30 People Share The Craziest “I Quit” Moment They’ve Ever Witnessed

1. Quitting via voicemail.

I used to work at a fast food place in a small town. We had the run of the mill “So-and-so was arrested. Guess he’s not working here anymore” happen more times than I could count. But the best was when someone didn’t show up for his shift. The manager calls his phone and he doesn’t answer. It goes to voicemail. He changed his greeting to the following: “Fuck you. I quit.”

2. Kissed IT.

Strangest way has to be when a co-worker of mine walked into the head of IT’s office, grabbed him by the tie and kissed him. They hated each other.

3. Got past the “no quitting” policy by quitting.

My high school summer job was at Burger King. One year they put me on the schedule when I was supposed to be at a sports camp 6 hours away and I said, “no, I told you like three months ago I need those two weeks off” and they replied with “well you have to come back to work then go back to camp” and I was like, “okay,” so I drove back home and quit. When I got home, there was a manager on the phone for me saying that they have a “no-quitting policy.” I was like “okay, well I quit so…” Followed by awkward silence. Then she hung up on me.

4. A prostitution ring masked as a genetics analyst.

We had one of our genetics analysts get arrested for drugging up underage runaways and forcing them into prostitution from his basement. He called in from jail to quit.

5. A man child leaving his job.

This was at a restaurant.

The general manager of the place was fired for being a scumbag pervert moron.

After he was escorted to his car, he drove to the front of the restaurant, got out, ran to the grassy area, and started pulling up handfuls of grass and throwing them at the windows. While screaming like a burnt child.

6. Beers and tears.

I used to manage the tech support side of a call center for an ISP, I had one tech come in and put a 6 pack of beer on my desk and said “that’s that” and walk out crying.

7. Avoided the talk with the boss.

I ran away after quitting. I was hired by a competing company, put in my two weeks, and the boss got suspicious. He came by my desk and told me to follow him into his office to sign a non-competing form, basically saying that after I left there I couldn’t work for the competition for 6 months. I was shitting my pants as I got up to follow him. At that exact moment, the phone rang. I picked it up and told him I would be there in 5 minutes. Finished up the phone call, grabbed my shit, and hauled ass out the back door. They eventually did find out that I went to work for the competition and he sent me an email saying “congrats on the new job. I’ll have to stop by for a ‘visit’ one of these days.”

8. An employee with an angry mom.

I had to fire an employee after I caught her sleeping in her cubicle multiple times and then telling me that asking her to assist in other areas when we were slow “was not her job.”

Her mom came in afterwards and came storming into my office up in a huff. Picture this: a 40-year old black woman (in pretty good shape) in skin tight leopard leggings with gigantic gold high heels on, oversized sunglasses and cornrows in her hair screaming at me “YOU JUST A FUCKIN RACIST, IMMA SEND MY LAWYER AT YOU AN’ HE GUNNA SUE YO ASS. WE GOTTA RACIAL DISCRIMINATION SUIT ON OUR HANDS!” I just looked at her the whole time and never said a word. After which she stormed out of the building screaming “Y’ALL A BUNCH OF FUCKING RACIST NIGGAS IN HERE.”

9. A misinformed employee.

A guy I knew got an email for a meeting in the boss’s office. Figuring he was fucked, he starts just destroying computer equipment. Just fucking shit up like crazy.

So he goes into the office, sits down, and the boss tells him he needs him to go to a conference someplace, and it’d be all paid for by the company.

He didn’t get to go to the conference.

10. Never came back from his lunch.

My previous company was so awful that we would get new employees sometimes that would “get the vibe” very quickly and quit within a few days. But the classic was the guy who never came back from his lunch break on the first day. Within his group in our company, his name became a verb meaning “to quit at lunch and never come back”. So occasionally, you’d hear a frustrated employee say “that’s it, I’m doing a [this guy’s name].”

11. An unsuspecting “I quit” moment.

A bus boy at Red Lobster had had enough on a Friday night. He was in the middle of cleaning a table. Nobody was talking to him, nobody was yelling and nobody had had any confrontation with him all night. Suddenly he stood up, yelled, “FUCK THIS PLACE!” took off his apron, threw it across the room, and walked out the door. Never saw him again.

12. A bare-all quit.

My ex-girlfriend used to be a pizza delivery driver for a chain pizzeria. One day her boss was giving her guff and she said she quit. The manager said she needed to bring her uniform in. She promptly took off her shirt, threw it at him (she was wearing a bra), then walked out. In a restaurant full of families/customers.

13. A triumphant quitting moment.

After 25 years as an executive with a fairly large corporation, I threw the keys to my company car and my company credit card on the CEO’s desk and walked home…started my own business four months later and just retired after 19 successful and blissful years.

14. A gory “I quit” moment.

A friend of mine had some coworkers in their warehouse that didn’t get along. One went home for lunch claiming to get Tylenol for a headache. She came back with a gun, shot her nemesis coworker in the hip as she walked past, then walked up to her and shot her in the head point blank.

This woman then headed to the front office, gave the gun to her boss and said she had shot the coworker, and quit. She waited around for the police to come get her

15. Quit, then went back for groceries.

When I quit my job, I left not angrily, but curtly. Solemnly walked out of the office, said goodbyes to my co-workers, and made it two steps out the door, congratulating myself on my dignity–until I realized that I left all my groceries in the office fridge. Went back and, with as much dignity as I could, collected half a loaf of bread, two jars of peanut butter, and four older apples.

16. A guy who didn’t beat around the bush.

I worked in a shitty call center that paid cash under the table. A guy in his 40s got hired, showed up drunk every day, worked there for two weeks, got paid, walked straight out the office while loudly proclaiming “ALRIGHT I’M OUTTA HERE, I QUIT. I’M GOING TO BUY COKE AND BANG HOOKERS NOW THANKS EVERYBODY.”

17. The old quit and fart.

I got fired last for criticizing the management of my small kitchen. I was in the manager’s tiny office and when he said the words I stood up, took off my work shirt, and proceeded to let out an excruciatingly long and obnoxiously loud fart. When it petered out I stood there in silence for about 10 seconds before turning and walking out.

18. An unconfrontational quitting moment.

One guy I know was so afraid of the confrontation involved in quitting that he gave his boss his resignation letter in a sealed envelope without telling him what it was, along with instructions not to open it until after he left for home.

19. A brazilian chef quitting in the only 24-hour diner in Boston.

I once worked as a fry cook at the only 24-hour diner in Boston. All the other fry cooks were Brazilians who worked ridiculous hours to send money back home. By that I mean, after working the overnight shift on a weekend when every fucking drunk-ass douchebag is 2ft behind you telling you to make him some fucking burgahs, these guys would then leave that job at 6am and go straight to the cleaning offices across town. Anyway, one night Marco is on the phone to his wife in Brazil and they’re arguing about something in the most rapid-fire Portuguese I’ve ever heard. He puts down the phone, slowly looks up, pauses, and screams, “I think my wife is cheating on me!” Then he pommel horses over the counter, bolts out the door and is never heard from again.

20. A man who had his wife quit for him.

An apprentice at my work (only there shortly) did not show up one day, which is not unusual for an apprentice, then on day 2 we called his wife, she said she had no idea where he was. Then on day 5 his wife calls back and apologizes for lying and that he had been in jail the whole time and quit for him. He picked up his toolbox 2 weeks after.

21. Need a break forever.

Busy Friday night behind the bar, other bartender walks up to me and says he needs a break. “Now?” I ask. He replies, “Now and forever” and leaves…

22. Quit and crashed the server.

I had a person at my job who wrote a big long email bashing her supervisor, the CEO and another employee as well as crying about the fact her coworkers never asked her to go to lunch with them. She selected everyone on her personal contact list and the companies directory including the help desk system. Our system sends an automated response anytime someone opens a new ticket. Between all the people reporting her email, out of office messages, and delivery failures she crashed our email server and the help desk server.

23. A very weird quitting scenario.

Everyone in the deli at this store I worked at talked about the way one guy quit. He was always a weird guy, just kind of odd and would say weird things. Not like he’s-going-to-stab-me weird, but enough that you just had to laugh at him rather than attempt to understand what he was getting at.

One day, he comes down the stairs from the break room/office area holding this pair of massive work boots. He holds them up, grinning, and says, “Them’s my walkin’ shoes.”

He left and never came back.

24. A casual year-long hiatus.

There was a guy at my work who just left a sticky note on his computer that read, “Going camping, be back in a week.”

He came back a year later and got his job back.

25. A rescue-quitting moment.

My buddy worked at a Wendy’s at the drive thru window. His friend came to the drive thru and said I’m here to rescue you, pulled up to the window and my friend jumped into his car from said window.

26. A glittery quitting moment.

My roommate told me about a girl that worked at Barnes and Noble with her. Apparently they always fire people on Friday and the girl in question somehow knew her head was going to be up on the chopping block. So on the day she assumed she was getting fired she brought a few items with her to help her go out with a bang, so to say. When they called her to the manager’s office, she slipped on a pair of designer high heels she’d brought with her, and filled her pockets with glitter. Upon being fired and walked out of the store, she turned around in the front of the store, reached in her pockets, and threw glitter everywhere, clicked her heels and ran out of the store. I know what she did was technically wrong because she ruined a lot of books, but if I were to ever go out with a bang, it would be like that.

27. A chef gone batshit.

I used to work in a kitchen at a locally owned restaurant, and one of the chefs got so fed up with the amount of eggs benedict he had to make. What did this guy do? He grabbed a big ass steak knife and cut the fucking palm of his hand and swiped it all along all the walls while screaming at the top of his lungs, then just walked out. Never saw the dude again.

28. What happens when a Jehovah’s Witness quits.

In a kitchen I worked at, some guy went ape shit. It was his last day before he retired, he was a mild mannered Jehovah’s Witness, and something in him just snapped. He started throwing pots and pans, threatened to come back and wreak havoc, yelled a lot, and eventually stormed out of work after calling us all sinners.

29. A dramatic and final farewell.

One of the programmers I used to work with left one morning without warning. He looked up at the ceiling and screamed a deep, and really hurt sounding scream for ten seconds, got up and walked out the door, out of the office and out towards the freeway.

Somebody saw him later that evening walking, about 20 miles from our office. He was never seen again by us. He never came back and got his car or any of his stuff. I took his keyboard.

30. Quit via food fight.

I worked in a restaurant and one day the pastry cook in charge of making the pastries made 15 lemon meringue pie (12 over the usual par) and when the chef confronted him later he proceeded to pick one up throw it into his face, then turn around and start a massive lemon meringue pie food fight. He then asked one of the servers to take a picture of all of them with his phone, then walked out through the restaurant saying “Peace out bitches” and left.

Like this? Read more about life in the workplace in The Graduates.