Long Notice
I knew I was quitting, so I gave 2 month notice at my job. I know, two MONTHS? But I figured it was the right thing to do, and they could hire my replacement in plenty of time. After I gave notice my boss started treating me really badly. I called in sick a few days later, leaving a message on his voicemail, and the next day he changed the sick policy to say we had to personally call everyone in the department (about 7 people) when we were calling in sick.
Effective immediately, anytime you must call in sick you are required to call each person in the department to let them know you won’t be in for the day. You must repeat this each day you do not come in to work. Print out the phone numbers for each person and keep it at home so you know how to reach everyone.
Then my boss takes me aside, tells me I’m doing a bad job. I remind him I am quitting anyway and he threatens to fire me earlier than I plan on quitting, but in the end does not.
Four months later, he emails me out of the blue and tells me he has not found a replacement and asks if I will do some contract work. Of course I say no. I learned my lesson, never give 2 months notice again!
I have not found a sufficient replacement for your position. I am the only programmer currently in the department. Would you be interested in doing some temporary contract work starting on Monday?
A very similar thing happened to me a few years back, except I gave only one month notice. I was trying to be a nice guy. Suddenly, everything I did was wrong. They loaded me up with work, and made no real attempt to find a replacement. I did the work for the first week, but when the personal treatment got bad, I basically just put in my forty hours and left it at that.
I had a good relationship with everyone else in the office, but by the end of the month my supervisor was so angry with me that I knew I’d never be able to use him as a reference.
Strangely enough, the exact thing happened to me as you: a month later, he called and asked me to do some contract work (I was a graphic designer). I, too, said no.
You should have agreed to do some contract work for 2X the money you were getting earlier. Or even better, talk to his superior and if they really need the work done, swap jobs with the boss you had.
Thanks for this, I plan to quit soon and I was actually going to give them a couple months notice just because I thought it would be nice, but lately they don’t like me much anyway and that’s probably the last thing I should do!