'Either do your job or hand in your resignation': Long-time employee calls boss's bluff, leads mass exodus

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Apr 20, 2024 11:00 AM EDT

This boss felt confident in telling one employee to quit… but he didn't think they'd actually do it. 

In a story to r/Maliciouscompliance, this employee shared what happened when they worked for a company with high turnover and low pay. U/Catacombs3 wrote that it was a continuous cycle. People would be hired, trained, and could often hit their targets. But paying your employees a low salary means they can't be loyal to you: they're always going to be looking for someone else who can pay them more. The stress of having a low wage is no joke. When money is always on your mind, it's hard to focus on the good parts of life. 

This employee had idealistic visions of the company, and they stayed long after other employees had switched to competing companies. They thought that since they worked so hard and were so dedicated, their employer would see the light, and decide to give them a raise or a promotion. In so many cases, though, these raises or promotions just aren't going to happen. Bosses will lie through their teeth, promising employees these dreams of future success, but it's just not going to happen. 

Next up, check out these cute shelter pets with hilarious names, like "Golf Cart" the black cat, or "French Fry Freddie," a sweet looking pup. 

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  • 01
    'The MD decided that the best way to deal with this was to... cancel all leave. I had leave coming up. My honeymoon to be exact.'
    via S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash
  • 02
    Turning a crisis into a catastrophe M I took a job working in a specific industry. It wasn't rocket science, anyone with decent research/interview skills could do it, but the industry demanded a certain format for the information, and for the end product to be marketable, each project had to be completed in a certain timeframe and meet certain benchmarks. As such,
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 03
    there was a bit of training involved in getting new staff familiar with the process, hitting targets and producing to a reasonable quality. The company I worked for took the policy of paying peanuts to the extreme. The consequence was that they ended up training a lot of people who moved on to better paying positions at competitors. We were actively head hunted once we'd been working there for 18+months.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 04
    Instead of doing the sensible thing, and offering pay increases/retention bonuses, the MD liked to lecture us about loyalty and not biting the hand that feeds you whilst telling us we were losers who were lucky to be employed. Shockingly, this did not have the desired effect of increasing morale or loyalty.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 05
    All the best staff were siphoned off by competitors, leaving the dead wood and the hopelessly naive (that would be me) who thought that their hard work and perseverance would eventually be rewarded with pay increases and promotion. (Like I said, hopelessly naive).
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 06
    A crisis arose when a larger than usual number of staff left for greener pastures in a shorter than usual period. There were not enough experienced staff to take over all the projects. Some of the newbies were thrown in way over their heads and a decent portion of them couldn't cope and walked out. We were meant to have about 100 people working in this role, and only had about 75.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 07
    In his 'wisdom', the MD decided that the best way to deal with this was to... cancel all leave. I had leave coming up. My honeymoon to be exact. I had gotten married a month previously, but we planned a dream holiday for a few weeks later. And it was now cancelled.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 08
    Even 20 year old me, who was, as previously noted, hopelessly naive, had a breaking point. I approached the MD politely asked if I could take my previously approved leave.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 09
    "No! Either do your job or hand in your resignation", he said, confident that the little mouse would scurry back to her desk and quietly continue doing the work of two people. I did go back to my desk.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 10
    But I returned in 10 mins and handed in my resignation, stating my last day would be in two days, giving myself the luxury of time to get sorted before leaving.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 11
    Apparently the aftermath was quite something. I was the start of a disastrous second cascade of disappearing staff. The dam was leaking before I left, but it collapsed after. He essentially had to start over and it took years for him to recover from losing 80% of his key workers. He certainly lost his dominant position in the market.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 12
    But I didn't enquire deeply. I secured a job with one of the competitors who had been making offers and never went back. I still work in that field and every now and then I run into one of my old colleagues and we reminisce about the bad old days and laugh and laugh about what a he was.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 13
    NairobiMuzungu Congratulations for learning to stand up for yourself early in your career. May your tribe increase. Early in my career my wife told me that i "had crossed the line from dedication to stupidity". She was right and it never happened again.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 14
    500 [d... I just don't understand management/owners who treat their staff poorly. The only thing I can come up with is miserable people. I used to sail for a living as a merchant marine engineer and there was this one guy I sailed with who was just a miserable person. He never had anything positive to say about anybody, and was
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 15
    always complaining. Fortunately he wasn't the chief engineer. After having been on a number of different ships, loyalty is good people. I've been on good ships and bad ships. What defined why one ship had high personnel turnover and another had people "homesteading" (staying on the same ship for a long time) was the people environment, starting
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 16
    with vessel management, between the Captain and Chief Engineer. If you were on a ship in poor condition. but the Chief and Captain were great, people would stay there and go through for them.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 17
    isthattrulyneeded I once worked for a small (like six person) software consulting firm for specialized software. The owner shared with all of us a list of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. She included
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 18
    the OFFICE FURNITURE on the list of strengths but not any of her externally trained from a small pool staff members. Turnover was high.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 19
    mmoonlit I worked for an IT company that as absolute to all its employees. They paid poorly, asked for too much and, consequently, had a huge turnover. To add insult to injury, at a certain point the power hungry CFO demanded all the highest paid positions in costumer service (including
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 20
    technical support) to be replaced for cheaper, younger staff - after all, it was an easy job, it didn't need high paying (that wasn't even that high to begin with) and the employees were getting too helpful with the users (we did a lot to keep the clients, because the product was ).
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 21
    Cue to five minute solution problems being escalated to the managers and taking days to be solved, clients getting angrier and angrier and even complete system shut down at some of our high profile clients (which, by the way, were freaking hospitals).
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 22
    I left the company (by my own volition) soon after that, but from what I heard from people who stayed there, they've since lost a huge amount of clients due to their poor service and empty promises.
    via u/Catacombs3
  • 23
    [deleted] not biting the hand that feeds you " Looks like the MD should have taken his own advice.
    via u/Catacombs3

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