Letters of resignation

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Another thread made me think of this.

“What was the strongest letter of resignation you ever wrote, and why?” Understand that I think you should think carefully before submitting anything but a friendly letter.

I worked for a major department store as an elevator escalator mechanic. The department head decided to out source the work to a elevator company. The company had arranged jobs with the contractor for the guys in Local 8. Those of us in Local #39 were going to be offered positions as stationary engineers with the department store. For me this ment a cut of $2.00 per hour, loss of company truck, and loss of $10,000 a year in OT.

We all knew what was going to happen. In the meeting telling us when and how the department head did not start the meeting with “I have good news and I have bad news.” His first words were "Gentlemen I assume you know what this meeting is about and I want you to know 'This is good news.
Then he went over the positions that we being offered and it would be effective next Monday.

Also in the meeting he singled me out to tell me he did not want to loose me. I left that meeting and started sending out my resume. When I recieved a job offer I wrote my letter and sent it that afternoon. It read

To: Mr. G
From: Me
Subject Good news

This is good news In your meeting with the Chief Engineers and the Elevator mechanics you stated you did not want to loose me, but as of this date you have given me no reason to stay. Therefore I Am resigining effective as of and I put Friday of the next week. When asked I explained he gave me one week before cutting my pay so I gave him one week.

Afterwards was funny. The next Friday was payday. They did not have my final check ready, wanted me to comeback the next day. I demanded my check right then and there or I would go to the labor commisioner. I go my check an hour later. They figured my vacation wrong and over paid me. I told the clerk about the mistake and left. I went right to the bank to deposit the check.

The week after I left the department head called the union to file a greavance? The business agent laughed at him and told him he could not and maybe he will start treating the employees he liked better. I was one of the first out the door.

2

I don’t generally burn bridges but my last boss was brilliant but politically clueless, which is not a good thing to be when you work in government. It’s not at all the same as working in private industry and you don’t get to play customers off each other because those elected officials have very long memories, lots of power and they get even. My boss decided that he could grab two huge projects, double book the resources and then send me out to do all of the explaining when both projects got behind on schedule. For a bright man he had a hard time with the fact that 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 1. I was getting my ass kicked as a proxy for him and he was getting more and more unreasonable about it and telling me to “just cut the estimates in half”. Since I was planning to retire soon anyway even though he didn’t know that, at our last horrible meeting I ended it with turning to him as I walked out and saying “BTW, starting next week I’m taking my last 8 weeks of paid vacation and then retiring. Good luck with all of this”. The look on his face was priceless. He begged. It was all of the payback I needed, but when VIPs were smirking at him behind his back and the CAO was slapping him around for losing the head of his applications teams it was even better. They’ll survive because no one is irreplaceable but both projects are almost a year late now and he has no one to take the heat for him.

Of course if I had ever planned to do that kind of work again I never would have been such a bitch about it and left him high and dry.