So it’s Friday, you’re looking forward to the weekend… Ever thought about what you’d do if you didn’t want to come back in to work on Monday?
So it’s Friday, you’re looking forward to the weekend… Ever thought about what you’d do if you didn’t want to come back in to work on Monday?
Leaving a job can be the end of an era, a time for goodbyes, a time for celebration and new opportunities … or it can be just plain bizarre.
Even if you’re thinking of getting out of the brokering business for good, these are some tactics you probably don’t want to try…
‘Calling’ it quits…
One advertising agency employee, pushed over the edge by his boss claiming credit (again) for a project she hadn’t done, used his work phone to call his grandmother’s house in Oman. When she answered, he told her not to hang up the receiver. He placed the phone in his bottom drawer and locked it. Then he grabbed his bag, suit jacket, sauntered over to his boss's office and said, “For two years, you've made everyone's life on this floor a living hell.” He caused such a scene security was called and he was escorted out of the building.
He had the last laugh, though. Since it was a Friday, by the time his (ex-) workplace realized that his phone line had been on the entire weekend, it had racked up no less than 71 hours in silent, super-expensive international phone call hours.
And another interesting use for the work phone…
A secretary, finally fed-up with her boss referring to her as “hey” and “you” came in to work one morning with her name taped to her forehead.
He never cracked a smile. In fact he still refused to use her name. That afternoon, when he yelled at her for not answering his phone within the accepted three-ring time frame, the secretary tore the phone out of the wall jack, threw it through his office door and walked out.
The calm, naked exit…
I guess you could call this method ‘The Minimalist’…
Up until recently, Oslo’s National Museum had manual security only, “nice men and women in anonymous uniforms, sitting quietly on chairs in their respective parts of the museum.”
One security guard, after coming in to work at 8am every day including Saturdays for 30 years to “smile at visitors and shush the kids and the students,” decided she had had enough.
“She stood up, took off her uniform, folded it neatly and placed it on the chair where she had spent most of her adult life, and walked naked through the entire museum with her hands above her head.”
The guy who ruined TV for the weekend…
A programmer for a local TV station was left in charge of working over Independence Day weekend, when everybody else was out of town.
Sick of angry bosses and slacker co-workers, the employee programmed the commercials in for the weekend, but nothing else.
“What was usually their highest-rated weekend was now nothing but dead air and commercials, and the two other people who knew how to work the programming software were out of town.”
When the program director called on Monday, the programmer said a succinct and not-too-polite goodbye, and moved interstate.
Emergency exit
Certainly we all remember this one: Flight attendants put up with their fair share of abuse, but one day it all got a bit much for New York City steward Steven Slater.
After dealing with one particularly rude passenger, Slater apparently got on the plane’s public address system and cursed at everyone aboard.
He then activated the plane’s inflatable evacuation slide, launched himself off the plane, ran to the employee parking lot and left the airport in a car he had parked there … but not before grabbing himself a few road beers from the airplane galley on the way out.
Bonus last day stories:
Leaving a job can be the end of an era, a time for goodbyes, a time for celebration and new opportunities … or it can be just plain bizarre.
Even if you’re thinking of getting out of the brokering business for good, these are some tactics you probably don’t want to try…
‘Calling’ it quits…
One advertising agency employee, pushed over the edge by his boss claiming credit (again) for a project she hadn’t done, used his work phone to call his grandmother’s house in Oman. When she answered, he told her not to hang up the receiver. He placed the phone in his bottom drawer and locked it. Then he grabbed his bag, suit jacket, sauntered over to his boss's office and said, “For two years, you've made everyone's life on this floor a living hell.” He caused such a scene security was called and he was escorted out of the building.
He had the last laugh, though. Since it was a Friday, by the time his (ex-) workplace realized that his phone line had been on the entire weekend, it had racked up no less than 71 hours in silent, super-expensive international phone call hours.
And another interesting use for the work phone…
A secretary, finally fed-up with her boss referring to her as “hey” and “you” came in to work one morning with her name taped to her forehead.
He never cracked a smile. In fact he still refused to use her name. That afternoon, when he yelled at her for not answering his phone within the accepted three-ring time frame, the secretary tore the phone out of the wall jack, threw it through his office door and walked out.
The calm, naked exit…
I guess you could call this method ‘The Minimalist’…
Up until recently, Oslo’s National Museum had manual security only, “nice men and women in anonymous uniforms, sitting quietly on chairs in their respective parts of the museum.”
One security guard, after coming in to work at 8am every day including Saturdays for 30 years to “smile at visitors and shush the kids and the students,” decided she had had enough.
“She stood up, took off her uniform, folded it neatly and placed it on the chair where she had spent most of her adult life, and walked naked through the entire museum with her hands above her head.”
The guy who ruined TV for the weekend…
A programmer for a local TV station was left in charge of working over Independence Day weekend, when everybody else was out of town.
Sick of angry bosses and slacker co-workers, the employee programmed the commercials in for the weekend, but nothing else.
“What was usually their highest-rated weekend was now nothing but dead air and commercials, and the two other people who knew how to work the programming software were out of town.”
When the program director called on Monday, the programmer said a succinct and not-too-polite goodbye, and moved interstate.
Emergency exit
Certainly we all remember this one: Flight attendants put up with their fair share of abuse, but one day it all got a bit much for New York City steward Steven Slater.
After dealing with one particularly rude passenger, Slater apparently got on the plane’s public address system and cursed at everyone aboard.
He then activated the plane’s inflatable evacuation slide, launched himself off the plane, ran to the employee parking lot and left the airport in a car he had parked there … but not before grabbing himself a few road beers from the airplane galley on the way out.
Bonus last day stories:
- Racked up a $2,000 bar tab. Apparently that was the norm here…where was this office again?
- High school teacher parked her car in the student lunch room.
- Bus driver stopped the bus at rush hour and disappeared out the door into the pouring rain, leaving his passengers stranded.
- Baked his office a cake, wrote his resignation letter on the cake in icing.
- Wrote a song about every staff member in the office and went around singing it to them.
- Sat in a meeting room with a case of beer. Anytime another employee came in to ask them a question, they had to down a beer with them. This was repeated later by another staff member, except with tequila instead.
- Threw out everything. No, really. All stationary. All client files. All intellectual properties. Absolutely, positively everything. And then put a hot water bottle in a filing cabinet.
- Faxed his resume to apply for a new promising-sounding job... not realizing it was the one he already had and hated!
