"What job will you get now?"
"I don't know, I don't know; any damn job better than this," he said very bitterly.
Having adopted the quitting idea, these six days were too much to endure. A little later, Jock was ready to make front-wall. He saw Shorty and said, "Get me that hook and spoon."
Shorty stood and looked at Jock, with the utmost malignity in his face, and said finally, "Get your goddam hook and spoon yourself."
Jock was greatly surprised, and returned, "Who the hell are you?"
Shorty snapped instantly, "Who the hell are you?"
And then he was fired.
This is the second "quitting mad" I've seen. The feeling seems to be something like the irrepressible desire that gets piled up sometimes in the ranks of the army to "tell 'em to go to hell" and take the consequences. It's the result of accumulated poisons of overfatigue, long hours, overwrought nerves, "the military discipline of the mills."
The practical advantage of being "given the hook" is that you can draw your pay immediately; whereas, if you simply leave, you have to wait for the end of the two weeks' period.
I ate my dinner at the Greek's.