re: Have you ever "Up and Quit" your job on impulse?

Yep. I paid my way through school working as a shipfitter in a shipyard during the summers. Steel doesn't want to be curved into the shape of a ship, so a shipfitter welds eyepads to the steel and hooks up a bunch of 5 and 10 ton comealongs and pulls the everloving shite out of the piece of steel to get it in the position it needs to be in. Then he tack welds it into place and the welders come behind him and put a continuous weld to turn two pieces of steel into one. Up until the welders are finished marrying the two pieces, the steel isn't really joined well at all and the comealongs stay in place to provide the load bearing until the final welds can provide it. That's the job in a nutshell. Pull steel. Tack steel.

I was doing that in the middle of August one day. The piece I was working on was outside, not under the fab shop roof. We were about three miles from the sun, so the steel was about 140 degrees. It was about halfway through the afternoon shift. Now, part of why I did that job is that during the summer, that shipyard ran balls to the wall. I could get 84 hour weeks if I wanted, so with all the overtime, I could take down almost eight months worth of pay in 12 weeks. It was a fricking non-stop grueling grind of 12 hour days.

So, I'd already been there about 9 hours that day when I heard a loud BANG, then a few seconds later another, then what sounded like a burst from a machine gun. My welding hood was knocked off my head and I was staring at a quivering piece of 5/16" thick steel about 6 inches from my face when it previously was at arm's length. The welds holding the eyepads the comealongs were attached to on the backside of my workpiece had let go. That started a cascade failure, breaking all the tack welds and letting the steel whip back into the position it wanted to naturally be in. I was lucky enough that I was just far enough away that it wasn't able to hit me and turn the bones in my face into Jell-O.

I looked around, and because of where I was working kind of off by myself nobody else even noticed what happened. I realized that had I been hit, if I wasn't instantly killed, I likely would have have laid there on that hot steel until I was non-instantly killed. I was graduating the next year, so I marched right to the yard foreman, told him what happened and that I'd find some other way to make up for the money I was going to miss and quit on the spot. Then I went to this little dive bar three hundred yards from the entrance of the shipyard and ordered two double shots of whiskey and sat there until my hands quit shaking.

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Thankfully he backed down. I say "thankfully "because I ended up working for that company for 4 summers and then for 14 more years full-time. (That guy was long gone before I began working full time). Then I started my own company with the experience I gained working there.

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That’s a great story.

A summer job in college. The guy running place was a major jackhole but the money was decent. My dad came in to tell me his dad had died and afterwards, before I had a chance to explain, the guy running the place lit into me for wasting time getting visitors. I put a computer monitor through a window and left.

Yeah, one time. I was a an ops supervisor at a trucking company. We had a rash of people quit and the GM told me I needed to go to the night shift for a few weeks until he could hire / train new people. I was cool with that, even though I had a newborn at home, I wanted to be a team player.

Anyways, after a few months, he told me things were going well on nights and that would be my full time position from now on. I went home after shift and called a friend of mine who was the manager of a freight brokerage company and asked if he had a spot for me. He said yes and I immediately turned around and went back to work to turn my badge in.

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This never happened.

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Did you learn nothing from the story? If you get a chance to take it back, do so.

When I was 18 and working as a lifeguard. Crazy thunder/lightening storm and the ranger at the wave pool told us to get back on stand despite no visitors being there. Summer was almost over and like 6 of the lifeguards were like frick that and we all left. FWIW the head wall of the pool and surrounding area had two lightning strikes in the previous few summers. I had another summer job I was working at as well and left for LSU in a week.

Had worked there for 4 summers and in retrospect wish I wouldn’t have even though there were no negative repercussions.

Yep...worked at staples for 3 days. Told them I was going on lunch but clocked out and never came back. I was just working for some extra pocket change but it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Yes, it was awesome. Found a job the next day.

Yep..about 14yrs ago. Plenty of money, divorced, no kids. Got sick of my VP, said frick it and quit with no job, or leads for a job. And this wasn’t some hourly job, it was a career job with an industry leader. Making way more than I’m making today.
Things are quite different today unfortunately.