The strange psychology of the workplace departure e-mail.

In Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics, first published in 1947, Erich Fromm sneeringly dubbed this inclination to privilege your cheerful, collegial, and salable side the "marketing orientation." There is something to be said for this repression. It is preferable, after all, that people check their uglier prejudices, knee-jerk resentments, and complaints of chronic indigestion at the office door. There's a trace of kindness in this self-imposed silence. And in the event of job loss, bowing out gracefully when the situation's entirely beyond your control does display some refreshingly adult behavior at a time when grown-ups seem few and far between.

But the parting note that offers nothing but affirmation to (now-former) employer and employees seems ill suited to 2009—and more bloodless than it needs to be. Have we collectively grown so skittish that even those with legitimate grievances won't give voice to their dissatisfaction? I queried a businessman in a rapidly contracting industry whose job evaporated in spectacular fashion. Because he didn't CC his personal address, he couldn't find his farewell e-mail in his archives. "But I can send you the one I should have written." He also considered whether a mass mailing was an adequate vessel for the toxic brew of emotions he felt that day. If he had to do it over again, "Maybe I'd have just played 'Maggie's Farm' loudly over and over as I packed up my office and waited for people to come over and ask why."

Being "positive" is not the only appropriate reaction when contemplating loss of livelihood, however temporary. Maybe our grown-up discretion lets the juvenile delinquents who dreamed up credit-default swaps off too easily.

But for those whose professional conscience won't allow them to skip the polite goodbye, positive thinking and pro forma gratitude are not the only options. Existential resignation could also do the trick. The eponymous, other-directed hero of 1955's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit spends the bulk of the book crafting a speech for an indifferent, uncommunicative superior. He can't sleep, he drinks too much, and he worries constantly that he'll lose his income and his family's respect along with it. He soon arrives at a glibly cynical, de facto mantra: "I shouldn't get too excited. ... It doesn't really matter. Here goes nothing. It will be interesting to see what happens." Top those lines off with your "new contact information" and job done.