25 People Recall The Single Office Event That Provoked A Mass Resignation

Working in an office can lead to many frustrating incidents. This could be a concern that affects only one individual or it could be something that affects the collective as a whole. Regardless, there are many instances where people feel pushed to their breaking points and try to encourage a mass walk-out in retaliation. At least we daydream of such moments of revolution though they are relatively rare in real life due to mundane concerns such as people’s need to make money for their private responsibilities. 

#1

Image source: Lynne Bailey, Ahmet Kurt / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Not quite everyone, but the newly-appointed Head of IT announced that everyone in the section would have to re-apply for their jobs. Nine-tenths of the people affected decided that if they had to jump through all the hoops – update their CVS, complete application forms and go through interviews – then they might as well try for better-paid and more interesting jobs than they currently had. Most of them did so very successfully and the new Head of IT found himself left with a rump of poorly-motivated employees who had not kept up with developments in their field, were probably the very ones he’d intended to get rid of and certainly were not up to the job of filling in for their former colleagues. He didn’t last very long….

#2

Image source: Haruhi Suzumiya, Getty Images / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Todd kept slapping everyone.

#3

Image source: Mary Ross, Getty Images / unsplash (not the actual photo)

The owner of the store made all of us sign a contract that we would neever change the date of the food, sush as tomatos. onions, lettuce etc. That was good, potentially keeping food poisoning from hitting the store, After we had all signed she then anounced that she would fire any body NOT changing the dates because it was a huge expense and waste to throw out out-of-date food. Within a week every last crew member had found another job and quit,

#4

Image source: Mary Martin Hayes, Kateryna Hliznitsova / unsplash (not the actual photo)

I worked at a Walmart once. They told everyone that you have to put in, in advance, if you are sick or want to go to a funeral. HOW WOULD ANYONE KNOW THAT IN ADVANCE???

#5

Image source: Ellison1983 , Getty Images / unsplash (not the actual photo)

When I quit.

I worked for a man who was quite literally the stupidest man I’d ever worked with/for/near or around.

Example 1: Issued a report showing New Sun China Energy as a sale in Asia.

Boss protested. “No, that’s not right! It should be Europe.”

Me: “New Sun China Energy is located in China. Which is in Asia.”

Boss: “No! China’s in Europe.”

Me: “Um. No. China’s in Asia.”

Boss [thumping hand on desk]: China is part of Germany. You must report the sale in EU.

Me: Ok.

I proceeded to inform our plant manager (native German) that his country had exploded by a billion additional citizens because China was now a state of Germany. He got a laugh out of that.

Example 2: Member of my team was diagnosed with brain cancer and was dying. Still came into work every day because her life was so awful coming to work was the highlight of it.

Me to Boss: Deb needs Friday off for more radiation treatment.

Boss: That doesn’t work for me. Tell her to reschedule.

Example 3: Boss very proud of himself because he saved a ton of money on vet fees when his dog was bitten by another dog.

Me: How did you manage that?

Boss: I just wrapped duct tape around his snout to stop the bleeding.

Me: How will he eat or drink?

Boss: [silence]

I kid you not.

When I finally quit for better fields, my entire staff quit within the following week. I’d been protecting them from this sh*thead for years and no one could tolerate him. He ended to closing the year [a big task in a large corporate accounting department] with all TEMPS.

Ya just can’t make this stuff up.

#6

Image source: Cody Belise, BBC Creative / unsplash (not the actual photo)

I worked at a daycare right out of College once I moved back to NY. This daycare was considered one of the best run in the area. The place was great. The only bad thing was the board. Being a non-profit we were governed by a board, made up entirely of parents. Half of these parents were on a power trip and expected special treatment for their children.

Well, we essentially got our first violation in 9 years when a child falling off the indoor jungle gym. Unfortunately, the violation was due to the fact the jungle gym was meant to be outdoors not indoors. Suffice to say the state was not happy.

The worst part was we had requested for the jungle gym to be moved outside numerous times but were not allowed to do it with out board permission. The Tuesday after the child got hurt we all walked in to board members emptying our directors office. They fired her due to the fact it was unacceptable for the center to have gotten a violation and she was out due to it. Once she was gone our violation went with her due to the violation being associated with her record(at least that’s how we understood it) once our director was gone people left in droves including one of our assistant directors.

In total we had 23 of our 30 person staff leave. Because the board wanted to be able to say that they ran a violation free center they fired the one person people cared about and respected the most. The daycare had to shut down abruptly due to lack of staff.

#7

Image source: Kathy Clark, Dan Burton / unsplash (not the actual photo)

When I got fired from a building supply warehouse Everyone else quit! I was the girl in the one girl office and there were 3 other men in the office as well as 3 salesmen that quit. That left the boss all alone!! The reason I was fired was because I had moved in with my boyfriend. I guess this went against his puritan values. It felt really good ti have the support of all my coworkers!! I had a job the next week that payed twice as much!

#8

Image source: Ronda Spears, The Jopwell Collection / unsplash (not the actual photo)

They hired a new manager to the department. I was #5 of 8 people. 3 people transferred to other departments and 5 quit outright, before the manager was removed. I was the only one to give an exit interview. I told them about the scheduling mistakes, ordering mistakes, lack of needed items and lack of health accommodations. they fired her 2 weeks after I left.

#9

Image source: Candy Johnson-Brown, Maxime / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Just 3 weeks ago, a major cross channel ferry company in the UK called all 800 employees to an emergency Zoom meeting and fired them all with immediate effect and gave them 15 minutes to gather their belongings and disembark the ferries. As they were disembarking their replacements were boarding to begin their training and all their ferry services were cancelled immediately. The new foreign workers were being hired because they were willing to work for a fraction of the salary of the UK workers. As far as I know they have still to date not resumed their regular ferry services. That company is losing money whilst the other 2 ferry services are making a k*****g taking on all the passengers from the other company.

#10

Image source: Rick Sheehy, Camille Chen / unsplash (not the actual photo)

It was less a case of everyone quitting and no one being willing to work for them.

It was a small, seasonal place (restaurant) on Cape Cod. The owner had a well-deserved reputation as a petty person who would fire people, especially women, who didn’t do as he said to. He would also treat customers the same way and there were several cases of the owner taking money but then telling people, especially teens, they had to leave. This resulted in several calls to the police and one charge of larceny, It was a pay at a counter type of place.

So one year no one would work for him. Just a case of his name coming up and people, having heard of his rep refused to work for this. What’s amazing is that during the season, at this time, most of the people who worked at this place were college students from Ireland. Summer at the beaches and make some money.

He actually called other restaurants that hired some of his ex-staff and said he was going to sue. He threatened to have the visas of some of the workers revoked by spreading lies. It was in the news when it all went down and, not surprisingly, he went out of business claiming to the end he was the victim.

#11

Image source: Mick Parker, Ales Krivec / unsplash (not the actual photo)

I’ve never seen everyone quit at once, nor everyone completely, but I’ve seen close.

27 out of 30 people quit within the same month, after the company informed them they would be closing our site, and moving everyone to another site, a long way away, and there was no additional pay or travel allowance.

The 3 who stayed (I was one) were union members, and we got a proper severance. The union then chased up the 27 others, offered them a one-off membership, and fought for them too. It ended up scheduled to go to court. A few weeks before the hearing, they also got severance packages, but not as generous as the 3 of us who didn’t quit first. The head office HR person got sacked over that, as she knowingly let management believe it was OK. Mind you, any half decent manager would have clicked that it’s not that easy.

On another occasion, I saw a whole department turn over in under 6 months, and the subsequent people nearly had another 100% turnover within a year. HR had metrics, where acceptable turnover was 12%. That is, they expected to have 12 out of 100 people quit. Some departments had 8–10 people, who had been there for years. Their metrics were awesome. But accounts, under “the dragon” – they had a rating of over 100%. That was not a good thing.

And one last one. I lasted 6 months in a job after I worked out what the manager was like. I would have left sooner, but I wanted to find a decent job, not a gap-filler. Within 12 months, more than half the company’s employees left – including every single state manager, and all but one sales guy – the one who stayed was his nephew. The parent company finally realised, but it was too late. For several years myself and all the other state managers got phone calls asking us to come back. We all declined, the damage was done.

#12

Image source: Cassy Veronica, Pablo Merchán Montes / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Not an event but a single person leaving. The problem with fast food restaurants is they suck. Even the managers hate being there and the working conditions are awful. At our particular store, we only were staying cause someone else was staying. Alex and John were staying cause I was staying. Theressa was staying because Alex was staying. Lily was staying cause Theressa was staying. And so on and so forth for the entire staff. I was tired of working there and finally got a job offer somewhere else. I put in my notice and instantly a chain reaction kicked in. Alex put his notice in, then Theressa, then Lily, and so on until even the managers left.

#13

Image source: Jim Reifsnyder-Smith, Michal Balog / unsplash (not the actual photo)

You asked, “What event at your workplace caused everyone to quit?”.

Our company told everybody that their jobs were moving to Florida – the housing was cheaper and the company was getting huge tax incentives.

The employees decided that uprooting their lives was not worth moving from a state with low taxes (#11) and excellent education and public services, to a state with slightly lower taxes (#6), but terrible education and weeping infrastructure. Especially so their bosses – who were not moving – could get bigger bonuses.

The administrative assistants were not offered the opportunity to move. Their jobs were terminated. They were to, move themselves, and reapply for their jobs in Florida.

Some said “no” but to avoid getting fired immediately, most said “yes” which bought them time to retire or get new jobs. In some business units, it is expected only 25% will stay with the company – all that knowledge and experience is lost forever.

The company is Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.

#14

Image source: Chris , Curated Lifestyle / unsplash (not the actual photo)

After a few years of struggling, my previous company decided to bring in a new CEO in an attempt to turn things around. Shortly after that, the layoffs and extensive restructuring began which sucked, but it happens. Morale slowly began to lower after this which obviously caused some people to quit as well.

And then October of 2020 came. My company decided in all of its wisdom, to make some significant policy changes in the middle of the pandemic which made things more difficult for our customers and for the next few months we went into full damage control mode. We lost some big accounts and it became quite clear early on that these changes were not fully thought out and that it did more harm than good, however, we were instructed to carry on and continue to enforce these customer unfriendly policies.

Over the next year, people would leave in groups, there one day, gone the next. There were so many that they stopped putting out departure notices, even for the people that spent many years at the company. The culture was awful, our customer feedback was awful, and our glorious CEO announced his retirement right in the middle of all of this but the damage had already been done. People were being stretched out, over worked, and and under appreciated for too long.

I resigned last December after almost 15 years and now that the dust has settled, I am much happier with my new employer.

#15

Image source: Kelly Green, Toa Heftiba / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Everyone didn’t quit, but a good number of people left due to poor management, lack of direction from the supervisor, little to no support, workloads that were excessively high with unreachable expectations. You can also add salaries that were not commensurate with other agencies for the same job, and a poor work/life balance. Employees need to feel supported, heard, and appreciated. Workloads need to be manageable. Expectations need to be realistic. Burn out is the number one reason people leave. And it’s generally due to all of the things I’ve listed.

#16

Image source: Ruth Barr, Magnet / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Well I’ve never worked somewhere where everyone quit. But I have worked at a place that a great deal of people would have quit if they hadn’t fixed the issue asap.

It was at a call center for a cell phone company. The holidays were usually handle like this:

-if it was your day off you didn’t work unless you told the scheduling department you wanted to work.

-everyone else bid on the shifts available. One of the options was “no shift”. If you didn’t want to work that was your number one bid.

-you then put all the rest of the shifts in order of what you wanted to work most to least in case you didn’t get it off.

-bidding was then done with reverse seniority, seniority meaning how long you’d worked there. So the more seniority you had the less likely it was you’d have to work.

They also promised to get the holiday shifts posted at least a month before the holiday so you could plan.

One year we were coming up on the holiday season. In October we’d been asking about the bid for Thanksgiving. They don’t get back to us. End of October/beginning of November (I forget exactly when) our associate directors held a meeting with each of their teams. They said this year they were running the holidays as a normal work day. If you worked Thursday then you worked whatever your normal shift was on Thanksgiving. Three weeks before the holiday. After many people booked trips due to no news from them and their seniority (mostly those that hadn’t had to work holidays in the past). And no you could not put in a time off request, like you could for other Thursdays, because it was a holiday and they needed sufficient staffing.

Oh the uproar. Literally everyone pushed back on this. Many stated they’d be calling in sick or using their emergency day off, which the company gave each quarter it was basically a vacation day you didn’t have to preschedule. By the afternoon they realized how badly they f*cked up. We told them repeatedly if they’d given more notice of this we would have been more willing to accommodate it. By only giving three weeks notice they were f*cking up the holiday plans of literally hundreds of agents (call center had 800–900 agents affected by this).

By the time I left, 7 or 8 pm, they’d sent an email saying they’d go back to the original way of doing the holiday shift bids. That was done quickly, but still only have two weeks to plan if you had to work. They did have more holiday shifts than normal, but nowhere near the amount of people that normally work Thursdays. They said they’d let us know what way we were doing Christmas and New Year’s the week after Thanksgiving.

Result: they kept holiday shift bidding the same. That Thanksgiving they had a lot more people than they needed. Scheduling ended up letting a lot of them leave early to keep the agent to calls ratio in the range they were supposed to be in. Great hoopla that ended with things right back where they started.

#17

Image source: Thornton Kelly , Visual Karsa / unsplash (not the actual photo)

I started work at McDonalds when I was 15. I arrived my first morning to a note on the door to the assistant manager signed by the whole morning crew that essentially said ‘F You! You suck! We quit!’ I was quickly promoted to McDonalds cook and handed a bunch of binders with pictorial instructions on how to cook the variety of morning dishes (i.e. Egg McMuffins, Hash Browns, Hotcakes, etc). The assistant manager went up front and ran the register whilst I was left on my own trying to cook. I didn’t have time to even look at the damn binders so I just made it up as I went. I had eaten most of the breakfast menu before so it wasn’t like I was cooking some foreign dish that I never heard of or seen before, but it sucked. I was just making food that was within the ballpark of what it was supposed to be (I mean a sausage and egg McMuffin is pretty much sausage, egg and a muffin). I wasn’t following proper cooking times so from a consistency standpoint, I was serving up a McMess.

I quickly discovered that the assistant manager thought he was a McDonald’s God (trying saying that without laughing). He abused staff and pranced around like he was God’s gift to the fast-food world. 😂 He eventually moved to afternoon/evening service, was abusive to the wrong person and was almost shot to death one evening (I wrote about it on another post) by that disgruntled employee.

#18

Image source: Eric Overton, ThisisEngineering / unsplash (not the actual photo)

I once worked at an engineering firm that had a 401K program in which the engineers were quite active. Over a few years, people had accumulated a significant amount of money, since being engineers, they were good with numbers and not particularly disposed to blow money on status items — so their contributions were high.

The company itself, however, wasn’t terribly competently run. And when it was turned down for a corporate loan, it retaliated against the bank that held the 401K’s by pulling them all out and dangling them as candy in front of another bank that did eventually give them the loan. (Yes, I know this is illegal. But just try to prove it.)

Trouble was that the bank that was dumb enough to loan them money ran a terrible investment program as well. And as people looked at the 401K into which they were now locked, they wanted out. The only way out was with a QDRO from a court or with a letter of resignation.

Being engineers, people ran the numbers and concluded that the incentive bonus to quit created by the 401K program’s mismanagement was good enough that the letters of resignation from the very best people came pouring in.

Four years later, a competitor bought the wreckage of this company for 13 cents on the dollar.

#19

Image source: Paul Nerstrand Maakestad, Nick Pampoukidis / unsplash (not the actual photo)

For at least two months our employer had to go to a local downtown bank to borrow enough money to make payroll. This was a small town with only one or two banks . You know our employer did not get a good rate. We had to volunteer to take cuts to our already low paychecks. It was not the kind of place where people could just quit. But everyone who could sent out letters and resumes. Within eighteen months everyone who could find something better was gone. Including me and my spouse. Eventually, the outfit did shut down.

BTW, nothing against small town banks. They, more than many, must be careful about loaning money.

#20

Image source: Odd Boots , Campaign Creators / unsplash (not the actual photo)

I worked for a small company that boasted profit sharing as an important and awesome benefit. The employees were accustomed to receiving a profit sharing bonus of anywhere from $5k-$10 at the end of the fiscal year. One year the company decided to reinvest all the profits back into the business and the employees received a check for around $300. Many of them quit.

#21

Image source: Paul Irving, Kübra Arslaner / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Back in a previous millennium, I was working for a company that specialised in taking over in-house services from local authorities & the like. The senior management were very focused on short-term gains.

In my office there was a hot desk area next to my desk, often used by sales staff. Most didn’t interact with the rest of us much, but there were two (who happened to be married to each other) who were friendly. They’d not been there long: I think taken on from elsewhere.

One day they were both there, & packing stuff up. I asked why, & they told me. They were both about to put in resignation letters & given what was in them, they expected to be out of the door immediately — & that was fine with them. They were quitting because they’d found fraud in the team, organised by its head, which the top management should have been aware of, if they’d ever looked properly at the figures. They didn’t know if a director or someone almost at that level was complicit or not, but they’d compiled evidence & it was with their letters. And they had copies at home. We said goodbye to each other & they went. Oh, they said they were sure of starting new jobs soon.

The sh*t hit the fan soon after. The head of our office was called to a meeting, & came back looking shaken. None of the sales team were ever seen again. After a while it was announced that a new head of sales had been appointed. There were sackings at a couple of customers.

#22

Image source: Paul Passarelli, Getty Images / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Our paychecks bounced! In all candor I would not have noticed, but you know that every shop has the person who gets his paycheck and immediately leaves work and goes to the bank. Well, that guy came back and started yelling at the managers, that his check was no good, and that started a sh*tstorm.

The ‘branch-office’ in Norwalk we were at (formerly KG-Data), had been recently acquired by FastComm Corp (in Georgia IIRC). Well they were broke, but were hiding the fact as best as they could. Until the SHTF.

The entire engineering team, and the secretary, basically walked out. Fortunately it was a lovely early April day in 1999 so we all went to the deli and ate our lunches at a nearby picnic table.

The guy who sold the and was the defacto manager (VP-division, Pres old biz name) was pissed, and embarrassed, and angry at us, but, really had nothing to fall back on. We learned shortly thereafter that he was ‘aware’ of difficulties, but had said nothing. One guy quit that very afternoon. Packed his things and that was that! He was the smart one. The rest of us stuck it out.

They managed to get us all a ‘stipend’ about two weeks later, but we didn’t get back on ‘payroll’ for months. They let the secretary go, then tech/IT guy, the engineering team kinda hung on because we enjoyed spending time together, and we figured that a mass exodus would only diminish their incentive to deliver back pay.

Since we all had side gigs, we would collaborate on each others projects during our now *extended* lunches. Pay remained sporadic through the rest of the summer, in the fall they closed the doors and didn’t even bother to preserve our work. I think they declared bankruptcy later that year.

#23

Image source: Alan Higgins, Campaign Creators / unsplash (not the actual photo)

The firm I worked for, a subsidiary of a German firm, as a self employed operator (commission only) sold the UK arm to an American firm.
The new management was total c**p, didn’t even understand the business. Every existing operator quit as soon as they started to chisel the commissions.
The operators they replaced them with were cheap, not motivated.
One by one the sites became unprofitable, the yanks sold the lot to a bank. Every UK site closed.
All the German sites are still operating and profitable.

#24

Image source: Heinz Beanz, Alexander Mils / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Not one event, but our employer grossly underpays us for the work we do. Technically over minimum wage, but vastly below what we should be for the work we do by about $20,000 per year. Other companies are hiring hard following return to business from the pandemic, and staff are leaving weekly to pursue better pay opportunities.

#25

Image source: Jeff Tipton, wocintechchat / unsplash (not the actual photo)

The company announced they were closing the operations center within 6 to 9 months and transferring all the work to another state. Within three to four weeks there was only a skeleton crew of people still working and a fairly large number of temporary workers from a temporary staffing agency had to be hired. The irony is that the company never intended on running people off. Most employees were going to be offered jobs in the new state, and those that weren’t, or didn’t take the new job, had plenty of time to get a new job. But about 90% of the workforce left like rats leaving a sinking ship.