“I’m done, and I need you to know why.” The resignation hits the internet before the CEO’s coffee finishes brewing. Maybe it first arrived as a company-wide email or detonated in Slack, reactions stacking like spectators at a parade. Or it migrates to LinkedIn, a scathing paragraph wrapped in professionalism with a thin icing of fury.
We’ve all seen examples of rage quitting. Who could forget how Marina Shifrin layered text about feeling overworked and invisible as she filmed herself dancing alone in her office to Kanye West’s “Gone,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URyNg8oH9Gg. Fifteen million people watched her say goodbye to her job.
Why do rage quits attract so many views? Perhaps because the rest of us see ourselves in the employee’s meltdown. We’ve swallowed frustration at work. Many of us have rehearsed the speeches we’d deliver if courage finally outweighs caution.
Here’s what employers need to understand: Most workplace rage quits contain three elements: accumulated disrespect or compromise; a triggering humiliation or realization, and the employee’s decision to visibly reclaim their control.
Accumulated disrespect
Employees take each job offer hoping for work they’ll like it, a boss they can respect, and basic fairness. They don’t start jobs planning to torch their employer’s reputation on their way out the door.
Then, a promise made during the hiring process fails to materialize. The employee brings it to their manager’s attention, but the manager denies making the promise or sluffs it off. Or, the employee raises a legitimate concern, then another, and even another, and nothing changes.
Most employees initially adjust. They give their manager or employer chance after chance. These small concessions stack up. Unfortunately, some employers choose to overlook significant problems, instead expecting employees to be “mentally tough,” https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/stop-telling-employees-to-be-resilient/. Over time, employee hopes curdle.
A trigger
Employees generally tell themselves they can live with almost anything, right up until the moment they can’t. One day, their future with that employer snaps into focus and it looks exactly like the past.
Sometimes the trigger comes in a meeting, a confrontation, a curt email, a denied request or a decision that lands as confirmation that nothing will change. The employee doesn’t see a path forward and decides the only way to get heard is to create a spectacle. Suddenly the employee’s story belongs to the internet instead of the employer. Want examples? This 2024 video provides more than a dozen ranging from the hysterical to the unbelievable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sChlIik85Y.
The employee’s decision
When patience empties out, many employees still leave quietly. Rage quitters make a different calculation. They boil over with what they want to say and decide control over their ending is worth the cost. Even when the blast radius may include them and torch their career, they choose visibility. And what might have been an employer issue becomes an internet sensation.
This doesn’t mean dramatic exits tell the true story. Hurt people swing wide. Yet employers possess more agency to prevent rage quits than they like to admit. Employees in free fall rarely hide it. Their productivity plummets. Their attitude drops from positive to negative. They withdraw from their managers and their colleagues, https://www.hrmorning.com/articles/rage-quitting-truths/. By the time a resignation explodes online, the fuse typically burned in plain sight.
© 2025 Lynne Curry, PhD, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
If you’re an employee incredibly frustrated by what you find in your workplace, you may find answers in Beating the Workplace Bully: A Tactical Guide to Taking Charge, https://amzn.to/2UNMcyX or Navigating Conflict: Tools for Difficult Conversations, https://amzn.to/3rCKoWj. If you’re a manager or employer who wants to turn things around, you’ll find solutions in Managing for Accountability, https://bit.ly/3T3vww8.
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This was a GREAT subject! I haven’t ‘been there’ but have seen it in minor form on a few occasions. And I’ve bordered on being there a time or two.
Along these same lines and consistent with your ending, I wonder…Why do so many workers let things build up to the degree? Or, phrased a different way, Why do companies not spend more time and effort trying to catch these situations before they explode? I’ve been there.
I remember an issue I was part of; I think I might have passed some of it along to you some years ago. He was well junior to me in the company (half the years of service; younger by about 15 years); I had not been advised of ‘the opening’ that he filled, nor was I solicited, nor was I offered any opportunity to apply for the position. I knew the opening existed – it was for my direct-report supervisor who had quit/retired. This guy came from within the company, from a position nearly peer-like, but actually lower-performing than mine. I was ‘the guy who fit anywhere, and would be detailed to fill in most any gap on a temporary basis. My primary work was developing courses – research, outlining, syllabus creating. Yet he was promoted to the position. And then he started micro-managing me. He told me, among other things, that I had to change a training syllabus for a class – on a subject that he had no experience in, with students he had no prior experience with, and against everything I knew about instructing the subject and students. He told me that I could not use tried-and-proven methods. I balked. We were ‘at loggerheads!’
It got ugly with the emails. He went to the boss. The boss called me in for a meeting. The boss, HR director and I met. And I knew what the subject was. There was the obvious ‘file folder of information’ open on the table when I entered the meeting.
I opened with a straight-shot. “As we discuss this, understand that if this doesn’t come out right, you can consider this my exit interview.” And we got down to the discussion.
It was a Thursday end-of-day meeting. I was given Friday off (being ‘salaried’ I was paid for the time). He told me we would meet Monday and we would complete our discussion.
We met Monday. Our discussion was good. I was retained and continued, including the course development as I had originally planned. They obviously had a follow-up discussion with my supervisor also. And the relationship, though a bit strained for a short while, improved.
My questions are: why aren’t there more ‘in depth – what’s going on’ meetings’ with good, and questionable employees? Where are periodic evaluations and why aren’t they 360 degree in this scenario? And why are ‘exit interviews’ so often vilified – by both sides of this equation?
GREAT comment, Dan. I truly love: “As we discuss this, understand that if this doesn’t come out right, you can consider this my exit interview.”