Many years ago, a woman that worked at the same place, just didnât turn up one day. I think they (the closest thing we had to HR at the time) let this slide for a week, then called her. She just said âOh, I didnât work to work there any moreâ.
I donât think they pursued it any further and let it at that.
I just donât understand that mentality. You burn a bridge, when you could just send an email or something saying you quit and keep the possibility of coming back sometime open. Or if your boss actually liked you, you could have gotten a recommendation, but instead decided to make their life suck.
Just send an email saying you quit, itâs really not that hard.
You burn a bridge
Yeah, thatâs kind of the point
keep the possibility of coming back sometime open
If I wanted to work there I wouldnât be quitting, especially not just dipping out
Or if your boss actually liked you, you could have gotten a recommendation
Usually people doing this arenât in that situation, being on good terms with someone usually means you donât just vanish on them
instead decided to make their life suck.
The vast majority of times this is, again, the point
You do you, but a little professionalism goes a long way. Maybe that manager moves to another org that you want to apply at, and they reject you because of how you acted the last time. Or maybe they just tell someone at the new org how you left.
Doing this has zero benefits to you, sending an email takes almost zero effort and might have some benefit for you. The rational thing is to send the email.
I thought it was weird at the time. The contracts had a notice period in, and itâs not like many US states where employment is at-will. The employer is definitely required to give notice (albeit they can send you home and just pay you the notice period, which many do). So I suspect they could have gone after her for that, if they wanted to.
Likely they considered it not worth pursuing, though.
But if youâre going to violate a contract anyway, might as well make dealing with that easier for your direct manager. Maybe youâre unwilling to work those three months, but sending an email saying you resign at least helps your boss out. My boss put one of my coworkers on disability leave, for example, instead of firing them (he fired them when they came back after a couple months and the issue wasnât resolved).
But it all starts with actually making the most base level of effort. An email takes like 10 seconds and doesnât need to be long:
Sorry for the short notice, but I canât work here anymore and wonât be coming in anymore. Know Iâm supposed to give more notice, but I just canât. Sorry again.
As someone that manages people, Iâd be annoyed with that, but less annoyed than if someone just stopped showing up. In fact, if they were a decent worker, I might respond with something like this:
Thanks for letting me know. Hereâs the documentation for short-term disability, if thatâs what you need. Let me know if youâd like to try that. Iâve started processing your resignation with the shortest possible term (X days), but I can cancel that if you let my know by <day>. Iâve told the team youâre out sick, so coming back wonât be an issue if you choose to.
I hope everything is well, please feel free to reach out, even if you just want to talk.
And if I really didnât like the employee:
Sorry to hear that, thanks for letting me know, Iâve started processing your resignation. Our policy is 3 months notice, and the consequence for doing that is <X>. Iâve attached a copy of the company policy for you to review.
Let me know if you need anything further.
Both are better than sending no notice at all.
I ran away from my site like this one day. I was working as an Engineer Trainee. No one gave a damn. Eventually, I returned after a month or so. Resigned in less than one month after returning. Man, I hate this country with a passion where you are not even treated as a human being, but as a machine.
You were able to leave your job for a month, come back and continue like nothing happened, then were able to resign a month after thatâŚand you are saying you werenât treated like a human?
Yesterday, I (sort of) learned the phrase âimplication arrows,â from which I learned that I should assume that this story is not true, though the arrows⌠Imply that itâs true. I still donât really get it.
Anyway, Iâve never held a job where the employer would do more than the bare minimum required by law if I disappeared. Certainly not so much as contacting my family unless there were extenuating circumstances like me verifiably disappearing mid shift. I suspect this is true for most people.
As a manager I would definitely contact an employeeâs emergency contacts and then request a welfare check if one of my team dropped off the face of the earth. Medical incidents happen and a couple of the team live alone that I know of.
In that case, you sound like a good manager to have.
I like my current managers, but I think if I stopped showing Iâd eventually just stop getting paid. There was a period where I wasnât attending daily meetings because I hadnât received the invitation to them. Eventually I made a comment to my manager that I was glad the current contract didnât require a ridiculous number of meetings and he said something like âwhat are you talking about? There are daily meetings. We just thought you were out sick or something.â
Iâve always been skeptical of greentext (and most internet) stories, itâs just more fun to suspend oneâs disbelief.
Iâm just still confused about the concept of âimplication arrows,â heh.
itâs referencing a quite old meme of â>implying implicationsâ, being that the storytelling style of greentext is wildly unconventional in that it is structured around quoting / citing some external imagery or context, and thereby inviting the reader to infer what the poster is thinking instead of directly stating it
That reminds me when I missed the first day of teaching because of a really bad flu causing me to lose track of the dates, I got a very concerned call from my advisor who thought I offed myself. Apparently not too uncommon for underpaid adjunct professors, unfortunately.
When I was in grad school I knew a guy who just simply didnât teach for half the semester. No contact with students, no classes held, just didnât show. He gave everyone a passing grade on the midterm and came back halfway through. No explanation. He was not fired. Of course, like the rest of us, he was grossly underpaid and didnât have health insurance. I guess they get what they get if theyâre gonna treat us like cogs, right?
Sometimes I wonder how people get away with stuff like this. I recall that story from Spain, I think, where a guy was getting a paycheck for like 20 years but not working at all. I guess they did a reorg and his new âbossâ didnât know about him and he never got work assigned and he just stopped showing upâŚfor years.
It has to be a pointless job to start with, right? If I just didnât work at my job for a week it would probably get noticed. If I no-showed completely it certainly would.
Iâd probably be given the benefit of the doubt for a few weeks if I just stopped producing work. I could maybe make it a month before someone said something about my performance but only because sometimes the things I work on take a while to come to fruition. And missing meetings isnât uncommon because of conflicts/being super busy.
Id probably also get the benefit of the doubt if I no-showed too. But after a two days theyâd call my wife or come by my house, or send the police department to my house to check on me.