I worked with a guy who knew he was going to retire soon after 40-some years at the paper, but he hadn't decided when. He got called into a conference room by an editor he hated and was called out for not having a particular article completed. He quietly got up, walked out, went to his car and retrieved some gear that belonged to the paper. He plopped it on a desk and drove home.
He wouldn't answer anyone's call and was technically terminated for abandoning his job. We did an offsite retirement party for him a month or so later.
Not newspapers, but many years ago we had a high school football coach quit about three games into the season. It was a private school and he was a crotchety old biscuit. The guy was double dipping (getting state retirement plus a paycheck from the private school), so he didn't necessarily need the job and eventually went out in a blaze of glory.
He called the team together after the pep rally at 10 a.m. Friday morning, told them he was done, then walked to the principal's office and handed in his brief resignation letter and went home.
The team had a road game at 7 p.m.
That's always stood out to me as a great "fork you, I'm out" move.
As a side note, I found out that afternoon and tried calling him, but he wasn't answering the phone. Once or twice I did that thing where you space out waiting for the machine/voice mail to pick up and let it ring about 20 times. I had to cover their game that night, an hour away, so time was starting to run short. One of our news reporters happened to be his next door neighbor, and when he went home around 4 I told him to call me if the coach was at home. Coach was, so I went over to his house and knocked on the door.
He did talk to me, but one of the first things he said was, "Why did you let that forking phone ring?"
