Lindsey Weedston
As worker strikes continue to explode across the U.S. following so many months of increasingly terrible working conditions over the pandemic, a trend has appeared of people posting their text conversations in which they informed their awful managers that they were quitting, effective immediately.
Many of these have come from the Reddit forum known as “Antiwork,” which aims to radically change the way that people think of the concept of “work” and end the weird mythology that people need to overwork themselves at terrible jobs in order to be worthy of life.
For example, continuing to work a job where you get told to “stop being a victim” because you wanted to take a day off to grieve the death of your father does not in any way make you a better person, and you should just quit.
In this case, the worker was apparently enjoying his usual day off, for whatever reason getting only one per week as it is, when their manager texted them expecting to be working the evening that day even though they had been explicitly told they couldn’t come in that day.
“As you know, I found out yesterday my dad passed away. I’m gonna go ahead and at least take the one day I get a week off to mourn his death,” the worker replied. “I am so sorry for any inconvenience this will cause you.”
“My uncle died a few days ago, I lost my grandma,” the manager claimed. “Stop being a victim.”
This did not go over well with the grieving worker, who quit on the spot.
“And go f— yourself,” they concluded.
Another example giving people vicarious joy on the internet comes from a bartender who was told by their manager that they weren’t being a “team player” by drinking on their day off, you know, like normal people with jobs do.
This worker apparently got a text at 3 am to come in the next day at 11 am, just eight hours later, until 10 at night. The manager was lucky their employee was even awake, or, judging by the way this ended, rather unlucky.
“Why are you just now telling me at 3 am that you need me to work 11 hours tomorrow?” the worker asks. “I’ve had a few drinks and I don’t feel like coming into work hungover and working for that long on my day off.”
This kind of thing, by the way, is what is known as poor workplace boundaries and are a huge flashing neon sign that you need to quit your job. The bartender in this case was kind enough to offer up the suggestion that if “Robert” needed a bartender that badly, he could just fill in himself.
“Don’t you even know how to bartend too?” they asked. “Even if you don’t we literally have flash cards for each drink on the menu for each event, you can literally just tape them to the counter and use them as a guide to make the drinks yourself.”
The suggestion that the manager do actual work for once did not go over well.
“We are going to talk about this attitude when you come in Sunday.”
Were they, though?
“No we’re not,” said the worker. “Bartenders are needed all over the place now, I think I’ll just go work at one of the dozens of places hiring around here. I’m fed up with you.”
As is often the case in these interactions, the manager tried to salvage the situation to no avail.
“Give me a call, don’t make such an impulsive decision,” Robert pleaded. “You’re making a mistake because you’re drunk and you think it’s a good idea, when you wake up tomorrow you’re gonna regret this.”
Based on the bartender’s final response and the fact that they posted the texts on Reddit, we’re guessing that Robert’s prediction was incorrect.
