“Twenty minutes later, my Slack and email access were cut off, and HR called to tell me my termination was effective immediately.”

As a Senior Editor at BuzzFeed, I cover lifestyle topics including books, work and money, health, and home.

"Sure, there are some shitty companies, shitty HRs, and shitty bosses.

I say: Be a professional. You can’t control your employer, but you can choose what standards you’re going to uphold. It is professional to give notice."

"I gave notice out of respect and out of a desire to keep disruption of your office to a minimum. My new job doesn't start for two weeks, so terminating me today leaves me without pay for two weeks.

But, setting me aside, think about the message you're sending. You want employees to give you notice, but terminating me immediately tells them they shouldn't. If someone lines up a new job to start in two weeks, they know that if they tell you that, you might terminate them immediately, like you're doing to me, and leave them unemployed for two weeks. You're telling them the smart move is not to give more than a few days' notice, if any. Is that the message you want to send?

They met again briefly and rescinded the termination. It was awkward for a day or two, but after that, I was able to productively wrap up the things I was working on and hand off a few matters to someone else."