I handed in my notice a short while later and everyone was, to my surprise, surprised. I really didn’t understand why the shock…until I learned in due course that most people don’t follow through.

When I was a young adult, I used to work as a lab tech in a plasma center. That involved taking liter bottles of plasma, checking the computer system, filling out paperwork, drawing fluid and taking blood vials to run in a centrifuge, and frequently having to redo paperwork because the barely-trained phlebotomists kept sending them to me covered in drops of blood. Of course, this not only took longer, but meant I had to sanitize the entire area, change PPE, and get shit from the rest of the team for not just taking their biohazard-contaminated paperwork regardless. The room held 50 to 100 donors at a time, and the lab team was just two people.

My immediate boss would routinely just fucking disappear or taking random lunches, even during rushes, leaving me to handle everything on my own. She'd get pissy over small things, and spent time chatting with management in the offices, just hanging out, while I did all the work.

One day, she did something like this and left. I muttered to myself that I was going to quit. I finished the sample I was working on and went into the -40 degree biohazard freezer to store the sample.

Cut to a minute later, I came out of the freezer to see someone from management in the lab, saying "I heard you're quitting?"

...what?

She said "Fine then. Go ahead and go." (or something like that.)

I was stunned, but realized that my shitty manager must have heard me on her way out, and fucking told on me. I hadn't planned on following through, and was mostly just upset at being used, but now?

"Fuck it." I thought. "I said I'll do it, so I'll do it."

I'm not a good speaker, but I basically stumbled over some short apology like that I would have finished the work day first, but would leave now if she wanted to. Her reply was to get all exasperated, as if she hadn't expected me to do anything but crumple at being confronted, and she told me "Well, have a nice life then!" as I walked out the door. Never saw her or my shitty manager again. Years later, I did hear my shitty manager had gotten fired or something, for being shit at hear job.

I think I made the right choice.

(Edited for typos, so many typos....)