I Tried to Quit My Job by Faking My Death

Turns out HR requires a death certificate and my acting skills peaked in high school theater.

Danse Macabre Fun by Kiszkiloszki via Giphy

There comes a moment in every terrible job where you realize that giving two weeks notice feels like volunteering for a slow execution. You start thinking there has to be a better way. A cleaner exit. Something with less awkward small talk and fewer farewell cake situations where everyone pretends they’ll miss you.

That’s when the idea hit me. What if I just died.

Not literally. I’m not that committed to avoiding confrontation. But what if I staged my death convincingly enough that my employer would simply accept my tragic demise and move on without requiring me to train my replacement or attend a goodbye lunch where everyone asks what my plans are.

It seemed foolproof at 2am when I was lying in bed catastrophizing about having to tell my boss I was leaving. It seemed less foolproof at 7am when I was googling “how to fake your own death legally.”

Turns out there’s no legal way to do it. Also turns out there are a shocking number of Reddit threads about this exact topic, which made me feel both less alone and more concerned about society.

But I was already committed. My brain had decided this was the path forward and rational thinking was no longer invited to participate in decision-making.

Step one was figuring out how I died. This required more thought than I expected. It couldn’t be something too dramatic because that would invite questions. But it also couldn’t be boring because people don’t believe boring deaths anymore. Everyone’s suspicious now.

I settled on “hiking accident.” Vague enough to avoid follow-up questions. Believable enough that people wouldn’t immediately assume I was lying. Outdoorsy enough to make me seem like I was living my best life right up until the tragic end.

The problem was that I hate hiking. Everyone who knows me knows I hate hiking. I once described hiking as “walking but worse and with more bugs.” So this was already falling apart before it started.

But I pushed forward because giving up wasn’t an option and giving two weeks notice was somehow even less of an option.

Step two was getting someone to report my death. This is where things got complicated because it turns out most people are not willing to call your employer and pretend you died. I asked three friends. All three said no. One of them said “absolutely not” and then didn’t text me back for four days.

So I had to get creative. I drafted an email from a fake family member. Spent two hours making sure it hit the right tone of grief without being so over-the-top that it seemed suspicious. Included just enough details to seem legitimate but not so many that anyone could fact-check them.

The email was a masterpiece. My finest work. Better than anything I’d actually produced for my job.

I scheduled it to send on Monday morning. Spent the entire weekend having a low-level panic attack about what I’d just set in motion. Went back and forth between thinking this was genius and thinking this was the worst decision I’d ever made and I should probably just quit like a normal person.

Monday morning arrived. The email sent. I waited.

Three hours later my phone rang. It was HR.

My first thought was “they bought it.” My second thought was “I should probably let this go to voicemail because dead people don’t answer their phones.”

I didn’t answer.

They called again. Then again. Then my boss called. Then someone from my team called. Then HR called again but from a different number like they thought maybe I just had the first number blocked.

After the seventh call I started to panic. This was getting out of hand. They were supposed to just accept my tragic demise and move on with their lives. Instead they were launching what appeared to be a full-scale investigation into my whereabouts.

That’s when the texts started. “Are you okay.” “Please call us.” “We’re very concerned.” “Your sister’s email seems suspicious.” “We need to verify this information.” “HR requires a death certificate.”

A death certificate.

I sat there staring at my phone having what can only be described as a full mental breakdown about the fact that I’d somehow forgotten death certificates exist.

How was I supposed to produce a death certificate for my fake death? Was I supposed to forge one? Was that a felony? It felt like it was probably a felony. I wasn’t prepared to commit felonies just to avoid giving two weeks notice.

The whole plan collapsed in approximately four hours. By noon I was calling HR back and having the most humiliating conversation of my entire life where I had to explain that no I was not dead I was just very anxious about quitting and thought faking my death would be easier than having a normal adult conversation about leaving my job.

There was a very long silence on the other end of the phone.

Then the HR person said “so you’re resigning.”

And I said “yes.”

And she said “we’ll need that in writing.”

And I said “ok.”

They asked if I could still give two weeks notice. I said yes because at that point I’d already lost all dignity and two weeks of awkwardness seemed like a fair punishment for trying to fake my own death.

Those two weeks were exactly as horrible as I’d imagined. Worse actually because now everyone knew I’d tried to fake my death to get out of quitting properly. The story spread through the office faster than that time Mary microwaved fish in the break room.

People kept coming up to me and saying things like “so glad you’re alive” in a tone that suggested they were actually not that glad. Rebecca from accounting asked if I was “feeling okay mentally” which was nice of her but also mortifying.

On my last day there was no cake. No card. No farewell lunch. Just me packing up my desk while everyone pretended I wasn’t there and trying very hard not to make this more awkward than it already was.

I learned several things from this experience. First that faking your own death is more complicated than it seems and requires resources I do not have. Second that HR takes death certificates very seriously and will absolutely verify your death before processing your exit paperwork. Third that sometimes the embarrassing thing you’re trying to avoid is actually less embarrassing than the scheme you create to avoid it.

I’m at a new job now. When they asked why I left my last position I said “it was time for a change” and left it at that.

They don’t need to know. And HR definitely doesn’t need to know.

Some stories are better left in the drafts folder of your life where they belong.

Right next to the email I sent pretending to be my own grieving family member.

Which I saved. Obviously.

As a reminder of the time I tried to die my way out of a resignation letter and learned that sometimes being a mature adult means just doing the uncomfortable thing instead of creating a theatrical production to avoid it.

My high school drama teacher would be so disappointed.