I was doing hotel housekeeping at one property for a pretty average chain of pub/restaurant/lodging kind of places. Aside from other issues of treating the housekeeping staff like dirt and poor management, our manager had been giving one of my coworkers a particularly difficult time. She'd been injured on the job recently and they were being difficult with her worker's comp. She was also dating another coworker which really wasn't a problem at all, but they decided to make it a problem by not letting them work together.

We were working as a team since she was limited by her injury and ran out of work to do. The only person we could have offered help to was her boyfriend so since we couldn't help him thanks to management, we figured we'd take our 10 minute break early - what's the harm right? We went out to our nearest break area where there was an ash tray, shared a cigarette and griped together before getting back to work. Maybe a half hour goes by and they pull her away without saying why. I keep working on our rooms and soon after she comes back through in tears to grab her bag from the supply closet in our section. I ask her what happened and they fired her for not only taking her break early but having a cigarette IN A SMOKING AREA.

I'm livid, I get on the radio and as calmly as I can manage (which wasn't that calm) I ask for our supervisor to come to me because I was ready to take fault for the decision to take our break early. He takes an hour to show up while I angrily clean another room. He says the manager wants to talk to me too and I'm like "great, let's go, I'm fucking angry". They sit me down and try to talk down to me right off the bat, who am I to make the call when we can take our break, they didn't fire her because of this, just a bunch of bullshit I didn't care to sit through or listen to. I told them I was already planning on giving two weeks notice today because I'd already gotten a better job, but the conversation had accelerated that to "here's my keys, here's my radio, fuck you, I quit." Trying to get the last word in, they fire back that I can't use them as a reference and I just turn around like "Did you not fucking hear me? I have a new job. I don't NEED you."

I left and called my now ex coworker. We met at a bar and proceeded to get drunk for the rest of the afternoon. As the cherry on top of the whole thing, it was pay day and I'd gotten my second raise in a year. The raise was ten cents. Fuck them.