Just because jobs data is coming in at what appears to be a great looking clip doesn’t mean that workers are not growing more and more disgruntled as wages lag inflation, number of hours worked rises and the quality of benefits deteriorates. Case in point is a group of several employees who decided to make notable public exits from their jobs, as was highlighted in a recent CNBC article.
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 3.5 million Americans quit their job every month. As the article points out, some submit or tender a respectful and typical resignation – others, instead, simply don’t.
For example, on December 6 of this year, 17 year old Jackson Racicot posted a video to a social media site called “How I Quit My Job Today”. The post has gone viral and has been viewed over 700,000 times so far. The video is of him quitting his job at the Walmart in Alberta, Canada by reading a speech that he had prepared over the store’s intercom.
After making it clear that he didn’t like his benefits being cut – and being treated as a part time worker despite working 40 hours a week, he stated:
“Attention all shoppers, associates and management, I would like to say to all of you today that nobody should work here, ever. Our managers will make promises and never keep them. I’m sick of all the bullshit, bogus write-ups and my job. Fuck management, fuck this job and fuck Walmart.”
Another public resignation that went viral was in 2010, when Steven Slater left his job as a flight attendant for JetBlue. You may remember the story of him arguing with a passenger before getting on the plane intercom and exclaiming “I’ve been in this business for 28 years! I’ve had it! That’s it!”.
He then took two beers from the plane’s beverage cart and exited the plane in grand fashion – on its emergency slide. The incident garnered him respect from his peers in the business despite eventually resulting in him being charged with criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and trespassing.
A fellow flight attendant told the Washington Post at the time: “He took a stand for not only flight attendants but everyone.”
And then there’s the story of Marina Shifrin, who gained popularity on the internet after she quit her job as a video producer by making a video of her self dancing to the song “Gone” by Kanye West in 2013.
The text on the screen of the video read:
“It’s 4:30 a.m. and I am at work. For almost two years I’ve sacrifice my relationships, time and energy for this job. And my boss only cares about quantity and how many views each video gets. So I figured, I’d make ONE video of my own. To focus on the content instead of worry about the views. Oh, and to let my boss know… I quit.”
The video of her resignation, which was eventually removed by YouTube for including copyrighted material, wound up with 19 million views before being taken down.
Then there was the Twitter employee who wound up deleting Donald Trump‘s Twitter account before leaving his job at the company. Bahtiyar Duysak recalled his last day at work as uneventful up until his final hour, when he received a notification that President Trump’s Twitter account had been reported for violating Twitter’s terms of service. He put the wheels in motion to deactivate the account before shutting down shop and leaving the building one last time.
After the incident, Duysak was remorseful:
“It was definitely a mistake, and if I am involved in this I really apologize if I hurt anyone. I didn’t do anything on purpose. I love Twitter and I love America.”
And finally there was the story of Charlo Greene, who was a local news reporter in Anchorage, Alaska that had decided to leave her position to become an advocate for the cannabis industry. After having the station run footage of an edited news package about the debate regarding legalizing recreational marijuana in the state of Alaska, she then revealed herself as the leader of the Alaska Cannabis Club and quit her job live on the air.
While live, she stated:
“I, the actual owner of the Alaska Cannabis Club will be dedicating all of my energy toward fighting for freedom and fairness which begins with legalizing Marijuana here in Alaska. And as for this job, well, not that I have a choice, but fuck it. I quit.”
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