Our Not-So-Serious Guide to Quitting Your Job—in 12 Easy Steps

We’re all a little itchy at work these days. Here’s our 12-step exit strategy.

Step 1: Wake up one morning and realize you just don’t want to go to work—ever again. Go to work anyway, but with the little free time you have start reading too many books about travel and listening to too many songs about breaking free.

Step 2: Look at your finances. Invest more of your money. Try not to look at your investment statements when the president decides to increase tariffs for no reason (again). Wonder how you’ve become the kind of person who complains about tariffs.

Step 3: Go out with a coworker and stay up so late commiserating that you get riled up enough and tired enough to forget about how important money or healthcare is. Decide to quit.

Step 4: Give your two weeks’ notice. Agonize over your exact wording, so they know it’s not them, it’s you. Make it clear that ultimately you hope you can still be friends.

Step 5: Tell your coworkers that you’re leaving. Have the same conversation with every single person in the office: They tell you they’re happy for you, and you tell them it was a really hard decision. You’re both lying.

Step 6: Send a sappy “goodbye job!” email that vaguely implies huge future projects you can’t talk about yet, which could mean anything from “I have no job lined up” to “I’ve been cast as the next Wonder Woman.”

Step 7: Discover that quitting your job is like if, when you broke up with your boyfriend, 15 women you’ve never met emailed you asking to be introduced to him. 

Step 8: On your first Monday with no job, text 10 different former coworkers to see what’s going on at the office.

Step 9: Deep-clean your kitchen. Find out that you’ve essentially quit your job to focus full time on getting that spot out of your countertop.

Step 10: Sign up for health insurance. Realize insurance really is so expensive. Go through a phase where all you talk about is how the healthcare system in this country is broken.

Step 11: Settle into a routine where you focus on your own big projects. Discover that these things actually are exciting when you’re not juggling them for other people. Think to yourself, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”

Step 12: Start getting emails from everyone you know asking for advice on quitting their jobs, too.