Hi Antiwork!!! This is a very long resignation letter, but it was sent to my now old boss on Monday Night after starting my new Job. After working my first day at my new job, I got to my now old job at 6:15 PM and realized that I wouldn’t be home to see my wife and son till probably 9pm. They would both be asleep and I realized that this wouldn’t be sustainable for even another day even though I thought I could play it out for a month. I decided to type up this letter and copy the entire accounting department. My boss was able to contact IT to delete it from everyone’s email, but I had also sent it to the accounting department’s Christmas text chat to make sure that everyone did see it.
For background, I am an AP manager and am always here for my people. I have done everything I could to help them, but there was only so much I could do. I have had a very hard past at a previous job that caused me a lot of trauma that I have just really gotten over before this job, so I thought working at a nonprofit Christian Organization (I’m not Christian and would never do this again) would be good for my mental health (HA!). I started on December 3rd and a month and a half later I was forced to write an apology letter (and my mental health started suffering because of this) because documents from one of our properties weren’t making their way to me. An IT issue did cause this, but they still didn’t keep documents on site like they were supposed to, so I asked why they didn’t follow policy. I spell everything out in the letter so have a look. It is pretty TL;dr, but it felt great sending it and my employees that love me so much also loved this letter. They are now told that they aren’t allowed to communicate with me at all by text or phone. They still do 🙂
Hello, XXXX [Old Boss],
Sorry for the sloppiness, I didn’t have much time to write this, so the grammar is a bit off as I was in a rush to get this out. I would like to let you know that I am submitting my resignation effective immediately. This choice was made for several reasons regarding overreaching management styles and information being omitted to me from as early on as my interview. The main reason for all this, however, is because I was forced to write an apology letter for stating something that was true and not in any way rude or unprofessional. One of our properties was not following policy even though their paperwork was being turned in correctly. While there might have been an IT issue, the policy was not being followed creating extra work on my part. Because of this I feel that any process implementation or improvement in the future would be hard to roll out because policies need to be followed to ensure that everything is being done the same way across the company. It currently isn’t.
Because of the situation with me pointing out that policy was not being followed and you forcing me to write an apology letter, I have gotten to the point that I am too scared to send an email to any executive director that questions something or point something out in fear of what you might think it sounds like while then being forced to humiliate myself again by having to write another apology letter. Even with current events with the XXXX transition [Worked at Phoenix, put a 2 week notice in, moved to the main office, but is currently still working 40% at Corporate, 60% at Phoenix almost a month after she quit working at Phoenix] I don't want to get too involved because even though XXXX is my employee I feel that asking why she's spending so much time at the Phoenix property might make you upset and then cause more problems for me in the future. This is judging by all the times that XXXX [the department scapegoat] was written up and documented -I feel like this was a path that I was going to be on with you eventually. I can't work in a situation where I'm constantly scared of what my manager is going to think, I also don't like to be in a position where I feel like my manager doesn't trust my judgement or abilities. I was hired to manage, not to have you micromanage everything about the department without me being able to put my mark on anything.
When I started you gave me the idea to look at the employee records to gauge the current employees that I have. In the employee file I found one employee in particular, XXXX [the department scapegoat], who was being documented for almost anything that came up. I do understand that documentation in a management role is important, but I feel that she was being documented for anything and everything that she did. You also made XXXX apologize for a previous issue, and like me you had her write an apology letter that you had to see before it was sent out. This is very demeaning and disrespectful and I'm not sure you understand how poorly it can make you feel. Again, this is what made me start looking when you did this to me.
Something else that I do not find fair or right about XXXX [Company Name] is what they are paying their employees. A 3% raise every year is not up to industry standards when the rates that our current employees are being paid is at or below the 25th percentile. XXXX is keeping the AP department alive, and she is being paid at least $3 to $4 an hour less than she should be. This is unacceptable and I can't work in a place where my employees are being treated in such a way. XXXX [The department scapegoat that still does great work] needs to be paid more. XXXX who was just hired and was brought in at a low rate had her old job at Phoenix posted for $2.00 an hour more than what she's currently getting paid now. Again, this isn't right, and they shouldn't be treated in this way.
Something that I've constantly heard here at XXXX [Company Name] is that there's no room in the budget for higher employee wages or benefits or anything else that might come up. but what I have been seeing is a free for all on credit card usage as nothing is policed and no one is held accountable. I have seen thousands of dollars go out to gift cards and thousands of dollars a month go out into restaurants, gifts, fast food and coffee purchases that are coded into areas such as supplies and other inappropriate GL coding [for non-accountants, this is basically a way for the managers at the properties to hide these purchases from the budget] totaling several tens of thousands of dollars a year. This is unacceptable and should be looked at closer. If we have to hold payments to vendors because we don't have enough money why is it okay for the free for all usage of our credit cards to pay for these kind of purchases. Because of payment holding, we had to pay over $4000 in late fees for one vendor. How does this make sense? I have never worked for an entity that has had to hold payment because there's not enough cash on hand. This should be a red flag and any inappropriate spending should be immediately stopped, but if I said something, I would be the one that would get in trouble and would have to apologize.
I also have never worked for a company that doesn't give holiday pay. I was told in my interview that the PTO system is a little weird, I wasn't told however that when there was a holiday, and my son would be home from daycare because they aren't open, that I would have to find other ways for him to be watched. This puts an extra hardship on people with kids because XXXX [Company Name] won't match an industry standard where office employees have holidays off. Additionally, I found out two months into my employment that there are four holidays that XXXX [Company Name] will not be open, but I would have to use my PTO. I have never heard of something like this in a corporate office environment and this also heavily influenced a reason to leave as not having random holidays off would only lead to burnout and unhappy employees.
I intended to work here for over three years as part of my plan. In fact, XXXX [HR Rep] told me that this is a job that you could retire from, and I have agreed with that the more and more that I start to learn and understand my job. However, this job is not possible to maintain happiness with being an executioner of a heavy-handed micromanager. I want to remind you again that forcing someone to write an apology letter for something that wasn’t even wrong is a sign of poor leadership and bad management decisions. I’m not sure what you were trying to prove by having me write that, but this is the result of that. If you really cared about the mission of XXXX [Company Name], you would care about the tens of thousands of dollars going out in credit card payments for non-business-related expenses. This is a business, not a personal social club to greet your good friends. It should be run like a business.
Good Bye XXXX [Old Boss].