Take this job and shove it

It has been said more than once - by me, at least - that the two sweetest words in the English language are "I quit." 

Or, if you want to go longer, as the brilliantly named (by himself) and thoroughly disreputable and scabrous, Johnny Paycheck had it with his 1977 hit, "Take This Job and Shove It."

All jobs, of course, have their moments. 

Some of those moments are good, great even. Some of them are just miserable, but the misery tends to dissipate once you take a deep breath. And some of those moments are so god-awful that you just want to walk right out the door without a backward's look.

I never actually walked out of a job in a huff.

I did last only one shift as a waitress at Valle's Steak House, but I called in my regrets from a payphone at Brigham's during the afternoon lull.

And my roommate and I did blow out of Durgin-Park after she was fired for throwing a bowl of half-eaten strawberry shortcake at the owner - a righteous hit, if ever - but we were only going to be there a few more days anyway, before taking off on our Grand Tour of Europe. And we were laughing so hard as we exited the building, it didn't seem as if I was really saying "I quit." (Or "take this job and shove it.")

But at one point, during my actual (i.e., non-waitress) professional career, I did carry a metaphorical "I quit" card in my metaphorical backpocket for a while.

I was reporting to someone who was one of the absolute worst managers I have ever encountered. 

One evening, after a day of putting up with her petty, demeaning, and imperious bullshit, I came home and told my husband I wanted out. (Or the job, not the marriage.) We talked about it and I decided that, with his support, if I had to just walk out the door, that was fine. 

Fortunately, I didn't have to carry that metaphorical card for very long.

The investors in this small, hapless software company brought in a turnaround guy, and all of a sudden I was reporting to him, not to her. A vast improvement.

Anyway, after he'd been there a bit, he determined that we were going to have to thin the ranks, and I was one of the people he asked for advice on who to lay off.

Hmmmmm.....

I went through the list of who I thought was expendable and, honestly, although it wasn't a revenge tour, she was on it. (For reasons that had nothing to do with our personal hash. Or at least not entirely.) 

When I got to her name, Mr. Turnaround smiled a bit. 

"No one starts with her," he told me. "But everyone gets there."

Without devoting an entire post to her, I will say that she was a thoroughly malign force - and I wasn't the only one who felt that way. Mr. Turnaround also told me that he just didn't get her. "She presents herself as if she's the company sweetheart, and yet..."

So I didn't have to, but Ms. Sweetheart was the one I would have played my "I quit" card on if needs be.

I hadn't thought of her in a while, but she came to mind when I read about some folks at a Chipotle in Austin, Texas, who go so fed up, they just took a hike a few weeks back. 

A group of five Chipotle employees, including a general manager and kitchen manager, quit their jobs at the end of their shifts on November 14 after working under "impossible" conditions, they told Insider.

Peter Guerra, a Chipotle veteran of five years and general manager for six months, worked at the Scofield Farms Chipotle location in Austin, Texas.

"My store was severely understaffed, we struggled just to keep our heads above water," with less and less support from management, Guerra said. He said he was regularly scheduled to work 80 hours a week, but often had to work additional hours to cover for employees who quit and left gaps in staffing. (Source: Yahoo News)

80 hours a week which, I'm guessing, the general manager didn't get paid overtime to work. (My understanding is that one of the ways fastfood employees get screwed is to give them a manager's title and put them on salary, and then overwork them.)

Between filling digital DoorDash orders and keeping the dining room open, things just got to be too much.

"I thought, 'this is literally going to kill me if I keep it up,'" Guerra said.

The kitchen manager also quit.

But "they finished their shifts and cleaned up the store, before leaving around 1 a.m." Because, at heart, they are good, hard-working employees who want to do a good job. They just didn't want to be killed in the process. 

Several other employees also quit. The store remains open, but a few days after the mass leave-taking "the restaurant still did not appear to be accepting online orders." And maybe that's the way it's going to have to be until the labor market problems sort themselves out. Better pay? Letting in more immigrants? Automate the truly low end, thankless jobs? There is a way out of here.

Until then, we can expect to see a lot more folks saying "take this job and shove it; I ain't workin' here no more.'

Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.