Got told to go help someone and they got in my face yelling for looking at a piece of equipment they were having problems with. Next day I said I wouldn’t work with them and got told that I can’t pick who I work with. It turns out that you actually can pick who you work with.

I was told that I gave one of our young engineers a “crisis of conscience” for telling him about how a product we were developing needed some more work and testing because we didn’t have enough data on it to release it for use.

Somehow management decided that I was poisoning the company and was toxic for not releasing a partially tested product that could either get people sick or set things on fire and then get people sick.

I was told to get on board and apologize to the young engineer for being a bad example or leave. I started polishing my resume, then turned in my resignation.

I spoke to the young engineer in a friendly and non-acusatory manner and he denied staying any of that to management, he claimed he understood what I was telling him and he agreed with my statements. We still keep in touch.

I was a freelancer for about a decade, and only ever walked off of one job site. It was because of safety concerns and one asshole. I was a stagehand, setting up lighting, decking, and audio gear for a musical in a local megachurch. I was in charge of a crew for this job, through a local labor company; Church hired the company to provide labor, who hired me as a subcontractor to make sure things went well, track workers’ time, etc… The load in was set to last three days, with them rehearsing in the evenings. Then they’d open that weekend.

I ended up attaching myself to the lighting crew for the first day, because decking and audio crews already had people who knew what they were doing. Plus if I’m in the catwalk, I can usually keep a pretty good eye on what is going on around the room. Some catwalks are easy to get to. They’re designed thoughtfully, with the expectation that crews will need to access them regularly. Other catwalks are… Not so easy. Maybe it was designed to be easy at one point, but then engineers added more structural beams, HVAC installers added air ducts, electricians added panels and conduit across doorways and walkways, architectural lighting got added in walkways, etc… Basically, the construction was a bunch of different crews, and none of them talked to each other to keep the catwalks accessible.

This church’s catwalk was unfortunately in the latter group. Getting to it involved a combination of a six-story-tall spiral staircase, army-crawling under an air duct, climbing over some electrical conduit, and squat-walking on a steel mesh grid to avoid some overhead beams. Needless to say, we made the trek up there once, and immediately decided that we weren’t going to be carrying our lights the same way we got up. Hell, lots of our lights wouldn’t even fit the same way we came up, due to the army-crawling section.

So we throw a rope down from the catwalk. Our lights are heavy, and it’s about a 7-story-tall lift to get from the audience to the catwalk. But many hands makes for light work, right? I ask who knows their knots, because we need someone on the ground to tie the lights onto the rope. One of the newbies (who I had never worked with before) raises his hand, so I send him down to act as ground support. His job is simple. We send the rope down from the catwalk, he ties the light to it, and then we haul the light up while he watches from the ground, making sure we don’t knock into anything or scratch the ceiling of the theater. Lather, rinse, repeat. This dude has the easiest job in the entire goddamned building, because all he has to do is tie a knot every few minutes, then watch the rest of us work.

So we send the rope down. A minute or so later, he calls back up that we’re good to lift. So we haul this light up. It’s heavy. It sucks. Many hands makes for light work, but we can only get a few hands on the rope due to the way we’re positioned in the catwalk. But we muscle this light up. One down, only 90 more to go.

But then as we set the light down on the catwalk, we realize that the “knot” we had lifted it with was basically just a bunch of loops with the tail pulled through. It fell apart as soon as the tension on the rope was released. Apparently our knot-tying ground support lied about being able to tie knots, and just went with the “if you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot” method. Except his “tie a lot” part wasn’t even safe, because he ended up just making a tension knot that completely fell apart as soon as the tension was gone. So I send someone else (who I have worked with before, and actually trust) down to the ground, and they send him back up.

All of this was simply to say that we were already a little bit on edge regarding this lighting install, because if that “knot” had come undone midway through our lift, we would have dropped a thousand dollar ~120lb light onto the audience seats, from about 90 feet in the air. So I want you to keep that part in mind when I bring up this next part…

After we get thirty or forty lights lifted, we’re feeling the strain. These lights are heavy, and my guys are smoked. The catwalk is hot (because hot air rises, this is in Texas in the summertime on a sunny day, and we’re basically pressed against the roof,) and we’ve all soaked through our shirts with sweat. For every light, once we get to the edge of the catwalk, we basically have to manhandle it up and over the railing to avoid scratching the decorative ceiling panels that are below us.

In the meantime, the church’s audio guy has shown up. He is sitting in the audience, chatting with another church employee. He apparently brought his son to work today. His son was like 5 or 6, and was suddenly running around in the audience, directly underneath us as we’re lifting these damned lights. Again, we’re already worried about dropping one of these lights. Even if we have the best knots in the world, accidents happen. I have seen clamps, handles, and hard points break off of lights before. I have seen ropes break. I have seen steel cables break. So there’s always some measure of “this could all go wrong and there’s nothing we can do but watch it fall” in the back of your mind with every single hoist. We already watched a knot fall apart that morning. And now there’s a fucking child playing underneath us.

So I call down, something along the lines of “Hey, can someone get that kid out of the way? We’re working up here!”

The sound guy almost immediately shouts back “how about you parent your kids, and let me parent mine!”

Like I said, my guys were already needing a break. We had already told ourselves that we were going to take a water break soon. As soon as that dude’s response had stopped reverberating around the (now dead silent) auditorium, I called out “Okay {company name}! Make it safe, then tools down! Take 20, then meet me on the dock!” Simultaneously, all ~40 crew members got the exact same glint in their eyes as they realized what was going on, finished whatever they were doing, then walked away for a smoke break.

In that 20 minutes, I called the company owner (who I play board games with nearly every week), and let him know what was going on. This was ~90 minutes into an 8 hour day. But notably, the crew had a 5 hour minimum. Meaning they’d get paid for at least 5 hours regardless of how long they worked. The intent is to ensure every job is worth the drive; without a minimum, nobody would take a 30 minute job if they had to drive 45 minutes to get there. And he said I could give the crew a choice. They can stay for the full 8 hours, or they can take the minimum and walk away right now. Next, I talked to the church’s main point of contact, to let them know what had happened, and what I was about to tell the crew. And when my crew came back after their break, I gave them all that choice. Every single person on the ~40 man crew took the minimum and walked away for the day.

The show’s load in was delayed by a day, and the church’s sound guy wasn’t present for the rest of the week’s load in and setup.

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Got pulled off all of my R&D projects and told by the CEO in a meeting with all of the team leaders (who enthusiastically agreed) to focus entirely on this one project as it was critically important and mandatory whether we liked it or not before we could go to market with our product. Said OK, got it ready in record time, none of the managers wanted to approve testing. Got told a generic “We need more info.”

Fleshed out everything I could. Did all sorts of bench top testing with full reports, did thorough budget analysis for the entire thing, a complete gantt chart with every contingency accounted for.

Two years later I’m in the latest of god only knows how many approval meetings with management. I’ve dialed back how much I expect out of them and I’m just trying to get an official project initiation form signed so at least I have a record of them acknowledging the project’s existence. One of them asks, for the nth time, “Why do we need to do this again?”

Boss looks at me expectantly, like “Yes, why do we need to do this?” as if I was the one who put myself on the project. I said “I can forward you the email where you told me to drop everything and work on it. If you changed your mind I’m more than OK to drop it and work on something else, but I refuse to hold even one more meeting to get agreement that I should even be working on this.”

He says “I think we just need more information.” I ask “Such as?” knowing full well there wasn’t a single more thing I could add. “We just need more information.” All of the team leaders just stared at me. So I quit on the spot and walked out.

Talked to a friend who still worked there and they still haven’t moved forward with that project years later, and the governing body still refuses to allow sale of the product until they do. It’s a 2 year timeline for testing so I have no idea what they are thinking. It’s only $100,000 too, they paid me more to try and get approval for two years than it would have cost to do it in the first place.

Got stuck as the charge nurse of acute psych almost every single night I worked for over a year. “But no one else can handle it like you” (I’m aware–acute is what I do) but I needed a fucking break. I told them 1/3 days I wanted to either be a floor nurse on med-psych or be the BERRT / consult nurse to the medsurg nurses for behavioral codes. They humored me one day a month for like three months then shoved my head right back under.

Then the supervisor came in to critique my morning reports twice in one week and honestly I didn’t even snap I literally just said “OK understood can I finish report now” so she tried to corner me in a side room but I haven’t survived ten years in acute psych without major injury by not being able to clock aggressive body language so I just walked right back into the nurses station to let everybody see her yell at me then handed her my badge and keys and left. Had a new job lined up within the week.

Current boss started out with the same sort of compliments like “oh you’re so calm when people are threatening to murder you” etc like yeah, as I said, this is what I do, and once I was settled in, everybody got used to asking me for advice on the EMR, meds, they got me teaching the violence deescalation classes the supervisor was tired of, made myself indispensable etc, I straight up told her I’ll do all of this, you can even enjoy my fun side projects I get up to when I’m bored–but if you make me charge nurse or let the house supers get shitty with me I’m out as soon as my contract is up.

So far she hasn’t pushed it.

Public and employee bathrooms out of order. 3 hours before opening, no one has ordered portable toilets. Was told to “walk to the Starbucks” if I needed to go so bad. So I left and never went back. 3 years at that job.

I have rage quit two jobs.

A long time ago I worked in a supermarket as a personal shopper. It was a pretty decent job, early start (4am) but an early finish, so it felt that I had the whole day to do whatever I wanted, though I was tired.

Skip ahead to Christmas eve, where everybody apparently has left their huge shops until the very last minute. Not only through our online service, but also in person.

Imagine this: You are being pushed to complete orders as quickly as possible and being called out for being slow, not only that, but every aisle is so full of people that you literally cannot push your trolley through them. I literally couldn’t move or do my job. I’m fairly embarrassed to say that I walked out, didn’t even tell anybody, and to my surprise I never got called out for it (I think it was too busy to notice) and the way the system worked, one of my colleagues would have just got the order and completed it without me.

The first job I ever quit, I must have been 16 years old. I was working as a promoter for a bar in a small town, essentially walking around with a sign, hanging out flyers, etc. ironic that a 16 year old is advertising a place they wouldn’t otherwise be allowed into, but it was cash in hand and pretty dodgy.

On my first night I was promised $50 for my work, but ended up being given $25 because they said it was a trial night. Suddenly my nightly salary is $25 and as a 16 year old, I’m a bit too scared of this dodgy guy in his car that was paying me to ask for the full amount.

Skip ahead a couple of weeks (I work maybe 3-4 nights a week, hours are like 10pm-5am) and tonight, it is pouring down with rain, I’m freezing cold, my uniform involves a t-shirt, and it is genuinely just a horrible experience.

I go to my boss, and tell him that I’m gonna go put my coat on and he says that’s not part of my uniform. I get a bit ballsy and tell him I want the extra $25 for the night before, and he said he never promised me anymore money than $25. So I walk home, in the rain, feeling hard done by but also like I learnt a valuable lesson. I never worked for less than I was worth after that.

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Tweakers in the welding crew

Got laid off from my career job in broadcasting and picked up work unloading trucks at Walmart at night. Hated it but needed the money. One night, when I was already at my wit’s end due to being treated like a child as seems to be the company’s SOP, I was unloading a row from the truck and it collapsed on me. Corner of a box hit me just below the eye and cut the skin. So I’m in the employee bathroom with a cold paper towel trying to get it to stop bleeding while cursing to myself. Not yelling but normal speaking volume. I guess it was audible through the door because I step out and a manager is there. The first thing they say isn’t asking if I’m ok, but rather chastising me for cursing telling me to stop. I look at her, say “like fuck I do,” take my name badge off and toss it at her feet and walk out.

“I’m 100% convinced that most of those denials were being made because the staff that was there were overburdened to the point of just blanket denying shit to make their KPIs”

And I am 100% convinced this type of thing is not an accident. Because why would an insurance company WANT to pay out more than they have to? Instead they slash staff which saves money on pay AND claims and the company can blame any drop in quality on the reduced staff!

It’s genius except for the part where they are killing paying customers!

I’m glad people like you are out there!

My 2 story’s are nowhere near as great as this but I’ll share anyway lol

The first was working in a supermarket: I hated working at the register, I need to move around, I can’t be stuck in one spot for hours on end. I had tried to get reassigned to another department so I could be more active so I ask the manager if anything has changed and if I could be moved. This sonofabitch actually says this “I’m going to do with you what I do with my kids, I know you really don’t like the register so you’re going to stay there.”

Ok. I grabbed my drawer, handed it in, and walked out.

The second was working as a service technician years later. I had to go to NYC very often and parking succccks there, I usually have to park blocks and blocks away from where I need to be and carry heavy equipment back and forth. Occasionally you’ll be in a timed spot and might not make it back in time and get a ticket, the boss never paid those tickets they were on me for choosing the spot, fine. One day I looked for 15 minutes for a spot and couldn’t find anything, so I parked in a restaurant parking lot that wasn’t going to open for 3 hours. 20 minutes later I get a call from my office that they’re going to tow the van if I don’t come get it… $300 for them to not tow the van. By that point I probably had already paid $3000 in tickets, most of which I really didn’t have a choice, it was carry 50-100 lbs for 30+ mins each way, or eat a ticket. That was the final straw. I absolutely hate driving as it is especially in the overpopulated shithole I live in.

Less of a rage-quit and more of a rage-promotion. (it’ll make sense, just keep reading.)

I am someone who keeps track of what I do, my productivity, and how much output I’m generating in my work. A company I used to work for decided they wanted to do back-door layoffs by handing out phony write-ups and putting people on performance improvement plans, and they targeted me.

Essentially, I went into a meeting with my boss thinking I was going to get promoted or at least an attaboy, because I knew I was the highest performer on the team.

Nope. It was a writeup. I told them straight up that I was doing more work than anyone on the team, I could prove it, and I wasn’t signing. I fought the PIP with HR too, and the delicious thing was my bosses knew they fucked up, because I breezed right through it.

Ended up interviewing for an internal req that put me in a senior position on another team, and what galled me the most was the insistence of my boss on a going-away lunch, and I hated every second of it. I was gracious on my way out because I didn’t want to burn bridges, but I honestly hope that person is rotting in Hell now, and am very pleased that that company got bought out and sold for parts, so hopefully they all got fired too.

they asked me to do things