I use to work for a large fast food company, doing customer service in their email only support center. I hated customer service and wanted out badly. I decided to teach myself programming and hopes of becoming a front-end developer. Jan of 2020 I started taking some online classes and what not. My manager really did not like me for whatever reason. I also started having really bad back problems. I told my manager about my back problems and the pain I was having, the next day I came in to find out that she moved my parking spot literally a mile away and made me walk a good 15 mins to work and back just to get to my car in the winter. That was the final straw for me and I went all in on learning how to program.
Fast Forward a couple weeks and coronavirus starts ramping up. I come into work one day and I ask my manager, “Hey have you heard anything about us having to work from home or whats going to happen?” She laughs in my face and says she will never allow us to WFH. Two days later the whole company is working from home. It's around this time that the US is offering an extra $600 a week unemployment benefit. I do some quick math at my desk and realize I can literally make more money if they fire me. So I start producing the worst quality work imaginable. I am short and rude to customers. A couple weeks later I get fired, and I immediately file for unemployment. I was making about $900 a week pre-pandemic, but after getting fired I am now making about $1100 on unemployment.
I got fired in May of 2020, I then dedicate 100% of my time to learning how to code and I have just finished my first year as a front end developer. Life is good.