Last week I took a yoga class in which the teacher mentioned that her mother’s 2012 resolution is to get rid of something every day -- either through recycling, upcycling, donating, composting, etc.

Today is the day I begin this ritual as well. I’m going through some old papers, deciding what needs to be kept, and what needs to be thrown overboard. Flipping through a file named “Misc.” I found a letter of resignation from 1996. It’s an email that was sent company-wide at 7:19am on April 22nd, and it reads:

“It saddens me to write this to you, but after careful consideration, I have deemed it necessary to resign my position as Data Management Clerk, effective immediately.

“I feel I have no choice but to seek employment where hard workers are rewarded and slackers are reprimanded, rather than the reverse, as I have experienced on numerous occasions here at Redacted.

“Regretful regards,”

I remember opening this person’s email at my desk and being so surprised by his succinct resignation. No flowery words, no “it’s me, not you” platitudes. This person was pissed (and at the time, I was too) and thought there was no need to cover up his disgust with pretty frosting. The funny thing is, I didn’t even print out the copy I have in my hands right now. It was printed and slid across a tabletop to me by the designer whose desk I shared; she was possibly the only other designer in that division who hated her job and our creative director more than I did. She eventually quit, the other disgruntled designer, and her letter of resignation is probably in another file of mine. Why I never thought to create a folder called “Good letters of resignation” is beyond me! I’m sure as the weeks roll on, I’ll discover more.