Bartenders Share Their Most Epic Quitting Stories

Mark Yocca / Supercall
Mark Yocca / Supercall

There is not a single one of us in the food and beverage industry that has not fantasized about ripping off an apron mid shift and taking a Half-Baked inspired exit. “F- you, F- you, you’re cool.  I’m out.” We deal with customers and management day in and day out, and that’s a whole lot of personalities. Throw in some money and a touch of alcohol and, well, fingers crossed you just keep swimming.

Over the years, I’ve fantasized about my own hypothetical exit. Would I stand on the bar and go all Jerry Maguire? Could I pull off the “no call, no show”? I’ve always rolled with the classy two week’s notice topped with a nice “thank you so much.” As much as I’ve always wanted to storm out at some point of any job, middle fingers blazing and righteous fury shooting out my ears, I’ve never had it in me.  All my life, I’ve heard the story of my great aunt’s exit from her one and only restaurant job. Doris, never one to mince words or sugarcoat anything that isn’t a cookie—the woman inadvertently taught me my first swear words and later applauded me for using them correctly—was told by her boss that her nails were too long to work in his restaurant. She could cut them or go home. She told her boss where he could shove it, showed him a very specific finger resplendent with its “too long” nail, and walked right out the door.

I started down the rabbit hole of dramatic exit stories last summer. I was on a date out on Long Island. We were chatting about bars in the area and his friend who had worked down the block when our server said, “Oh yeah he quit. Best day ever! I was working here when he rode by on a horse swigging Champagne!”

I put down my pizza. I must’ve heard her wrong.

Rode by? On a horse?

My date reached for his phone, revealing a picture of a shirtless man wearing a crown and a cape on a horse. The ride through town was also the dude’s farewell to Long Island; he now lives in New Orleans where he could do this kind of thing every day without anyone batting an eye.

“You have any epic quitting stories?”  I teased from across the table.

“I can tell you that it’s always been fun to quit in a calm way: ‘This is not a good fit for us’,” he said. “I’ve always taken a slight sadistic pleasure in it.”

“So you broke up with your job? It’s not you it’s me?”

“Well, not always. I used to work at a steakhouse and one night they pushed everyone into my section and triple sat me with six tops, there was no way to keep up and no support. I counted out my cash, handed it to the manager and walked out the back, that seemed to get the point across. In my early 20s I also had a last night quitting party that totally wrecked the dive bar I was working at,” he raised his Vieux Carre. “But I guess the best would have to be when I was working out east and the manager told me to shake all my Manhattans. I handed in my apron and told him I didn’t drive an hour and a half to work to make shit drinks.”

Back in the city, friends were more than happy to share their stories. From texts, to DMs, conversations over drinks or while at work—everyone seemed to have a good quitting story. Except for me.

Mark Yocca / Supercall

“I had been doing a cheese presentation for a table,” said my friend Tara who, in another life, had been a captain at an iconic fine dining restaurant. “Midway through the presentation, I felt this sharp pain in my side. I turned around and there was this old lady clutching her fork! She had just jabbed it into me to get my attention! I mean, quite literally, stick a fork in me, I’m done. I quit shortly after.” She sipped her Campari and soda.

“Back when I was working in midtown, our GM got fired for being a drunk,” her boyfriend, Hans, chimed in. “They replaced him with this new guy who didn’t even introduce himself and just started making changes. Corporate was convinced our location needed help, but this guy had no people skills. I used to joke about us playing Survivor: bartender edition. It seemed like we couldn’t go a week without someone quitting or getting fired. So this one week, three guys waited until the middle of Friday night, grabbed all of their stuff and walked out. It took management like 10 minutes to realize they were gone. I mean, I didn’t do it. But I thought about it.”

The more I asked around, the more I heard about epic walk-outs.

“The closing email last night was labeled ‘End Of The World,’” Maria deftly separated an egg white into a Ramos Gin Fizz and started her dry shake. “I couldn’t figure out why until I came in for my shift today.” She added ice. “Apparently we were so short staffed yesterday that all management was on the floor. One of the only servers left lost it and walked out through the kitchen yelling, ‘You can take this shit sandwich and shove it!’ So, uh, if you know anyone looking for a serving gig, I’m pretty sure we’re hiring.”

“Oh man!” my girlfriend Chelsea exclaimed over pilsners. “I was waiting tables in a French restaurant where not only did we have to tip out the management 10 percent of our tips, but one night they took money out of our paychecks to pay to repair the broken POS because ‘someone on staff had to be responsible.’ I walked out on a full section on a Friday. Giselle and Tom Brady were in my section so it felt extra good.”

“Back when I worked at a country club,” my cousin texted me, “the bosses would frequently overwork us. One manager finally hit his limit, dropped his keys down the toilet, quit, and walked out—all in under five minutes. It took a few hours to find the keys, which are valuable, I guess, making that move the ultimate fuck you.”

Mark Yocca / Supercall

“It's 2012,” Allison started steaming milk for a latte. “I'm working at a restaurant and bar that gets wild late nights. Out of the blue, boss disappears and is replaced by two owners who explain that he's been stealing from everyone the entire time I've worked there!” She pulled a double shot of espresso. “We don't get paid tips for about a month while the restaurant recovers. A few more months pass, we get our tips, things settle down, I don't think I'll ever see him again.” With a few deft rolls of her wrist, a leaf appears in my latte and she continues. “Suddenly, thief boss's brother settles the suits with the restaurant, the two owners take the settlement and leave, and here's ol’ bossman back in charge! I read the email and can't believe it. The next day I come to open and there he is, blocking the entrance. He's mad that I told people outside the restaurant that he's a fucking crook,” Allison smiles. “I'm ready to fight but instead I laugh at him, throw the keys to the restaurant down the gutter, and parade out of the East Village like a freed chimp from the lab.”

My friend Carlos is a DJ, so I wasn’t expecting him to message me about a restaurant past that I never knew existed, let alone his exit from it: “About eight years ago, I was a food runner busting my ass every day. Everyone loved me except for Dwayne. He’d demean me and verbally abuse me and play these mind games with me. Treated me like a damn peon. I couldn’t take it anymore, so one night during service I stopped what I was doing and yelled ‘Dwayne, you're a psychologically debilitating motherfucking asshole and I can't take it anymore. Fuck you and fuck this.’ Five coworkers high-fived me on my way out the door.”

My girlfriend Clara has always been a badass with the biggest heart you’ll ever encounter. Her laugh is infectious and there is nothing she won’t do for a friend or even a stranger in need. We’ve talked about her quitting this particular bar many times. It never fails to leave me with my jaw on the floor and few of my Aunt Doris’s favorite words escaping my lips.

“I said, ‘You shouldn’t lay off my bouncer. We need a guy at the door,’” Clara said, flipping her long dark hair. “’Let’s just try it out,’ [my boss said],” she raised her eyebrows. A few days later, a couple came in during her shift and insisted that she “make the drinks strong.” She handed them their Old Fashioneds at regular strength, since “make it strong” isn’t some secret phrase that gets you free booze, despite the vast number of customers who think otherwise. They hurled a few choice phrases at Clara, who then removed the offensive, “weak ass” cocktails. As she was dumping the drinks, they decked her.

“Next weekend, me with two black eyes and a broken nose: ‘Can I have my fucking bouncer back now?’” she laughed bitterly. “[And then my boss said,] ‘How about we just always make sure you have a manager around? You just need a man around.’” She shook her head. “[So I told him,] ‘Yeah I don’t need a skinny white boy playing Candy Crush on the end of my bar all day. I think we are done here.’”

Mark Yocca / Supercall

Some of the stories I heard bordered on traumatic, but in making the decision to quit and move on, my friends had wound up opening up other possibilities. I’ve never been one to make a move without a safety net lined up, but these people seemed unafraid to jump into the abyss and figure it out.

I got a message from a friend down South that I found particularly uplifting: “My boss at the time physically pulled me away from a customer handing me cash for a drink I’d just made and took me into the office to ream me out about opening a new pack of register tape when there was one already open next to it (first, it wasn’t me who actually did it, second, sheesh). I thought the little vein in his lobster red forehead would explode, so to save him an aneurism, I calmly quit. I made a promise to myself to never work for another asshat like that again and started my own business. When I’m nearby now I pop in and thank him for helping me find the strength to do this—it burns him up.”

“I was working at this horrible, horrible job,” Renee rolled a Bloody Mary. “You know when you have a shitty job but the money makes it worth it? Yeah, this wasn’t that. The manager was super happy in his racism. I was the first American hired. He preferred to hire girls with no papers and he treated the kitchen like crap. The train made me late, I walked in and he laid into me. I told him the train stalled. He followed me around telling me everything I was doing wrong,” she paused and smiled, “so, I turned around and said, ‘You’re an awful man and a racist’ and asked for my tips from the previous night. He told me he’d mail them,” she laughed. “I told him to get my money, [then I] went into the kitchen and told everyone in there that they deserved to be treated better and should all quit. We understand that we are easily replaceable [in this industry] but sometimes we let people push us around out of fear. There are jobs out there where you’re respected. I quit and now I have a job at a bar I love and one at a brewery that makes me super happy.”

The more I delved into my friends’ quitting stories, the harder it was becoming to make it through any frustrating service without wanting to throw in the bar rag and have a story of my own. After making it through a particularly trying evening, I met up with some friends at a local dive bar for a few Lone Stars and some much needed decompression. The topic of conversation naturally turned to quitting.

“Apparently I’m a thing of legend at my old burger joint,” Brad swigged from his bottle of beer. “We went in for lunch and everyone was in awe. Honestly I had no clue why.”

“They comped our whole check and the manager came over and shook his hand!” his girlfriend collapsed into peals of laughter.

“They couldn’t believe they finally got to meet the guy who walked out on his shift because he heard ‘Hotel California’ played one too many times!”

“On my last night at my old job, I had a real pain in the ass customer,” Simon leaned over the bar, his eyes twinkling. “She kept saying her Martini wasn’t what she specifically told me to make. So I reached over, picked it up and took a swig. She lost it. I asked her what I could get for her and she said, ‘A Dirty Martini.’ I said, ‘No, no, I made you that and you didn’t like it. That’s mine now. How about some wine?’ Then I finished her Martini and walked out.” He swiped his bar rag over the bartop and went off to pour someone else a drink.

Maybe I don’t have an epic story because I’ve been lucky enough not to work for or with people who would push me to that point. Somehow I’ve managed to zen through the moment and figure it out. But I couldn’t get the image of the bartender on the horse out of my mind, swigging Champagne, wearing a crown. A fabulous farewell. It made me think of my former bar husband, Nick, who quit to open his own amazing bar. I worked his last shift with him until midnight and then made myself go home so I could function through a brunch shift the following day. At 9:30 a.m., I unlocked the door. Music filled the room, blaring through the speakers. Great, I thought, he forgot to turn the iPod off. “I don’t want anybody else, when I think about you I touch myself,” the song told me. It played all the way through, and then it played through again. It wasn’t until the third repeat that I realized it was completely intentional. Through the “ahhhs” and “oooos” I searched for the iPod, realizing as the song started up for a fourth and then a fifth time that it had been strategically hidden and I had to open in less than 10 minutes.

My phone beeped: Miss me yet?

I don’t want anybody else, I wrote back, now where is the damn iPod?

I quit, you’ll figure it out. Smooch.