I worked with someone who did this. It was the HR person. She just didn’t show up one day, didn’t answer her phone or door. For a solid week. After a wellness check by the police, it was revealed that she was fine, just couldn’t go back in to work because she hated her job so much.
I was young, and it was a shitty grocery chain filled with shitty management and shitty customers. I 100% thought she had killed herself, or skipped town for some other awful reason. It was a relief to hear she was OK. Fuck that store.
Are you ok yourself? Do you still work there?
You sound like a good person, wish you two were friends so she might not be as depressed.
I am in a much better environment! This was about 10 years ago, and that particular store closed. I also ghosted that job. They had been harassing my trans coworker friend so we just stopped showing up. They did NOT try to call me :)
This guy fucks, what a kind soul
Don’t you ever stop being you, you’re needed.
what if we organized the workers but instead of striking we all just don’t show up and gaslight the regional management into thinking everything’s fine
Because the store management isn’t going to organize with us rabble. It’s also hard to mimic the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars worth of sales that regional looks at in their accounts. Pulling the wool over their eyes on that level is getting into bank fraud territory, and would require the aid of, and not just also not showing up, of bank workers.
That reminds me when I missed the first day of teaching because of a really bad flu causing me to lose track of the dates, I got a very concerned call from my advisor who thought I offed myself. Apparently not too uncommon for underpaid adjunct professors, unfortunately.
When I was in grad school I knew a guy who just simply didn’t teach for half the semester. No contact with students, no classes held, just didn’t show. He gave everyone a passing grade on the midterm and came back halfway through. No explanation. He was not fired. Of course, like the rest of us, he was grossly underpaid and didn’t have health insurance. I guess they get what they get if they’re gonna treat us like cogs, right?
Sometimes I wonder how people get away with stuff like this. I recall that story from Spain, I think, where a guy was getting a paycheck for like 20 years but not working at all. I guess they did a reorg and his new ‘boss’ didn’t know about him and he never got work assigned and he just stopped showing up…for years.
It has to be a pointless job to start with, right? If I just didn’t work at my job for a week it would probably get noticed. If I no-showed completely it certainly would.
I’d probably be given the benefit of the doubt for a few weeks if I just stopped producing work. I could maybe make it a month before someone said something about my performance but only because sometimes the things I work on take a while to come to fruition. And missing meetings isn’t uncommon because of conflicts/being super busy.
Id probably also get the benefit of the doubt if I no-showed too. But after a two days they’d call my wife or come by my house, or send the police department to my house to check on me.
This is advanced ghosting.
It’s proactive.
I ghost people before they even don’t give me their number.
3 month bullshit for resign? What kind of work contract is that?
Let me introduce you to Europe
To be fair this is a counterpart for being harder to get fired compared to some USA states. It makes the economy less fast to adjust but it makes people’s life less stressful.
IDK my man, having three months of forewarning for resignation sounds pretty cool to me. I don’t really see it as a downside. Especially in Italian law, where you can avoid making things awkward by agreeing with your employer to make the resignation time as short as you both want, as long as those three months are paid out. Blessed.
It could make you miss you a job opening that needs someone earlier. Hadn’t have the issue myself, but I guess it happens.
If you’re hopping within the country, usually the local culture is adapted. I never had issues with it, employers expect you to have a resignation period.
Plus as I was saying companies don’t really like to have a working quitter, so they will usually negotiate for that time to be shortened. Maybe one month so you can transfer your knowledge to somebody else, then you’re out - with the three months money, naturally.
Three months would be excessive in the Netherlands. The legal minimum is one calendar month. When you resign you can always negotiate to shorten the period, but most of the time people will work the remainder of the contract. Also, your new employer might actually think there is something wrong if you can quit your current job faster than the one month.
Yeah one month is the standard practice here too, as a negotiated shortening of the three month notice. It’s good to have the other two months paid out, that’s all I’m saying.
As someone who has dealt with multiple people leaving (two fired, two quit with no warning, and two with warning), I honestly don’t see much value after the first couple days. So honestly, a 1-week period would be plenty, if only to give HR a chance to properly close everything out while you’re still easily reachable.
Even a month sounds excruciatingly long. We have a 2-week expectation here in the US, and it’s more than sufficient to get someone off-boarded, though insufficient to find a replacement. And that’s fine, we just adjust to whatever the new headcount is (usually by cutting out a bit of work after reassigning more important work).
That said, I would appreciate some form of mandatory severance. We don’t have any, and it sucks when the market is poor.
You wouldn’t because everyone is expecting you to do the right, corporate thing, so they’ll gladly wait for you to gracefully terminate your old job.
In tech anyways.
Let’s say you have an opportunity to work somewhere else making 2x more, but you have to wait 3 months. Or let’s say your boss really sucks, but you have to tough it out for 3 months. Or let’s say a close family member dies but your company won’t give you time off to grieve, you just have to put that off for 3 months.
How productive do you think you’d be in those 3 months? I can’t speak for you, but I certainly wouldn’t be giving it my all…
In the US, there’s no minimum for most industries, but 2-weeks is expected (6-weeks in health care apparently). I think anyone can put up with almost anything for 2-weeks, and the 2-weeks isn’t even required, it’s just expected. And honestly, every time we had someone resign, we won’t trust them with new projects anyway, so they end up doing very little for most of those 2-weeks.
Europe’s economy is like an old Volvo. It’s slow but full of safety features in case your hit something. USA’s economy is like a classic Ford Mustang. It goes really fast on the straight but when you hit a bump things can go horribly wrong quickly. ~Mark Blyth
Depends on the country. Where I live, the maximum permitted by law is 30 days (unless both the employer and the employee agree on a different termination period). That goes for both firing and quitting.
Yes of course it does, but standardised employment contract are rather common in Europe - at least in the few countries I worked in, YMMV. There are exceptions of course, but I imagine for Americans the idea of state laws mandating your entitlement to three months of salaries plus severance money must sound outlandish.
Stop calling it Europe then, you’re referring to 2-3 specific countries. There are very different laws and ideas about the “standardized” contract in different countries.
I don’t know what are you talking about. In my country the standard is two weeks and max one month in special cases. I’ve participated in the hiring of multiple people from different European countries and they never asked for more than one month to join in, except when they wanted to relocate.
In France, the standard for software engineers is 3 months. Verified with this official source https://code.travail.gouv.fr/outils/preavis-demission. With convention “Bureaux d’études techniques, cabinets d’ingénieurs-conseils et sociétés de conseils”.
That’s crazy. So if they present a same day resignation note they have to pay a three month salary penalty? That’s just companies stealing workers’ money.
No, not at all.
If the company fire you they have to pay you, e.g., three months notice, regardless of if they want you to do the work or not.
If you quit without notice, you might have to pay the costs incurred by you quitting early, but that’s not your salary -because they now wouldn’t be paying you.
Costs might be something like the company having to refuse an order because they now don’t have enough people to do the work, or the increased cost of an expedited hiring process.
I don’t know how common costs are in France, but the UK has the same rules and essentially no one ever claims costs. You need to really fuck over your employee in a very explicit and well documented way for this to even be considered.
The main disadvantage is you will have a bad reference if you leave without notice.
So a company with a higher revenue may reclaim higher costs, even if they paid like shit? Doesn’t look fair to me. In Spain that penalty for not complying with the notice period is automatic. Also companies hiring don’t care for references unless they know directly the person that wrote it (so only useful for small indistry sectors).
In theory. It’s just standard contract law. You violate the contract, so you have to make the other party right.
In practice, the court is likely to go, “You should’ve hired someone else to do the work. No costs”
I don’t think I understand your comment, who has to pay a penalty? Who’s stealing what? You can’t do a same day resignation unless the company agrees. If they don’t agree, they can ask you to keep working for 3 months, and if you don’t come to work, they may declare you abandoned your job. Then, they don’t have to pay you, but you’re still officially an employee so you can’t legally start a new contract, they may ask you for a compensation payment and also sue you for damage.
In Spain you may resign before, but they can subtract for each missing working day to the notice period end the money they own you (it is a penalty, not just discounting from salary the days you are not working). In some cases leaving workers use their remaining PTO days to exchange to leave before the period of notice as they have the same value. So in Spain a greater period of notice can result in bigger penalties when leaving a company, while companies can fire you on the spot (paying the required severance).
It’s often a negotiable point (and should be in your negotiations with any company): the amount of time I give an employer as notice is directly tied to my exit package type stuff.
Here it is defined in the collective bargain. So if you have 30 notice period and want to reduce it to 15 you have to bargain for it through one of the workers’ union present in the negotiations with the company.
I have 6 months in Germany, all managers at my company get this. I find it a bit too much, but it can usually be negotiated
India too.
It is actually really nice.
It works both ways, if they fire you, you still have a job for 3 months at least. Giving you plenty of time to find a new job. You also get half a day per week (paid) to use for soliciting other companies.
Generally it is more devastating to lose your job than it is to lose an employee. Since you have plenty of other employees who can temporarily fill in, while you generally have only one job that pays for everything you do.
Maybe this is a difference between countries, but is fired for cause and laid off treated different? Like I can understand and appreciate the protections if your position is eliminated or something. In the US we have unemployment insurance where you can get I think 3/4 of your normal pay if laid off. But if you get fired for cause then you’re on your own.
No, why you got fired does not in fact affect your need to eat food and house your family, so it’s not a factor.
And if you are “laid off”, ie the company says they don’t need your job anymore, you are usually entitled to a pretty nice redundancy payment too - plus the usual.
Really depends on the employer. One gave me a nice 3 months severance for being laid off. Another only gave me a weeks notice and only two weeks of severance. That sucked since bills continue to come in but now you gotta take a savings hit unless you can find a job in 2 weeks.
I ended up finding another job, but it took a few months and now I’m trying to crawl out of that debt hole.
I live in the Netherlands, and fired for cause is very hard over here. Basically the employer needs solid evidence of misbehaviour, and even then most judges will still rule in favour of the employee.
3/4th of your normal pay??? Lmfao
What state do you live in?
In California you max out at less than $2000 per month. Which won’t even cover rent.
I guess there’s a limit here too. I’ve never made enough when having to reley on unemployment to hit the max. I just looked it up though and looks like its a bit over $800 for the weekly max.
Thats how it works in apparently most of europe. In poland for example its based on your tenure. With 3 month being the max after you work there for more than 3 years. If you are not important enough for the company and want to start your new work earlier it can be negotiated down i think.
I ran away from my site like this one day. I was working as an Engineer Trainee. No one gave a damn. Eventually, I returned after a month or so. Resigned in less than one month after returning. Man, I hate this country with a passion where you are not even treated as a human being, but as a machine.
You were able to leave your job for a month, come back and continue like nothing happened, then were able to resign a month after that…and you are saying you weren’t treated like a human?
Yeah, that company is really tolerant. I’m guessing OP could’ve negotiated a sabbatical with people that lax.
Average .ml take
Many years ago, a woman that worked at the same place, just didn’t turn up one day. I think they (the closest thing we had to HR at the time) let this slide for a week, then called her. She just said “Oh, I didn’t work to work there any more”.
I don’t think they pursued it any further and let it at that.
I just don’t understand that mentality. You burn a bridge, when you could just send an email or something saying you quit and keep the possibility of coming back sometime open. Or if your boss actually liked you, you could have gotten a recommendation, but instead decided to make their life suck.
Just send an email saying you quit, it’s really not that hard.
I thought it was weird at the time. The contracts had a notice period in, and it’s not like many US states where employment is at-will. The employer is definitely required to give notice (albeit they can send you home and just pay you the notice period, which many do). So I suspect they could have gone after her for that, if they wanted to.
Likely they considered it not worth pursuing, though.
But if you’re going to violate a contract anyway, might as well make dealing with that easier for your direct manager. Maybe you’re unwilling to work those three months, but sending an email saying you resign at least helps your boss out. My boss put one of my coworkers on disability leave, for example, instead of firing them (he fired them when they came back after a couple months and the issue wasn’t resolved).
But it all starts with actually making the most base level of effort. An email takes like 10 seconds and doesn’t need to be long:
Sorry for the short notice, but I can’t work here anymore and won’t be coming in anymore. Know I’m supposed to give more notice, but I just can’t. Sorry again.
As someone that manages people, I’d be annoyed with that, but less annoyed than if someone just stopped showing up. In fact, if they were a decent worker, I might respond with something like this:
Thanks for letting me know. Here’s the documentation for short-term disability, if that’s what you need. Let me know if you’d like to try that. I’ve started processing your resignation with the shortest possible term (X days), but I can cancel that if you let my know by <day>. I’ve told the team you’re out sick, so coming back won’t be an issue if you choose to.
I hope everything is well, please feel free to reach out, even if you just want to talk.
And if I really didn’t like the employee:
Sorry to hear that, thanks for letting me know, I’ve started processing your resignation. Our policy is 3 months notice, and the consequence for doing that is <X>. I’ve attached a copy of the company policy for you to review.
Let me know if you need anything further.
Both are better than sending no notice at all.
You burn a bridge
Yeah, that’s kind of the point
keep the possibility of coming back sometime open
If I wanted to work there I wouldn’t be quitting, especially not just dipping out
Or if your boss actually liked you, you could have gotten a recommendation
Usually people doing this aren’t in that situation, being on good terms with someone usually means you don’t just vanish on them
instead decided to make their life suck.
The vast majority of times this is, again, the point
You do you, but a little professionalism goes a long way. Maybe that manager moves to another org that you want to apply at, and they reject you because of how you acted the last time. Or maybe they just tell someone at the new org how you left.
Doing this has zero benefits to you, sending an email takes almost zero effort and might have some benefit for you. The rational thing is to send the email.
Maybe that manager moves to another org that you want to apply at, and they reject you because of how you acted the last time
Good, I don’t have to work with them again, win for me
Doing this has zero benefits to you
Catharsis comes to mind, on top of the schadenfreude
sending an email takes almost zero effort
Yeah, and thats part of why not doing it sends a point
If your workers hate working for you so much they won’t even send an email then you should evaluate your management and work culture, yakno?
Just show up at your own wake like Beerfest and everything will be fine.
Even better would be to wear a disguise and speak at your own funeral
Free flowers! 🌻
Florists hate this one trick.
They love the increased sales
Burnout
R.i.p anon your green text will be remembered
I had an assistant who didn’t really need the job, but her parents forced her to have one. She was the youngest, and only girl, of a family of 5 siblings. All her older brothers worked at the race track that their family owned, and she was dating someone they didn’t approve of. I liked her boyfriend, he seemed friendly and soft-spoken, but her folks were like “if you’re going to date whom you want, you better have a job and live on your own.” Well, one day, she got mad because I asked her to work a shift she didn’t want to. So she simply didn’t show up, which really fucked me over. So I called her up, pretty pissed. No answer.
She didn’t show up for 3 days. So I fired her for job abandonment. She didn’t really need the job, right? Her parents owned a racetrack.
A week later, her folks called me, and asked if I’d seen her. No, she didn’t show up for work ever again. They panicked. “OMFG WE DON’T KNOW WHERE SHE IS!” They immediately assumed her BF kidnapped and/or murdered her. The police were called, an investigation was opened up. Her BF’s address showed he’d moved away. I had to sit with the police and go through an interrogation about her last whereabouts. She became a missing person, and once a week for two months, her parents called and asked if I had heard anything. The detective called with more questions. Then her car was found in an impound lot: it had been abandoned and looted in a New Jersey parking garage. Then the calls petered off and stopped.
A year went by, and I assumed the worst.
One day, one of the employees in another store in the mall told me he saw her with her BF. I didn’t believe them, but then other people said that they’d seen her, and corroborated some stories she told them. Apparently, she had been planning to run away for some time, and just ran away with her BF and went NC with her family. That didn’t work out so well, because both had trouble finding jobs and then their car got carjacked. Both of them were forced to return home, and her parents were forced to reconcile that she was never going to leave her BF.
I was pretty pissed, though, that I thought she was dead.
Yesterday, I (sort of) learned the phrase “implication arrows,” from which I learned that I should assume that this story is not true, though the arrows… Imply that it’s true. I still don’t really get it.
Anyway, I’ve never held a job where the employer would do more than the bare minimum required by law if I disappeared. Certainly not so much as contacting my family unless there were extenuating circumstances like me verifiably disappearing mid shift. I suspect this is true for most people.
I’ve always been skeptical of greentext (and most internet) stories, it’s just more fun to suspend one’s disbelief.
I’m just still confused about the concept of “implication arrows,” heh.
it’s referencing a quite old meme of “>implying implications”, being that the storytelling style of greentext is wildly unconventional in that it is structured around quoting / citing some external imagery or context, and thereby inviting the reader to infer what the poster is thinking instead of directly stating it
Well, thank you for the information.
As a manager I would definitely contact an employee’s emergency contacts and then request a welfare check if one of my team dropped off the face of the earth. Medical incidents happen and a couple of the team live alone that I know of.
In that case, you sound like a good manager to have.
I like my current managers, but I think if I stopped showing I’d eventually just stop getting paid. There was a period where I wasn’t attending daily meetings because I hadn’t received the invitation to them. Eventually I made a comment to my manager that I was glad the current contract didn’t require a ridiculous number of meetings and he said something like “what are you talking about? There are daily meetings. We just thought you were out sick or something.”
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