How to resign in the best way possible?

August 26, 2021 9:55 AM

How to resign in the best way possible? Featuring depression, medical leave, and being massively overworked.

Long story short, I'm intermittently crying throughout my work day due to stress and exacerbated depression. Suffice to say, I need to resign ASAP for the sake of my mental health.

As for why... I've working without any leadership or supervision for most of this year. At the same time, my workload has increased exponentially without recognition or even to anyone's knowledge since I'm without a supervisor. On top of regular pandemic/life stress, things have reached a boiling point and I cannot continue to sacrifice my health for work.

Good:
- I have historically been a high performer. I work independently and have a unique skillset that no one else in my department has. There has been enormous turnover in my work section--I believe they will be eager to try to retain me.
- I have the capacity to crosstrain someone and pass on my institutional knowledge to get them up to speed as soon as possible. (Although I do not have the capacity to continue doing my current job as-is.)
- I have six months worth of emergency savings or more.
- I have filed FMLA leave to take time off due to depression.

Bad:
- My monthly expenses come out to around $3500-$4000, including rent and COBRA.
- I cannot immediately go to another full-time office job. Most of the time I spend away from work, I spend sleeping from emotional exhaustion. I am hoping to find a temporary/part-time job soon, even if it pays dramatically less, just to have some kind of regular schedule and income to retain my sanity. I do not know feasible this is.
- As stated above, my capacity and willpower to continue doing to my regular job duties is in the gutter and it is extremely difficult to make it through the day.


Is there any way I can leverage this situation to my advantage and negotiate some sort of exit package/deal for myself? Or truly any advice would help at this moment in time... Thanks MeFi.

posted by joeyjoejoejr to Work & Money (10 answers total)

to me, the best exit package would be a medical leave of absence that let me choose to return if i wanted to.

or, stretch it out and beef up your savings with a part time schedule while you train your replacement.
posted by j_curiouser at 10:07 AM on August 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

Hey there. I hear that you are exhausted and need some time away. The current situation is untenable. It sounds miserable. So I'll answer your big question first: the way to resign is simply to write a short email, without much length or any emotion, with a statement along the lines of, "This is my notice of resignation. My last day of work will be X." Don't worry about training your replacement. Don't make your last day dependent on them hiring someone else. You will be stuck there indefinitely if you do that. If you need to leave, just give two weeks' notice and leave. I don't see why they'd give you an exit package. Depending on your employers' policies, you might be able to take unused vacation time or sick leave and then have your last official day be much later than your last day working (because you put leave time at the end).

But, I also think this stress means that you don't have capacity to think clearly through all your options. Have you started your FMLA leave yet? If not, do not make this decision now. Take two weeks, a month, whatever time you need right now to help you feel better. Then, in a week or two or five, with some perspective and therapy (if you're not in therapy, finding a therapist should absolutely be a priority, even if it's a short term therapist through an employee assistance program), start thinking through this with some more space and capacity.

As a high performer, and someone who regards themselves as a high performer, is it possible you are holding yourself to standard that others are not? Is it possible that you could do your job differently or less? This past year, I have seen my workplace let many things go. It's not great, but we're mostly still stumbling along, getting most things done. And you know what? It's fine. It's more than fine, because we are prioritizing things differently.

Also, I think your employer would much rather you do less than leave. But this likely also means getting yourself out of a capitalist mindset where you regard your value as a human by what you do at work, by being a high performer. (As a former self-regarding-high-performer, I can say that this is terrifying and freeing.)

Use FMLA to take some time to figure this out, and then move ahead. Don't make these decisions now.
posted by bluedaisy at 10:11 AM on August 26, 2021 [30 favorites]

If you qualify for FMLA, there is no need to resign right away. Once your FMLA leave is approved, then you just... don't have to go to work anymore. (Or for 12 weeks, or whatever the leave period is.) You can use the leave time to catch up on your sleep, go to therapy (as bluedaisy mentioned), and consider your options. I don't know about your workplace, but it is often the case that you would remain on the employee health plan during leave time. HR should be able to tell you that. (If so, you would need to pay your premiums out of pocket, but that will be much, much less than COBRA.)

You can always decide to quit at the end of your leave, if you want to. But quitting now doesn't get you anything.
posted by tuesdayschild at 10:58 AM on August 26, 2021 [10 favorites]

You are, in fact, ill. Visit a doctor and get a recommendation for being off work for at least 4 weeks. My doctor suggested it, and it was great. Use sick time, short-term disability pay or any other resource.

Most companies will not do any buyout or severance; you are a bargain, they want you to stay.

If you consider returning, work with your doctor, contact the next manager in the chain, define the workload that is manageable, make it clear that it's an accommodation for disability.
posted by theora55 at 11:04 AM on August 26, 2021 [4 favorites]

Hi, I am you, writing from the middle of my FMLA leave from a remarkably similar situation. Don't quit now, take the FMLA, take the maximum time you can. Since they want to retain people, they will be inclined to cooperate with you on this. You don't owe them anything: this is part of their cost of doing business in the way they have been doing it. I have really gotten my depression under control, have really reconnected with my own sense of self and purpose. For the first month of my leave, the thought of returning to work felt like a threat & would elevate my heart rate. Today I feel in control of my life & options and the prospect of returning to work feels like one of many options available to me, all of which I can consider in a balanced and measured way.

Using an analogy my therapist gave me this week: whenever we go back to work, we need to remain aware of when our stress-anxiety-depression meter gets into the yellow zone and address it then. We are starting our leave because our needle has been pegged in the maximum-danger red zone for so long we're completely thrashed. You are in the red zone. It gets better. This is what FMLA is for.
posted by xueexueg at 11:10 AM on August 26, 2021 [6 favorites]

I have historically been a high performer. I work independently and have a unique skillset that no one else in my department has.

Given this, is it possible they’d be open to having you convert (after your FMLA leave) to a part time position, either as an employee or contractor?

I hit a similar point at my job this month, and was able to negotiate down to part-time, keeping only the parts of my work that I am uniquely good at. My employer was a little resistant at first but realized at the end of the day it’s easier (and cheaper) for her to hire someone less experienced to pick up the grind work, and just use me for the specialist stuff, than to have to completely replace a skill set that is very hard to find.

(But definitely take your leave first.)
posted by tinymojo at 1:02 PM on August 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

1. When's the last time you took a vacation, or time off at all?
2. When's the last time you got a raise?

Separation packages are negotiated at hire, so you should forget about that. However, you might think in terms of "retention bonus" that can also relate to #2, especially if you haven't had a raise in a while, or if your raises have been piddling 3% cost-of-living adjustments.

Unique skills are valuable, but they are often underpaid. Same goes for people who can continue to do great work without supervision. While having their workload increased! You are a machine, but currently you appear to also be a pack-mule. Time to demand some respect in the form of time and money. You're on the FMLA track now, so time is likely to be taken care of.

You don't mention anything about your compensation, but I bet it's low. Nobody's irreplaceable, but do some research (Glassdoor, etc.) and ask for a raise to the top of the range you can find for your unique skills (because you have other valuable skills, too), even if it would be a 50% increase or something that seems outrageous to someone with low self-esteem (teasing!). Ask me how I know!

Consider this, too: you are completely self-managing and able to take on whatever work they would like you to handle. Why are you commuting to an office? You're already considering leaving, you might as well ask them to provide your ideal working environment before you go. They might be willing to retention-bonus you that way, too.

Lastly, all of this stuff can be hard to think about in the middle of feeling stressed about the job, so don't feel you have to hurry. A lot of what I'm talking about can be a negotiation you initiate before you return from FMLA, so you have time to put your thoughts together about it.
posted by rhizome at 1:26 PM on August 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

The advice above to take leave & create time to get yourself into a different headspace before making major decisions is good.

If you are completely burned out mentally and emotionally with the entire work organisation, it might be for the best to move on -- but on another hand -- and i say this from personal experience -- sometimes if you are in a larger organisation the problem is due to a particular local situation in a team / project, and if you move laterally to a different team that feels different and new enough, the different new work environment provides enough of a mental and emotional reset that it avoids triggering the same old patterns of depressed thinking.

After you've had time to rest and, when you're in a better state for long decision making and business negotiations, it may be helpful to:

(a) figure what your hard boundaries are. They could be things like: "i am not longer available to perform role X in team A but may be available to perform role Y". Or "Unfortunately I am no longer available to perform role X in team A but i am open to the possibility of performing role X or adjacent role Y in some different division B, up to 3 days per week, provided I have the support of a supervisor with weekly 1:1s".

(b) Communicate your situation -- and clearly articulate your boundaries with the manager(s) at work, and see if you can both get into a collaborative discussion where you are working together to brainstorm options for making the best out of the situation and see if there is some mutually beneficial option that is a better alternative to you resigning.
posted by are-coral-made at 1:29 PM on August 26, 2021

Adding to rhizome's comments:

> You are a machine, but currently you appear to also be a pack-mule.
> Consider this, too: you are completely self-managing and able to take on whatever work they would like you to handle

If there is a problem where there is far too much work compared to capacity to due it -- due to understaffing, unrealistic schedules -- too many low value inbound requests for your attention -- then those are management's problem to fix -- not the problem of an individual worker.

Suppose there is too much work to do. As a worker, do you (a) try to work very hard to make the best of the situation and power through it, working extra unpaid overtime? or (b) adhere to your boundaries of working at most 40 hours per week, and drop excess work on the floor? If you pick option (a) then you may temporarily mitigate the organisational problem (understaffing) and mask it from management's attention, but in in way that is not sustainable to your health in the long run. Unless management has some way to see you are burning out, from their perspective there is no problem to solve, so the situation is unlikely to change. If instead you pick option (b), and self-limit the amount of work you do, and work doesn't get done, then the problem becomes increasingly visible to management, and it becomes management's problem to solve, not yours.

It is like a game of strategy: if you pick option (a) then you hide the organisational problem from management -- or worse -- from management's perspective maybe there is no problem -- so this is not a winning strategic move, in the long run you lose. If you pick option (b) to not fix the problem and punt it on for management to deal with then maybe there are some difficult conversations in the short term, but you win. If you have some kind of internalised work ethic you may naturally want to pick option (a).


Don't beat yourself up about it. Taking some time off to recover sounds excellent. You don't need to go back into the same situation. You can set your boundaries for how you are willing to engage in work and figure out a new situation (at the same employer or a new one) that works for you and is mentally and physically sustainable.
posted by are-coral-made at 1:53 PM on August 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

Something to consider, too, about the hypothetical part-time job you mentioned in your question: a part-time job can be just as exhausting as a full-time job (especially when you're new to it), and the reduced pay/benefits can really burn. A lot of places I've looked at part-time gigs want to pay you for 20 hours a week but have your schedule open to them for a full 40.

I think the suggestions to start by taking medical leave are spot-on; I wish I'd thought to do something similar two years ago when I left my job (for school, which I later dropped, and freelance work) but I didn't even recognize the headspace I was in at the time.
posted by saramour at 9:15 AM on August 27, 2021