Have you ever walked out of a job?

I was working in an assisted living facility. The manager felt it necessary to “rescue” a down-and-out kind of family, so he hired the lot of them to run the kitchen and work in other positions. Some of them were ex-felons and there were some very unsavory characters.

The manager directly over me really appreciated my work ethic and expertise (he said I was the best he’d ever seen at my job), but I was not favored by “The Family.” When I announced that I would be moving out of state and was giving my two week notice, one thug coworker shoved me into a wall in full view of the office staff. Nobody said a thing, and it was as if it had never happened. When I complained to my supervisor, he said he would take my complaint, but it would be ignored (he didn’t like them either). I quit right then and there, which was the intent of my assailant.

Edit: I’m not sure what I learned, but I’m glad I walked out. It’s unpleasant to have no closure about such an experience. By the way, that place is still in business 11 years later.

I’m now retired and have moved back into the same community. I am careful to caution anyone who is contemplating moving to that place to look elsewhere. ((Shudder))

Yeah, at least twice. I’m so far from an impulsive person, but my gut response to feeling trapped in an unhealthy situation is to walk away, so that tends to come out at work.

In both situations I was having a medical issue (which is chronic, not just a sudden thing) at work where I needed to be able to go to the restroom with very short notice and that was brushed off by my immediate supervisors at the time, so I just took off my nametag and went home. Both times, management had called me trying to get me to come back to work after the fact, but I was so fed up in both cases that they couldn’t have got me back to those jobs if they literally got on their knees and begged.

What did I learn? That most workplace cultures in the US are absolutely toxic and dehumanizing and it’s so common that the majority of people are just oblivious to it because it’s just the way things are. We’re not robots, we’re people.

I learned that I prefer to work directly for people (and under my own supervision).

I didn’t “walk out”, but I quit a job I had for about 23 years. I found out they were screwing me over for pay to the tune of about $22k/yr compared to the people in the company doing the exact same job. When I brought it up, I had a long talk with my boss who figured I’d just take it. I was a fixture and the pay practices were written in such a bizarre way that he could continue without fear of legal entanglements. HR was basically backing him. At the end of our conversation, I told him that, just to be sure we had the same understanding, after our conversation I had two options: to either continue on with the way things were going or to seek other employment. I wasu good with looking for another job. He tried convincing me that there was some compromise we could make, but it quickly became clear his idea of compromise was that I would continue to be screwed. So a month later I gave my two weeks notice and had another job lined up. My boss was suddenly trying to come up with every offer he could think of to get me to stay. I told him that boat sailed a month before.
It told me that large companies will frequently try to screw over their employees as much as they can if they can make a buck from it. It also told me that I knew my worth and didn’t have to settle with being screwed over.

No I could never do that. I’m ex military and you’re just taught to never abandon someone like that.

I have submitted a 2 week after a few months at one job, because it was a second job and I was just working too much.

I have walked out of more jobs than I have given proper notice at. But most of those were shit jobs. If I made over 15 a hour you would get two weeks.

Two examples of walking:

1 – Napa autoparts warehouse where we made 7 bucks a hour dodging forklifts driven by meth-heads while moving transmissions. Fuck that noise. I bounced ASAP. It was essentially playing Frogger but game over meant game over. Because I could die.

2 – Had a job doing roofing for a bit. Again shit pay and no fucks were given about safety. I walked at lunch. And that job was for my sisters husband, and I lived with them at the time. Made things a bit weird around the house for a while.

At-will employment goes both ways. For those not in the know. This is probably your contract.

“At-will employment is a term used in U.S. labor law for contractual relationships in which an employee can be dismissed by an employer for any reason (that is, without having to establish “just cause” for termination), and without warning”

You can fire me whenever for any reason. I can fire my employer too. No hard feelings.

No, but I have walked out on a job interview.
I was desperate to find work, but couldn’t stand myself doing that job.

Not a good idea to burn bridges.

@filmfann ::

Around 20 years ago I moved to Bend, Oregon to crash with my sister that had been recently diagnosed with twins. It was in a February and Bend would be covered in snow for a few months. I don’t drive and we lived way out in the burbs and there were no sidewalks. It was impossible to get around and look for a job (had tons of savings so not a huge deal but I wanted to work).

Once the snow melted I put on my finest clothes and dropped of a resume at a place that made ammo. And a few blocks away was place that made wafers.

The ammo place called first for a interview and pretty much decided after the interview I didn’t need money that bad.

I did get the job at the wafer fab and we had astronauts come talk to us since we made MOSFETs that went into the power supplies in the international space station. So that was cool. Better than bullets.

When I was 22 wanting to work one of a wall of switchboards (if you know what that means) I couldn’t figure it out very well. So the boss called me into his office and said something like, “some people just dont take to this” or something. I ran out and ran down the street , several blocks to our house in tears. Now I think , ” wow; I was in great shape to do that! ”

@Aster I had an Aunt who worked on a switchboard for many years. Used to visit her at work as a kid.