Most of us have quit a job at one point or another, but not many of us have caused everyone to quit .
That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, though. A Redditor shared their story of causing a mass quitting, and wanted to know whether they were in the right or in the wrong.
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“I was done with the company…”
That’s how OP’s story begins. The reason for their discontent, they say, is that the company issued pay cuts in an effort to avoid layoffs. The company also reneged on paying out a 10 percent bonus that was promised.
“20 percent of the department already quit but I was hanging on,” OP wrote.
“Then the boss yelled at an intern.”
Apparently the intern wanted some time off because she needed to take her cat to the vet.
“The boss basically told her cats were animals and she wasn’t allowed to request time off unless it was a human dying,” wrote OP.
“[The boss] was supposed to discuss it in private but decided to just go to a corner of the office where my team overheard him. [The intern] was crying and grabbed her stuff and ran out of the office.”
OP decided it was time to quit.
They wrote a mass, company-wide email explaining their decision, making note of the interaction between the boss and the intern.
“Then immediately like ten people emailed me back to ask who the manager was and to avoid leaving a trace, I told them in person and within a few days most people knew,” wrote OP.
OP works in IT and easily found a new job.
Since then, though, “over two dozen people” at the old company have sent in their notice.
“Now the company is shutting down people’s emails a few days before they leave,” wrote OP. “The boss came to berate me as he was being disciplined and might lose his job.”
Was OP in the right?
Long story short: yes. But commenters shared some interesting perspectives all the same.
“You’re not to blame for people leaving because if this was a good, solid company with good, solid leadership, people don’t leave in mass like that,” one commenter weighed in .
“But part of me sees the way that you quit as unprofessional. I get why you did, just (in my opinion) you didn’t leave in a professional manner.”
“Why do people think they’re morally obligated to protect their employers from the consequences of the employer’s own actions?”
This was a common theme in the comments. Nobody is married to the company that they work for, and nobody should feel compelled to protect the company if said company is failing them.
Who really caused the mass quitting?
OP says they did, but really, there’s more to the story.
“OP didn’t cause this mass quitting, the company and its treatment of people did,” one comment stated . “What the boss did was the tipping point, and what OP did facilitated the reaction.”
It’s more common than you might think.
“I had the same thing happen at my last job,” one commenter said .
“I finally left because I got sick of being treated like crap, and within my two-week period, four more people handed in their notice. Sometimes once one person leaves, it’s the impetus for others to take the leap as well.”
The boss should have thought things through.
“Who the [expletive] is he to tell someone how to feel?” asked one outraged commenter. “Who the [expletive] is he to tell people whether they get to grieve and for how long? Who the [expletive] is he to judge the value of a life?”
The verdict is emphatic.
While there was a tiny amount of dissent, the overwhelming majority of commenters agree that OP was not in the wrong for their actions.
Let us know what you think of this example of workplace drama, and share stories of your own, in the comments section!
