Woman wanted to help her boyfriend quit — but sent her own boss a resignation letter with a weird request

Some messages might turn into a core workplace memory, even if they seem like a big mistake at first. Something similar happened with a writer who wrote her boyfriend's resignation letter and sent it to her manager so he could print it for her. However, she missed a crucial piece of information — the context. The boss replied with a message full of surprise, and a laugh riot ensued later on. The woman shared a screenshot of the messages exchanged with her boss from a now-deleted X account, per The Sun.

The then 22-year-old copywriter, Beth Ashley, wrote a resignation letter for her boyfriend because he didn't have enough time to write one on his own. Then she sent it to her manager, Andy Clarke, along with a message that read, "Can you print this for me please?" Clarke did not know the context behind the letter and replied with a "What kind of sick powerplay is this...?"  Beth told the outlet, "My tech is broken in the office, so I had to ask Andy to print it off for me."

Without any explanation, a document titled "resignation letter" could take any boss by surprise, especially when the employee is also asking him to print it out for them. After an outpouring of questions, Ashley reassured people that he was, indeed, joking. "He knows my boyfriend very well, so I think he had put two and two together, but instead he decided to rinse me in his reply." Clarke was sitting right in front of Ashley at that time. But instead of taking his headphones off and talking to her, he just sent a response. "I just howled laughing so loudly," she wrote. The woman has had a cordial relationship with her manager all along, but quite a few people on the internet were concerned that she had been fired over the mistake.

"I've had loads of random strangers messaging me asking if I've been fired. Of course not. What kind of mad manager would actually fire someone over that? It's all fine now. I still work there. No one has fired me," Ashley revealed. The copywriter took things a notch higher when she offered "resignation letter writing services" to take advantage of her moment in the internet spotlight. "I'd like to use the success of this tweet to advertise my resignation letter writing services, 15 euros ($16.99), and I'll tell your boss you are never coming back." She added, "I was just quite skint and thought it would be funny to offer to write resignation letters. I have had people ask, though."

"Most people genuinely can't write them, so even if they're not looking for a sassy reproach, they were asking, 'Will you do it?'" Ashley pointed out. "I haven't taken any letter-writing gigs up, but I have written a few people's CVs." Letting people know that you are leaving, in a professional way, can make a big difference if you want to leave your job on a positive note, per Harvard Business Review. Priscilla Claman, a career coach, even told the outlet that a resignation letter can be sent to HR as well as the boss's boss so the person can "control how they think about you and whether they’ll write a future reference." 

u/TacticalMicrowav3 wrote, "Your boss seems kind of fun." u/blaze1234 advised, "ROFL seriously hilarious. Reply: Just for my BF, but now that you mention it, I'd like to speak with you about my pay relative to current market conditions - I've been getting some sweet offers lately..." Reflecting popularly poor work cultures around the world, u/dragonking737 wrote "My resignation letter was a sticky note with the date I was done, with my signature on it. Didn't get a single complaint or even a sit down meeting to discuss my leaving."