Quitting Survey

[Parrothead]

I quit Publix after the store manager left and we got a new one. New manager thought the best way to get people to work harder was to threaten their jobs. I had an SC come through my line and then go bitch to manager, who came over and reamed me out in the deli in front of the staff and customers. He never even gave me a chance to defend myself.

[MadMike]

My last job was at the home improvements store, which I quit almost 20 years ago to take the computer programmer job I have now. It was the second of two retail jobs I ever worked in my lifetime, the first being a supermarket.

I never intended that job to be long-term. It was just until I got a programming job like I was looking for. The only reason I left the supermarket job for another retail job was because the supermarket absolutely refused to make me full-time, which would have included benefits and slightly better pay. Instead, they'd schedule me 39 hours every week so they could work me as much as they possibly could without having to give me full-time benefits. They had the nerve to seem shocked when I put in my notice.

I was at the other job about six months when I finally got offered the job I have now. This was after countless interviews where I would ultimately be told that they were looking for someone with experience, which you can't get without a job, which you can't get without experience, which you can't get a job, and so on.

I was glad to get out of that job, not just because I was getting the job that I wanted, but also because the job I had at the time wasn't really what I was interested in, and the pay sucked, and the customers... well, you know. I went into the office and gave my notice, and while there wasn't any hostility on my part or theirs, I must have had a big stupid grin on my face and not known it, because one of the other employees saw me coming out of the office and said, "Mike, by that look on your face, you just gave your notice, didn't you?"

[cinema guy]

My last job was office supervisor at a window (the glass kind, not Microsoft) factory. I suffered depression and after a period of struggling to work with it, I ended up on the sick for over a year. When I was due to go back, I couldn't face it. I was lucky to get a job at the cinema very quickly and so I resigned before I returned.

[IvorTangrean]

The last job I quit was at a network admin company. I went to school for programming and found a good job as a admin, it was good but I did not get along well with the new hire and I was finding that my skills were capped out, I would have needed a lot of training to go further. So all and all I quit and spent the next month looking for work, then I found were I work now, I get paid about 30% more and am working at what I trained for.

[smoorman76]

The last job I had I quit because I moved.

The one before that, though, they decided they didn't feel like paying my income taxes. My boss never did figure out why everybody quit after the W-2s came out. Somebody (not me) did rat them out to the IRS and I'm told the fines were significant.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I've quit my last two jobs:

- I left the call center because my visa had finally come and I was moving countries. I didn't even give my two weeks, just walked out one night and never came back. I felt a bit guitly about it but I got treated so badly there and hated the job so I figured I wouldn't bother giving them notice. It's not uncommon at a call center for people to up and leave anyway.

- I left my last job because the company I worked for was shuttering stores left and right and constantly implying I would be fired if I didn't do this and that without actually following through. I got tired of them constantly holding my job over my head and putting me under undue stress. Also with the stores closing its not like this was a hot up and coming company. So I left.

[Dreamstalker]

A PT repair gig for a family friend in another town. The place had to be a front or tax shelter, no competent repair shop would look like that (the half-assed repair corner in my apartment is better set up). I was making what is considered about 50% of minimum wage for an entry-level tech in that area.

His assistant wasn't qualified to even touch a computer, yet somehow before I came on she managed to build three (all of which came back to the shop for issues that never should have happened). She nearly caused me to get electrocuted twice, that was when I realized that should anything bad happen to me I would be screwed...her reaction to the second time when I was sitting on the floor trying to figure out WTF happened--I wasn't actually hurt, just dazed and had a blister on one finger for awhile--was to ask what I was doing on the floor (you didn't see the spark that YOU caused?).

I wasn't allowed to touch the a/c, even when it was 92 degrees and muggy outside.

The bench, which should have been at the back of the shop where the router et al was (and the back counter was in fact designed for such), was a folding table near the front of the shop directly underneath an a/c unit that had a bad habit of dripping when turned on. I wasn't allowed to suss out the location of the circuit breaker--scuse me I DO need to know that and if you don't think so let me explain. There were no tools to speak of and a load of illegal software.

The "bench computer" turned out to be useless for diagnostic purposes as it was bleeding-edge hardware that your average user in that town didn't have; older kit wouldn't work with it.

The assistant sat on the front counter computer all day watching Asian pop music videos online; when I went to assist the few copy/fax customers that did come in (the only computer-related customers ever was one guy looking for a component cable that--surprise--we didn't have, and someone else complaining that the ink cartridges he sells are expired and sun-damaged from being in the window) she would get in my way as much as a person can. My only actual contact with the owner was when he breezed in from his other (cushy government) job as I was leaving, half the time to lecture me about something that only a psychic would know (dude, you want it done, write it down if you're not going to be here). The next-to-last straw was when I was told I "don't know how to fix a computer because you don't know how to build a computer"...because I couldn't get known-incompatible parts to work (478 heatsink assembly on a 775 board).

[crazylegs]

My last job was with the dog intently listening and essentially I got bored being a security guard, so I applied for <current position> and left, best decision I ever made!

[SpyOne]

Let's do an entire work history.

First job, assembling computers, quit because when school started I would only be able to work 2.5 hours a day between end of school and store closing, and that wouldn't cover my car insurance.
Second Job, McDonalds, reduced to 2 days a week when my car insurance was paid for the next year, quit when I was taking 2 weeks off, and realized that after 2 weeks away I wouldn't come back.
Third job, cashier, hired as a temp for one month.
Third Job, work at student newspaper, left at the end of the semester because I was dropping out of college.
Fourth job, pizza delivery, quit when I was moving 700 miles away.
Fifth job, door-to-door sales of frozen meat. Seriously overslept on what was to be my second day, took that as a Sign From God that I didn't want that job.
Sixth Job, Pizza delivery. Eventually cut back my hours to 2 days a week. Fired for excessive tardiness.
Seventh job, convenience store clerk. Still there.

[Mr_Bandwagon]

I've quit several jobs, mostly for geographic reasons, Alpha Job was moving me to another country so I had to quit the part time gig. I have only quit 3 for other reasons.

Sandwich shop 1: 2+ years with no increase in pay. Got a better paying gig at...
Sandwich shop 2: Managers where a bunch of morons, had enough onday and walked out midshift. I never should have left sandwich shop 1.

Label factory: I went to college for 1 semester then had a falling out with the school, they wanted more money I didn't have any. So I moved back to my home town got a room in boarding house and a job at the 5th largest label company in the world. We made the little tags that go in the back of your shirts, but only the good woven ones not the cheep ass printed ones. Anyway I was there for about a year trying to earn a little money and figure out what to do next and the Thursday befor my 20th B-day we had a retirement party for someone who just took a job there after highschool to earn a little money and figure out what to do next...The next day I was in the local miltary recruiters office.

[XCashier]

The last job I quit was a temporary job that involved filling packets of seeds. A task that had to be done by hand (never mind the fact that they had an expensive machine that was supposed to do the job, just sitting there growing cobwebs), in a filthy, freezing cold warehouse (not even so much as a space heater). It was supposed to be a month, it went for seven weeks and would've gone longer if I hadn't re-aggrivated my old tenosynovitis injury due to the repetetive motions. Look, I know jobs are scarce, but I really don't need to permanently disable my writing hand (yeah, that would really make it fun to find a job!).

[Kogarashi]

Last job I quit (instead of being laid off/terminated or just ending) was as a cashier at Walmart. I left because I was going to have a baby, and planned to be a stay-at-home mom since Hubby's grad school stipend was actually enough to live off of and the Walmart check would've gone entirely to daycare had I gone back to work. The cashier job was really just to give me something to do until the baby arrived.

Job before that was a call center doing outbound calls for companies like Kaplan and University of Phoenix. We were calling people who had filled out forms online or on paper about getting a GED or technical degree, even though I suspect that more than half the people we called were teenagers who filled out the forms online so they could try to "Win a free Xbox/Playstation/Whatever!" I quit that job due to high stress levels.

[LingualMonkey]

Quit my last job because the junior college I was at was more concerned with having a warm body in a classroom than in actually having me teach anything.

[Arm]

Army. Quit (or rather, did not re-up) because I was tired of being abused by the then-government. Also, wanted more control over my life.

Every job since then I've lost for other reasons...

Office admin, declined to go full-time because of working with a senile harridan who could only do the world a favor if she jumped in front of a bus. Contract was subsequently terminated, eventually, when they finally found someone to work with her- though it took three months, and my contract had initially been three weeks.

Tech contracts, no possible way for them to hire me on full-time...

Programmer, laid off after 2 months when the project I'd been hired for was working-enough-to-sell. NOT working. I was going to quit, though, and had started digging out my resume and such at that point. Definitely a moment of 'you can't quit, you're fired!'... They wanted 60-hour weeks for a 40K salary, the management of my area were clueless assholes... I was the seventh person laid off in the two months I worked there.

And a sweet contracting gig I would've kept, but we ran out of projects. That one just kinda died a terrible, lingering death. I was never technically fired, nor did I quit. And I'm still (or was last I checked) in the computer there... there's just no work available.

generally when I quit jobs it's because of the work environment. Some things I just don't like to subject myself to.