Logged in one Monday to an email in my inbox. It was from HR offering a very generous early retirement/severance package.

It turns out they offered it to every employee over the age of 50 and 15 years tenure. All of the key employees took it. All of us. The ones that get things done behind the scenes and know where all of the bodies are buried. Good luck to those left behind.

Working in a call center, government contract supporting a program that has two major busy seasons for different things and an off season.

Teams Meeting with us (frontline people who man the phones and take the calls), our supervisor (who was an **angel**), our Manager, and the Call Center Manager (top person on-site).

We'd just completed the second major busy season, back to back calls from the beginning to the end of the day, automated with a routing system that puts the caller in our ear *3 seconds* after the last one ends.

There's no sitting there watching a phone ring. There's no avoiding the next call. It was *grueling* and *tortuous*. The thing that made the job worth it was that for ⅓ of the year there was time between calls, anywhere from a few minutes to nearly an hour.

Except, that hadn't happened. And we all wondered why we we're still getting B2B calls.

We're going over call metrics and the Call Center Manager casually let's slip that they've finally managed to fine tune the temp numbers at other sites to address the "unwanted downtime issues" to ensure we're consistently on the phone at all times year round.

You could hear a pin drop.

Half the Team quit within a week and those that remained were informed that they were not allowed to tell anybody what the Call Center Manager had said.

Day 3 as a frack hand…

Pulled up into what can only be described as a river bed after 3 days of rain. The mud was literally hip deep, it was almost 100 degrees, and like 90% humidity. We had to rig up, do the first blast, wire line, do another one, and tear down…I was brand new and several hundred miles from home, zero experience and at the time still too tough to understand how messed up the situation was. 20% of the crew quit when we got back to the office, was told that’s normal. Boss bought us subway as a thanks.

That was the single hardest day of work I’ve ever done…in any field. It really set the bar high for what kinda nonsense I can deal with.

Not seen but lived the consequences. At some point the director at my uni passed a law lowering the budget. Many teachers and other people warned that they would leave if it did pass. It passed. About 100 left.

I was one of a few that quit on day 3 of a new job. Turns out it was a front for a religious cult. I'll leave it at that so I don't get sued.

I was an ER nurse. I was on duty during a holiday and knew what to expect. There were several young nurses who were working their first holiday and were not happy about it. As the day became more crazy, the nurses were more vocal about missing out on their holiday plans. Finally it is early evening, the waiting room is packed and every exam room was filled. I became very concerned why it was taking so long to get the flow going. It turns out. I was the only nurse left. The others all left to go home to be with their families. None returned to work another shift. One said she was upset so many people decided to get sick on a holiday.

New CEO announces that everyone MUST be in-office at least 3 days a week. No exceptions. No thought to the fact that most of the staff had been hired as remote or that they'd downsized the office space accordingly.
Next day, his inbox is full of resignation letters. Over half the department quit. It turns out that the liberal WFH policy was the only thing keeping people there.

A girl got caught stealing from people's lockers and desk draws. Initially we were told she wasn't coming back, but a week later, we were prepared for her returning by a manager. 4 people just up and walked right then. Another 2 didn't come back after lunch. Hope she was worth it to them. I left shortly after that for a better job.

Worked for a firm that sold financial products. Company had 6K employees and 200 salespeople. I was one of them. We had a great year and sold more product than any prior year. There was a big companywide meeting on a Friday congratulating us. Great, right?

Monday at noon a mass email went out canceling all our annual sales bonuses. Forty salespeople walked that day. Forty more were out by the end of the week, so just under 50% of the sales force. This was a well respected company and never had a problem recruiting. As soon as word got out about the canceled bonuses, it ruined the firm's reputation.

Worked in a large food packaging plant and a co worker [passed away] at the table during lunch. They just told everyone to go back to work. Some people left and didn’t come back.