Some disgruntled employees are eschewing the boring old resignation letter and two weeks’ notice, and instead going out with a bang.
Earlier this week, The Post reported that a Manhattan court stenographer let his boss know he was not digging his daily grind when he typed “I hate my job” over and over instead of accurately transcribing what was going on during some 30 cases.
He’s not the only one whose grand exit has made headlines. Here are five people who have said to their bosses, “Take this job and shove it!” and gone out in a blaze of infamy. (Warning: Don’t try this at home.)
She’s so ‘Gone’
Marina Shifrin worked long hours at Taiwanese animation company Next Media Animation, and last September, she decided she’d had enough. Alone in her office after an all-nighter, Shifrin, 25 at the time, made a video dancing around the cubicles to Kanye West’s “Gone.” Her video begins with a caption: “My boss only cares about quantity and how many views each video gets.” Her resignation, ironically, went viral, with more than 17 million views today.
Letting it fly
JetBlue employee Steven Slater was up to here with rude passengers. In 2010, on the tarmac at Kennedy International Airport, the career flight attendant got into a dispute with a flier who stood up too early to fetch her overhead baggage. Slater, 38 at the time, grabbed the intercom and let loose a string of expletives, took two beers from the beverage cart, activated the emergency activation slide and jumped right out. Slater didn’t get to ride off into the sunset, though. Later that day, he was arrested and charged with criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and criminal trespass, to which he pled not guilty.
‘Super’ idea
Gwen Dean from Yonkers, NY, quit her job as an engineer in front of nearly 100 million people — when she resigned during a Super Bowl ad this year. The 36-year-old was the subject of a commercial for GoDaddy, a Web site that creates domain names. She was chosen out of about 100 people who answered a blind announcement for people wanting to resign on air.
“Hi Ted. I quit,” Dean says, addressing her boss in the 30-second spot. She’s holding a blue puppet while the domain name for her new business, PuppetsByGwen.com, flashes on the bottom of the screen.
Apparently Ted had no hard feelings. According to Dean, her boss texted her after seeing her on TV to congratulate her.
Take it to the bank
In a move fit for Don Draper on “Mad Men,” Greg Smith quit his job at investment bank Goldman Sachs with a scathing op-ed in the New York Times in 2012. After spending 12 years at the Manhattan-based bank, Smith details an environment that had grown “toxic” and “destructive” under chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein and president Gary Cohn. “It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off,” Smith wrote. Smith got a book deal out of the op-ed. But the tome, called “Why I Left Goldman Sachs” (almost the same title as the Times article), didn’t sell well.
Going out on a high note
Joey DeFrancesco, a then-23-year-old hotel room-service employee, enlisted his band, a 19-piece brass ensemble for which he plays trumpet, to help him quit his job — and brought along a videographer to capture the affair. “I’ve worked at this hotel, the Providence Renaissance, for three and a half years,” DeFrancesco begins. “They treat us like s–t here, and I’m going to go in and quit right now.”
When DeFrancesco’s boss appears, he breaks into a grin, passes him a resignation letter and announces, “I’m here to tell you I’m quitting,” as his band breaks into song.
The video, “Joey Quits,” has more than 4 million views on YouTube.