Quitting a bad job is like a good meal: it’s better with company. Who hasn’t fantasized of leaving a terrible gig in a huff, only to be triumphantly followed by a validating gang of equally abused co-workers? Well, for these Redditors, the “dream” came true. Enjoy these inspirational (or enraging) stories of what made everyone at work finally quit at the same time.
1. You’re Not Worth My Time
They completely restructured the way we're paid. What I used to do involved about 40% client interaction, 20% team/coworkers’ interaction, and 40% paperwork and case coordination stuff. Based on what we do that means only 40% of the time is technically billable, and there are really sticky rules for what is and isn't billable. So, logically, we were being paid on a salary model.
Cue management saying we can only make money for the time we have that is actually billable. A quarter of the department quit. Two of us on the same day.
2. The Clock is Running Out
I had worked at a grocery store for about three years before moving from Courtesy Clerk (basically bagger + custodian) to Helper Clerk (stocker). The grocery department wanted to save costs on personnel but couldn't fire anyone or lay anyone off due to the union. So, they started cutting back hours and literally told us "when someone quits, everyone else will get more hours."
We were supposed to be 40-hour employees and they had us at 32 hours. Two people quit and we were down to 24 hours. A third person quit, down to 16 hours. I don't know what their plan was, but they didn't give us more hours as people left.
3. The Blood Bond Between Criminals
I've been working at my job for two months now and there are about nine people there. Well, earlier this month, out of nowhere, the supervisor and his sister who did data entry like I do just resigned. It was super weird, but then I learned the rest of the story. Apparently, he was arrested for tax fraud and identity theft, and the sister (I don't know if she was involved) hightailed it back to Ohio.
So now, obviously, we're short, yet the project manager hasn't bothered to hire anyone new.
4. The Family That Fails Together
He canceled all raises and bonuses for everyone in the whole company...except himself (the CEO), his wife (financial and human resources), and his son (an utterly useless IT tech) in a year where we had record profits brought in almost double the clients...on top of announcing they aren't looking to hire more people when we were already overwhelmed.
Good part about it was when the majority of us quit, they lost almost every single client shortly afterward to their competitors and the company is now defunct.
5. Who Will Hold the Door?
Many years ago, in high school, I worked at a movie theater. The place was pretty poorly run from the moment I started there. We never got paid on time and management was basically a bunch of lazy jerks who sat in the office talking all day and never actually did any managing. It would have been hard for things to have gotten any worse, but after a couple of months they brought in new management who seemed to want to make it their personal mission to run the theater as poorly as possible.
They first decided to implement a new policy requiring all projectionists to wear ties, despite the fact that projectionists are never seen by the public, not to mention that tiny little detail that the projectionists worked around giant, rapidly spinning objects that a tie could get caught in. Management refused to reconsider the policy and every single projectionist quit as a result.
They then decided that the door people (of which I was one), who were always scheduled seven days a week, would now only be scheduled on the weekends, and refused to reassign any of us to concessions on the weekdays so we wouldn't lose hours. As a result, almost every single door person quit, including me. What else did they expect?
After that, they started imposing impossible cleanliness standards on concessions, things like requiring them to scrape popcorn kernels out of the cracks in the trim behind the popcorn machines. Concessions was there until five in the morning every night trying to meet their standards. Most of the concession people quit as a result.
By my count, the theater went from a staff of about 50 to a staff of about 12 in three weeks. I swung by about a month after I quit and found out that entire management staff had been fired and replaced yet again by an entirely new one—ones who actually seemed to be running the theater properly. My best guess is that the previous management had been told to whip the theater into shape, and they were idiots who had no idea how to effectively do that.
6. Three Strikes, We’re All Out
When I was 16, I worked in the concessions stand at a minor league baseball stadium. Minimum wage at the time was $5.15/hr, this job paid $8, and it was always in the evenings, so it was perfect work for a high school student. The only bad thing was our management was TERRIBLE. The main manager would throw toddler tantrums about once a shift over stupid stuff like not ordering enough of a specific beer (she did the ordering) or running out of pre-cut lemons for tea.
One night, the stadium was running a promotion and it was incredibly busy—easily 2-3x the normal volume of customers. We were all working our butts off handling multiple roles each with absolutely no downtime. Although we all cleaned as we worked, nobody had a chance to do thorough cleaning for the whole shift because of the never-ending horde of hungry baseball fans.
The manager showed up three or four hours late, as per usual, and throws the biggest freaking tantrum I've ever seen in my entire life, all over the unswept floor. Finally, she announces "Listen up you, lazy peons! Minimal work gets minimal pay. Everybody is being paid minimum wage tonight because you slobs won't clean up anything."
Both of our bartenders and the bar back quit on the spot, which caused a chain reaction. We all took off our aprons and hats to leave. She blocked the exit and was red in the face from screaming, so one of the cooks climbed out of one of the big serving windows where we served customers, so I did the same and most of the staff followed.
Bear in mind that this all happened in front of like 200+ customers. Of course, my final paycheck "got lost" so I had to file a wage theft complaint with the Texas Workforce Commission.
7. Someone Needs to Go Back to School
I worked at Buffalo Wild Wings for a few years as a line cook. Two different stores, same freaking pay. It was the type of work where you ask for a raise and they scoff and say, “Yeah, me too.” Anyways, I had been pretty dead set on quitting sooner or later, our kitchen was very small. Most people ended up closing 4-5 days a week with doubles on the weekends, while still attending school full time as it was a college town.
On SUPER BOWL FREAKING SUNDAY, a useless coworker who ducked out in the bathroom most of their shifts finally stops showing, and in response, the managerial staff delegated closing to my pal, J. Dude was a freaking delight to be around, hands down the best coworkers ever. J had told them that due to being a full-time student, he no longer wanted to be first in last out (4 pm-12 am, 1 am on the weekends). They basically told him to go screw himself, and that they don’t have any more shifts for him.
Immediately, me and one other cook walked to the office and quit on the spot. Buffalo Wild Wings lost four cooks on Super Bowl Sunday, leaving them with 7 full-time students on the schedule. It was a managerial circus show.
8. An Offer They Can’t Refuse
I work in a warehouse in Australia. The manager was a cheap jerk. We were on $21 an hour. I was employed by an outside labor hire company, and they hated my manager. One day, they sent an email out to all of us saying we could move to a different warehouse and get $29 an hour. 15 guys quit that week, about half the workforce.
Within two weeks we got a pay rise to $29.
9. Let’s Dine Out
I was a line cook at a restaurant and the owner was treating us like trash. There were only three of us, the Executive Chef, Sous Chef, and myself, but we all picked up our paychecks on Friday afternoon and cashed them, then called individually to quit before the dinner rush. The owner called in some family members to fill in and the place is still thriving 20 years later.
10. A Slice of Chaos
My wife's cousin and her husband opened a pizza shop in our small town. I had never met them, so we went in to say hi one evening. Turns out, the husband was a complete jerk. They appeared to be very busy, and he was running around with a very angry look on his face and had nothing nice to say to anyone. He only acknowledged us with a rude grunt in our general direction.
While we were waiting, he began berating one of his three employees and, one by one, they all simply took off their smocks, threw them right in his face, and walked out the door with their middle fingers extended in his direction. I was quite impressed. They ended up closing within the following couple of weeks once word got out.
11. The Bully Means Business
I worked in a coffee and food place. One of the managers bullied people on the job and would blatantly bash them when they were at work and within hearing distance. Everyone knew about it, but no one wanted to say anything until one day, someone spoke up to our boss and quit. Once people saw that she could do that, six more people came forward and quit—yet they never fired that manager.
12. It’s a Dirty Job, But Someone Had to Do It
I rage quit my minimum wage job a few months ago and about a month after I quit, 80% of the employees walked out on one night, leaving everything for the mean new night manager to handle. From what I heard through the grapevine, she responded by stealing a bunch of money from the cash register, getting fired, and then starring in a sex movie to pay her rent. And then the business started "borrowing" money from other franchises to stay afloat. Guess I made the right decision in quitting when I did lol.
Also, yes, I've seen the movie. It was TERRIBLE.
13. Let’s Go to the Movies
Was part of a mass-quitting at a movie theater in 1997. The manager started berating people one by one by whispering in their ears. One girl started to cry and left the popcorn stand and walked into a movie, then everyone working the concessions followed her. The ticket salespeople saw this and knew what was going on, so they went into the theater to watch the movie too.
Eventually, all the ushers migrated in there too and every employee was watching the flick.
14. When a Bonus Becomes a Minus (to Your Staff)
We were promised bonuses at the end of the year. Then, they suddenly told everyone they will not be giving out bonuses due to low company performance. The company had a successful year, but the boss was in the middle of building a multimillion-dollar home, and his brother-in-law manager just bought a nice home that year. I quit on the spot. Many others quit soon after.
15. A Domestic Dispute
They called everyone into a major company meeting and informed us we were all (except for sales and managers) being offshored to India and the Philippines. They had a plan for us training our replacements that, strangely, didn't account for pre-schedule turnover. People started finding jobs literally the next week and the hemorrhaging never stopped.
16. Ladies First (to Leave)
I don’t know if I'd say “mass quitting,” but I worked at a Journeys (only six employees) and our manager was terrible. He stole shoes from the store, and he sent penis pics to the females. Well on Mondays, we would all come in to talk about the week and see the schedule. One girl quit, then another, then I decided to leave too.
Learned later everyone but the manager quit in under a day.
17. Never Forget Who Got You That Vacation
Worked at a data-company. The guys in the sales department screwed around all day. They'd literally be in the parking lot drinking beer and racing RC cars. When it came to handling accounts/clients, they frequently gave away free accounts in order to "retain" customers (and make their own sales numbers look good), and somehow they got away with it.
Meanwhile, there were dozens of programmers and database nerds working tirelessly behind the scenes to integrate a bunch of complicated data and make it easy to access via the website. Yearly holiday announcements come around, and upper management decides to send the entire sales team to Hawaii for an all-expense-paid vacation.
When the furious developers asked why they were just taking the sales team, the confused CEO literally said, "Well... I mean... I guess we could ask the sales team to pick one person from each department who helped them the most this year, and take them too..." The programmers/engineers/database people were livid and walked out in droves.
Gee, I wonder why the company tanked.
18. All You Need is Love
At a pet store, there was about 45 employees in total. Our store manager who everyone loved was suddenly moved to another store and the district manager who was...not loved...replaced him. About 13 people left in less than two weeks, and several (five or six) more had already left or gone part-time to return to school a week before.
There was always high turnover, and when people were leaving and apologizing to our old boss he was just like, "Not my problem!"
19. A Good Boss Is in Low Supply
I worked as the head secretary for a contractor and was in a small office with a few other girls. He paid us under the table (when he felt like it), did poor work, was consistently nasty and mean, and was all around a terrible, terrible boss. One day, when he yelled at me for eating regularly (I'm a type 1 diabetic and snack on occasion to keep my sugar up), that was the last straw, and I quit.
The next day, the other girls left too. Last I heard, the on-site employees also left, and now he is trying to manage everything alone. Because he also burnt his bridges with his suppliers, he has next to no business and is going to lose his house. Karma.
20. Finder’s Keepers
I worked at a small design studio in NYC. About 40 people worked there. Some account execs led a mutiny. About 85% of the employees left on the same day, taking all but one client with them. This was long before Mad Men was created.
21. Blink and You’ll Miss Them
I worked at a Noodles and Company that had some serious problems. The original General Manager was fired, and the first temporary manager was a raging jerk; he was also the first of eight temps. He threatened to fire the entire staff if we didn't follow his rules. 16 out of 28 people quit the next day. The following seven managers weren't much better. Five out of eight of them were fired within a week of leaving that restaurant.
Makes me wonder how that chain still exists.
22. No Profession for a Predator
I was the tech director of a non-profit live music/theater venue with a pretty active board of directors. One night, a board member tried to drug and assault two of my crew members after a staff party (unsuccessful, thankfully). It was a fairly small college town, and the board member was a big deal and a major donor, so the whole thing got swept under the rug.
Myself, the director of operations, the executive director, and the entirety of the technical crew quit on the day we found out he'd just get away with it and the place went under less than a year after.
23. The Brogrammer’s Paradox
Small web company in a small city where everyone in the industry knows everyone else. Shortly before I was hired, the two senior programmers quit at the same time to start their own business. Stuff went downhill pretty fast for the two of them, and their business didn't last long. The owner almost had a breakdown, having lost 2/3 of his geeks.
That man was the best boss I ever had; the guys who quit were just young and felt invincible, that having their own business would be a piece of cake! The junior programmer who was left got chummy really fast with the replacement programmer that they hired. Unfortunately, new hire turned out to be a jerk and was let go.
Proving that people tend not to learn from other's mistakes, the junior programmer quit to start a new company with the dude who had been laid off, saying there weren't any advancement opportunities at the company. Last I heard, junior programmer got another job because the jerk just disappeared; no one had any clue where he went.
All's well that ends well though! About four months after junior programmer left, the company was bought out by a larger one where there would have been lots of opportunities. One of the original dudes who left apologized to the owner for his douchiness and got re-hired and is an awesome co-worker.
24. Inheriting Trouble
The day I walked in to quit my job, a co-worker told me that she had just given notice, and so had a back-of-house staff member earlier that day. The new manager, who was really sweet and had taken over for the manager that led us all to seek other employment, was completely overwhelmed. I told her I would hang out and help her finish some data entry for inventory to soften the blow. I also decided I would wait a few days to break the news.
As I'm sitting there, the manager answers the phone. It's the new hire calling to quit. The manager turns to me with tears in her eyes and says, "At least you aren't quitting, right?" She figured it out with a look. I felt like such a jerk. The worst part about it was that the manager before her deserved the same-day resignations, but she had been promoted.
25. Someone is Kind of Thick
I've been in a situation where multiple people were fired in a string. I was working for Curves, and the manager of all the branches in the city was a major witch—not to mention completely stupid. She fired everyone that was over a size 12 over a series of two weeks, from all locations. When the owner realized what was going on, she fired the manager for being discriminatory.
Also, she was hiring her teenage daughter's stick-thin cheerleader friends in their places.
26. Spreading My Wings (Right into Your Face)
I work for a firm that represents people in claims for Social Security disability. We had five representatives, including me (I'm still there), and about 50 office employees who handled the clerical side of things. We had three of our five reps (the backbone of the company) quit and go into business on their own at once with no warning.
The six months that followed were super hectic, but also led to an instantaneous jump in seniority that worked in my favor once the waters settled. Our company started requiring non-competes from the higher up employees after that. Also, when they left, the owner and founder of the company had just passed away earlier that month...
Things were a huge mess for a while.
27. Say “No” to The Boy’s Club
I interviewed with a mid-sized software company some time ago. Their product was selling very well, and they had recently moved into an impressive new glass and chrome building. Shortly after, every woman in the company quit on the same day. At first, I was disappointed they didn't call me back for another interview, since my technical knowledge was a good match for their needs.
But then, even though I'm a guy, I figured that the "every woman quit" indicated some real management problems, so I'm glad they didn't call me.
28. I Know When I’m Being Frozen Out
When Apple decided to "let me go,” they lost about 15 other employees who followed suit. They quit on the spot, and we all walked out together gleefully. I use "let me go" in quotes because I've had enough of their corporate bureaucracy. It all happened based on an unproven instance. After a month of investigations, they deemed me not responsible nor having anything to do with what happened, but they still gave me the ultimatum: Turn in your two weeks notice, or be fired.”
I turned in my two weeks notice and walked out right then and there (escorted by security). The other folks in my department knew what had happened, all wrote up their resignation letters, and we all left as a group. Went to a local pub, got schnockered, and I got paid out my vacation time, plus a few "bonuses," so I stuck around the city for my final month-long vacation.
Then moved back to the city I call home. :)
29. Prime Shipping, Subprime Treatment of Workers
I work in a call center. About this time last year, we lost 10 people all within a day or two. Our company started out really caring about its employees, but then we merged with Amazon. Amazon forced them to lower starting pay for people. They cut our insurance down to the bare minimum. Things like office parties are all completely gone.
It really killed morale. Most of us here are still looking for our out. If I had the money, I'd have quit with them last year.
30. Anything for the Music
It was way back in 1974. I was working in a factory that made wooden accessories for the home. Early in June of that year, we started hearing commercials for the big Ozark Music Festival. Three days, twenty-eight first line bands, $18. There were several of us in our teens and early twenties working there, and the buzz about the concert increased as it got closer.
The trouble was it started on Friday, a workday, there were five of us planning on calling in sick and taking off. On the Wednesday before the concert at lunch, our supervisor addressed the rumors that we were skipping work on Friday to go to the concert. He informed us that anyone who didn't come to work Friday didn't need to come Monday.
After some grumbling and talking it over, all five of us said see ya later and left right then. It was the best decision I ever made.
31. Get Out Before It Gets Hot
Worked at a Wendy’s and one of the regional managers started running a store because they couldn’t/wouldn’t find new managers to replace the old ones. Well anyways, this guy practically ran the place into the ground. Before he started running the store most everyone liked working there as it was a good environment. A few months after, a couple of people quit because of him.
Then one day, I roll in at nine to help open the store, and he comes out to my car as soon as I park (I was 15 minutes early and usually just sat in my car until nine) and tells me, “Hey I need you early because the three openers just quit on me.” We manage to get the restaurant open and had a number of people from other stores help run the place until the people from the next shift came in.
A couple of days later, I hear the full story of what happened from a co-worker. The regional manager is supposed to be at the store at seven or so, and the openers 30 minutes later. He didn’t actually show up until 8:30. So when the openers, already mad at being at work really early and not being on the clock, saw the regional manager roll in and knew it was gonna be an awful shift all decided that they were done with him and just quit right there.
So at least six people quit because of this guy by the time I left the place. Probably more left after me.
32. Too Big to Fail
I did landscape construction. The cheap owner kept taking bigger and bigger projects while never hiring more help. We were all overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious as hell. One of our foremen quit, and I followed suit a few days later. Two more guys quit the next day. He was down to three guys for the obscene amount of work he wanted to do.
Of course, everything gets way behind schedule, but he's convinced it's not his fault at all. He went out of business less than a year later.
33. The Tattoo Artists Leave Their Mark
Tattoo shop owner (who lived in another state) hired some jerk to come "revamp" the shop. I had been managing for three years at this point, and he just expected me to teach him how to do my job so he could replace me. That guy had no clue how to run a shop. Plus, the owner had been embezzling money for her coke habit and had blamed the longest-standing artist at the shop for lost revenue. Accused him of stealing. I did the books. No one was stealing. She was nuts.
Anyway, all the artists and I mutinied and left at the same time. Screwed them over good. With that idiot at the helm, the shop didn’t last a year after we all left.
34. We Popped Out Before the Bubble Burst
I was working for a very large IT company. Before the tech bubble burst, we had a meeting with our "new director and the VP." They were tired of people complaining about things that should be changed at the job and how they managed people. So, they sat around 200 of us down in our auditorium, and the director said she didn't want to hear any more complaints on how she was running things, and if we didn't like them, there was the door, but that there was no way we'd leave such a great job.
Well, there was a mass exodus and probably close to 50 people left within two months. She and the VP were "re-orged" and given 0 reports. They were finally gone after a round of layoffs happened shortly after.
35. An Empire Falls in Four Moons
Owners retired, they were literally the greatest people, both very sweet, but kept the place running like a well-oiled machine—they took pretty good care of us and their restaurant. When they left, they gave the restaurant over to their nephew, who at the time was a busboy/waiter, He was kind of standoffish, didn’t really interact with us too much, a bit lazy at times, but for the most part did his stuff and went home; he seemed okay.
Until he got the power of being the owner. He fired four people, including two of the four cooks and two of the three dishwashers, all because he "didn’t like their attitude." This was literally the same day he got the gig; a Friday night just before the dinner rush. He refused to allow people to take vacation that they’d already requested and gotten confirmed by the original owners, would change the schedule randomly without telling anyone, and then scream at people when they missed a shift or came in late because of it.
He’d refuse to replenish the kitchen until we were literally already out of things, then take forever to put in the orders. He showed up randomly and would drink at the bar, for free of course because he was the owner, and then bring in all his buddies to drink with him, together they’d get way out of hand and grab at women and try to start fights.
Within the first month of him being the owner, over half the staff had quit, usually walking out literally in the middle of their shifts, after being screamed at. They’d basically throw down their aprons and tell everyone else that they were so sorry, but they couldn’t do it anymore. Finally one day, the last cook, this big dude who usually kept the kitchen laughing and running at a decent pace, started crying in the middle of his shift.
He dropped everything he was doing after the boss came and yelled at him for being to slow and making "slop," then walked out. The rest of us just bailed along with him. Four months later, the place was closed, his aunt and uncle were absolutely furious and devastated that he’d run the business they’d built up for over 30 years into the ground.
36. No Job is Worth Your Freedom
Several years ago, I worked in a mental health center. We worked primarily with kids. It was time for the center to renew their certification. Instead of keeping up with everything that needed to be done over the course of five years, the proper procedures were ignored. In the couple of months before recertification, the administration made us sit through a ridiculous amount of training on things that would have been covered in training such as HIPAA laws and identifying child abuse.
Then came our paperwork. Our center encouraged us to do things that aren’t exactly covered by Medicaid or approved through certification. For example, taking kids to the park isn’t allowed, but guess where they instructed us to take these kids, so they didn’t disturb the therapists working? I had to go back and edit five months worth of documents to get rid of the evidence.
The kicker was that bathrooms were supposed to have a log of when they were cleaned. An administrator perfectly forged the signatures of multiple employees. I don’t think they would have gone through that trouble just for a bathroom log. What else were they forging our signatures on? The potential risk of being charged with Medicaid fraud was too high for me. I quit, as did many others.
I did report them to the authorities. Shockingly they are still in business. I did what I had to cover my butt.
37. Time is Money and His Was Up
I was bartending on the side to augment the trash pay I get as a helicopter flight instructor. Worked there for two years and I was never late, nor had any disciplinary trouble. Well, one day I had a cross country flight run longer than it should’ve because I had some maintenance issues. I knew I would be late for the bartending gig, so I called and talked to my supervisor to give him a heads up.
By the time I made it to work, I was only 20 minutes late. Well, the owner’s 23-year-old son managed the place and informed me that his new policy was that I would have to surrender half of my tips for the night, as punishment for being late. I told him that I didn’t think that was very fair, especially since I was only 20 minutes late for a five-hour shift, I’d never once been late, and I’d called ahead.
He literally said, “Tough luck, don’t be late.” I told him to go screw himself and walked out. When I told my coworkers what happened, four other people quit right on the spot because they’d had enough of the dude’s power tripping BS. Don’t mess with people’s money.
38. Not a DIY Project
The boss went off on a tirade on me for something that wasn’t my fault and I got him to scream, “People like you are expendable pieces in this company and I can replace you tomorrow if I wanted to.” 80% of the engineers quit the next day. Simply didn’t show up. Including me. From what I know, the entire project folded because my now ex-boss couldn’t find people to replace us because no one wanted to do the kind of work he was looking for at the salary he was paying.
39. Resize the Clock
Not a mass quit, but I used to work at a grocery store and our manager was being a jerk about days off/playing favorites. One day, we conspired to all call sick on the same day. Only two people showed up for work (out of 10, from 5:00-21:00), the entire day. The manager had to work from 6:00-22:00, and the department sales were $12,000 under.
He respected our time off requests after that. I quit a few months later anyway.
40. Everyone’s Got Beef
Ok, I did NOT work there, but I saw the glory. In the 90s, we would end up at the Waffle House in town. We always enjoyed talking with the bottomless coffee and the ''all the way'' potatoes or whatever...One night, I ordered chili and the waitress who knew us said: "Mo, I think you want a T-Bone steak.” Being college students fresh from a bar, we didn't have money for that, but she simply said: "Rare, Medium, or Well."
We just laughed and went on with our conversations. Then all of us got steaks and the hashbrowns all the way!! All the customers seemed to be getting T-Bones. We perked up and listened to the staff. They were really angry and cheesed at the manager. It seemed he had been harassing them and calling constantly berating them about their service and anything else he could come up with.
Several had worked double shifts and were beat. They then came around and gave us checks for just coffee. One of the waitresses started laughing and noted that the manager was over in the Flag Stop parking lot watching with binoculars. That was it. They all put their Waffle House uniforms on the counter and walked. All. Of. Them. They simply left.
The manager came screaming to the restaurant and burst in the door. He was running around like a lunatic. He went in the back and no one was there. Then he went table to table asking what we ordered. Everyone got up and started to leave while he was madly trying to stop people on the way out. The employees migrated to "Western Sizzlin" across the street. The Waffle House is now a Chipotle.
Was a truly odd moment.
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