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People Are Revealing Their Final Acts Of Defiance Towards Obnoxious Bosses Before Quitting, And I’m Screamingggggg
Reddit user ssteepballet recently asked community members to share their final “F U” moments towards a boss they didn’t like. The thread quickly filled with a spicy range of defiant and triumphant “mic drop” exits that left me speechless. Here’s what people shared:
1.“He had shared an Andy Warhol bottle of Dom Perignon with us after we hit a big goal. He let me keep the cork because it was the first time I’d ever had champagne. When he fired our team months later, he stood in the doorway as I packed my desk. I tossed him the cork, said, ‘I think you know where you can stick this,’ and walked out the door with my stuff.”
2.“I reported him and the company to the IRS for not sending me a W2 and noted how they changed the company name and various things every few months to cheat on taxes.”
3.“We were getting ready to roll out the next great version of our core product. It was dependent on a single ‘master’ encryption key. The boss asked me to change the key and not share it with anyone. Okay, no problem. A week or two later, I decided to give my two weeks’ notice, and he went off the deep end, screaming and throwing stuff. I was going to give him the key; I had it on a diskette in my hand. He called security, and they immediately walked me out the door. Later that day, a messenger gave me a ‘legal order’ saying I must immediately destroy all company stuff (threatening a lawsuit if I didn’t), so I killed the diskette. They went live immediately after, but the database was corrupted, and they couldn’t do anything without the key, which no longer existed. Apparently, it took them weeks to recreate all the lost customer data. Bummer.”
4.“Trucker here. I convinced all the other drivers at our terminal to apply at a competing trucking company down the road. They hired all but one of us, so we dropped our keys on the boss’s desk. The plant pulled their contract within a month, and the company went bankrupt.”
5.“He got a new job and was leaving. On his last day, I left a gift on his desk: the board game ‘Clue,’ with a note that said, ‘Since you don’t have one.'”
6.“I left him stranded at Marseilles airport. I was meant to pick him up that day and drive him back to Monaco. At precisely the moment his plane was landing, I sent the ‘F U’ email to his PA saying that I would no longer be available. It was the best day ever.”
7.“I just made the firing as awkward as possible. I spent 20 minutes in silence reading my severance package while she and the rep from HR watched. They tried to tell me they would email a copy I can electronically sign, but I just said no thanks. Then, I had them make a copy for me to take home again. They tried to say they would email it, but I insisted on a paper copy.”
8.“I quit just before a busy holiday weekend. I booked a nice beach trip and headed out. On my way out of town, the manager called and asked, ‘Are you going to cover your shifts this weekend, or did you get somebody to work for you?’ Nope.”
9.“I used their arrogance to fund my startup. I worked for this company for more than 10 years. They had about 150 employees and always claimed the whole ‘we’re a family’ thing, but the vibe was actually, ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us.’ Anyone who ever quit, which was rare, was always shunned and walked out immediately. Knowing this, and after researching employment law in my state, I gave him a 30-day notice instead of just two weeks. As expected, he walked me out and paid me for only two weeks. That shortfall allowed me to file for unemployment since I had no HR issues. His pride made it all too easy to predict, and I enjoyed every check, knowing their insurance had gone up a little because of it.”
10.“I left an upper-decker in the ‘office staff only’ bathroom on my last day after the boss stopped letting the shop crew and drivers use both bathrooms and had 100+ people sharing one single bathroom so four people could have their own.”
11.I worked at a grocery store when I was younger. While working there, my first daughter was born. Her first birthday happened to fall on Memorial Day, and the store director wanted me to skip her birthday so he could have a barbecue. I told him that I wouldn’t be there, but he still went ahead and scheduled me. Well, I didn’t show up, and the next few months were a real pain. This guy started acting all petty and demoted me from management, cut my pay, and reduced my hours. It was messed up, but luckily, the union had my back and made him pay me a couple of grand in back pay after I put up with that crap for a few months.”
“I eventually landed an amazing career at a water treatment plant, and now I’m making three times the money I used to. But before leaving, as my final F U, I gave all of my uniforms to the unhoused men who hung out in the parking lot. They’d walk around the parking lot in store uniforms, asking for money and food. My old boss got into a few confrontations trying to get the shirts back from them. I wish I could’ve been there for those. Ultimately, those guys started going through the back of the store during receiving hours and taking beer and food. To this day, years later, I guess it’s still a problem, even after they changed uniforms.”
12.“I was a teacher and needed to take off the last day for a family vacation. Note: This was the last day for teachers, so we had no students. We would just clean up and go out to lunch with our coworkers. I submitted my vacation request and told them I would do all necessary check-out items before I left. Also, I hadn’t taken any time off for the last two years, not a sick or personal day! They denied my request and said if I didn’t show up that day, they would deduct my pay by my daily rate of $300+. I was so mad that I went and applied for another job in a way better district and got it. When the principal found out I got a new job, she frantically emailed and texted me, saying they would work out the vacation time. I was so over them and didn’t give her the time of day. They had treated me poorly long enough. The real kicker was that I didn’t submit my quitting form until July 1 (my district’s deadline), so they couldn’t hire someone for months!”
13.“I was in a crappy job, in HR no less, on a contract, and I told the boss two months in advance that I was leaving at the end of the contract. After that day, they removed me from EVERYTHING — email groups, meetings, and a three-day offsite meeting (I found out about the meetings when I came to work, and no one was there for three days). I sat around playing games and reading on my last day. I was wandering around the building saying goodbye to people I actually enjoyed when suddenly my boss stopped me and said, ‘We are having a staff meeting, and you have to be there,’ then left. I went to someone I knew in the area of HR, and they said, ‘They planned a party for you.'”
“So after two months of being totally removed from ANYTHING — no meetings, no one talking to me, etc. — they wanted to feel good by throwing me a party. So I snuck out the back door (my desk had been cleared for days), got in my car, and left. I called the lady I knew, and she said they sat there for about 30 minutes and then left the board room. THEY WERE MAD.”
14.“I was a mechanic at a shop, and the boss had a favorite mechanic who could get away with anything. One day, about an hour before closing, an older lady comes in for front wheel bearings. I don’t know why they told her they could do it then, but they did. Well, the suck-up favorite mechanic snapped two of her wheel studs. He got frustrated, left the car in the air, and went home! The boss came in and asked where he had gone, so I told him what happened. The boss then said, ‘Well, get over there and finish it.’ Excuse me? I told him that it was not my problem and that I was finishing another vehicle in my bay. He said, ‘If you don’t finish that car, you can find another shop to work at.’ I simply said, ‘You are right.'”
“Later that night, after we closed, I used my store key to come in and turn in my uniforms and get my tools. The boss blew up my phone for the next two weeks, but I never answered. I went on to open my own shop and do better.”
15.“We never really got along. He got a promotion to upper management and needed an assistant. I had already found another job elsewhere before he got that promotion and had planned to quit. When the posting came out for his assistant, I applied for it just to stress him out, thinking he would once again have to deal with me. I went through the process and got the job, but never showed up on the first day, or the next, or the next. Somehow, this went on for over a month before HR called me, laughing and asking if I wanted to submit my resignation. He had to do all the work alone, which made me happy.”
16.“I worked for a landscaping company that mainly did construction. The owner would constantly take more work than a company our size could manage and would then have massive temper tantrums when it wasn’t getting done fast enough. The breaking point was him taking a massive project that was over two hours away from where anyone lived. That morning, he had 10 employees. The next morning, he had three. He called each of us, begged us to return, and then asked why we were doing this to him. I told him about his inability to balance the workload and the fact that his employees didn’t want to drive over two hours to a job site every day. He said I’d regret it and hung up. I had a new construction job the next week. The dumb owner’s company went under about a year later.”
17.“Gave them a ‘Sorry for your loss’ card when I quit.”
18.“Not me, but a friend. He worked at an Aladdin’s Castle video game parlor in the mid-’80s. His boss had been hounding him for weeks to work additional overtime even though he had a new baby and his wife was still in the hospital because of complications. His wife was scheduled to come home on a day the boss insisted he work. He decided he no longer needed the job or the headaches and tossed his master keyring into the roll-top safe, spun the cylinder, and walked out to pick up his wife from the hospital.”
“A roll-top safe was used to make daily deposits into a secure safe that only the person with the master key could unlock. There was a heavy metal cylinder at the top of the safe with an opening; when deposits were made into the cylinder, the deposit fell into the secure chamber when the cylinder was rotated. Once deposited, the only way to access the money was with the master key. With the master key (and the keys that locked the building) trapped deep within the safe, the boss was forced to call a locksmith (on a weekend) to retrieve the keys. His boss deserved every second of seething fury he experienced while watching the locksmith work over the safe.”
19.“I called a day before Christmas Eve to say I was resigning. I tried raising my salary for six years and never got more than a trainee. When I called, he said he could finally raise my salary to keep me in his company. I laughed and said, ‘No, I have already decided.’ It was the best decision ever in my work career. The place was toxic, with a really bad salary, and everyone was competing against each other instead of helping.”
20.“I used to clean a very busy deli in the evening after closing. I worked from 9:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m., completely taking the display cases apart, making it BEAUTIFUL for the next morning. The owner was a nasty drunk. As I was in the process, he called the store, berated me, called me names, told me I took too long, and rambled on and on. I was already fed up with his nonsense. I got off the phone, wrote a note that said, ‘I quit,’ set the alarm, and put my key through the mail slot. I left a NASTY, horrible mess. He called the next day and asked what had happened, but I didn’t call him back. I called the deli the next day and apologized to my coworkers, but they thought it was hysterical. They said he was totally distraught and hungover, but they were with me 100%! Everybody quit over the next few months because he was a complete jerk.”
21.“I called in sick on my last day after 15 years at the company. He wasn’t happy, but I was, and I was finally free.”
22.“I had a meeting with my boss, who was trying to ‘put me in my place’ the whole time. At the end of his 20-minute rant, I handed him the resignation letter I planned to give him the whole time. Watching him waste his time and tell him I was leaving without anything else lined up was so satisfying.”
23.“I emailed my two weeks’ notice the very same day I got another job offer. I copied the email to HR. My notice came only a few days after another manager’s two-week notice. My boss scheduled me to close on my very last day and told me I could come by to give her my keys another day. She hated closing and had made me the closing donkey for months. Yeah, right. She opened that day. I came in, told her I had a medical emergency, handed her my keys, and left. According to my old coworkers, she had to work a double and apparently was seething.”
“She was easily the worst boss I ever had for many reasons, not the least of which was verbally abusing our employees. One of my final straws was when I found out she’d been lying to others in the company that she had put me on a performance review that I’d signed off on. Turnover was extremely high under her, and actually, our entire management team ended up quitting. Last I heard, the store was falling apart, and our district manager had gotten sick of her.”
24.“I was at a school where, for no reason, my boss and his boss both disliked me. The boss was an ex-military guy, and I was involved in the Peace Corps, which may have been a part of it. I was very successful at the school and made my boss look bad by comparison. Anyway, I got let go, which I knew was coming. It was one of those deals where they allowed you to stay a year while you found a new school. Since I knew it was coming, I went out and got a job, which turned out to be a better job with 50% more pay. The market just happened to be hot at the time, pre-Covid. Summer came, and I didn’t tell them I had a new job, so they assumed I would stay the extra year.”
“There was a date by which I had to turn in my contract for the extra year, but it was in July, so it was pretty late for them to find a new person. On the deadline date, I declined the offer. They could not replace me in time, so this caused a lot of issues and extra work for them. The best part was that I wrote a really nice letter thanking everyone for their support (which had been minimal at best) and basically left on very good terms. I sent it to every one of my colleagues, most of whom supported my boss. One of my friends told me that the letter made them furious, and my boss got fired eventually as things went downhill.”
25.“A month after I started my new job, I recruited two key workers from my old company. I left my boss having to explain to his boss why he had no idea what to do despite taking credit for everything we had done.”
26.“I’m a former executive chef. I got fired via email while on leave for a death in the family. I didn’t check my messages until I returned to work, so I was completely blindsided. Of course, everyone else already knew, including other restaurants. The boss was conveniently absent when I came to get my stuff. I smashed a company laptop and wiped a few hundred recipes and other important documents from my master hard drive. I heard she was pretty mad about that. These were petty actions on my part, but that boss was a habitual line stepper and harasser who loved verbal abuse. They constantly threatened to fire me over several years, always saying they could do it without me at a moment’s notice. That was part of daily life for way too long, so I never felt bad for screwing her over like that. A few months later, she got fired. Three of my former managers informed me about it before the boss knew it was coming. That was the sweet, sweet icing on the cake.”
27.“I quietly asked for an exit interview with HR. I was told they don’t do that for contractors, but I insisted. When it came time for the exit interview, I quietly explained the desperate situation on the call floor to HR. People were quitting for other jobs, and the boss was not replacing them but was still expecting call numbers and stats to improve with fewer people. Also, the boss changed the rules of what was and was not allowed in a call daily, yet didn’t ask her workers their opinions on it, but expected us to just take her write-ups for breaking rules that didn’t exist the day before.”
“I never insulted the big boss; I kept my tone polite and professional while pointing out the issues. HR started sitting in on those daily meetings with shift supervisors about the rule changes and started to push back. Things got better for the floor staff, and they hired replacements. Within a few months, after the shift supervisors collectively signed a statement to point out the boss’s direct abuse towards them, HR had enough and asked her to leave.”
28.And: “I worked retail for a bit after finishing school, and our manager quit right during the holiday season, so we went without one through January. Then, instead of promoting those of us who kept the store running, corporate brought a new manager in from a different store. She proceeded to find flimsy pretexts to fire us all. She called me back from vacation time I was spending visiting my sister, who was going through cancer treatment, to ‘cover a shift.’ When I showed up, she fired me. I had a 32 oz root beer in my hand, which I expected to sip during my shift. She was wearing the whole thing before I walked out the door for the last time. It was all over her ugly white sweater. Zero regrets.”
Have you ever given a crappy boss one final “screw you” before leaving a toxic job? Tell us your story in the comments or submit it anonymously using this form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
World News
Moral imperative to stop small boat gangs, says Yvette Cooper
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![PA A small boat arriving near Dover](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/dc44/live/0ad87c20-6bbf-11ef-9f70-95a4eda3a418.png.webp)
There is a “moral imperative” to stop the gangs helping people get to the UK in small boats, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said ahead of a meeting with ministers, intelligence agencies and law enforcement bodies.
The summit takes place three days after 12 people, including six children and a pregnant woman, died trying to make the dangerous journey across the English Channel.
The disaster is the deadliest loss of life in the waterway this year.
Earlier this week, Conservative shadow home secretary James Cleverly said it was “not enough to talk about ‘smashing the gangs’ when the real-life consequences are so serious”.
Ms Cooper said people had been “packed into an unsafe boat which literally collapsed in the water” adding: “We will not rest until these networks have been dismantled and brought to justice.”
This year so far, more than 21,000 people have made the crossing – slightly higher than at the same time last year but 20% lower than in 2022.
Having scrapped the previous Conservative government’s Rwanda plan, aimed at curbing the number of crossings, Labour will come under pressure to demonstrate that its own approach is working.
The government has pledged to focus on stopping smuggling gangs.
Mr Cleverly said Labour should re-establish the Rwanda policy “to stop vulnerable people being exploited and secure our border”.
Friday’s meeting to discuss small boat crossings will be attended by Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Attorney General Lord Hermer and representatives from the National Crime Agency (NCA), Border Forces and Crown Prosecution Service.
Graeme Biggar, head of the NCA, is expected to tell the attendees that in recent weeks, co-operation with Bulgaria has led to more than 40 small boats and engines being seized, which could have been used to transport 2,400 people across the Channel.
The NCA says more than 410 small boats and engines have been seized since last spring.
Mr Biggar will also set out the details of 70 other ongoing investigations including raids of warehouses in Libya, where migrants were being held.
The summit will look at analysis of the operational capabilities of the criminal smuggling gangs.
The Home Office had promised a “rapid” recruitment of a border security command chief to target the gangs, however no appointment has yet been announced. Downing Street says it will be confirmed “in the next few weeks”.
Ms Cooper said the last two months had seen “encouraging progress, with significant seizures of boats and equipment in Europe”.
“But there is work to do,” she added, “and the Border Security Command will bring all the relevant bodies together to investigate, arrest and prosecute these networks, as well as deepen our ties with key international partners.
“At the same time, we are swiftly removing those with no right to be in the UK, which will ensure we have a fair, firm and functioning asylum system where the rules are respected and enforced.”
![Graph showing numbers of people crossing the English Channel in boats](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/0c1f/live/e8d6a2f0-6bc3-11ef-b970-9f202720b57a.png.webp)
The Home Office says a “reset in the relationship with Europe” has led to a 50% increase in the number of NCA officers based with Europol and that officers are being sent to Romania and those South East Asian countries where gangs advertise Channel crossings.
The department argues that this week’s deaths in the Channel demonstrate the “increasingly extreme measures the gangs are willing to contemplate as more people are crammed into less seaworthy vessels”.
“Intelligence reveals smugglers have also increased the price they charge for migrants to cross the Channel, including charging for children to get into boats, as the business model comes under pressure from UK and partner law enforcement.”
Steve Smith, head of Care4Calais, has argued that the “only way to stop the crossings is to create safe routes for people to claim asylum in the UK”.
“That’s what the new government should be focusing on,” the refugee charity head said.
Christa Rottensteiner, the UN’s migration agency chief, told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the provision of more safe and legal routes would take away the demand for smugglers.
“Good international cooperation is also at the heart of it – so tackling smuggling along the whole migration route,” she said.
But the former head of the UK border force, Tony Smith, told the programme he hoped the government would reconsider scrapping the Rwanda scheme – the former Conservative government’s plan to send some asylum seekers to the east African country – to act as a deterrent to crossing the Channel.
“We have to make it clear to migrants in France who are already in a safe country that actually it won’t work – getting in a small boat, you won’t get to stay in the UK and that you’re likely to be relocated elsewhere,” he said.
World News
Trump returning to California for big-dollar fundraisers next week
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Former President Trump is scheduled to return to California next week for a pair of high-dollar fundraisers, one notably hosted by relatives of the wife of Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to invitations obtained by The Times.
On Sept. 13, donors are being asked to pony up as much as $500,000 per couple for an afternoon fundraiser in Woodside hosted by Tom and Stacey Siebel. Tom Siebel, a billionaire software developer and businessman who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump’s 2024 campaign, is a second cousin once removed of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the Democratic governor’s wife.
Newsom’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Siebel Newsom’s family has a well-reported history of Republican activism, including by her father, Ken Siebel. But after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose presidential bid Ken Siebel supported financially, misstated the motivation for Siebel and his wife moving to Florida during a debate with the governor, the first partner’s father described DeSantis as a “lying slimeball,” according to the Daily Mail.
Trump will also headline an evening fundraiser in Los Angeles on Sept. 12, with top tickets going for $250,000 per person. The location and hosts have not been revealed.
The gatherings take place at a critical moment in the campaign, in the window between the first debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, on Tuesday, and Sept. 18, when Trump is scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that could have affected his 2016 bid.
Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Ohio‘s Sen. JD Vance, will raise money in Los Angeles on Sunday, as Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff did on Thursday. Several Italian Americans, including Hollywood stars, will host a virtual dinner fundraiser for Harris on Sunday. Among the participants of “Paisans for Kamala” are actors Steve Buscemi, Alyssa Milano, Lorraine Bracco, Marisa Tomei and John Turturro, as well as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The amount of attention being showered on Californians in the waning weeks of the presidential campaign is due to its outsized role in fueling campaigns of both parties. Despite the state’s cobalt-blue tilt, it is home to an enormous number of Republican as well as Democratic donors and is typically among the largest sources of donations to candidates of both parties.
As of Aug. 8, Harris had raised $65.5 million for her presidential campaign from Californians, more than any other state’s residents had donated, according to Federal Election Commission fundraising disclosures of donors who contributed more than $200 to a candidate committee.
Trump had raised $24.8 million from California donors, the second-most from any state. (These figures reflect donations to the candidates’ committees, not to outside groups or independent expenditure committees.)
World News
JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and calls for better security
PHOENIX (AP) — Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said Thursday that he lamented that school shootings are a “fact of life” and argued the U.S. needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia.
“If these psychos are going to go after our kids we’ve got to be prepared for it,” Vance said at a rally in Phoenix. “We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
Vance said he doesn’t like the idea of his own kids going to a school with hardened security, “but that’s increasingly the reality that we live in.”
He called the shooting in Georgia an “awful tragedy,” and said the families in Winder, Georgia, need prayers and sympathy.
Earlier this year, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, toured the bloodstained Florida classroom building where the 2018 Parkland high school massacre happened. She then announced a program to assist states that have laws allowing police to temporarily seize guns from people judges have found to be dangerous.
Harris, who leads the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, has supported both stronger gun controls, such as banning sales of AR-15 and similar rifles, and better school security, like making sure classroom doors don’t lock from the outside as they did in Parkland.
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