I fully expect that when I give notice at my current job, I’ll be told to GTFO and not let the door hit me. My boss is the kind of guy that when I told him docking someone an entire day’s pay was an unreasonable first-line reprimand for not complying with a new policy (no warning system, just mess up once and you’re on a 1-day suspension w/o pay), informed me that termination could be the first-line reprimand if I preferred that option. He also told me that if I insisted on being paid mileage for running office errands in my car, he would cut staffing levels to roughly half of what they were currently. Actually, he didn’t tell me these things, he wrote them in an email. (Yes, I know. And he did attempt to walk it back a little after he’d had time to consider what a lovely lawsuit he was setting himself up for. He still refuses to pay mileage, but has at least stopped threatening to punish everyone else for me wanting to get paid what I’m owed.)
As a human resources manager, I am not a big fan of quitting without notice. However, I actually prefer it to quitting with notice and then flaking out at the end. Although we currently do honor two-week notice (with the exception of someone we were about to fire anyways), in my experience it’s about 50/50 chance the person will not actually work the entire two weeks or will phone it in/call off often/generally not care/etc… so I can understand the employers that simply walk you out the door.
I’ve never quit without notice- but there was once when I should have. In my mid-twenties, I was managing a clinic for a negligent, unethical vet. It was the kind of place that was hard to walk away from because the rest of the staff was in hell and you just didn’t want to do that to them. Plus, it was my first official management job and I didn’t want it to have a bad reference, even if now I know that most vets in the area knew the guy was an ass.
This was in near the 2000 census and my sisters and I took the exam to be census workers to earn money on the side. I’ve always been a good test taker and I got a call that not only did they want me to be a census worker but they also wanted me to come on to a long-term, government position in the local census bureau. Apparently they were in such a need for a worker and it happened that a lady who knew me worked there and they decided they wanted me to start yesterday. I would have had to give a three day notice. I begged them to let me give two weeks. The lady doing the hiring said she wished she could because that was the kind of employee they wanted but they had to have me start immediately.
I turned it down. A better paying job with benefits and probably a better career path. I’m still kicking myself, especially since I quit soon after - the vet later lost his license (YEAH!) and I took a job at another vet that I quit (with notice) 3 months later. I then took a job as a manager that I loved for almost ten years until they let me go in a horrible, humiliating layoff with…no…notice…(I did get severance pay but it didn’t make up for the heartbreak).
Currently, my job is fine. With multiple locations, I have to deal with no-noticers all the time. But… most of our positions are not life-time career builders and it comes with the territory. What I hate most is dishonesty - either quit and leave or give a respectful two weeks and honor it. Be upfront about what you will or will not be able to do in those weeks and don’t treat me like a fool and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt at reference time if you were a good employee prior to that.
Really? What job is so important you can’t wait 2 weeks for a new employee to start and yet hires the sort of people who are so unprofessional as to not give their previous employer notice?
Looking for a new job because my employer has failed to pay me for three weeks makes me “disgruntled and bitter”?
In such case, what possible reason for quitting wouldn’t sound negative?
Yes, there is. As it stands, they are now paying me rather than face those consequences but needless to say the relationship has soured. They also have failed to pay other employees.
They’re broke.
“Business going under”.
That’s what I said when I worked for a company that couldn’t pay me any longer. Thankfully they gave me a chance to look for another job and I got my current one ASAP. I explained in interviews that unfortunately my previous company had run out of funding, and I didn’t get the impression that interviewers had a problem with that.
Anyway, best of luck Broomstick****, I hope you find a better company soon!
When I have interviewed people who are currently working and they tell they can leave their present job without notice it’s a point against them really. It seems unprofessional at best, and in many cases I suspect because they have already gotten notice from the present employer.
On the other hand, I’ve had a few employees leave without notice and didn’t mind, because they were not good workers anyway. One of these people keeps sending me resumes (unbeknownst to her because it’s a blind box ad) and has our firm listed on her resume, stating that she worked here three times as long as she did and claiming to have been a legal secretary rather than a file clerk.
Yep, that’s how my department used to work, until they shit-canned the CIO, and the interim guy and the permanent replacement don’t seem to have the same macho BS about showing off how they can do more with less than the old CIO seemed to have.
Only reason I stuck it out was because when it got really ugly, my wife was 4-5 months pregnant, and I didn’t want to deal with switching health insurance until after the kid was born and was ok for a few months. By then, things had started to get better.