I know I just used one of Conan’s farewell comments as the Ethics Quote of the Week, and I know saluting him again risks my being called a Conan booster, which I am not. (Full Disclosure: Conan and I graduated from the same college, and my mother thinks that should matter to me. It doesn’t.) I have also been accused of not having enough Ethics Heroes, and it is a fair beef. I would be remiss not to give Conan that designation for a segment of his “Tonight Show” farewell that I left out of the earlier post. It was this:
“There has been a lot of speculation in the press about what I legally can and can’t say about NBC. To set the record straight, tonight I am allowed to say anything I want. And what I want to say is this: between my time at Saturday Night Live, The Late Night Show, and my brief run here on The Tonight Show, I have worked with NBC for over twenty years. Yes, we have our differences right now and yes, we’re going to go our separate ways. But this company has been my home for most of my adult life. I am enormously proud of the work we have done together, and I want to thank NBC for making it all possible.”
Print this out and make a dozen copies; keep one for yourself and have some to give to your children and their children. For this is the way to leave a job, whether you jump or, like Conan, are pushed; whether you are fired or “down-sized.” You do not leave angry or bitter; you don’t leave with insults or zingers at your employers or your boss. You say thank you, because you had the privilege to work there. You say you are grateful for the experience, you shake hands, and you leave with dignity, respect, and humility.
This has the benefit of being both the most ethical way to leave a job, and the smartest. If you do it right, they may start wondering whether it was right to make you leave after all. And who knows? You might want to come back some day.
Conan O’Brien already had his millions in severance pay. He could have gone out with guns blazing, getting big laughs, pleasing his fans, making headlines and creating an instant YouTube classic. Instead, he chose to give all of us an invaluable lesson on how to leave a job when things did not go our way.
It’s not easy, I know. I’ve done it myself. It is, however, the right thing to do.
Thanks for the reminder, Conan.
Ethics Alarms 
Indeed.
If only the “take this job and shove it” crowd could learn to eschew the personal satisfaction of smacking down a former employer and learn the subtler but more intrinsically valuable benefits of applying the Golden Rule.
God knows, I have been there as well, and it’s hard not to take rhetorical revenge when you’ve been treated badly. But it is possible, and worth it in the end.
That is my experience as well.
Conan has always been a huge inspiration for me, and to see this was amazing. I have trouble imagining being able to be so mature (I probably wouldn’t say anything at all).