How to Leave a Job Without a Trace

Being forgotten is part of the gig, apparently.

When I left my job of three and a half years, no one gave me a card. That was it. No flimsy folded cardboard filled with half-hearted inside jokes. No “good luck!” or “we’ll miss you” in varying shades of office penmanship. Nothing.

I got a goodbye lunch. Eventually. Even that I organised myself – a gesture so loaded it’s like throwing your own surprise party and still acting surprised. And this wasn’t just some casual gig. I’d been there. I trained the newbies. I cried in the bathroom before 10am and still made it through the quarterly WIP meeting.

All that, and not even a rectangle of paper with a cartoon duck in a suit and a pun about new adventures.

---

What I Couldn’t Ask For

I’m painfully aware of how small and bitter this sounds. I didn’t want a gift. I actually said that. I remember it clearly: “No, I don’t feel comfortable getting presents.” I meant it at the time, in the way people with a history of being disappointed often mean it. What I didn’t realise then, and what I only felt, with raw and delayed clarity, was that I did want to be acknowledged. What I really wanted, what I couldn’t quite say without sounding like I was asking for too much, was a stupid bloody card.

A card isn’t a gift. It’s a receipt. Proof that you existed there, that someone noticed. That you weren’t just another name in the org chart who was reliable, efficient and easy to forget. A card is a workplace ritual – and like all rituals, it’s meaningless until it’s missing. Then it becomes everything.

---

A Farewell Without Witness

I didn’t expect a grand gesture, but I thought there’d be something. A closing ritual. One last line with my name in it.

Instead, nothing.

It was even floated – the idea of a card. A throwaway line you assume will become something. But it didn’t. Not even a last-minute panic purchase. Not even a loose sheet of printer paper with a rushed “Take care.” The silence was louder than anything anyone could have written.

What do you do with that? Where do you put the weight of being passively unacknowledged?

Farewell cards are basic, performative workplace etiquette. Sure, but they’re also a tiny form of repair. They say: we’re parting ways, but not without pause. They mark time. They offer a moment to say, this mattered, you mattered. To not receive one is to be ghosted by a place you gave years of your life to.

---

Proof of Life

People will say: it’s just a card. Don’t take it personally. But it’s not just a card. It’s a symbol – of emotional labour, of workplace expectations, of what happens when you make things smooth and easy for everyone else until the very end. You slip away, unthanked.

You’re good at disappearing. They let you.

Maybe it hurts because, buried in all that routine and polite small talk, something real slipped out. Something that should have been publicly witnessed. All I wanted in return was the most pathetic little ritual of being seen. Something disposable, with a shitty pun and a few signatures. Something to prove I was there.

I left the building. That was that. Nothing followed me out.

Another Slice?