10 Terrible Ways to Quit Your Job (That You Definitely Shouldn't Try)

There is a sensible way to quit your job. You speak to your manager, explain that you've decided to leave, put it in writing and spend your notice period making sure everything is handed over properly. It's professional, sensible and, unfortunately for the purposes of this article, incredibly boring. Because every so often somebody decides that quietly handing over a resignation letter simply doesn't have enough drama.

People have resigned using cakes, videos, songs, social media posts and all sorts of increasingly ridiculous methods. Some are genuinely funny, some are painfully awkward and others probably seemed like a much better idea before the person involved remembered that references exist.

So, we've collected some of the worst ways you could theoretically quit your job. We obviously don't advise trying any of them. If you're genuinely thinking about leaving, you're far better off quietly browsing current vacancies and keeping your professional reputation intact. For everyone else, here are a few resignations best left to the imagination.

1. Write Your Resignation on a Cake

The resignation cake is probably the most famous terrible way to leave a job, and there's something undeniably funny about it. Instead of asking your manager for a private conversation, you walk into work carrying a beautifully decorated cake. Everyone assumes somebody has a birthday, plates start appearing and eventually somebody notices that the icing says "I QUIT." Your manager is now trying to process the fact that they're losing an employee while also deciding whether asking for a slice would appear strangely enthusiastic.

The problem is that you've turned a fairly ordinary HR conversation into an office event. People who had absolutely nothing to do with your resignation are now standing around eating Victoria sponge and waiting to see how your manager reacts. Would it be memorable? Absolutely. Would we recommend it? Absolutely not. Would we still accept a slice? Obviously.

2. Send the Most Suspicious Meeting Invitation Possible

Few things create unnecessary panic in an office quite as effectively as a mysterious calendar invitation. Send your manager a meeting request called "Quick Catch-Up", schedule it three days in advance and provide absolutely no explanation. You can then continue working completely normally while they spend the next 72 hours wondering whether you're about to ask for more money, confess to an enormous mistake or reveal that you've secretly hated working there since 2024.

When the meeting eventually arrives, walk in completely calmly and hand over your resignation. The actual resignation probably won't even be the worst part. It's the completely unnecessary three-day psychological thriller you've created beforehand. Your manager almost certainly has enough going on already, so don't actually do this, but you have to admire the efficiency of four innocent calendar words causing that much concern.

3. Slowly Make Your Desk Disappear

Rather than telling anyone you're planning to leave, gradually remove your belongings from the office and see how long it takes people to notice. Start with something small enough to avoid suspicion. The plant goes home on Monday, your favourite mug disappears on Wednesday and by Friday you've quietly removed the framed photograph that's been sitting beside your monitor for three years. The following week you take the spare charger, notebook and emergency biscuits until eventually your desk contains nothing except company equipment and one suspiciously lonely pen.

Eventually somebody will ask what's happening. Are you moving desks? No. Are you having a clear-out? Sort of. Are you leaving? Interesting question, Steve. Keep this completely pointless mystery going until you've removed every trace that you ever worked there, then finally hand over your resignation. It achieves nothing professionally, but your final-day packing will take approximately six seconds.

4. Become Suspiciously Happy About Everything

Anyone who has secretly accepted another job will recognise this feeling. The printer breaks and suddenly you find it quite funny. Another meeting appears in your calendar and you happily accept it. Your manager asks for a fifth version of something at 4:45pm and you respond with the peaceful expression of somebody who knows that this particular problem has a very definite expiry date.

There's a specific type of workplace happiness that appears when somebody knows they're leaving but nobody else does. The things that irritated you for months suddenly lose all their power because mentally you're already halfway out of the building. Your colleagues will probably notice eventually, particularly when you start smiling during Monday morning meetings. If you haven't actually found another job yet, however, perhaps don't mentally resign quite so early. Getting your application sorted and avoiding the CV mistakes that can cost you a job is probably a better use of that energy.

5. Let Your Out-of-Office Resign for You

Imagine finishing work on Friday without mentioning your resignation to anyone. At 5pm you switch on your automatic reply with a message explaining that you no longer work for the company and, importantly, that if your manager happens to be reading it, this is also how they're discovering the news. You then close the laptop and disappear into the weekend while Monday morning slowly approaches for everybody else.

It's wonderfully efficient and professionally disastrous. The problem with spectacular resignations is that they're normally designed around how funny the first minute will be rather than how awkward the following few years could become. You'll have an excellent story, but so will your former manager, and unfortunately their version might eventually be told to somebody who's considering employing you.

6. Turn Your Resignation Into a Treasure Hunt

Anybody can hand their manager an envelope. If you're determined to make the process unnecessarily difficult, hide your resignation somewhere in the office and leave a series of clues leading towards it. The first clue could be underneath their keyboard, the second in a meeting room and the third somewhere near the coffee machine. After 20 minutes of increasingly confusing riddles, your manager finally discovers an envelope containing the exciting news that they now need to replace you.

There are several obvious problems with this plan, the largest being that your manager may have absolutely no interest in participating. Somebody could throw away a clue, the cleaner could accidentally move one or Dave from accounts could find clue number three and decide it's some sort of company competition. Three weeks later you're still employed because nobody managed to solve your unnecessarily cryptic resignation. Perhaps email has its advantages after all.

7. Bring Your Own Replacement

This might actually be the most considerate terrible resignation on the list. Rather than leaving your employer with the inconvenience of finding somebody new, arrive at your resignation meeting accompanied by a complete stranger. Put your letter on the desk, gesture towards the person sitting beside you and confidently announce, "Don't worry, I've sorted everything."

This is Gary. Your manager has never met Gary. Gary isn't entirely sure why he's there. Nobody knows what Gary's qualifications are, but you've decided he's taking over from Monday. You've essentially created your own recruitment process without involving the company and somehow made your departure considerably more complicated than it needed to be. If your employer genuinely does need somebody to replace you, there are people whose actual job involves dealing with that. You can read more about how recruitment agencies help employers and candidates, none of which involves arriving unexpectedly with Gary.

8. Prepare a Full Resignation PowerPoint

If you've worked in an office for long enough, you've probably sat through a presentation that could have been an email. Your resignation offers the perfect opportunity to reverse that tradition by turning something that could have been an email into the most unnecessarily detailed presentation of your career. Book a meeting room, connect your laptop and begin with Slide 1: An Important Business Update. Follow it with a graph showing your motivation steadily declining over the previous 18 months, a slide titled Key Challenges containing Monday through Friday and a completely meaningless pie chart where 100% of the pie is labelled "Leaving."

The final slide reveals your last working day while an unnecessary animation sends the date flying dramatically across the screen. You've now spent several hours preparing something that could have been communicated in three sentences, which arguably makes this the most authentically corporate resignation possible. Nobody should actually resign through PowerPoint, but if somebody ever does, we'd be disappointed if they didn't include transitions.

9. Go Out for Lunch and Never Come Back

At lunchtime you stand up, put your coat on and ask whether anybody wants anything from the shop. Three people give you their orders, somebody transfers you £4.50 and you casually walk through the office doors. Then you never return. No resignation meeting, no goodbye and, most importantly, no meal deals.

This isn't really resigning. It's disappearing with collateral sandwich damage. Your former colleagues won't remember the projects you delivered, the deadlines you hit or the years you spent working alongside them. They'll remember that you vanished owing them £13.60 and Steve never got his prawn cocktail crisps. Whatever happens when you eventually leave your job, don't make somebody else's lunch part of the casualty list.

10. Let LinkedIn Tell Your Manager

You've accepted another job, the contract is signed and you're understandably excited, so you prepare the obligatory LinkedIn announcement. You're delighted to announce something, you're starting a new chapter and you've thanked everyone who supported you along the way. You choose the photo, check everything looks good and press publish. A few likes arrive, somebody comments "Congratulations!" and then your current manager likes the post. That's when you remember that you haven't actually told them you're leaving yet.

There are workplace mistakes and then there's accidentally outsourcing your resignation to LinkedIn. Your manager now knows you're leaving, your colleagues probably know you're leaving and you're sitting at your desk wondering how long you can reasonably pretend you haven't noticed. Keep the announcement in drafts until you've actually had the conversation. Your reputation follows you into your next job search and eventually your next interview, where there are already plenty of things you really shouldn't say without having to explain this as well.

Unfortunately, You Should Probably Quit Normally

After all that, the genuinely sensible option sounds painfully uneventful. Speak to your manager privately, explain that you've decided to leave, give the correct notice and confirm everything in writing. Work your notice properly, leave a decent handover and try not to create a story that follows you around for the rest of your career. If you're genuinely planning to leave rather than imagining what you'd like to do after a particularly difficult Monday, we've also written a proper guide on how to quit your job without making it weird.

Careers have an annoying habit of bringing people back into your life. Former colleagues become managers, managers move to different businesses and somebody you worked alongside five years ago can suddenly appear across the table during an interview. A ridiculous resignation might give you an excellent story for the pub, but leaving properly gives you something considerably more useful: people who would happily work with you again.

Once you've escaped without cakes, treasure hunts or abandoning anybody's lunch, you can start thinking about what comes next. Get your CV sorted, prepare properly for interviews and start exploring current vacancies without detonating your existing career on the way out. Leaving your job doesn't need to be memorable. Ideally, the exciting part should be where you're going next.

Although we're still willing to hear arguments in favour of the cake.