They say people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers.

That couldn’t be more true in this story, but there is a lot more to it than that.

Check out what prompted this worker to make a big, career-shifting step.

Boss: Think about whether you want to keep working here. Me: OK. I don’t

Two years ago I started work at Company as their digital marketing person.

After I started, it turned out that I was brought in to put out the fires left by my predecessor, the VP Marketing, who had a team of 4 plus himself, spent over $1 million in one year and brought in 5 deals, 2 of them for under $10K.

After a performance like that, I had lots of work to do, and very little to do it with.

Aside from 1 or 2 paid tools, everything else was to be done using free tools only.

I’m gonna do some bragging here, I beat the previous year’s figures in all categories with 10% of the budget.

But that didn’t make this garden rosy.

When I started, I thought Bossman (Founder/CEO) had a really good management style, saying things like: “Your successes are yours, your mistakes are mine,” and “The enemy of good is great. I don’t expect perfection, I want you to make sure things work and get them done.”

In essence, I was allowed to run my own (one-man) department and outsourced freelancers, and as long as I was getting results, he left me alone.

Since I was the only person on the marketing team, I also had to learn a large number of skills and platforms that weren’t directly related to digital marketing.

Things were pretty good.

One of the main things that weren’t perfect was that Bossman had serious anger management issues.

As I said before, he left me alone but I saw him blow up at and fire other people for stupid reasons.

He lost it at me too once or twice, but he’d calm down after a couple of hours and things would be back to normal.

Looking back, he was abusing me.

And there’s no advancement in this story.

As the year came to an end, I approached Boss and initiated a performance review.

I ran him through everything I had done in the past year and he was pretty surprised at how much I had done with so little.

I asked him for a raise, pointing out that I was currently making 8,000/month in local currency (average is 4,500/month) when people with my (now augmented) skill set were making between 13-14,000/month.

I asked him for 12,000.

He said he’d get back to me, and never did.

Every time I asked him about my raise, he had another excuse.

After the last excuse, I began looking for something else.

Things are going to get ugly.

The other day we had a meeting, and it turns out that two months ago I made a mistake.

It wasn’t a critical mistake, and it was rectified within a few hours of discovering the mistake.

No harm or damage was caused whatsoever to Company, but Bossman flipping LOST IT.

I mean slamming on tables, yelling for the whole office to hear, what have you.

Then he said the magic words: “Pack your things up and go home. Think about whether you want to keep working here.”

So that’s what I did, and 10 seconds later I said “No, I don’t.”

I started packing up while he turned an even deeper shade of red and got even louder.

I didn’t answer him at all, just kept on packing up my things and saying goodbye to my colleagues.

Turns out that being ignored really pushed his buttons, to the point where he started threatening to call security to have me removed, while I was actively removing my self and my things from the office.

My country is very strict on employee’s rights.

His words and behavior are considered an improper dismissal.

By law he’s required to give me 30 days notice of dismissal, which he didn’t.

When he realized his mistake, he convened a pre-dismissal hearing, but it was already too late, he’s opened himself up to a lawsuit, which I’m already talking with lawyers about.

Things are finally looking up.

Because by law he has to give me those 30 days’ notice even though he already fired me, for the next 30 days I’m eligible for ALL the benefits and social rights in my salary, but I can do jack all for him and there’s nothing he can do to me without making the incoming lawsuit 10 times worse.

I’ve already got 4 interviews lined up for next week, paying almost double what Boss was paying me, and best of all, I’ll be interviewing for other places on his dime.

I was the only marketing person and without me, nothing happens in the marketing department for the next month.

If he doesn’t hire someone on in time, I won’t be around to answer any questions the new person might have.

Here is what folks are saying.

The cheapest executives are always the worst ones.

Good rule of thumb!

You do what you have to do.

Good advice.

I do, too. Thing is, he must have really underpaid freelancers to get everything so cheap.

Know what you’re worth and know what you don’t deserve.

And then act accordingly.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.