I used to work for a [Burger Chain]. The place was a complete hot mess, with only one good manager, and the rest were absolutely bonkers. If a manager wasn’t on a power trip, it was because they decided to hide in the office and surf the Internet instead of managing the restaurant.

Eventually, I decided it was time to move on. I submitted my two-week notice, worked my last days, got hugs from coworkers, and went off into the sunset… or so I thought.

Two days after my last shift, I got a message from the one good manager. He asked why I wasn’t at work; I was the only cashier scheduled that night.

I felt bad that they did this to him. I had to message him back, detailing the situation. Of course, that messed him up for a bit as he had to scramble to get people to fill in my vacated spot.

But it doesn’t end there. Oh, no. The next day, I was leaving on a vacation out of town. I’m sure you can guess the upcoming nonsense.

Once I got out of town, my phone started to blow up. It was from my former [Burger Chain]. 

Bad Manager: “[My Name], you are rostered to work all this week. Why aren’t you here?”

Me: “Because I don’t work for you anymore. I worked the last of my two-week notice on [date]. I’m not coming back. I quit.”

Bad Manager: “Well, I extended your schedule for a further week because you wouldn’t mind.”

Me: “Yeah, that was really stupid of you, wasn’t it? I do mind, because I quit.”

Bad Manager: “I suggest you tone down your attitude, [My Name]. Anyway, [Coworker] saw on Facebook that you’re out of town. I suggest you come in for your shift tomorrow.”

I decided to be a smarta**.

Me: “Nah.”

Bad Manager: “Nah?! What do you mean, ‘Nah’?!”

Me: “I mean nope. Uh-uh. Not gonna. Bye, Felicia. No. As in, I will not come in. I quit. I put in my notice. I don’t appreciate being rostered on after I’ve quit. I will not be returning to work for you, because I’ve quit. Oh, and by the way, I quit! Never call me again, or I will file a harassment claim. Do you understand me?”

It got very quiet on the other end, so I hung up on the (likely stunned) silence.

I never got another call from that place.

This happened in 2017 when I was an apprentice electrician in New York City. As anyone in construction can tell you, the apprentice is the one sent out to get the coffee for everyone on the job, and as I was one of only two on the job site and was fresh in the business, I was the one who was picked to get it most of the time. Every day, when the work day started, I would go to each of the other workers, get their order (if any), and then later pick it up for break, bringing it down to where we were all working to eat together. Or, in the case of the foreman and sub-foreman, I’d leave it in the shanty upstairs if he was going to be up there.

The foreman overall wasn’t a bad guy, but he tended to run a bit hot and cold. Most days he was nice, friendly, understanding, chatty, and overall a good guy. Some days, however, the stress would get to him and he’d get a bit angry and snappy. And of course, I wouldn’t know this until my first interaction of the day when I asked for his coffee order. On those days, he’d generally respond with something along the lines of…

Foreman: “What is it with you and coffee? Why are you asking me about coffee? I don’t want to hear about coffee! Go away! Go away!”

It didn’t happen too often, but it got annoying being yelled at for doing my job. Usually, I’d get his coffee order later, but one day it took me asking him three times before this exchange happened.

Foreman: “Why are you asking me about coffee?! Stop asking me about it! [Coworker], what is the one thing I say I never want to hear about?”

Coworker: “…dust masks?”

Foreman: “Dust masks and coffee! I never want to hear anything about them again! Go away!”

So, I shrugged, said okay, and walked off. I didn’t talk to him again about it that day.

Fast forward a few days to Monday. I was sitting downstairs with the other workers at break as we ate our sandwiches and drank coffee. The foreman and sub-foreman showed up.

Foreman: “Hey, [My Name].”

Me: “Hey, [Foreman].”

Foreman: “So, ah, I take it my coffee is upstairs in the shanty?”

I pointed at the sub-foreman.

Me: “His is.”

Foreman: “Well, where’s mine?”

Me: *Smugly* “What is the one thing you told me you never wanted to hear about ever again?”

There was a long pause.

Foreman: “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Me: “I just did.”

Another pause.

Foreman: “Go get the [several pieces of very heavy pipe that take two people to lift] and move it from [Sub-floor 8] to [Sub-floor 2].”

And then he walked away. He probably thought he was punishing me since it was nothing but stairs to get up those floors, but I just laughed as the other apprentice had already asked me to help him do that anyway. 

I left that job site a month or two later, but the foreman never snapped at me about coffee again, and he always calmly gave me his order.

I’m a nurse at a large hospital. The floor I worked on was selected to be the [contagious illness] unit during the first and second waves of the global health crisis.

More nurses than not were catching [illness], so when I got an inkling of being sick, I called out for a day and got tested. If I tested positive, then I would get two weeks off without penalty, but I tested negative, so I returned to work the next day. I got called into the office where my manager gave me a verbal warning because I had one too many sick days.

Me: “You realize we are in a [health crisis], right?”

Manager: “Yes, I know that, but we still have to stick to the original policy.”

When we clocked in, there was an electronic message that popped up on the time clock that read, “During the [health crisis], we need to self-monitor ourselves, and by clocking in, you are declaring that you are fit to work.” There was no adjustment to the policy even though we were an [illness] unit during a health crisis, so I would either have to lie about feeling sick when I clocked in or call out and get in trouble.

Here is where malicious compliance comes in. I had always picked up a lot of extra time in a sister department, not because I needed the extra money but because the hospital was always short-staffed. My manager didn’t like the fact that I picked up extra time in the other department. She wanted me to pick up extra time in our department.

Manager: “As punishment, you can not pick up extra time in [sister unit] for ninety days, the length of your disciplinary period. You should be responsible enough to pick up extra time in your own department.”

As I didn’t need the extra money, I didn’t pick up ANY extra time anywhere in that period. I got called almost every day to ask if I could come in because my department was short-staffed. One of the reasons they were short-staffed was that our sister unit was even more short-staffed and the nurses on my unit were getting pulled to go work there. If only more nurses picked up extra time on the other unit. Hmm…

At the end of the ninety days, I was told I could pick up extra time in the sister department again. At that point, I handed in my two weeks’ notice and told my manager that I had accepted a position at another hospital.

Manager: “Because of your years of service, you need to give four weeks’ notice.”

Me: “No, that’s just a courtesy. So I’ll extend the same courtesy I got when I needed to call out sick.”

About fifteen years ago, I worked in a large hospital for kids in the maintenance department. Our manager was a major b****. No one on our team liked her, and we outwardly showed no respect for her after her constant harassment of us in the two years she worked there.

She would call us on the maintenance radios and be rude or tell the guys they were being incompetent. It was beyond micromanagement but also rude on top of it. She expected the maintenance guys to come to do work at her house for free, or she would tell some of the hospital vendors she would guarantee the hospital contract if they did work at her house for cheap. She used to brag about this to me. [Manager] and I were the only women in our department of about twenty-five people.

I was a mouthy twenty-something-year-old and didn’t care for her attitude, and I would regularly say, “Yeah, sure, whatever,” when she asked me to do things. I would do what she asked because it was my job, but I would make a noncommittal remark like that.

One time, [Manager] asked me to come to her house and help her pull down dead trees in her backyard since she was having a pool installed. I said no, mainly cause I wouldn’t do it for someone I liked let alone her, and pretty soon after that, she started treating me even worse than she did before and trying to get me in trouble. For example, she CCed her buddy in Human Resources on emails to me asking for the status of projects that I was working on and wanted my replies in writing.

Fast forward six months. I was five months pregnant with my first baby, and I was chatting in the office with one of the maintenance guys. [Manager] asked me to do something — I don’t remember what.

Me: “Yeah. Whatever, sure. I’ll do that in a few minutes.”

And I turned back around to talk to my coworker. [Manager] was standing behind me, and I heard her whisper:

Manager: “I wish I could slap the s*** out of you.”

I could see that my coworker heard her say it, too, and I made no comment, but I was shocked. I acted like I didn’t hear her. She left the office a minute later to do something.

I got up and walked down the hall to the employee health department because my heart was racing, and I was fuming, pissed, and five months pregnant. The employee nurse had me lie down for a bit, took my vitals, and wrote up a formal report. An hour later, she sent me back to my desk as okay to continue working.

When I logged back in, I saw an email from [Manager], with Human Resources CC’d, asking where I had been for the last hour as she’d called the office phone a bunch of times and I had abandoned my desk.

I emailed her back.

Me: “I apologize for being away from my desk. When you said you ‘wished you could slap the s*** out of me,’ I was so upset that I had to be calmed down and have my and my baby’s vitals checked at Employee Health. They were concerned about my hostile working environment and wanted me to stay there for the full hour.”

I made sure I BCC’d her buddy in HR and ALL of HR, her boss, and his boss to make sure everyone saw it.

I was summoned to HR about thirty minutes later. I knew [Manager] hadn’t seen my reply yet; this was the early 2000s and her computer was down in the office near me. They had me go home for the day and put me on admin leave for three extra days.

I came back to the office to see that [Manager]’s desk had been emptied out, and we never saw her again.

Those guys in maintenance threw me the best baby shower ever three months later.

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It is a few days before March fourteenth.

Boss: “I need you to pull down all the ads we have for the pie-day promotion. This came from corporate.”

Me: “We’re not doing pie-day anymore?”

Boss: “No, customers didn’t understand what the π symbol meant in the π-day posters.”

Me: “I guess that’s not surprising.”

Boss: “It isn’t? Why not?”

Me: “Because this is the country where the third-pounder failed because the general population thought it was smaller than the quarter-pounder.”

My boss sadly conceded that I had a point.