Why are you glad that you quit? (List)

[Shangri-laschild]

The gas station I used to work at got held up at gun point. And it was a shift I most likely would have been working.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I've only quit one job in my life--inserting ads into the local crappy bi-weekly newspaper.

Why I'm happy I quit:

• Minimum wage job where I only worked 5-8 hours a week and thus couldn't save up money
• Co-workers were mostly cranky old coots doing this as a second job or for something to do
• Extremely tedious and boring, standing in one spot just about all day
• No idea when I would be finished with work--one day I was there 8 am to almost 9 pm assembling ad bundles
• Not long after I quit, all the ads were bundled and inserted automatically at the printing plant so all the inserters were out of a job anyway

I quit that job over the phone as soon as I found out I got my store job. No way I was going back there.

[AirHostess]

I quit being a flight attendant:

>Long days
>Rude passengers
>The job itself
>Unsociable hours-Give me a nice 9-5 with flexi time!

I quit my present job and I am going back to my old old job in the civil service. I only left as it was my childhood dream to fly! I then temped for a while in a hospital in my home town whilst waiting for my vetting clearances to go through to return to my old job. I couldn't face a summer of flying!
>Poor manager (I have posted a few stories on the Manager forum here!)
>Unhelpful and unfriendly co-workers
>Rude doctors
>No training what so ever
>Poor pay

[Misanthropical]

In Security at the Mall:

No more putting up with men who thought women shouldn't be in security.

No more putting up with sick jokes from men who got turned on by women in uniforms.

No more of my boss and supervisor telling me what a great job I was doing and then putting in my review that I basically sucked at everything, including how I dressed and wore my hair.

No more of the passive aggressive behavior from the mall manager who thought anyone in security was a complete moron.

No more putting on the beyond ugly uniform.

When I quit, I no longer needed to be on anti depressants. Weird, huh?

[Daphne]

This is my final week as a public librarian. Here is what pushed me over the edge:

1). Patrons complaining about our free computers. They never seemed to quite comprehend that a special computer of their very own wasn't there when they wanted it. If they were smart, they would have realized those computers are referred to as HOME COMPUTERS.

2). Patrons who, when told they only had until 5 after the hour to log onto their computer reservation, would attempt to log on at 8 or 10 after the hour. Then they'd become enraged over losing their reservation.

3). Patrons who complained about not being able to get on a computer because their fines exceeded the maximum. Too bad, so sad.

4). Patrons who can't figure out the print release station.

5). Patrons who complain about said print release station. We're all quite happy with it. We don't want to see your porn.

6). Patrons who view porn.

7). Patrons who masturbate.

8). Patrons who get into fistfights over computers.

9). Patrons who complain about items in our collection.

10). Patrons who complain about items we don't have in our collection.

11). Patrons who can't understand that there is a difference between public libraries, academic libraries, and law libraries.

12). Patrons who argue about our study room policies.

13). Patrons who damage our materials and then become enraged when told how much the replacement cost is.

14). Patrons who refer to the computer printer as a copy machine.

15). Patrons with screaming brats.

16). Patrons who take out their cell phones and begin talking as loud as possible in the library as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

17). Patrons who hit on me.

18). Patrons who don't realize that if you don't return something, your account will go to collections. It will come back to bite you in the ass when you try to apply for a loan. Happy house hunting

19). Patrons who are ungrateful for every damn thing we try to do to improve their lives.


In some ways I thank this job for being so miserable. If it hadn't been so terrible, I may not have applied to so many other really great positions. I'm now on my way to doing a fantastic internship that will put my master's degree to good use.

[Gravekeeper]

Job #1: Dishwashing! ( With occasional computer repair )

- I was in high school and my mom ran the restaurant. ( The second one she's run I might add. She ran an A&W before this until the owner closed it down. Then took over this place which was a nice family restaurant. )
- Conclusion: No complaints, everyone was nice. Mom is just as fair and common sense as a boss as she was a parent. =p


Job #2: Freelance Tech Support

- Started this up in my late years of high school. Would go to folks houses and undo whatever damage they had done.
- Conclusion: There is no God


Job #3: Call Center Slave

- Humanity slowly whittled away.
- Naive innocence lost.
- Management was as slack witted as callers.
- Jerked around a lot. Especially on shifts. At one point I started my work week with a 6am shift, then an afternoon shift, then an evening, then 2 graveyards, then back to 6am two days later.
- Randomly thrown into supervisor position without pay increase.
- Conclusion: I despise the human race.


Job #4: Night Minion ( Current )

- Slave Company was bought out and absorbed. We were moved to new office.
- Old Boss left company inside of a month.
- HR Manager who was complete backstabbing lying shit weasel from old company was fired after it became obvious he did absolutely nothing. But could no longer hide that fact under new ownership.
- Settled into roll of night denizen permanently to avoid the day time interoffice politics. Plus I perfer the hours/pace.
- Conclusion: You already know how this ends.

[Kara]

Warning: Epic Length

Dillons (Kroger owned grocery chain) 1997-2001: I didn't exactly quit this job. I started as a lowly sacker, then became a cashier. I had my eyes on the Video dept from the day I started, so I pretty much volunteered for whatever dept needed someone to build up brownie points that I could exchange for what I wanted when an opening finally happened in that coveted department. I worked Grocery for awhile, worked meat market (only had to clean up when they closed, I got over my sense of "ewww" around bloody chucks of meat in a hurry. If you've never had to scrape bits of raw meat out of a band-saw, I wouldn't recommend trying it), night crew (graveyard shift = ugh), and finally the Video dept got an opening and I went to the store manager about it. I was the assistant manager of the department, when I left.

My SO is a vision therapist and the doctor she worked for was an asshat. She got tired of him screaming at her and all the other employees all the time and he told her to just try and find another office that would give her better hours and pay. She did. We were nervous about moving to a larger city, but we were both ready to set out on our own so we packed up and moved. I had talked to a manager at a Dillons store that was close to our apartment complex we had been looking at, and he said he had nothing in Video, but had full-time positions in Grocery. That was fine with me, and I filled out all the transfer paperwork from my home store. The day we moved in I went to him and asked when I could start and he started with "Yeah.....um...." and I knew the news was bad. It would have been nice if he hadn't damn near promised me a position so I could have sought employment elsewhere. He referred me to the hiring center, and they found a position at a store in the Ghetto that was only part time. I didn't feel like getting stabbed on my way to my car after work, so I started looking around. It was really too bad. I was happy with the company, the pay was decent, and if they could have gotten me the job I was promised I would never have set foot in:

Circuit City 2001-2004: I loathed this job after the manager started showing her true colors about a month after I started. They put me in the computer department, and at the time I knew how to operate one but not much else. The guys in the department (a terrific bunch of jaded, sarcastic, underpaid assholes, who were genuinely fun to work with) took me in and taught me all about computer repair and maintenance. We didn't service computers in store, so I didn't really need to know this, but most of them had a degree in Computer Science and were certified technicians, they just couldn't find jobs to take advantage of their credentials. We did do work "under the table," so I was able to start doing this too ($5 to install RAM, $10 for software, $25 for OS upgrade/system recovery, $30 for hardware install).

I had never worked commission before. When you had a good couple of weeks, well, it was awesome. When you had a slow couple of weeks, hello Mr Ramen Noodles. Most of the problems consisted of dealing with the manager's shrill yapping like a crazed chihuahua. She always had something to bitch about or criticize someone (or their department) in front of the whole store. She had a habit of hiring her drinking buddies. People who had been doing just fine in their sales would suddenly be fired for "not meeting their numbers." Then another blonde anorexic dimwitted girl would show up the next day. They could come and go at will, sometimes not bothering to come in for days at a time, and were never even warned. Meanwhile, I'd be sick or have some crisis or another and have to listen to her yell and scream about how lousy I was as an employee. It didn't matter if her inner circle sold a damn thing, they were mysteriously overlooked when it came to the weekly bitch-fest of reviewing our sales and performance.

Finally, I couldn't take the pressure anymore and told her that I wondered about moving to an hourly position, she was unusually nice and understanding, which should have set off my alarms but I didn't think anything of it at the time. She then told me that I could even go into training and be an Ops manager. I said we already had an Ops manager (who was a wonderful person), and she said that it wouldn't be a problem because I could divide the tasks between us. She also told me I'd get a raise since I had another anniversary coming up since I started working there. So I took a drastic pay cut for more job security and moved to the software department. About 2 weeks later, the entire company moved from commission to hourly in all departments. Everyone who was commissioned at the time of the change got paid the average of their pay over the previous year. I, meanwhile, was stuck at $8 an hour because I had changed positions before the company made the switch to hourly. My manager knew this when I went to her almost in tears over worrying about my job. She had spent a week in Las Vegas before then where all the store managers had been told about this. She knew it was coming. She had been so happy because she knew they wouldn't have to pay me as much.

The Ops manager training was a load of crap. I did all the training to be able to take certification, but she had permanently earned my hatred from the day I found out how she screwed me over. So when our regional HR manager came in one day, I told him what happened and he just told me that he would "investigate" it. What exactly it is that "Human Resources" does for Circuit City, I'll never know, but it seems to be the same initiative as the corporate assholes: take care of leadership and the hell with the workers. He also told me that once I completed my manager training, I would be "on the bench" until a store needed me. I told him about her suggesting that I would be a co-Ops manager, and he said that was impossible. But again, "It's her store, my hands are tied." Of course, she was super-pissed when he went to her and told her what I had told him in confidence. She almost brought me to tears as she pulled me into her office and screamed at me about what a terrible, lazy, worthless employee I was and how dare I go over her head, but I swore I wouldn't let her see me cry. I was able to hold back until the end of my shift and almost didn't make it into my car before it hit.

Oh, and that annual raise I was promised? Yeah, it is yearly after you've been in your position for a year, not since you became an employee. So that didn't happen either. The Ops manager was on my side though and at each performance review she'd give me as much of a raise as she could get away with. She even threw out the store manager's review on me that she did while the Ops manager was on vacation. Store Manager mainly put down that I was inconsistent, unfriendly, retarded, and a complete bitch. So Ops Manager did her own review and I got another raise.

After that, I didn't care. I came in, kept my department organized, did my job, and went home. My eyes had pretty much been fixated on the floor at that point. I wanted to quit, but we wanted to buy a house and since we had a pre-authorized approval for a home loan, I couldn't change employers without messing that up. We finally gave up since we couldn't find anything in a decent neighborhood. A friend of mine (who had been fired for not meeting his numbers even though we were hourly and didn't have numbers anymore) had come in one day and told me how great it was working customer service for this wireless phone company. Another friend, who worked in the backroom (also fired for not meeting numbers, even though they have no numbers at all), worked customer service for the cable company and also went on and on about how much better it was. I applied at both places. The cable company never called me back. The wireless company called me back within a few hours. The only time I was happier at Circuit City than the day I walked in and quit was the day the store closed down because she had finally run it into the ground. I walked in with a big smile and she could only stare at her feet and mutter "hey." I found out from the Ops manager that the company had pretty much gotten all the employees together and told them they were fired and the store was closing. Managers can be relocated if they choose to be. Store Managers are always relocated. But they didn't even offer this to her. They finally got sick of her bullshit. I guess that would be understandable for someone who single-handedly destroyed an entire store. Last I heard she was working at a jewelry store in a mall in Missouri.

(WIRELESS COMPANY): 2004 - Present: Don't let my venomous posts in the main board fool you. I love this job. I get paid very nicely, I have amazing benefits, and even though I quickly coined the phrase "phonetards" to classify most of my customers, I enjoy coming to work every day. I don't know how far I'll go in the company (I'm happy where I am in the depths of the cancellation department), or how long it will last, but I intend to make the most of it for as long as possible. Oh, and we did buy the house that had almost everything we wanted and got to move to a quieter suburb.

No, I'm not trying to make myself look like some fairytale princess who lived happily ever after. But things are so much nicer now than they were before. It's nice to be happy again.