Bob. A Job.

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to inform you of my resignation from the position of Acting Junior Vice-Assistant to the Deputy Director of Marketing with immediate effect. I seem to recall something in my original contract about a thirty day notice period but in the spirit of agile management and notwithstanding the fact that I wiped my arse with said document a couple of months back, it’s probably best for all concerned if I slip off quietly into the night.

Go on admit it. You’d love it if I genuinely slipped off into the night. You probably wouldn’t complain too much if I slipped off noisily, say, from a fourteenth-floor window but in the famous words of Mick and the boys…you CAN’T always GET what you WAAAANNNNT.

After fifteen years of loyal service – for which, I might add, I received not even a cursory handshake from anyone in a management position, much less the tax-free bonus and mercy fuck from the newly appointed Head of HR I was hoping for. Speaking of HR, can I propose an addendum to the standard employment contract stating that anyone who survives more than eighteen months in these hallowed halls of corporate wankspeak should have his or her own private harem or at the very least a discounted rate at the coffee machine?

My security card, lanyard and laptop will all be left at reception. I’d suggest rebuilding the laptop at your earliest convenience. This has nothing to do with the extraordinary collection of high definition lesbian porn I’ve amassed over time (I dumped the best bits on to Sharepoint in preparation for next week’s audit – you’re welcome) and more to do with the fact that I had to go about it with a hammer.

Repeatedly.

I can assure you this was not a decision I took lightly (the going about it with a hammer part rather than the porn or indeed my resignation) but after many years of stoic optimism that one day an email would arrive that contained (mostly) grammatically correct English and an actual point I found myself tipped over the edge so to speak a week last Wednesday when a Mr Wayne du Toit (a data ninja based in our Bloemfontein office and open to job offers if LinkedIn is to be believed) became the forty-second person in the space of a minute to use the power of the Reply-All button to ask people to stop “replying to all” in response to an email that had inadvertently been sent “to all employees”. I’m sure you’ll agree that short of driving to Bloemfontein and seeing how much of a ninja Mr Du Toit actually is when faced with the impending violence of a middle-aged fellow employee, the hammer-laptop-combo was the only viable option.

In lieu of any deductions you’ll find a way to weasel out of my final pay packet I intend to keep the enormous stockpile of office supplies I’ve accumulated over time. That said, in the spirit of being a “team player” if you can guess the weight of post-its I’ve stashed to the nearest fifty grams I’m prepared to reveal how I got the pool table past security.

If it’s all the same to you I’d like to waive my right to an exit interview given that I’m fairly sure I can find the exit all by myself. Also, the word “interview” implies that there is some sort of goal or purpose to the session and given that the aforementioned mercy fuck seems unlikely I’d prefer not to waste our collective time. “Life’s too short to stuff an artichoke,” as Beryl used to say. You remember Beryl? Used to work in logistics? I always meant to find out if she was being profound or just hated stuffed artichokes but I never got the chance. She was really the catalyst for all this, but I suppose when a co-worker eats her own head during a management meeting just to escape the endless banality of our collective existence it’s inevitable that she would be.

It’s been a pleasure working with you blah blah blah, will miss the etc. etc. and please stay in touch*

*by stay in touch I’m hinting more at never ever contact me ever.

Ever.

Toodles.

Bob.