Everyone should have at least one 'f--- this job' job in their lives

Every once in a while, there’s something on Twitter that offers us a little piece of truth. The other day, a tweet from someone named Domhnall G popped up while I was scrolling through Jeffrey Epstein related tweets.

There was a bit more to it, but the key takeaway is this:

Everyone should have at least one 'f--- this job' job in their lives.

Ain’t it the truth.

My first three “f--- this job’ jobs were waitressing.

One wasn’t because the people at Valle’s Steak House were godawful. It’s just that my friend Joyce and I knew after working one lunch shift that Valle’s Steak House on Route 9 wasn’t for us. We were arm service gals, not tray service gals. And the place just seemed like it was going to be an unholy drag. Regimented, military, no fun.

So we decamped to Friendly’s for lunch, laughed our asses of, and flipped a coin to see who was going to call the head waitress to quit. (I think I lost – or was it won -  and had to be the one to utter the two most satisfying the words in the English language: I quit. Or in this case, we quit.)

Anyway, Joyce and I were out of school, waitressing to fund our wanderlust – which you could do way back then without worrying about your future career – and had recently returned from a couple of months camping cross country.

Now we were going back to waitressing to save enough for a European adventure.

But Valle’s just didn’t cut it.

So we went back to our previous employer, Durgin-Park.

We knew that Durgin would in many ways be hellish. We’d already worked there. We knew that the owner was insane AND mean. That most of the old bag waitresses were just plain mean.

But we also knew that the money would be good, and that crazy as Durgin was, it was also good for plenty of laughs.

So off we went back to Durgin.

Only to quit in a big f-u way after a few months.

The owner was screaming at Joyce for some minor infraction – too much whipped cream on the strawberry shortcake – and she lost it. So she threw the bowl full of partially eaten and fully whipped-cream at the owner.

Quitting – before we could be fired: Joyce for the act itself, me for being an accomplice after the fact – we went over to our tables to explain that we were quitting and if people wanted to tip us, they could tip us now. Of course, our tables couldn’t have missed the shortcake toss, let alone the mayhem – think Keystone Kops chase scene – that took place throughout the restaurant in the aftermath of the shortcake toss, so it was all great fun.

Fast forward, and I was back from months hitching around Europe at odds on what to do now. (Career, what career? I don’t need no stinkin’ career.) So I went back to waitressing, at a terrible place where the waiters got to work in the part of the restaurant where they could make decent money. And the waitresses were stuck in a dark basement, short-money pub where, on top of not making any money, we had to wear polyester miniskirt sailor dresses in an electric blue.

With one of the other waitresses, I began agitating for the waitresses to get to join the union that the waiters were part of – and to get a chance to work in the real, money-making part of the enterprise.

Anyway, management wasn’t having any, and we got into a big f-u that ended up with our walking out. I can’t remember if I returned the polyester sailor minidress or burned it.

Eventually, I stumbled into business school and a career, as one does.

Quitting a job is generally quite satisfying. By the time you’ve decided to part company, you’re probably not in that happy a place. But mostly when I left a job for something better, it was on good terms. (And this included two times when I was laid off. My third layoff was more of an f-u to me, followed by an f-u to them. Another story entirely.)

But one job I didn’t quit was only made tolerable because I carried an f-u around in my pocket. (Actually in my brain.) This was a place where I worked for nearly a decade, and it was during a rough patch when I was reporting to someone truly terrible. I remember after one particularly awful and hurtful incident, I went home and told my husband that I couldn’t stand it much longer. His response: “why don’t you just quit.”

Hmmm.

It wouldn’t really have occurred to me to quit without another job, but after talking with Jim I pretty much felt “permission granted.”

Let me tell you, it made it so much easier to withstand the daily crap knowing that I could walk out without looking back.

And the upshot of this tale: I didn’t end up reporting to this person for much longer, and shortly thereafter, she was laid off – in part on my recommendation. (The president of the company asked a few of us who we thought should be on the lay-off list. I mentioned her name, and he laughed. “No one starts with her,” he told me, “But everyone gets to her.”)

Then there was the consulting client who I gloriously fired.

Now, I’ve turned down some opportunities because I had worked with the person in the past and wasn’t looking forward to doing it again. And other opportunities because I didn’t have the time and/or the interest. But most of those I’ve worked with on a freelance basis have been just fine. Some have become friends.

But this one time, I actually had to fire a client.

When I first began working with her consulting company, doing freelance writing, it looked like a dream opportunity. She wanted me to commit to writing x reports a year. The pay was good. And it looked like I might have a pretty good anchor tenant for my business.

She turned out to be irrational and nitpicky, hating everything I wrote, often claiming it was wrong and unclear – complaints I’d never heard from anyone else – and rewriting things (poorly). She’d then ask me to edit her work. I’d edit them back to the original writing I’d done and, voila, she accepted everything.

And then she made a particularly ridiculous demand. So I told her that after I completed work on the current project (which I’d committed to), we would part company.

My husband predicted that, in a few months, she would come back looking for my help. Which indeed she did, but there was, of course, no way.

Turning her down was almost as satisfying as quitting had been.

Yes, “everyone should have at least one ‘---this job’ job in their lives.”