I once quit a job without giving two weeks’ notice. I quit after my lunch break. The boss wasn’t surprised at all. I think she even wondered why it took so long like it was a bet amongst the bosses. Each day that went by with me still on the line was another nickel in the jar.
I worked at a trophy factory in Tampa and made the medals people wear around their necks after winning track meets and whatnot. For some reason we made lots of medals for the PBA – “The Police Benevolent Association” and I thought that if I ever got pulled over I could use this as a conversation starter.
I was on an assembly line and would be given scalding hot medals from out of the mold and was to sand down the edges on a steel-brush sander until they were smooth and round. Like when Christmas cookies come out with bits that are cooked under the Santa mold. My job was to remove those bits with spinning bristles of steel. These were very hot cookies and shards of lead would fly off everywhere. Although, if this were a candy factory I would absolutely leave little pieces of chocolate if they looked like Santa penis’.
Along the line, there were several of us with varied levels of sanders in front of us. The first would sand off the rough edges with each in the line making the edges smoother until the last in line had a very fine sander that polished the final product. Although each on the line spoke a different language… I was the only one who could communicate with any of them. On Tuesdays, it was my day to control the radio – I got news from the outside this way.
We were in a hot windowless room. Often while sanding the medals I would secretly sharpen a screwdriver into a fine point to make a shiv for the day I broke free. I would tuck it under my lab coat when one of the bosses walked by and ask for a “piss break boss”.
We had to wear lab coats to keep the shards of medals off our clothes. Once, I had my coat open and got it caught in the sander when I took a big old “look how many medallions I’ve completed” stretch. The sander instantly pulled me up to the machine and was sanding my already hairless chest until the Korean guy next to me turned off the power to my machine. He gave me a pat on the back as if to say, “This is why we keep our coats buttoned you little jackass who plays stupid music on Tuesday.”
The next day, the “No accidents in 300 days” sign changed to “No accidents in 1 day” and everyone hated me even more.
It wasn’t many more days before I decided to quit on my lunch break. I didn’t even have to use my weapon.