YOU CAN'T FIRE ME, I QUIT.

Flamboyantly, notes USA Today.  It's not clear whether those workers are going Galt, or engaging in revolutionary consciousness against the extraction of surplus value.

While some people have a natural penchant for all things dramatic, including giving notice, many of these over-the-top resignations come from frustrated workers who've reached a boiling point.

"Many people are doing twice the work with half the resources," says Anne Kreamer, author of It's Always Personal: Emotion in the New Workplace. "They feel overwhelmed and undervalued. … It comes to a point where they just want to open their doors and shout out, 'I just can't take it anymore!' "

In higher education, the stress levels are an attempt to have excellence without money.  Or perhaps a simulacrum of productivity gains.  In business, the grinding down of workers has to have deleterious effects on productivity, but until management recognizes that it is not measuring those effects, the beatdown will go on.

Four in 10 employees say their work stress level has increased in the last six months, according to a CareerBuilder survey from late this summer. Two in 10 feel burned out. (USA TODAY parent Gannett is a part owner of CareerBuilder.)

More than half of workers say they have more responsibilities than at the start of the 2007 recession, with 70% saying they have not gotten a pay increase to compensate for the added work, according to a survey from employee support services provider Workplace Options.

There's probably a lot of secret updating of resumes on company printers, or plans to start small businesses being hatched.

Meanwhile headquarters is probably contemplating a revision of its strategic plan, or otherwise neglecting to take care of its business.