when is it OK to quit without notice?

by Alison Green on September 12, 2024

A reader writes:

I’ve read your advice that two weeks’ notice before quitting is the professional standard, because it “provides time for you to wrap up projects and transition them to whoever will be covering them in the interim.” In general, I agree.

But what about in situations where you couldn’t possibly “wrap up” anything with two years’ notice, much less two weeks? And there is literally nobody who could possibly cover your job duties? Imagine your usual bad company, where they hire a lot of staff in the wrong positions and never enough in the critical ones. Where there ends up being one, solitary, guy who maintains all the critical infrastructure, despite years of begging for more help. Who’s been on-call at all hours of the day, 24/7/365, for a decade. (Vacations? Hah! What are those?!) Where the pay and benefits are mediocre at best. Where the boss never gives a damn about you or the miracles you perform every week to keep things working … unless something breaks and then it’s all your fault. The usual B.S. And of course, it’s not like they would try and do much to fix things in that two weeks, either. They’ve ignored you for a decade; they’re not gonna see the light now.

So why not just say “I quit!” and walk out the door at that point?

I mean, there’s always the delight of the schadenfreude as a balm for the abused soul. But there’s also just getting out before you go entirely mad, too. And why subject yourself to two weeks of passive-aggressive victim-blaming at that point, either?

What factors would you consider acceptable or unacceptable to help make that decision to go full Joanna over your flair?

You should give two weeks notice because it’s the professional convention and it’s generally considered a bridge-burning move not to.

There are some exceptions to this:

* If circumstances make it impossible — for example, you need to leave immediately because of a health issue, family crisis, etc.

* If your company has a track record of having resigning employees leave immediately and not paying them for their notice periods.

* If you’re very new to the job. Sometimes in that case it will still make sense to offer two weeks if they want it, but not always. (More here.)

* If you’re not being paid and it’s not a volunteer job.

* If you’ve been egregiously mistreated. The bar for this is pretty high, though; the stuff in your letter probably wouldn’t qualify. (In contrast, here’s an example of a situation that did.) The problems in your letter are a reason to leave, but not a reason to burn the bridge by not giving any notice.

If you leave without notice just because you’re annoyed and fed up … well, you’re still allowed to do that. But you should be aware that you’ll be burning the bridge. You might think you don’t care about that, but it’s something that’s highly likely to come up in future reference checks (formal as well as informal ones) and a lot of employers will get alarmed by that. It can also get you marked as ineligible for rehire, which also concerns reference-checkers. You might even find it affects how coworkers see you, not just your managers; even people you consider allies can be less likely to recommend for you for a job later on if they’re uneasy about how you left.

Typically, when you’ve stuck out a situation like the one you described for years already, it’s in your best interests to just deal with two more weeks of it so that you leave on decent terms. Two weeks is nothing, particularly when you know you’re on your way out and don’t need to care about any of it anymore.

Your point that your company won’t use those two weeks to transition your work doesn’t change any of this. Because again, it’s about professional convention. We can say that convention sucks and should change, but it’s still the convention for now and if you flout it, it can come with repercussions. It doesn’t matter if we think it should or not; for now, leaving with no notice without one of the reasons above still reads as an F-you.

You might decide that you want to deliver that F-you, and you’ve considered the risks and are willing to accept them. If so, so be it! That’s your call. But go into it with your eyes open about the potential consequences.

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{ 249 comments }

{ 249 comments… read them below }

  1. Wendy Darling*

    Also, giving 2 weeks notice is not, like, legally binding. If you give 2 weeks notice and people immediately go off the rails and start treating you like garbage, you can indeed say “Actually this isn’t working, today is my last day, here’s my stuff”.

    I quit a job where I was treated horribly, and giving myself permission to walk the heck out if my boss flipped out when I gave notice is what allowed me to work out my notice. (I lucked out and my boss opted to “punish” me by never speaking to me again and having HR handle everything, which was actually a huge improvement over normal.)

    1. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*

      I also had a boss “punish” me with the gift of not talking to me after I put in my notice.

      Most relaxing two weeks on the job since he came on the scene.

      1. RedinSC*

        I had that, except for the next to last day when she realized that she didn’t have all the information she needed to deal with our major donors. Ooops, sucks to be her.

        I did, however, spend my 2 weeks writing everything down I could, but still… It was lovely not talking with her for nearly 2 weeks.

    2. Bast*

      Yes, I also had a boss who, after her usual guilt trip about “all we did for you” decided to just pretend I didn’t exist for 2 weeks. Fine, whatever.

      1. Exhausted Trope*

        Yes!! I’ve been on the receiving end of this response more than twice and it’s always come from managers who did precisely nothing for you. Sheesh!

        1. Bast*

          As a then middle manager who was the go between for the hourly employees and upper management, she refused to listen to any of the (perfectly valid) concerns hourly staff had about the office, procedures, and the lack of work being done by some. There was some blatant disregard for things that could have been easily fixed, because her attitude was that giving them a job in of itself was a blessing and they should be thankful for it. She actively made things WORSE for people and loved stirring the pot when she knew there were issues between 2 individuals. Every time someone left they got guilt tripped and made to feel like she had moved the moon and stars for them. It was ridiculous.

    3. Relentlessly Socratic*

      Very much this. I recently left OldJob, giving an extremely long notice period (for reasons, some of which benefited my team and some benefiting me. That she also benefited was incidental). Working with OldBoss became increasingly difficult–at one point I was in tears with HR and she reminded me that I could leave any time I wanted to.

      I ended up sticking through the full notice period, but it was made a lot easier knowing that all I need to do was say “you know what, my last day is today.”

    4. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

      Yes, I really think there should have been a bullet on the exceptions list with a link to one of the posts describing that and the language to use when your STBXM (soon to be ex-manager) is a big poopyhead.

    5. Media Monkey*

      I had a boss who didn’t speak to me after i handed in my notice. i’m in the uk and my notice period was 3 months…

      1. Bast*

        Was this an improvement on how Boss normally acted or were they normally friendly? I can think of some bosses where having them be quiet and letting me do my work in peace would have been preferred to their usual shenanigans.

    6. DJ Hymnotic*

      My last boss saved me the trouble and when I gave them my two weeks’ notice (which I handed in after they posted a recording cussing me out in a text to the rest of the staff) called me the following morning to tell me not to bother coming back to work.

      Joke’s on them, I went straight from that phone call straight to the initial interview for the job I have now, and from which I just got promoted beginning later this month. Meanwhile, they keep turning over their staff.

    7. tina turner*

      When you give notice you can ASK what they would like. Don’t forget to ASK. And then be sure you have it in writing if you’re counting on getting paid for your time there. Confirm in writing if they tell you verbally. That also gives you a chance to document anything else you want, in writing. That written confirmation, if they don’t give you one, is your “evidence” if you need it later. You could quote a comment they made if it was kinda hostile, e.g.

  2. Pool Noodle Barnacle Pen0s*

    I apply the “to my benefit” standard when deciding what I’m going to do about notice. Giving 2+ weeks notice means leaving on good terms, which is going to be to my benefit in most cases – It leaves an open door to go back and work there again if I want, and I can feel OK about asking my previous boss for a reference.

    But in cases where leaving on good terms would not benefit you, then it’s perfectly OK to give as much notice as they would give you when unilaterally ending the relationship. Which is typically zero.

    Your employer views you as a means to an end, more than anything. You should view them the same way. Your job is not your identity, and your professional reputation almost always has a way shorter memory than you think it does.

    1. Aeryn Sun*

      +1. Consider how this would or wouldn’t benefit you. Keeping professional conventions can be a pain but if it could hurt your professional reputation to leave without notice then it might be a decent idea to do the two weeks. But if that won’t affect you, for whatever reason, then they wouldn’t hesitate to throw you out with no notice so you shouldn’t either.

    2. Beth*

      Yes, this. Giving 2 weeks notice isn’t really out of consideration for your employer. (If it was, it would probably be longer! Who among us really thinks we can wrap up, document, hand off, etc all of our work in 2 weeks?)

      It’s out of consideration to yourself. Following the standard for professional behavior means that people around you perceive you as professional, reasonable, and generally upstanding. It probably means you’ll get a better reference (which is valuable even if you don’t intend to list your current manager as a reference–you never know when a hiring manager might know someone who works at the company you’re leaving). It’s more likely to leave you eligible for rehire (which, once again, is valuable–even if you’d never rejoin the company as you know it, it might be a very different place in a few years). Depending on your employer, it may mean you get a payout for any unused PTO.

      But there are times when you look at all that, look at what you’re dealing with, and decide that on the balance, you’re better off getting out of there ASAP. That’s when you quit without notice–not to send a message to your employer or to inconvenience them, but because it makes the most sense for you.

  3. el l*

    The 2 weeks is not primarily to finish up projects. 2 weeks is above all intended to be (a) time for you to document your work so the next person can pick it up easily, and (b) time to sort out any admin items like payment. That’s all.

    That’s part of why it’s just not done when someone quits: Because it’s a pretty minimal ask. Nothing new – or even “old business” – is expected to get done.

    1. BPT*

      Exactly – it’s not on the resigning employee to necessary “wrap up” projects or actually transition the work to someone else. If they have to hire someone new, that would take much more than two weeks.

      It’s more about making sure you have created SOPs or guides about the work that you do, make sure login information/websites they might need are in one easily accessible place, create a memo of work that is nearly complete, in progress, ongoing, just starting, etc and includes contact information of people outside the organization who you regularly work with. Actually finishing work probably won’t happen at the notice period.

    2. Ashley*

      And easily is relative. In some roles no matter how much documentation you leave you can’t cover everything but you document what you can, and try to leave as many notes as possible on the open things that can’t be finished.
      A good company will use the time to put together a temporary plan of who will assume your duties so you can spend some time going over things, but it doesn’t always happen.
      While the blaze of glory may feel good in the moment, the question is 5-10 years down the road will the long term repercussions be worth it. And really when they are dependent on you for everything anyway two more weeks really won’t let them be ready for your departure so the morning after your last day can still give you some good feels without the long term issues.

    3. Brad Deltan*

      Original LW here: your second point about giving the 2 weeks to sort out admin issues: last paycheck, handing in keys, returning laptops, etc etc etc. That’s a good point! I intentionally didn’t get into that aspect because I wanted to focus more on your first point.

      I thought I was clear but just to be sure: I wasn’t just talking about the inability to wrap up ongoing projects. I know lots of jobs where a person could spend MONTHS…if not years…trying to document the work they do *at all*. Never mind trying to document it thoroughly enough that “the next person can pick it up easily.”

      I can’t count the number of times I and many of my colleagues have said point blank to our bosses: “Do you want me to document it, or do you want me to get the work done? I don’t have the time to do both.”

      Alison raises many good points about why giving two weeks’ notice is a good idea. But this idea that it has any usefulness whatsoever (at least in most “white collar” salaried jobs) to ease the employee transition? I’m sorry but I don’t buy it.

      1. hellohello*

        I think in a healthy workplace (one where the answer to your question would be: “let’s take some work off your plate so you can both accomplish this task and document it”) it’s possible to get, if not a comprehensive, at least a very useful exit document put together in two weeks. You’ll never get everything you do written down perfectly, but you can at least put together passwords, a list of critical tasks, names of people to ask for help, etc.

        In your case, the two weeks isn’t going to do anything to help your employer, who will probably just ignore it until you’re gone and then realize they’re up shit creek without you… but in that case, you might as well give the two weeks with the knowledge it will make it harder for them to call you unprofessional in the future *and* you’ll still get the satisfaction of knowing they’re screwed once you’re gone.

      2. ecnaseener*

        You don’t buy the idea that there’s ANYTHING you could write down in the span of two weeks that might be helpful? Anything that you might want to know if you were starting a similar position at a similar institution, like “where the servers are located” or “a list of the key infrastructure that this position is in charge of maintaining”?

        It doesn’t have to be writing a step-by-step manual of every task, or imparting everything you’ve learned over your career. Telling people where to start is better than nothing.

        1. Rainy*

          I recently left a job where the transition planning was basically “nobody is allowed to leave for any reason up to and including their own death.” I wrote down what I could before I left, but I have no way of knowing whether anything I wrote down will be useful by the time they hire my replacement. I gave a week and a half notice, incidentally, because by that point I was kind of fed up, and if I’d known how I’d be treated during that week and a half I’d have shortened it even further.

          Strictly speaking, though, because I took a bunch of vacation on my way out the door, HR’s records will show that I gave 5 weeks’ notice. I found out just this week, after having to open a ticket with former HR, that if you leave voluntarily, my former employer holds your final check until the next pay period, so the end of the month, which is mildly annoying but whatever, BUT ALSO that your PTO payout is held until your former office decides to sign the paperwork, which can take weeks or longer. So I’m glad that I took some of that PTO as vacation instead of the lump sum payout, because leadership is furious with me for leaving, and I have every expectation that they’re going to sit on that payout as long as is humanly possible.

          1. Chocolate Covered Cotton*

            FYI, that policy is legal in many states and illegal in some. In California, they’d have only 72 hours to give your final paycheck if you give no notice and have to pay you on your last day if you give at least 72 hours notice. If you’re laid off or fired, they have to pay you on your last day. Oregon has something similar.

            Several states have no law at all, surprisingly. I guess they just take every dispute to court? And there’s no federal law either.

            Here’s a page with final paycheck laws by state, for the curious.
            https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/final-paycheck-laws-by-state/

            1. Rainy*

              Yeah, in my old state the law is “your company has to have a policy about this and whatever their policy is is fine”, unfortunately.

              If I don’t get my vacation payout on the last day of the month, I’m going to start texting my old manager and opening tickets with my old HR until the path of least resistance is paying me til I shut up.

              I found out this morning that leadership in my old office has stopped saying my name even though I’ve been gone only a few weeks and everyone there knows who I am. My former colleague said that I’ve become She Who Must Not Be Named by leadership, and sent me screenshots.

        2. Boof*

          Yes, there’s zero obligation to “hire and train a replacement first” or “write a full curriculum so anyone coming on can do what you’re doing” etc etc. I’d say it’s more about things like closing out all your accounts, making a pile of stuff that is critical to hand off (IDK, like, “here are the server codes” or “here is the registration paperwork to maintain good legal standing and it’s due ___ ” – depends what your job is). Whatever the most critical stuff you can hand off in those two weeks (and if they refuse to give you someone to hand off to, just write the stuff down and leave it in a folder for them to deal with when they realize they have to etc)

      3. sparkle emoji*

        Hi Brad, I’m currently at a company where people are asked to leave as soon as the give notice. I will say I feel it’s more disruptive this way, as they have to hide all plans until they tell the boss, and then Poof! they’re gone. Having the 2 weeks as a coworker to ask those questions about who’s taking over what and what we need to know about their workload helps. Would it help to think of the 2 weeks as a courtesy to any coworkers you do like working with?

        1. Lizzay*

          I know my current job would have been easier if they’d had a culture of documentation. I’ve been dropped in the middle of so many projects & not even know the right questions to ask.

        2. MassMatt*

          Do you know if your company pays them for two weeks even if they don’t have them working it?

          There are fields where regulations or best practices require that employees leave immediately but they will still pay severance, and of course there are employers that are just vindictive and react with a “you can’t quit! You’re fired!!” kind of mentality.

      4. Lizzay*

        I mean, if you could write down *everything*, it could be programmed & a human wouldn’t be needed. But just general guidelines or specifics on certain things (“99% of the time, do it as normal, but b/c of x, y & z, in this specific case, this needs to be done first”) ought to be reasonable.

      5. el l*

        FWIW, I’ll tell you what I’ve done for documentation when I’ve left jobs. I’ve left a Word doc that lists:

        1. Major Projects
        2. For each, the File Folders on my laptop where files are at, or any other non-obvious things on how they’re organized
        3. For each, a short list (think 3-8 items) of final reports, major Excel spreadsheets/pieces of code, and/or already-existing docs I think a person would find helpful as they get up to speed
        4. Email Address(es) I used, anything they can reference when they can ask IT for access

        And that’s it. Easily done by even a slow worker in 2 weeks, without undue hand holding or being pedantic.

        1. ferrina*

          This is the best way I’ve found to do it. A healthy organization uses those 2 weeks to make sure that they know what needs to be covered and where the materials are. If the place is super on top of it, I might even be able to sit down with the person that is covering a particular project to see if they have any questions.

        2. Media Monkey*

          this! in the last few weeks, i also have an open word doc with a status on all projects/ clients (I work in an agency) which i update in the last few weeks so that i can hand over that latest status and make sure nothing is missed.

      6. Kay*

        OP – I fear that after 10 years of continually having this frustration build up your sense of what healthy norms should look like is skewed. Unless you are retiring or will never have to work again, not realizing this will only hurt you. If a healthy workplace gets wind of an “f you” style walking out they will not want to hire you, especially if your reasoning is of the “it wouldn’t have mattered anyway” variety.

        I hope you give your two weeks as a start to resetting your calibration for what a professional environment should look like.

        1. MassMatt*

          Came here to say this. I think LW has let the (very understandable!) pent-up anger about their long mistreatment cloud their perspective on giving notice.

          I get that LW was screwed by a bad employer, but consider that the satisfaction of the rage-quit is fleeting, but in the long term you could be the one more hurt by it.

      7. Kevin Sours*

        I think that, perhaps, this attitude is reflective of environments you’ve been in. Can you transition everything you’ve been working on in two weeks without any disruption? No. But that’s a long way from “any usefulness whatsoever”. Simply having time to determine who is going to take over tasks and giving them a moment for mentally prep for it is useful. Or having time to shuffle things around so that Bill and Suzy *have* the time to take over Jed’s work when he leaves. Or being able to communicate that requests for X go to Suzy now and for Y it goes to Bill.

        However rough that transition is, it going to be smoother than figuring it all out on Tuesday morning after Jed says “hey boss I’m not coming in tomorrow” on Monday.

      8. Deborah Vance, Vance Refrigeration*

        I think you’re thinking of a more formal documentation, but it doesn’t have to be like that. We’ve seen letters from people who left jobs but were still getting constant calls asking where something was, or what was the password, or who to contact at a partner company, and so on. So it’s more like write down passwords, any essential tasks that only you knows how to do it, where each document is, things like that. You’ll never have time to document every single thing, but doing at least some of it will help your professional reputation down the road.
        Also, if there’s at least some project that you could wrap up during your notice period, do it so your company can’t claim you’re leaving them hanging during a busy period or something.

      9. Mad Scientist*

        “Do you want me to document it, or do you want me to get the work done? I don’t have the time to do both.”

        You say that you’ve said this to your bosses before, but has it been said to them *during someone’s notice period*? Because the normal answer is different than the answer during someone’s notice period. Normally, the priority is to get the work done. But during your notice period, the priority should be documentation (bonus points if you also get any real work done, but that doesn’t always happen, and that’s okay).

        It should not take you months or years to pull together the kind of documentation we’re referring to here. It looks different for different jobs, but for me, it would mainly be a list of ongoing projects / tasks with a point of contact and schedule for each (even if the “schedule” is just “finish X by end of year” or “waiting on Y before moving forward with Z”). I’d probably document more than that personally, but that’s the minimum sort of effort people are talking about.

        But it sounds like you’re pretty disgruntled and ready to burn the bridge regardless of the answers you get here. Best of luck to you!

      10. Roland*

        I think you’re assuming a lot about “most” white collar jobs based on your own bad job. As a counterpoint, as a software engineer on a team of engineers, 2 weeks is plenty of time to transfer whatever I’m working on at any given time to my peers or manager.

        1. Howard Bannister*

          Indeed, the general idea with my job is that if we document as we do things and keep the documentation in common areas then if I was hit by a bus tomorrow any of my peers could take over my projects quickly enough to meet the current deadlines; and, yes, this does take more time. Not doing the documentation, however, is a great way to ensure that you do, someday, end up missing those deadlines. Things happen! No one person can be allowed to be utterly indispensable, because no one person can be forever reliable.

      11. Beth*

        I think you’re highlighting the difference between a good employer and a bad one here.

        In an environment where you’re chronically overloaded, never have time to document your work, and have to push back routinely on managers who keep asking you to do more? Yeah, of course you’re not handing off all your work successfully. There’s too much of it, too little of a foundation in place documentation-wise, and probably no one to hand it to anyways.

        In what I would consider a really good environment? You probably already have written documentation of key processes, which just need updating. You probably already have some documentation of your current projects–at a minimum, you can use notes from meetings and check-ins as a starting point. Each project probably has a team who already have context on the project and can help your replacement get up to speed. You probably have a designated handoff person for each major task, and they probably actually have capacity for the new work. There will be things you forget or miss, but they’re probably “that thing I update once a year” level, not core duties.

        Most places are somewhere in between those two extremes. Usually 2 weeks isn’t enough to transition everything fully, but you can hand off the most mission-critical things and at least make a note about the rest.

      12. SemiAnon*

        I work on the software end of very complex technical/scientific projects in large collaborations. In my job, two weeks would be enough time to tidy the documentation on my code, make sure all my stuff is pushed to GitHub and updated and the Jira tickets have comments, and have a couple of meetings with project managers about the current state of my work, with the goal of handing stuff off to other people. Plus the admin stuff. We have the GitHub repositories, Jira ticketing system, project managers and regular status meetings because it’s a big complicated project with 100+ people on multiple continents involved, and people leave, sometimes unexpectedly. We actually had a vital team member die suddenly at one point – it took time to transition to a new person, but the project wasn’t seriously disrupted.

        In a badly run project, with two weeks – make a list of important external contacts, tell people where your files/equipment are, write down any passwords and log-in information, and try to make a list of the tasks you do as part of your job. The odds are they’ll never look at what you’ve done and will run around like chickens with their heads cut off, but you’ve done your best.

        I suspect your view may have been warped by too many years at a chaotic, poorly organized employer. Most places handle two week notices with a bit of slowdown, but no chaos.

        1. Kyrielle*

          This. And the beauty of it is, an employer like this is basically equally hosed with two weeks notice as they would be with none. You can give the notice, work it out (or walk early if they treat you extra badly), hold your head high…and know they’re still going to be lost, because that’s how they’ve set it up.

      13. Bitte Meddler*

        I’m in a white collar profession. When I left my last job, I used the two weeks to bring team members up to speed on where I was in certain projects, to forward them email chains so they’d have all the background info, walk them through the project documentation I’d created so they could follow my train of thought, and sending emails to key stakeholders of my projects letting them know that I was leaving and X-colleague would be taking over.

        If I’d turned in my notice and walked out the door, there would have been a panicked scramble trying to figure out what work I’d done already and what was still on the to-do list for each project.

        The two weeks notice absolutely smoothed out the transition process.

  4. Binky*

    I feel like a big part of the equation is how outsiders will perceive your departure. Potential future employers don’t know the circumstances and frustrations that would lead to leaving without notice. So it’s reassuring for them to hear that you gave standard notice.

    1. ferrina*

      Really good point. A lot of people complain about how badly their employer treats them, and it’s impossible from the outside to tell if the employer is the problem or if you are. When you say “I offered to stay for the two weeks notice and they declined” or “I wrapped up my notice earlier than I intended because my boss was raising their voice at me at least once an hour”, that makes it clear the you are the one acting reasonably.

      1. Nicosloanica*

        Yeah, this reminds me of someone venting on Nonprofit Happy Hour about how they wanted to escort someone out immediately after they gave notice; this person was useless, they said, they couldn’t wait to get rid of them and they would have nothing to contribute (so sort of the invoice of OP’s situation here). The other commenters made the point that the two weeks wasn’t about that employee so much as the *other employees,* who would be watching. No matter how crappy the employee was, if they weren’t at least paid out for the two weeks’, the real audience is the next person who quits.

    2. Smurfette*

      Right! OP doesn’t want to be in a position where the company can say “everything here is a huge mess because Brad walked out with no notice” when the situation is actually “everything here is a huge mess because we’re understaffed and management didn’t care about business continuity”.

  5. Nervous Nellie*

    Also, since your next job may not be your last job, this awful job will remain on your resume for a while. A graceful exit from it makes it more likely you will have a positive reference, whether from chosen allies in the company or even for the generic verification given by HR to companies to which you apply.

  6. danooli*

    I walked out the door a few years ago in a blaze of glory after being mistreated, and I do not regret it at all. We were overstaffed, so I knew the work was covered, but I was thrown under the bus for the last time.

    Thankfully, I had savings and took a few months off, and was happily re-employed by the company I worked at prior (who had to lay me off due to the 2008 recession.)

    Your results WILL vary, but sometimes you just need to GTFO.

    1. Anon for this*

      I gave three days notice once: zero regrets. I was changing fields so it was very much a ‘step off of a cliff and hope I can fly’ moment (turned out I could!), but the usual place-full-of-bees and an ultimatum that made it clear that my great-grandboss had been acting maliciously (and possibly illegally) in some previous incidents gave me the push to take that leap. Surprisingly I’ve never been asked about how I left that place, but if it ever does come up my work history since then should reassure any employers that that once was an aberration.

      That said! Keep in mind that you never know what the future may bring. That bridge may look safe to burn now, but you never know if you’ll unexpectedly find yourself on the banks of that same river. Thanks to a downturn I wound up temping in my old profession last year, working for a different previous employer that I never expected to see again. This employer hadn’t been particularly great themselves but not to the same extent, and I had left them professionally with the standard courtesies and two week notice. That intact bridge wound up saving our bacon (and the roof over our heads) when both of us unexpectedly found ourselves out of work.

  7. Fiona-a-a-a*

    I once did this because I was advised that, in spite of my approved ADA accommodations which were not up for review, because I worded an email in a way someone it wasn’t even sent to didn’t prefer, I was no longer trustworthy enough to work from a desk with a lamp on it, as opposed to a desk with an overhead fluorescent light with a 100% chance of causing a debilitating migraine.

    … I’ll admit it was rather satisfying.

    (I am aware that this was not legal. If you have not personally done a disability lawsuit against an employer, whether as plaintiff or attorney, I request that you not give me legal advice.)

    1. Archi-detect*

      yeah I could see how everyone would want to rush to tell you to sue them but I get why that is not practical advice in a lot of situations, or just not worth dragging it out when you can just be done with it. Glad you got out of it though!

      1. Fiona-a-a-a*

        Yes, I enjoy not having to argue about whether I deserve to not have a migraine caused by my office environment. If I had persisted long enough to preserve my right to sue, I would have had to enjoy that discussion far more than the humane number of times (0).

    2. Crencestre*

      Many people caught in your situation don’t even HAVE to launch a lawsuit – their company’s HR department will explain to management what can happen if they refuse to grant ADA-mandated accommodations. Of course, that depends on the company’s having a decent HR department in the first place, and it sounds as if your firm may not have that.

    3. I Have RBF*

      Lawsuits in general are a heavy lift, and disability and discrimination suits are the hardest, IIRC.

      I had a likely case once, but it would have cost me more in emotional load to pursue that I could have received. I got a new job within a month, and didn’t sign the outrageous severance letter, so I take satisfaction in knowing that some idiot there had to worry for quite a while that the other shoe was going to drop.

  8. Liz*

    No matter how satisfying it might be to just stand up and walk out, please think about the colleagues you leave behind and what your abrupt departure would mean for them. I had a colleague just leave a note at the end of the day that they weren’t coming back, and it created no end of hassle for other people who had nothing to do with the circumstances that had promoted that person want to quit. The departing colleague didn’t reassign to other people access to projects they were working on, didn’t leave any progress updates on their ongoing work, didn’t hand off permissions and passwords that others would need to pick up their work, etc. Not surprisingly, people who had had positive feelings about that colleague ended up feeling very differently after they had to deal with cleaning up the mess they left behind. Even if you can’t do two weeks, maybe spend one day reassigning permissions and handing in office keys and such?

    1. the quiet quitter strikes again*

      That level of disruption is a management failure, not the failure of an individual who ends their employment. I mean, office keys and equipment should be turned in of course, but that takes 2 minutes, not 2 weeks. A competent manager should be able to handle project handoffs, and passwords should be able to be reset by an IT with admin access. If that infrastructure isn’t in place, the employee has no obligation to paper over that level of brokenness.

      1. Lizzay*

        Truth, however, if it takes IT 5 business days to reset a password, that’s still your former coworkers who would have to deal with it.

        Management does very well at ensuring s*** rolls downhill – they get to put all of the blame on the people who are most affected by the stuff like the above.

      2. Gumby*

        Some of the passwords that I have are not to systems that my company’s internal IT has control over. For example, I am the only person at my firm who has access to certain parts of a website for one of our customers where we turn in reports and get approval to submit invoices. We can only have one person in my role in the customer’s system. So having someone take that over means getting a new account approved. It wouldn’t be impossible to do if I were to up and disappear one day, but it would certainly be easier if I gave notice so they could start the process ahead of time so that there were no gaps that would delay invoicing. (And it would be illegal to hand over my log in credentials to someone else – literally – as it is a government customer. There cannot be a generic firm log in.) That is far from the only example of external systems that would have to be updated if I or other co-workers left without notice.

        I personally appreciate that my own manager trusts me enough that taking over any of my projects w/o advanced warning would be an issue. It means he trusts me and it not micromanaging my work. I don’t consider it a management failure that he knows the broad strokes of what I am doing rather than the nitty gritty details. On some projects we work closely together. On others all he knows is “I don’t have to worry about the monthly report for Customer because Gumby is on it.” Could he find the reports if need be? Of course. But if I planned on leaving (I do not at the moment!) I would definitely make sure he, or someone else, knew where I keep the report, what spreadsheets I use to develop it, how to handle situations that come up periodically, etc.

        1. IT blues*

          As someone in IT, the idea that only one person has access to a critical system like that makes me uncomfortable. Your company is just asking from problems in case the universe decides to throw you under a literal bus. I get that’s the way things are but the biggest headaches are always for clients who put everything on one person and are left unable to function should the worst happen.

      3. MsSolo (UK)*

        Unless you have password protected Excel sheets – the only way to get back into those if you don’t have the passwords is to break the spreadsheet apart by changing the file format and delete the relevant lines of code! (fun times, fun times)

    2. Coverage Associate*

      This. I have been left to clean up abruptly departing managers’ messes twice. If a F you was intended, I’m sure it wasn’t intended towards me, but higher up management, yet it’s the direct reports who worked with the departed employee day to day who get stuck with the day to day clean up. The same problems with management that inspired the F you are the problems that land it on the wrong people.

      Also, while you won’t see a formal ethics opinion requiring a certain amount of notice, the short notice period meant that clients didn’t have time to decide about their cases, so there were weeks where neither the partner’s old or new firm could act on the cases. For cases in active litigation, it was almost a big problem. And there are ethical issues about not prejudicing clients.

    3. Unkempt Flatware*

      Sometimes it is okay to only think about #1. Mental health is real and it doesn’t have to be an extreme circumstance to decide to protect it. As the quiet quitter said above, my colleagues are the responsibility of management, not mine.

    4. a trans person*

      > please think about the colleagues you leave behind and what your abrupt departure would mean for them.

      Strong disagree. I’d go so far as to say that you *must not* think about the colleagues you leave behind, because guilt about your former company’s business practices is yet another tool for them to exploit your labor. If you accept emotional or ethical responsibility, you will only trap and harm yourself, and indirectly your fellow workers by continuing to normalize corporate abuse.

      1. Relentlessly Socratic*

        Thank you for saying this. Many times people stay far longer than they should in a role (even good ones! but sometimes ya gotta move on!) because they feel guilt/loyalty to their colleagues.

        Honestly, most coworkers want you to do what’s best for you. And if it’s a toxic place overall, most coworkers are happy you got out. (unless they, themselves, are the problem…)

      2. Joron Twiner*

        You’re right, but I think there is a balance where you do what is best for yourself while not actively harming or making it worse for others.

        Your departure will be disruptive to your coworkers, that doesn’t mean you should never quit your job. But if you can give notice in accordance with the expected professional norm, it makes it slightly easier for your coworkers. Win-win.

      3. Jackalope*

        For me, that’s where the 2 weeks notice gives you a way to balance those two things out. If gives you a bit of time to put together at least a list of what you’re doing on the regular. If you have any particularly great coworkers that you don’t want to leave in the lurch, it gives you time to brief them on things that may happen when you’re gone so they can be prepared. Etc. It’s not a huge time commitment on your part, but it’s a way to smooth things out a bit for people you like and want to support before you move on to the next thing.

    5. Crencestre*

      Good point, Liz, but if the company is really as dysfunctional as the LW says that it is (and I’ve no reason to doubt them), then no matter what the LW does in the way of resigning, their colleagues will get stuck picking up the slack. Unless and until, of course, those colleagues still on the job will also decide that THEY’VE had it up to here, get better jobs and hand in THEIR notices (while mentally singing “So Long, Farewell” on their way out the door!)

      1. Lizzay*

        No, that is absolutely true. And seconding what a trans person said. It’s another way to foster that ingrained guilt that only works in one direction.

        And really, it doesn’t sounds like LW really has any colleagues to pick up the slack in their own department, so … meh !

        1. a trans person*

          And to be clear, I’ve almost always given 2+ weeks notice and left on good or neutral terms! I’ve done the write-ups and so on and felt good about it. But I was at places where I *could*, and I agree, LW doesn’t need to feel bad that their workplace isn’t.

  9. the quiet quitter strikes again*

    I agree with Alison’s overall advice here, and there is a strategic argument to be made for giving 2 weeks, sure.

    But as an aside: like many “professional conventions”, this one is very obviously an example of an unjust labor hierarchy, and as such should be challenged more. Until 2 weeks notice for a firing (barring certain extreme situations such as an employee engaging in hostile, threatening, or violent behavior, or at minimum something like stealing) is considered the norm, I feel there is no obligation, moral or otherwise, to give notice. And I genuinely feel that there needs to be more pushback against employers who choose to interpret it as an “F-you” and not just a normal business interaction. We need to collectively start calling out that kind of misinterpretation as the hyperbolic and hypercritical nonsense that it is. Just because this is the norm we’ve (coercively) tolerated doesn’t mean we must continue doing so.

    1. T.N.H*

      I dunno, most people are given a lot more than 2 weeks notice that they will be fired via PIPs, severance etc. The last company I worked at, not a single person was ever fired on the spot. Even people who had stolen money and committed blatant sexual assault got notice and severance.

            1. T.N.H*

              I’m sure this varies by industry/location/timing etc. The one time I was laid off (Covid), I got 3 months.

            2. Lizzay*

              Oh yeah, I’ve seen months of severence. In my industry, depending on the company, it can be a month per year of service with no upper limit.

            3. Bast*

              Years ago, my father worked for a large company that was undergoing massive cuts. In this case, the longer you survived the layoffs (which would happen around every quarter), the worse off you were. Those laid off fairly early ended up retaining health insurance for a year, months and months of severance, etc. Folks in the middle got their health coverage for maybe half of that time and severance for the a couple of months. Those in the last couple of rounds were walked out of the door with nothing except a “sucks to be you.” I guess they couldn’t afford to be generous at the end.

            4. Gumby*

              It varies. I’ve had one layoff with very little severance (2 weeks? 3?) but months of notice where we were not expected to do hardly any work and so we spent the whole time job searching, and one with 8 weeks of severance.

        2. ecnaseener*

          There is in fact a law requiring severance if you lay off a large enough group of employees without notice.

            1. Relentlessly Socratic*

              Oops, WARN relates to giving notice of layoffs. I don’t think it involves severance (and I am willing to be wrong about that)

              Severance in the US (From the US dept of labor)
              Severance pay is often granted to employees upon termination of employment. It is usually based on length of employment for which an employee is eligible upon termination. There is no requirement in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for severance pay. Severance pay is a matter of agreement between an employer and an employee (or the employee’s representative).

                1. Kevin Sours*

                  This is one of those where the law and the practical effects differ. From the Department of Labor documentation:

                  “Neither the Act nor the regulations recognize the concept of pay in lieu of
                  notice. WARN requires notice, making no provision for any alternative.”

                  In practice putting employees on garden leave is common. However there are some differences that are important to keep in mind. Your employer is on the hook for benefits — including PTO accrual — for the notice period not just salary and, at least by my read, you would be considered employed for the period for things like bonuses or vesting.

                  Note that you *can* voluntarily waive your WARN ACT rights as part of receiving a severance (at least in some cases) so be careful what you sign if you are offered one.

                  https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/layoff/pdfs/_EmployerWARN2003.pdf

              1. WellRed*

                Only for companies over a certain size. A large amount of people are employed y smaller companies that do not need to provide notice or severance.

      2. the quiet quitter strikes again*

        But they aren’t obliged to if the employee is at-will, and that goes both ways. And to be fair, most employers also have more than enough time to address issues that drive people to leave, like the ones OP mentions. Claiming shock over someone quitting after such a laundry list of issues going unaddressed for *years* is even worse than someone claiming caught off guard if they are fired after being put on a PIP.

        1. T.N.H*

          Right, neither the company nor the employee are required to give notice (usually). But both often do, in large part to maintain reputation. So assuming the company you work for historically has given notice/severance for layoffs and firings, you should also give 2-weeks notice. In every place I have worked, this has been the case. I’m sure there are companies that don’t and Alison addresses that as the exception (people who are told not to serve their notice period). You said until 2-weeks notice for firing is the norm and I think that IS the norm already in many industries.

      3. Turquoisecow*

        The only time I’ve seen anyone at my office jobs get advance notice of a layoff was when my large company was going out of business and they were legally required to give us all WARN notices.

        Prior to that, most layoffs or firings were a surprise to the person being removed. I don’t know if they all received severance or not but they certainly didn’t get notice.

        Which is not to say I think employees shouldn’t give notice, but failure to do so is more likely to make your coworkers’ lives difficult than the bosses or executives, so it’s not sticking it to the man at all.

    2. metadata minion*

      I absolutely agree that there’s an imbalance here, but the people most affected by you leaving immediately are your fellow workers, not management. Assuming your coworkers aren’t egregiously terrible, it’s a kindness to spend some time tying up what loose ends you can and passing on documentation.

      1. the quiet quitter strikes again*

        Fellow workers being more than – at most -mildly inconvenienced as a result of one person quitting is 100% a management failure. It is unkind to blame an individual worker or expect them to sacrifice themselves to avoid such predictable consequences of mismanagement. If a workplace is that dysfunctional as a rule, and assuming one’s coworkers aren’t terrible, they will understand and not resent anyone for leaving.

      2. Bast*

        If one person’s departure can royally mess up a team that badly, that’s a management failure. Someone leaving is expected to be a minor inconvenience, but typically when people are wildly overwhelmed after someone quits it’s because the place is understaffed/really needed more than one person trained to do that/wildly mismanaged in some other way. As a manager, you need to take into account that people can leave at any time, go on medical or maternity leaves, get hit by a bus, move across the country, whatever, and be prepared to deal with it so that it does not create an impossible workload for the team. If one person leaving throws a company into this much chaos, it’s a management failure, and 2 weeks likely isn’t going to fix that.

  10. Middle Aged Lady*

    I did this twice. Once at a part-time job I only held for a few weeks, serving a vulnerable population where I wasn’t informed of the degree to which the leaders let this population set the tone of daily interactions. When there was a smashed car window and a theft that leadership knew was done by a client but they did not tell the staff it happened. I was disturbed by this. About a week later, The day I left—one client knifed another in the parking lot and when we asked the boss about it when he came in, his answer was ‘that didn’t happen, let’s not fearmonger” I resigned on the spot.

    Once at a full-time I loved at a restaurant where I was told to train someone I knew would not adhere to safe food-handling practices. I came in to see that the schedule had been changed and I now had 16 hours a week. I walked, and the boss called begging me to come back. I went back to college instead.

    1. Jay (no, the other one)*

      Years ago we relocated for my husband’s one-year academic post-doc. I knew I would be living there for less than 12 months so I took a part-time hourly job. I’m an MD and I worked for a walk-in clinic (lovingly known as a doc-in-the-box). I started in October and in February the man who supervised the part-timers came in during my shift. He’d done some chart reviews and had some concerns. I was totally open to this – I was a year out of residency and he had decades of experience. He had one issue: I wasn’t doing enough rapid strep tests. At the time (1990) they were new and unreliable. I explained why I didn’t use them and cited the JAMA article on the subject. He said “No, you don’t understand. Every time you do one of those tests, we make $12.00.”

      I stood up, took off my white coat, picked up my stethoscope, and said “Hope you’re free to cover my shift. I will change my practice to improve patient care. I will not change my practice so that you or I or anyone else can make more money.” He stared at me as I put on my coat and then suddenly picked up his briefcase and walked out. I worked there for another four months and he never bothered me again.

      1. Boof*

        bravo! I’ve sort of wondered how those gigs work (I’m an academic oncologist and been at the place i did fellowship for 6 years now, really like it) – never been pressured like that but you hear about slimy things and it’s such a slipper slope, your integrity is not worth $12! (or anything; it’s priceless :P )

    2. Turquoisecow*

      Yeah I quit without notice on a job I held for less than a week. I hadn’t even been fully trained yet so there would have been no benefit to giving notice. I emailed it to the owner, who did not reply but I’m sure found me very unprofessional but I found her and the environment infantilizing and controlling and decided I was better off getting out of there before it frustrated me more, plus $10/hour wasn’t worth it.

  11. Holly Gibney*

    I’ve decided to give a week’s notice at the job I’m leaving, which to me is a week more than they deserve. They egregiously underpay ($15k below the low income line in my city), classify me as one job but expect me to do the work of at least 2, and didn’t negotiate in good faith when I asked for a pretty minor disability accommodation. I’ve already decided I’ll never ask my supervisor for a rec because I can’t trust her–she delights in sabotaging people while pretending it’s not her fault, and even before the accommodation drama (in which she lied to HR about the nature of my job!) I wouldn’t have trusted her to give me a good rec even though she only said positive things to my face/when I was around. I’d also never want to return to work for this organization in another department, and I’m planning to leave this field altogether next year so I can go to grad school to prepare for a career in a different industry. I feel like in this case it’s fine? As they say, may the bridges I burn light the way!

    1. ecnaseener*

      I’d just keep in mind that you don’t have to put her down as a reference for people to ask her (or someone else from this job) about you. So you just have to weigh the risk of someone from this job being asked about you and giving a worse answer than they would’ve given if you gave 2 weeks notice.

      I agree it’s probably a small risk! Just be aware it’s not zero.

      1. Jay (no, the other one)*

        I left a job in 2016 and at the time my boss hadn’t spoken to me in three months. For obvious reasons I never want to use him as a reference. I have listed other people I worked with there for two jobs since than and it hasn’t been a problem.

    2. Nicosloanica*

      My fellow employee just gave a week to our boss. I raised my eyebrows personally but I guess everyone else just accepts it. I don’t think it’s going to hurt him. To be fair, his tenure was fairly short and he also bent some other rules (he took nearly two weeks off shortly after he started) so I guess some people are just immune to consequences.

  12. Workaholic*

    I quit a job once with no notice. They tried shaming me when I picked up my final check. But I was hired for specific hours (it was my 2nd job and I *had* to be off work by the agreed upon time so I could drive home and sleep. The Mgr was always “too busy” and never let me leave) I also was only allowed one 15 min lunch break off the clock per 8 hr shift (apparently legal in my state, just previously I worked for companies that gave 30-min lunch off clock and 2 10-min breaks on the clock). I had to train myself (thankfully I was familiar with the general work, and as a former asst Mgr at a diff co I knew how to train ppl, so I found their training materials). After a week I was feeling super fuzzy all the time, then came down sick. Got in trouble for not giving X hours notice for calling in sick (I was on the opening shift and couldn’t give notice since nobody was there to take my call – plus I still hadn’t really been trained yet). I realized after a day in bed that I could quit, or die. Being my 2nd job, and only there a week or two, I didn’t care about having them as a reference. When they tried shaming me when I picked up my check I told them to treat their employees better, and maybe they wouldn’t ask leave.

    1. Bast*

      Yeah, no. I’ve worked part time gigs after my main job, and I’ve always made it clear that I have a full time job that I am not sacrificing for a 10 hour per week, side job. That’s not what I say, but I make clear that my hours are what they are. If that doesn’t work for them, fine, but if you are going to continually expect me to work outside of my available, you are going to find that I don’t come in. Not available = not available, not, try your luck.

    2. Melissa*

      part time 12 hour a week job is the only job I quit on the spot. I was there two weeks and they could not schedule me around my full time job. honestly I think they needed a morning person and hired me, despite me having zero morning availability. they had my availability written out for them and when the scheduling manager told me it was my problem and I needed to find coverage for her mistake (this was week 2. I did not have any capital with my coworkers.) I quit. you knew my availability was 6 pm-9 pm and you keep scheduling me for 10 am- 3 pm. Best of luck. (and this was late 90s before PT jobs expected FT availability)

      1. WS*

        Same. I was in university and told them I would be available every morning until noon and all day on weekends. They were pleased, then after a week started scheduling me for 3-9pm weekdays and told me (two weeks into the semester) to “make it work”. They were genuinely shocked when I quit.

        1. I Have RBF*

          … then after a week started scheduling me for 3-9pm weekdays and told me (two weeks into the semester) to “make it work”. They were genuinely shocked when I quit.

          I see this a lot from people working part time, food service type jobs. Why in the living fuck do those managers think that their dinky, shitty, part time job is worth upending someone’s schooling or other, full time job? Are they high on their own supply?

          They were told, up front, of the person’s availability. Why would they think a part-timer would change it on demand? Do they really think so little of people’s lives that they expect people to sacrifice them for a demeaning, minimum wage, part-time gig?

          I just don’t get it, but apparently it happens a lot nowadays, and then when people understandably quit after that shit, they whine that “No OnE wAnTs To WoRk AnYmOrE!!1!”

  13. Sneaky Squirrel*

    You might never want or need that positive reference from your colleagues, but you’re increasing your chances of a negative reference if you end up needing one after burning that bridge. It’s all a matter of how much you can afford the consequences of leaving on negative terms. I work in a small enough industry where reputations can make a difference in job opportunities in the field and people have their connections across companies.

    1. Dawn*

      And it’s not even a matter of needing one, companies will absolutely contact references that you didn’t actually provide, former coworkers can show up at new companies within your industry, even in a hiring capacity, a background check might prompt them to reach out to your former employer for more information on why and how you left, a future hiring manager might be your current manager’s brother-in-law. You just. Don’t. Know.

      1. Mad Scientist*

        Yeah, this is a great point. You might feel sure that you’d never want to return to this company, but that doesn’t mean the people you screwed over (including coworkers) will never cross paths with you again.

    2. ScruffyInternHerder*

      At the same time though? That I typically haven’t left in a huff, in a tiny industry, says a LOT if I suddenly do leave without giving notice.

  14. LinesInTheSand*

    “But there’s also just getting out before you go entirely mad, too”

    In the scenario you’ve laid out, you lasted 10 years. So what’s 2 more weeks?

    Note that there is nothing that says you have to spend all 2 weeks performing at your previous level. Those two weeks are for hand offs and documenting your work. And once you give your two weeks, you’ve got A LOT of leverage. So you could decide, for example, to say something like “This is my two weeks notice. I’ll spend the remaining time documenting, but I won’t be available for on call emergencies until you find a successor for me to train” or something like that. Think of it as quiet quitting but out loud.

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        True, and also most bearable. It’s two sides to a very weird coin. During my notice period in my last few jobs, it took me a few days to realize that I didn’t need to keep working at my pre-notice level because the tasks that I’d been in charge of for years were now someone else’s responsibility. I could, instead of taking care of them, immediately pass them off to the new person (or interim person until they hired someone else) with a quick note to the effect of “Hi Jane, Fergus is now handling that task so I’m forwarding your request to him. Fergus, let me know if you have any questions. Happy to walk you through this if you want.”

        And as Fergus got more comfortable with the tasks, I was able to quit working earlier in the day and enjoy free afternoons as long as I checked in with Fergus. Another option for OP would be to say that you’ve got a bunch of medical appts that you need to take care of before your insurance changes or something like that. Or even just “appts,” no need to specify what kind of appts. (You have an appt with your couch or your surfboard or whatever, but they don’t need to know that.) These kinds of appts definitely keep a really annoying notice period bearable. And yes, I can agree that a notice period is a time when I get both the most annoyed AND the most “IDGAF” during my working life.

        1. Peanut Hamper*

          Yep, my last two weeks at my old job were definitely my easiest because I just didn’t care but also realized that it didn’t matter whether I cared or not. My “fucks to give” jar had been empty for the longest time and suddenly it just didn’t matter any more.

          Was it the equivalent of a Caribbean cruise? No. But it was pretty close.

    2. Nicosloanica*

      Also, take comfort in the fact that, for most of the truly messed up places I’ve worked (which is a lot of places somehow) they almost never use the last two weeks profitably anyway. They often don’t even get back to me until I’m into my second week of notice, and if the situation is as you say, you won’t be able to help them much anyway. So then there’s always a bit of a panic on their end when they realize I’m really leaving tomorrow. You may still get the satisfaction of having them beg you to contract with them or extend your leave – and obviously, do not accept!

  15. Bookworm*

    I have almost always given 2 weeks notice, only did so for an internship that was completely useless and the job needed me to start the next day, etc. I know it’s standard, that you never want to leave a bad impression, etc. but I feel like it’s one of those things that will count against you if you don’t do it but it is ultimately meaningless (like, I’ve never known any one anywhere to be commended for giving their 2 weeks notice and being professional in that interim, but you do hear about the people who just up and quit).

    I think it really depends. There are certainly extenuating circumstances but depending on your situation and you know your paths will never cross again, etc. I might be more inclined to just up and quit. YMMV, though.

    1. Aggretsuko*

      I gave 24 hours notice, but this was a job that was ready to fire me if I ever came back, I hadn’t been there for months because I was on disability leave, and under no circumstances would they have given me a good review, nor would I ever be able to come back to my old general employer again.

      I’m inclined to say if you’ve been at a place for ten years and don’t have a bad reputation, maybe don’t pull this, though.

  16. Charlotte Lucas*

    I quit without notice once. It was from a discount department store, and I was working part time. I had been full time for a month, then moved to PT when I got a FT job related to my actual career path. They could not keep to my schedule availability to save their lives (this was over 30 years ago, but software was available then). I would have to call to fix my schedule every week.

    One week, every shift I was scheduled for was while I was working at my regular job. So, I let them know it happened again and to make it easier to fix my schedule the next week, I just would work the current week’s schedule and be done.

    Keep in mind, my FT job actually had a fair amount of flexibility in when I worked, but I did have to physically be on location about 20 hours a week M-F. Yet a store that was open until 11 and on weekends could not figure out how to get my hours to work. (Sure, Discount Retailer, I would much rather make slightly over minimum wage a few hours a week and the crappiest store discount I’ve ever had than bother with my actual career path. And I say that as someone who has worked in and enjoyed retail, only wishing it had better pay and benefits for most staff )

    I started in the summer and found out from a former coworker that in January the store had laid off everyone who had started around that time. No regrets!

  17. Specks*

    Let me get this straight: you suffered through all of this, seething with resentment, for a decade. You decided to stay or maybe had no other options. And now that you’re about to finally get out, you want to screw up your reference from a job (of a decade!) because you really don’t want to do 2 more weeks? Why?!

    Like really, why?! Is there something specific that happened or is your new job demanding you start today or you can walk (red flag!), or something else? If none of that, well, you’ve stuck around for a decade. Two more weeks to do the professional thing is nothing.

  18. Dawn*

    Under anything other than fairly extreme circumstances, the momentary satisfaction you gain from declining to provide an additional two weeks of your time – a very, very minimal fraction of your life – is not worth what it could cost you in the long run.

    Look at it this way. The average life expectancy in the US is about 80 years. That’s 4,160 weeks. Two weeks is 0.05% of your average lifespan, and it’ll pass you by so fast.

    Just work out the two weeks. You will survive it. It’s so little in the grand scheme of things.

    1. Unkempt Flatware*

      When your mental health is suffering, which doesn’t even have to be an extreme circumstance, two weeks can be utter hell. And we carry things in our bodies for far longer than we actually experienced something.

      1. Dawn*

        I am perfectly well-aware of the effects of mental health issues, thank you kindly.

        If it’s causing you enough grief to genuinely warrant leaving without notice, then it counts as an extreme circumstance. But most of the time it’s not.

        I left a job under pretty terrible circumstances once; I won’t go over them because they’re traumatic as all get-out, but I still gave two weeks. And I made it through that two weeks and that job that I was at for three years is still on my resume today.

        Don’t for one single solitary second assume that I don’t understand mental health issues extremely well. It is still, however, two weeks.

  19. Kai*

    My boss’s husband & mine worked in the same company, different departments.
    She was telling him things about me, & he was in turn, telling everyone he worked with, to embarrass my husband.
    My boss did not like me, she never did. I was hired while she was on maternity leave, & she was trying to get rid of me ever since she got back.
    Anyway, I found a new job, handed in my notice immediate effect. I got the chance to tell her what her husband was doing. She denied it, I told her not to bother.
    I also told her she had bigger problems than me, because she now knew she couldn’t trust her husband to keep her secrets. She looked away & said “I know”
    It was a great moment.

  20. Just a Manager*

    What about for a retirement from a job where you have been at for 8-9 years?

    I definitely don’t want to give more than a few months because it might impact a bonus I would get at the beginning of the year.

    1. ecnaseener*

      A few months is already very generous if you’re in a 2-week-notice culture, and if they don’t think it’s generous enough, who cares? You’re retiring, you don’t need a reference or anything!

      1. Lizzay*

        I had a boss who gave 2 *years* of notice (internally – externally ‘only’ maybe 6-8 months)! And then proceeded to blow past that date and worked for another maybe 6 months!

        In his case, it was to introduce the clients (whom he’s worked with for years, if not decades) to his replacement while he was still around & to slowly transfer the work over – it was a pretty seasonal industry, so for some clients it may have only been one or two fiscal cycles that they were aware of his impending retirement.

        All that being said, I don’t think he was concerned the company was going to short-change him on his bonus. The co was pretty transparent about how they were calculated, so if you’re concerned, don’t announce until after you get your bonus.

      2. Turquoisecow*

        Often with retiring it’s recommended to get stuff started early, especially if you’re getting a pension or something like that, so you have a smooth transition from company insurance to Medicare or from your income to social security, some of which can take time to set up.

        My mom’s last job had a pension and they recommended (but didn’t require) letting them know about 6 months prior so all that paperwork could get started and be approved by time you left. My dad was unexpectedly laid off about a 8 months or so before he’d planned to retire and he had to quickly scramble to all that set up and I think had to pay out of pocket for some medication before his new insurance kicked in.

        Also if you’ve been at a job a long time, it’s considered considerate to help with a transition process, especially if you’re in a management position. Everyone I’ve known who’s retired has announced it months or even a year beforehand, and a few transitioned to part time work to ease themselves and the company into it.

    3. ThursdaysGeek*

      I’m retiring next January and my boss has known for at least a year. It’s been official for about a month. But he is also retiring, and we work for a company that is ethical – our annual bonus may not come until a couple of months after we retire, but it will come. We’ve both been cleaning up, training, getting as much into as good of shape as possible so we are missed, but only personally.

      The company would like a lot more than 2 weeks notice for retirement, like a couple of months at least, but since they treat us well, it’s not a problem.

    4. HR grunt*

      I would not give notice before that check is in your hand. I had a very unpleasant day in March of canceling year end bonuses for workers that had quit or been fired, meaning they worked the entire previous year and quit in January or February, but because their bonus was issued in March, they were no longer eligible for some reason. I really disagree with that practice… so don’t tell them you’re leaving until that money is in your hand.

      1. Just a Manager*

        Thanks, in theory, the bonus is for the past year’s performance. Even though I work for a relatively decent company, I have a feeling that they would reduce or even eliminate it if they knew I was retiring mid-year.

        I think I’ll wait for the bonus which comes in February and then let them know.

  21. UngratefulGigWorker*

    I once quit with basically no notice from a part time job that had extremely irregular hours, but I needed it to at least keep my car running while I looked for a job in my field. The manager would typically not even schedule me until a few days before he needed to. I ended up accepting a contract position in my chosen career with an _immediate_ start date and I think I was able to give a few days notice. My manager understood but the business owner was somehow incredibly insulted that I would quit with no notice – even though I was averaging less than 8 hours per week during the time I worked there!

    1. Nicosloanica*

      I do sort of think there should be some sort of pro-rating for less than full time jobs, since most of them should accept that you can’t live on that job alone anyway and are probably juggling other things.

  22. spiriferida*

    Metaphorically, leaving with two weeks notice is walking out of the door with a wave, while no notice is walking out with both middle fingers raised.

    1. Nicosloanica*

      If it makes you feel better OP, you can spend the last two weeks queuing up “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” – and as you clear the doorframe, do the fist-pump-in-the-air thing. I did this when I left an old job as my coworkers clapped and cheered. Man, that felt great.

      1. Grey Coder*

        I may have done this with the end of “Kiss him Goodbye” — “Na na na na, hey hey, goodbye” (repeat).

  23. Lily Potter*

    “…It’s about professional convention. We can say that convention sucks and should change, but it’s still the convention for now and if you flout it, it can come with repercussions. ”

    I feel like these lines should be the opening response to about 1/3 of the questions asked on this board. It would answer everything from “Is it okay for me to go to work with wet hair” to “Why should I have to wear a bra to work” to “Why do I have to go into the office when I’m perfectly productive working at home”? You can push back on office norms all you want, but pushing can come with repurcussions.

      1. Mad Scientist*

        Out of curiosity, how do you actually use italics in comments on this column in the first place? I’ve always found the formatting a bit challenging on here tbh!

        1. Roland*

          Take a look at the “commenting rules” linked above the comment textbox – the end has formatting instructions.

    1. Jane*

      This! All the people saying “what if I want to go back?” Why in the world would you want to go back to a place you want to quit without any notice??????

        2. Bast*

          I’d find individuals within the company who would give a positive reference. There are plenty of jobs who become irrationally angry when someone quits and will then say negative things and attempt to sabotage former employee, no matter how good the employee was. As long as OP can find some references within the company, they should be okay.

        3. Hey Nony Nony*

          Here’s a vote for being friendly with people at work. Get another manager or colleague (with maybe a higher title, maybe not) to be a reference for you. Claim they were your direct manager. Does it always work? Well, it’s worked enough for me.

        4. CS*

          Put down a coworker you were on good terms with. Done. Doing the “proper” thing and giving notice doesn’t guarantee you a good reference either.

  25. Catherine UK*

    Another good example of quitting without notice was the person whose boss wouldn’t let them have any time off for their graduation ceremony. They didn’t even ask for the entire day off, only 2 hours, and the boss refused to make anyone else provide cover!

  26. TotesmaGoats*

    I’ve only left one job with less than 2 weeks notice. It also the only job where my tenure was short. I was crying to and from work every day. I had to get out for my mental health. They got 8 days.

    1. EngineeringFun*

      I did similar but now on my background check it says “I am not suitable for rehire” at that company because I didn’t give 2 weeks. It’s giving my background checkers pause. I explained but you don’t want to do this too often!

      1. TotesMaGoats*

        Yeah, there is always a downside but since I would never work there ever again, I’m ok with any mark from that institution. Prior to and after that I’ve had long stays with long resignation windows.

    2. I Have RBF*

      I have quit shitshow temp gigs with no notice. When it was clear that I either needed to quit or end up losing my cool, I quit. I can only take so much abuse before I need to leave.

    1. ecnaseener*

      They don’t, at least not in this letter? LW only said that’s how long it would take for them to wrap projects up, not that their employer tried to require it.

    2. ReallyBadPerson*

      My brother was a partner in his accounting firm. He had to give two years notice when he decided to retire. I believe it is standard for people in his position. Even now, he still does work for longtime clients.

  28. Brad Deltan*

    Original LW here: I think people are ascribing a lot more emotion to this than I meant to convey.

    I can’t say I’ve ever worked at a place where I spent ten years being treated like crap and then just decided to leave without notice one day. I just made it up as an example. But is it really that hard to imagine working somewhere for a decade where things just get gradually worse and worse over time, and one day you realize just how bad it really is? Or where the boss you loved, and was the reason you stayed, got laid off and replaced with some hellish goober who has no clue how much they’re making your life hell? Or where your company gets acquired by someone else and lays off half the staff, cuts your benefits, and announces no raises this year?

    Or equally important: maybe you work (or more precisely, you are “trapped”) in a field where job openings are few and far between. You’ve stuck it out for years but now you’ve got a new job and a start date and you just know you’ll never have to care what your current company thinks because they’ll be in bankruptcy liquidation in another year or two anyways.

    It’s not so much about “why be so rude to your employer?!?!?” (which, btw, fuck that noise – it’s a job not a social event) and more about “there is literally no point to continuing this charade.”

    Also, folks are putting waaaaay too much emphasis on a perceived difference between using those last two weeks to “wrap up projects” vs to “document things for the next guy.” There’s almost no difference between those things at a huge percentage (quite possibly a “vast majority”) of mid- to high-level professional jobs.

    Most of them, you could spend two MONTHS trying to document everything to the bare minimum (never mind trying to document it so the next person can actually transition into the role easily!) and that’s if the employer wasn’t demanding you keep doing all your regular work why trying to document stuff.

    Just accept that in my example, two weeks’ is utterly meaningless in terms of having any sort of useful transition assistance for your company…and the next guy is gonna have to learn in a trial by fire.

    In another comment, though, I will point out one person did make a good point. Those two weeks are useful for the company to figure out various logistics for your departure, such as last paycheck, setting up COBRA, retrieving keys/laptops/company phones, etc. It’s a good point. It’s not quite a deal-changer, because none of that really *requires* you still be employed for two weeks to handle it all. After all, companies fire workers on the spot and still manage to handle all those logistics anyway. But even so, it does help make for a smoother transition, so I acknowledge that.

    In addition, of course, to the good points Alison raises…which mostly revolve around “this is the industry standard and the cost/benefit analysis for you in the near- and far-term behooves you to stick it out for two weeks whenever possible.”

    1. spiriferida*

      Personally, I do find the two weeks arbitrary, but I think the reason most jobs have settled on two weeks as standard isn’t because it’s a meaningful amount of time to be able to completely hand off the job and hire a replacement, but because it’s a reasonable compromise on the pressures on the various parties involved.

      Two weeks isn’t too onerous for the new job to wait, who probably wants their new hire to start promptly. It doesn’t leave the resigning employee in a strange limbo for an excessive amount of time, even if they don’t really need the two weeks. Socially, it’s enough time for coworkers to plan a ‘goodbye’ lunch or some such, if it’s a culture where those are expected. And it’s just long enough work-wise for some responsibilities to be given to other employees without feeling like it’s being sprung on them.

    2. Lusara*

      I disagree. I’ve left many jobs (in IT if that matters) where the two weeks was very useful to document and transition stuff. It worked because of competent management that actually cared about everything.

      I agree if there is incompetent management then it probably won’t make a difference.

    4. Roland*

      > Just accept that in my example, two weeks’ is utterly meaningless in terms of having any sort of useful transition assistance for your company…

      I mean sure, in your made up example, anything can be true. But you’re also writing like it’s true for many real jobs instead of just your made up example.

      1. Mad Scientist*

        Right? Why bother writing in for advice about a made-up situation if you’re just going to respond “just accept that I’m right” in response to the advice you receive?

      2. sparkle emoji*

        Yeah, if this is just a thought experiment where you decide all the rules then have fun? But if this was a real scenario my personal choice is to do the conventional thing just in case I ever need a reference or run into a coworker at a future job. You lose very little by giving a standard 2 weeks.

        1. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

          As presented, the scenario isn’t egregious enough to warrant quitting without notice.

          There’s plenty of if-this-then-that hypothetical advice in the response anyways.

          “2 weeks isn’t enough time for transition” is not one of the exceptions to the rule. You transition/write down as much as you can in the two weeks. When the two weeks are up, you leave with your head held high and your integrity intact.

          “They don’t value my contributions enough” is not one of the exceptions to the rule either.

    6. Galvanic*

      The commentariat apologizes for not understanding your points and not providing useful responses. The commentariat is also looking for the mega-eye-roll emoji on their keyboard.

    7. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

      Two weeks is arbitrary, but even a couple of days notice–rather than telling your boss you’re quitting, effective immediately–might give them a chance to contact a temp agency or hire a contractor to keep the system up and running while they figure out what to do next.

      I would probably give them minimal/high-level documentation, something like “I handle the Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Purple, Pink, and Brown accounts. Also the Polka-Dot account, but we haven’t heard from them since 2019. The deadlines for the Red and Pink accounts are before any of the others. Here’s our contact information for each client,” so they don’t run around later blaming you because nobody else remembered that the Orange account existed.

    8. Dawn*

      It is not that hard to imagine such a situation, but the point stands that Mr. Ten Years Of Abuse should still give his two weeks of notice, because it will benefit him to do so.

    9. HR grunt*

      If you write about a made-up scenario and people respond to the details of it, you can’t be upset that people didn’t understand your secret real point…

      The ultimate point is that you’ve put up with a crap environment while working there, however long that was. You put up with it while job hunting, if you did that. Now you’re ready to leave, and you can’t put up with it for 2 more weeks? Especially when you’ve got the leverage of your upcoming last day??

      You take 2 weeks thinking of all the urgent daily stuff that happens and designate someone to take that on, and write down where the files and keys are. Then your next employer (and current coworkers who become your network…) know you’re a sensible professional and not an unhinged person who can’t be trusted.

      1. amoeba*

        I mean, it’s especially a little bit funny to read as somebody for whom three months notice or more (from both sides!) is standard. Two weeks is… nothing, really!
        Now, if something truly egregious happened, like, I don’t know, you quit because your manager went completely bananapants and abused you verbally or threw a chair at you, so you quit on the spot – sure. Even here, while I have a contract I can’t break, I could probably get a doctor’s note in those situations, making sure I never have to set foot in that office again!
        But in most other situations, if nothing drastic suddenly happened, I really just don’t see how that short amount of time, especially after 10 years (!) would be significant at all.

  29. Not A Manager*

    “Why subject yourself to two weeks of passive-aggressive victim-blaming at that point, either?”

    This might make it even more satisfying. Give the two weeks notice, politely shut down any attempted bullshit three times, and at the fourth time tell them that it needs to stop immediately or today will be your last day.

    2. Goldenrod*

      Personally, I LOVED working during my notice period at my last job. I actually gave 3 weeks, and then you know what? Crazy Boss avoided me like the plague because I think she was afraid of me. I really enjoyed when that balance of power shifted.

      Once or twice, she tried to needle me, but she basically knew the game was over – and she didn’t want to hear what I’d have to say if she pushed me too far. I could see her restraining herself out of fear. It was…enjoyable. :)

  30. Michael*

    Another way to look at this is that the two weeks is there because that is widely considered a reasonable amount of time for leaving employees to wrap up their work, produce any documentation, do relevant training of other employees, etc. If your company is not competently run enough to take advantage of those two weeks to the fullest, that’s on them–but it is still professional of you to give them the chance.

  32. Hiring Mgr*

    I would at least offer the two weeks, but for me personally leaving before the two weeks would make no difference at all in whether I’d hire you. After ten years if that’s the worst they can say about you I think you’ve done ok

  33. hereforthecomments*

    I once quit with a day’s notice. I normally would not have done that, but my supervisor had just told the staff how awful and unimportant we were. We had also been told that the only reference we would ever get was confirmation that we worked there and the dates of employment. We were warned that if we used anyone on staff as a reference without going through HR, that person would be punished (so I couldn’t ask a co-worker to be a reference listed separately with their personal phone number and email). It was satisfying, but I would not have done it if I’d thought I’d ever get any future harm from it. And I kept excellent records and had instructions and materials for someone to pick up what I was doing–ironic, since I was so awful and unimportant.

  34. Religious Nutter*

    Letter Writer, it sounds like you’re in IT, and like you’re the sole admin for a company that isn’t treating you fairly. Maybe I’m reading that wrong, but if I’m not? As a fellow IT, I see you.

    I know the idea probably turns your stomach, but I’d still give your 2 weeks notice. Tell them you’re leaving (in writing!) and write up a transition document for whoever has to come in next.

    The worst job I ever had I still quit with 2 weeks notice, and I’ve got to tell you, they were my favorite 2 weeks at that job. They were a victory lap around all the crazy. I wrote a huge transition document explaining everything to do with my job and my work processes. I’m not kidding. It was a BINDER. The look on my boss’s face when I handed him a FULL 3-ring with my job inside was _absolutely priceless_. I, like you, had been carrying the org on my shoulders for years, and to have that in written form sitting on my waste-of-space boss’s desk? Worth every minute I spent on it.

    The crazy isn’t a reflection on you, it’s a reflection on them. Take 2 weeks to detangle yourself from it and leave with a smile on your face.

    1. Lizzay*

      When I sent my cheat sheet of my client list (not detailed – one Excel tab) to my manager when I left she was like “woah”. And I was like “yeah”. And that was just the cheat sheet, not the detailed list of things I covered.

    2. Goldenrod*

      Ha ha, this is great. I created a binder during my notice period too. It was fun. (Loose definition of fun, but still…)

    3. Smurfette*

      I’m thinking the same thing. OP can have the pleasure of watching them deal with the consequences of their own actions.

  36. Czech Mate*

    I’ve been there, OP. I was in basically your position at a crappy job a few years ago, and after a big fight with the CEO, I went home and gave two weeks notice. The CEO wrote back and said “I spoke with [tech person] yesterday and she pulled your access to [the system and email] immediately as opposed to waiting until the 30th., therefore, you won’t be able to perform any of [your work tasks]. [HR] is checking how many PTO’s you have available so you can use them during the next two weeks.”

    I replied with my list of pending tasks and said that since I didn’t have access to the system or my email, I’d just make my resignation effective immediately.

    Did it feel good? Yes. But also no. I was already in final stage interviews for my current job, and during that final interview, I had to admit that I’d already given notice at my previous job. I was a nervous wreck for the next few weeks as well. I also burned a bridge with the CEO. I wouldn’t ask her for a reference (other folks at the company have given me recs, so not the end of the world) but it’s not great. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to all the wonderful people I worked with, and actually, I realized that IS kind of meaningful. I’ve heard some gossip about what happened after I left (CEO apparently just sniffs and derisively says “Czech Mate is better off.”) but I wouldn’t be surprised if the CEO has led some folks there to believe that I was fired.

    Stick it out the extra two weeks if you can.

      1. Czech Mate*

        They could do the Boston Marathon together! During COVID when they got rid of entrance qualifications for the Boston Marathon, she INSISTED that we needed to do it together as an office!

  37. Tess McGill*

    I just have to say, you’ve painted quite the picture of your workplace. I can see why you’re tempted to just light a match and watch it burn. Rage quitting would feel good in the moment, but it’s not worth the risk in the slight chance this bites you in the future. Good luck, and get out of there.

    1. Glorifica*

      Apparently not his actual workplace, just one he dreamed up then decided must be real – somewhere, somehow.

      The fallacy is strong with this one.

  38. Goldenrod*

    As much as we all love epic stories of people dramatically quitting – many of which we have enjoyed on this site thanks to Alison – in reality, it’s better not to flame out. Even the airline steward who we all loved who quit over the intercom and slid down the emergency slide – I mean, I still have a special place in my heart for that guy, but even he regretted it later.

    The reason I think it’s better not to quit dramatically is because of my strong belief that people should always act in their own self-interest at work. Especially when it’s a dysfunctional or toxic office, and especially if you are a high-performer…because the dramatic quitting scenario won’t help you. As Alison said, you can burn bridges, you can make it hard to get references or to get a job later…and I truly believe that living well is the best revenge.

    Why give people you loathe and disrespect ANY ammunition that they can use against you? Even if it just gives them reason to bad-mouth you – why hand them that gift?

    I advise, in your own best interest and for your own self-respect, quietly work your two weeks, and leave in good standing. You can enjoy your contempt for your employer privately and on your own time…believe me, I do! I tell anyone who asks exactly what that experience was like. But I’m also proud that my former boss cannot ever legitimately say a bad word about me because I kept it clean and professional right up to the bitter end.

    1. I Have RBF*

      I still get really good mileage out of my “Hell Jobs in Silicon Valley” stories – layoffs, layoffs disguised as firings to circumvent the WARN act, discrimination of all kinds, interviews that were crazy, etc. I’ve had jobs where I have been tempted to file off the serial numbers and write thriller or horror novels (I still may.)

  39. nekosan*

    In retrospect, I keep wondering if my response to “If you won’t sign this, I’ll just forge your signature,” should have been “I’m quitting immediately,” instead of “That’s unacceptable. My two weeks notice starts now.” (I was too flabbergasted to think; what I said was a knee-jerk reaction.)

    2. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

      You had a better knee-jerk than I would have (I probably would have just stared at them in confusion). And remember, you can always change your mind later and shorten your notice, but it’s very hard to lengthen one.

  40. Setting Up Shop*

    One other reason to not give notice is if you are leaving your job to be in direct competition with your current employer. I left a company with no notice for that reason once. I had been overworked, passed over for pay increases and I was told that if ever they wanted to replace me, I would not see it coming. I would be out before I knew it. Increasingly, my boss had been stressed out and taking it all out on me. I was at my breaking point. I decided I couldn’t handle it any more. I couldn’t compete with the company on everything they did, but I could take the one part of the company that I did well and do it for myself. So I quit with no notice and started up as competitor. Did it feel good? No. But would it have felt better staying for 2 weeks and then told I was stealing things during that time? Also no. And that most certainly would have been what would have happened.

  41. T James*

    Another exception to the two week rule: you’re at or near retirement age and aren’t getting another job. I had a co-worker who realized one day last year that he was 64 years old and didn’t have to put up with this shit anymore. He walked out and hasn’t been heard from since. He’s my hero.

  42. BradC*

    This isn’t about the notice, but about the job scenario you’ve described: DOCUMENT DOCUMENT DOCUMENT.
    That obscure system that requires a (virtual) whack every Tuesday at 3pm? Document it.
    The old server that is grinding to a halt because it hasn’t been updated since 2003? Document it.
    That business critical process that requires the precise manual intervention of 4 people across 3 different organizations? Document it.
    Then when you’re ready to leave, send an electronic copy of that documentation to several people in the organization, leave a printed copy on your desk, and leave with a clear conscience.

    2. I Have RBF*

      I try to maintain “bus documentation” – what people would nerd to know if I got hit by a bus. I am not young, and I’ve already had health issues that could have been fatal. The nice thing is that if I need to quit, my handoff stuff mostly documented.

  43. Ready for the weekend*

    I did my two weeks because I had a lot of vacation days and I wanted to make sure I would get them with no issues.

  44. Tim C*

    I have seen people give 2 weeks notice and where they gave no notice. To me it made absolutely no difference. When I left my last 3 jobs I gave more than 2 weeks each time. The notice may as well have been zero because I heard the aftermath was big. Infact the last job I left my employer asked what it would take to have me come back. Go back in time and treat me better?

    It isn’t fair if you are laid off you get no notice and they get 2 weeks. But I believe I have to be better than them.

  45. Britucator*

    I once quit a job with no notice in retail because the terms of the employment changed drastically. I went from hourly to “you can take home whatever money you make the day you work.” I literally made five dollars one day in eight hours. Incidentally, the day after I quit, the business got shut down anyway because the owner had not paid rent on the place in six months. The owner was still angry at me for quitting without notice and never paid me my last paycheck. She claimed the money got “stolen.”

    1. The Unionizer Bunny*

      I believe this is known as “illegal”
      https://gitteslaw.com/employee-rights/employee-commissions/#2

      2. I had a slow week, and didn’t make any commission. Does that mean I work for free?

      No. As long as you [are] covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or an equivalent state law, you must earn at least the hourly minimum wage, which nationally is $7.25. An employer cannot create a commission standard that is so low that it makes it impossible for you to be paid the minimum wage when your weekly pay is averaged by the number of hours worked.

      If your pay including commission is below the minimum wage, then your employer is required to make up the difference. For example, if during a slow period, your commission averages only $2.50 per hour you work, your employer must pay you an additional $4.75 per hour to make up the difference, so that you receive the $7.25 minimum wage.

      The statute of limitations for wage theft is 2 years. If the money she was holding for payroll was stolen, that’s too bad for her because she can’t offload that loss onto you – she still owes you the money, even if she has to go out of business from selling off assets to pay the wages for work you did.

  46. Princess Pumpkin Spice*

    At OldJob, I was so very tempted to just tell my manager I was leaving and be done with it all. It was a very similar situation – I was holding all the puppet strings, and without me there the theatre would collapse. The job was a dysfunctional mess. Still, I’d been there a few years and thought I would need the reference. So I stayed 2 weeks. OP, the vindication I felt when they realized hey, PPS isn’t coming back next week OH NOOOOO… truly unmatched.

    Give the 2 weeks notice, watch them flounder and bask in all the reasons you’re leaving.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      Yes, in some cases, this.

      You left out the step where you go out and buy some popcorn to eat while watching them flounder.

  47. Kevin Sours*

    I would add “new job has an inflexible start date” to the list. It’s not ideal (and a bit of a warning flag about new job) but you don’t owe it to the job you are leaving to pass on opportunity because the timing is awkward. You might be burning a bridge and need to take that into account but ultimately companies are going to do what’s best for them and you need to take the same approach.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      Hard agree on this one. Sometimes jobs have training windows where you either catch this one or wait two or four weeks for the next one. No way am I going to give up a good opportunity with a new company that isn’t toxic to get away from one that a tornado full of bees and sharks.

      1. Kevin Sours*

        Not sure that how toxic old job is changing anything other than how apologetic you should be about it.

  48. Lime green Pacer*

    My province has a legal requirement to give notice if you have been employed for over 90 days. However, the list of exemptions is illuminating: industry standards provide a different notice period; continuing to work risks employee health and safety; “employment contract is impossible to perform due to unforeseeable or unpreventable causes beyond the employee’s control”; employee has already been laid off, or has no work due to strikes or lockout; and finally, my personal favourite, “quit because of a reduction in wage rate, overtime rate, vacation pay, general holiday pay or termination pay”.

    1. I Have RBF*

      This makes sense. A company that starts screwing with your compensation in adverse ways is probably circling the drain anyway, and since screwing up your comp is unethical and possibly illegal, it makes sense to get out ASAP.

      Interviewer: “So why did you leave X job with no notice?”
      Applicant: “They announced a 20% pay cut effective immediately.”

  49. Lucy*

    I’m not working the two weeks’ notice for the company, my boss, or my employer. My perspective is I’m working it for me, to put myself on the best possible footing for any possible future reference checks. A couple of years ago, I worked out a notice a 12 week notice. My new job, tied to the school year, didn’t start until after that. No matter how awful the leadership was during that notice, I was committed to finishing—for myself. So that I could get the paychecks in the meantime, and so that they would have as little ammunition as possible for the sabotaging of my reputation I knew they wanted to do. The way I handled it cemented my good reputation with everyone else I worked with who wasn’t awful, and I’ve never regretted it. One caveat: I still have several weeks of unpaid downtime to decompress before starting my next job.

    1. Lucy*

      Correction: I had several weeks of downtime. It was an extremely toxic environment after a hostile takeover.

  50. Toupeee*

    Another consideration for just walking out instead of giving notice:
    If your company pays out unused vacation days when an employee leaves, some places may use a walk-off as justification for not paying those days out. Depending on what state you live in, they may be allowed to do that.

    So consider how much unused PTO you have, if your company pays it out when people leave, if they have such a policy on the books, and if you’re in a state that doesn’t really care whether or not that happens. Then weigh all that against your desire to flip off your boss with a “see you never!” as you triumphantly walk to your car.

  51. Aeon*

    I only ever quit without notice after being harassed for months. Once the harassment turned violent and the perpetrator still wasn’t stopped, it was time to go. By the time it escalates that far, the bridge is probably burned on their end, anyway.

  52. Katrine Fonsmark*

    I have heard so many stories recently of people giving 2 weeks notice and being told to just leave – without pay. These people had no clue this was their company’s way of doing things. In fact, it just happened to my husband! He was shocked – this was a huge company. Luckily, HR stepped in and said that’s not their practice, and that the manager was welcome to make it his last day, but he would indeed get paid for the 2 week notice period. So he got a 2 week vacation before his new job, paid. But not everyone is so lucky. We couldn’t go without 2 weeks of pay very easily, so that makes me super nervous to ever give notice again.

    1. Dawn*

      The good news is that you can generally claim unemployment for those two weeks. Check your regional EI laws.

      1. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

        Yes, but unemployment typically only pays about half of what you were making. And it always has a cap (that an IT worker, even with mediocre pay, would likely be over).

        1. Dawn*

          I just said that it was good news that you could claim it at all, not that it’s better than your actual pay. Where in the world do you read that into my statement?

        2. I Have RBF*

          In California, where I live, a week of unemployment is a maximum of $450. My current salary is more than that for a single day, and I’m underpaid for what I do. Plus there’s a “waiting week” for UI. So them not paying for two weeks would functionally leave me without nine days pay.

          UI here is a bitter joke, and probably a big part of why we have so many homeless people.

  53. H.Regalis*

    Alison’s advice is a recommendation, not a command. Hell, all advice is. You’re the expert on your own life. You’re not going to be eternally damned or branded with a scarlet Q. Your letter makes you sound like you’re under a ton of stress and are seeking special dispensation from the Work Pope to leave. You don’t need someone else’s blessing to make your decisions.

    1. Smurfette*

      Honestly this is a weird thing to say. Nobody considers Alison’s advice to be a “command” (including Alison). And people write in because they want her advice.

      If you have a different view than Alison then by all means share it, but simply pointing out that OP can do as he pleases is a bit redundant.

      1. H.Regalis*

        OP gives a long paragraph about how shitty their job is, and then specifically asks what Alison’s criteria would be for forgoing the standard two weeks notice. It reads to me like they’re burned out, beaten down, and are seeking permission to do what they want to do, which is GTFO.

  54. Jackalope*

    Alison referred to this obliquely, but another reason to give no notice would be if your employer is putting you at harm/requiring you to break the law, or forcing you to harm someone else. This might seem obvious, but people sometimes feel like they need to go without the safety equipment/drive in on the icy, impassable roads/ignore the tornado warning/put up with the handsy guy who creeps on teenage girl employees. Your life and well-being are more important than the job.

  55. Lobstermn*

    My 2c, and you can take or leave it:

    If you have a reference that’s not your supervisor (which you probably do, because this is a lousy workplace), you can zero notice leave 1 job every 5-10 years without meaningful consequence in most fields.

  56. Troubadour*

    If it’s any consolation, based on my personal experience and that of friends, I bet that once you’ve handed in your 2 weeks notice you will instantly feel happier even before you’ve actually left the place. I still (15 years later) distinctly remember how I came to work every day for those last two weeks just grinning in happiness because it *was* the last two weeks.

    1. Smurfette*

      Yup. A significant part of the stress of an awful job is feeling trapped. Once you’ve resigned, you’re free as a bird. It’s a great feeling :)

  57. Blue Horizon*

    There is also a CYA aspect to this. It’s a fairly solid bet that after you leave, they will try to blame you for as many of their business problems as they can. If you quit without notice, unless it’s for a clear and justifiable reason, you are handing them a very convenient stick to beat you with (or smear your reputation with, if you’re no longer around).

    Even if you know they aren’t going to use it (especially then, in fact) I’d be scrupulous about doing a proper handover in this situation. Keep records. If there is anybody working there that you still trust or whose opinion you value, make sure they know about it. Assume that six months from now, whether or not you give notice, the story will be “OP screwed us over so badly by leaving”. Take the two weeks and use them to preemptively prepare your counterargument, and to prep others to recognize it for the BS that it is.

    You might not care what the company has to say, but there are presumably some colleagues that you like or respect (or would just like to be able to work with in future if needed) and you don’t want them poisoning the well for those people.

  58. Polly Hedron*

    I agree it would be better to give two weeks’ notice.
    But whatever you do and whenever you leave, OP, please update us! I’d love to hear the story of your last day(s).

  59. Orv*

    I had a job like that. When I told them I was quitting they ended up splitting it into two jobs and hiring two people, one of whom I trained during my notice period. I don’t regret giving notice, even though they folded soon after so I never really got to use them as a reference.

  60. ElliottRook*

    I didn’t finish out my notice period at my last job.

    The boss refused to fire a coworker who had been having text conversations on the work phone with a customer regarding alt-right topics. This was on top of him being so egregiously bad at the job that he was losing us business. I took a lot of pride in doing the job well, and I had many customers complain about him to me, so I had wanted him gone practically since he’d started! When I passed the complaints to my boss, she insisted he just needed more coaching, but he’d gotten nearly 2 years of coaching with no improvement in sight.

    I had screenshots of the alt-right talk as proof, and without using the phrase, I gave the boss a “him or me” ultimatum. When she said she still wasn’t going to fire him, I informed her I was immediately starting a job hunt. Unfortunately I wasn’t financially able to just walk away from the job, but I made it clear that I didn’t feel safe around him as a queer person. His shift was sometimes right before mine, and I refused to get out of my car if he was still on the premises. (At least once I had to have my boss tell him to leave HQ so I could start my shift.)

    Fortunately I did land another job and turned in my two weeks’ notice. My last night was meant to be a Monday night (my work week ran Thursday-Monday). One of the last customers of Saturday night was so abusive (called me a c*nt to my face) that I had just HAD IT. My job wasn’t willing to protect my safety, and now I had a creep who had been trying to get me to violate policy (share info about my coworkers’ schedules) acting like I was the one who was out of line, and calling me nasty names about it.

    I was unlikely to make much money on the Sunday and Monday night that I had left to work anyway, so after clearing it with my wife I just told the boss I was finishing out the shift and wouldn’t be back. Frankly, I was so demoralized by that encounter, if there hadn’t been customers scheduled in that last little bit, I would’ve been tempted not to even bother finishing the shift.

    The business had to stop providing overnight service without a reliable night employee, and went under 14 months after I left. Frankly, I’m shocked it took that long with poor quality of alt-right guy’s service. He ran into a friend of mine some months after I quit, and was lamenting that he had “no idea” what he’d done to piss me off so much…all while misgendering me. :P

    I’ve been at my current job just over 2 years, still thriving working nights, at roughly double the money. :) I just got back from a work trip doing my job plus some of the kind of work I loved from my old job (which I enjoyed before alt-right guy showed up and brought down the party) and got a 20-hour bonus for it! It’s great to be appreciated and also not worry about if my coworkers are safe people to be around.

  61. Oink*

    Not giving notice is also inconsiderate towards coworkers. If you just walk out the door you leave no hand over information to the next person. In a role where you need shift cover, no notice might mean a bunch of people have to cancel plans last minute to replace the person who essentially just walks off the job. It’s not a silly convention for no reason. There are practical reasons behind two (or however many) weeks’ notice being a professional courtesy.

    1. Orv*

      In one of my previous jobs I made meticulous notes for the next person. Within a month they’d fired him and he’d destroyed all of my documentation. They called me begging for copies, which I didn’t have.

  62. Upstate Downstate*

    How about you use the two weeks of notice as a final farewell tour and have book long lunches with all of your favorite coworkers and vendors and use that time to solidify future references from them if you need.

    Then the rest of the time document their contact details, take some fun office supplies (hellloooo permanent markers!), empty out all the ink jet printers the last day and take some toilet paper rolls home. Make it fun for yourself! You’ve been there 10 years and that speaks volumes already.

    If you really end up needing a reference and no one at this job would do, hit up Reddit. There’s a subgroup that is just people offering to be references for one another. Pretty neat!

  63. Nomic*

    The only time I quit without notice I has a horrible breakup (complete with threats of violence). When I went to my minimum wage job in the mall and begged for two weeks so I could get away, they denied it. In August (the dead season). I turned in my apron and didn’t look back.

    It helped that I also had a (very) part-time IT job that gave me resume coverage, so I never bothered to list the mall job on my resume.

  64. I'm so old I'm historic*

    LW1, it really depends on the business you are in. If someone leaves our employ without notice, they are automatically marked ineligible for rehire. It presents a problem if future employers call. Sometimes they don’t want a reference, they just ask for dates of employment and if the employee was eligible for rehire. In that case, it may look bad for future employment. With that being said, chances are if you leave you probably have a job already lined up and the point is moot. I would put in the notice and if things get worse, you always have the opportunity to just walk out before the notice is up.

  65. KT*

    Employers do not give you a notice period when they fire you. They do not deserve a courtesy they do not extend.

  66. Spacedog*

    I struggle with this….sometimes I feel like that two weeks between jobs would be better spent decompressing, especially if you had a bad experience at the job you’re leaving.

  67. WestsideStory*

    Just one suggestion: use that two weeks to make sure your colleagues and outside contacts are aware you are leaving, and that they also have two weeks to reach out to you with their particular concerns.
    Early on in my current career, I quit giving four weeks notice. My manager asked me to not mention it to clients….afterwards I found he had been telling them all I had quit without notice!!!!
    I had quietly made sure my colleagues knew I was leaving, but some damage was done.

  68. M.*

    I’ve only quit without notice once, but it was an exceptional situation and I hadn’t been there for too long. I’d been there for seven months, which is definitely a little too long to quit without notice without anything else going on, but there were a couple extenuating circumstances. Specifically:

    1) I was mislead on what the job actually was. Say I work as an auto mechanic; it was posted as an auto mechanic job, they asked me questions you’d ask an auto mechanic in an interview, but when I started they wanted me to sweep the floors and clean the toilets with a toothbrush.

    2) Our department’s director was terrible – basically, if he wanted something from you he’d email you with “thoughts?”, if you asked for clarification he’d put you on blast and basically call you mentally incapable (using worse language).

    3) When I tried to start the process for ADA accommodations a certain disability I have, I was stonewalled by HR. They ignored my emails and calls for days, and would tell me they couldn’t help because I wasn’t following procedure, then go silent again when I’d respond like “sorry about that, I wasn’t aware. So we can keep this moving smoothly, could you share the process we use or where I can find it?”

    I could’ve fought at least some of these, but I didn’t want to deal with the stress or to have a reference in my history that could say I brought legal action against my employer, so I got another job and resigned the day after I signed the new job’s offer.

    The day before I quit, I told a couple of coworkers that I was going to quit the next day without notice, and they said they understood because our director could be abusive, using those specific words.

    This was about six years ago so I’m a lot better at handling these situations and feeling out when something isn’t a fit during the interview process now. Looking back I would’ve handled it differently, but I can’t say that quitting on the spot was a horrible idea.

  69. Burn It or Burn Out*

    Yeah, I like this advice – “generally you need to offer two weeks, except sometimes it’s very clear that it’s a waste and sometimes it is just bad enough that you gotta.” Only you know if your situation has reached the point where, 10 years down the road, you’ll still be happy that you quit the way you did, but I would keep that idea in mind for sure when you’re contemplating a walkout.

    That being said, I burned the bridge to my last job and danced in its ashes, and I see absolutely no path to my regretting it. It was one of those “we’re a family here” companies (aka hot garbage), and it was a temp service (I shouldn’t speak for all temp services, but I’m gonna anyway: temp services are evil anti-employee cesspools of discriminatory hiring practices and they should be illegal). The owner doesn’t quite reach the highest levels of bananapants I’ve seen in my years of lurking AAM, but that’s not for lack of trying. She would pull people into her office to pray for them (including speaking in tongues… LOUDLY) and then gift them this not-a-Bible book (spoiler: was a bible, just written by her weird culty Neo-Christian church – and no, she was not LDS or a Jehovah’s Witness); she claimed her company functioned as a ministry of her weird culty Neo-Christian church; she regularly tried to get a coworker who wore a wig to remove said wig with such gems as “it’s not Halloween, take off your costume” and “do you even have hair under there?”; and after I spent a month crafting a 50+ page handbook complete with annotated screengrabs and step-by-step instructions, the only feedback I received (of ANY KIND, positive or negative) was that I needed to change the single introductory paragraph to read that the company was “woman-owned, minority-owned”. I never did find out what she intended to “claim” as her minority identity outside of “woman”, especially since she was white as the driven bleeping snow. Oh and because of course this is the cherry on top of the “hot fudge” sundae of working for her: she didn’t pay for beans – I doubled my salary moving into nonprofit healthcare in a post-Corvid-Pandemonium world, and I know at least two other people left and also doubled in industries that typically are skinflints.

  70. RamonaThePest*

    When I retired as a teacher, I had an incredible library of books I’d purchased (classroom library for students, hundreds of books I kept for read-louds, mentor texts, etc) along with my mini-fridge, special chair, microwave, and storage furniture. ISold my entire furniture and other items to a colleague whose DIL was a new teacher. I hauled the rest of my books, materials, and supplies home over the school year in multiple trips. I had two colleagues on my grade who for years noticeably left me out of planning meetings (“Oh, we just decided this while we were eating lunch,”to the point where other team members would call them out on it. When I did meet with them, I’d be ignored to the point that I once resorted to holding my hand in the air and wave it around like a ten year old. Near the end, one of those colleagues said pointedly, “If I were retiring, I’d give my books away.” Yeah, if I was you, I’d have been more respectful to me (I was the one open to trying new things) but here we are.

  71. Chatte_en_Fer*

    In my experience, the two week thing can also depend on industry. Before changing fields, I quit a relatively high up position without notice. Because the industry was relatively niche in my area, and knew the reputation of the place I previously left (it was that bad), most just made a veiled comment of sympathy and we moved on.

    I was being horribly mistreated, one of the higher ups of another department was skirting the edge of sexual harassment, and they were starting to ask other salaried employees to skip pay periods so they could make payroll.

    It’s best to not quit without notice if you can avoid it; and if you did leave for one of the reasons Allison mentioned, I have found addressing it before the interviewer asks can be helpful. Something like “there was a situation in my family that required care-giving”, “the company was experiencing financial conflicts which resulted in me ending the agreement”, and what have you.

    Now I will also say that there is a difference between quitting without notice and causing drama or a scene. That will reflect very poorly on you, and yes there is a high chance people in your field will here about it if you had to be dragged out screaming by security or police.

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