“If you Google banana breads, there’s over a million recipes online, and they’re all going to be good but they’re all slightly different,” she said. “You have to choose your own recipe.”
It’s the story of the pandemic: When people posted their banana bread photos, they influenced their friends to start baking as well. But like quitting, it was something no two people did the same way.
The friend who inspired Ms. Cruz’s resignation, Cat Del Carmen, 34, agreed that it was important to develop her own quitting strategy. Ms. Del Carmen was able to leave a job at Adobe by cutting back spending on restaurant meals, vacations and TJ Maxx splurges. The six months after she left her job were high pressure financially. Ms. Del Carmen drew comfort from her correspondence with friends on social media who were also navigating the post-paycheck territory.
That bond forged by resignation, as people look to one another for inspiration and affirmation, is a phenomenon that predates the pandemic.
“It’s a huge decision,” said Anthony Klotz, an organizational psychologist at Texas A&M University. “If you Google how to resign from your job, there’s lots of conflicting guidance. Those answers are not in a company handbook. It makes sense people reach out for sounding boards from trusted others.”
Aimee Wells, 53, who works in public relations, had her own quitagion experience years ago. She had been working at a global marketing firm in San Francisco, where she bristled at the time constraints of corporate life. She was never able to drop off her son at kindergarten. She remembered watching the 1996 movie “One Fine Day,” in which Michelle Pfeiffer plays an architect who decides to make her family a priority over high-powered work. It left Ms. Wells grappling with how to reset the balance between her own corporate job and personal life (far as it was from the realities of Ms. Pfeiffer and George Clooney’s).
One evening, on the train coming home from work at 6, she ran into a neighbor carrying shopping bags full of files, office supplies and photographs. The neighbor told Ms. Wells that she had just quit the role that was burning her out.