2 weeks notice? would it be better to give a

Marian
Fri, 22 Oct 2010 07:22:39 +0000

What have other people in your company done when they resigned?

I would follow their lead.

Some companies don’t really want you around after you have decided to leave. The 3- or 4-week period might feel too long to your supervisor and co-workers if the typical amount of notice in your company is 2 weeks.

I worked for one company that didn’t even allow 2 weeks notice. If you submitted your resignation, they called a security guard, who then accompanied you for the rest of the day while you packed up your personal possessions, explained the status of your current projects to your supervisor, and went through the HR formalities. In lieu of notice, the HR people would hand you a check equivalent to 2 weeks pay just before you were escorted out of the building.

Heaven only knows what past departing employees had done to them, but they were pretty adamant about not letting it happen again.

On the other hand, there are some workplaces where people may know months in advance that someone is leaving, and nobody is uncomfortable with it. Here I am thinking of a university laboratory where I once worked. Some of the employees were on one-year or two-year contracts and knew exactly when they would be leaving from the day they started. Others were spouses of students who knew they would be leaving when their spouse graduated. In this setting, a month’s notice rather than 2 weeks probably would have been considered courteous.