“Freedom Lies In Being Bold”

I was the store manager at an upscale convenience store. The place was one of the worst I had ever worked for: I hadn’t had a day off in five months due to short staffing issues caused by their ridiculous hiring practices. It also wasn’t uncommon for me to work eighteen-hour days.

My boss, the district manager, was horrible and never helped me. We had a robbery, and he didn’t even bother to ask if I was okay. In fact, I was dragged in for a disciplinary meeting because the robbery happened.

The store’s policy in stated black and white text that we were not to confront robbers and just to comply for our safety — perfectly reasonable. But, of course, [District Manager] decided I needed to be punished for the theft, some way, somehow. As he was ranting about this, that, and the other, something in my head just… clicked. 

He was threatening all sorts of disciplinary actions, from pay cuts to mandatory retraining to loss of raises for the next umpteen years. If you listened to his ranting, you would think I was going to be fired out of a cannon into the sun. As he piled on more and more actions that I would face, I realized that he was very carefully avoiding saying that I would be terminated.

I realized in that second that I had him over a barrel. If he fired me — or if I quit — no one within fifty miles could take over my job. Except him. If I was gone, he would have no choice but to handle all this nonsense by himself.

I had never quit a job in my life before, but this time, I did. I smiled at him. It was not a nice smile. He actually stumbled to a stop at that smile. I stood up, still smiling, dropped my nametag and keys on the desk in front of him, told him very explicitly where he could shove his disciplinary actions and this job, and walked out.

[District Manager] was speechless for several minutes, long enough for me to log out and gather up my things. I closed the door on him yelling my name in the most panicked voice I had ever heard out of anyone, anywhere. My phone was blowing up before I had even closed my car door; he made three frantic calls that I hit “Ignore” on, and he kept calling back the instant it went to voicemail. I paused just long enough to block the store number, and then I left.

Two days after I quit, I got a call at 1:00 am from the alarm company. It was so satisfying to say, “Sorry, I don’t work there anymore. You’ll have to get a new store contact number!” 

I went to visit some of my old coworkers sometime later and they told me stories about how hard it was for [District Manager] to try and do everything I had been — and now he was — doing alone.

[District Manager] had to respond to every alarm for over two months until they got a replacement for me. The staff told me he had been trying to get a hold of me to see if he could negotiate to get me back part-time, with a significant pay raise.

I’ve never laughed so hard in all my life!