Telling off a student

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MindDetective

MindDetective

It is my last week at the university where I teach. I have had a miserable, entitled student pestering me and my poor TA all semester. He had the gall to demand I give him full points for the questions that the online exam errored on. I gave him the questions and told him to e-mail the answers back to me. This gave him extra time and was considered reasonable by other students who experienced a similar problem. To him that was unacceptable. But little did he know that I can't get fired from this job now. It is too late for that. So I told him off. I told him he was a bully and that he wasn't going to get what he wanted. Maybe things will escalate to the dean but I really stopped caring about his 24 (out of 1000) points. The student has no respect for education and is the worst of the worst point-counters. I've never told off a student like that but being on the way out is very freeing.

What's the worst you've done on your way out?
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
I've never burned a bridge at any job I've ever worked at. I guess I'm just too chickenshit or haven't had the chance to meet jerks like that.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
Awesome. I did once when I was a graduate TA. I just went beyond bewildered that this one girl just could not understand the concept of slope. She seemed almost proud that she couldn't understand it. It got under my skin, and I kind of went off on her in front of the class. She never did anything about it though.
 
Gusto

Gusto

I once used a manager sort of telling me off as an excuse to finally quit.

I had been working two part time jobs at the time, for about a month, and the newest job was the one I really wanted to keep and it showed. I kept calling into the older job to tell my boss I needed to switch or cancel shifts so that I could work a shift at my new job, etc.

Finally, the old boss took me aside at work and told me that it was getting to be too much, and that I would have to decide which job was more important to me. He was kinda shocked that I gave him my two weeks notice right there.
 
Emrys

Emrys

I used to work at WalMart when I was a starving university student. I had finished my regular 4-10 shift, when my section manager asked if I would stay and work overnight to set up for a promotion. I needed the money, so I said yes.
Over the course of the night, I set up one of the endcap signs incorrectly. It wasn't a big deal, since it still conveyed the necessary information (item description and price). It just wasn't "corporation standard".
At 8:00 that morning, after I had worked 16 hrs straight, my store manager called me on it. On the floor, in front of customers and all my co-workers. Basically asked me how stupid I was that I couldn't put together a sign correctly. So I told him exactly what I thought of the sign, the job, and him, and walked out of the store. Never clocked out, never looked back.
I didn't just burn that bridge; I nuked it from orbit. It was the only way to be sure.
 
C

Chibibar

MindDetective: I never told anyone off. I just don't waste my energy on it. At least you have the email to show that you GAVE him the time and extra effort to help him and he doesn't think it is good enough? well tough cookies on him.
 
MindDetective

MindDetective

Trading up. In my present position, I have no option for promotion (tenure), even if I am here for 20 years. I am considered purely a contractual hire. So I am moving into a position that WILL enable me to receive promotion someday. I also get higher pay and a milder climate at the new job, though it is at a smaller school.
 
W

Wasabi Poptart

When I left my casino job, I walked into my department's office and left a note on my manager's desk that I was quitting effective immediately. I only returned to collect my last pay stub.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

A friend of mine was once told before he started his shift as a waiter that he was fired. But they expected him to finish the shift. When a customer called to him and said...

"Waiter! I need some butter."

My friend looked at him and smiled...

"If you want some butter why don't you scrape it off of your teeth?"
 
W

Wasabi Poptart

Nah. You need to put a bag of flaming poo on his doorstep, ring the bell, and run.
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

Staff member
First I read that as flamingo poo, and considered it a novel trick...

Then I noticed there was no O.

Now I has a sad :(
 
Mathias

Mathias

When I quit Home Depot I did the "fuck you" thing to my other buddies at their registers. It wasn't really a bridge burning, but I did it in front of customers.

I have too many teaching stories to tell... let's just say I've made quite the reputation for myself as the professor you don't want to pull grade-grubbing shit on. Don't get me wrong though, if you can logically argue the rationale for an answer, I'll give it a look over.

I'm actually starting my new job at the end of this month as soon as finals are graded (after a nice week break). Kinda excited to be getting back into industry and making mo' money. I'm not burning any bridges though.
 
Cajungal

Cajungal

Staff member
Well done, sir! I've never done anything like that on my way out of a job, but I've had pretty good luck. Even the worst people I worked with were tolerable, and our differences could be resolved fairly easily. Someday I'd love to have that opportunity just to see if I could be honest like that. Once I gave an ex-friend what was essentially an exit interview-- letting her know that her crappy boyfriends and general behavior make me feel unsafe and that it was too painful watching her be self-destructive to hang around with her. It didn't take, though... she still calls me.
 
Gusto

Gusto

Tin, as someone who used to work at KFC, owned by the same people as Taco Bell, I can attest to their stores' poor drainage. Well played, sir.
 
C

Chibibar

Tinwhistler said:
Funny thing is, she ended up getting my position (as expected)...I think I only saw her in the store for 3 or 4 months before the entire management team was swapped out. I guess she couldn't cut the mustard.
Click to expand...
Karma is a bitch :)
 
C

Chibibar

Tinwhistler said:
Two jobs ago, I thought I had a good relationship with the company I worked for, but I didn't really get along with the new guy they'd hired to be a project manager. As an example, I spent all afternoon one day explaining to him that database normalization was standard "best practices" for something like 30 or 40 years--this dumbass wanted to de-normalize the databases so that we had duplicate raw text across all of the tables. Worse yet, he wanted to combine all of our specialized table structures (names, addresses, document information, etc) into one single giant database table. Which means we'd have had TONS of duplicate data in the database, which is a recipe for absolute disaster and which totally breaks the whole "relational" part of "relational database". It was clear the guy never really worked with computers except maybe from a management standpoint. Anyway, we butted heads a few times, but it was never openly hostile.

So, when I gave him my verbal two weeks notice, he asked me to leave immediately. So I guess he didn't like me just as much as I didn't like him...probably for making him look dumb in corporate meetings.

A half hour later he came back to my office and asked me why I wasn't gone yet, and I told him I was crafting my resignation letter, and followed it up with "And I'll probably still be here for another hour working on it..unless you plan on having security throw me out."--basically daring him to do just that. He declined, naturally.

Two days later he called me sounding desperate and asked me for the passwords for my computer and for the source code repository (which he should have had already, but evidently a couple of other key people left the job recently as well). I snorted on the phone and said "well, you know, if you'd have let me work out those two weeks, you could have just came by my desk today and I'd have been glad to help you out. As it is, my consulting rate is $75.00 hour..."

I think those are the only two times I've ever really been obnoxious leaving a job, and I feel pretty justified in both of them.
Click to expand...
Did he pay? hehe
 
C

Chibibar

Alas, I don't have any stories like that. The "worst" way I got fired was by a meeting. I was doing contract work (2 year contract) and was in 1st year. The company wasn't doing well so they called in all their contract workers (mainly IT) and had a big meeting about the company's future. after the meeting, all those attended are promptly let go THAT day.
 
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