Quitting a job sucks. Why not outsource it?
Plus, 5 things workplaces should do to make quitting better.
Films and TV shows paint a glorious picture of quitting a job. Characters from Bridget Jones to Jerry Maguire1 resign from their roles in righteous blazes of glory, offering up moral declarations to bosses as coworkers look on in wonder. The reality, as always, is quite different. As it should be: a romcom in which the protagonist went to their usual one-to-one with their manager, handed in their notice in person and in writing in a follow-up email, then spent the next two months creating a detailed handover doc, would be pretty shit. But perhaps these sorts of depictions explain why the true experience of quitting is such an awkward, uncomfortable, disappointing letdown.
Resigning from your job sucks, regardless of the conditions under which you’re leaving. If you’re leaving and you hate your role, it’s rare you get the satisfaction of saying ‘and fuck you, and you, and you’ and storming out of the office. If you’re out and you’re leaving on good terms, it’s a strange sort of mourning process. Either way, it’s an irritating and drawn out process with bizarre and unnecessary etiquette.
Why, for example, do people who are experiencing poor treatment at work still have to go through the rigmarole of booking in a face-to-face meeting with their boss and delivering the news, even in cases when it’s their boss who has misbehaved? Why is it the expectation that you’ll resign in person, never over the phone or via video call or email? Why do you have to accompany your face-to-face ‘I quit’ with a strangely formal letter for it to ‘count’? Why do so many companies enforce lengthy notice periods, seemingly for no reason beyond punishment?
With all this nonsense, it didn’t surprise me to learn that in Tokyo, there’s now a company who will resign for you. Momuri is an agency that charges around £110 to call up your boss and tell them you’re leaving. It was formed primarily in answer to Japanese work culture, where quitting can be incredibly difficult – bosses sometimes refuse resignations and resigning is generally seen as a sort of failure or weakness – but I think it’s only a matter of time before similar services pop up in other countries, and for situations that aren’t expressly toxic but just… awkward.
Because it is incredibly awkward, isn’t it? So awkward that you might delay doing it, or abandon your plan to quit entirely. In most cases, quitting goes down like this: you decide to leave and then enter hours or days of nervous build up. You finally work up the courage to message your boss and ask if they’ve got ‘5 minutes for a quick chat’. If you’re lucky, they’ll say yes quickly and immediately understand that this translates to ‘I’m about to resign’. But more often, your manager is tricky to get hold of and you have to sit there, legs shaking and finger clicking around emails that you no longer care about, until long past you were due to leave for the day when they’re finally out of meetings and unable to slip away. Then there’s the conversation itself; very often tense, uncomfortable, and emotional. People very often cry when they quit, not because they’re sad to go but because all that nervous energy has built up and suddenly been released. Your boss might try to keep you (a nice ego boost) or they won’t (quite disappointing) and then you have to return to your desk like nothing’s happened.
Then it’s the notice period – a cursed concept! Cruel and unusual! Why would you want to keep someone around who doesn’t want to be there for months on end? – which is commonly extremely stressful and overburdened, because you have a load of pressure to get everything done and leave things in a decent state for the next employee. And the whole time you have to keep working, keep being pleasant, because you want to leave ‘on good terms’. What a far cry from the satisfaction promised by those film scenes.
Workers already look to external sources for guidance on quitting. Career coaches offer up advice on how to resign, there are endless articles with tips, family and friends rehearse the ‘I quit’ conversation, and I expect many people have ChatGPT-ed their resignation letters. Why not have the option to outsource resignations entirely, and avoid all the uncomfortable faffing about? Imagine if you could quit by simply sending one email or pushing a button that would let your workplace know you wanted to leave. Dreamy.
Without that option, I think there are a few things all bosses and workplaces could and should do to make the whole resignation process less terrible.
5 things workplaces should do to make quitting better
Have regular one-to-ones
Managers should be creating space to regularly chat to the people they manage for many reasons, but one additional benefit of a weekly catchup is it gives people an easy slot for resigning. That takes a huge amount of pressure off the conversation and means workers don’t have to chase someone down to hand in their notice.
Consider cutting their notice period
If keeping someone around for a couple of months is genuinely needed to keep the company going, fine. But this is often not the case. Having a blanket long notice period is, I believe, deeply unfair. It can prevent people from landing great jobs where they’d be far happier and make employees miserable for months on end, completely sapping their energy and wrecking their mental wellbeing. I’m not suggesting everyone scraps notice periods entirely and deals with the chaos, but at least consider notice periods on a person-by-person basis. If you know full well that you could get someone to cover them in the space of two weeks, why force them to stay for three months? Keeping someone who doesn’t want to be there around isn’t just bad for them, it’s bad for the company – you’re at risk of poor work performance, information getting leaked, retaliation, and bad vibes contagion (ever worked alongside someone who’s constantly moaning about their job? It really puts a dampener on your own contentment).
At least pretend to care
Look, you might not be able to offer someone double what another company is offering to convince them to stay. You might not even want them to stay. But at least make a half-hearted plea for them not to go. Or even say that you’ll be so sad to see them depart. It’s a bit like the dance of reaching for your purse on a date or on a meal out with your parents: you don’t actually need to pay, but it means a lot for you to seem like you might offer. Come on, make the person quitting feel good. It costs you nothing to say that they’ll be ‘dearly missed’.
Acknowledge that workers won’t stay forever
Don’t act like those who leave are instantly mortal enemies, or talk about them giving up, or dismiss them as not cut out for the job. It’s weird and unhealthy. The best managers want the people they manage to succeed and grow, regardless of where they do it. Do what you can to create a culture where quitting isn’t a bad thing and people feel comfortable discussing their future plans.
Have exit interviews – and actually listen to what’s said
The closest thing we get to the Hollywood ‘and here’s the moment I tell you why this place sucks and you listen up, mister’ scene is an exit interview… but they so often end up not happening! A huge letdown. People need that catharsis. Also, bosses need to know where they’ve gone wrong in order to improve. Make sure exit interviews happen, give departing employees space to talk freely (so a good chunk of time and ideally left ‘til the day they’re leaving), and actually take in what they tell you. Don’t resist feedback from the few people who are going to give it to you straight.
Work-related reading recs:
Great feature on Stylist with workaholics sharing why getting fired was the best thing that happened to them. Yes, it’s paywalled. Yes, subscribing is worth it. Stylist now has Apple Pay so it’s much easier to subscribe, too.
Really enjoyed this insight into working as a historical consultant on films
Interesting piece on people taking breaks from work
Weirdly, both films that include Renée Zellweger. Some examples of other iconic quitting scenes that don’t feature Renée Zellweger include: The Devil Wears Prada, Friends, 500 Days of Summer, American Beauty, Joe Versus The Volcano, Office Space, The Wolf of Wall Street, Half Baked, Elf, Hitch, Sex and the City… and I feel like there are loads more that I can’t remember, and it’s driving me mad. I’ve got a vague memory of some romcoms where women do the whole ‘and you know what? I quit’ thing. Can anyone recall any more? Please tell me ones I’m missing. I’m going to be thinking about this all week.*
*While writing this I put out an Instagram story asking people to please help with this and received these additions: Two Weeks Notice, Fight Club, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Proposal, Seinfeld, Mad Men, Working Girl, The Bear, A Cinderella Story, Summer Heights High. Any more?
The standard notice period in the US is two weeks. Even that can be cut down by burning unused vacation time (or having your employer walk you out early). It’s the flip side of “at will” employment which allows them to fire you at any time.