“If You Don’t Like It, Leave”: 50 Times People Left Arrogant Folks Speechless

My great grandmother is notorious for being a mean old b***h. It was Thanksgiving at her house, and much of the extended family were there. She started harping on my mom's cousin for something, like she always does, and my mom's cousin was like, "Grandma, can't we just have a nice dinner for once?" And Great Grandma was like, "If you don't like it, leave!" And every last cousin, aunt, uncle, and all of their food disappeared to my aunt's house. Lol.

Yup, at a potluck, we had a Karen who went on a power trip and made rules that only benefited her. She screamed "“If You Don’t Like It, Leave”, the other mothers, fathers, all picked up there kids, took their dishes from the pot luck and left. It was only the Karen and us security guards. We weren't able to leave because we were on the job, however, we didn't share our pizza with her.

When I was in high school, a group of friends agreed to meet at a local pizza place after a Friday evening basketball game. Most of the group arrived before me and three of my friends, so when the four of us arrived, the hostess and server did not realize we were a part of the large group that was already filling the restaurant. (The students from our school represented about 75% of their now very full dining area.)

We were seated at the one available table in the middle of the room, received our menus, and were in the process of preparing our order, when my best friend asked the waitress for a napkin. She returned a moment later, gave him the napkins, and he responded with a friendly “Thank you!” I don’t know if she misheard him or what, but she immediately became angry and responded with a very harsh, “Stop giving me that attitude!” We were all taken aback, and I immediately stepped in to defend my friend, who was a naturally shy and quiet person. I explained he only told her thanks and did not have an attitude at all. She yelled at me, insisting that he was rude, and stormed away. The entire table had a moment of awkward silence, and then burst into laughter, along with several tables around us that had heard the exchange. It was all just so surreal. She literally got upset at our friend because he thanked her for bringing him a napkin.

But we quickly went back to preparing our order, until the manager approached the table and said that she had been told we were giving one of her waitresses a hard time. I explained what happened, and as I did, the rest of the dining room went quiet, as they had realized that something tense was taking place. Then the manager cut me off mid sentence, told me that she dealt with disrespectful teens like us all the time and was sick of it. She then told us that we could take our business elsewhere. So I agreed, and our table stood up to leave. And, almost as one, 75% of the customers in their dining room on that Friday evening stood up and walked out with us.

I will never forget the stunned look on that manager’s face as she watched hundreds of dollars of sales leave with us. It was the last time I ate there. And that was a pity, because I loved their pizza.

My husband worked at a really toxic job for a while. As staff got fired or quit, they weren't replaced (to cut costs) and instead the remaining 2 employees were worked to death. Finally, the owner (who was a s****y boss and terrible businessman) called a meeting with the 2 to try to force an attitude adjustment. The employees tried to be constructive and talk about things they saw that needed to be improved upon to make things work better, and of course this egotistical a*****e owner wouldn't have it. He told them if they couldn't handle the expectations that they were free to leavs. So they did. Both of them left immediately and never set foot in the store again. I don't think the owner was expecting that at all - he expected them to grovel and beg to keep their jobs and thank him for the opportunity to work 70-hour weeks under his tyrannical rule.

My husband called me after that meeting and was so upset he couldn't hardly tell me what happened. He was terrified- he was so sure I would be angry at him for quitting his job when we really weren't in a position that I could support us. I wasn't mad at all! I was so proud of him for not taking the s**t that was being doled out to him and doing what is best for his mental health. He's a d**n good man and deserved better.

Msbakerbutt69:

I'd rather be slightly broke with a happy husband than rich with an unhappy one.

When I was a kid I stayed at a friend's house for the weekend. My friend's mother was one of those parents who, at the dinner table, required their kids to eat everything on their plate come hell or high water.

I had been served way too much food, and said that I can't eat it all. The mother said to me, "you can either finish your food or leave the table." I promptly left the table.

This totally blew the minds of my friend and his siblings. It had never occurred to them that leaving the table was actually a viable option.

When my mother picked me up the next day, my friend's mother told her what had happened and said I was the rudest little boy. I think my mother was actually quite proud of me.

Turles5000:

My parents were like this growing up. I still clean my plate as an adult often which causes me to over eat. Its not a healthy way to raise children IMO, and although I don't have extreme weight issues I can see how some people could develop issues.

My mother is well known for her Christmas/Easter/whatever tantrums. She threw a particularly good one when I was about 14, and yelled the infamous line.

My Uncle and Aunt piled themselves, their daughter, and myself and about 5 of my siblings into their 4WD, and we all left to go to their place, picking up KFC for lunch on the way.

Don't know what kind of Christmas my mother had, but ours was pretty good in the end! So glad we didn't get pulled over!

Every year the military has this event they host named The Warrior Games. It's like the olympics for men and women who were injured while serving. I'm a decent cyclist so I was selected to represent the Marine Corps team in that event. I'm not sure where they hold the event these days but the year I was selected they flew us out to Colorado Springs. When I got there I quickly realized that 99% of the Marines competing were still active duty. I had retired a few years prior so it was weird being around Marines again.

Almost immediately after arriving the senior leaders and officers in charge began demanding that I get my haircut and to shave my beard. At first I laughed it off and thought they were joking. Turns out they were quite serious. The lady who was in charge of the Marine team was a Major and she took me off to the side and "ordered" me to get a haircut. I reminded her that I had retired a few years prior and was no longer required to abide by active military grooming standards.

Then a lightbulb went off in her head and with a smirk she said "well you either get a haircut or you can go home. Your choice." So I smirked back and said "guess I'm flying home!" They had already prepurchased our airplane tickets home so all I did was call Delta, explain what happened, and the lady on the other end transferred my ticket to a flight home the next day. I had taken a few weeks off work to attend this event so I just went back home and enjoyed my time off with my hair and beard.

From 1996-1999 I worked for Burger King. It was my first job and I stayed because they were close to home, my friends worked there, and they were very accommodating for my buddy school (and then university) schedule.

At one point they fired our favorite manager, Kevin. We were never really told why, he was just gone one day. They replaced him with a complete t**d of a human.

The t**d started forcing us to sell food that policy said was too old to sell. He cut down on ketchup portions for carryout fries. He started short staffing us so things weren't getting cleaned correctly. Scheduled students when they had class. Just a general jerk who didn't know what he was doing.

Burger King didn't realize Kevin had an entire well-oiled crew who was loyal to him. They told us to deal with the new manager instead of trying to fix his issues. So we left.

All of us.

The entire crew save a few nights shift closers who had to have a job walking distance from their apartments.

Kevin became the store manager of a newly opened pizza place and needed to hire a whole crew. God news for him is he didn't have any trouble finding one that one what they were doing and worked well together.

So that was the day I went from burger maiden to pizza princess. Stayed there 3 years, too, until I got through college.

It’s the last thing my really wicked mother ever said to me, when I was 17.

She worked for a small business college and demanded that I attend that school after graduating high school. They had programs that were for Travel and Tourism, Administration, etc. The average age of the student at this 2 year college was 32. I remember thinking (at that time) ‘I don’t wanna go to college with a bunch of OLD people’. All my friends were attending four year schools, universities, etc. I knew i was going to have to pay for school on my own, so I wanted to enjoy it and have it be on my own terms.

She told me that was my lone path and ‘if you don’t like it, you can leave.’

I dipped out. Age 17. Had nowhere to go. Prayed that a friend would let me stay at his place for a few nights to chill.

Next time I saw her, was 12 years later. She was in a coma-post CVA secondary to diabetes and a myriad of other health issues. She died two days later.

I now have my doctorate, and a great life. But also, a head full of memories that no one deserves to have from a childhood run by a hateful b***h.

At my old job they put in place a new policy, which at the time we didn't realize that it was probably illegal( i won't say the name of the company) but basically in simple terms was if you had to miss work for ANYTHING, the pointed you, and three full points was termination. One of my co-workers had jury duty, so he had to miss. Pointed him for it. My wife went into labor, I got pointed. A few other people had unavoidable instances and were point. Eventually, we all had HR come down to the factory so we could express our complains, and the lady say " if you don't like it, find another job". Not even 5 minutes after she said that, 45 people of a 55-person crew left THAT DAY. Me included.

I was born into the cult that is the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses (JW). I was told from a young age that I was only permitted to live with my mother if I was a good and faithful JW, if I wasn't committed to the big J then I was out on my a*s. I remember one large argument I had with my mother in the car when she suddenly pulled over and screamed at me to get out and never come back because I wasn't being a good enough little JW. I refused because I was a scared little child.

Fast forward to my teen years and she still made it clear that it was Jehovah's way or the highway. So I left. It was a f*****g massive drama. My mother called my older siblings and 'elders' from the congregation (church group) and they all came over to try and talk me out of it. It was this huge ordeal, but I stuck to my guns and left that very night with a suitcase full of my stuff and my school backpack.

I already had a little unit lined up and had already paid the security bond on it. I moved in with a friend from school who was also having some trouble at home. That was probably the biggest defining moment of my life so far. If I hadn't moved out then I'd still be a d**n JW and would have a COMPLETELY different life to the one I have and love now.

JW's suck.

My dad. Without going into too much detail, he had gone back on an agreement we had and i was protesting, so he said "As long as you and your brother live under our roof, you obey our rules. Otherwise, you can leave."

I was 22 years old and had my own fulltime job, so i said "ok then" and started packing right then and there. Found a place, moved out, and done. Dad basically was all surprisedpikachu.jpg lol it felt great.

My aunt's 40th birthday. It had been a long day and we were set to eat dinner but she decided that she wanted to open gifts. My mom tried to explain that everyone was hungry and to just wait until we were done eating or at the very least until everyone had a plate. She starts getting pissy and saying that it's her day and that if we don't like it we can leave. Now my dad. Not too fond of my aunt for reasons I won't get into here. Gets up and walks out. Well this started a chain reaction. The only people left were my mother and grandmother. My aunt starts yelling and getting upset to which my grandmother replies. "Maybe don't be a b***h?" It's been ten years and she has never acted that way again.

A former industrial job I used to have said that during an all-hands meeting. We were understaffed, underpaid, and overworked, and everyone knew it. Instead of the 2/1 ratio of two machines to one operator for safety reasons, we'd have 4, 6, 8, because people were getting paid less than most retail jobs to bust their asses in some of the most disgusting work I've ever done. You'd come home covered in moldy coolant, metal shavings, and STINK. Machines started breaking down, because they'd never shut them down to perform maintenance on them, so we'd often have massive problems, which, of course, meant even more overtime to make up for the broken machines, and people started quitting.

Management's response was to tell us that they expected us to work harder, because they couldn't get more help in. One of my coworkers, who generally gave no f***s, asked, in front of everyone in that room, why they didn't try raising the poor wages, and see if they could entice people that way. The response was "We're not having that conversation right now. If you don't like it, you can quit."

Hoo, buddy, was that the wrong thing to say. As soon as word got out to the other shifts, what can only be called a f*****g exodus began. We lost half of each shift within the week. I stuck around for a few more weeks, until I had a conflict with my schooling at the time, since one of my classes got out about 30 minutes before my shift, 30 minutes away, so I warned them in advance that I might be a few minutes late one day a week, MAYBE, and got told that "I needed to decide what was more important, my school, or my job." So I quit. And giggled my a*s off at the sign in the HR office that said we had an almost 80% turnover rate. Never did find out what happened to that hellhole, but I can't imagine anything good with losing that many people. The poor HR rep seemed like she was just so f*****g done with everything, and seemed so very apologetic as she took my badge.

Not exactly but my sister had a habit of picking fights with people and when it wasn't going her way, she'd tell them she was removing them from her life. She's done it to boyfriends, long time friends, sorority sisters...she did it to me twice.

The first time, I rolled my eyes because she's younger than me. After the second time my sister told me "I'm removing you from my life, you're toxic!" and unfriended me and told family I was toxic (in reality, I wasn't letting her be toxic, selfish, and under the influence of whatever she was on with/to me, my spouse, or my kids, so she decided to was a good idea to threaten us) I said okay, fine.

Per her usual routine, after a few weeks she came around and wanted to pretend she never said the things she said I didn't respond. She claimed it all was a joke and she had a right to be in my kids lives. I haven't spoken to her in two years. I honestly do not miss her drama and it was the best decision for my family. It highlighted how bad the generational dysfunction was in my family and how it was expected to just overlook bad behavior and people please for everyone else's comfort.

I realized that I didn't want my kids to repeat that cycle. I vowed to always put my kids first. I'm not popular in my family right now but I've never been happier and this was the first year I got to enjoy holidays without having panic attacks or dread. When someone walks out of your life, let them.

When my parents divorced my dad said "fine, if you think i'm so awful you can go live with mom."

Guess what I and all my siblings did.

I was the whistleblower at my workplace, I witnessed my manager mentally and physically ab**e a 101 year old woman (I worked in a care home) I raised the alarm, and staff above the manager didn’t deal with things quick enough and over worry of a bad name (press had gotten ahold of the story) they were trying to keep it quiet and were going to allow this manager back to work on a final warning.

We were a small team, about 8 of us.. when they told us that, all of us reached in to our bags and threw our notices at them, it was all of us, or her. A week or so later and them paying her £15k she was gone. Worst thing is, we were a charity care home, she basically got thousands and thousands of pounds for ab**ing a vulnerable elderly woman.

Anon:

You were incredibly restrained and correct in your response.
As an American after 5 years of taking care of my grandfather and grandmother and another three to four years of just taking care of my grandfather I would have whooped that lady's a*s. I would have broke some kneecaps.

At an off-campus college party, the host - a tenor voice major in the music dept. - started playing Wagner and Verdi operas *full blast*.

When those attending asked him to play something else that they could all like, he said: "You all need to LEARN to like opera - if you won't give it a fair try, you can always just leave!"

And with that, everyone left.

In high school, when it came time to dissect baby pigs, one of my friends would just quietly sit and sob while trying to dissect (*big* animal lover, couldn't stand it). Our teacher was incredibly rude about it, being really insensitive and all the other kids caught on, too. She basically told us that if we didn't like it, the door was right there. So we all got up and left, one by one, goggles still on and everything. I think like only 2 kids stayed behind.

I think it was 6th grade, we were all playing a game of truth or dare, but one of the really pervy boys starting daring the girls to kiss some of the other boys, or lay on them. All the girls told him to knock it off but he just said “if you don’t like it, leave the game” everyone AND I MEAN everyone (we had 14-17 people there) got up and left him there.