This happened close to 20 years ago now, but a recent post in here reminded me of it so I figured that I'd tell the story…
So back around 2001-02 I worked in lower management for Papa John's. I started out just as a shift leader, where I made I think 5.75/hour @ 40 hours a week. Then I was transferred into a different store in a different city, and “promoted” to assistant manager, on salary for a whopping $300 a week. The store didn't have a lot of staff, because it didn't do a lot of business; it was in a city where a very large portion of the population are senior citizens, and senior citizens with money at that, so eating Papa John's was really not what they were looking for..
The store manager for that location was a narcissistic piece of work and was fairly mentally unhinged. We'll refer to her as Karen. She lived really close to the store, so even on days when she didn't work, she would come by to make our lives miserable. Typical micromanagement nonsense, with the bonus “do as I say not as I do” crap too. And of course she was always super SUUUPER nice to the area supervisor (her boss). We'll call him Bob. Bob was also pretty self-centered and petty, so of course he responded well to having her kiss his ass.
So anyway. Cell phones were still not the norm quite yet, then, but were getting there. And because I was having to drive to another city, I just felt better having a phone (a fancy schmancy Samsung flip phone). But I didn't really use it for much, and really never gave out the number. Well, there came a week where Karen had forced me to work 6 days in a row, from 3pm till close, so around 10-11 hour shifts. So, we're talking like, 60-70 hours for $300. By the time my next day off (and my only one off till I started another week) came around I was super, super over it. So imagine both my shock and dismay when on said day off, my cell phone started ringing, and I saw it was from the store.
I made sure not to answer, because no. Just no. I was not going to be working 11 days in a row thank you very much. And on top of that I was super annoyed that someone had managed to give her my number. But it kept ringing, because she kept calling. And she kept leaving increasingly angry voice messages. Screaming, profanity filled messages about how DARE I not answer the phone?! How DARE I not be available when she wanted to get ahold of me?! And my favorite, threats to fire me if I EVER did such a thing again. So needless to say when I went in the next day, Karen made it a point to come in and bitch me up and down for my audacity to have a life of my own, and all the resentment and hatred I had for her rose up many notches. But I was young, dumb, and needed the job, so I just kept my head down and like your typical narc after a few days she eventually went on to find someone else to be furious with.
But then, she crossed a line, and she FAFO.
In the city that I was working in there, they had an event they called the cardboard boat races. Different people and businesses would literally build boats out of cardboard and they would go out and participate in all kinds of contests, and Karen decided that our store NEEDED to be in that event. Cue her making me work all her shifts, while she and her favorite inside worker spent literally days in the back room making this frikken cardboard boat. On my tenth day in a row, I went to open again that morning–yup, it was her shift but of COURSE she made me work it because it was the day of the boat race! It was super important and she had to be there!–and I was REALLY looking forward to my day off the next day. Then, as I was doing pre-opening prep, Bob called, and casually said “just so you know, you'll need to work tomorrow too, because Karen will be too tired to come in.”
And lo, I experienced for the first time in my life what people mean when they say they “see red”. My hearing diminished to nothing but the sound of ringing and of my blood whooshing in my ears, and the edges of my vision went black as the rest of it took on a hazy red color, and I said, “No. FUCK no. Fuck that shit, I'm done. Come get your fucking keys for this fucking trash store, I fuckin' quit.”
When the area supervisor stormed in a few minutes later, red in the face, spitting when he talked, he tried to get nasty with me, even tried to square up and try to intimidate me (for the record, though I'm a woman, at the time I was both large AND tall and he was a little troll of a man) and I would not back down. As I walked out the front door, I took off my nametag and threw it, and then threw my store keys in his general direction, and that was that. I heard later, when I went in to pick up my check, that Karen was absolutely spitting furious, because of course the area supervisor refused to work a shift, and he made her come in and cover it, resulting in her missing her precious cardboard boat race.
Never has it felt so good to quit a job. I had a new one with a new chain lined up within a few days, and the store owner was very involved and just awesome to work for, I'm still sad that I ended up losing that job after a natural disaster destroyed a few of his stores, including the one I worked in.