Resignations are tricky. There’s no good way to quit, but there is a right way to leave.

Email-only is unprofessional.  If someone really wants that new job, then part of the price is sucking it up and chatting to the boss live, preferably in person. 

However, one of my resignations was over the phone since the owner of the company lived in another state. That was awkward.  He was a miffed that I didn’t wait for his next visit to town, but I wasn’t going to delay a 30% pay raise for the propriety of an in-person announcement.  (Post COVID, I’d have scheduled it via videoconference, but it wasn’t an option at the time. We did have a good in-person exit interview before I left.)

On the other hand, the employee doesn’t bear all of the blame for quitting the wrong way. Such a misstep implies that there is a problem in the firm culture. If the person had been at the office for a significant period, then they weren’t mentored by experienced colleagues and had not developed a trusting relationship with their supervisor.  If they are relatively new, then the hire was a cultural misfit and likely a mistake in the first place.

Relationships have been fraying in our fragmented hyper-digital age. It’s no surprise that the American work culture is suffering as well. Resignation blunders are a balancing of the scales. Corporations have been treating employees as disposable for the past few decades — why would it be a surprise that people are treating employers as immediately quittable?

My sister was laid off via a Sunday night email. She didn’t know it until her badge was locked out on Monday morning. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but could I judge her harshly if she quits her next job via Slack?

I still advise someone to quit in person. But this expectation can’t survive if employers continue upon this path towards a faceless gig-economy. Corporate HR has figured out that writing letters are less stressful than personal meetings. Why shouldn’t employees make that same discovery?

If firms want their work to be more than mere transactions, then bosses have to start modeling the relationship they want reciprocated.

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On a brighter note, my former intern in private practice just quit his job to join my division.

His supervisor was extremely gracious. She even said that she would have fired him to force him to take this opportunity!

In our era of bad feelings, we should remember that most folks, staff and management, are trying to do right by their colleagues — even when the system is pushing us all to act otherwise.