Ask Lemmy

Always via letter.

I once gave a job three months notice. I knew I was moving and wanted them to know as soon as I did. It worked out well for me for two reasons. One, they uncapped my overtime, said I could work as much as I wanted to get ready for the move. Two, after I moved and jobs weren't quite what I thought, they re-hired me at my new location and transferred my file, so I got to keep my previous time and training credit.

I once, and only once, walked out on a job without hardly any notice. It was just a temp job, we were working in a call center, and they had this alarm that blared in our department whenever someone was on hold in another department. That department didn't have the siren, and they pretty much just fucked off all day, and we were punished for it, quite directly. So I went to the supervisor and told him that wasn't going to work. He told me to deal with it, so I did — I left, and when I got home (this was before we had cell phones), I called the temp agency and told them what happened. They said they were already called and said I walked out. When I told them why, they asked me to come in to speak to them directly. I did so. They'd begun an internal investigation, and I had to make a statement for the record. Well, I wasn't compelled to, but I damn sure wanted to. Ended up getting my pay for the whole week, and the agency pulled all their people out. They took the investigation to the call center people and asked them for a statement, and they basically confirmed what I said, and then tried to justify it. Apparently there was a clause in the contract the temp agency was able to invoke and it cost the call center a fair amount of money. Supposedly. I got a lot of this secondhand. It kind of snowballed from there because the call center itself was a contractor to a much larger company, and the company found out about the call center's misdeeds and they may have lost that contract, too. I mean, no company really wants a reputation as having poor customer service, so the place was already being investigated from the other end.

The only other time I put in notice wasn't for quitting, it was for vacation. My supervisor tried to deny me vacation, so I put it another way. I told her I was going regardless, and if my minimum wage fast food job wasn't there when I got back, I'd just apply at the 2-3 others in the same area and one of them would pick me and my work ethic up, and I'd probably get a little more money out of it. Lo and behold, my job was waiting for me when I got back.