Have you ever gone to quit a job just to have your boss say they were going to fire you?

I’m thinking that might happen to me today. Hopefully being fired means some sort of severance package for you.

Once. I gave two weeks notice to my a-hole boss, and he basically said, “Don’t bother.”

Put me in a pinch because I was moving and needed the extra check.

I had this job at a Mexican food place and I absolutely hated it. I had been planning on quitting in the next couple days, and then one day before work I went for a run, got locked out of my house, tried to get in through an upstairs window and ended up getting stranded on my roof so I couldn’t make it in. When I finally got off, my boss had TEXTED ME not to come in anymore. Made my life easier!

I was laid off from a job, and 4 months down the road I got this call. This guy was actually a sales person (I’m an Accountant) and he basically was ready to offer me the job based on the resume. It was working for this entrepreneur who ran two businesses. He said just go out to the local small airport where the owner had a plane and just chat with him, which I did, and that was it. They threw a huge salary/bonus package, a company car, home office, cell phone, the works at me. Then I started working, and whereas this one company he had was doing OK, this other company was something he just thought sounded like a good idea, he got it for what he thought was a steal, but he basically got ripped off. No work had been done on the accounting side for months, the books were a mess, and they were beyond the point where he should have filed bankruptcy. But he wanted to try to finance the one company with the other and started to comingle the assets, which is a big no no. He also wanted me to put forth projections to create financial statements (which from an Accounting standpoint are supposed to be reporting on the actual activity of a company), for months that hadn’t happened yet, and he wanted me to represent what he expected to happen as what had already happened to banks so they would lend him money.

I basically did what I could for him without breaking any laws, and I was left in a situation one day while working up at the company he was trying to get off the ground, basically their entire staff save for a couple guys were temps and they hadn’t paid the temp agency, so they stopped sending the production staff, and this was a business customizing RVs and flatbed boxes for trucks, so we had some valuable customer assets locked up in the shop. Everyone but me left because the phones were ringing from people wanting to know where’s my money/where’s my truck, and the owner called me to tell me to not answer the phone, turn off the lights and draw the curtains. Basically I felt like I was being told to lie. I was very adverse to giving up my job, because I had only been at this place 6 weeks, I had just come off 4 months of unemployment which was the pitts, and I was making crazy money, but I still looked into state unemployment law to determine if I could quit for cause, and on this Friday afternoon when I was locked up in this building with people calling, pounding on the doors, trying to peek through the windows, etc., I ended up taking the computer home with me to try to straighten out the books at home (I never did get my home office that was promised to me, which was another thing, I was driving all the time). I spent some time looking into what I’d need to do to be able to prove I quit for cause, and I realized that I had an active account, I could just start collecting again, so I was seriously ready to call it quits if I was asked to do anything else I was uncomfortable with. I had turned in the projections he had asked for, but I obviously wasn’t about to misrepresent anything and I got so very little feedback from this guy ever, he was always just out of reach…I always seemed to work through his salesman who was just so slimy I couldn’t stand the dude. So, over the weekend as I was contemplating what to do and thinking it would probably hinge on how my last work had been received, if my fears were unfounded and I was misreading what he really wanted from me, and if they decided to do the right thing and file for bankruptcy which they really needed to, or if I was going to hear back more specific instructions which would leave me with no choice but to break the law or quit…that was going to be my deciding factor.

Instead, on Saturday afternoon, I got a phone call while I was out with my family. It was a sales person I’d never met. He fired me, which I did not expect. Seemed that the owner felt I’d done the same thing his previous accountant who he’d also canned had done…basically he wanted someone to play ball, and I suspect the whole reason he hired me in the first place without even formally interviewing me was I was still fairly young, I had enough business acumen to get things done, but probably not enough that I would insist on doing everything by the book. I was told how it was “all a game” many times. So it wasn’t “quite” me going to quit and being fired, but it was close.

It happened to me.

I don’t have as much to say as @dalepetrie, but I’ll say something. :D

It wasn’t at exactly the same time, but I was planning on leaving “soon” for college, and I was called into the Manager’s office and was reprimanded up one side and down the other, and then was told to either “quit” or “be fired”. Which sucked.

(I think my immediate boss didn’t like me for several reasons. One, I had dyed my hair bright colors on several occasions. (OH NO!) Two, I was too smart for my own good—I was always trying to improve upon things and rarely left well-enough alone. Three, the place I was working at was essentially “going under”, so having a semi-good reason to get rid of someone was probably a very good thing in his book. Also, due to the fact that there was no-one around most of the time, I may have gotten into some mischief…hey, I share a lot of personality traits with cats.)

Not exactly, but kind of. I was going to quit after giving birth to be a stay at home mom, but we received notice 3 weeks prior that our entire department was being eliminated the day before my due date.

wow dalepetrie that is intense. you seemed to make all the right choices with that one though. i wonder whatever happened to his failing business.
supacase , everything happens for a reason huh?
deni…mine was a restaurant too, hate doesn’t describe the way working there made me feel..i’d say your ass got lucky :-P
kevbo, see that’s not cool. they should have just let you quit! haha
theichibun, no severance package.. it was my weekend job anywho. they just told me repeatedly they loved me as a person, and loved me, and demanded i come back and they’ll be upset if they don’t see me, and that they were sorry. and i assure you that if you want to quit, you’ll be able to do it before getting fired! hope the day went well.

After a couple of weeks on a new job, I told my boss it wasn’t what I expected, and she agreed that I was not a good fit, and she had already hired my replacement. I had given up my unemployment to take the job, and she helped me get it back.

I’d say that’s a pretty positive situation in the end.