Factory machine operator quits job after boss denies him a pay raise, leaving the company with no qualified operators: ‘They effectively lost thousands’

Author image for Bar Mor Hazut
Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Aug 4, 2026 1:45 PM EDT

There's nothing like watching your old workplace crash and burn because they failed to appreciate you while you were working there.

You know that meme of 'Disaster Girl', of the young girl looking mischievously at the camera while a house is burning in the background? That is how we imagine most employees feel after they quit their job and learn of all the chaos that followed. When you work at a place that doesn't appreciate everything you do for them, you can practically imagine what would happen when you finally decide to leave. Since you're overworked and undervalued, no one in the company actually knows the scope of all you do, which means that they will only learn about it when you are no longer there to do it. Only after you stop carrying the entire company on your back do the people you work for understand what asset is leaving them, and what mistake they made for not giving you the credit you were due.

That is how we imagine the boss in the story below was feeling. In this factory, there was one guy and one guy only who knew how to operate the machines. Even though multiple people were trained to do so, this one employee was the only one who truly worked to understand the complicated machinery, but still, he was never appreciated for it. When a better-paying job came his way, the employee knew he had to take it. Why stay in a workplace that doesn't value you when you have a better opportunity? So, the employee handed in his notice and spent his last weeks enjoying the new sense of freedom he got. 

It was only on his last day that the big boss realized that his leaving meant that they would have no one to operate the factory's machines, but by then, it was too late. Did that stop him from calling the employee a few months later, begging him to take his old job back? You can bet that it didn't…

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    Factory worker smiling at the camera.
    via SeventyFour

    Factory worker smiling at the camera.

    Subject is a model.

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    Boss wants two weeks notice, company loses thousands

    This is my Granddad's story from the late 60 to early 70s in England, and to note, he was very poorly when he told this to me, so this is the
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    story that I managed to hear, so there's bits missing and not a lot of specifics, so all of this is what I gathered
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    Back when my grandad was younger, he used to work in a factory making engines for cars, and despite being a hard worker, he was always
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    disrespected and under appreciated, and he felt it. more so with his boss, and despite this boss holding very littler power over a very
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    little area of the factory, this boss would constantly yell and exert his power over everyone.
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    This story starts when the company buys this machine from Germany, and what I could gather from my Granddad, this machine was
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    like a computerised machine before computers were really a thing, so instead of one computer doing all of these complex calculations,
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    you have pegs and wires that you have to physically move to work this machine, but he didn'tsay what the machine did. Now obviously this was complex so the
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    company sent a small group of workers to Germany to be taught how the machine worked over three months, and a group of Germans would come to England to
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    build the machine. My granddad wasn't one of the people who went to Germany, so he stayed, but instead, he watched the
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    Germans install the machine, and despite the language barrier, my grandad understood how it worked and how to fix it,
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    pretty much everything he would have learnt if he went to Germany with the other workers.
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    After some time, my grandad got married to my grandma, and realising he needed a house, he went to the bank to talk about mortgages, but the only
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    issue is that he gets £22 a week when he needs £44 a week to get a mortgage, so he asked his boss, who promptly said no. Laster on in the week, my grandad
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    spoke to a mate of his who is now living in France, and the friend said "I recently lost my drivers licence so I can't work for my company anymore, but they need
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    someone to do deliveries for £48 a week between England and France." The next day, my grandad went up to his boss and
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    asked "Sir, who do I give this two week notice into?" And the boss, playing a powerplay leans over my grandad, puffing smoke into
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    his face from his pipe, and says in a low voice "You hand that to me, you understand, I'm the boss here, I'm the most important." And my grandad handed it over to him.
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    Over the course of the two weeks, it was normal, until the last day when the manager came over and said "Mike, I heared you're leaving today, is that true?"
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    Factory workers walking among machines.
    via Getty Images

    Factory workers walking among machines.

    Subjects are models.

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    And my grandad said "Yes, boss asked me to give him my two week notice" and the manager went white, asking my grandad if the boss told anyone, listing
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    anyone who had the same or more power then the boss did, even asking if the owner knew, and my grandad said no each time,
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    with a bigger smile each time, and after everyone else on the factory went up to him asking the exact same questions, he couldn't hide his excitement.
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    You see, what everyone failed to notice is that while the workers who went to Germany, they where in a country known for big beers and pretty women, so they
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    learnt absolutely nothing in those three months, and anything they did learn was quickly forgotten when they learnt my grandad knew
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    how to work and fix the machine, so because of my grandad leaving, he effectively left with the knowledge as he can't teach anyone else in his last two
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    weeks (and that's if everyone else knew he was leaving in those two weeks). And the ending happened two months later when my grandad got a call from
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    someone back at the company asked if he wanted his old job back, and my grandad calmly replied "No, I do not want my old job back, as I'd effectively be
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    going back in life, especially back to a job that doesn't pay me well or treat me well." And for anyone wondering what happened with the machine, it ran well
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    in those two months, but someone swapped the wires. for the motors, as there was two motors, they put the wires into the wrong ones, and that's why they called
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    my grandad, as they effectively lost thousands for the machine, the installation of the machine and flying all the workers to Germany to basically just go
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    on a bender. As for the boss and everyone involved, my grandad never bothered learning what happened to them, but I'd like to imagine there was a fallout and the
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    fires of h rained down, but this company was one of the more expensive car companies, so in all honesty, it could have been a minor set back.
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boss workplace-stories employee manager job tales-from-the-workplace factory workplace company operator machine
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