Work should be fulfilling, but too often, people find themselves drained and disengaged. Micromanagement, lack of empathy, overwork, and generational conflicts are just a few of the many factors that amplify employee frustration, leading to resignations. An anonymous employee once wrote a resignation letter that now often resurfaces on social media because of how classic it is. Shared in the Reddit group r/antiwork, the hilarious letter shows the employee leaving all formal courtesies aside and coming straight to the point.
A screenshot of this resignation letter was first posted by u/_Taylor___, who was a friend of a co-worker of the employee who resigned. In the letter dated February 3, 2023, the employee subtly vented their anger, telling their employer how they felt about resigning from the job. It was a printed common letter template in which the employee made some edits with a blue pen. The handwritten edits transformed the letter into a brutally honest yet utterly hilarious piece of expression.
The letter, addressed to the supervisor, begins with the standard line, “I regret to inform you I will be departing from my role as [Job Title] at [Company’s Name] in two weeks.” Above the [Job Title], the employee wrote four titles, “MOW,” “Brakeman,” “Conductor,” and “Engineer,” which indicated that the employee worked in railways. MOW stands for “Maintenance of Way.”
The next paragraph reads, “While I’ve ‘generally tolerated’ my tenure at this company for 10 years, I will be leaving in order to pursue happiness.” The employee wrote “generally tolerated” by striking through the text “greatly enjoyed,” and adding “to pursue happiness” above the entry for “reason for departure.”
“Working with ‘a few’ talented colleagues has been an honor, and I will never forget the many things that happened there.” The employee cut out the phrase “things I learned” to “things that happened.” In the next paragraph, the printed text in the template read, “I will be happy to assist in the training of a replacement or helping with any transition issues that may arise.” The employee crossed out this entire line, and replaced it with a blunt handwritten response, “Goodbye.”
A friend of mine posted this, one of his favorite coworkers resigned, this was his resignation letter
byu/_Taylor___ inantiwork
The tongue-in-cheek resignation letter has been attracting massive attention from people on social media. In this particular thread, over 52,000 people upvoted the letter and over 1,000 commented. People rushed to the comments section to express their harsh feelings about toxic work environments. But above everything else, people loved the letter and described it as “brilliant,” “amazing,” “incredible,” “10/10,” “perfection,” and “savage.” They lauded the writer of the letter with remarks like “an absolute legend,” and “giga chad.”
One Redditor, u/static_discord, commented, “These kinds of resignations are awesome. They’re innocuous, good-humored, and passive-aggressive simultaneously, and adequately convey the message to the intended recipient.” Others thought that it was an epic and hilarious way to sign off from work. “This genuinely made me laugh. I am using this in the future,” said u/Ken-legacy.
Many felt the letter was cathartic and it stirred up all the buried emotions they felt about their workplace. “This is cathartic to read,” commented u/mykusrex. Referring to the last “Goodbye” response in the letter, u/Anythingtoavoidwork commented, “I can honestly feel the catharsis in crossing all of that out to write goodbye.” u/violetsprouts noted the letter as “beautiful” and added, “The opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference. The best insult is to remind someone that nothing about them has any impact on your life.”
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on July 23, 2024. It has since been updated.
