College of Awesome – How to Quit Your Shitty Job

Task

Effectively leave the shitty children’s science education job you started just 4 days before.

Background

We’ve all worked shitty jobs. Newspaper rounds, flipping burgers, call centre whoring; most people have worked their fair share of mind-numbing, soul-destroying horse-shit pay-check creators. You wake up each morning knowing you have to get dressed, have breakfast, lock the house and then drive yourself a place where you achieve a little bit of nothing each day. A place where your talents are wasted, you’re unappreciated, even belittled by your boss and co-workers. Every time you sit down for the pre-start meeting you feel a little piece of your soul die.

And that’s just the 3rd day

It’s important to know how to escape these pits of despair. Each one of these death-jobs is unique: each has it’s own traps, it’s own quit-preventing nuances. Some pay just enough to get you by, others tie you down through work-mates, some even involve a misguided loyalty to a faceless corporation. Many people would recommend an individual approach to quitting your job – quit in a way that’s most appropriate to the situation at hand. Well here at the Mighty Ginge we’ve heard your thoughts, and we’ve ignored them. Instead, here’s a sure-fire way to leave any shitty job at any time – quickly & cleanly, without any risk of suffering boss or co-worker induced guilt trips.

For simplicity sake we’ve created a hypothetical situation. A situation where an individual has started work as a member of the floor staff at a hypothetical science & technology museum in the hypothetical city of “Perth”. This individual has started work at our hypothetical science and technology museum to see if he can cope with the rigors of working with children with the plan to go into teaching. After 3 days of screaming, shitty, satanic little school children trying to injure themselves on the interactive displays; this hypothetical individual has decided that if he doesn’t quit immediately, he will mortally wound the next pre-teen that licks the controls on the toy crane set. It is at this point that our hypothetical job-quitter begins to implement the method listed below.

Pre-Requisites

While this technique can be applied in almost every situation, it does require some early ground work before implementation. Ensure that during your initial job interview, make your interviewer aware of your previous and recent military background. If you don’t have a previous background in the military, make it up – tell them some shit about being in the reserves for a few years, how you enjoyed teaching others in the military, but how you want the chance to help shape the lives of children instead.

Equipment Required

• 1x phone
• 1x pair of camouflage fatigues
• 1x pair of combat boots
• 1x ID lanyard
• The ability to lie to an employer without a shred of remorse

Method

1. Dress, have breakfast and prepare yourself for another day of work just like you have for the last 3 days
2. Walk out of your house and get in your car. Put the key in the ignition.
3. At this point you should be completely overwhelmed by the thought of enduring another 8 torturous hours with all those little screaming bags of pus – try as you might, you shouldn’t be physically capable of turning the key to start the ignition.
4. Have a complete psychotic break down, where you acknowledge that if you did drive to work it would almost certainly end in the accidental homicide of an under 12. At the end of this psychotic break, blank out.
5. When you come to, you should find yourself wearing the combat fatigues, camouflage fatigues and ID lanyard.
6. Pick up the phone and call your boss. At this time you will most likely get his answering machine as it’s half an hour before work.
7. Leave a message on your boss’s answering machine explaining that an Arabic interpreter had been shot that morning in Iraq, and because you were listed as the holder of a specialist skill as an Arabic* speaker, the Army has the right to call you up for immediate deployment for up to 2 years after you have left the services**. Ensure you use terms like “deployment” and “area of operations”, and refer to instructions from “Warrant Officer Kilpatrick” or “Staff Sergeant Cookes” (never just use “Sergeant”, it sounds like you’re making it up). Finish the message by saying you’re heading into work to return your keys, and then have to head around to the nearby Army base for deployment instructions.
8. Return to your car – this time you should have no issues starting the ignition.
9. Drive into the children’s science and technology museum; walking through the front door wearing your combat boots, fatigues, ID lanyard and with an overwhelmed look of your face (the face should be easy if you just imagine the potential threat of working with children ever again).
10. Meet your boss in his office – apologise for leaving him in a lurch, return your keys. He will undoubtedly blabber on for 10 minutes saying things like “If there’s anything we can do to help”, “You’re doing a great thing” and asking if you know when you’ll be heading off. Tell him you’re doing 3 weeks pre-deployment training in Shoalwater Bay, and then you’ll be deployed directly “to the area of operations”.
11. Ensure you make a joke about dying that’s in very bad taste (“Yeah, that’s if I make it back! Ha ha!”). Everyone present will feel awkward, convinced that you’re just trying to hide your nerves about going to war by making jokes and putting on a brave face.
12. Thank your ex-boss for the oppurtunity, appologise again for leaving so suddenly, then walk out the door to freedom.

Foolproof, provided your ex-boss doesn’t spot you in a local supermarket two weeks later. Although even if he does, he’ll be too confused to say anything.

*Iraq and Arabic can just as easily be swapped for Afghanistan and Farsi, Iran and Persian, or the Solomon Islands and English

**No part of this is actually true, but people working in children’s science education are unlikely to be aware of the bald-faced lie you’ve just told them