I Quit!
Thirteen writers on the sheer transcendent joy of quitting a job from hell
We’ve all had bad jobs. Some worse than others. Bad bosses, bad working conditions, bad pay, bad food, bad odors, bad everything.
And while we toiled away at those bad jobs, we dreamed of quitting. Our minds concocted fictional scenarios of going out with a proper dramatic flourish: telling off the boss with devastating wit and elan; making a Braveheart speech to your fellow long-suffering coworkers; alerting the proper authorities to misdeeds at the company; or maybe just going to lunch, finishing your sandwich, shrugging, and never coming back.
For most people, these scenarios remain the stuff of fantasy. We don’t all have the luxury of just walking away from a solid income.
But not for everyone.
We at Medium recently put out a call to contributors and pro writers to tell us their best quitting stories. Hundreds submitted entires. We read them all, and selected the 15 strongest. As you’ll see, these pieces are not only funny and discomfiting; they’re inspiring, cathartic, even optimistic.
Whether these writers are firing off resignation letters that double as minutely observed dissections of their boss’s flaws, or creating an entire magazine to serve as their notice, or stranding their manager in the middle of nowhere, or flat out just running away when the boss wasn’t looking, these people, to us, embody the sheer visceral pleasure of ditching the job from hell.
Read I Quit!
