What is the worst exit you have had to a job?

[reecejackox]

Turned up and found out I wasnt needed.

 

[fla4fun]

Probably the most recent, as we had all been working from home for almost a year, and they told us the company was shutting down due to Covid on a conference call. It was like we all left the office a year ago and just never saw one another again. It would have been nice to say goodbye in person . . .

 

[Skippy918]

I was working for a small company at the time ~100 people. They called about half of us into a meeting and gave us our walking papers. Then they handed us boxes and we had to pack up our things and leave. It was so surreal when it happened. Luckily I found a new job fairly quickly and it’s been great.

 

[BlueStarryHat]

I worked one day at McDonald's and was so bad at it that I was let go before my shift was even half over. McFired.

 

[maxaroni]

I was working for a small company at the time ~100 people. They called about half of us into a meeting and gave us our walking papers. Then they handed us boxes and we had to pack up our things and leave. It was so surreal when it happened. Luckily I found a new job fairly quickly and it’s been great.

It hasn’t happened to me, still employed at the company, layoffs were a bit unnerving though. We’ve had quite a few layoffs, the manager taps you on the shoulder and says he needs to speak with you. Once in his office, a supervisor is boxing up your things. They take you to the lobby and hand you your box. It’s awfuL

 

[RUDisney]

I worked for a company for 6-months. I should have known from the beginning that it was going to be bad. I took the job as an in-between until I could find something in my wheelhouse.

I was hired to be a trainer, but was sent to supermarkets to give samples to customers.

I needed to take a day off because I was in the ER with my DH until 3:15 a.m. and after a day of work and running a school dance in the evening (that I left early to take DH to the ER), I was tired and couldn't wake up early to be interactive with people. I got 2 days off for the year, but when I got my next pay, this day wasn't included in it. The owner was at WDW with his family, so I couldn't talk to him until he got back.

When he got back, he told me I wasn't sick, so I wouldn't be paid. I asked him for the written policy that defines illness. He couldn't produce one, so I asked if he understood that the Fair Labor Standards Act says that if you don't have a written policy, it's just his whim. He threw his pen on his desk and said, "I guess I have to pay you then."

I was salaried, but when I got my current job offer, I was finished with the low life owner of this company. He wasn't there when I turned in my company-owned property. I told my coworkers that I would take inventory in a store that was an hour away so they wouldn't have to add that to the end of their day, but when I was finished with that, I was finished.

I never received pay for that day. I contacted my attorney, who is a friend of mine, and the state to report that I wasn't paid. I finally received my last pay through the owner's attorney, to my attorney. It wasn't a matter of the amount, but of the principle.

Overall, the whole thing was a bad experience. The owner cared about his bottom line and not in any way for his employees. I feel sorry for the others who work/worked for him.

 

[tex1989]

Two instances come to mind but I was not affected in either one. Once had a friend who worked for Arco (energy company). They announce a manditory all employee meeting in the auditorium of the complex and had people wait for almost two hours. At some point they brought all theses boxes out in front and said if they called your name please come forward and collect your personal effects as you had been laid off. Brutal!

The second was my wife and I worked for the same company and one Thursday they said everyone needed to be at their desk at 9:00 am. Your supervisor then came and got you if you were affected. Took you to their office where there was security would escort you back to you desk to pack it and then walk you out of the building. You were asked when your suoervisor was letting you go if you needed a taxi voucher to get home if you had taken the bus or carpooled and there was a line of cabs around the building in downtown Houston. Interestingly enough it was a large corporation and there were like 70 couple who both worked there and in every instance the lower earning of the two were let go. My wife was let go on that day. We were later contacted by a group filing a lawsuit because of the situation because up to that point she had glowing reviews and it seemed obvious what they were doing. We carpooled so she just went home and came back and got me at the end of the day.

 

[BrianL]

I've never really had a confrontational exit. I guess the one that stung the most was when the company shut down the store with little notice. It was just an ancillairy job for me, but much of the staff was in tears. It occurs to me that I have only ever left one job willingly though, and at the time I was dropping one of my three jobs. And while I have had jobs end due to restructuring at my current company I have stayed with the company. They even went out of their way to find me a place the last time which I greatly appreciated.

 

[bcla]

With a layoff, I've never had anything dumped in a box and told to leave. I've always been trusted enough to just pack stuff on my own and leave myself. I've found out in the morning and had all day to just spend time my coworkers getting a beer before heading back to the office to grab our stuff.

I guess the most awkward was taking the job I didn't really want because I was pressured to either take it or leave it. I had another interview before I took that job, but no offers. As soon as I got another offer I told my manager and that was it. I hadn't been there long enough to have much personal stuff at my desk. I was working directly with about 2 other people including the manager. Another guy was out and ask about maybe saying goodbye in person and the manager said don't worry about it. I think he understood and knew this was a possibility.

I did get paid though. 3 days although one day I left in the morning.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

I was at a company that was insane.
My boss(was new) would never meet with me and though I workerd really was a bit of a jerk.

My older boss had just got promoted and I no longer worked for him. So I decided to get the hell out of Dodge...or was it take my Dodge out of Hell. Either way I left tire marks in the parking lot.
Anyways.. I had a feeling I was going to get the presidents award for some VBA programing I did.
My old boss never told me he put me in, but I know another department which used the coding really really loved it and it saved them tons of time each close.
So first thing in the morning, I told my new boss I had to talk to him. He said yeah I will try to open some time. I remided him at 10AM and 11AM that I needed to talk to him. 1PM we had our corporate wide staff meeting, I won the presidents award. 2PM I told him look the reason i got to talk to you is I'm resigining.
Got my $1000 for the award.

bad for them

 

[hertamaniac]

I went through 2 layoffs, but I wouldn't really classify them as bad.

I worked for a publicly listed technology company and my wife had already accepted a job to relocate from PA to FL. I didn't disclose a thing to anyone in the company and then a day or two before I was going to give notice, I was let go (I knew a round of layoffs were coming and throttled back on my performance intentionally). By keeping silent, I got a rather handsome severance package, full benefits and was actually very jovial with HR and my supervisor during the exit meeting; needless to say, they were stunned.

The second time was well after I made my career and no longer needed to be a part of that company. I knew my time had passed and after training my replacement (who lasted ~6 months), I made provisions to leave. So on the actual day that the President and Vice-President were going to "shock" me with the news, I had already moved all of my personal possessions out of my office. I'll never forget when they asked me, "do you need a box for your things?". To which I said, "nope...I already took them out yesterday"; they laughed and I did too.

 

[Colleen27]

Put in my two weeks notice and got fired by a text from my boss's boss the next day, because if they'd let me work my two weeks and quit voluntarily they'd have had to pay out my accrued vacation time in my final paycheck.

 

[KPeterso]

I had one. Called into a room and told I was being let go. And then escorted back to my desk to pack my stuff. Computer had been pulled. Guess the email I had started about an issue was not completed or sent. And then they handed me meds for a patient to deliver (I did deliver regularly to that patient) and I handed it back and said I no longer work here. You can figure it out. And walked out. Oh and then they called me the next day to ask a few questions and get help on a few things. Yeah, no, I am not helping for no money and if can't afford my salary, you can't afford my consulting fee.

 

[neverlandsky]

In orientation a coworker from the department I was going to work in cornered me, stared me down, and asked if I worked hard and got what it takes. Worked my butt off doing circles around coworkers. Decided to leave on my own accord due to toxic work environment. It was bad. Harassment, hazing, cussing, and yelling where management was too scared to do something about it because they didn’t want to lose any of the workforce.

Put in my 2 weeks. Dropped company items in personnel. Coworker, the one who got in my face at orientation goes have a good weekend and see you next week. I said yep. Didn’t look back.

As I picked up my last paycheck, another worker goes, you shouldn’t of called in all those times and you would still have your job. I never called in. Not even once. Was always to work early and left late.

 

[tex1989]

Since I work in the Energy Trading business one thing that has always been the case is that when you do resign in almost every instance you are told to wait for security and then escorted to your desk to pack your stuff and then escorted out the door. It is not the exception but rather the rule and not something we think about to much. So if you see personal items disappearing off a desk that always raises some questions. The other thing that is done on the Trade Floor is when someone is retiring as they take their last walk off the floor they ring a bell and usually get a stand ovation from the floor. Kind of a nice gesture and since we have about 300 people on the floor it is quite impressive.

 

[sdoll]

I received a outlook invite for a meeting that didn't include a conference number instead said to meet in the HR managers office. there were 9 of us in the company (large company) we all had the same invite 15 mins apart. It was very clear we were going to have our positions eliminated. My meeting time was 3 hours after I received my invite. It was sort of like "dead man walking." I had time to clean my office, go through my emails, I even went and talked to HR and let her know I knew what was going to happen and that I was ok. I called my mom, my husband, etc. and waited. Best thing that ever happened to me! I hated that job. That was a Tuesday, I cleaned and relaxed on Wednesday, Thursday I dusted off my resume and applied for jobs. Friday I had an interview and Monday I had a new job. I made money on the deal. I was lucky! Honeslty, I would have elimnated my position as well if I had to make the decisions.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

In orientation a coworker from the department I was going to work in cornered me, stared me down, and asked if I worked hard and got what it takes.

If it wasn't my supervisor, I'd have said "Nope. I sure don't. I just got this job because I'm the boss's nephew. That means you and everyone else is going to have to work harder to make up for my laziness. And when it comes to firing someone for an underperforming department, well do you think the boss is going to let his nephew go?

 

[AndreaDM]

All this talk about HR cleaning out your desk for you makes me want to stash some really odd things in my desk drawers so if that ever happens I'll at least have given them something to talk about!

I've never been asked to clean out my desk and leave, but my next-door office mate was. It was a long, awkward experience as we just waited for her to go through EVERYTHING. Since then, I've made sure I can clean out and be gone in 5 min, everything I have would fit in a shoebox.

 

[kdonnel]

Only been laid off once so I guess that is my worst to date.

Got a meeting notice at 7:50am for a 8:00am 1 on 1 meeting with my boss. Only problem is she works on the west coast and I work on the east coast so it was obvious the reason.

Many in my office had been either laid off or close to layoffs many many times. During the annual November layoff period we would reminisce about layoffs.

Some of the worst:
1. One guy got a layoff notice on his first day of work. He was going to work for a defense contractor and everyone got a notice every 60 days stating that they could be let go sometime in the next 60 days. Since everyone had been notified they could always trigger the layoffs for any day they wanted without having to wait through the notification period. He ended up staying for 2 years before he was really laid off.

2. One guy showed up for work in NYC and found the building surrounding with limousines. As you went in the building your swipe card either let you go to the elevators or you were redirected to a first floor conference room where you signed your papers, picked up your stuff, and got assigned a limo for the ride home.

3. One guy got a company email that at 7am tomorrow they were to remotely check their company voice mail. If the system let them in, they were to report to work. If not they were laid off.

4. One guy described a time where there was an all hands meeting called. Half of the people were invited to one conference room, the other half to another conference room. One of the conference rooms was instead HR with the layoff papers.

5. I witnessed one guy who was relocating from Washington State to Georgia get laid off the day he made it to Georgia. The person who laid him off didn't even bother to come in that day and did the layoff over the phone. The guy had picked up and moved to what he thought was a better position that was in fact eliminated during the 3 days it took him to drive. He was so devastated. He stayed in the office conference room all day. He even returned the next day because he said he had nowhere to go. After a few days he stopped coming but his car remained in the parking lot, packed with stuff from the move. After six months the building had his car towed.

 

[MrsCobraBubbles]

My last job was pretty nasty about my exit. The admin at that school district seemed to love to be nasty and petty to the employees anyway so I guess I should have expected it. They refused to accept my 2 weeks notice because I had used a sick day to interview for my next job. I had put in for a personal day originally for the interview (without telling them that I was going to an interview, of course) and I was denied because we were supposed to give 10 working days' notice before a personal day. So they left me no choice, I either took a sick day or just didn't take the opportunity to interview, the school district I was interviewing with wasn't going to wait 2 more weeks for an interview. I guess I'm glad I don't work for administrators like that anymore, but I still feel bad about it because I worked there for so long, it made me sad to have to leave like that.