Can you tell me about a time you left your job well aware how it would mess up the place you left?

[Liz1tummypain]

I did this once before, when I could well afford the loss of income and I'd been bullied and couldn't manage or wait to find a new job first. Have been considering it again recently, which I won't go into now but just realised others must do the same.

I know we are all replaceable but I think we reach the point when we like the thought of making it difficult for certain people, ( not necessarily all) those remaining in post when we go. What were your circumstances when you left and you knew it would cause major inconvenience?

Deleting your notes is fair enough but removing the formula is quite unprofessional.

I felt it wasn't the students fault so I mad sure I'd finished all the teaching units and it was just revision at the end.

I was a carer for a young teen with very complex needs.

It was a highly stressful job as she had multiple life threatening incidents daily. Tube fed, trachea, ventilator, seizures etc ..

But I enjoyed caring for them and enabling them to attend school and have some fun times/days out.

Company policy was that if your shift was cancelled without the required notice you still got full pay unless they could get you another placement..

Mum was very good at not actually cancelling even if she knew she would be away, teen was hospitalised or she didn't need you for some reason..(she said that the company still got paid).

But the company was terrible and got out of paying..there were whole weeks of wages I lost..

Eventually I couldn't manage not knowing what I would be paid weekly. I had a mortgage and bills!

Just as I made up my mind that I had no choice but to leave my colleague (we worked in pairs) suddenly left..

I knew it would be very hard for the Mum but I was struggling financially..

She was lovely and totally understood..
But I still felt very bad for leaving her in the lurch.

She cancelled her child's care package with that company soon after as she was very angry that she lost so many of her carers.

The company went bust I believe soon after I left.

Well he could have found them easily if he followed my instructions instead of just trying to wing it. He didn’t need the previous reports for the formula.

I spent weeks not doing anything else but create how to guides when being made redundant. I was the only person who could get anything usable out of the equipment, so was already wondering how they thought it was so easy I wouldn't be needed at the same time as demanding I created these guides.

Left them a single hardcopy of each with watermarks on every page and every image. No way were they passing all of this off as their own work.

The IT manager would have been able to retrieve the original files if asked. But they made him redundant as well.

Yes bullied out.
I still around a year later get calls asking how to do this/work things/remember passwords etc

And others call in tears because the bullies still bully...

Oops posted too soon as I said there were SOP’s which weren’t deleted. I just saved a copy with the formulas to make it easier each month. He was a bullying cock who made me suicidal so professionalism wasn’t in my mind. He could easily lead uk the SOP and gave the info, I offered the file path and he made out that I was calling him stupid…well he was thick as shit tbf!

At 21 you were the only person who knew how to use their certain computer system???

This story isn't exactly me leaving and the place going to a mess but it's in a similar vein of feeling happy when something went wrong for previous employer...

I'd been in the same role for 8 years and felt ready for a new challenge and shared this with my manager. She talked about a management track and having me sit in on certain meetings and picking up different tasks as development. I felt pleased with this, and became aware that a younger, lot less experienced, male employee was doing the same. Out of the blue, it was announced on a teams meeting that the male had been given a manager's position. No interview - just given. I expressed my upset with my manager in private and she said they thought I wouldn't want a full time job. I swiftly looked for another job, and was lucky enough to find a higher paying, more challenging role. I was pleased when I heard the new male manager hadn't stayed with them long after that. My career has developed well in the subsequent years so they did me a favour in the long run.

Not quite what the op asked but I had been seconded to a department for 6 months promotion, had to apply for the role. Out of the 3 secondees I didn't get the job, another candidate from my old department did. As it wasn't her fault I congratulated her and got on with my old job. She came up shocked that I had been so nice and that said that someone said out of the 3 I was the best and they were surprised I hadn't got it. I told her not to worry and that the feedback I got from the appointing manager was that I had "the wrong personality" so I was never going to get the job.

Scroll forward 5 years, I'd transferred to the parent company and been promoted, the subsidiary company is integrated with ours and I'm appointing manager...guess who was made redundant.

Not because of the personality comment, but the fact she got the manager who I had been seconded to, who was leaving on matt leave and having a very different pregnancy and lots of medical issues, to tell me. She refused to meet me.

Yep - in my last job, I knew damn well it was going to leave them broken because after I handed my notice in, I supported seven other people to leave as well. Just one poor dude and my manager left by three months later.

It was the worst job I’ve ever had and I cried at least once a week by the end - and I never cry. My other half was begging me to leave. My actions? Zero. Regrets.

Left my last job, 4 weeks notice. I offered to extend through the summer holidays (school based) to complete a thorough handover. I left copious notes. The offer was ignored and she temp cover didn’t bother with the notes.

The permanent replacement called me at my new workplace, in tears, 6 months later. She was working well over her hours and was still hugely behind. I went in on a weekend, talked her through my handover notes which she’d never been shown and gave her my personal mobile. I care about the organisation, and the children, but not the awful Head who drove out an entire SLT in 18 months.

Not me directly, but I observed with interest. When the Inner London Education Authority broke up, the London Boroughs took over, and Lewisham was not famed for its budgeting and planning skills: there was a fascinating TV documentary about it made at the time.
I had moved over to the independent sector by then, but still in touch with a lot of friends and colleagues.
One of their clever attempts to get some flexibility was to appoint all new staff on "temporary terminal" contracts, i.e. one day's notice on either side. This flexibility suits some people, and they usually work as supply teachers, but most folk on a budget need to have a consistent notion of what their pay will be from month to month.
Someone in the office got the calculations wrong, thought a big budget cut was necessary. and many "temporary terminal" teachers were unceremoniously ousted. I'm not even sure how legal the action was, but heigh-ho.
A vacancy came up at my new school, and I got in touch with my former colleague to let her know. She had a lot to offer, and was quickly appointed to a permanent post.
A big plus for her was that, as she was being offered a permanent contract, she could prove a regular income when applying for a mortgage.
All round Lewisham, similar stories were playing out. Obviously, the best candidates were snapped the fastest.
Then it was discovered that the budget was not as tight as previously suspected, so they were graciously offered their jobs back. Most declined; as a way of weeding out the best teachers first, it was almost inspired.

I walked out of a retail job without giving notice. Immediate supervisor was horrid and I just couldn't take it any more, so quit and walked out.

I bumped into a former colleague a few weeks later and apparently it caused chaos with holidays and rotas, in what was a small dept. Totally unplanned but quite satisfying.

I spent a decade building department that got excellent outcomes. Passed over for promotion several times, they were happy for me to perform where I was as they knew they’d struggle to replace me. I got another job. They replaced me. My replacement dismantled my work, insisted her ideas were better. Outcomes are falling, department is not as successful. I’m earning 30K a year more elsewhere.

Ha my current job
My first and second line manager are incompetent.
I am thinking of leaving but worry for my colleague who will be left in the shit without me.

Lurking here

I was let go from a job years ago, and I knew they’d fall to pieces without me, because nobody really appreciated just how much my role involved or rather, had evolved. My manager was shit and just let me manage myself.

Within a month the CEO asked to meet me and offered me my job back. I hadn’t even found another job yet (2009) but I still refused.

The department I worked in was due to shut in two years. There had already been a round of redundancies the previous year. The atmosphere was getting unpleasant. Not within the department - we were a strong, experienced team, and the first round of redundancies had resulted in some voluntaries who were happy to effectively be paid to retire. But management did not want to spend money on resourcing the department as no new clients were being taken on. Yet we were expected to continue performing at the same level of commitment and quality.

I applied for and got another job. Told my close colleagues before I handed in my notice. Turned out 4 of us had done the same, and would be leaving within a week or so of each other.

Management were quite philosophical about this. They recognised that there was no reason we should hang around for uncertain jobs and a guarantee of annual redundancies. They did not make our lives any worse for the rest of the notice period, even redeployed some staff to our department so that we could train them up before we left.

Due to high staff turnover it ended up just me and one other colleague who were actually trained and insured to use a machine. Others did use it but weren't insured and had no actual training. The other colleague wasn't particularly savvy with it, could use it but not troubleshoot it or get it to do anything out of the ordinary.

I took interest when the installers did training courses and as a result, I could sort most issues that didn't require new hardware or a major software update and could get it to do almost anything it was capable of. There was a £600 callout charge before an engineer even touched it so I'd usually have it in bits on the floor before resorting to an engineer.

I gave 5 weeks notice and repeatedly offered to train the store manager on its use. He didn't make time until my last day because, in his words, it's not complicated, is it. LOL yes. It is.

So I gave him the run down on the advanced stuff, figuring my colleague could show him the basic stuff. He lost interest 5 minutes in. I shrugged. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

Got phoned at least twice a week after I left for months. How do I do this?

What does this error mean?

It's not working.

Why is it making that noise?

How do I boot it without the photospectrometer?

How do I reconnect the photospectrometer without rebooting it? (It was glitching and wouldn't boot with it connected. You had to reboot without it and then reconnect it after the boot screen but before the OS launched then reinstall the drivers and recalibrate it.) So yeah, complicated.

Why are all the greys coming out pink? (Because it's out of black colourant, you moron!)

The first few were just shop floor colleagues, not their fault they work for an idiot so I helped them. Then it broke down and I popped in on my lunch break (working just round the corner) and fixed it.

Then it went wrong again and I went there and it was because basic daily maintenance wasn't being done and a 4 year old could have figured out what was wrong. All they had to do was lift a panel and they would have seen that a cannister was empty. I explained it like they were 5 and then refused to answer any more calls. Told them if I had to sort it again, I'd charge £100 per hour so they better book some training courses.

I walked out of one job in the middle of a crisis team meeting. Along with 8 of my colleagues. Bullying new management had made work Impossible. We all stayed for the residents and. It was really hard to walk away. Management called a meeting to discuss our concerns and we all went in with signed letters of resignation. When it became clear our concerns were not being listened to or acted upon we simply threw our letters on the table and left.

Called CQC on the way out who fortunately acted upon our concerns and the place was eventually shut down.

I left my last job feeling that way, and since then lots of others have left. It was just a really ridiculously over pressured environment.

Sadly I think your head has moved to our school. Very similar modus operandi - we're all despairing.

Yes. I know it sounds crazy but it’s true. It was a new system/piece of software, only used for one specific task and I was the only person who did that task. They obviously knew how to use their other systems which they used for their work.

@twoshedsjackson wow, that was a ridiculous situation. Bad for the teachers, must have been impossible for the education authority to control and obviously bad for the children trying to get an education. Crazy.