When it comes to thinking about the future, I tend toward constant brainstorming and preparation. This includes plans with family, schedules, vacations, and most things related to personal finance. People who know me see this pattern in my daily life and actions. I spend a lot of time and energy planning. In preparing for my eventual departure from my employer, I’m already thinking about my resignation letter.
Just for fun, I’ve come up with a couple of fake resignation letters.
I thought it would be fun to create two resignation letters, one positive and one negative. For the negative letter, I decided to write as if I were throwing all caution to the wind and letting the bridges burn! The positive approach would be the kinder and gentler resignation letter that continues the butt kissing and “corporate speak” one encounters in large companies.
I know that my sense of humor leans toward the dry side. I don’t plan to use either of these resignation letters once I decide to notify my employer of my parting. For now, this is just a way to poke some fun—at myself and at the process of leaving “the man.” For the sake of these resignation letters, I am using the movie Office Space as my inspiration, blatantly borrowing the characters’ names. My boss is Bill Lundbergh and I work for a mythical company, Initech. These are the letters I would have written after losing it, when I heard the woman chirp for the thousandth time:
“Corporate accounts payable, Nina speaking – JUST a moment.”
The Negative Resignation Letter
May 19, 2016
Bill Lundbergh
123 Main Street
Anywhere, USA 54321
Billy Boy,
I have had it. I quit! I can’t stand another day carrying out the meaningless, mindless, and completely irrelevant tasks you seem to dream up on a daily basis. However, I have to give you credit for creating an endless stream of stupid ideas. Where do you get all your energy and creativity? Do you actually believe your own shit?
I’m telling you right now that two weeks from this second I am walking out the door and never looking back at my job at Initech. I wish you the best of luck finding someone to do this bullshit work you have assigned to me.
There will be no more goals or new plans this year that you will cram down my throat. What the hell was wrong with last year’s plan? Oh yeah, we have re-org’d three times since then. You constantly feed us the company line about how wonderful these changes are for “aligning our objectives” with some other obscure team we never heard of until 15 minutes ago. How can it actually be better every time?
You created freaking banners asking, “What can you do for Initech?” and organized Hawaiian shirt days. Great job!
Thanks so much for calling me on weekends, sending endless emails 24/7, and my favorite:
“Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Ahh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too…”
You have been so busy interfering in my life that you forgot about your own. News flash: Your wife has been having an affair with your boss for the last four years. That’s right, and everyone knows. Have fun driving the Porsche home tonight!
Speaking of Porsches, while you have been spending all your money on fancy cars, clothes, vacations, houses, and country club memberships, I have been saving. In fact, I have saved my full paycheck the entire time I’ve worked for you. My family has lived below our means, driven one car, and put our money in passive investments. My wife and I never need to work another day in our lives. How does that make you feel?
Initech has been very effective at running off the best people. After two mergers and eight re-orgs in the last five years, some of us find it hard swallowing the company propaganda about how great these changes will be for us. Those who dissent and question changes are labeled troublemakers. I just love managers like you tell us, “If you don’t like change, you should consider leaving the company.” That is awesome motivation for empowering your employees. Guess what, I did “update my resume” as you suggested at least fifty times in our monotonous internal meetings.
BTW – screw the internal education and compliance stuff from now on. I digress, just as you do when you ramble on, discussing five different subjects in one long-ass sentence that seems to go on and on and on and on… and never gets to the point. You also might want to keep an eye on Milton Waddams and forget about taking your Swingline stapler back.
So “take this job and shove it” as Johnny Paycheck sang, “I ain’t workin’ here no more!”
Please don’t call me ever again,
Peter Gibbons
The Positive Resignation Letter
May 19, 2016
Bill Lundbergh
123 Main Street
Anywhere, USA 54321
Dear Mr. Lundbergh,
It is with great trepidation and after intense soul searching that I regrettably tender my six-month notice of resignation. It has been so hard making this decision since Initech has been the best company I have ever worked for. I can’t say enough about you, Bill, as a boss. Your leadership qualities and abilities are the best! I believe business schools should use you as a case study for their textbooks on effective business management.
I will miss the new ideas and changes you generate that always makes Initech a better place to work. It helps to keep a healthy and challenging environment by not staying with the same plan each year. Our customers completely understand these changes and recognize us as thought leaders. I am so happy when you fire those non-conformists, or they quit, because they don’t see the perfect logic and wisdom in our company’s changes. How could they possibly leave the best company in the industry? They must be stupid. I can’t imagine how unfulfilling my life will be once I leave Initech.
The only reason I am leaving is because I won fifty million dollars in the lottery last month and my attorney says I need to move to the Caribbean to shelter my income. I know you don’t encourage remote working arrangements and would prefer that we share conference room tables and desks. That builds a sense of collaboration that living thousands of miles away in an island nation would not foster. I get that. Now I am going to purchase all those fine cars and things that I was so envious of you owning all those years.
I sincerely want to keep in contact with you through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and will follow your personal blog. I want you to call any time you just feel like talking. Also, I can’t get enough of your joke emails, so please keep those coming. Should I find that something changes in my situation, I would love to come back to my old job again. I will continue to keep my skills up to date so that I can fit right back into my old position.
I now feel like I am making such a big mistake leaving Initech. There will be many sleepless nights as I think about all the great things I could have done with the company.
Your most loyal employee, 🙂
Peter Gibbons
The final version of my Resignation Letter will be professional
This was a fun exercise for me, releasing some direct and passive-aggressive tendencies in written form. Needless to say, neither of these letters will be my final version. I will probably take the weasel’s approach and keep it positive, sans sarcasm.
My decision to take the professional resignation letter path ensures my leaving under the best of circumstances. This has paid dividends for me in the past in terms of building my career. My future could manifest in ways that I cannot imagine at this point, so why alienate people on the way out?
I don’t see the need to work again, but who knows for certain. This is part of my conservative nature—wanting to have a fallback position if needed, creating my own version of an employment insurance policy. Who knows, I could form some other business with my boss or coworkers in the future. The future is uncertain; why not make something positive out of leaving work with my employer?
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Have you already written a resignation letter in preparation for early retirement? If so, did you take the negative or positive approach?
Photo copyright : fuzzbones
Steve @ Think Save Retire says
Ha! Love it, especially the fact that you addressed your resignation letters to Bill Lumburgh! And I couldn’t agree more, taking the professional route is absolutely the best way to go. I did that recently with my boss and feel like the remaining time I have at my organization will be very, very positive. 🙂
Bryan says
I agree with the professional approach, no reason to burn bridges that might come back to haunt me.
As fun as it was writing the nasty resignation letter, it is uncanny and darn right scary how easy the professional one was to type. I guess that says something about how I have “assimilated into the machine” and have adopted the “corporate speak”.
I think I need to run – not walk away quickly!!! 🙂
Stockbeard says
Man, I need to start seriously thinking about what my resignation letter will look like… in the meantime, thanks for the laughs 🙂
Bryan says
Stockbeard,
It definitely makes it more real when you actually write the resignation letter. Even though I was doing this in fun, I am also working on the version my boss will receive.
The big question is when will I deliver it?
Bryan
ARB says
My resignation letter will be the image of Calvin from “Calvin And Hobbes” mooning followed by a middle finger.
Just kidding. It would be a professional one. I not only wouldn’t want to burn bridges, but I honestly like my boss and coworkers. The customers I can’t stand, but my fellow bankers and tellers have been flat out awesome and I don’t have a nasty letter I would ever want to deliver.
But you know what would be a great exercise for fun? One that you should consider posting once you finally leave? A resignation letter written to the working world itself. Not your employer or a company, but a letter written to the very concept of active income employment itself. Because for me, while I don’t have anything bad I really want to say to my boss, I would really like to lay into the very concept of dedicating your life to working for someone else and making somebody ELSE money. I’d have lots of things to say about–or to, in this exercise–modern day corporate wage slavery.
I think that resignation letter will be the sweetest of all.
Sincerely,
ARB–Angry Retail Banker
Bryan says
Leave it up to you to come up with a creative twist to the resignation letter my friend ARB! Sending one to the working world in general.
For the most part I like working with my coworkers, I just don’t enjoy the constant change, re-orgs, and new strategies. I have become burnt out on hearing any new grand plan from our leadership. 🙁