When Sam Baines turned in a tongue-in-cheek resignation at his job, he never expected it to go viral.
Baines knew his team had a sense of humor. They had long joked together about many things, including how they would all survive when Baines had to quit his job at a call center in Sheffield in the United Kingdom.
So, true to form, Baines decided to announce his resignation by handing in a condolence card to his manager.
“I’ve been working here for almost a year now and had to hand my notice in as I’m going back to university this September,” said Baines. “We are a really close team and have a fantastic manager, so we’re always joking around and having fun. I knew I had to do something a little more creative when giving my notice to try and get one more joke in before I left!”
The manager found it so funny, they shared it with the rest of the call center team.
“I knew my boss would find it funny, so I wasn’t worried about how they’d take it,” said Baines. “It went down great and helped make a positive from an otherwise sad situation.”
Baines’ call center colleague, Hannah, shared the humorous notice on Twitter, where it unexpectedly took off.
Within a week of posting, the tweet has garnered more than 76,000 retweets and almost 435,000 likes.
On the fron the card read:
“So sorry for your loss.”
Then inside Sam wrote:
“It’s me. Thinking of you at this difficult time. I leave in a week.”
Hannah confirmed that the team took Baines’ condolence card with good humor. Everyone knew it was meant as a good-natured joke. But hilariously, people’s responses on Twitter included quite a few stories of similar happenings at their own job. One woman, Zoe, even shared a photo from her colleague, Danny, who coincidentally had used the exact same condolence card as Baines. Clearly, he shares a sense of humor with quite a few people.
It’s gone viral for a happier reason — but with similar results — as another resignation.
Back in 2013, a woman named Marina Shifrin posted a resignation video to her boss at the media company where she worked. It featured Shifrin performing an interpretive dance to Kanye West’s “Gone.”
Of course, Shifrin’s main reason for leaving was the horrendous amount of overtime she was required to put in.
So appropriately, she filmed the video in the office at 4:30 in the morning.
Shifrin said she was tired of her complaints being dismissed after two years of putting in exhaustive hours and sacrificing her sanity and relationships.
“I understood that it was a risk, but I never named the company or my boss and I mean, have you seen my dancing?” said Shifrin. “How can anyone take that seriously…”
The video, which showed Shifrin dancing in a variety of locations around her office (including the bathroom), has more than 19 million views. Clearly, there’s more than one way to quit a job.
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