Autostraddle Storytime Roundtable: I Quit! You’re Fired! I’m Taking the Goldfish!
Crystal:
A few years ago I had my dream writing job. The boss was a serious animal lover, and so the office was overrun by his pets. I love animals and so working in a zoo was fun … until one of the dogs turned against me.
The little bastard would constantly growl and bark, tear up my office and try to bite me whenever we’d cross paths. Knowing how lucky I was to have landed the job, I just put up with it – until one day the dog’s teeth connected with flesh, causing me to trash talk it very loudly, and at length.
To be fair, challenging a dog that wore a pink diamante collar to a duel was not exactly my finest moment… but I didn’t expect to be schooled over it. The boss summoned me into his office and accused me of provoking the animal, that the dog would never bite someone who didn’t deserve it and so I need to adjust my attitude. It was too much.
Not wanting ‘Quit Over Altercation With Dog’ stamped on my employment record, I waited a few weeks before resigning with an excuse about not wanting to be a writer anymore.
“And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married …”
(Milton, Office Space)
Intern Elizabeth
My first job was as a Page at the Des Plaines Public Library. I was hired by my BFF’s mom, and for three years it was awesome. Then my boss got promoted, they put an incompetent chick in charge of the pages (she was nice, but bad at her job) and created a new position to look over everyone. The woman they hired, Susan, was NUTS.
Apparently Susan was hired ’cause she was “militant” and could therefore get things done. She’d recently converted to a very strict sect of Islam and chose to wear the full hijan. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with that, except when it makes you act crazy strict & unreasonable while working with teenagers and twentysomethings at a LIBRARY.
She literally sent people to spy on us in the stacks and drop in on us during breaks to drive us out faster. Her spies would tattle on us for every little thing, sometimes with ridiculous exaggerations. And these were *adults* with high positions in the library.
It was so childish and annoying. I didn’t want to deal with it (I was taking full time classes downtown, living at home in the suburbs and working 2 jobs. My fuse was short as it was.)
So one day I walked in, decided I didn’t want to/couldn’t be there anymore, crossed my name off all the schedules, wrote my boss a little paragraph, tossed it in her mailbox and left. Didn’t talk to anyone.
Left them one Page short for 8-hours on a Saturday and I didn’t care (so unlike me) and didn’t feel bad/guilty.
Then a few days later my former boss (the incompetent one) called and said that Susan wanted to know why I quit, what I was tired of, etc.
So I said, “Do you want to tell her it was because of *her*?!” And my boss friggin told that woman what I said!
So Susan kept calling me, wanting to talk. I refused. My mom took the calls for me, said I didn’t need to talk to her if I didn’t want to. I did feel bad about it eventually. Especially when I had papers to do for school and couldn’t find the books I needed elsewhere…
Also, I realized that they had taken the employee code off my card roughly the second I walked out the door and so I owed $20+ in overdue fines. Luckily the Clerks still liked me and cut the fine to almost nothing.
Tinkerbell:
I do not have to work because I am a dog and I don’t eat any food because I want to be skinny. I am so happy for recessions, because everyone I want to play with is at home, except for the people that have no homes so they have no newspapers. One thing is for sure that I will never go to college. All the girls I know who went to college have no jobs. All the boys I know who went to college have jobs. Most of the people I know who didn’t go to college also have jobs. Politicians have jobs, then they have sex, then they have no jobs. I’d like to live on a kibbutz or in a wigwam. What is human resources? Love Tinkerbell.