July 21, 2025 at 11:35 am

Manager Gives Employee An Ultimatum To Do As Told Or Quit, So The Employee Chooses The Latter

by Jayne Elliott

staff worker in a school cafeteria

Shutterstock/Reddit

This story brought back at lot of memories about a job I had when I was a freshman in college, but I ended up quitting for completely different reasons than the person who shares this memory.

Picture a school cafeteria on a college campus.

You’re a student with a part time job trying to cover what scholarships won’t.

If your manager gives you an ultimatum to do as told or quit, what do you do?

Let’s see how this person’s job went from good to bad to unbearable.

Lazy boss demands I do as he says or quit….

So, back circa 2000 I was a freshman in college.

I didn’t have a wealthy family but got good scholarships from grades, but I still had to work 20 hours a week to make ends meet.

I ended up working in the school cafeteria as a dishwasher, this position paid extra compared to other student positions and I got a free meal each shift.

There were a couple full time staff supplemented by us students, they of course got the clean side of the conveyor belt washer (these guys were all great, very nice to us students).

The other 3 spots (first spot on conveyor to pull silverware/cups/garbage, second conveyor spot rinsing/stacking dishes and the person loading washer) were typically students.

It was great at first.

First quarter goes good, we’re a bit short handed but the group I usually worked with got on well and we all learned which spots we were fastest at – so when busy we’d all go where fastest to keep from getting overwhelmed.

When slower we’d rotate to break up monotony.

Second quarter rolls around and someone in management decided we needed a “dish room supervisor”, enter new hire “Kevin”.

Nobody liked Kevin.

Kevin is a lazy jerk, he would spend 1-2 hours eating and would only come in to yell at us before disappearing.

We all hated him.

Well one night it happened, Kevin decided he was going to order which spot we worked at.

Of course he did this on a shift we were shorter than usual and somehow managed to put all 3 of us in our slowest spots.

Kevin gave them an ultimatum.

I of course tried to explain why we had been in different spots and should stay there.

Kevin was having none of it, told me to shut up and do as he said or quit.

So I did, I said I was done and walked out.

His expression was priceless.

It gets even better.

Even better when I changed and came back for dinner he was having to work himself in the first conveyor spot (close by tray drop off) so I made sure to smile at him.

I apologized to my friends for dipping out on them but they understood, they didn’t last too much longer either but Kevin apparently treated them nicer afterwards.

That’s a great quitting story!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person also worked while in college.

Screenshot 2025 06 26 at 6.37.37 PM Manager Gives Employee An Ultimatum To Do As Told Or Quit, So The Employee Chooses The Latter

This person has done the same thing.

Screenshot 2025 06 26 at 6.38.08 PM Manager Gives Employee An Ultimatum To Do As Told Or Quit, So The Employee Chooses The Latter

Doing something similar really backfired for this person’s boss!

Screenshot 2025 06 26 at 6.38.27 PM Manager Gives Employee An Ultimatum To Do As Told Or Quit, So The Employee Chooses The Latter

This person applauds anyone who works while in college.

Screenshot 2025 06 26 at 6.39.10 PM Manager Gives Employee An Ultimatum To Do As Told Or Quit, So The Employee Chooses The Latter

If you threaten someone, their response might surprise you!

So be prepared.

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.