In 2011, Joey La Neve DeFrancesco had been working in room service at a luxury hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, for nearly four years, whisking delicacies on demand to guests’ rooms, when he reached breaking point. He was paid a measly $5.50 (£4) an hour, made to work punishingly long shifts and, to top it off, had managers taking a cut of his hard-earned tips.

The poor treatment ratcheted up after DeFrancesco and colleagues tried to unionise workers at the hotel. In response, managers would berate those involved for making tiny mistakes. Things got so petty that workers on shift who had to take calls from guests were banned from sitting down.

DeFrancesco decided to call it quits. On the day he finally bid farewell, he snuck into the hotel’s employee quarters with a seven-strong marching band and surprised his boss with a musical ambush. “I’m here to tell you that I’m quitting,” he said, before walking out to the triumphant soundtrack of his band in full swing and chanting “Joey quits”.

DeFrancesco, who was 22 years old at the time, hastily organised a friend to film the encounter. After sitting on the video for a few days, he uploaded it to YouTube where it quickly went viral. Thirteen years on, the video has amassed nearly 10m views.

“We really didn’t think it was going to get much attention,” says DeFrancesco. The 36-year-old labour organiser and musician, who lives in New York, says he felt “liberated” after he quit and turned the tables on his managers. “Now I’m going to embarrass you for treating everyone terribly here,” he says.

Did leaving in a viral blaze of glory hamper his ability to get another job? Not in the slightest. Soon after leaving, DeFrancesco began working in a museum. He says the incident has “honestly never come up” in job interviews since. In fact, he says it might be something to “put on the résumé”.

While DeFrancesco’s tale holds a strong position in the job resignation hall of fame, it faces increasing competition from a new generation of workers leaving their jobs with viral aplomb. The phenomenon of revenge quitting, where frustrated or unhappy employees show how they really feel about their workplaces, is on the rise. Even clergymen are not immune to such temptations: in July, Father Pat Brennan provided a “parting gift” to his congregation in the form of a poem that doubled up as a resignation letter, where he took aim at “disgruntled, unlikable” parishioners who spread “gossip” from their “holy lips”.

The employer-rating site Glassdoor warned late last year that “a wave of revenge quitting [is] on the horizon” in 2025 amid falling employee satisfaction. In the UK, a survey of 2,008 workers released in July by the recruitment company Reed found that 15% of British employees had revenge quit their jobs. The firm’s chair, James Reed reckons that social media was accelerating the trend after a flurry of revenge quitters shared their stories online. Brianna Slaughter was one of them, with their video ending with the rallying cry: “These corporations will fire you in one day and leave you with nothing. If you want to leave, leave babe.”

The 26-year-old American, who lives in Kyoto, Japan, was two hours away from teaching their next English class when they quit on the spot. For a while, things had been manageable, but everything changed with the arrival of a meddling new manager. “If I finished a lesson one minute early or one minute late, she would reprimand me,” Slaughter says.

When Slaughter started the job, they had plenty of free time and their colleagues were mostly “chill”, but the cracks soon began to appear. They were paid 2,000 yen (£10) per class, instead of an hourly wage, which meant having to stick around unpaid for hours between classes for a paltry paycheck. Schedules weren’t handed out until the day before, making planning almost impossible. And the job was sedentary, which took a toll. “I went to the doctor and they said, because you’re sitting all the time, you have inflammation in your neck,” Slaughter says.

Slaughter’s breaking point came with the arrival of the new manager. She told Slaughter to wear long-sleeved tops to hide their apparently “offensive tattoos” and often sat in on classes, which, they say, made everyone feel “awkward”. It got to a point where Slaughter was crying every night. Last May, after receiving a measly paycheck of 100,000 yen (£500) for a month of “hardcore classroom teaching”, enough was enough.

Slaughter sent a resignation letter to a higher-up, who “begged” them to stay, before swiftly reminding them of the two-month notice period. In their TikTok video, which has 1.2m views, Slaughter says they told their manager: “Two months? You’re lucky if I give you fucking two weeks. I gave you two hours, babe. I’m leaving now.”

Far from stalling their career, their tale going viral opened up new possibilities. “I made $7,000 on TikTok the month I quit,” says Slaughter, who has since made a living as a content creator, advising people interested in moving to Japan. Some even got in touch and said the video inspired them to say goodbye to their own toxic workplaces. “They said: I think I’m going to quit my job too. This was my sign.” For those still on the fence, Slaughter says: “You should have left yesterday.”

Young people are more likely to revenge quit. Reed said 26% of 18- to 34-year-olds and 22% of 35- to 44-year-olds in the UK admitted to doing it, compared with just 8% of people aged 45 to 54. In June, a survey by business research group the Conference Room found a 15% gap in job satisfaction between the youngest and oldest workers in the US, with 57% of under-25s saying they were satisfied with their jobs, compared with 72% of over-55s.

Four years ago, 25-year-old Carly, who lives in Alabama, US, was unemployed, “kind of broke and willing to take anything”. After contacting a temp agency, she was quickly offered a job as a receptionist, based on her CV alone, and she was asked to start the next day. “That was the first sign that this might not be the best place to work but I was desperate, so I took it,” she says.

The first three months were “fine” and she got a promotion to HR payroll manager, but things soon went south. A new colleague, who was related to the bosses, started badmouthing her and spread a false rumour that she was an alcoholic because she used a lamp in her office instead of the overhead light. “I just like ambience,” says Carly.

She was soon given an additional role on top of her current one: accounts payable manager. “It was just too much for one 21-year-old to manage by herself,” she says. The firm briefly hired a man (who was paid $10 an hour more than her) to take over her role as HR payroll manager but he was swiftly fired after messing up the company’s paychecks. She was forced back into doing both roles again.

“I was constantly stressed, upset, and crying,” she says. Things came to a head when Carly’s problem colleague called for her to attend a manager-wide meeting so he could “air out his frustrations” with her. “It was a ridiculous request,” she says. “He basically wanted to bully me in front of everyone.” She agreed to the meeting but, little did they know, she had other plans.

On the morning of the meeting, Carly woke up early, drove to the office and scheduled an email to all the managers “letting them know how fucked up their business was,” she says. It began fairly graciously. “I have decided that it is time to move on to a different venture,” it said, but soon ramped up. She took aim at her short-lived replacement, calling him “literally dumb as a rock” and said her heavy workload led to “daily stress that often built up into anxiety attacks and tearful nights”. Signing off, it said: “My laptop and keys are on my desk.”

After the email was sent, her boss tried to call her. She didn’t pick up the phone. “I never heard from them again,” she says. After Carly left the office for the final time, she felt euphoric. “I could have stripped my clothes off and run naked all the way home. The anxiety and stress I had been feeling all vanished,” she says.

She secured another job shortly afterwards, but she has some concerns about applying for future work. “If they ask, I’ll just be honest and say, if you treat me good, I will not do that to you,” she says.

While most people revenge quit to stick the middle finger to their bad bosses, warning off prospective new employees can also be a motivation. Katie Ostler had been working in a supermarket in Melbourne, Australia for two years when the time came to call it quits. She had started doing the job at 16 years old. “It was a really toxic, high-paced work environment and there was a lot of turnover,” she says.

Ostler, who is now 29, and lives in Manchester, UK, said her bosses had not bothered to learn her name for the first six months. “It wasn’t a great place to be but I just kind of kept my head down and did what I needed to do,” she says.

As she approached 18, a whole new set of job opportunities were opening up, specifically bar work. She was already handing her CV out to local pubs when an incident at the supermarket tipped her over the edge. One day, a customer began shouting at one of Ostler’s 15-year-old colleagues over a refund. Instead of backing up the young female employee, their manager took the side of the customer and joined in on the yelling. “I thought it was a good time to go,” she says.

Soon after, she was offered a job behind a bar and went to the supermarket to hand in her resignation with the one-week obligatory notice. She tried to give the letter to a supervisor, who said it needed to be handed directly to her manager. Ostler asked where he was, but was told that he was in the middle of an interview. They let slip where it was being held. She barged into the interview, handed her manager the letter and said aloud: “Don’t work here – here’s my resignation.” The room went silent and the interviewee gave her a confused expression. “It took a lot of bravery. I walked out before [my manager] could say anything,” she says.

It wasn’t the last she heard from him. She was on her way to start her new job when he called her and told her not to finish her final week because he “didn’t want my toxic energy” around the team. “I remember thinking, have you looked in the mirror?” she says. She did have to nip back to the supermarket for some groceries a few times afterwards. “I avoided it when I could, but people would recognise me and say hello. Unfortunately, no one was cheering when I came in,” she says. Still, resigning had felt triumphant enough. “I felt like a boss. It was a very empowering moment.”