Boss forces part-time employee to start working full-time or quit, ends up regretting it immediately

Part-time jobs allow individuals to supplement their income while not straining themselves too much. In addition to the income, they can also gain experience and develop skills while maintaining some flexibility. With that being said, the reason part-time jobs work is because they do not take up a lot of time of a person's day. u/AZNM1912 shared a story of how his part-time employer forced him to go full-time. So, he took a stand and quit. 

The post titled, "My part-time job told me I had to go full time or quit. This is coming from the same company who says nobody wants to work," has gained a significant 22.3K upvotes on the platform along with 1.2K comments. The man starts by sharing that he had a full-time and a part-time job. He worked on a part-time job a few nights a week and a weekend day. His most recent one was at a small recycling company that involved taking apart old computers. 

Everything was going okay till his boss came in and demanded that he come in full-time beginning next week as he could not find other help. The poster reminded him that he had another full-time job that allowed him to pay the bills and offered benefits. Upon hearing this, their boss did not take it well and responded, "Nobody wants to work." He went on to say that if the OP could not join full-time, they should quit.

The man initially believed his boss was joking but soon found out that he was serious. He asked his manager, "So, you can't find help, but you'd rather have me quit than work part-time?" Upon inquiring when he could quit, the boss suggested he could do it immediately. So the OP did not waste any time and immediately left. The boss then texted him three times, but he decided not to respond or look at it. He conclude, "Might as well enjoy my nights and weekends for a while. His logic just doesn't make sense to me." 

People who read the story could relate to the poster's situation and shared their thoughts in the comments section. u/Swordfishtrombone13 said, "Yeah, the whole idea of 'If you work here, we are your only job' needs to go on to the s*** pile. Business is being dragged into a new world... kicking and screaming." 

Another user, u/TristanaRiggle, shared their own experience which was quite similar to the OP's, "Many managers only have 'do it, or you're fired' as their one and ONLY lever to pull against employees. This lever is useless against people who have options and less than useless against people who know the manager has no authority over them. I had a manager who would regularly come into meetings angry because 'Why isn't X done?' We would promptly and dutifully explain that we were waiting for some other group to sign off; we had done all our work but couldn't go forward without sign-off. At this point, the manager would sigh impotently and move on because she couldn't threaten the other group and had no skills to find another way to get them to do their part on these projects. We would REGULARLY have projects sit in limbo for weeks or even MONTHS because of this."

Editor's note: This article was originally published on September 1, 2023. It has since been updated.