It's fair to say that the passenger who insulted Steven Slater at Pittsburgh Airport in the summer of 2010 didn't expect to turn him into a global celebrity. Yet that's precisely what happened the moment the JetBlue flight attendant heard the slur and cracked.
Seconds later Slater grabbed the aircraft intercom and responded with a foul-mouthed tirade before concluding: "I've been in the business 28 years. I've had it. That's it!"
He then stole some beer from the galley, activated the plane's emergency exit and slid down the inflatable slide on to the tarmac, before catching a bus to the terminal.
As job resignations go it's pretty much a stroke of genius - even if Slater was later arrested. It's also one that's touched the maverick nerve of anyone who's ever suffered idiot customers and moronic bosses (ie all of us).
Yet Steven is by no means the only person to have resigned with panache, as our list of the greatest job resignations proves.
Only the criminally insane would have stepped into the ring with Lennox Lewis in his prime, so fellow heavyweight slugger Riddick Bowe was clearly in full control of his marbles when he dumped his WBC heavyweight championship belt into a bin rather than face the Londoner.
By resigning from the title mid-press conference Riddick possibly saved himself from a savage pummelling.
Oddly, Bowe went on to join the US Marines, only to discuss leaving on his first day and quitting for good 11 days later.
As the host of The Tonight Show in the late 1950s, US comic Jack Paar was one of the biggest names in American TV. That is, until an editor changed one of his gags and he snapped mid-broadcast.
"I'm leaving The Tonight Show," said Jack. "There must be a better way to make a living than this, a way of entertaining people without being constantly involved in some form of controversy. I love NBC but they let me down."
Jack then stormed off and left a startled announcer holding the mic. Cue adverts.
Computer programmers are not generally regarded as the sort of crazy wildmen who blow their stacks and go off the rails. But that's without reckoning on Aussie games developer Jarrad Woods who created a unique Super Mario Resignation Game to tell his boss he'd had enough.
In the best tradition of the moustachioed plumber, you leap around the screen on various blocks. Yet this one ends with a full screen flashing "I QUIT" at the end of the last level.
As the chief exec of a global computer giant like Sun Microsystems, you'd expect Jonathan Schwartz to close the door behind him with dignity and a safely banked golden handshake. Not a bit of it.
When Sun was sold to Oracle in 2006 its top man let the world know he was calling it quits because he was a bit pants at his job by tweeting: "Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more."
If only all bosses were so honest!
The basic laws of physics state that the taller a building is the more likely someone will be to leap off the top clutching a parachute. Yet Canadian thrill-seeker Bill Eustace didn't even wait for Toronto's CN Tower to be completed before he made his crazy plummet.
As a construction worker on the site, Eustace was able to reach the top of the tower and jump through the scaffolding, earning himself the title of 'most dangerous job resignation ever' in the process.
His less-than-chuffed boss commented through gritted teeth: "This isn't a circus, it's a construction site!"
Rugby is all about getting your retaliation in first, but Aussie Rugby League legend Mal Meninga went one better when he turned his hand to politics - by resigning pretty much before he'd started.
Better still, he did it live on radio, saying "I'm buggered. I'm sorry. I have to resign," just moments into his first political interview. The length of Mal's political career? A mere 28 seconds.
We've all been underpaid and overworked at some stage. But very few of us have savoured the glorious taste of airing our gripes to the management.
So raise a glass to underpaid DJ Inetta 'the Moodsetta' Hinton, who went one better and broadcast her complaints during a mid-programme resignation from WBLX radio in Alabama, finishing her rant about low pay with the words: "I quit this bitch!" Class.
There's only one thing that's funnier than someone resigning in the nude - and that's someone resigning in the nude on camera while dancing along to James Brown in a bizarre Star Wars homage.
In what must rank as the weirdest job resignation ever a Frenchman called, er, Joy, jumped ship from the Emakina computer company by baring all - and telling the staff he wanted to have sex with them to boot! Zut alors!
Source:Specials