Everyone dreams of quitting their job in a blaze of self-righteous glory, but few truly get the chance.
Recently, a Redditor reached into his employment history to pull out a quitting story that had others sick of the corporate grind cheering him on.
“I had a manager who hated reading emails and would miss important issues/meetings because of it,” the story began. “He spent a lot of time ‘playing golf with clients’ and was mostly inaccessible. It got to the point where most of the team cc-ed me so I could grant approvals for stuff like expense reports and help out on projects my manager was supposed to work on.”
While that in and of itself would be annoying enough to prompt some people to quit, the real trouble came when the Redditor requested time off for his honeymoon.
As he recalled, he had accumulated five weeks’ worth of vacation and was asking about two months ahead of time for three weeks of free time to spend with his new bride. But his request was denied.
After getting in touch with his boss to see what the problem was, he says he received this response: “Look, we need dedicated people, if you think you can take 3 weeks off for a vacation, you need to reconsider your position here.”
So the original poster did the logical thing and opted to quit. He says he told his manager immediately, CCed human resources, and followed several times trying to set up transition plans for his responsibilities with his manager, per HR’s request.
After his last day, he says his boss called him, confused as to why he wasn’t in the office. He told him to “stop messing around” and insisted the employee had to give “proper notice and transitions.”
“HR asked you to develop a transition plan and to attend my exit interview,” he recalls telling him. “It’s not my fault you don’t read all your emails.”
In a satisfying conclusion to the story, the OP says his boss wound up failing so badly at doing his job on his own that it wound up revealing he wasn’t actually golfing with clients and got into some legal troubles with the company.
Better yet, OP got a better-paying job with a competitor who not only gave him three weeks off for his honeymoon
but turned it into a paid vacation.
A story like this wasn’t surprising to readers, many of whom have dealt with more than their fair share of bosses who like to slack off and put work off onto their lesser paid employees, not to mention companies that refuse to grant vacation requests when they want them.
In fact, a recent post in the r/antiwork featured a screenshot of an email shared by u/Annoyedgf6, who had asked management for time off for their wedding five months ahead of time…and received this reply:
Too many stories like this just feature the beleaguered employee carrying on under their boss’s thumb for too long, so it’s nice to read one that seemed to turn out with the bad manager getting their comeuppance.