Whether it’s a horrible boss, a sketchy date, or a moment in time where something – or everything – just feels totally off, we’ve all been there.
Those are the moments when listening to our guts, or those little voices in the back of our heads, is more important than ever – and these 15 people didn’t hesitate when their’s started talking.
15. Red flag.
I was at a party, it was a bunch of suburban teenagers like myself at the time.
There was this dude I didn’t recognize walking around and acting super hard, even though he was really scrawny.
He finally got to me, and was like, “yo, I got AK47s for sale, you want one?” I was like, dude, shut up, you ain’t got sh%t.
He takes me out to his car and opens the trunk. It is FULL of guns piled on top of one another. Handguns, assault rifles, shotguns, you name it.
I ended up sneaking out, hopping in my car and heading home.
This dude ended up being a known foot soldier type for a gang out of the nearest big city. He got arrested a few days later when he got stopped for speeding, the cops searched his car and found the guns. He was only 16.
14. She did think about it.
I was in my mid-20s, working myself to absolute death in a small-town office supply store. I mean, the amount of work I was doing as a department specialist was staggering. I was basically working and running half the store myself, so the store manager didn’t have to – while the assistant manager above me was doing nothing but taking a paycheck, stealing digital cameras, and lying about being a trained ninja, and staff was kept to a minimum to make store numbers look better. I was just straight-up in retail hell.
It’s also important to note that my store manager was an arrogant, incapable asshole two steps from heart failure, who had been shunted to that small-town store just to get him out of the way – twice. They’d had to remove him for a while based on employee and customer complaints, some of them in the vein of sexual harassment. I don’t know how he managed to keep his job.
Anyway, one day, he comes up to me. He’s concerned about my attitude. “Customers love you. You know what you’re doing, you do great work. But as soon as you’re not talking to a customer, your whole attitude changes. You never speak to me with respect or enthusiasm. I can see on your face that you don’t want to be here. I mean, look at me! If you just improved your attitude and wanted to be here, you could be me in a couple years! Think about it!”
So I did. And that night, I went home, applied to go back to school, and quit my job the next day.
13. All for the best, I suppose.
I was roofing and getting paid by the day, after a few months I asked to get paid piece work.
My pay for that week was about double and the boss said he had to put me back to daily rate next week….I said goodbye and started my own business.
12. Middle schoolers, man.
When 8th graders had me crying into my pillow every night and drinking wine every time I could.
I quit teaching and joined a lab.
11. Sometimes people are the worst.
Worked at a pizza place for seven years, and the last two it was getting annoying. The new manager was a jerk, pathological liar and got upset at others for leaving on time when he always left 2-3 hours early from openings.
There were a couple of near-quits, one especially on a very busy morning where I was trying to finish day prep, answer phones and take deliveries. I get back from a double and the boss is at the salad line trying to finish up a salad and there are no black olives, and asks me ‘Are there olives in the fridge?”
I say not yet, haven’t gotten to them yet and he angrily replies “You know it’s your fucking job, right?”
I sigh and he adds “DOn’t take back to me!”
I let it slide.
But the last draw was when my mother passed away.
When she went in to the hospital (30 days before her death), I informed work I would be up there with her anytime they scheduled any sort of procedure. It seemed okay, at first, but now comes a Saturday I had requested off and got scheduled anyway. I was like, fine, whatever… for the week.. but then on Friday I was told my mother was going in for a serious procedure on Saturday, so I told my boss. His reply “You asked for the day off, so you’re just using her as an excuse.”
I replied, “No, but you’re the reason I quit.”
That was that. Mother passed away with in a week and I am grateful I was with her instead of at work.
10. Always check your stubs.
I worked in a bookstore and was about to get a monthly-hour contract instead of just a call-up contract. Everything seemed to go fine, i even called up one of the higher ups to confirm stuff was in order after some discussion about the amount of hours i should be working, until i realized i wasn’t getting any wage decelerations (or whatever they are called) anymore and my paychecks seemed rather low for the amount id been working.
Fast forward a few months later, covid had hit and i wasn’t able to work anymore due to regulations, and i had been sending a mail every week about the paychecks, cause i didn’t get a response. I finally get notice that there was an accident because there was “confusion over my contract”.
I wrote up a quick mail to the higher ups about some questions i had regarding their policy of payment through inability to work and their lack of communication. I was expecting the boss to send me a mail, but after two weeks of nothing, he came by the store while i was working with customers without any indication and asked me what my problems were.
Shaking and angry i quickly listed my issues, and he dismissed all of them. Saying the info was either none of my business or that it was outside of his control and could therefore not do anything. I was flabbergasted, and felt isolated. My manager was willing to help but was scared to speak up to the guy out of fear of losing her job.
I decided to call up a public lawyer, and help me out. A month later i get a mail from the boss still claiming that everything was correct and that he would pay 250 euros to stay hush hush.
I was fuming at this point, and didn’t give in. Two weeks later and i he finally conceded in paying my wages correctly for that half year. Amounting to almost 1500 euros.
I had already written my resignation letter at this point. But boy did it feel good.
Turns out they payed me for about 7 hours less per week for almost four months
9. Hindsight is 20/20.
Got injured on the job to the point I had to be off to recover while receiving physical therapy. Went in one day just in time to have my HR call the physical therapist to tell her they’d canceled my insurance. My physical therapist, to their credit put the phone on speaker to let me hear what was going on.
I’d been with the organization 16 years, had pulled numerous all-nighters, sacrificed events with my family and holidays, vacation time, you name it AND put up with a ton of shit from my boss and her cronies, the grown version of the Mean Girls if you will. According to them I was often the most incompetent lazy terrible person there. I put up with it for way too long, because I loved the clients I worked with and I believed in what we were doing.
But that day was my, “F*ck this sh%t, I’m out,” moment. I cussed HR out over the phone and never set foot in the place again. Not even to pick up my last paycheck, which was all of a measly $10 I’d earned the day I went back to work part-time only to get yelled at for not writing someone else’s press release to their liking.
No regrets except I should have quit sooner. It’s just not worth giving 200% when all you get back is the kind of criticism and backstabbing that makes you cry every night when you go home and cry every morning getting ready for work.
Life is good now.
8. Back in the day.
I was the assistant manager of a local pizza franchise that barely exists anymore (I wonder why!). The manager found a better opportunity somewhere else and left, and the woman they replaced him with was probably one of the dumbest people I’ve ever worked with.
You see, we had this deal at our pizza chain where you always got two pizzas with your order (no it wasn’t Little Ceasars). Basically, all that was offered on the menu was a two for one deal for all pizzas.
Well, we had one older gentleman who was living alone after his wife passed away and he loved our pizza. He came in like twice a week, paid full price but only had us make one pizza for him. He always firmly insisted on paying full price and only taking one pizza.
So he comes in for his usual pizza run on this stupid manager’s second day and I grab his single pizza and hand it to him. She comes flying out of the office and starts yelling at me, “Where is his other pizza?!? Why are you trying to cheat this man?” So I calmly explained to her that this was his usual routine and he even told her he was happy with it.
She flies into an even bigger hissy fit yelling something like “Well that’s not company policy, he’s only allowed to order what’s on the menu, and we don’t make special deals with specific customers.”
I looked at her and said, “You realize we’re saving the company money by only making one pizza, and he’s fine with that, right?”
She screeches, “I don’t care. I’m going to report you for this.”
So I pulled my apron off, threw it in her chest and said, “Don’t bother, I quit. You’re too stupid to work for” and walked out the door with the customer. We had a good laugh about it in the parking lot.
Anyhow, I got a job at Blockbuster video right after that, and that was an infinitely better job in every way.
7. I hope he gets in trouble.
Recently worked for a dentist who was committing all kinds of insurance fraud. Now I’m as honest as they come, and this wasn’t okay with me. Especially knowing my name would be on some of the correspondence.
Add to that, this guy was a complete jackass. He thought nothing of berating me in front of patients. I’ve been doing what I do for a lot longer than him, and that kind of disrespect I won’t tolerate.
I left for lunch, sent a text saying I was done and I went home.
6. We’ll just see about that.
When my boss told me I didn’t have the nerve to quit my job.
Handed my notice in 10 minutes after he said it.
5. The woods are never safe.
Was in a forest with a few friends having some fun being oblivious kids. We had just crossed a small river with a large incline on both sides. We go to the other side and started to walk.
I looked at a tree and stopped (I still have no clue what made me feel like stopping) a guy in full gray clothes stepped out from behind the tree and pulled what looked like a gun from his back. For people that may ask it was just a handgun.
Safe to say me and my friends ran as fast as we could without looking back through the forest crossing the river without caring about the makeshift bridge we built and ran straight through. When we got out I realized how bad that could have been.
4. Good for her.
I was working a particularly awful nursing home as a CNA. I was bullied by some of the other CNAs as well as one terrible nurse. I put up with it for a year and put in my 2w notice. I only told management, not the other staff. On my second to last day there, that nurse decided to scream in my face about some imaginary infraction.
About an hour later I learned that the company that had bought the facility earlier in the year had decided anyone who’d been working there less than a year on the sale date would not get any vacation days. I’d also only be getting half my sick days paid out when I quit. That meant 2.5 days of pay.
And I learned that if I didn’t complete my 2 weeks of notice, I’d forfeit those 2.5 days.
I realized 2.5 days of pay wasn’t worth the abuse I was having to endure and I told the DON at the end of that day that I was never coming back. She tried to talk me into it, but it didn’t work.
3. Never going camping.
My grandpa was born in 1915. When he was a kid sometime in the twenties, him and his grandpa went squirrel hunting in the woods of Kentucky. They were hiking through the woods and found a clearing with a still. They heard from the trees,
“What y’all doin?”
“Just out squirrel hunting”
“Ain’t no squirrels round here”
“Sure ain’t”
They proceeded to swiftly nope the f*ck out of there.
2. Someone has regrets.
Worked for someone who hired her lazy brother-in-law as part of my team. I had to do all the work on my own, but not only did he take credit for my work, he threw me under the bus. (Boss wanted to upgrade the antiquated system we were using, but the lazy BIL said there was nothing wrong with our current system and blamed me for not knowing how to do it right even though I was the one who made it work at all in the first place.)
Boss took his word for it and then told me I should learn how to do it properly under Lazy’s guidance. So I said f*ck this and I turned in my resignation letter the next day. I offered to help train whoever they were gonna hire to replace me. Boss said, “No need. (Lazy) can handle it.”
Okay then.
A couple of months later, I get a text message from my old boss, who has never texted me before, acting like an old friend wanting to catch up before asking me to come back…
1. Why not all three?
Me and my brother were chilling outside a 711 talking to a homeless guy and he offered to take us into an alley and let us try some crack.
Still not sure if he wanted to rob us, let us try his crack, or let us try his crack lmao.
I hope if I’m ever in a similar situation I have as many guts!
Do you have a similar story to add to the list? Please hit us with it in the comments!
