'Actually, I don't need the job anymore': 15+ Times people got to say 'no' for the most satisfying reasons

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Feb 4, 2024 11:00 AM EST

Saying no is an important skill to learn in life. It takes practice: it can be way easier to instantly say yes to whatever people ask you to do. Especially if you're a people-pleaser, you probably know the pressure of feeling like you have to agree to every request people throw at you. Maybe it's your boss asking if you can stay late at work on a Friday, even though you see him waltzing out of the office at 4 PM. Or perhaps your ex-partner keeps trying to get you back in their life, and you keep agreeing, even though it never really works out for you in the end. And parents know the pressure, too---their kids' schools constantly ask for volunteers to bake food or chaperone trips, and parents feel obligated to agree.

Learning to say no can be difficult at first, because people you care about might be disappointed or hurt. But after some practice, saying no to things feels like a superpower. Once you learn how to protect your peace and choose what's right for yourself, it opens up a whole world of possibilities. The people below had some awesome tales of times like these. They answered the question, "What's the most satisfying "no" you've ever given?" People shared workplace incidents, relationship stories, and more. 

Up next, this dude shares a driveway with his neighbors, but they're totally fine with letting him shovel snow for hours while they remain cozied up indoors. 

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  • 01
    What's the most satisfying "no" you've ever given? "we know you still have paid vacation days left, but we'd prefer you to stay and work, you'll get a small bonus" "Nope." (after quitting my job for my current, awesome job)
    via Jose Losada on Unsplash
  • 02
    What's the most satisfying "no" you've ever given?
    via u/Death_proofer
  • 03
    ✪ [deleted] "we know you still have paid vacation days left, but we'd prefer you to stay and work, you'll get a small bonus" "Nope." (after quitting my my current, awesome job) job for
    via u/[deleted]
  • 04
    heartbreakcity Oh man. Okay, so I work for an anime convention. There is an incredible amount of drama and rumors that go around; it is insane. So this was a couple of years ago, and I happen to be waiting for an elevator with two girls who are talking about my convention's future. It's Sunday; it could be a ten or fifteen minute wait. And one of them says, "Oh my god, I am soooo glad [convention] is moving back to the Hyatt next year!"
    via u/heartbreakcity
  • 05
    We weren't. It wasn't big enough to hold us anymore. And it's always better to quash rumors before they have a chance to circulate too much. So I politely say, "Actually, it's going to be here again." I get these obnoxious, know- it-all looks from both of them. One of them goes, "No, it's not; I heard it from my friend on Security."
    via u/heartbreakcity
  • 06
    Ohhh, so now it's a "I know someone!" game. But my boss is the owner of the convention; I have held hotel contracts for the next three years in my hands - I know where it will be held. But I don't want to pull the "I know someone higher up than you" ; that's petty. So instead I say, "Why don't you email in and settle this for us?"
    via u/heartbreakcity
  • 07
    We've got the time, so she pulls out her phone, goes to our website, finds the contact page, and starts typing out an email. She hits send. A few seconds later, my phone beeps. I've got a new email! I open it, it's clearly from her. It says, "[Convention] is moving back to the Hyatt next year, right?" I type back, "No," and hit send. Most satisfying 'No' by a long shot.
    via u/heartbreakcity
  • 08
    Durbee I was working in a toxic, limiting environment, wearing more hats than a British royal, with new responsibilities popping up every day. I would never say no because I enjoyed the challenge. However, when I pointed out my value but received a paltry increase, I decided to leave. I got a job offer that would basically double my salary, delivered my resignation letter... And all broke loose.
    via u/Durbee
  • 09
    A group of them took me out to lunch as a sort of intervention and basically did what they did best - delivered the hard sell. I'm integral to the business, they'll open up a career advancement path for me if I'll just hang in there, yada yada yada. Then they made their counter-offer knowing full well how much my offer was for, and low-balled me. Like I couldn't do simple math and would be swayed by a fancy lunch and the romantic idea of company loyalty. "It's the best we can do" just wasn't goo
    via u/Durbee
  • 10
    I got pulled aside by just about every single higher up over the next two weeks, and they all progressively sweetened the pot. I stood firm. Easiest No's of my life. I actually left that job with a sense of survivor's guilt about the people I left behind.
    via u/Durbee
  • 11
    plaasheks My previous boss was a so I eventually move to a different department in the company to get away from her. This department has to vet the stuff that my old boss's department does. The very first time I got to reject her was absolute toe-curling euphoria.
    via u/plaasheks
  • 12
    [deleted] I used to work as a refrigeration tech and had a job at the only employer in my county. They treated me like , cutting pay and benefits, giving us the bare essentials to do our jobs and complain when it takes us longer. Then another company opened up an office and started hiring a few of us. They offered me a job as a lead tech with a bunch of benefits. These folks and I clicked and I knew we would get along.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 13
    My old employer came to my house and begged me on a literal bended knee not to quit. They made this speech about how they would give me whatever I wanted. I looked this man who had treated me so bad and just said "No, now get out of my house"
    via u/[deleted]
  • 14
    PruthianCaveman When the company I worked for eventually noticed that there just wasn't enough work out there, decided they needed to reduce staff & roll three positions into one, and asked me: "Do you want to apply for the one position that'll remain?" I 'noped' so hard that my boss's boss's boss scheduled a meeting with me to ask why I was so strongly opposed to staying. :)
    via u/PruthianCaveman
  • 15
    kingcal I was fired for refusing to work overtime hours for no extra pay. They kicked me out of the apartment provided to me and only gave me an hour to pack everything. They called the cops and had me escorted out of the building when I went in to collect my final pay stub.
    via u/kingcal
  • 16
    A week later, they sent me an e-mail with a "letter of reinstatement". I got it at 11 PM on a Friday night, and they demanded I come in to work the next morning at 9 AM. I respectfully declined.
    via u/kingcal
  • 17
    Sunny_Psy_Op I'm a small-time landlord. When I was just getting into things I made some bad mistakes. The neighbor of one of my properties is a very friendly guy and when I was doing renovations would constantly pop over to chat.
    via u/Sunny_Psy_Op
  • 18
    Turns out his son and his girlfriend are looking for a place to live. Great! Saves me the trouble of having to hunt down a renter, I thought. I run a background check and there are some red flags but nothing they can't plausibly explain. They spend the next several months putting me through . They never paid their rent on time and towards the end didn't pay up at all. They trashed the house. There was little in the way of permanent damage, but it was absolutely filthy. They ground cigarette butt
    via u/Sunny_Psy_Op
  • 19
    wrote "I on the side of the tub--etched it in and went over it in nail polish. I ended up evicting them and getting a judgment against them. I figured I'd never collect and never hear from them.
    via u/Sunny_Psy_Op
  • 20
    Fast forward two years. The house is empty. I just had a tenant leave and I was about to start doing turnover. My phone goes off one day. It's my former tenant. His girlfriend left him, he's back living at home and he really wants a place to stay. "Not on your life."
    via u/Sunny_Psy_Op
  • 21
    tatertots4u When you get out of the military, you go through TAPS. Transitions assistance Teaches you how to live like a civilian again. At the beginning of the week long course, they have a reserve recruiter talk to everybody to sign up for reserve duty. I was ready to get out and move on with my life and told the recruiter I wasn't interested. He asked me if I like drinking and hanging out on the weekends cause that's what they do. I said "no". He looked at me like the that I am and says, "wel
    via u/tatertots4u
  • 22
    [deleted] After my grandfather died, we had the usual thing where people come out the woodwork because they think they're entitled some part of the leftovers. So I go to my bank to deposit some cash in my account like usual, and my grandfather's financial adviser was there. She recognized me and asked if she could talk to me, and she began trying to butter me up into accepting her proposal that we liquidate absolutely everything in the estate. This meant that I'd lose my car, the
    via u/[deleted]
  • 23
    roof over my head, and my mom would lose her car as well as that was also under the estate. Considering this was right after my grandfather died, I just knew there was an ulterior motive. So I said no. As the last surviving member of that side of the family who had control over the fate of my grandfather's estate, I wasn't about to risk losing everything. She got all angry and told me I was being a fool, but I double down on my decision and told her that they could have everything over my dead b
    via u/[deleted]
  • 24
    Turned out to be a smart decision, because some lawyers got to my mentally disabled aunt (long story) and took pretty much all of the cash in the estate, leaving...you guessed it! All the property that we chose not to liquidate. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe the cogs were turning for my aunt's lawsuit way before I ever knew about it and the adviser was paid off or something by these lawyers so they could get more of the stuff they shouldn't have. Thankfully she was relieved of h
    via u/[deleted]
  • 25
    Just knowing in hindsight that I stopped a lot of damage/ J myself over to by telling that off with her boneheaded proposal makes it feel all the more satisfying.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 26
    Cupcakesforever101 Many years ago I had serious problems asserting myself and would be walked all over as a result. One day my friend asked me to return snow shoes off at a store she rented them from on my way home from work. I obliged, and found out when I went to return them that there was a significant late fee on them and was forced to pay it. I then got in my car, drove off and cried, not knowing if my friend would pay me back and also feeling like once again I didn't stand my own. That's
    via u/Cupcakesforever101
  • 27
    when it finally dawned on me that this was a perfect opportunity to try asserting myself as I had been learning to do in counselling. I turned my car around and returned to the store demanding my money back. I even had to speak with the manager, but eventually they complied and returned my money to me. How they arranged the payment with my friend was their problem, not mine. It seems like such a small "no" but it marked the turning
    via u/Cupcakesforever101
  • 28
    point for me, when I started standing up for myself. The effect has snowballed and since then I have a substantially happier life and am very clear about my boundaries and my expectation that they be respected. I generally have no problem saying no and would describe myself as an assertive person.
    via u/Cupcakesforever101
  • 29
    NuYawker Recently? I am a paramedic in a major city. On a particularly busy day we get dispatched to a cardiac arrest. We fly over there in about 6 mins through heavy traffic. To give you some context, that is a segment 1 priority of 8. This gets an ems supervisor, police (hopefully with an AED), fire engine company, EMTs and us (paramedics). When we get there a coworker greets us and tells us the patient's leg has been hurting for 2 days...
    via u/NuYawker
  • 30
    Wait, what? Turns out they had waited 40 mins for an ambulance (because it was very busy and the other units were handling sicker people, like people in actual cardiac arrest) and the caller/friend took it upon herself to say the patient was now dead. Just to get us there faster. Cause it was Friday and they were closing soon.
    via u/NuYawker
  • 31
    The satisfying no? After she admitted to us what happened. After all 12 of us came upstairs to resuscitate the patient. She had the gall to ask to ride with us to the hospital. Best "No, absolutely not. Call a cab" Ever. She looked so sad and shocked. And the pt had sciatica by the way. We did nothing but take vitals. And the hospital was less than a mile away.
    via u/NuYawker
  • 32
    Dratnorr I work at a restaurant and one day the duty manager who everyone hates is doing his thing where he makes everyone else do his tasks and then gets angry cause we close late because of the extra work, (he always seems to not notice that part). Because we finished late, he asks for a ride to 'the road a block over', else he has to walk ten minutes
    via u/Dratnorr
  • 33
    home. Of course 'the road a block over' means to his doorstep, so I flat out say no and proceed to drive past him as he walks home in the rain at 11:30 at night. We make eye contact as I go past and its the most satisfying thing I've done in a long time.
    via u/Dratnorr
  • 34
    lost_in_stars My wife volunteered at a place where she routinely had contact with the public. She met new people all the time, but really clicked with one woman in particular. They went out for coffee, found they had a lot in common, and agreed both couples should see a movie or have dinner or something together. One evening the woman calls my wife and says something like "I think we are right near your house, if you are free can we drop by and our husbands can meet." Sure. We talk for a
    via u/lost_in_stars
  • 35
    bit, I can see why my wife gets along with the woman so well, and then suddenly the guy hands me some kind of brochure. It's Amway (by another name, one of the spinoff companies.) Nope. "Sure, cool, just take a look, OK?" Next day the woman calls again. "Hey, the regional manager happens to be in town, he is really a great person and I think you should meet him and you can tell him what you think of the stuff we showed you."
    via u/lost_in_stars
  • 36
    "Nope. I'll put everything you left me outside my door if you need it. We're not interested and there's nothing to talk about." Half an hour later the doorbell rings and the manager, who I have never met before, finds our door unlocked and walks in followed by our new "friends."
    via u/lost_in_stars
  • 37
    "I don't really think you understand the opportunity you are passing up here..." I said the thing that every homeowner should say at least once: "Get the house." out of my "You don't need to be about it!" "You haven't heard me saying 'no' yet, so obviously I do." They skulked out and that was that. Greatest "no" I have ever uttered.
    via u/lost_in_stars
  • 38
    [deleted] Former employer hired a girl to replace me after I quit. When she couldn't do what I could do, they told her to call me up for help (for free of course). My response was, "They didn't treat me very well and showed me no respect. You have all my files, which was more than I had, since I created them from scratch. Good luck." Their company went out of business within 6 months.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 39
    办 18-> MikeT75 I'd lost thousands of dollars (-7K) intending to marry a woman-child ten years ago and lost it all because we called off the wedding so close to the event. Had we gone through with the wedding, a financial mess would have eventually resulted from divorce, so I just forced myself to look on the bright side.
    via u/MikeT75
  • 40
    Couple of months later, she receives two $1000 checks ($2K total) from a travel insurance company covering the loss on the honeymoon we were supposed to take - one check for each of us since the policy was in both our names. This was also about a week or two after I found out, before I could finish sweeping the floors to the apartment she moved out of, that she was currently Ja "friend" of mine. They eventually got married and had kids. There was a level of shady that made the time overlap never
    via u/MikeT75
  • 41
    She reaches out to a mutual friend of ours' and asks them if she could leave a check in my name with them. The check was received from the travel insurance company to cover the loss of the honeymoon. She wanted me to sign it over to her. Her thinking was that she would pay for the honeymoon and I would pay for everything else, since I made more money than her and "everything else" cost more. She did not understand that, when in a relationship, expenses, savings, and debt are all fungible. I made
    via u/MikeT75
  • 42
    than her, but that did not mean that I picked out the flowers, the band, the limos, without her input. I told our mutual friends that she should not have involved them and that it was of her. If she wished for me to sign the check over to her, she could go ahead and call me and ask me herself... So, she calls: "Hey, its J---, I have a check here in your name..." ME: "Did you receive the email of itemized expenses I incurred as a result of calling off this wedding and your being almost $25,000 in
    via u/MikeT75
  • 43
    card with nearly 30% APRS across three cards??" (Did I mention that part?) J---: "No, I am not reading your emails. I don't care what you lost. I want my money." ME: "I know you think its your money, even though we'd agreed to pool our money for all of the costs. I know you don't care what I lost. This is why I couldn't spend the rest of my life with you. So, in regard to signing over the $1000 check to you, I think you should hand ME the check to help cover the expenses I incurred because you n
    via u/MikeT75
  • 44
    to have a 5K wedding band, two thousand dollars in flow-" And then she hung up on me. So, the most satisfying "no" I ever gave, I never got the chance to say. It was GLORIOUS. It doesn't end there... Four years later, my father calls me and tells me there is a state website for undeclared funds. He said my name was on there and to check it out. I look into it and, lo and behold!, its the $1000 in my name from the travel insurance! I just figured she'd forged my signature and
    via u/MikeT75
  • 45
    cashed the check, wouldn't have put it past her. Well, if I didn't hunt that money down - took me a few months to get the proof and get through to the right people - but I got my check! And what did I do with it? I took my current wife out to dinner at Del Frisco Double Eagle Steakhouse, ordered a bottle of Stag's Leap Artemis, bought her flowers, went to a Broadway show, and celebrated her for being just an awesome J, beautiful person. Best thousand dollars I ever spent on the only woman I ever
    via u/MikeT75
  • 46
    D inadequatelyadequate I have difficulty standing up to bad employers ( managers, people with no concept of logistics etc) its more or less a result of spending a long time in hospitality. I switched industries to do construction in the last year - went back to school to learn the basics of several trades. I took this crappy concrete job I found online; the guy who runs the company is a one- guy-operation which isn't super uncommon where I live..he basically said he just
    via u/inadequatelyadequate
  • 47
    hires 3 people for his busy season before it snows. I told him I don't know a whole lot about concrete other than some brick work and he was OK with it. Less than a week into the job this guy is berating me and calling me an idiot every ten minutes, completely humiliating me whenever I ask for clarification on tasks and telling me his 8 year old son knows how to drive and I must be brain dead to not. He asks if I'm on lithium for making a mistake on the first try for doing something (refacing co
    via u/inadequatelyadequate
  • 48
    psycho off. I feared my own safety sometimes. He does this for another week and a half..somehow I put up with it. We went back to the city (7 hr drive) for a day off and I offered my direct deposit information and he said no, just bring it the next day when we go back out of town. I said "No. I won't be returning, I can't deal with your ineffective communication and poor managing skills."
    via u/inadequatelyadequate
  • 49
    He just started screaming that I wasn't as mechanically inclined as he had thought and that I'm a terrible person that will never succeed at anything. I honestly think he needed a certified concrete finisher and that's his own fault for just seeking out people with no experience to treat them like a subhuman parasite.
    via u/inadequatelyadequate
  • 50
    Hannahbellector3388 8 years + off and on with the same guy. And like an idiot anytime he'd beckon me back, I'd come crawling. Didn't matter who I was with, what was going on in my life, I'd drop anything to try and make this relationship work. Along with a heap of other excuses as to why it would every time, one of his excuses was that he wanted kids, and it just wasn't happening with me. 2 years go by, I find myself a year and a half into a new relationship, where i finally found out what a rel
    via u/Hannahbellector3388
  • 51
    found out he was going to be a dad. But things had ended between him and the mom. He was finally getting his baby, and finally ready to settle down with me. Saying no to that with a few choice words was such an amazing and empowering feeling. And the fact that I'm still with the guy I was with at the time makes it feel that much better.
    via u/Hannahbellector3388
  • 52
    djbadname13 Getting to say "Actually, I don't need the job anymore. That'll have to be a firm no."
    via u/djbadname13

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