Coffee Break [4/12/23]

Your mid morning pick me up

We’ve all had bad days at work. Days where you were tempted to walk off the job without notice. Joshua Pinquet of Orlando, Florida, quit his job transporting prisoners en route to North Carolina. And landed behind bars himself. Although it was a bonehead move, I can’t help but feel sorry for the guy. And I’d like to know what happened on this trip that was the final straw.

If you’ve ever dramatically left a position, DeadSplinters, tell us all about it. Have a good Monday, and try to stay out of jail.

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27 Comments

  1. “During the investigation, detectives learned the transport company had been hired by various law enforcement agencies outside North Carolina to deliver inmates to and from various detention centers around the country,” the news release reads.

    I’m going say right now that maybe outsourcing has gone too far.  The Fugitive would be a lot less dramatic if it had replaced the bus that was hit by a train with a van driven by a 21 year old who was probably not able to get an Uber gig.

  2. When I first moved to Seattle, I worked at a camera store.  We sold on commissions & I was the #2 salesperson in the entire company of about 15 stores.  I decided to go back to school and told my manager I wanted to reduce my hours.  The store manager & the regional manager took me out of the store & we sat in the middle of the mall talking over a cup of coffee.  They tried to bully me & told me I had to work this many hours and these days.  I handed them my keys, didn’t finish my day and said “ok, I am done!”  I walked out of the mall right then and there, never looked back.

    • Good for you. When my daughter worked part-time for Lush they tried to bully her into quitting college to work full-time for them. And when she wouldn’t they told her she could only work for them as a holiday or seasonal employee. What sucks is they play up their whole “we’re a progressive company” thing. But they are terrible to work for. They have sales quotas for employees. Insist that they hard sell and not to take no for an answer. Instead of working for them at Christmas, she got a job at Sephora where they treated her much better. They also told her there was a full-time position for her if she wanted it but they accepted her no and continued to give her hours and didn’t retaliate against her. I’m probably bursting a bubble here for folks who like Lush and believe they are a company with a conscience but it’s all branding. Their founder, Mark Constantine, is also a TERF.

        • That kind of smell in an enclosed space can trigger migraines for me.  I still used their products because some of them are really nice. And my daughter had a 50% discount. But the more we learned about them the less I liked them. They’re very culty.

  3. Not my story, this is from Ask a Manager (thanks to Hannibal for turning me on to this website). Here is the link to the best of, although I think this one is superior:

    “I worked in high school at a mismanaged grocery chain that is now out of business. I was a cashier but they had a 16-year-old girl working behind the fish counter (which was illegal) and who was not being paid properly for the work she was doing (because she wasn’t supposed to be doing it!).

    On Sunday, the beginning of the pay period, she clocked in, wrote ‘I QUIT’ in cod, haddock, and tilapia filets in the seafood counter, and clocked out. She framed a photo of her masterwork and her last paycheck for $2 and hung it in her bedroom.”

  4. I used to think it was my employers, but now I realize it’s probably me.

    I got my start working for an industrial computer company. I think it’s still around, but it wasn’t growing the way it was when I was there (not that I had much to do about that.) It was a family company and they didn’t trust outsiders which was fine if family didn’t steal from them.

    It was quite frustrating there. I tried to do my job, but would get sideswiped by various family members and their various agendas. It didn’t help that the boss loved to gamble and would spend 4-5 hours at Casino Niagara in the evening so he was unavailable.

    I won’t go into the gory details, but I finally had it and exploded. I basically yelled at my supervisor about all the stupid bullshit I endured over the past year and half for about 30 minutes. Two hours later I was given the choice of being fired or resign. I chose to resign.

  5. I sort of walked out of the job I had before this one. I’d been fired and was fairly desperate. Got an interview with a “startup” company that sold laser technology. It was owned by a Russian guy and a lot of the management was Russian, particularly the accountants. They were sketchy as hell and offered me the job after my first interview. The place was a mess in an industrial park, old computers and equipment, broken desks, holes in walls, etc. My first day I sat in my shabby office for an hour just thinking “What have I done?”

    Their “marketing” was basically sending out emails, and their email service was repeatedly suspended for violating spam laws. I tried to clean it up and they got furious. “JUST SEND EMAILS!” So I did. All told, I was there four weeks, getting more and more freaked out.

    I dug around in the files in my office and started finding letters and files left behind by previous marketing managers. Including their offer letters and resignation letters. I counted eight over the previous two years. Now I’m really panicking.

    I’d kept sending out resumes and doing interviews.  I’d sneak out and do phone interviews from nearby parking lots. Finally I got an offer from my current job on a Friday.

    Monday morning I went in as usual. I told the sales manager about it and a couple of the sales people (nice enough folks) that I was leaving. I found the Russian guy who handled paychecks (upper “management” never showed up until after lunch), and handed him a resignation letter. I said this is effective immediately, I’m not giving notice, I don’t care about my final paycheck, you can keep it.  Here are my keys. And I left. I was gone by 9:30 am.

    They actually did send me my final paycheck. I know it’s illegal not to, but I honestly didn’t expect it.

  6. I’ve never had a full rage-quit. There was a place, a part-time retail job I had during college that kept yanking me around for hours and I was close to having another job lined up. One day I showed up at the appointed time, they told me actually my shift was getting moved to a later time and I said “Sounds great, I won’t be back for that.”

    Also not a rage-quit but for my first professional job, I got some real bad vibes from the place when I went to interview, but I needed it and took the job. It wasn’t terrible, but my feelings about what the job might turn into — weird split shift hours, a very sour office — were dead-on, and I left the job a few months later for a much happier position that I probably should have just waited for in the first place.

    • I don’t know why retail employers are so hard on college students. It’s not like most of them want full time workers who they have to give benefits to. 🤷🏻‍♀️

    • I’ve never rage-quit but I have stood up during an interview and said “I think we’re done here — I know the way out” and left. That was also extremely satisfying. The woman was accusing me of padding my resume. I had a job and I wasn’t desperate, so I was disinclined to take any shit.

  7. ive never really quit a job…..got fired a couple times….once for being an idiot and once coz 2008 happened

    worked for years as a temp tho….which has the wonderful perk of fuck this job im out send me somewhere else no notice

    course the flipside of that perk is that employers also dont have to give notice if they want you gone….

    cant say i miss temping….

    • contracted workers get a months notice here…..which generally means a month before your contract ends you know if you’re getting renewed or not

      ive got a lifers contract now….which means i dont get renewed…and makes me very hard and expensive to fire

      is nice

      for temps a weeks notice is considered common courtesy….but its not a have to

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