People Are Sharing What Caused Everyone To Mass Quit At Work, And I Really Wasn't Expecting Some Of These

Throughout the past year, employees have continued to quit en masse in what's been dubbed the "Great Resignation," and anti-work sentiment has grown due to high costs of living, low wages, and overall dissatisfaction at work across the nation.

Viacom Media Networks / Via giphy.com

So when u/PegBundysBonBons asked, "What happened at your work which caused multiple people to all quit at once?" many people shared their stories of resigning en masse, and what happened to the business after:

1."They laid off half the company with no warning. This included a gentleman who was less than a year from retirement and had been there for more than 35 years. The company was shocked when half the remaining people abandoned ship shortly thereafter."

—u/Aloretta_Dethly

2."I worked in the concessions stand at a baseball stadium. The minimum wage then was $5.15 per hour, and this paid $8. One night, it was incredibly busy — easily two to three times the normal volume of customers. We were all working our asses off handling multiple roles each with no downtime. Though we cleaned as we worked, nobody could do thorough cleaning due to the never-ending horde. The manager showed up three hours late, per usual, and threw a tantrum over the unswept floor. Finally, she announced, 'Listen up, you lazy fucks! Minimal work gets minimal pay. Everybody is being paid minimum wage tonight because you slobs won't clean up anything.' Both bartenders and the barback quit on the spot, causing a chain reaction. We all took off our aprons and hats to leave. She blocked the exit and was red in the face from screaming, so one of the cooks climbed out of one of the serving windows where we served customers, so I did the same and most staff followed."

3."The company consistently outpaced competing firms and found itself emerging as one of the industry-leading agencies. This was also a California tech firm, so shorts, flip flops, beers at lunch, and getting high on the roof were all rather common — but we were rapidly growing, and the atmosphere and location made us a hot ticket for talent. Anyway, the CFO and CMO cashed out, and the CEO decided to totally remodel the company by making it far more corporate. On top of all of this, they implemented unattainable goals and removed our work from home policy. The final straw was they removed our rather generous vacation policy and replaced it with 'unlimited vacation' which was a facade for 'you can take as much vacation as you want if we approve it.' A quarter of the company quit and immediately landed better jobs."

4."The owner died, and his idiot son took over. He decided that the company didn't make him enough money and started to implement 'cost-cutting' measures like turning off the A/C in the building."

—u/Downvotesdarksouls

5."Restructure the way we're paid. What I used to do involved about 40% client interaction, 20% team interaction, and 40% paperwork and case coordination stuff. Based on what we do, only 40% of the time is technically billable, and there are really sticky rules for what is and isn't billable. So, logically, we were being paid on a salary model. Cue management saying we can only make money for the time we have that is actually billable. A quarter of the department quit — two of us on the same day."

—u/gore_schach

6."The owners of our restaurant were the greatest people. When they retired, they left the restaurant to their nephew, who was a busboy. He was a bit standoffish but did his shit and went home, so he seemed okay — until he got the power of being the owner. One Friday night, he fired two of four cooks and two of three dishwashers just before the dinner rush because he 'didn't like their attitude.' Within one month, over half the staff had quit — usually by walking out in the middle of their shifts after being screamed at. They’d throw down their aprons and tell everyone that they were so sorry but couldn’t do it anymore. Once the last cook — this big dude who kept the kitchen laughing and running at a decent pace — started crying and walked out in the middle of his shift after the boss yelled at him for being too slow and making 'slop,' the rest of us bailed with him. Four months later, the place closed. His aunt and uncle were furious and devastated."

7."Turned out the owner of the company was keeping the social security money taken from our paychecks. Yes, he was caught."

—u/Rysilk

8."I used to work at a fast-food restaurant, and we had a terrible manager who hated a lot of people working there. Everyone else hated him, too, but no one wanted to call him out on his shit and quit. I was the first to do it because I requested two weeks off in August about three months in advance. (My family likes to plan our summer vacations early on.) When August came around, he had scheduled me off for the whole month except for those two weeks. There was no way that he could have misinterpreted my request. When I got my schedule, I stormed into the restaurant, called him out on everything, and then quit on the spot. About two weeks later, I heard that five other people had had enough and quit as well."

9."I was the first to quit due to salary disagreement. My tasks got reassigned to other coworkers. A few months later, Coworker A quit. Tasks got shuffled again. Coworker B quit a couple of months after. Then, Coworker C had a mental breakdown, got drunk, and 'retired' mid-day. Last I heard, the company was bought out by a third party."

—u/Lee_Roy_Jenkem

10."I worked at a sports bar for a few years as a line cook. Two different stores, same pay. It was the type of work where you ask for a raise, and they scoff and say, 'Yeah, me too.' Anyway, I'd been pretty dead set on quitting sooner or later. Our kitchen was very small, so most people ended up closing four to five days a week with doubles on the weekends — on top of attending school full time as it was a college town. On Super Bowl Sunday, a useless coworker, who usually ducked out in the bathroom for most of his shifts, finally stopped showing. In response, the managerial staff delegated closing to my pal, J. He was a delight to be around — hands down the best coworker ever. J had told them that due to being a full-time student, he no longer wanted to be first in, last out (4 p.m. – 12 a.m.). They basically told him to go fuck himself, and that they don't have any more shifts for him. Immediately, another cook and I walked quit on the spot."

11."I did landscape construction. The cheap-ass owner kept taking bigger and bigger projects while never hiring more help. We were all overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious as hell. One of our foremen quit, and I followed suit a few days later. Two more guys quit the next day. He was down to three guys for the obscene amount of work he wanted to do. Of course, everything then gets way behind schedule, but he's convinced it's not his fault at all. He went out of business less than a year later."

—u/apocalypticradish

12."I was hired by the new owners to replace the existing manager, and given the impression that he was moving on to another job. Four days in, I asked him where he was headed and if he was excited. He just looked blankly at me and said, 'I'm not going anywhere. I'm just training you as the assistant manager, right?' The look I gave him must have been a great tip-off because he got up and walked into one of the new owners' offices. In 30 seconds, they were screaming at each other. The existing manager then stormed out of the office, grabbed his stuff, gave me the finger, and left. Over the next few days, I tried to calm things with the other employees. They weren't faulting me, but the new ownership now left a very bad taste in their mouths. Over a seven to 10 day period, my team shrank from 15 people to three."

13."I'm the manager of a retail store, and I'd found out a cashier was scamming reward card benefits. She used a fake account instead of a customer's reward card to give herself reward points and redeem them, so the customers weren't getting the points they were owed. I came up with a detailed incident report, and after I confronted her in a reasonable manner, she got angry and quit. The next day, every other cashier quit. After wondering what had happened, I found out they were all in on it and using her fake card on their shifts, too. Now, I'm down four cashiers and have one left. The same day, my last cashier disappeared for 20 minutes. Turns out, she was in the bathroom with another employee doing the nasty. She then quit because her dad is a cop, and she didn't want him to find out she got fired for that. She also asked me if she should go to urgent care because she didn’t take her tampon out before they did it, and she couldn’t find it."

14."I was working for a very large IT company before the tech bubble burst. One day, we had a meeting with our new director and VP. They were tired of people complaining about things that should be changed and how they managed people, so they sat 200 of us down in our auditorium said they didn't want to hear any more complaints about how they were running things. The director said that if we didn't like it, then there was the door because there was no way we'd leave such great jobs. Well, there was a mass exodus. Close to 50 people left within two months, and the director and VP were 're-orged.' They were given zero reports and were gone after a round of layoffs shortly thereafter."

—u/moltondelug

15."Years ago, I worked at a chain salon (my last, I swear). There were 14 of us, plus my boss. Half of us were really good and very passionate about what we do — all booked with good clientele. Our boss was wonderful, didn’t micromanage, etc. She was a big reason that while it was a chain, it didn't feel like one. She got fired for cashing a check at work. She bought a product, paid for it with a check, and then added an extra $40 so she didn't have to find an ATM before she went to the bar. She'd worked for the company for five years, pulled three shops into the highest-ranking ones in the district, and consistently had shops exceeding their numbers. But just like that, she was fired. Even worse, when I came to work the next day, we weren't allowed to talk about it. We didn't all quit at once, but over the next four months, the top stylists — who brought in 70% of the revenue — left. We took our clientele with us and went to smaller, private salons."

16."I worked at a fast-food chain, and one of the regional managers began running a store because they couldn’t find new managers. This guy practically ran the place into the ground. Before he started, everyone liked working there, and it was a good environment. A few months after, a couple of people had quit because of him. One day, I rolled in at 9 a.m. to open the store. He came out to my car as I parked — I was 15 minutes early and usually sat in my car until it was time — and said, 'Hey, I need you to start early because the three openers just quit on me.' We opened, and people from other stores came until the people for the next shift started. Later, I heard the full story. The regional manager is supposed to be at the store at 7 a.m., and the openers are to arrive 30 minutes later. This guy didn't show up until 8:30. When the openers — who'd been there for an hour unable to clock in — saw the regional manager roll in, they decided to quit right there."

17."I worked at a data company where the guys in the sales department fucked around all day. They'd literally hang out in the parking lot, drinking beer and racing RC cars. When it came to handling clients, they frequently gave away free accounts in order to 'retain' customers (and make their own sales numbers look good). Somehow, they got away with it. Meanwhile, dozens of programmers worked tirelessly to integrate complicated data and make it easy to access via the website. When upper management made the yearly holiday announcements, they revealed that they decided to send the entire sales team to Hawaii for an all-inclusive vacation. When the developers asked why it was only the sales team, the CEO literally said, 'Well, I mean, I guess we could ask the sales team to pick one person from each department who helped them the most this year and take them, too.' The programmers, engineers, and database people were livid and walked out in droves."

"Gee, I wonder why the company tanked." —u/Luckyboy28

18."I worked in a mental health center primarily with kids. It was time for the center to renew its certification, but it'd ignored proper procedures for everything that needed to be done over the past five years. Before recertification, the administration made us sit through a ridiculous amount of training on topics that would have been covered in other training, such as HIPAA laws and identifying child abuse. Then came our paperwork. Our center encouraged us to do things that aren't exactly covered by Medicaid or approved through certification. I had to edit five months' worth of documents to get rid of the evidence. The bathrooms were also supposed to have a cleaning log, so an administrator perfectly forged the signatures of multiple employees. I don't think they go through that trouble just for a bathroom log. What else were they forging our signatures on? The risk of being charged with fraud was too high for me. I quit, as did many others."

19."The company canceled all raises and bonuses for everyone except the CEO, his wife (who was in finance and HR), and his son (who was utterly useless in IT) in a year when we had record profits and brought in almost double the clients. They also announced that they weren't looking to hire more people when we were already overwhelmed. The good part about it was that shortly after the majority of us quit, they lost almost every single client to their competitors. The company is now defunct."

—u/CaptainJudaism

20."A school district I sometimes sub in had a big round of hiring. A bunch of building substitute teachers applied for the jobs, and only half of them got interviews. Of the subs that got interviews (myself included), the only one who made it past the screening interview was a relative of a current employee. The rest of us weren't the 'right fit.' The real reason was that there was a substitute shortage, and they didn't want to lose any of us. Not a single sub — who wasn't a relative — was hired for one of over a dozen teaching jobs they'd posted. Many of the building subs aren't coming back next year."

21."In high school, I worked at a pretty poorly-run movie theater. It would've been hard for things to have gotten any worse, but after a couple of months, they brought in new management. They first required all projectionists to wear ties, despite the fact that projectionists are never seen by the public — not to mention that projectionists worked around rapidly spinning objects that a tie could get caught in. They refused to reconsider the policy, so every single projectionist quit. They then decided that the door people, who were always scheduled seven days a week, would now only be scheduled on the weekends, and refused to reassign any to concessions so we wouldn't lose hours. Every single door person quit, including me. After, they imposed cleanliness standards on concessions. Employees were there until 5 a.m. every night trying to meet their standards, so they all ended up quitting, too. The theater went from a staff of 50 to 12 in three weeks."

22."I worked in construction as part of an HSE team. The chief engineer was pissed that the job was slower because of the HSE (especially safety) procedures. We had a couple of lost time incidents at this point, and just a week before, a guy almost died. Nevertheless, he was still pissed about the delays, so he got everyone in a room to say, 'You're not here to do your jobs. You're here to do what I tell you to do.' Twenty people asked to quit on the spot."

—u/idontlikeflamingos

23."I worked at a local restaurant that had recently changed owners. Multiple issues immediately came up, and things were tense. After a month, we were really only hanging in there because we liked each other, but some others and I had started looking for new jobs. Anyway, one waitress was a young mother who really needed the job. One night, she got a call that her grandmother had had a severe stroke and was unresponsive. They didn't expect her grandmother to make it through the night, so she asked to take off and start her three-hour drive to Dallas. The manager said of course, but the new owner said no. The manager and owner ended up getting into a verbal fight in the back while the waitress pleaded her case, crying. The manager said that if the owner wouldn't let her go, he was done. The owner ended up firing them both on the spot. Within the next 15 minutes, everyone who hadn't been recently hired walked out of the building."

24."Our boss had a meeting and announced a new policy: All salaried employees had to work a minimum of 45 billable hours per week because of the increased project load we had. I pointed out to a few co-workers that our employment contracts specified 37.5 hours per week, and that I would be adhering to that policy. Well, about a week later, I was 'laid off' due to a lack of projects. Ha. I was happy to go, and at least two others left voluntarily within the week. The job I found next was much better and wasn't run by someone quite so clueless about how to treat people."

—u/4a4a

25."They tried to make us do a third, straight 16-hour shift while telling us that we were taking too long. I was a basic box mover at a courier company that had cut their staff in half and still expected us to do the same amount of work. It'd gotten bad, so the people who worked in the head office came down to supervise us at the end of shifts one day. We stopped taking any breaks and worked WELL past our hours without overtime. On the second day that they came to supervise us, the immediate supervisor of our team asked for the night off next week. It was Christmas Eve, and most of us have family. The bosses refused, so we ALL quit. Their entire workforce quit in less than 10 minutes. There were three people in the office that morning when the other 300 of us walked out."

26."They called everyone into a major company meeting and informed us we were all — except for sales and managers — being offshored to India and the Philippines. They had a plan for us to train our replacements that, strangely, didn't account for pre-schedule turnover. People started finding jobs literally the next week, and the hemorrhaging never stopped."

—u/CosmicLovepats

27."The boss went off on a tirade on me for something that wasn't my fault. I got him to scream, 'People like you are expendable pieces in this company, and I can replace you tomorrow if I wanted to.' Well, 80% of the engineers quit the next day. They simply didn’t show up, including me. From what I know, the entire project folded because my now ex-boss couldn't find people to replace us, because no one wanted to do the kind of work he was looking for at the salary he was paying."

—u/richardkim_nyc

28."I worked at a fast-food restaurant back in high school. The summer before I left for college, I put in my two-week notice. I wanted to enjoy a month without working before I moved away for school. Rather than keeping me on those last two weeks, the store manager just decided not to put me on the schedule anymore — which I discovered on what turned out to be the last day I worked. Right after the breakfast crew left, I decided that if they weren't going to honor the notice, I wasn't going to honor the eight-hour shift. I was done. The thing was, most of the crew that day were also going off to college and had seen what the manager had done, so they fucked off with me. In the middle of the lunch rush, the store was down to the old-ass lady who worked the drive-thru and the manager on duty. That's it."

Would have walked out in these situations? Or have you actually experienced people quitting en masse before? Let us know in the comments below!