Who among us have been in a work situation where your frustration is off the charts and you finally throw your hands up and say something you might mean… but don’t REALLY want to say.
Yeah, those are some hilariously uncomfortable moments… and they ALWAYS make for some good stories. Like it did for these AskReddit users.
1. A line in the sand
“I’m a speech therapist. I work in a skilled nursing facility. For the most part…..they all suck. This is no exception. But the place I used to work, the boss was a scumbag. To the extent that the entire rehab staff signed a letter asking to get him fired. He was basically forced out, I eventually left, and came to my current job.
I swung by the rehab gym and…..saw his ass sitting in my current boss’s office. I kind of froze in shock….. I thought he was interviewing for a job there. So I went to the boss at the time and told her flat out that if he got hired…..I was walking out immediately. She got a stunned look on her face, and quickly assured me that he wasn’t working there. That was my first time drawing a line in the sand like that.”
2. Pay me
“When I was 17 I worked a summer holiday job at Pizza Hut – I had transferred to my home town restaurant from my University town restaurant.
I was there for 5 weeks and hadn’t been paid yet. The d%ckhead boss claimed it was because I gave him the wrong employee number. I hadn’t.
Anyway after 5 weeks of no pay I rang him on New Years’ Eve (ie busiest night of the summer) and said I wasn’t coming to work because I wasn’t a volunteer and I wasn’t going to work for free. He told me if I didn’t go to work I may as well not come back as I would be fired.
I didn’t go to work and had a fun New Years instead.
Then a few days later I called the Employment Tribunal (I’m in New Zealand) and told them what had happened. They called my d%ckhead boss. He then called me, offered me my job back and was nice as pie for the rest of the summer.”
3. Frustrating
“Ha!! I worked at an unspecified telecom a few years ago. I was a senior manager in charge of programming, third level support, and production support. A business unit bullied through code changes (made by the business side through a side deal with a legacy programmer in the data center, circumventing my team, QA and production testing) that just had to get implemented immediately without going through any testing at all.
I refused, the CIO overruled me. 72 hours later, phone activations had ground to a halt, customers nationwide were screaming, and the CIO called phone conference after phone conference demanding timelines for when I was going to get this sh^t fixed. He kept screaming to have members of my team to get on the phone and explain themselves to him. I refused.
Finally I snapped and told him that if he wanted me to fix HIS mistake I would need to get off the f*cking phone go work with my teams, and the only reason they hadn’t walked out yet was that I was keeping him off their asses, but we would all happily go together. 24ish hours later QA and my team had the bullsh^t cleaned up and fixed for a clean rollout.
This was all to avoid a 24 hour delay for QA/production testing. I wish I could say that was the only/worst time.”
4. Don’t call me lazy
“Worked a job where I was the only one who knows how to take apart, clean, fix, and put all the equipment back together and do the weekly and monthly maintenance.
Had a boss tell me one day that I was doing a poor job and not doing enough and that anyone could do it. If I didn’t step up I would be fired or else as they had manuals for each piece of equipment.
So that night I took apart all the equipment (weekly and monthly stuff too), cleaned them, and then just left it apart for them to figure out that morning. Then I turned off my phone after getting home for the entire day as I had the day off.
When I turned it back on the next day I saw that I had initially received angry texts ordering me to return and put everything back together. This lasted an hour. Then texts saying I risked being fired. Then texts begging me to return. Then more texts trying to compromise with OT. Then an apology before nothing else for the rest of the day other than that the head boss wanted to see me as soon as I came in the next day.
Came in the next day and over half the stuff was still not put together and what had been put together was put together haphazardly and would need to be taken out again then put back in correctly. Was immediately asked to be seen by my boss and their boss to explain myself the moment I was seen entering.
Once in the office I told them that if they weren’t there to apologise then just fire me then and there or drop it and let me put all the stuff back together. They looked at each other and then told me that I could get back to work.
Boss never called me lazy again.”
5. I have to go now
“Husband was having his gallbladder taken out and was having complications before surgery. I needed to leave early from work for about two hours and my boss threw a fit stating I couldn’t leave. I told her I had 300 hours of sick time I can use for myself and my husband and if she wanted to push I’d take all of it at once.. Leaving no one but her to do my job. She said she’d fire me if I tried.. I just looked at her and said I have to go I’ll send you my Dr’s note.
I wasn’t fired. I was actually awarded that year for job performance.
Edit: I didn’t take all 300 hours. I just threatened to since I was protected by FmLA. I only took the day off..”
6. I have never felt more free
“I had the exact situation happen at a job. Between myself and one other guy were were successful in keeping an entire warehouse in running order. They denied pay raises and any time off.
I was a couple of years ago, but I still remember being a ball of anger each and every day I had to go to work. The only thing that made it worth it was a bonus check that we were supposed to get. The final straw was when the front of the house staff decided there was only enough “profit sharing money” to be shared between themselves, and would no longer give a piece of the pie to the back of the house employees.
I found another job, and the interviews went well. When I sat down with the manager and asked again why the bonus was going away, he tried to pull out a list of all the things I wasn’t doing. Essentially it was just a list of things that they had tried to add to my plate above what I was already doing. I had told them no, because I was already overloaded.
I put my two weeks in at the end of that meeting, and have never felt more free.”
7. Sick leave
“Was working in a restaurant, already knew I was sick but our managers were as$holes and I knew if I called in they’d be extremely pissy. Showed up to work around 8am, by 9am I knew I wasn’t gonna last the rest of the day, managers still made me stay.
Around 9:30 I was pre-bussing my tables and just the site of half eaten food pushed me over the edge, managed to hold my vomit until I got to the dishwashing area but puked in a trashcan immediately after putting my plates down.
A coworker saw me and vouched for me when I went to tell my manager I was leaving for the doctor, he said, “Even with a doctors note, if you leave work today you’ll be fired.” I said, “You have human waste in a kitchen trashcan and haven’t even done anything about it, it’s on camera, I’m leaving.”
Showed up for work a few days later and didn’t hear anything about it. Ended up quitting a few weeks later for a job at a couple considerably higher scale restaurant.”
8. Fix the order
“For the past few years I’ve worked at one of the “nicer” restaurants in my small beach town. I’m one of the only servers there who cares about doing a good and I’m the only one who doesn’t take a smoke break every 15 minutes. This past summer a new, very illegal, rule was implemented that if we messed up an order in anyway we would be liable to pay for that messed up food. I usually didn’t have a problem with mess ups so I didn’t bring up the legality of this matter since I make good money and don’t want to start fires in places that don’t concern me.
That until I rang in a ‘Cherry Glazed Burger’ instead of a ‘Cherry Glazed Steak’ (each stylized CGB and CGS in our sh^tty computer system) I fixed this with the kitchen, but not before they had already started the burger. I told my manager and she just gave me a disappointed and told me that the rules are the rules. I then dived into both federal and state workers rights code and told her she would never see me again if I found any money out of my tips at the end of the night. Never had a problem fixing an order again.”
9. A management problem
“Put in my two weeks notice at wildly understaffed job. 6 days later got sick. I call around and see if anyone can take my shift. No one is available.
Tried to call out that morning. sh^tty manager tries to persuade me to come in even though I am barfing everywhere. I non-commitally agree to call in later in the day to see if I am feeling up to coming in anyway.
Call back, say I am still sick and will not be coming in. Manager blows up at me in front of customers, being rude as f*ck. Eventually asks what I expect to do about the shift needing to be covered. I say I have done everything I am required to and it sounds like a management problem to me. Hang up and turn my phone off.”
10. Call the health department!
“I worked at a certain “super quick” sandwich delivery place for a little while, and they would always try to pull this sh^t. I would call and tell them I’m sick and they’d say if I couldnt find someone to cover and didnt come in I would get written up. Except when it comes to a restaurant, even slightly encouraging a sick employee to come in is f*ckED UP. And that doesnt even get into the part where I make minimum wage and it’s really just not my f*cking job to find a replacement for my shift. If it is my job, I expect far more than minimum wage.
A couple times I just stayed home anyway and let them write me up. Sometimes without even attempting to find a replacement. I knew I was f*cking good at the job and they needed me too much to fire me. Then one day, i was super sick. Like, puking for hours sick. I called in, they fired me for it.
I called up the health department and told them that this company had tried to coerce me into working while sick multiple times, and that I knew they did it to other employees as well. The health department started sending someone in there once a week or so to just see if anyone looked sick. I doubt anything ever came of it, but it felt good to retaliate.”
11. One man team
“Worked for a newspaper, editing and actually putting the paper together. Arranging it all, placing stories and pictures where they need to be. Titling, quoting and sourcing everything. I was a one man team and used an overly complicated system that I figured out how to use really effectively. They treated me like sh^t, set impossible deadlines and berated me for not meeting them. One day the boss tells me to fully put a paper done by the end of the day, gave me no warning, I had no articles from the journalists and no photos from photographers. It was my job to collect it all from everyone and he wants me to do it in a single day?
I told him no, if he wants it done, he has to give me more time. He tells me if I don’t have it done by the end of the day I’m fired, I tell him that this paper can’t function without me. He tells me I need to “take the day off and cool my temper” and that he’ll do my job for me. Get a call an hour after I get home that he needs me to come in and do it and I can have as much time as I need. Promptly quit on that assh*le, f*ck your sh*tty newspaper.”
12. No thank you
“I was 17 and working part-time at a fast food restaurant. Someone wrecked the men’s restroom. Shat in the urinal, rubbed sh*t all over the wall. The manager came out and told me to clean it. I refused. She threatened to fire me, to which I laughed in her face and told her “you can clean it yourself or you can lose an employee and still clean it yourself. I don’t need this job.”
Needless to say, I wasn’t fired and I didn’t clean that up. I still laugh thinking about it.”
13. Sketchy AF
“Worked at a 7/11. My coworker and I were classmates and were 16-17 at the time. Place was broken into, food and drinks were stolen and I came to work with the owner and his daughter yelling at my coworker.
He was pissed and wanted us two to be liable for the damages.
So he threatened to fire me and my coworker, but my coworker told him that he’ll have to clean up with only his daughter, the owner mellowed out, but we quit a week later when we found out it was the daughter that let her friends steal and roughed the place up to make it look like it was a break in.
Place shut down a few years later because of violations.”
Wow… now those were some crazy situations!
Do you have a moment where you felt this way? Share it in the comments!