of little interest.

After 6 weeks of the very nadir of bureaucratic nightmares, he cracked. We asked him to get some coffees, which he grudgingly accepted but one person asked him for some convoluted concoction (it might've been double moccachino-chocolate-fudge-decaf), and he stood prosaicly and proclaimed in stentorian tones, "I'm not a fuckin' slave, you're all bastards" and stormed out.

This in itself wasnt a surprise, we all felt the same way on a daily basis, the only difference being he was able to return to school in a couple of weeks time and continue spreading his chlamydia to the females in his year group.
No, the real cap on the whole story was how we watched him cycle off like a bat out of hell on a bike several sizes too small for him, like an enraged Noddy pedalling furiously across the car park, legs moving so fast they were nearly a blur, but his conveyance moving slower than if he were actually pushing it.

It passed a merry 10 minutes of mirth before we returned to our drudgery, secretly envying him his freedom to go and catch nob-rot from some teenage tarts.
(Vic Flange, Fri 23 May 2008, 19:54, 2 replies)

Oh no, this is not the time for this QOTW
I used to be a sound engineer type over here in France, making soundtracks for ads, working with people like Clara Morgane (google her), and generally enjoying life, but work got scarce so ... i'm currently doing a course to learn C# and all that malarkey, and i'm hating it, as Bill Hicks would say i'm like a dog being showed a card trick... I'm resisting the urge to quit and do something else, but I hate quitting.
Anyone got a job for me over in the UK? HELP!
(Alaning, Fri 23 May 2008, 19:34, Reply)

Today, my boss asked if I ever smile.
I replied, deadpan: "My smile will coincide with my letter of notice."

She looked a little hurt.
(Generator cannot be named for legal reasons, Fri 23 May 2008, 19:14, 3 replies)

Anally servicing Lithuanian sailors
“Have you completed that spreadsheet on the P&L for the HR department of Amalgamated Consolidations yet?” barked Tarquin?

I dried my eyes and replied: “I'm afraid not, boss, not with mum's emergency operation today and everything, I'll...”

“Stop mumbling, man! Have you done it or not? And the answer better be yes because your appraisal's due and let me tell you it's not looking too clever, you've had four hours to complete that simple piece of work – a monkey could do it – and if it's not done you can start packing your bags and why haven't you got your company tie on – you're a disgrace – and I could tell you weren't paying attention when I briefed you so...”

“You've had your afternoon coffee, haven't you?”

“Yes, what of it?”

I took a deep breath. I looked at the window at the late evening sunshine. I looked round the badly lit yellow cube hell where I had lost my youth. The office of Consolidated Amalgamation Solutions was empty now, the poor doomed souls who work here having gone home to drink themselves into oblivion until the morning commute crushed their spirits once more. Yes, it was time. I looked my employer in the eye and said: “Because you always turn into a vicious, unreasonable fanny after your coffee, ya choob.”

He started to splutter but I continued: “But you're quite right, I wasn't listening when you briefed me. I was too busy watching a video of your father anally servicing Lithuanian sailors down the docks at a fiver a go. By the way, is that you in the corner licking them clean afterwards? Nice jacket.”

He just stared at me. I got to my feet: “Ah, you're speechless now. That'll be the scoline I slipped in your coffee. They use it to paralyse people having operations.”

Tarquin slumped to the floor. I looked at him, this petty tyrant brought low by his pathetic craving for caffeine. His ugly gash of a mouth hung slack, no more spouting the corporate analingus that had served to drag him up the tiny company ladder. Importantly, his eyes sill flickered with terror. And there was a reaction when I kicked him in the Acer maracas. He was conscious and could still feel pain. I thanked God my plan had worked, at the same time as I asked forgiveness for the many wicked things I was about to do.

The next few hours involved more concentration than I'd ever devoted to my job. Flaying someone alive is far from easy, especially when you are using company paperclips. As well as trying to peel the skin off in one piece, I had to not only keep Tarquin paralysed but also alive and fully conscious. I wanted to him to fully appreciate the sensations of the pickling process especially as it had been such a bitch squeezing all those lemons.

Finally, we were ready. I had been preparing for months so I had them lined up. One after another, hour after hour, over the unbroken space of three days I seduced every woman who had ever been special to him. I used the same strategy of blatant lies he had used on his employees to get these ladies to perform acts that even the Marquis de Sade would have found a bit much. Tarquin's wife had been easy but finding his first love had been really bloody tough. In the end, thanks to Facebook, I'd managed to get her over from Australia to join my unwitting sequential harem. And at each moment of climax I made sure I was looking straight at the double mirror, behind which dangled Tarquin with his now lidless eyes.

Of course, I couldn't leave him to watch such a heartbreaking scene without distraction. So I provided a specialist trinket it had taken me years to find in a back alley shop in the Castro district of San Francisco, one famed in certain circles for its devotion to the extreme intimate arts. True, my electricity bill had rocketed but it was worth the money just to see the look on Tarquin's face when I first turned on “The Fist Of Hercules”.

All good things come to an end. “Tarquin, it's time to end the madness.” He looked at me (well, he had no choice) and I could see hope building in him that I meant to release him. I took some fading pleasure in crushing that dream: “It's time to end the blasphemous horror of your continued existence. You are the worst kind of MBA monkey: a corporate drone who's never happier than when whoring his ass and his mother for a profit. Your life has been devoted to blind greed and the reckless destruction of the lives of those who are weaker and poorer than you. You've got off lightly if you ask me.”

I then inserted the last few bricks of the false wall and left the country for six months trekking in Nepal.

As a result, I am unable to provide a reference from my previous employer. But, rest assured, I have many years' experience in this sector and have a clear understanding of the goals and culture of Amalgamated Solution Consolidated. Finally, I have a proven track record of seeing projects to completion, involving members of my team every step of the way.

I hope you will consider my application worthy of an interview.


(From my yet-to-be written novel... Oh and length, etc)
( calgacus Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, Fri 23 May 2008, 18:36, 1 reply)

misguided youth
I quit my first ever pub job to go see a gig- the tight jobsworth master of the overpriced Scream pub wouldn't give me the night off.

Fair enough reason.

Except the band I wanted to see was...Ramsey- Joe Absolom's band.

I lost my job to see monkey boy from Eastenders do a really poor Green Day impression in a flea pit in North London. He did stare at my arse after the gig though, according to my very drunk, squiffy eyed friend. Worth it? You decide.
(octopuspie, Fri 23 May 2008, 17:00, 2 replies)

When all this was fields.....
and TheWeeWitch was an office junior, our boss was quite beside himself with excitement one morning. Eggy Bob (he had egg sandwiches for lunch every single day) had committed the offence of nepotism.

His sister's eldest daughter had just left (private) school and he'd persuaded her that a career in life assurance would be far more exciting than treking through South American jungles on a gap year trip. The lass had attended one of Edinburgh's fine educational establishments which cost more than I earned a year at the time.

She started the following Monday, and it was immediately apparent that the job description had been "enhanced" somewhat. When informed that she'd be filing (and not her nails), collecting and delivering post, running errands etc, she was vocally horrified. Give her credit, she got stuck into the filing. For a good twenty minutes, then declared she was bored and wanted to do something different. Much eyebrow raising among the rest of us, but we didn't feel we could really say no to her.

The morning passed in a kind of stop-start fashion as we kept having to find new things for her to do. She had the attention span of a toddler. And about the same mentality. An unspoken agreement saw her dispatched on the "early" lunch break at 12 sharp.

She never came back.

Eggy Bob was extremely concerned (understandably) and tried phoning the house several times. Eventually, she answered. Turned out she'd decided that this wasn't the job for her and that she wasn't coming back. She hadn't answered the phone earlier because she wasn't in. She'd got on the bus to go home, but it was going the wrong way. Luckily it was a circular route and she eventually ended up where she wanted to be, but it had taken over two hours. It had never even occurred to her to say anything before she left.

We never saw her again. She was farmed out to relatives in France for the summer, then enrolled at some private "college" (which sounded suspiciously like a finishing school), presumably until she landed herself a well connected husband.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Fri 23 May 2008, 16:58, 28 replies)

oh and...
I was suspended without pay from a Primark for stealing a £3 shirt when in fact i had paid for the item in question and hadn't left the premises. That also prompted me to call the manager a cunt and walk out.

I even got to attend a lecture I was going to miss due to the shift in the afternoon. Bonus.
(Pat_Gash, Fri 23 May 2008, 16:48, Reply)