I have worked in escape rooms for years, I'm like a professional escape room employee I guess. for MANY MANY reasons I've wanted out, and only recently (like within the last two months) started looking to redirect my work life. I told my boss my intent to leave, but that I would stay around long enough to finish the one room we started designing. but I am wondering if I should even give this place that much, or if I should just leave the second I get a chance.

I have a whole list of reasons I want to leave, but yesterday was PRETTY bad. I don't know if it was any worse than any of the other bad days, this job is just death by a million cuts. so over the winter I have made some doll head puppets in my down time and the intent was to make commercials to post to social media with them. so I designed some puppets, spent time making them, wrote up a few scripts, and was almost ready to go. a few final things I needed were some props. nothing major, but I made a google doc for the boss to reference and asked him to get those for me. I also needed a camera to actually shoot the commercial on. I have an SLR, but it's old and doesn't read SD cards anymore, so it doesn't have tons of space on it and I don't think it will work for that reason. then there's my phone, which is eh. my boss has a nice camera, he's brought it in to shoot other things for the escape room. he has a camera, a camera stand, lights, tons of stuff. all I really wanted was the camera and camera stand, though. so I tell him the last few things I need to get this thing going, and he says it's no problem he can bring the camera in. and then I tell him again, and again, and again.

he never brings in the camera and stand. he keeps saying he will, but he doesn't. literally, dude, just through one (1) camera and one (1) camera stand in your car and deliver it to the escape room. once there I will take it from there. he has these items already HE OWNS THESE ITEMS, he just needs to bring them in for me. and the thing that gets me is he frequently makes do-to lists and puppet commercial is ALWAYS on there for me to do. every time he brings up me making them, I point out that I still need the camera. bring me the camera and I will start. so after asking so many times for the camera before I start planning to shoot, I change my tactic. I get some friends together, we decide on a date, and I tell him, hey, I'm gonna get started on the puppet commercial. my friends are coming in on THIS DATE to shoot the commercial, so get me the camera by then. no longer asking him to bring it in when he has time, now telling him to bring it in by this time. I gave him a little over a weeks notice (not counted the months I've been asking prior to this) about my plan to shoot on this date. he says okay, he can do that. I go in a day before the date we planned to shoot to run a room that was booked, I see there's still no camera, so I send him another message, just a reminder, we're shooting tomorrow, when can you bring in the camera? he says he can get it in by 10 am that day. okay, great. filming day comes around, he messages me, asking when my friends plan on showing up, I tell him later in the afternoon, shouldn't be a problem right? because it's almost 10 am, so you're heading there with the camera? no, he texts me back and says it will be later that day, then goes on to list all of these things he is up to that day, and expresses frustration that he has to run around so much and has so much work to do today.

A PROBLEM THAT COULD HAVE BEEN SOLVED IF HE BROUGHT IN THE CAMERA ANY OF THE OTHER HUNDRED TIMES I ASKED FOR IT.

by this point I feel like I am going crazy. is it this unreasonable to ask your boss to give you the supplies to need to complete the task he wants you to complete? is there some other way to make a commercial that doesn't involve a camera that I am unaware of? why is it so hard to just bring in a camera. it's a small camera too. it's a hand held camera and the camera stand is retractable. I don't know.

I don't care, I am moving forward. I will bring my old crap camera, and if it doesn't work it doesn't work. we get there, cameras still aren't there, so I give the boss some buffer time by running my friends through the scenes, lines, all that. boss finally shows up with his friend and all the camera stuff. okay, GREAT. finally we are making some progress with these god forsaken puppets.

he then goes to open the door to a mostly unused office and there is a huge puddle of water on the floor dripping down the walls. this is unrelated to the puppets, the puppets did not cause the water leak. but we realize the gardener who was there earlier that day left the hose on. so this is a mess. but hey, good thing I was so persistent about filming today, right? neither of us had any other reason to be there that day, and this could have been missed for even longer and caused even more damage if we weren't there at the time. so I try to do the whole looking on the bright side thing. he doesn't see it that way and starts to get angry. when he gets mad, he tends to hit things and throw things, so he's moving things out of puddle but like by throwing them, and he kicks a table that isn't even in the way of the puddle, and I really don't appreciate that. so I leave with my puppets, go into the other room, and start filming with my friends, and trying to shield them from his temper tantrum. my puppets and my friends don't need this drama. I hear him and his friend talking, and his friend is even trying to calm him down and offering to help clean this mess.

my friends and I do a few takes, I like what we have, I am hoping boss has a handle on the mess in the other room so maybe I can leave this day on a good note. I finally accomplished something! my friends head off and I am downloading all the videos to the computer to look through them when I hear the boss from the other room yell expletives at someone. at first I think it's his friend, because this wouldn't be the first time he's had a friend over to help his business and it ends in a fight, and I decide I've worked enough for the day. I put everything away, clock out, go to leave. I'm tired, I don't want to be here while a 50 year old man and rampaging over an accident none of us had control over. I see his friend is using a shop vac on the water and boss is sitting on a bench on the phone, so maybe he didn't yell at his friend.

but the vibes are bad. I finally made progress on a project I've been assigned because I had to basically force my boss into action, but I want to just be happy I finally got SOME project done for the business before I bail. but he's out there, just expelling his anger everywhere, as if his friend isn't there to help, as if his employee isn't on the premise, as if his EMPLOYEE'S FRIENDS weren't around to see this.

I had an interview somewhere else. I am hopeful. it's not a done deal, but if they offer me the job, my plan was to start there and ease my way out of the escape room while I start at this new job. but this incident, and like a hundred other things are leaving me wondering why I am giving this place even that much loyalty. I don't want to leave an unfinished project. but the dude could barely get me SUPPLIES for me to do most of the work. when it comes to actually building an ENTIRE ESCAPE ROOM SET, how often will I be left waiting on him? never mind the fact that he has no handle on his stress at all. he's a mess. how long does this really need to be my problem? am I PROVING anything by staying till this room is built, or am I just torturing myself? I feel like if I leave without helping build this room, it will derail so many of his plans. but... he's derailing my plans. he's even derailed my plans for HIS own business. for my conscious I wanted to finish the room we designed, but... if me leaving ruins him, isn't that his fault?

I just wanted the puppet project to be something fun and something I could tie positive feelings to, man.

First, genuinely sorry that you have to deal with such a shitty boss. Tbh he sounds like an abusive supervisor and like he creates a toxic work environment, either due to his temper problems or his inability to work with people and respect your time as an employee.

I've been in a somewhat similar position (though my former supervisor was more passive-aggressive), so forgive me if you don't want/need advice--I just thought I'd share my perspective and the things I think about in situations like this. Ignore everything below if this sort of feedback isn't what you need!

If you live in the US in a right-to-work state (or a place with similar laws), you have no legal obligation to stick around with an employer for any amount of time. Two weeks' notice or "after X project is done" is just considered polite if you want to maintain a professional relationship with them.

Do you think that it will be important in the future to have your current boss listed as a reference for future jobs? And if so, can you trust him to be a good reference? There are some bosses who react spitefully and purposely give bad references while lying to workers and saying that they can be a good reference. I've definitely encountered them in the past.

Aside from that, if you're currently thinking to ease into your new job by staying at the escape room until the new project is done, can you really count on your boss to do his part to complete it on time? It just sounds like he dropped the ball REAL bad with something as simple as bringing in the camera, so based on that alone, I just wonder if completing the new room would also get dragged out an potentially affect your new job.

Regardless of whether you stick around or drop the escape room job immediately, I hope your next job is much better!

"can you really count on your boss to do his part to complete it on time?" EXTREMELY this.

there's been other things he hasn't followed through on before. he only started looking for more employees after I told him I was leaving. it's been almost a year since we've been discussing hiring more people to help. he's expressed disappointment and frustration in the lack of staff we have in the past, but it's only since I told him I'm leaving that I see him now actually start looking, and I realized this whole time he HADN'T been looking. he just like, expected staff to fall into his lap. like, before he made it sound like there just weren't any people applying, but now I actually see the effects of him trying. he's had several interview with people since I talked to him, and even hired a new person to start.so I could have help this whole time?

and because I know how short staffed we are, I wanted to finish this room, I feel like me leaving could really, actually, set this escape room back, and all these people excited for a new room from us won't get it when we promised. so it's more of a thing where I feel morally responsible. but what isn't helping is he's been making a lot of defeatist comments lately about himself and the business, and I don't know if this is intentional guilt tripping, or he just doesn't know how it comes off, but he says a lot of stuff like "I thought I finally got this place to a point it could grow" and "I feel like I'll never get this place off the ground"

it's been an escape room since 2017, by the way, and has been featured on some escape room websites and being a very high quality, fun escape room. I think it IS a good escape room.

I feel like I am just in a situation where I feel one way, but I am constantly being bombarded with the other side's take on things and that is this business will fall apart without me and this man's dreams will be shattered. like obviously I should leave, but when and how? I tried to do the nice thing and offer to complete a project, but you are entirely right. he couldn't do a simple thing to help me complete a small project, so if I backed out of my word now would I be wrong? what has he done to show me it's worth it? why hinge your dreams on the effort of someone else?

And what does staying earn for you? It's not your company. If it fails and falls short on due dates and projects that's on him 100% while I get feeling bad to those you leave behind ultimately you have to cover for you. If this next possible job is better for you go for it. It may not be a dream job or anything amazing, however having a more reliable work experience for future jobs to call is going to do you so much better than this flaky guy ever will. Encourage the others to get out of there too. Nobody deserves to have to contend with his mood swings. It's why I'm considering leaving my current work. One nasty attitude supervisor is all it takes to ruin a workforce. There's 3 of us loudly talking of leaving idk if there's more. Its on the owner/company to run a well staffed and functional job not the workers. If we can't be provided a decent thing to work from and we move on to better not our fault.