I delivered for Pizza Hut last year. I'm a pot smoker, so was everyone else at the shop. Before I get to my shitty story, you have to know that one day, the guy who's kind of in charge of all of the drivers was asked "How easy is delivering compared to waiting on tables?" to which he replied "It's the easiest fucking job in the world. You take the pizza to your car, light up a blunt, and go on your way." I was in the back room with them and I cracked a smile and everyone was laughing saying "Haha jrod, of course you know that."

One Sunday morning I asked a coworker if my eyes looked okay. She has no problem with anyone smoking pot, but that day she decided to rat me out to the shift manager. So then it was me, the shift manager, the head driver guy, and the GM outside. They told me I couldn't be doing this. I looked the other driver square in the eyes and he dropped his head. I think he knew exactly what I wanted to say, but I didn't say it. I went home and had to tell my mom, and out of nowhere she wrote my letter of resignation. That was the embarrassing part, but I don't think my manager knew she did it. Went in to take the drug test, failed, and went on with life.

Now I make sandwiches at another shop of pot heads. The manager in charge of the schedule sold her old vaporizer on ebay and had the dad of the kid who bought it come to the shop to pick it up. Needless to say I'm in really good company here.

I've quit a bunch of jobs and never been fired, and always gave proper two weeks notice. Never walked on a job, not even the shitty ones I probably could have. I always left on good terms, albeit possible "sticking it to them" on a few ocassions and leaving them in a bind for a bit.

However, there was one job I had up here, for a small field tech IT job. Essentially small business IT, going out to the businesses, fixing stuff, going back to the main office, etc. Was a job to fill the gap between better jobs as I had recently quit another place. But it was the biggest joke of a job I've ever had in my life. The owner was a real intense toolbag, and was dishonest from the start. He told me in the interview it was a FT full employee position, and that he would reimburse me for gas and mileage on my car (I asked specifically for details about these things), since it was field appointments I'd be doing. Well, on my first day he hands me a 1099 tax form (for contractors), and informs me I'm a contractor for the first time. Strike one. When I fill out the paperwork I realize there was nothing about mileage reimbursement anywhere, so I ask, and he says "Well your a contractor, so you can just write it off... it's even BETTER than reimbursement". Stike two. I mention that I felt he had lied to me during the interview process about what type of employee I would be, and that he flat out lied to my face about mileage reimbursement. He says "Well I'm sorry you were confused". Strike three.

"You're right, I am sorry I was confused, and more sorry I gave you even a minute of my time." and I got up to walk out, he tried to stop me and grabbed my arm and asked why I was being so unprofessional, "I don't care what your side of the story is but you flat out lied multiple times during the interview, and now you're physically holding me as well, gee, wonder why I don't want to work here?". He just let me go and I may have told him to go fuck himself. He tried calling me the following morning to see if I was coming in and I told him no, then he tried to guilt me into coming back saying I was screwing him over and he had a lot riding on me. When I declined, he informed me he was "a powerful person in the local IT market", and that I'd have trouble finding a job if I crossed him.

Only job I've ever walked from, but technically I didn't even finish the paperwork so I still maintain I have a clean record of never walking off a job. That guy was a complete psychopath.

Hell yes.

I made ends meet my sophomore year in college by working swing shift at 7-11. After watching three hours of VHS tapes about what to do in the event of a robbery, I discovered that the lion's share of my work day dealt with selling scratch tickets to gambling addicts and changing out scorched irish-creme-flavored coffee. One fine evening I made the mistake of opening a magazine and reading it between 2am and 3am.

A week later I was called on the carpet. The owner had been reviewing the surveillance tapes and had noticed that I was committing the cardinal sin of reading.

"Instead of what?" I said.

"Instead of straightening out the store," he said.

"I did that at ten, at midnight, at one and at two," I said.

"Then what's the problem with doing it at two thirty?" he replied.

Faced with impeccable logic, I informed him that I wasn't interested in making $11 an hour to endlessly tidy a 7-11 so poorly managed during the day that the back shelves still had Crystal Pepsi in 1996. There were zero consequences from my decision as three months later I changed cities and spent the next three years mixing bands in clubs for money.

I also resigned with less than a day's notice from a rather terrible bioengineering firm with a nine-person engineering team, of which I, the "intern," was one of two with an actual engineering degree.

There are stories I could tell about Ekos Corporation.

I did a few months ago, actually. It felt pretty good too!

I was responsible for traveling around the country to collect transportation information with a piece of shit van (kind of like the google car). Sounds cool, right? Not when you don't get to come home for over four months, get about one day off a week, and drive for nearly ten hours a day (unless it rained). Once I finally got a week off in between projects I was told I'd have to drive to the west coast and back in a few days to pick up and switch out another vehicle that another crew was using. SURPRISE!! I ended up having to stay while my partner and a person from the other crew got to go back. They didn't tell me this until I got there, yet they knew the whole time. I had only packed for a few days.

After working that surprise project for another month, I had just about reached my limit. The saving grace of my next (third) project was that it was about an hour away from my house. However, we had a different vehicle that was very old and sensitive. We would hit a bump in the road, the software would crash, and we'd lose all of the data we'd just collected. After constantly reporting this and our superiors doing nothing about it, my partner and I seriously considered quitting. Then it happened. They gave me a lot of shit for wanting a weekend off for a family gathering after a very stressful week. After that, my partner and I each called the office to tell them we were dropping the van off there. We both quit that day.

Although I probably should have given notice, I couldn't take it anymore. I did give them some feedback in an exit interview, however. My weekend was awesome, too!

EDIT I totally spaced out and forgot to mention all the safety issues that were problematic as well. Not only did they have us zip-tying loose brake cables, they also were not happy when we wanted to take our van in to get the COMPLETELY bald tires and grinding brakes replaced (not an exaggeration, I actually have a pretty sweet bald tire pic from the incident). Every time we would mention our concerns they would just tell us to tough it out because the project was almost over. Sorry, I don't feel like driving through the mountains on bald tires and bad brakes.

Oh fuck yeah, walked out of a Papa Johns never to return at the ripe age of 15. I worked there happily for about a year, then they switched managers on me. New guy was a lunatic, treated me like I was even younger than I was, despite the fact that I was easily their best employee.

A la your story, thenewgreen, I quit halfway through a Friday night, which any pizza veteran can tell you is the busiest part of the week. Felt great.

The only times I've quit my job has been to move onto other work/school and they were pretty amicable; I still keep in touch with my old EB Games managers. I had a friend who got fed up with the bullshit we put up with at a call-center and decided to see how long it would take them to fire him. He figured out the absolute minimum amount of work he would have to do to not have customers complain about him and spent the other 90% of his time doing whatever he wanted while getting paid to do it. He lasted a year and a half before getting fired and was able to argue well enough with the government to get a years worth of EI.

Once, during a summer in the middle of University when I was having trouble making ends meet, I took a job as a door-to-door double glazing salesman. It was the worst job I've ever had, and I was abysmal at it (I hated lying to people to try to make them want to buy something that they didn't really want and generally didn't need). I hated every minute of it.

All of the work was on commission, and I'd been told that it usually took a few days at it before you got the hang of it, so I stuck with it for just over a week. That's when I got my first sale; some lady who'd thought my pitch was worthwhile. But she called up the company later that day to say she'd changed her mind and didn't want a quote after all, and I realised that no matter how hard I tried, I'd never be enough of a con man to be good at this job (which I already hated).

I simply didn't turn up for work the next day. When my boss called me, I said, "You didn't lose any sales by me not being there. This really isn't for me; I quit."

Never underestimate the power of menopause, I say. I was the National Sales Manager for a large corporate at one time, and had a team of around 12 sales people working for me at any one time. The National Campaign Manager and I had been friendly, but I was getting the sense that he was a bit of a bully and wasn't sure where that would lead. One day, we had a little meeting, both of us were there, and my whole team. During this meeting, I said something about upper management not really caring about the team, so we had to care about ourselves. Well, the NCM thought that I was out of line and wanted me to apologise for saying what I had said to the team. I told him no. I said that I didn't believe that I'd said anything wrong, and it was partially to create a sense of us working together against the odds. I thought that was the end of it.

About 30 minutes later, I walked past one of the glass enclosed conference rooms, to see my entire team inside with the NCM. I didn't call this meeting, so WTF? When the first person came out of the room, I asked him what was going on. He said, "Phil was apologising to us for your remark." Suddenly the menopausal brain kicked those hormones up to HIGH. When the last salesperson walked out and Phil was heading toward the door, I stepped in, closed the door and opened a can of whoopass. Basically it went kinda like this: Who the FUCK do you think you are? You're apologising for ME? FUCK YOU! You have a shitload of nerve thinking you can take my goddamned team, people that I got to win after 2 years of losing, and apologise for me. Fuck you, twice, asshole.

There may have been a few more "fucks" in there but that was basically the way it went. I went upstairs, to speak to the Division head, a man who liked me a lot and put me in my role because I made him lots of money, but he was in Aussie that week, so the stupid woman who was in his place, instead of getting us both together and hashing it out, told me that I should go home and think about it. I told her that I quit and that they could send my cheque to my home.

Haha, oh, I've walked out on a few jobs.

When I was 11, I was the paperboy for my neighborhood. Being my first job I was excited and didn't ask many questions about payment. So I go and deliver my papers, wondering when I get paid. Turns out, I have to go out and collect the money myself from the people at their doors. Sure, it was only two dollars, but people avoided me like the plauge. For a month's work of getting up early in the morning and delivering the paper to 100+ houses, I got about maybe $10. So I just quit.

When I was 15 I worked for a Mexican restaurant. I was a bus boy so I didn't expect an extravagant job. I found out a few weeks later that this place didn't have a non-smoking section. I went home every day smelling like tacos and smoke. They were never very clear with me about my schedule, and so in return, I wasn't clear with them about when I was going in. The last night I worked there was a New Years Eve (I can't remember which). I just sort of never showed up there again. I'm not upset about it as I felt that being there was detrimental to my well-being.

The last place I walked out on was at an amusement park. It was hell. I worked games and at least at this job I was getting paid minimum wage. (As a bus boy, you get paid even less then waiters/waitresses and you're supposed to get up to minimum by how much the waiters/waitresses feel you deserve from their tips). The managers at this place weren't much older than I was and acted like complete total dicks. I went and found a job as a gondolier and once that job started I never went back to the amusement park.

Since then I've had two jobs that I left on good terms. One was the gondola ride place and the other was driving a shuttle for my school. I'm currently at a business repairing smart phones and what not. I don't think I ever expect to stay at a place long enough to climb the managerial ladder. I like experiencing something new every few years. I actually might get a job at my school's Sustainability Office sometime in the near future and I'm very excited about that.