11 Star Wars Characters Who Should Have Quit Their Jobs Immediately

Most people have a boss they can't stand at some point in their lives. In Star Wars, your boss can choke you through a television, and somehow people still show up to work the next morning. So I'm counting down 11 Star Wars characters who should have quit their jobs immediately, and my number one actually left one terrible organization just to join something worse.

11. Bib Fortuna turned down a clean exit and went for Jabba's throne

Bib is basically the guy running the front desk at Jabba's palace. He handles the visitors, he whispers in Jabba's ear from time to time, and he spends his working life surrounded by criminals who might kill somebody because lunch took too long. I'm not going to pretend Bib is an innocent employee who accidentally answered the wrong classified ad. He belongs in this place. But look around your workplace, buddy. There's a trap door in front of your boss that drops people into a monster pit. That should probably come up during your training and orientation.

Then Luke walks in, uses a Jedi mind trick on Bib, and gets past him. Jabba immediately recognizes what happened and calls him a fool. Imagine having to explain to your manager that somebody remotely edited your brain. The part that really got me is what Bib does after Jabba dies: he eventually ends up sitting on the throne himself. He saw how the previous owner's career ended and decided the problem was probably just the seating arrangement. Then Boba Fett comes back and shoots him. Bib had the perfect opportunity to leave this entire business behind, and instead he wanted to be promoted to management.

10. Lando Calrissian recognized when Cloud City had become an impossible job

Lando thought he had finally moved into something respectable. He's running Cloud City. He's got a cape, and everybody wants a cape. He's got a nice office and an actual community that depends on him. Things are looking good for Lando. Then Darth Vader arrives, and suddenly Lando's job becomes negotiating with somebody who doesn't believe negotiations apply to him.

I understand why Lando makes the initial deal. He's trying to protect the city and the people living there. Vader has overwhelming aura, let's just say that, and Lando doesn't have a lot of good options. But the arrangement keeps changing. Han gets handed over to Boba Fett. Leia and Chewie are supposed to stay under Imperial control. Every conversation leaves Lando with less than he had before. At some point, you have to realize you're not negotiating anymore. You're just being informed of the outcome.

Thankfully, Lando does realize it. He helps the others escape, tells the citizens to evacuate, and gets out himself. It's a pretty dramatic resignation. Honestly, most people send an email. Lando had to announce that the city is being occupied and then leave in somebody else's spaceship. He's on this list because he actually recognizes when the job has become impossible, and a few people coming up could have used that skill.

9. Finn never chose the First Order, but he made the right call by leaving

Finn belongs here with a huge asterisk next to his name. He didn't voluntarily sign up for the First Order. He was taken as a child and raised to serve it. This isn't somebody who should have read the employee reviews before applying. But when we meet him in The Force Awakens, we see the moment the reality of that life becomes impossible for him to ignore. A fellow Stormtrooper dies beside him. Then Kylo Ren orders the slaughter of the villagers, and Finn can't bring himself to participate. That's quite a first day for the audience to see.

Then Finn makes the correct decision and gets out. He frees Poe because he needs a pilot, they steal a TIE fighter, and his entire career plan becomes putting as much distance between himself and the First Order as possible. What I like is that he's scared. He doesn't suddenly become fearless because he knows they're wrong. He understands exactly how dangerous these people are. His resignation involved a prison break, stolen military equipment, and getting shot at by his former coworkers. It's still an improvement over staying.

8. The man building the second Death Star promised more because the Emperor was coming

At number eight is the officer overseeing construction of the second Death Star, which already sounds like a position you should approach carefully. What happened to the first guy? Well, he exploded. So who's coming to inspect this one? Darth Vader. Great. Wonderful project. Vader arrives and tells him construction needs to move faster, so he explains they need more personnel. That's a reasonable response to an unreasonable deadline. You can't just tell a space station the size of a moon to finish itself because the boss is getting impatient.

Then Vader tells him the Emperor is coming, and suddenly he promises they will double their efforts. Nothing about the staffing problem has changed. He hasn't received more workers. He just learned that the next person visiting is even worse than the guy currently in front of him threatening him. That's the moment to start looking for a quiet administrative position on a planet nobody important visits, because once your construction schedule depends on how frightened you are, the project has already gone badly wrong. Sure enough, the rebels destroy the station before he gets to enjoy a successful completion.

7. General Hux sabotaged the First Order just to see Kylo Ren lose

Hux starts out looking like somebody who believes he's going to run the galaxy and win everything. He has the uniform, the authority, the enormous speech. He's standing in front of an army acting like history is about to remember him forever. Then he spends the rest of his career getting humiliated by people with better access to the Force. Snoke throws him around. Kylo throws him around. Poe wastes his time over the radio.

By The Rise of Skywalker, Hux is so consumed by his hatred of Kylo that he becomes a spy, and his explanation is incredible. He doesn't care whether the Resistance wins. He wants Kylo Ren to lose. You've reached a dangerous level of workplace resentment when you're helping destroy your own organization just to make sure your coworker doesn't get a promotion or the credit. Then General Pryde figures him out and shoots him.

Hux could have tried to escape. Instead, he stayed inside the First Order while secretly sabotaging it, apparently hoping this would end better than every other interaction he had with senior leadership. Buddy, you didn't need another promotion. You needed to leave the parking lot.

6. Nute Gunray kept taking meetings with Darth Sidious after every warning sign

Nute gets involved with Darth Sidious. Bad move. Somehow the mysterious hooded man issuing orders from the shadows doesn't concern him enough. Then things go terribly wrong on Naboo. Jedi show up, his invasion fails, and he gets arrested. That should have been a pretty useful learning experience. Instead, he remains involved with the Sith and becomes part of the Separatist leadership.

I understand that Gunray is greedy and vindictive, and absolutely not somebody we're supposed to feel particularly sorry for. But even purely out of self interest, how many red flags and warnings do you need? By Revenge of the Sith, the Separatist leaders are sent to Mustafar, where they're supposed to be safe. Then Anakin arrives and kills every single one of them. Gunray discovers that being useful to Sidious and being protected by Sidious are different things.

If your business partner keeps changing the government, starting wars, and concealing his identity, maybe stop taking meetings. Gunray kept thinking the next arrangement would finally work, and the final arrangement was getting locked in a room with Darth Vader.

5. Admiral Ozzel learned his rank gave him no job security

Ozzel makes a tactical mistake approaching Hoth. He brings the fleet out of hyperspace too close to the system, alerts the rebels, and allows them to raise their shield. That's a serious mistake. Vader wanted surprise, and Ozzel lost it. But a serious mistake should lead to being relieved of command, right? Maybe an investigation. Maybe a trip to HR. Something involving paperwork.

Instead, Vader kills him remotely, through a screen, and that changes the entire discussion about working from home. You're not even safe in another room. Your manager doesn't need to physically attend the meeting to murder you. The really uncomfortable part is the other guy standing right there while it happens. Ozzel dies, and Vader is already giving his job to somebody else. There's barely a pause between the termination and the replacement.

Ozzel should have gotten away from Vader long before Hoth. If he somehow thought his rank gave him protection, that settled the question. You can command the biggest ship in the fleet and have no job security.

4. Captain Needa took responsibility, and Vader killed him anyway

Needa loses track of the Millennium Falcon and decides to personally apologize to Darth Vader. We have seen how this man handles disappointing news. Needa is volunteering to enter choking distance, and Vader can already do that remotely. What's frustrating on top of that is that Needa's decision comes from a quality we should respect. He takes responsibility. He takes ownership. He doesn't dump the blame on somebody beneath him. He goes to explain the failure himself.

Under a reasonable commander, that might have meant something. Under Vader, it means two people carrying your body out of the room. That's why Needa ranks above Ozzel for me. Ozzel made a bad tactical call. Needa tries to handle failure professionally, and his boss murders him anyway. Once accountability and incompetence receive the same punishment, there really is no correct way to do this job. The man needed an escape pod, not an apology.

3. Admiral Piett survived Vader and still didn't take his chance to leave

Piett gets promoted while watching his predecessor die. There's no clearer preview of your new responsibilities than that. Congratulations, you're the admiral now, stepping around the previous admiral's body. Unlike some Imperial officers, Piett seems capable. He identifies the lead on Hoth, pays attention, and tries to follow Vader's orders, which makes his situation worse, because we can see that competence doesn't remove the danger. The Millennium Falcon keeps escaping, and he knows exactly what happened to the last people who disappointed Vader.

At the end of The Empire Strikes Back, when the Falcon finally jumps to hyperspace, you can practically feel him waiting to find out whether he's about to die. Vader walks away, and he survives. That was your window, my man. You should have left. Instead, he's still commanding the Executor at Endor, an A-wing crashes into the bridge, the ship loses control, and it goes down into the Death Star. He survived Vader long enough to get killed by another part of the job. He needed to turn one lucky escape into a permanent departure, and he couldn't do it.

2. Orson Krennic was killed by the Death Star he spent his career chasing

I don't like this guy. Director Orson Krennic is what happens when somebody keeps believing the next accomplishment will finally make upper management appreciate and notice him. He's obsessed with finishing the Death Star. He wants recognition. He wants access to the Emperor. He wants everybody to understand what he's contributed. He's a flatterer. Then the weapon works, and Tarkin takes control of it. Imagine spending years building the project everybody cares about, finally demonstrating that it works, and immediately being told somebody else will be handling it from there.

Krennic is a monster. He coerces Galen Erso, terrorizes people, and oversees a weapon built for mass murder, so my sympathy is not there. But as a picture of ambition making somebody ignore every warning sign, he's kind of fascinating, to be honest with you. He even goes to Vader to complain, and Vader chokes him a little bit.

Then Krennic goes to Scarif to deal with the stolen plans. He ends up wounded on the tower, looking toward the very weapon he helped create, and then Tarkin blasts him out of the universe. Krennic spent his career trying to get closer to the Death Star, and at the end, it got a little too close for him. He wanted his work to define his legacy, but it didn't. It was his exit.

1. Count Dooku quit the Jedi Order and joined something worse

Number one has to be Count Dooku. Dooku actually quit one organization when he left the Jedi Order. Then he looked at Darth Sidious and apparently decided this was a healthier working environment for him. That's an impressive failure to learn from experience. Dooku knows more than most of the people on this list. He knows Sidious is manipulating the war. He knows the Sith operate through betrayal. He knows he's working for somebody who treats entire civilizations as pieces on a chessboard. And somehow he believes his own position is secure.

Then we reach the opening of Revenge of the Sith. Dooku fights Anakin in front of Palpatine, loses his hands, and suddenly hears his master tell Anakin to kill him. Look at Dooku's face in that moment. That's when he finally understood what his job actually was. He thought he was a partner. He was the obstacle Anakin needed to remove.

That's what makes him my number one. This isn't an officer finding out his commander is cruel. Dooku signed up for the organization where replacing your master through violence is part of the basic structure, and then he seems genuinely stunned when his own master replaces him. He had wealth, status, experience, and more information than almost anybody around him, and he still stayed until the boss introduced his replacement. The retirement plan was right there, buddy. You chose the Sith.

Working for Vader feels like an obvious answer for the worst job in Star Wars, but Krennic getting killed by his own project is kind of tough to beat. If your new position opens up because the boss choked the last guy, keep looking for another job.

Who do you think had the worst job in Star Wars?