Resignation letter du Jour

[Adrian Brezhnev]

A friend of a friend of mine works for an extremely annoying PLC in an extraordinarily silly job, which he only does because it's quite so daft and full of surprises.

But the time has come to get a proper job, if such a thing exists, and so he has asked for advice in writing his resignation letter.

Has anyone here written a resignation letter that they are proud of?

I feel that his resigning from a job that is quite so annoying necessitates an equally annoying letter....

[Almost Yearly]

extremely annoying PLC

< In-joke of your choice >


Much better to get fired, I say.

[Adrian Brezhnev]

Ah, but the team he works for is so incredibly incompetent that it is going to take a really special act of  gross misconduct for him to be fired.

[Frinky]

It's never quite that simple, is it?

[Uncle_Z]

Tact and simplicity is the key.  The toes you tread on today may end up in the boots that squish you tomorrow.

Dear [wossname]

I have enjoyed working as part of your team for the last [wossname] but the opportunity has arisen for me to [pursue / develop] [my career / an alternative career] elsewhere.

The notice period in my conditions of employment is [fingy] [but I would like to take x days accrued holiday into consideration] accordingly my last day will be [blah].

Please let me know if there is anything that I can do to assist the smooth transition of responsibility.

[edit to add] I have hidden pieces of poopoo in various locations around the office.  I enclose cryptic clues as to their whereabouts and source[/haha how very funny I am]

Yours ...

[slim]

Dear Fascist Bullyboy,

[Banana Woofwoof]

I had no idea you had to write tactful resignation letters.  I resigned last month (last day is next Friday!) and basically said, "I'm leaving on the 24th June, see ya".

Do you write nice ones in the hope you'll get a good reference?

[surreal]

try http://www.i-resign.com - loads of examples and advice on there

[Lady Beaner]

Ooooh thats a really handy site!  Thanks for that!

[Spanking]

"Dear Fascist Bullyboy" - Top quote Slim!

[SurferGhost]

Are you sure this isn't just an excuse to get one of us to write THAT LETTER to your girlfriend Adrian?


EDIT: Go on tell me I missed it and that's all been resolved now...I was away for a bit y'know

[Sherringford Hovis]

What got me sacked from my last employer was the fact that they believed that I wrote this diatribe on Indymedia.

Because they couldn't actually prove it was or wasn't me*, and it wasn't posted from a work computer or uploaded during office hours, one of the directors of the company (who had a personal axe to grind due to my earlier attempts to recruit for the NUJ) then spent the best part of four months harrassing me and making my life hell in the vain hope that I'd do something stupid that would mean he could dismiss me, but there wasn't a single thing he could pull me up about. My immediate superior stood up for me repeatedly against this prick, but as soon as my kindly patron went away on holiday, I was immediately accused of 'inappropriate and excessive internet use during working hours' and unceremoniously booted. ACAS and the Employment Tribunal folks told me not to waste my time trying to get a settlement, as no one at the time had ever successfully won such an appeal (this was more than a year before the increasing popularity of workplace-blogging highlighted the whole issue).

With hindsight, it was the best thing that could've happened to my career - a competitor gave me a much nicer job on a great magazine for nearly twice the money. I'm now beginning to get bored and depressed with that company though, and am wondering whether starting a blog exposing the incompetence and corruption at my present employer might be a bit of a giggle... Much of it is going to sound like I nicked it from a Dilbert cartoon, but it's all depressingly true: for instance, would anyone believe me if I began with the story of an individual who has been the publisher of half-a-dozen well-known computer magazines for several years, but still doesn't know what to do when a subordinate sends them a zipped file? Or list the companies that have bribed which particular staff on UK videogames mags to give their shitty products a higher score than they actually deserve? Maybe I'll make a start this very afternooon...

Organise something unique that will get your 'friend of a friend' sacked in spectacular fashion to assure them a place in workplace legend. I'd love to do the classic boxers-on-the-head-pencils-in-nose-wibble-wibble freakout, but I've not worked anywhere yet where enough of the captive audience would get the reference.

*I'm not saying either way whether I actually wrote it or not. So nyer.

[slim]

Or list the companies that have bribed which particular staff on UK videogames mags to give their shitty products a higher score than they actually deserve?

Oooh, I'd love to hear about this, even if it were over a PM if you don't publish due to a fear of litigation. This used to fascinate me when I was an avid magazine reader.

[hands cold, liver warm]

Dear Jim'll fix it
Can you fix it for me to no longer have a job

Thanks
hclw

[Adrian Brezhnev]

Are you sure this isn't just an excuse to get one of us to write THAT LETTER to your girlfriend Adrian?

No it most certainly isn't!

EDIT: Go on tell me I missed it and that's all been resolved now...I was away for a bit y'know

It mostly got resolved, but there's still complications, but I never dared bringing the subject up again thanks to the extroardinary level of upset the whole discussion appeared to cause a lot of people, and worse, that it resulted in me being removed from the exclusive Summer Barbeque guest list.

[The Boston Crab]

Brezh, been having a bit of comp trouble, and I lost the disc with it on (since found) but I'll send you that LRD track over the weekend.

Here's my resignation letter:

"Dear Sir and Madam and Mum,
I'm going to go home.
Love from Graham."

[High Roller]

Get him to try this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4091636.stm

When the job candidate refused to strip as well, he put his clothes on and attempted to continue the interview as normal, the court was told.

[InfiniteFury]

http://chilled.cream.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=196442#196442

Seriously, I know what I'm talking about.

[Sherringford Hovis]

Or list the companies that have bribed which particular staff on UK videogames mags to give their shitty products a higher score than they actually deserve?

Oooh, I'd love to hear about this, even if it were over a PM if you don't publish due to a fear of litigation. This used to fascinate me when I was an avid magazine reader.

Any bean-spillage from me at this point would immediately identify me to those in the industry and at least cost me my job - and probably get me in hot water with companies whose NDAs I've signed - but I suppose I can post links to other reports as an example. As soon as I've found something else to do for a living, I may make some or all of what I know public, particularly stuff I can corroborate with concrete evidence.

Tip of the iceberg:

http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/drivergate/drivergate.htm
http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/driv3r.htm

So here's the real lesson of Drive-three-er, chums. Videogames magazines and videogames publishers nowadays exist solely as a mutual-support network aimed at squeezing money out of your pockets and into theirs. They know only too well that the days of games mags are numbered, so they have no interest in building reader loyalty, and hence no interest in integrity. All they want is to get as much cash out of you as possible before they die forever. And the best way of doing that is by hyping publishers' games, artificially inflating readers' enthusiasm, getting lucrative advertising from the publishers in return, and meanwhile cutting back on staff and budgets to the point that even reviewers naive enough to want to do their job properly simply don't have the time or the resources for it.

Atari's attempts to quash the story:
http://news.spong.com/detail/news.asp?prid=7014

[edit to add second WoS link]

[hands cold, liver warm]

Dear Boss.

I don't like you and the only reason why work was remotely bearable was the satisfaction I received from secretly spunking in your morning coffee everyday for the last 2 years. However my wife now wants children and I can no longer afford to despoit my sperm in your hot drinks. Therefore I am leaving.

yours

[Adrian Brezhnev]

That's a seriously good draft for the letter, quite possibly a lot more appropriate than the two first drafts that my friend is advising his friend to use....

Dear Phil,

As you know, I have never been able to take this "job" seriously. Perhaps I would have a little less contempt for the firm, had they actually paid me what they owe me.

Anyway, I think that you are a nice chap, and the rest of the team is very funny, but to be honest, I only took on this silly doorknocking position out of curiosity. I wanted to find out whether gas and electricity direct selling is quite as daft as most people think it is, and was delighted to find that my worst fears were confirmed.

Anyway, I am just writing to you to confirm that I don't want to take part any more, and that I have decided to go and get a job instead.


Best regards etc. etc.

and

Dear Phil,

It's twenty weeks now since I joined your team, and as you know, it has hardly been the most wonderful start to my new job.

Right from the beginning, I have had concerns that I am not well suited to the job, and I have tried over and over again to tell you about them.

My worries started with the fact that I never actually had a job interview. I attended the local Job Centre, where five of us listened to you describe the job in question by saying-

"It's a fucking shit job. I have to be up front with you. You'll hate it. You'll be knocking doors, and talking to 40 people a day, 34-37 of which will tell you to fuck off. But if you listen to what I say, and put it in to practice, you'll be earning £30,000 a year within six weeks. And how many other jobs can offer you that? How many customers do you reckon you need to sign up a day to earn thirty grand?

No. Three".

You then asked us all how much we'd like to earn a year, before talking to us individually, where you simply asked "Do you reckon you could do this". When I said "maybe", you told me to come to the training session two weeks later, and that was that.

The training session consisted of four days of talk about how not to do the job, learning a door script, and then the script to a customer presentation.

It was here that everything started to go horribly wrong. I for one find it impossible to learn a fixed sales script, especially if much of the contents are twatty and embarassing.

The first six weeks came and went. It's understandable that I did not get off the ground right away given that I had to take so much time off, but what did concern me was that whenever I did try putting in to practice exactly what you said, I still didn't sign up customers.

Whenever I tried talking to you about this all, you refused to listen to any of my concerns whatsoever and insisted on testing me on how well I could recite my script. When I got it wrong, you'd say  "Ah, that's where you're going wrong", even though you and I know all you were doing was classic rejection handling.

What worries me more is that in all the time I have been with the Firm, I have yet to meet a single sales rep that has reached there £30k target within six weeks. Furthermore, you are recruiting 15-20 new reps a month, but very few appear to last longer than three weeks, and some only last two days. In fact, I have to say that I have only ever met two sales reps that have been with the Firm for over twelve months and know what they are doing.

Er.... fuck it, I'm bored of writing all this, there's lots more to say, but it will fall on deaf ears. I've been trying for weeks to contact HR, but they are never in, er, can I please can I leave now.

Thanks

That's why I thought of bringing the subject up... neither of these drafts are what I would call particularly good, but I'm sure that over the weekend a bit of inspiration from CAB would help mong them in to something stronger.

[SetToStun]

Dear Fascist Bullyboy,

"Darling fascist bully-boy", surely...

[Adrian Brezhnev]

This is what entices applicants, apparently

This is what are average people earn

I've never met an average person, but I am led to believe that this statement is fairly misleading since it is said that most people leave within weeks due to excruciating boredom and lack of results, so never get up to that level.

[slim]

Interesting stuff

Many thanks for that, I look forward to the day you change careers. :)

[slim]

Dear Fascist Bullyboy,

"Darling fascist bully-boy", surely...

Gah, I knew it was wrong somehow, but couldn't remember the exact wording. Thanks for the correction. :)

This is what entices applicants, apparently
(picture)

This is what are average people earn

I've never met an average person, but I am led to believe that this statement is fairly misleading since it is said that most people leave within weeks due to excruciating boredom and lack of results, so never get up to that level.

They can legally mislead you in this way as average can mean mode, median or mean. Loads of finance companies pull stuff like this.

[Adrian Brezhnev]

Well, I think they are implying that £30k is the median.

For many people and many professions, that is nothing special, but in direct sales, it's seen as an extrordinarily wonderful figure. That's because it's a job that the likes of Southern Electric say can be done by anyone over the age of 18.

It's like those "Trainee Managers, no experience required. 30 positions available! Immediate start!" jobs that have always been in the Evening Standard- when you phone the number, you get invited to an "interview" without being asked for your CV, and if you're daft enough to go, you attend a pisspoor presentation given by a spiky-haired twentysomething Essex boy who goes on and on about how fun it might be to have a BMW 316 without actually saying anything about what the job entails.