This is a long one, so let me apologize. About a year ago, I was fired from my senior position at a (moderately toxic) local butcher shop, because I left after I agreed to stay for 2 hours overtime. Now, let me explain:
It was a busy Friday afternoon, we had two clerks call out of work that night. I was scheduled to work 5am-1:30pm, at 1:30 sharp HR and the store director came down to ask me if I could stay a couple of hours late. I said “sure, just let me take a quick break to let my wife know what's going on.”
I get on my phone, and I see a lot of missed calls from my mom. So I decide to call her back, it would only take a minute and it seemed important. I call her, she informs me my step-dad (the man who raised my sisters and I after our father passed away) had just died.
Being a normal person, I had a not-so-rational reaction in the face of an emergency. I told my crew that I had to leave, and that I wouldn't be coming back for the rest of the day. I didn't bother walking upstairs to clock out, because I assumed I would be able to fix this with HR after explaining what happened- I was wrong.
I came back about an hour afterwards, just to grab my knives, wife and kids were waiting in the car. Inside, I ran into the store manager and he was infuriated. Be asked me what I was doing there, and as I began to explain to him what was happening, he told me to shut up and leave because they had already punched me out- “since they no longer needed me.”
I tried to talk to him for 5 minutes to no avail, and just said “fuck it” and left. I worked the rest of that week, the entire next week and I was fired the next Sunday. The store owner was there to talk to me. He explained to me that I was being terminated for stealing time and insubordination.
I then explained the situation to him, and the store director began acting like I didn't try to tell him what was happening. He received a scolding from the owner for the way he treated me. He then offered me my job back, and ai turned him down.
My reasoning? This was a shop that I had poured all my free time into. I worked 60 hour weeks, 6 days, while my wife was 9 months pregnant. I did 80% of the meat cutting, did gourmet prep work, AND managed the seafood department. I gave them 110%, and this is how they treated me. I wanted nothing to do with the store, if they were going to keep the store director on board, and obviously that wasn't something I could influence, so I split.
Fast forward to today:
I am now in a much better place, with much better pay, with less responsibilities- I am incredibly happy and comfortable where I am. I walk into my old job to do some shopping, and I run into the same store manager who got me fired. He tells me that I should come back because they had just lost all their meat cutters during some sort of strike.
I told him to go fuck himself.
Don't let your employer disrespect you, you're just as much a human as they are.
TL,DR: old job fired me for some bullshit, and in the end I came out on top.