I've been trying to Quit b3ta
But I just keep coming back for more.

And here I am.
(happylittletulip helpless and delicious, Mon 26 May 2008, 18:23, 16 replies)

I walked out of a top advertising job after being hypnotised
I used to work in advertising as a strategist, for what's consistently judged as the top "creative" agency in the UK, trying to figure out ways into people's heads and writing them down as briefs for creatives.

Structurally speaking, much "creative" advertising works in a very similar way to hypnosis, the main difference being that while hypnosis tends to address individuals directly, advertising addresses collections of individuals, and often indirectly through their peers. What I mean by this is most clearly put in diagramatic form, comparing the process of hypnosis with the advertising process:



It was company policy, confirmed by my line managers and alluded, but never directly referred to, in prior reviews and training days, to surreptitiously use this technique to induce heightened states of awareness (trance) in fledgling trainees; a way of training them in the basics of advertising, identifying those who could not cope with such an environment, picking out the long-termers from the short-termers, and establishing a pecking order between the creatives and the rest of us.

They tried it on me and suceeded to some extent, although I managed to deconstruct it enough to not be wholly taken in by it. After confirming beyond doubt that this is what they were doing by going and talking about it with my line managers, I walked out without warning one day and never came back.

To be honest, the experience fucked me up paranoid-wise for quite a while. Cognitive therapy eventually sorted out the paranoia but not before it had driven me into two years of psychosis.

Nowadays I work with people with learning difficulties, a useful job involving much more well-adjusted individuals.
( octopus footwear raaa, Mon 26 May 2008, 17:14, Reply)

first post, gentle treatement appreciated.
Nothing particularly spectacular. I worked in a call centre for a month. Inbound calls, so not as should destroying as it may have been, and there were a lot of nice callers. However, the managers were douche bags. I replaced my lanyard for my security card with a different one that I owned. Nothing garish, an RAF one I kaged from a grad stall. I was bollocked by my line manager, as he was bollocked by the regional manager, who saw me with it. Then, I was on my break, logged off the system, sat, blatantly on my allowed and scheduled break. I took out my book. Some blonde manager thing came up and said "You can't read in here" I asked why and was told it was company policy. I asked for a reason behind this. It was a fucking Terry Pratchett book I was reading, not a top shelf wank mag. I told her to stick her job up her arse and walked out. This may seem petty, but consider the implications of a company that wont let you read on you breaks, what other shit are they going to pull?
(guyver Only Misanthropy Man can save us now!, Mon 26 May 2008, 16:40, Reply)

this is a quick one
I started a new job on my year out up in Wick. for those of you who don't know where wick is you'll need to take out a map and look under 'The Arse End Of No Where'. It almost as far north as you can get on the british mainland..and everyone is related, a bit too closely for my liking. Think the league of gentlemen in an Austrian cellar.

I lasted 3 hours until lunchtime on the first day of work before driving 5 hours to stay with a mate and drink the next 6 days into oblivion to try and get over the ordeal.
(babyjak, Mon 26 May 2008, 16:38, 2 replies)

I used to work for a large American company that make databases
More specifically I worked for a small arm of this company that provided a web-to-PDA service that was popular when PDAs were popular. At first it was just me and a sales guy - he got the contracts (advertising and content, and some extremely high-end brands too) and I did the coding and design. Then he left, and I was transferred to a manager in San Francisco. This left me as the sole representative of CompanyName Europe. Things went smoothly for a while until I went out to SF for a team meeting, where my new manager told everyone present that the company was going down the tubes and he was jumping ship as fast as he could. He did, and sent an email to all of our clients telling them pretty much the same. Both managers had taken their client databases with them, leaving me the only person who knew anything about who our clients actually were.

So anyway, I got transferred to another (very likeable) manager in the US who was content to let me do my own thing and for 6 months I ran the European side of the business pretty much single-handedly. Anyway. They started up a Parisian office, with a couple of guys from a company they had acquired - i.e. these guys had gone bust, their company had been bought up for a song, and the parent company needed to find something to do with them. So I had a few meetings with them and on the whole things seemed to be going well.

In my personal life, I was going to be going to New Zealand for 5 weeks, to meet the missus's family and for some much needed R&R. I was a little nervous how I was going to do this as I only had four weeks' holiday per year in total, so on one occasion when the French team were over from Paris, I asked them what I should do. Their reply was to ask my American manager if I could work from New Zealand for three of the weeks and then take the other two as holiday - I worked from home most days anyway, so it didn't matter whether I was in London or NZ as long as the work got done. I presented this scenario to my manager and he approved it.

Now in the intervening time, there was a reshuffle and one of the Parisian guys became my new manager. I foolishly assumed that he was as reasonable as the American. At first he was very friendly, especially after I furnished him with a copy of my client list (mistake number one). Then I went away to New Zealand where I continued working, but copied him in on my emails (mistake number two). He went ballistic, saying it was impossible for me to work from New Zealand, even though I'd done it on his advice and it had already been cleared, he sent an email to the clients informing them that his own French team would be handling things while I was away (even though I had already handled them), making me look bad in front of the client (An Unusually Decent Individual at a well-known German car company) and informed me that I would not be required to work while I was abroad, but he would bring up the case with HR when I got back.

So I got back, and he arranged a conference call with HR. From my point of view I'd done nothing wrong except trust a Frenchman (a mistake I've made since, but won't make again). In the call he started asking lots of leading questions about whether I had enough to do, and whether I had plenty of spare time, that sort of thing. I could tell he was getting at something, and in the end I asked him straight: "Do you think I'm working for someone else?"

He leapt straight at it. Yes! I was moonlighting for the company with my former UK manager - and he had the paperwork to prove it. At which point I asked for the call to be stopped until I had legal representation. What he had found - a contract between me and my former UK manager that I would build a website for him - was something I had left on my desk before going away, which had gone mysteriously missing. The short-arsed Napoleon-complexed little bastard had filched it off my desk. And kept quiet about it for eight months. As it happened, I *hadn't* built the website because I didn't really need the money, and didn't really have the time to do so. A quick consultation of my employment contract found that outside work was not against company rules either, provided that it didn't interfere with company work. So, not only had I obeyed my contract to the letter, but he had stolen property from my desk and kept it - if he was concerned that I was moonlighting surely the time to mention it would have been eight months earlier, you know, at the time - so the ghastly little French gnome didn't have a frog's leg to stand on. I mentioned "constructive dismissal" and he went very quiet.

Anyway, he made my life at work difficult for a while, but I kept in there, making sure that I was integral to the smooth running of the company and kissing his arse. As the months went on he started to trust me again until I picked the very worst time to leave and left.

In a panic, he called me and asked me back to train my replacement. It took five weeks, during which I was paid to do basically nothing. In retrospect I should have left them in the lurch, but from what I've heard since leaving, the company's pretty much gone belly-up anyway.

Sorry for long-windedness, but sometimes you have to get these things off your chest. And the moral of the story is, don't fuck with the geeks who run your company.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Mon 26 May 2008, 16:11, Reply)

I was in the middle of a business negotiation
Following a lengthy period hotel-hopping in the City, I came together with my banker to negotiate my business activity and resettle my finances. I proposed remortgaging a string of properties, selling one or two houses and possibly even winding up my chief business, which was in the energy market.
The argument was fraught, and my banker wouldn't budge an inch. I was over my head in debt, I had no guaranteed income and with such massive mortgages, there was no long-term future for me. We argued, we fought, we traded insults with eachother until I got to my feet, slammed my fist down on the desk and bellowed "ENOUGH!"

My life has become a lot less stressful since I quit Monopoly.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Mon 26 May 2008, 15:21, 7 replies)

Why I Quit the UK.
Some of you may remember my post on the Kids QOTW about how I got with a girl, who then found out she was pregnant from her ex. I stuck around and was there for the babies birth which ended up being quite a hurrendous experience due to complications. ( www.b3ta.com/questions/kids/post146569 )

So, A year later, me Kelly and baby Tom have been living with each other now for about 9 months.
Both of us working. My family were pretty much accepting the baby as their own and her family loved me to bits. Money was good, nice car on the drive. I had just started a new job as an IT Manager and all was good. I guess you couldnt ask for a more stable happy family life.

Our long term plans were to have another child at some point. To complete the circle. If that was to happen, and if I was to marry her then I would adopt Tom and be his legal father.

This was, until I started growing suspisious of Kellys MSN activities. Like when I looked up she would close her MSN chat window on the PC like she really didn't want me to look at what she was doing.
Something wasn't quite right and I couldnt put my finger on it.

I was very much in favour of Kelly having her own life outside the house and outside of her part time job. She kept in touch with some friends from a previous job. One guy in particular, Joe used to come round every now and again. He was a cool dude, into Anime, Red Dwarf etc. So we had stuff to talk about. He was at Tom's Christening and at our house warming BBQ. Yeah it was good. But something was a miss...

I did something that some would say is controversial, and an invasion of privacy but I ended up having to do it. But I installed an MSN Chat sniffer on my server, and so Kellys MSN activity was being logged and she had no idea I was able to read her conversations.

I soon found out that Kelly and Joe were messing about on MSN. Talking about sexual fantasies. It then got to the point where they were sat on webcams doing stuff to tease each other and turn each other on. This would go on whilst I was at work, or sleeping. One night she actually sneaked into our bedroom to get her vibrator and took it downstairs. Thinking I was asleep. Nope I wasnt. And infact i soon pulled out my PDA and was reading what she was up to downstairs in real time.

She was really stupid thinking she would get away with this seeing as she was living with an IT Expert using my computer on my network.

From what I could gather, what they were doing was strictly confined to the internet. And I watched their little relationsjhip blossom over a couple of months to see if it actually got physical.

I felt extremely hurt by what was going on, and started planning my exit from the whole situation. I had completely lost trust in Kelly. But was fighting myself beacuse she hadnt actually done anything in real life with him. Plus of course the baby hadnt done anything wrong and I loved him to bits. I didnt want to leave him. I was pretty much his dad.

I was bored at work one day and happened to stumble across a forum for British Expats living in Spain, and suddenly got very interested in the idea. A couple of months before, I had just taken Kelly on a short break to Torremolinos on the Costa Del Sol, and I had been to that area before. Ive always wanted to move to the U.S but since 9/11 getting Visas is just next to impossible. I soon found out that all I had to do to stay in Spain was register at a police station and find a job. No visas as its part of europe. So its incredibly easy to move there. I soon got very interested in this idea! I was seriously considering persueing it if things were to go wrong with Kelly.

One fatefull day came where one of the MSN logs indicated that they were going to do stuff with each other the next time they meet. Kelly had asked me to look after Tom one night whilst she went out. I knew where she was going. She was going to meet up with Joe. She said she was, but obviously just as friends. I planned that the day after they would of course talk abotu what they had done. If that happened, I was going to put my notice in at work, spend some time at my mates and then eventually drive down to Spain and never see them again.

Then perhaps the worse thing happened. They never met up! Joe wasn't feeling very well so cancelled on her. Which just prolonged the agony for me. At this point I had been watching them at it online for a couple of months and I really couldnt take it anymore. So despite this I had it out with Kelly anyway. She had nothing to say to me. Other than "Oh shit yes you caught me" and then she started feeling really really bad about it. I never told her how I found out. But I did quote some of her and his MSN comments. So she must have known I had seen her logs. She just started crying and said I love you I really do.

As a few days passed, she was nothing but sorry for the whole thing. But I suddenly felt bad. Even if I did forgive and forget. I had pretty much planned a new life in Spain. So I told her that I was going to do this. And she said that she would come too. A new fresh start would solve the problem she said. If she is willing to give up her life in the UK for me to move out to Spain away from people she knows. That would prove her real commitment to me.

Well its an idea. Except I had no idea whether a life in Spain would work for me let alone her. Its not like I had a job there or knew anyone or knew the area particularly well. So I said I would go ahead first for a couple of months and if all works out then she and the baby can follow. With working tax credits she could afford to keep the house going by herself.

So thats what happened. I flew out to Spain and within a week I got a job as an IT Technician and soon found a great circle of friends. A month later, Kelly came out and we chose an apartment together. She went home to make the preperations to move out with the baby permanently.

What she didnt realise was that I was still keeping tabs of her MSN conversations. And what was she up to? The same stuff again, with the same guy. Until one conversation made out that she had sexually pleasured him. I simply received an email "Dont bother coming to Spain. You know why."

She did nothing but deny it. She realised what a mistake she had made, and the life she was about to loose. I told her we were finished
Her response to that was to have sex with someone else. She admitted that one herself.
So that was it, we was completely and utterly finished.

So, I'm still out in Spain and she's still home in the U.K. I let her keep all my furniture and stuff in the house for the babys sake. We are still friends and her and the baby have come out for holidays. She no longer talks to Joe. I even saved her ass from getting evicted the other month, due to a financial muddle she had got herself in. Once again, I only did that for Tom. But I'd never have her. I'll always be there for the baby. I am still his godfather.

Hopefully I'll meet another girl and have our own baby sometime. Miss Right will be out there somewhere!
(Miggyman, Mon 26 May 2008, 15:07, 8 replies)

Slapstick flouncing..
I took a date to a haughty restaurant in town. I was a spotty teenager, eager to make an impression, she was a brunette beauty with eyes like pools of hazel and a backside like a juicy peach.

Our waiter arrived, looked down his nose at us and enquired what he could get for us.
We scanned the menu, and ordered. He all but scoffed at our choice of wine, an 87 chablis, clearly not enough body and depth to go with a greek sauna of red snapper on a bed of hens teeth.

Throughout the evening he taunted us with his sneering manner, his lofty attitude and his holier than thou demeanour.

As he served us coffees, (we ignored his querilous demands to know whether he should source some nescafé from the local Happy Shopper for us), he presented us with the bill.

"Of course the tip *will* be extra... Sir"

I flipped, I stood up, demanded to speak to the manager and pushed him in the direction of the kitchens with little more than a gentle shove.

He slid on the damp floor only a few inches mind but with enough force into the passing waiter to upend the large tray he was carrying aloft and empty its contents on the couple at the next table.

The male partner stood up covered in beef broth and turnip stew, like a bedraggled Vinny Jones and took a swing at the waiter. It connected with his jaw and sent him careering back into our waiter who was now looking in a state of shock.

He fell backwards and put his hand out to rescue himself but all that was in his wake to break his fall was a hotplate.

He took off, squawking like a parrot, running to the kitchen doors which burst open just ahead of him. The combined force of both parties coming through the aperture caused both to recoil, involuntarily. Our waiter's head connected with the terracotta tiled floor and his lights went out.

The other party careered backward into the kitchen, doors closing after him.
We heard a clattering and banging, some howls of pain and fear, and the doors opened again.
This time three members of the kitchen staff followed by the hapless waiter ran out. Behind them flames licked up towards the kitchen roof.
The fire alarms sounded, and the sprinklers came on.

My enduring memory of that evening was the waiter who had been punched, nursing a bloody nose with one hand, and dragging our comatose waiter out by the collar, both bedraggled and looking forlorn.

We left the scene without paying the exhorbitant £120 bill. The management must've been gutted, because so was the restaurant!
(Vic Flange, Mon 26 May 2008, 14:40, Reply)

I Quit.
.
I'm a professional computer contractor. A consultant. I go from firm to firm either augmenting their existing skills, or more usually, doing bleeding edge project work that the company doesn't have the in-house skills to do themselves. And I pride myself on my professionalism. I've never left a contract early because I got a better offer elsewhere - and I've had a hell of lot of offers.

So there I was, at beginning of the decade, called in to a nameless telecoms company in the North East of England. This company had managed to snag a small part (messaging) of a massive government contract and this where where I was needed. We had to analyse the existing messaging structure, then design and implement a new, shiny one built around M$ Exchange. Normally, no big deal. But this was the Government we were dealing with....

A bit more background. As I said, the company I was working for had only a small part of the contract - the major contractor was a massive multi-national company based in Texas. Anyone who's even remotely familiar with Government IT Projects will know who they are. I don't think they've ever, not even once, brought a project in on time and under budget. Indeed, they're renowned, they're legends in the industry, for bring in projects that don't work and are massively, ball-bouncingly, over budget. How the fuck they ever win tenders is beyond me. I can see the tender process now:

GOV: "So why should we give you the job? Last time, a £100 million contract ended up costing us £300 million and it didn't work."

TEX: "Well we've learnt from that and we're here to promise that it won't happen again"

GOV: "Honest?"

TEX: "Honest. Cross my heart and hope to die"

GOV: "Oh all right then. Jobs yours"

And this happens EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

But I'm wandering again.

So there we were, responsible for the messaging system. (Actually, it's just e-mail and calenders but messaging sounds better in management-speak.) This wasn't quite as straight-forward as it should have been as, back in the dark-ages, some civil-servant idiot had procured a custom-built email system that didn't adhere to any recognisable standard. Initially, it had been designed as an in-house private email system with no links to the outside world so they didn't *have* to interface with anyone else so they felt no need to stick to standards. Then, with the advent of Internet E-Mail, rather than scrap the system then and go with a standards-based system, they'd decided to cobble together a jerry-built interface to translate internet mail to their system and vica versa. In short, it was a bastardised abortion of a system. Probably why the Texans had palmed it off onto us.

So. Pretty near the start of this project I was in a meeting with my mate Herb, my boss, The Texans and a whole shedload of senior civil servants. The Texans were explaining to the Gov why we had to scrap their email system and start from scratch. No CONTACTS, no SAVED MESSAGES, no nothing. We'd just wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. They explained that their current system was totally incompatible with Exchange that no other route was possible.

Me and Herb exchanged glances. This was news to us. We'd started our design on the premise that we'd somehow *have* to import the old data. We couldn't believe that anyone would just accept that none of the old info could be saved. So Herb coughed and said:

"Well that's not strictly true...."

He was about to go when the boss kicked him under the table and then interrupted..

"I think Herb is thinking of something else. Please go on"

So me and Herb stayed quiet. After the meeting the boss pulled the two of us. He knew what we were working on.

"So do you think you can do it?" he asked.

"Shouldn't be a massive problem" I said. "We've already figured out exactly how the system stores the data. Just a matter of extracting it, reformatting it and then squirting it into Exchange."

Herb nodded: "There's a bit more to it than that, but Legless is right. I can cobble together a VB program that'll extract the data, convert it to a PST file then it's just a matter of firing it into the right Exchange profile."

"How long do you need" asked the boss

"Err - a week?" said Herb

"You've got two. Don't let me down"

So off we went. It took Herb about three days to write the program. It took me about a week to write the import/export routines and the final week was spent testing it and making it play "The Girl From Ipanema" when it was running...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWncdiAt5M4

So we went to the boss, announced success and demonstrated the system on our test-bed. He was over the moon.

The next couple of days the boss was running around in various meetings and then told us that he'd sold the system to The Texans for £35k. Fair enough we thought. Me and Herb were on a grand each a week plus expenses so it had cost the company about £5k for us to develop it and we didn't mind them making a fair profit. We were happy. Then came the fateful meeting.

Again, it was a meeting between us, the Texans, the Civil Service and, this time, the minister in charge of the department. All was going well when the chief Texan, an oily little twat, stood up:

"We do have one little surprise for you Minister" he oozed. "If you recall, we'd gone ahead with the new messaging system in the belief that we couldn't save any of your old data and we'd have to start from scratch"

The Minister nodded.

"Well, to be honest, that's what we believed when we accepted the contract. But, we've had a team of very bright programmers working back in Texas on just this very problem. We didn't mention it before because, well, to be honest, we didn't think it would come to anything. But you know what we Texans are like. We just hate to be beaten" Smarmy grin.

"And I'm delighted to be able to tell you that our boys have cracked the problem and have produced a system that *can* save all of your old data! And we're happy to offer it to you just for the cost it took us to develop it!"

"How much" asked the Minister sceptically, expecting to be whacked with something in the tens of millions.

"1.2 million pounds" said the Texan.

I choked on my water. I was expecting the Texans to add a mark-up. I was expecting maybe a 100K but a over a million quid?

The boss put his hand on my arm and squeezed warningly. I looked at Herb. He'd gone white.

I don't remember much about the rest of that meeting. I was too busy trying to control the Fist Of Death. It was taking every ounce of my self control not to leap across the table, grab the oily little Texan by the throat and slam his face repeatedly into the wall.

Eventually the meeting ended and we buggered off back to our office. The boss came in while I was spitting nails and apologised. Like us, he'd expected the Texans to charge maybe 100K for the program. But, to me, that wasn't really the point. All right - it was part of the point. The obscene gouging of the price has really fucked me off, but the thing that had me ready to kill wasn't just the price. It was the pack-or-fucking lies that the shit had spouted about:

"a team of programmers in Texas" and

"you know what we Texans are like. We just hate to be beaten"

That had really, really gotten under my skin. The work that me and Herb had put into that program (Herb more than me 'cos he was the coding king). It was our idea, we figured out how to do it and then to see it all credited to a bunch of fucking mythical cowboys made my blood boil.

The boss could see how upset I was. Probably because I was kicking things around the room and ranting. Herb just sat there and looked stony.So he told us to go home, take the next day off with pay (the Friday) then come back after the weekend. So we went home (Herb lived in the same village as me) and got righteously pissed.

We went into work the next week but it just wasn't the same. I was still burning at the fucking injustice of it all. The joy had gone out of the job for me. So I talked it over with Herb and then went to see the boss. And quit.

The first and only time I've ever left a contract early.


Cheers

P.S. Fuck me - that was an epic. Sorry for lack of funnies.
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 26 May 2008, 12:37, 8 replies)

One time I was forced to quit
I worked as Internet Tech Support for a call centre that dealt with Orange (then Wanadoo), Virgin and Sky.

Anyway, I went out one payday and went shopping on my lunch break. I came back to work and set my bag down under my desk and carried on working.

I got a call into the top floor office about 3. Somebody had told them I had a knife in my bag.

Yes, I did. A kitchen knife, in it's SEALED wrapper, in its box, under about £150 worth of clothes. I told them this, and they asked me to present it.
So, 4 minutes of digging and I found it, made a point of breaking seals and put it on the table.

'I can't believe there's a KNIFE in my office' says HR.
'It's shocking' says another.

I point out that this, as stated on the box, is a KITCHEN knife, and as they'd see by my records, I'd just moved out of my parents house. I also pointed out that in the bag there was a cutlery set and a cookery set.

They had none of it. They told me to leave the office and not come back before they called the police. They said I had to quit, but I refused to quit. I let them fire me. Why?

Even though it looks bad on the CV, I had another job anyway which I could use for reference, and their firing me meant I got paid three months wages. This isn't company policy; somebody let on to me that their system was fucked and still paying people.
I lived quite happily on that. And they didn't ask for it back, probably because they thought I was a knife-wielding maniac.
( Methylene Blue - electrohead, Mon 26 May 2008, 11:39, 19 replies)

Redundancy
About a year ago I was made redundant after the company I worked for was bought out by a rival. I ended up leaving with about three months salary as a payoff, which is nice, and a serious grudge against the guy that pushed me.

I remember during one of the meetings he offered me another position which had become available, involving a relocation 100 miles away to head office and a 25% pay decrease. The job? Warehouse shelf stacking. No, ta. But that's not why I dislike him, just an indicator of what kind of cloud cuckoo land he lived on.

At our final meeting, I made it clear that I had no hard feelings and I offered my services as a consultant should the need arise. He looked down at me condescendingly and simply said "We won't be needing that" with a horrid little grin on his face.

Within a week of leaving my old boss phones. She wonders if I would be interested in any consultancy work. Of course extra cash is extra cash, and I take up the opportunity to visit this new head office for a while and rub it in smarmy gits face.

Oddly enough, I didn't see him whilst I was there. He kept himself hidden away, which is probably for the best really. What I did see was a finance department who were struggling against the backlog and costs of paying their own staff (twelve months later apparently they still haven't paid many agents for work done).

I saw a customer services department who complain bitterly about the work they have to do... but don't get off their lazy arses and actually do it, instead chatting merrily and sending emails back and forth. Naturally they then got annoyed when customers complained that they hadn't received their products, and moan about being "overstretched".

I met the Network Administrator who looked like he had stumbled in after taking a wrong turn in the 1970s with qualifications in plumbing rather than IT.

Basically about 50% of the staff members were not suitable or even capable of doing their jobs.

I was taken to one side by a member of Senior Management who told me he was keen to "get me back on board" and that the other guy "had made a mistake." I politely told him I wasn't interested and I now read with glee the slow downfall of their empire in the trade papers, very grateful that I am not a part of it. There's no way anyone could save that sinking ship and by giving me a push to begin with I had a much shorter distance to swim to shore.
(Captain Skippy pooed in a bag and left it on your doorstep, Mon 26 May 2008, 10:22, Reply)

She quit on me, actually.
I've mentioned this before, so forgive me repeating myself- but the details are what make it a worthy story.

She was working for a staffing agency when I met her, a very pretty little brunette with curly hair and blue eyes. We got along very nicely, I thought- I got on well with her daughters, she liked my cooking, she liked my massages, and all looked good. Then one day she confided that she had been a stripper a few years back. Okay, says I. Not a big deal to me. She then confided that she had implants and had had a ferocious coke habit at that time. Okay, says I. You're not doing that anymore, right? Right. No problem. The past is gone, and as long as there's nothing life-threatening that I need to know about, none of it matters. Then she took me to her favorite biker bar, where we listened to a rather bad AC/DC tribute band. I had a great time, and chatted with her friends there. Next she took me to meet her family for a cookout. They were pretty blue-collar and rough around the edges, but overall very nice people and we got along great.

So the next time I go to cook dinner for her at her place she ends up dumping me. Why? Because I was too perfect, she said. She kept expecting to find out that I had something terrible wrong with me, that I wasn't the nice guy I seemed like, and when she couldn't find anything seamy about me, when she couldn't find any terrible secrets, it drove her crazy and made her tense. And with that she asked me to leave.

All I could think of was George Costanza from Seinfeld: "I've been dumped by an ex-stripper, Jerry!"

Not long after that I quit dating for a while...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Mon 26 May 2008, 5:38, 16 replies)

Twice too many
A few years ago I had struggled to find any enjoyable employment for months upon return from travelling to Australia etc.
Where I lived only had 3 main employers one of them providing 'power' for Britain. Anyway I didn't get a job as a drone first time (they asked me how my travelling would help me in the job?!)
Anyway they must have ran out of ideas as they offered me a job anyway. Really crap work but ok money.
Two days before I'm due to start I'm given 'notice' that my hernia operation has been booked for a week on Monday. Bugger.
They did show some sympathy, but basically as all their so called full time jobs were 3 month contracts so they said I'd be terminated but once I had recovered I could get my job back.
I tried to come back after a couple of weeks which was a mistake. Suffering from near exhaustion I went to see the doctor who signed me of for 6 weeks and said I shouldn't have come back so early.
Cue a predictable conversation when phoning in where they treated me with remarkably high contempt, possibly because I was late once in the 4 days since my operation.
Anyway, my contract was destroyed again and they still said I could come back! I quit in this instance in the sense I refused to go back to such shoddy HR. I don't think this should have been suprising to me as they were notorious for timing staff's comfort breaks.
It's like squeezing blood from a stone!
(muzzvsworld, Mon 26 May 2008, 3:48, 2 replies)

Physio
Good timing on this, i handed my notice in last week.

But this is a story from 6 years ago. I'll keep it short.

I'd trained to be a sports physio, and on passing everything which needed passing i went on the look for jobs with my main aim to work at a football club.

So went for some interviews most went well as i knew my stuff. I think i had about 6 interviews plus a few at rugby clubs. Anyway, got a job at a club in London, Prem team and i was very happy. My dream was going to come true, id be working at a top Prem team and earning decent money and learn off some of the best.

However, it was hell.

8 in the morning until late at night, working every day with normally just one day off a month and having to deal with some of the biggest tossers known to man, only 3 players from the whole squad were ok and would talk to you, the rest would fake injury to get out of playing and go nuts if we told them there was nothing wrong, some actually wanted to play and went nuts when we told them they were out of action for a while.

I lasted 1 season before id had enough. I now hate this team with a passion but wont say who.

For some reason i moved into advertising and its ok but im getting tempted to go back to being a physio for some strange reason,
(Lanceuppercut, Mon 26 May 2008, 3:35, 8 replies)

Quitting Whilst Ahead. Erm. Or Not.
Are you sitting comfortably? This is a bit of a long one (oo-er) but it's a rewarding story, I promise.

Picture, if you will, dear reader, the scene.

Edmund having worked his way through the various illnesses that threatened to make him Scotlands' very own version of John Nash (look it up if you don't know already) has managed to get his cap and gown, much to his surprise.

He slowly crawls up the slippery corporate slope having left academia behind and soon finds himself working for an organisation who were once called H*l***x, now Head Office based in Edinburgh following a merger with B*nk of Sc*tl*nd.

It's all very exciting, getting to do some research whilst at the same time riding on the coat tails of some very important bankers and getting my name on the project as a lead contributor. W00t, as I believe they say in these parts.

Until I realise what it entails. Two-and-a-half years of working 11 - 12 hours days, six-and-a-half days a week. One prolonged period of having six weeks in the office and not going home at all during that time, even having my laundry collected from the office, done and returned to me there.

The project was delivered approximately on time (around nine months start to finish) and within the budget set.

Having done it and thinking "Phew! I can get on with my life now, kick back and chill briefly", we got another project of a similar size dumped on us - this time for a completely different type of bank with which no-one had any experience whatsoever. Joy of joys.

After the aforementioned two and a bit years of this I was so close to burning myself out that I could smell the smoke (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) and decided that I was going to take some time off.

July 22nd 2002 I walk into my (newly-appointed-above-me) bosses office and tell him I'm taking the next month off, starting August 1st and ending August 31st 2002. I haven't taken any more than one weeks leave in total (and that was to attend a conference) since starting in 2000 to which he replied "No you're not, you're going to sit and do ... (list of meaningless tasks)".

This was too much, even for my little brain and accordingly I walked back to my desk a little deflated, packed up my stuff in my laptop bag (own laptop that I did a lot of the calculation on because they were too stingy to buy some properly wicked software) said "bye" to colleagues, walked into bosses office with my ID badge in my hand and *may* have indicated to him (it's all a bit of a blur now, tbh) that he f*ck right off.

Drove home to my estranged partner on the other side of the central belt of Scotland and picked up a couple of pairs of jeans, a few shirts, jumpers and shoes.

Got back in car and drove like the wind to Heathrow airport where I boarded a plane to the rest of my life.

That was six years ago and despite a few ups and downs (many downs, not so many ups) and some sizeable medications - moi, venlaflaxine? bring the noise! - on balance I feel a bit better now than I did then.

I work for myself and now, when I'm putting in a twelve hour day on a clients site I'm getting paid a shed-load more than those guys were paying me.

Yes it's a pain in the butt to be doing the tax and NI and corporation tax and the like but sod it, that's what I've got an accountant for.

I travel a lot (something I've always enjoyed) and in fact I'm writing this in a clients office in Hong Kong at this very moment, before returning to the UK Saturday for ten days of climbing (stop the presses - "Edmund takes holiday shocker") before flying back out here to keep doing it.

So, to the payoff - am I happy? Well, I feel a lot more relaxed now and my earnings have gone through the roof (i.e., quadrupled since 2002)but I know that there's always the elephant in the room; one day someone won't want what I'm selling. I'm more balanced. My personal life is still a sh!t, but that's only to be expected; who ever expected geeks to be happy?
(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Mon 26 May 2008, 3:26, 3 replies)

I've just remembered something slightly more interesting
I completely forgot about my last job in England. I worked for a football pools company, in the 'Customer Service' centre. Now, my dad has worked for this company for over 25 years, and I was desparate for a job to build up some funds for my big move to Oz. He said there were jobs going but I REALLY didn't want one. I couldn't understand why he wouldn't want his lad working with him and talked him around to getting me an interview. The day of the intervirew came around and I got suited up. I was too lazy to wash my hair so instead, I shaved it off (#2 I think). I went in and the job was to be on the phones. I had to do a bit of a practical so my interviewer called my phone from the other side of the office and pretended to be a customer. I got the job and was told I start on monday at 5. Monday rolls around and I'm introduced to the absolute dregs of the comapny that work this job. We have a staff 'meeting' at the start of every shift. This just gives the middle aged sunbed queens 45 minutes to talk about big brother and other useless shite. It also gave them time to comment every 5 minutes about how much I looked like my dad. Imagine that, a son who looks like his dad! It gave me time to completely zone out and get paid for sitting down.
My training started and I was handed over to one of these depressing souls to listen in on their calls. Oh yeah, they didn't tell me until I started that it was outgoing calls I was doing. I hated them from that moment onwards. We basically had to call people up who's subscriptions had expired and try to get them back on board. Most poeple were proper old and didn't even know what was happening. My trainer, one time, managed to get £125 from a woman who sounded older than Jesus and had no idea what was going on. When she hung up, the worthless thing beside me said "Almost never got that one!". I smiled and got back to hating the place. It came to my time where I was to man a phone. We were given lists and we had to go through as many as possible in 3 hours. It was hell. One night we all finished our lists, so the supervisor (she had the biggest hair ever, so much hairspray. Think Rick Moranis' helmet in Spaceballs, only made of hair) told us to do lists that were a year and a half old. We had started to completely cold call. The only thing that got me through was sitting next to a guy who was on incoming calls. He told me they get a call every night from a guy who said his newsagent stole his winnings 20 years ago, and what were we going to do about it. Every night, genius. Anyways, I went home and decided that I was to quit this place after only 3 weeks. I left it until 4:30 the next day to call them. It went something like this:

"Hello, whoever speaking"
"Hi, this is Visionary. Just calling to let you know that I won't be coming in today, or ever again"
"Why"
"Well, I was led to believe that I was gonna be on incoming calls, and I value my soul in the afterlife, and well, the job's just pure evil"

pause

"Well, you can't just quit half an hour before you're due in!"
"I think I just did. I never signed anything and I've only been working there for 3 weeks, so, try and stop me"
"Well, I'll have to talk to someone about this and I'll call you back in 10 minutes"
"OK"

Ten minutes later I took my phone with me to the toilet and started getting rid of some solids. The Phone rings

"Hello"
"Hello Visionay?"
"yes"
"There's no problem with you quitting"
"I know"

The last part said on a massive rectal push.

My dad arrived home to see my car still parked in the drive. He asked my why I wasn't in work and I told him. He said he told me I didn't want the job and agreed that the lady's hair was ridiculously massive and he was also fed up of being told how much we looked alike.
Thank you
(Visionaryofthe1980s www.myspace.com/visionariesofthe1980s, Mon 26 May 2008, 2:09, Reply)

I've just been dumped.
Well, fuck you, dumper boy: I quit first.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 26 May 2008, 1:39, 26 replies)

On my last paper round
BTW, i hated the damn paper-round, i was only it it for the cash.

I took all the crap papers, daily mail, express etc, and dumped them in a puddle outside the shop in full view of the shocked owners.

Next I took anything half decent, sun star or mirror, and went home, but only after giving them a nice wave goodbye with a shout of "Wankers!!!". Oh how i laughed.

Problem was I called into the shop a few days later to get a drink and the bastards refused to serve me. Talk about holding a grudge.
(Big Ginge putting the laughter into manslaughter, Mon 26 May 2008, 0:15, Reply)

Teams... Why does everyone bother?
So, i shall explain in the usual way.

After having been in this team for a good 5 years (Since the initial conception of it) i thought it was a pretty good team, helping each other get through things.

However,.. that was about to change.

So now, after 5 years i've told the team in a polite way that i quit, after all they had chucked off everyone who had been there for 5 years, the long timers, in favour of inexperianced players with less than one month under there belt.

"But we still want you to re-apply" .. Um hello, try telling that to the rest of us who are slowly grinding our battle axe, ready to do you in.

"Will you not re-apply?" Fuck no we won't, we want you to learn the exceptionally hard way, and come back to us basically begging for us to re-join you (even then, we still won't).

So, fuck you SETAS fuck you with a massive arse barge!
(Looneytwuns, Sun 25 May 2008, 22:25, 6 replies)

I shut the whole company
I was working for a woman who ran a "virtual office". I got the job on the basis that I did a bit of this and that, and bigged up her business and she'd pay me what I wanted. She was hardly there, so the work wasnt really that hard...

Then I found out that the bitch wasnt paying my tax or national insurance, and the deal was suddenly not so good.

So I threw a wobbly, and told everyone what she'd done... made a few phone calls and found out that none of her staff were getting their tax and NI paid.

So, we all called round the customers and told them what she'd done, and why we were walking out.

She was forced to close the whole company down, and went out of business about 6 months later, after she'd spent a packet in time and temps fees. I heard on the grapevine she still owes people money.

I thought about feeling bad for a little while, but she still owes me a grand.
(Kaplaaah Wasting time on the net since 1994., Sun 25 May 2008, 22:16, 1 reply)

Notice Periods.
I used to work for a company where they insisted a 2 month notice period for our job. Gee we were just techies not some kinda senior management. (They had 3 months!)

My collegue put his notice in, and to illustrate that 2 months was a long time. He refused to shave during his entire notice period. By the end of the two months he looked something like this:




Length? Far too long.
(Miggyman, Sun 25 May 2008, 21:28, 1 reply)

not so much i quit as i was was fired but...
i worked at a pub. only for about 3 days, the worst in the uk i swear. Anyhoom it was a shithole, hated working there, aunt twakie and little dick mick as i so affectionatley nicknamed them, they sent me a text basically telling me they were letting me go, cue revenge plan going into action. 1 call to environmental health, 1 video sent to the local police station and brewery of the landlady snorting coke on the bar and 1 phonecall to best friend who did the karaoke there. So for about 6 weeks even though i had been fired i was in 3 nights a week doing the karaoke there, landlord and lady not at all happy at handing me 150 smackers each night, they even tried to bar me for reading in the pub! then one day, in comes the men in black from both the brewery and the police and enviromental health in the space of about 2 hours. Its a shame really, the pubs all boarded up now, all those pumps going to waste...do i feel guilty? nah lol
(santas_lil_hohoho is packing her vibrator suitcase, Sun 25 May 2008, 21:17, 1 reply)

I feel i should stop pub crawls
after the leavers pub crawl on friday.

As it was fancy dress i decided that dressing up as a Nun would be "hilarious". I bought a very skimpy nun outift designed for a small woman and wore it round town for 13 hours whilst getting very drunk.

I woke up on saturday with a fuck-off hangover and swore to myself that i wouldn't drink again. Wonder how long that will last?


P.S - Anyone who lives in Bromsgrove, I'm sorry if you saw me...my costume was enough to make anyone sick

P.P.S - Dressing up as a "sexy" nun is one way to pull - the amount of drunk girls that came up to me wanting to meet up later was untrue!

EDIT: People have messaged e to see pictures so here is one:-

(Foulkesy123 The one and only..., Sun 25 May 2008, 19:29, 9 replies)

Never had to "flounce" out of anything...
...but there have been times when I have quit in a less than graceful manner, and was very nearly pushed before I had the sense to jump.

While working in a pharmacy I was consistently annoyed by the fact everyone constantly whinged about the massive Rx backlog yet wouldn't actually shift their arses and stop gossipping instead of working. I was also slightly troubled by restricted sales meds being left on the "pick your own" shelves (which is petty but still illegal and bothersome when I have to pick up the mess!). The shop was constantly left in a shit state as was the counter area, and nobody but me did a damn thing about it.

Then we had the supervisor who would constantly tell me to do jobs about 2 hours after I'd already completed them, bollock me for not doing things her way when my way yelided the same or better results 10x faster, and generally lock horns with me at every opportunity for the sake of it. Does not volunteering to make everyone a cuppa in the morning count as "not being a team player"? Apparently so. I could go on for hours about the sheer lack of professionality and how five-star useless everyone was, but it's just not that funny. Except for the look on Super's face when I told her that if she wanted a tea boy she should've fucking advertised for one, and to make her fucking own. But you'd have had to be there.

So anyway, I decided I'd had enough and had arranged to bugger off back down south. On my last day I arrive at work, nobody with keys bothers to turn up until gone 9:30. Massive queue of customers and me, and it's wet. THEY can fuck off to another chemist down the road... I wish I could have done the same. Bad start. I'm soaked and fucked off. I enter the shop, and not only had the stupid fucking cow who had to finish the stock counting manage to zero pretty well every item in the shop (inventory is now massively out), but I get blamed for it. Yeah, I should've stayed an hour after finishing yesterday to make sure it was done right, so partially my fault.

The final straw that day was discovering that yet again, the entire order had been fucked up and we had boxes of shit with nowhere to put them, and what HAD been merchandised was all to hell and very untidy. I snapped. Picking up a bottle of codeine linctus about 20 feet from where it should've been, I let out an enraged yell and fling the fucking thing right into dispensary and watch it shatter on the wall. I then proceed to act as if nothing had happened and stand quietly behind my counter waiting for a customer to serve. Nobody said a single word to me for the rest of that day. However, I still got a great ref. from the manager (who I actually got on with) and my full holiday pay! Fuck knows how that worked out.

I have another but in the interests of not boring everyone totally shitless I'll save it for a future post (which may include explosives, whiskey, poker and fire!)
(keyboardman, Sun 25 May 2008, 19:24, Reply)

not me but...
I've just (a few weeks ago) quit my job, but so far no signs of the place falling apart in my absence. I'm just happy not to be there to be honest. Anyway that's not funny, but this maybe is...
Years back I was a manager at Our Price (record emporium, younger readers,) and got despatched to the shop in Bromley to take over from the manager who'd just quit. All went well, but there was this issue of a severeal thousand quid order the shop had placed but no one could find. We searched and searched and eventually we found it. Several thousand copies of the Best of Jean Michel Jarre (Gallic knob-twiddler younger readers,) hidden behind a bit of false walling.
The outgoing manager had ordered all of these to screw the company for no known reason. Why JMJ? Very strange. All the Our Prices are gone now, but it gives me wry pleasure to see the old Bromley branch is now an Ann Summers!
Now I'm unemployed, but that has it's advantages.
(Mr Steve is jobless and fancyfree!, Sun 25 May 2008, 18:53, Reply)

I used to work in a mixing desk factory
I'd have to take the end-product of a manufacturing process - populated by underpaid and semi-skilled folks who really didn't care about the job, just getting paid enough for a night out on the town every week and a fortnight in Benidorm once a year - and basically have to rectify everything that had been mis-built or untested, i.e. components in backwards, ribbon cables offset by one row, switches standing proud of the PCB and so forth.

I was very hard up, recently separated and getting divorced and having to pay mortgage for my ex's place and rent on my own. Originally I was paid the same as the people whose job was to put the rotary dial knobs and switch caps on (LOL! their occupational description was 'Knobber and Capper') but begrudgingly they agreed to pay me £5 an hour (this was before the Minimum Wage)-the only fringe benefit was that they didn't mind you listening to walkmans all day.

So I looked around for better paid work and the only stuff that suited me was at a company in Cheshire, some 340 miles away. I applied for an interview and got an invite to attend on Christmas Eve. As it was a regular factory I was due to be in work that day but we always got half-a-day off and the afternoon was a company meal at a nearby hotel. I asked for the half-day off (unpaid) so I could get to the interview (it was at 9:30 in the morning) but was told I had to fulfil the quota for mixing desks for the month and it had been planned that I would finish 2 desks in that morning (48 channel mixing desks, bloody hell, it took a day to do 3 so this was a bit of a feat to pull off).

The only way I could have te day off was if I finished the allocation for the month. This was impossible, even if the next few desks were completely flawless- so I said- OK, I'll come in on the night shift and finish them. Left work at 4pm, came back in at 10pm and worked through to the early hours of the morning to finish the last two desks. Drove to Cheshire, arrived with no sleep and wired on Coca Cola and cigarettes (I didn't smoke but I needed the stimulant to stay awake while driving with no sleep) half an hour before the interview and muddled my way through it.

Got the job! Handed in my notice at the place and trained up my replacement as well as listing every failure I could recall (it was 110 items long) and left without a flounce.

But I did come back two years later driving the Jaguar XK8 I was testing at the time (I had a job at Jag after the one in Cheshire), went round to see some of colleagues that I'd enjoyed working with and THEN flounced out, fired up the big V8 and roared off without a backward glance.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Sun 25 May 2008, 17:43, Reply)

What the hell is a 'soffit' and why do I want one
When I was at college in my 2nd year of A-levels, despite having shitloads of coursework on and various mental health issues I decided to take on a part-time job at a call centre with Stayshite Windows, just to get some extra money for xmas prezzies and all that bollocks. As predicted, it was the most depressing job I ever had. Highlights include:

-Having to work in a scummy back office wearing my coat the whole time because the lardarse boss insisted on having the fire escape door open constantly, for fear his shitty polyester suit would spontaneously combust from his body heat,

-'enjoying' the smell of rotting food which would emanate from the alley and float in through the aforementioned open fire escape, courtesy of the Mcdonalds and the thai restaurant we were wedged inbetween,

-Working with a load of disgusting pikeys who were unappealing to all the five senses and refused to talk to me because I had a black coat and black hair, and therefore was some kind 'smelly goffick weirdo'. Tbh being ignored by these cretins was fine with me.

-The obvious 'fun' of the job itself, i.e. calling people up and asking if they would like new double glazing, soffits (still no clue) or fascias perhaps? I got one person who was actually interested in this shoddy-ass company, but predictably I saw no commission from this,

-The fact that I clearly had no time for this silly shit at this point in my life and got paid pretty much dick all for it, I had no free time because when I wasn't at work or college, I was at home helping my mother make some shite cardboard xmas decorations for her office (which took fucking ages), which I couldn't get out of for some reason, possibly because of her ugly temper and because she was still mad at me for daring to have sex with my long-term boyfriend, which she had found out about several months previous and instigated the sheer carnage that ensued, and may have still not quite gotten over...but thats another story.

Anyway, one day I could just not be arsed to sit in a chilly smelly office (in fact office is making it sound more glamourous than it is, more like a miserable smoking room) with a load of chavs and the fat, slimy lecherous boss, getting paid peanuts to have strangers shout at me down the phone for 4 hours, so I thought 'fuck this' and told the boss I couldn't come in that day for some stupid bullshit reason, and went to Pizza Hut with my mates. It was nice. I then just ignored all phonecalls from work and spent the rest of the pre-holiday period in relative bliss.

If your job makes you want to die and you can't get another right away, consider going on the dole, just for a bit. Seriously.

Or, just don't go in and see how long its before they notice. If its less than an hour then the shithole needs you more than you could possibly need them, and you should use this to your advantage. If not, just see how long you keep getting paid for.
(Ryuken-Kai, Sun 25 May 2008, 17:18, 3 replies)

glazing: OVER!
i once worked for a total of 2 days at a prolific double-glazing firm.
for my training i was plonked down with a girl who was 'gonna be a top model yeah, like jordan *chews gum loudly with mouth open, flicks hair*
she did 5 calls which were like 'hi there, *chew chew* it's lisa from angly ann windows, just calling to *click*....
after five, i was sat in front of my own phone, given a list of numbers and names, and told to get on with it. so the first day went.. well i guess. no-one threatened to find my house and disembowel me with a garden fork, so that was nice. no-one got much past my name and employer to be honest.
day two rolls around, and about the twentieth person goes 'actually yeah, i'm looking to gte the whole house redone, can you give me a quote? i was like. ummm... not personally but i can pass you to someone who can.. *loooks round office, sees no-one else is about*
well, actually i can't.
well can you get someone to come out and give us an estimate?
*looks round for pen/paper/forms- nothing*
well, not right at this time, but someone can call you back to discuss it further?

'well... can i ask what exactly the purpose of this call is if you can't actually do anything other than get someone to ring me again?'


'that's a bloody good point right there!'
*gets coat, leaves.*
(UppityDamnPrimate LET'S OPEN THIS F*CKING PIT UP, Sun 25 May 2008, 16:14, 2 replies)