"bye guys lol"

December 6, 2009 7:41 PM

How to leave a job gracefully when you can't tell your coworkers in person?

I work from home for a company that's mostly in-person (all my coworkers work on the same floor, and I work in another time zone). I am giving notice as of today. I have no plans to go visit my job site between now and my exit date. I know ordinarily I'd tell my coworkers in person and that would be really tough...but since that's not an option I'm not sure how to break it to people.

Phone calls would be weird since everyone can hear everyone else's conversations from surrounding cubes, so I feel like if I called one person everyone else would know something was afoot. Emails seem cowardly. I don't want to bring it up in a meeting since that's impersonal. I know I'm overthinking this...I just really have come to care about some of these people and don't want to leave the job in a hurtful way. If you work with someone who isn't local to you, what would help you feel like that person really did feel sad not to work with you anymore? How can I convey this without some kind of near-tears monologue in a conference room?

Any advice would be great. I've never quit a job before and hadn't predicted it would be so wrenching.

posted by anonymous to Human Relations (14 answers total)

Emails seem cowardly.

I don't think emails seem cowardly at all in your situation. You could write a nice, personalized email to the people you were closest with, and a general one to everyone else. I'm sure your co-workers will see it as a nice gesture.
posted by amyms at 7:53 PM on December 6, 2009

Email is not impersonal at all. Especially if you email each person individually, rather than as a group. (don't forget to use bcc if you're emailing a group that is not everyone!)

When I have left jobs I have sent a friendly mass email to the people I liked and/or respected. The rest I figured would notice my desk being empty. Anyone who I actually considered a friend, we already had each others contact info anyway.

There's that very natural "last day of school" tendency to want to keep in touch with everyone and kind of romanticize the relationships, but my feeling is if I haven't really become friends with that person in an organic way, there's no sense in trying to force it on my way out the door.
posted by drjimmy11 at 7:54 PM on December 6, 2009 [1 favorite]

Explain in the email that you can't explain this in person. People will understand.

Also write a bunch of personal emails to people and send them at the same time. Perhaps say that you've emailed everyone in them ( if it's not too much trouble ).

Your situation may be exceptional, but I've always felt bad about leaving but then have realised that, well, people rarely if ever take it as a personal affront.
posted by sien at 8:03 PM on December 6, 2009

Email notice of "it's my last day" is so common at my job that it its own format and etiquette, and we all work in the same three buildings.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 8:06 PM on December 6, 2009

Ditto all the other responses. I've been in this situation at least three times, where I was in an office in one city, but most of my colleagues were in other offices around the world. Email was the only practical way to do it. Have a one-on-one with your manager, but your other colleagues will almost certainly not think anything less of you for finding out in an email.
posted by deadmessenger at 8:11 PM on December 6, 2009

Email is practical, reasonable, and acceptable in this scenario. These are your co-workers, not, I assume, very close friends or family.

One thing to keep in mind, though - your email can and probably will be forwarded to other individuals. I don't know the circumstances under which you're leaving, but if you have anything less than favorable to say about the company, I'd leave it out. Always better to exit as gracefully as possible and avoid any bridge-burning.
posted by pecanpies at 8:45 PM on December 6, 2009 [3 favorites]

I work remotely with people and would prefer to do this with a phone call rather than email, though I've certainly received emails from people who were leaving.

Do you regularly have phone conferences with these colleagues? If so, you could announce your departure at the end of one of those calls, or schedule an informal conference call with the people you want to tell, and tell them during the call (though it might be difficult or weird to schedule a call specifically to tell them goodbye).
posted by PatoPata at 12:16 AM on December 7, 2009

Nothing wrong with email, I get like 5 of these a week in my inbox, mostly from people I don't know. If there's anyone you'd genuinely like to keep in touch with, email/phone them separately with contact info. If you're anything like me, this is an extremely short list.
posted by cj_ at 12:47 AM on December 7, 2009

If you find emails too impersonal, you can try recording a goodbye video and throwing it onto Youtube. Particularly fun because you can put some unicorn pictures into it.
Everyone loves unicorns.
posted by eytanb at 1:19 AM on December 7, 2009

Do you use instant messenger at work? When I worked remotely, that was my main form of both work-related and personal communication with my colleagues, so it was fairly natural to break the news that way. If you don't IM regularly, just use whatever medium feels most comfortable - whatever you'd use to share personal news like "I'm getting married," etc.

I also generally use kathrineg's rumor-mill approach when I'm putting in notice (because it's annoying to go around and tell everyone) and the conference-call idea would work well if the colleagues you want to tell are mostly/all on the same team.

My last week of work, I sent my team a care package full of snacks found in my city but not theirs, though I was planning on doing that anyway. You could do that for extra credit if you really like your coworkers.
posted by Metroid Baby at 4:18 AM on December 7, 2009

I like katherineg's suggestion of calling one person and having him tell people. My first idea was to send the e-mail, then follow up with personal calls to people.
posted by amtho at 6:15 AM on December 7, 2009

Well, I would recommend you avoid email considering you seem to really care personally about your co-workers. I think your question is "how do I express myself most personally" and phone trumps email every time for that.

If you want to express your heartfelt goodbyes and you can't in person - definitely do it on the phone. Its okay if you are "overheard"; just make a list of the folks you want to talk to, block out an hour, make a bunch of phone calls.

Also, its pretty common in my job anyway for the supervisor to make the announcement; if I quit, my boss would send out an email saying "thanks so much blah blah blah" and then all my colleagues would come talk to me on their own. Your boss can't do that for you?
posted by RajahKing at 6:27 AM on December 7, 2009

You could always handle it in the remarkable classy yet funny way that this guy did. And this was after he was laid off, too.
posted by e.e. coli at 8:07 AM on December 7, 2009

Announce the news to everyone in an email -- that way it's out there for everyone at the same time and you don't have to worry about anything personal being forwarded to someone else. Let them know this isn't yet goodbye, that you apologize for the impersonal way of announcing it but because of your situation, you wanted to let everyone know at once.

Then do your actually goodbyes separately -- either via email or phone or however you feel comfortable speaking to that person. Because of your situation, individual emails are no longer considering impersonal IMO and actually can mean much more than a phone call, since, given your office environment, emails are much more private than the phone.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:51 AM on December 7, 2009