14 of the most dramatic resignation letters of all time

Inspired by an "American Idol" contestant singing Mariah Carey's "Treated Me Kind" in 2009, Kevin Nalty decided he could no longer be a consumer product director at Merck Pharmaceuticals and a YouTube comedian at the same time.

When his YouTube channel Nalts gained attention — earning 7.4 million views for a video called "Farting in Public" — Merck offered Nalty the opportunity to resign.

Not all resignations are bitter, and some are even sweet (and strawberry-filled).

To give his three-week notice at Tucson's KOLD-TV, Herman presented his boss with his letter of resignation printed on a large sheet cake, which he posted to reddit.

"I knew they’d be disappointed in my departure," he told JimRomenesko.com in May of this year. "So I decided that I should resign via cake — not only because nobody can be mad or sad at a cake, but also because I’m a bit of a joker and a cake of resignation is pretty damn hilarious."

Hilarious, but not actually a surprise: Wisely, Herman had already given notice by email, promising to "hand-deliver a physical copy for his personnel file" later. The physical copy was delicious, but his boss wasn't blindsided by the news.

When financiers get mad, they want public revenge.

In March 2009, the resignation letter of Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president at AIG, was printed for all to read in a New York Times piece called "Dear A.I.G., I Quit."

DeSantis began by saying how proud he was of everything he had done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P.

The letter, which was addressed to then-AIG chairman Edward Liddy, said: "After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself."

Read the full letter here.

Hedge fund manager Andrew Lahde's viral letter appeared in the Financial Times on Oct. 17, 2008, when he explained why he was winding down Lahde Capital.

"Today I write not to gloat," he began. "Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye."

"Recently," he continued, "on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, 'What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it.' I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking.

"These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America."

Read the ful letter here.

After the First Lady's resignation, the federal government invited Anderson to sing in a ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial. Roosevelt's letter is below:

O'Brien's press release from Jan. 12, 2010 says:

People of Earth:

In the last few days, I've been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I've been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I've been absurdly lucky. That said, I've been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.

Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.

But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.

Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move The Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate The Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years The Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying The Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn't The Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.

So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show . But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn't matter. But with The Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.

There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.

Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it's always been that way.

Yours,

Conan

According to Ashlee Vance at The New York Times, Schwartz is an avid user of the web and became the first CEO of a major company to have a blog — and the first to tweet his resignation.

Joey DeFrancesco, 23, worked in room service for the Providence Rhode Island Hotel for three years before he quit in dramatic fashion. He told Dave Jamieson at the Huffington Post that he'd gotten a job somewhere else, but didn't say where.

Paul Carr's 2011 resignation was also his last post on TechCrunch:

"To those who have been following the recent TechCrunch drama, this post won’t come as much of a surprise," Carr wrote. "A little over a week ago I wrote that, unless Mike Arrington was allowed to choose his own successor as editor of TechCrunch, I would no longer write for the site. Sure enough, this past Monday, a statement from AOL announced Erick Schonfeld as the new editor."

Carr said many "outside observers assume that Schonfeld, who has been with TechCrunch since 2007, was Mike’s choice to take over. But, in the interests of transparency, it’s important to clarify what really happened. The truth is, Erick was Arianna Huffington's choice, not TechCrunch's."

Later in the letter, Carr explained that towards the end of his last book, he wrote about the importance of having loyalty to one's friends and of knowing when to quit. "The former principle literally saved my life while the latter I've never quite got the hang of — dragging out relationships, jobs, a drinking problem… sentences… to beyond snapping point. This time, though, I think I've learned my lesson."

Read the full post here.

On May 12, 2009, an opinion page editor for the Norwegian online news site ABC Nyheter tweeted that she had "cleaned out her desk and was ready for new challenges" after a meeting where she was informed she'd have more duties.

When Heidi Norby Lunde's employer found out, he asked her why she didn't speak to him about it before posting online. Soon after, Lunde was asked to be a host for "Studio 5," a Norwegian version of "The View."

He now runs the Web site "That Guy with the Glasses."

In 2013, ousted Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason resigned from the company with singular candor in a letter reprinted in The Washington Post:

People of Groupon,

After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding - I was fired today. If you're wondering why... you haven't been paying attention. From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that's hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.

You are doing amazing things at Groupon, and you deserve the outside world to give you a second chance. I'm getting in the way of that. A fresh CEO earns you that chance. The board is aligned behind the strategy we've shared over the last few months, and I've never seen you working together more effectively as a global company - it's time to give Groupon a relief valve from the public noise.

For those who are concerned about me, please don't be -- I love Groupon, and I'm terribly proud of what we've created. I'm OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to take the company this far with all of you. I'll now take some time to decompress (FYI I'm looking for a good fat camp to lose my Groupon 40, if anyone has a suggestion), and then maybe I'll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive.

If there's one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what's best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness - don't waste the opportunity!

I will miss you terribly.

Love,

Andrew

A disgruntled Canadian Whole Foods employee gave the company a piece of his mind back in 2011, and as Gawker reported then, the note left no ambiguity as to his real feelings. The letter begins:

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Dear Whole Foods Market,

My experience at Whole Foods was like an increasingly sped up fall down a really long hill. That got rockier with every metre. And eventually, just really spiky ... With fire, acid and Nickleback music. I was hired about five or six years ago. I appreciated and respected what the company said it's philosophies were at that time. The "core values" essentially. However, it didn't take long to realize what complete and utter bullshit they are...

The employee then moves on to a list of more specific complaints (Gawker has the full note here), before giving individual coworkers a piece of his mind. "How you haven't been fired by now is a massive mystery to, not just be, but many people," he tells one. "You probably belong in a psychiatric ward." It goes on from there.

Who could forget the JetBlue flight attendant who flipped out when a passenger refused to stay seated on a 2010 flight to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport?

Steven Slater exchanged a four-letter word with his defiant passenger before grabbing a beer and popping the lever for the plane's inflatable emergency chute. On his way out, he reportedly announced "That's it. I'm done."

Slater's former colleagues told David Gardner at the Daily Mail that Slater was having "a really bad day."