I worked at a place whose policy was that you had to give four weeks notice to get your vacation paid out.

I remember getting the call from the place I was going to where they gave me the offer. I said yes and they asked when I would start. They said “well, you probably have to give like two weeks notice so that would put us at such-and-such date” and I had to tell them that no, I had to give four weeks notice. I remember them being surprised that that was a thing.

At the place I was leaving, I also had a real asshole boss. He decided randomly that we were slacking off or some shit and started demanding 7:00am demoes every day. (I wrote software there.) When I’d secured a position elsewhere, I pulled the boss aside and gave him my 4-week notice. I was the tech lead and lead architect and basically in-charge-guy on the team of only 4 people for “Big Project™”. The boss had arbitrarily made up a due date for “Big Project™” and promised that timeline to the managers over him over my team’s objections. By the time I quit, the arbitrary deadline had already passed and he was getting pressured. With me gone, it was doomed to slip much later still.

The asshole boss asked me why and I ended up telling him – politely – exactly all the problems I had with him. That and leaving him in the lurch of his own making were kinda cathartic, honestly.

The asshole boss got fired on a “do not pass go, do not clear out your desk, security will escort you out” basis after I left. As if I wasn’t already overdosing on schadenfreude. What exactly he did to get fired is the subject of rumor only. I heard someone say he called the CTO incompetent and promised to replace him in a meeting with lots of people. Another rumor involved a possible affair with someone else high up in the IT department.

Whatever the case, I think it was more awkward for asshole boss than for me. But he deserved it.