Whether it’s planned or unexpected, leaving a job behind is an awkward procedure. You pack up the belongings you’ve amassed over months or years in a cubicle, fight back an outpouring of inappropriate emotions, and cooly take your leave.
Or you (metaphorically) burn the f*cking place down.
For all the people that take firing or quitting in stride and with grace, there’s just as many that totally Jerry Maguire it. From meltdowns to last minute revenge to dancing, there’s a broad spectrum of totally epic yet inappropriate responses for everyone who’s left behind to chat about around the water cooler (“Remember when so and so got fired?”).
Here are some exit scenes sure to have you laughing:
There’s the classic “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore” approach, which, while time-honored and tested, is still endlessly entertaining. First, from goalieamd:
I was working at a Cosi (sandwich, soup and salad place) and had asked to leave early the previous day since my uncle died. I went to back to work and was still in a state of shock and couldn’t check my baggage at the door. I had this horribly bitchy lady change her order 4 times during the lunch rush when I had a line out the door. I couldn’t take it anymore and told her to either order or to the get the f— out of my line. My manager heard me, before he could say anything I took my apron and hat off, handed it to him and grabbed my stuff and left.
Fanta_is_nazi_soda‘s coworker’s motto: deny until you die.
Big box retail electronics store. All hands meeting, so probably 60ish employees.
Management fired a guy right before the meeting (seems like a dumb decision), and before he walked out, he stood up in front of the crowd and said “Well I’m going to miss you all. These idiots fired me because they think I’ve been stealing stuff, and well I haven’t!”Right then an iPod touch came tumbling out of his hoodie’s pocket and hit the floor. Sealed in a box with the company’s inventory and antitheft stickers still on it.
For some reason, public defecation comes up a lot when careers end. From thebightwoo:
A coworker at an IT company took a s— in a bowl, placed it in a microwave, set it for 99 minutes and left. The microwave was no longer suitable for use and the smell got us the rest of the day off… A group of us tracked him down and bought him beer later that night.
And then there’s thekittycommander‘s tale, which is so disgusting it’s funny:
Guy went nuts when he heard he was going to be fired so he took a s— on the floor of the bathroom and proceeded to smear s— all over the walls, the toilets, everywhere except the sink, so unless he had a set of gloves with him I can only imagine that he left the building s—-handed. The cleaners threaten to quit on the spot rather than clean up the mess he made.
This guy made his employers work for it, per McCyanide:
One guy I worked with had worked with the company for almost ten years. When he decided to quit, he got a big cardboard box and filled it with packing peanuts. Deep at the bottom of the box, under all those packing peanuts, he left a note that simply said, “I quit.”
Some take no prisoners on their way out. Fruitdonttalk1‘s coworker wasn’t gonna let his boss off easily.
Call center. Gay male was fired. He went home and emailed the entire company several pages of text messages between him and the gay male supervisor. Very graphic and inappropriate messages. Supervisor was fired the next morning.
BlatantRepost‘s tale plays out like a Saturday Night Live sketch. A quiet coworker was leaving the company, and, per customary routine, he stood on a chair to give a farewell speech.
You know those niggling things that annoy you about your colleagues(e.g answering personal calls all the time) but you can’t bring up because of office politics/poor managers? Well this quiet guy stood up and matter of factly laid everyone’s sh*t bare. He talked on for about 5 minutes going around the office talking about the people he felt were useless, made 2 women (who were lazy as f*ck) cry and then thanked everyone else he hadn’t mentioned and left.
My friend was awestruck.
TimeSlipperWHOOPS‘ exit strategy was absolutely diabolical.
The Titanic museum exhibit travels with a large “iceberg” made using some mechanical wizardry. He was one of the techs who took care of the place. Something led to something and as he closed up for the night, he disabled the iceberg causing it to melt, thereby flooding the whole museum in several inches of water. Rumor has it he was already back home in Australia by the time they opened the next morning.
