Take This Job And SHOVE IT

My former company messed up royally, and the resulting exodus was glorious.

My own manager was, to put it bluntly, a monster in a human suit, and even that description probably insults monsters.

The final trigger for just about everyone was the end-of-year reviews. Water-cooler whispers around the lower-rung staff said that everyone who wasn’t management got reviews that were less than stellar, regardless of how hard the employees worked. Many were denied raises entirely and were given a story about how the company simply couldn’t afford to give out raises this year. Some were given chump change and were told that this was the best management could do. By chump change, I mean that some people got $0.05 more per hour, and those were the naïve or desperate who busted their a**es in the hopes of earning recognition. This set the staff on a low simmer.

The true slip-up happened when Human Resources sent a number of emails to the wrong people: the supervisors. In our company, supervisors were doing management work without management benefits and with a laughable increase in pay. The emails blatantly instructed anyone of (actual) management rank and above to spin the exact story we were fed. The email acknowledged that the company was facing record profits, and to prove it, management and those higher were being given incredibly generous (hush money) raises.

This switched the simmer to a roiling boil instantly. The supervisors were hardly even a step above the rest of us, and they had already been having a negative reaction to the nonsense-level workloads that had been dropped on them. Within twenty-four hours, everyone below management was in stealth-mutiny mode.

By the next week, everyone who was not in upper management was starting to take turns “having the flu” as we did interviews at other companies.

Within a month, the company began hemorrhaging employees. Surprised expressions quickly turned into full-on panic.

I had been a bit slower at getting my new job, so by the time I was giving my resignation, management was practically throwing suitcases of money at staff in order to retain them. No one was taking the bait.

Boss: “You know, [My Name], your commitment and loyalty to [Company] haven’t gone unnoticed by upper management, so I’m proud to tell you that all of your work finally has paid off.”

They pushed a list of benefits, and increased pay, at me. These were all things that I had been trying to get for years.

I pushed the list back.

Me: “I don’t think you understand; it’s too late. I’m leaving the company. This is my last day employed by [Company].”

Boss: “What can we offer you to get you to stay?”

I gave them an icy stare.

Me: “Literally nothing. I’m leaving. Let’s be clear. You tried to deny me paid time off for my honeymoon. You told me to put my dying dog in a freezer and to either grieve later or to get over it. You and I both know that anything you offer me now would just turn into a lie within months.”

I stood up from the table.

Me: “You lied to us a few months ago about how all of this—” *tapping the paper on the table in front of me* “—wasn’t possible to offer us, and the fact that you are offering it now proves that you were all deliberately been screwing us over. You are soulless, stupid, and incompetent, and I don’t even need a job reference from this s***show of a company.”

I spun on my heel and walked out, closing the door on their sputtering attempts to reply.

I won’t deny that that felt really, really good, considering how long I had been biting my tongue. The job prospects had been horrible until this point, so my only regret was that I couldn’t get a job opportunity lined up earlier.