Tell me your resignation stories.....

I informed them that the division's senior post-doc was an incompetent bully who had made my life a misery for the previous 2 years (and I don't scare easily).

They gave her tenure and a pay rise.

[shrug]

In my last job I had two bosses. I emailed the one who was my official line manager (boss 1)requesting a meeting with him, but didn't say what it was for - not realising that he was in Sweden. I shared an office with boss 2. So boss 1 received the email, for some reason got really worried and phoned me in a panic from Sweden. I had to tell him why I wanted to meet with him over the phone, whilst boss 2 was sitting opposite me (I hadn't told boss 2 that I was leaving yet). Then after the phone call it was really embarassing as I had to say tell boss 2 that "you've probably heard me saying this over the phone but I would like to resign..." and he kept saying things like "well no H, I don't listen to your phone calls" but it was really obvious he had heard everything...

When I left my UK job it was fab. It took them a week to email me the contract, so I knew I was leaving for a whole week before I could tell anyone. I was leaving a job at the bottom of the pile, working for a boss who was a bad manager and a bully and i was in the middle of a formal appeal about my recent appraisal. I was going to a world leading institute, in a foreign country, to head up a team there. a world away from the current job.

Telling my boss was fab. Things had been pretty frosty between us, and I asked for a private word. she looked cross, then I told her i was leaving, and why. Ahahahahahahaha. The look on her face was priceless. she just kept saying "no?! really?! C***?! really? in Switzerland? when? 6 weeks? OMG! F**k me! really? you're kidding?!"

Then two weeks later i broke my ankle, and couldn't finish wrapping up my work or handing over. All i managed to do was my leaving interview with HR, where they agreed I had been bullied, and should i made a complaint earlier, and a leaving lunch with the team.

How i laughed (in between grimacing at the pain).

P&P - it always amazes me how many places insist on an exit interview and then don't take any notice of the reasons given. I am still chewing over what to say at mine because I do think that the restructure hasn't been handled well but I am wondering if they would really care about my opinion. Hope you're much happier where you are now.

HC - Oh no! You poor thing! I'm trying to get my timing right with this one, but sometimes it's really just down to luck isn't it?

FG - Loving your story! What a lovely relief to be able to say all of that and good that your view of the bullying was confirmed, albeit after the event. PMSL @ how I laughed in between grimacing. I think I remember you saying about that before, I'm sure I remember when you broke your ankle.

I can honestly say its my dream job. I still get to do the science I love, only, supporting dozens of other researchers rather than having the pressures of running your own research project. Its a permanent job, so no more scrabbling around for funding every year or two, and I've got an amazing team that work for me.

When I told misery-guts that I had scored a managerial role in a prestigious government science facility her gace was a picture. ?

? Priceless! It's great that you're doing your dream job, I was thinking in the shower this morning how many people are doing things that just make them thoroughly miserable, it's really not right. Sounds like you made the right move.

I'm really looking forward to my new role - but still can't elucidate further until I've signed that elusive bit of paper!

One company I worked for started with a small department which grew over a couple of years. They reorganised and they changed the proportions of my areas of responsibility - taking away the interesting bits and leaving me with the less interesting. This was while other people lost the less interesting and gained more interesting (to me anyway). The managers had decided it all and we were just left with things how they were. I decided I wasn't happy with the changes and started looking. My boss sat next to me while I phoned for application forms, arranged interviews, turned one job down, etc. When I got a job that I wanted I asked for a meeting to tell him I was leaving and he was quite shocked! (Genuinely, not pretend not listening ?). Good luck with the resignation and the new job!

In nearly 17 years of being employed Ive never resgined, Ive just moved Government Departments.

Mr WT resigned last week, and HR and his Second Line manager are trying to talk him out of it. He knows nothing will change so isnt budging. He is tempted to go out in a blaze of glory though and slap a grievance on his direct boss, his ex boss and his second line manager fo bullying, favouritism and not follwing procedures properly.

You don't want to hear mine SLD - my last move involved my boss ignoring me for 2 weeks and then reporting me to HR for going to a leaving lunch for the CEO's PA - I only took an hour. My exit interview turned in to a disciplinary!

I should take it as a backhanded compliment - he couldn't cope with the idea of me going so threw all his toys out of the pram in grand style.

It also cost his reputation dearly - the number of senior managers who were told what was going on by their PAs was fantastic - I still get people asking me did he really behave like that. He doesn't get much goodwill from people these days.

My whole department got handed a letter to say our job was at risk due to market conditions. We were then talked through a proposed new structure and invited to give feedback. We did. This was promptly ignored. The new structure involved "streamlining" content between different channels - in other words get one person to do four people's job. The whole department was in a panic and our line managers, who were also up for a cull, encouraged us to attend as many interviews as possible.

The whole thing was so badly handled. One minute we were told the re-structure was due to market conditions, then it was because there were too many overlaps between teams' work and then it was because over the past year or so we had all done a crap job.

I contacted a rival and got a job for me and one for my colleague. We took great pleasure in handing in our notice especially when it was followed by about 10 other colleagues' resignations. Luckily there were still a few firms hiring at the back end of last year.

The chief executive, who appeared to have had little to do with it all before, stepped in. Called us to the office, offered £5k more to stay. Said he didn't realise how badly it was being handled and that I was a valued member of the team....blah blah blah.

IT was too late, I still moved for the same money I was on before and have never looked back. They ended up only making one person redundant (it was supposed to be 25) because so many people left.

? Kegsey he really didn't notice? That's classic! Mine said to me earlier this month "Don't use up all of your holiday in the first two months of the year!" as I had booked time off for interviews. I couldn't really respond to that other than to say that most of them were for appointments and for my birthday!

I saw your email about your H earlier in the week WT but didn't have time to respond. I think it's great that you're both pulling together to get him out of such an awful situation. As you said, it's making him ill and no job is worth that, poor guy. I really admire the two of you taking such a step. I can also understand the temptation to blow it all wide open but I guess that for a quiet life and for the sake of future references I probably wouldn't! Hope he gets the other role that he applies for - fingers crossed!

See alison, that's what I am a little bit worried about - mine does have a temper and is perfectly capable of throwing his toys out of the pram. That said I can put up with any amount of crap if I know it's only for three weeks (thank goodness for accrued annual leave!) Luckily I get on very well with people here and so I think he could only get away with the rage for a finite period... but I guess we shall see shortly! The MD at my new office has emailed to confirm acceptance of my proposed start date and is due to send through official confirmation shortly. Eep!

Crystal, that's awful - see I can almost envisage the same thing happening here and so am leaving whilst the going is good. Things haven't been handled very well to date and not only that, but even if my job is safe, it's likely to be a very different working environment in future. Glad that you managed to leave when you could - I know that quite a few of my colleagues are also looking at the moment.

I have resigned twice.

The first time was my first job out of Uni - I was offered what looked like a brilliant job at what looked like a great company to train as a surveyor. When I got there after passing my exams the whole dept had changed staff except for 1 chap. This should have set alarm bells ringing in hindsight.

The person who was my line manager (also meant to be training me), was a total @rse - I worked hard but wasn't totally occupied so sat round doing not much, which I told him and he wouldn't accept, but expected me to be there at 8 and leave at 7 - despite the fact I had nothing to do. The training I was meant to be being offered wasn't offered, and b/c it is hands on training the fact that I had little work to do was very detrimental too.

I moved to a different line manager by chance (someone else left) and things improved for a time, but I still hated the office as the atmosphere was awful and very passive aggressive - training still going poorly etc,

I rang the company's HR man who was in charge of recruiting graduates and said that he would always be there if I had any problems etc. I asked for a meeting and he asked why - I said I was thinking of resigning and he said "well, if you do you won't get a job working anywhere else!" No encouragement to work things out or even a meeting in the end.........

Needless to say I handed in my resignation that afternoon and left a week later.

14 mths I lasted - too long when getting up in the morning was the last thing I wanted to do.

The 2nd time I resigned was from my second job, once I had completed my surveyor training - the Co I worked for took me on to train me and knew I would leave once trained so it was a nice parting of ways really.

Hope it goes well SLD

When I left my job, i was the 25th person to leave (out of around 100) in the past 3 months.

On the morning in question, there were another 3 girls handing in their resignation letter at the same time!

Our senior line manager walked in, saw us waiting at her desk, letters in hand, about turned and walked back out.

She then went and sat in on a shift handover, that she never sits in with. Did she think if she hid from us, we'd just give up?

I went and spoke to our direct line manager, who popped her heead into the office where the handover was, and told the boss that we were waiting to see her.

She told her that she was busy, and then was on holiday for 2 weeks and we can hand it in, when she came back!!!!

Needless to say, we didnt wait.

It worked out even better for me, i hadnt realised how much annual leave i had to take so it turned out, that instead of working 4 weeks notice, i only had to work a week!

I'm amazed at some of these. Mine is quite tame in comparison. I wasn't happy where I was working, and had been sick just bofore annual leave. My line manager (somehow) persuaded me to go in for two days to clear any work that needed sorting, and delay my annual leave for two days. So, I was sitting in the office, trying to get stuff cleared - and she walked off to a meeting that she hadn't bothered telling me about, leaving me to cover 4 telephones. Friend was sitting opposite me, and when manager left, I had a rant about how I'd rearranged AL to clear work, and then wasn't being given the chance to actually clear anything - as I was left to deal with all the incoming queries. The look on my friend's face made me realise quite how forceful my ranting was - and maybe this job wasn't making me happy any more. Resignation letter was written that afternoon, and left on HR co-ordinator's desk. When I got back from AL a week or so later, everybody knew that I had resigned, courtesy of our senior manager.

Thanks guys - I am about to climb the wall - since having written my letter, three people have been in to see him in quick succession and I still haven't been able to tell him, it's driving me crazy. I will definitely tell him before I go though - in a way maybe it will work out better as he can digest it this evening rather than having to sit through the remainder of the working day.

I was all geared up to tell him too - and it didn't help that when he came out of his meeting I was on a phone-rant to the DVLA which I had to excuse myself from because he wanted a cup of tea - argh!

I used to be an office manager in a Big 4 accountancy firm and I managed five partners diaries (and their lives) as well as doing office managerial stuff for a further 150 staff - and the only other admin support were two typists and a receptionist who did as little as possible. Suffice to say I worked long and hard but I enjoyed my role and whilst I proposed for new and additional support it was not forthcoming, so I just carried on.

And then I stopped enjoying my work. I knew I was being taken for granted - both timewise, ie, them calling me at all hours of the day and night for piddly things, and also financially. I was getting headhunted for around another third of my salary a month more.

So I tried to have a conversation with my boss about what I was going through, how I thought we could work it out, how I was dedicated to staying but needed more support etc and also mooted ideas about rolling out a country wide secretarial program to recruit and train good support staff which my boss loved, but wanted me to run in conjunction with my already busy and demanding role. I said I wanted to resign and was persauded to "give him some time" to try and sort something out. He then just carried on like nothing had happened, so a month later - and without another role to actually go to - I resigned.

My boss then spent a week or so talking with everyone else but me about how he could get me to stay, and when it was obvious that I was going to leave, he then refused to talk with me for nearly three months. He even stopped coming into the office, and our communications were either via text or email!!! When he did come to the office he couldnt look me in the eye, and told anyone that would listen that I had been disloyal by resigning and that I had upset his "family".

When I eventually left - he let me go one week earlier than my notice period. By this time I did have another job to go to. My new firm took up references, and found that my old Arse of a boss was being petty saying that I was actually an awful employee and he was glad I was gone - this was despite me getting the highest rating consistently in the four appraisals I had had and getting a hefty bonus based on my feedback, as well as the fact that he actually wanted me to roll out this new secretarial program. He then said my integrity was questionable as I had left one week early!!! a) this isnt the correct use of the word integrity you lemon and b) this was by mutual agreement.

So I challenged his reference via the ethics committee of that firm, and got it rescinded. It seems now that he spends all his time asking others if they can ask me to go back and that he will pay me whatever I want. Never. In. A. Million. Years.

So good luck with your resignation. My last boss was great when I resigned and understood exactly why and gave me all the support I needed and gave me a great exit interview and I know a couple of points I raised have been addressed. So different to my previous one. Hum, I wonder what my next one will be like ;-)

My most spectacular resignation came just as I was approaching my seventh year in the job.

Basically, we'd nearly gone bankrupt the previous year, and had been taken over by a local businesswoman - which was fine, aside from the fact that it became very clear very quickly that she had no idea whatsoever how to run a cinema (her background was in restaurants) but insisted on asserting her authority even when she was demonstrably wrong.

I decided to give her a year, because I was grateful for her bailing us out in the first place - but things went downhill very quickly. I vividly remember the time when we were threatened with legal action and I discovered that her modus operandi when dealing with suppliers was simply not to pay them and then go elsewhere. She quite seriously thought that if she didn't pay the distributor of, say, Casablanca that there would be an alternative source. In fact, not only is there not an alternative source, but blacklisting by one distributor means you lose access to their entire catalogue at the very least - in extremis, you could get blacklisted by all the major distributors, which would effectively put you out of business.

I fear that this revelation rather drastically upset her business plans, because within days she was proposing massive cuts across the board. Unfortunately, we'd already made massive cuts as a side-effect of near-bankruptcy, but I did manage to slash the production budget of the printed programme by taking over pretty much everything myself. When I started, in pre-DTP days, the chain was me-typesetter-designer-printer, then it became me-designer-printer, and finally me-printer.

This actually worked surprisingly well - I enjoyed learning a new and genuinely useful skill, and I also thoroughly appreciated having total control. But the sticking-point was the printer: my boss insisted on using a London-based firm, "because they were closer". I pointed out that we'd always got it printed out in the sticks (usually somewhere oop north) because it was massively cheaper, but I was overruled. But because the printer I used to use was able to work directly from my electronic files, and the new one couldn't, we had to get another firm to turn my electronic files into high-resolution film which the printer would then use to make the plates.

Anyway, this worked OK the first couple of times, despite the significantly higher printing costs (mine not to reason why, I decided) - until one fateful morning when some numpty at the printer's slit open the envelope containing the film with some kind of Stanley knife, and scratched it.

I had to break the news that this would mean a 72-hour delay - and got blamed.

And I went ballistic.

Or at least inside - in fact, I was icily calm, went to my desk, wrote a resignation letter, and ended with "Since you never did get round to issuing me with the contract that you've been promising me ever since you took over, I believe this means that I'm free to leave immediately." I then worked the rest of the day, told the rest of the staff my decision, packed all my things up, and left that evening.

And although I did have a few "oh my God, what have I done?" moments over the next few days, in retrospect I think this was one of the best decisions I ever made - not least because I'd have been out on my ear within a couple of years anyway. And to be honest, there were loads of times over that final year when I felt like walking away - I just needed a good excuse that would leave me with a clear conscience.

I was off work with stress, as I was helping to care for my Dad who had terminal cancer in France. I had to get signed off because I was refused unpaid leave and after seeking union advice, this was the route I had to take. I emailed my boss and told him I had been signed off and I was going to Bordeaux where my Dad was in hospital. He kindly ignored my email and passed on my personal emailaddress to the welfare officer, who from previous experience is as much as a chocolate fire guard and I had asked fot it to go on my personnel file that under no circumstances was I too be conatcted by her.

I duly replied, thanked her and asked her not to bother me. Every other week I was emails, asking me to make contact as she needed to speak to me, this just stressed me out more. My GP was wonderful and just signed me off as long as I needed. I returned to the UK and was adjusting to return to work but still the emails kept coming, which just got me more and more distressed, so my husband wrote to the welfare officer and the HR manager asking them to back off, they were kept informed and my sick notes were always sent in as soon as they needed to be. In the end I got the union back involved and it transpired that it was all being driven by my bosses boss. My union rep got them all to back off and respect my needs.

At this time I was just about to start my diploma and it would possibly meant going part time, I got to the point where I couldn't contemplate going back as neither of my manager's had supported me in this difficult time. My husband was great and just told me to leave so that I could devote my time to my course, needless to say I was straight on the computer typing out my resignation. I had accrued enough leave and flexi time so it meant I never had to return. My friend cleared my desk and my husband went to collect it, so I never had to physically set foot in the building as I couldn't for fear of my mouth running away with me.

I am so glad that I did it as it meant I was able to be there for my Dad this time last year, to help nurse him and be there with him at the end. My husband was diagnosed with cancer last january and after helping me with my Dad, we came home and he went into hospital and had to have a toe amputated as the tumour was in his foot (sarcoma). He then had to have a course of daily radiotherapy for 6 weeks. I dread to think how I would've coped with all of this last year if I'd have had to think about work.

It was bitter sweet for me and gave me so much pleasure the day I handed in my resignation!!!!!!!!

I was bullied and harrassed by the boss. I should have been supervised by the senior but she backed away from me from the word go. I had been a senior member of staff but downgraded to work in the area that I had always wanted to work in. I wasn't opposed to anyone supervising me, but this senior had already decided in the first few weeks that she couldnt do it! I'm very respectful of people who have more knowledge than me. I was new, had little knowledge of this area and no-one would help me to learn. I went on a course and passed and the boss said, I was surprised that you passed! I've always been taught that if you don't know you ask, but apparantly I should have known it all from the start! I was running 3 wards of at least 60 patients, had 2 groups, 12 sessions of 1:1's with patients and had to make all the thermoplastic braces which often took 2 hours for a full leg brace. I did this job for a year.

I handed my notice in and went to be a locum and earn about another 10k than the boss did at the time. I hear she now owns a pet shop! The next staff member didnt last a month before she went in and handed her notice in.

But the resignation was very politely worded and I never filled in the exit interview as the boss said that she would never give me a good reference! But I'm the boss now and thankfully from my experience I have stopped a very nasty bullying incident recently and quite firmly told the people involved that I will not stand for it. I'm very passionate about stopping harrassment.

I had an absolute cow of a boss, and I took a couple of half days for my first and second interviews with another company. I'd just had my last interview and got the job when she announced that she was putting a stop to my holidays as apparently I was off too much.... (I was within my allowance for the time of year, its not like I had used a whle years holidays in my first 2 months of the year or whatever)

She was going on holiday so I waited until she was gone and handed in my month notice. So I worked the 2 weeks she wasn't there, and then I had a fortnight in Tenerife booked so that was part of the month and I left then. She then came back and asked where I was, and she was informed I had another job. Ha ha!! ?