Poll: Would You Quit Without Notice?

Comments

June 8, 2009 at 10:15 am

(1) eliewriter says:

My initial reaction was “I’d never quit without notice, that’s way too inconsiderate.”

Then I remembered that I once did.

It’s the only job I’ve ever quit without two weeks notice and without leaving on good terms.

But the working conditions were pretty unprofessional (the owner was a eavy drinker who routinely slammed doors until the walls shook and I was asked frequently to do damage control on clients he’d alienated by yelling at them and hanging up on them).

To me, it was better to leave without notice than get fired, which is where things were headed.

Taking the job was a panic decision to begin with, a hurried move after my company was sold and all employees were laid off. I didn’t realize when I was hired that my boss at the new company (a competitor to my old company) was threatened by me and looking to get me fired.

I don’t normally whine about an employer but my boss finally got a pseudo-complaint from me (after I’d pulled an all-nighter to meet a deadline and had a nauseating headache from fumes that came from a business in the same building, run by the owner’s wife).

Within minutes of admitting to my boss that I was exhausted and nauseated, the owner called me into his office and raked me over the coals. Obviously my boss had run straight to him. And even though the company had only one computer with an Internet connection and no individual e-mail addresses for employees who regularly corresponded with the public (it was normal for me to work at home in the evenings too), I was told I could no longer use my own e-mail address for working.

My boss was getting ready to leave for a week’s vacation but it was clear that I was in line to get fired as soon as he returned (after I did two people’s work that week for one paycheck–and a tiny one at that).

So I left as usual that Friday after getting my mileage reimbursement check, then worked over the weekend so I didn’t leave the company shorthanded the next week. I called in sick Monday and went to the doctor while I still had health insurance (good thing, too, because I found out I had a thyroid condition). Tuesday morning I e-mailed in the work I’d completed over the weekend, then sent an e-mail notifying the company that it was my last day.

Yep, I know it seems cowardly. I know I left the company in a bit of a lurch by not covering while the boss was on vacation. I tried to offset it by that extra work over the weekend so my own job was covered for that week, knowing that I wouldn’t be compensated for all those extra weekend hours I worked (and I was right, they never paid me for that).

I left feeling my conscience was as clear as possible under the circumstances, but hopefully it’s a choice I’ll never be faced with again.

I think it’s much smarter to avoid burning bridges, when possible. After I left that job (I’d lost my unemployment benefits because I tried working with an unsuitable company for too long) I called up a former boss and asked if they would hire me on a freelance basis–which was only possible because I hadn’t burned that bridge.

Good thing, too. Freelancing is how I scraped by until I got into another permanent job.