The way a Brooklyn woman left a message for coworkers on her last day at work has had people in stitches after she shared the prank in a TikTok video with 1.9 million views.
Alexandra Dye, 28, left her mark when she moved on from her role as an art director at an advertising agency by changing her Slack profile picture—ensuring she wouldn't be forgotten anytime soon.
"I was working as an art director at an ad agency (specializing in social) so a lot of what we did was silly and fun," Dye told Newsweek. "I'd been there for a few years at that point and it was always sad and a little ominous to see people's Slack pictures turn grey when they left—that was also the primary way my coworkers and I learned someone was let go, when their picture would suddenly go grayscale midday. So I knew people were definitely looking."
Dye headed to Photoshop and edited her usual ID photo to include angel wings and a "In loving memory" banner. "This is my legacy," she said in the caption of the video.
The move was met with laughter from her former coworkers, who quickly shared screenshots of her unexpected farewell image. "I was good friends with a lot of my coworkers so it was really bittersweet putting in my two weeks," Dye said. "I was like, 'It's not like I'm dying,' and then got the idea to leave them with that photo."
The unusual move left people in stitches on TikTok, where people were quick to share their reactions in the comments, including their own experiences of similar work departures.
"My former coworker made a custom emoji of his face in Teams before he left," said @Aliecake.
While @caleb1caleb wrote: "I changed my email signature to 'I am no longer with us ... (in the corporate sense).'"
@Savannah recalled: "I got laid off with notice in 2023, so my last day I changed my Slack status to a tombstone."
Dye was thrilled by the response her video received. "Over the next few days, I got a handful of texts from them with screenshots saying they thought it was hilarious," she said. "That screenshot at the end of the video was from one of my Creative Directors after I'd left."
"I work in social media, so I almost always have TikTok on the brain," she said. "I thought it would get a few laughs but didn't realize it would be that big of a hit, and I'm so glad it was! I've spent hours laughing through the comments section; a lot of people are sharing other unhinged things they did on their last day and I love it. Within one day, another user created a video of her doing the same thing at her job. I'm obsessed, I adore it, I want an army of clever deactivation photos."
Dye's story is part of a broader trend where employees find creative ways to bid farewell to their workplaces. In 2019, a viral movement saw employees handing in their resignation notices via condolence cards. One individual's card read: "So very sorry for your loss," with a handwritten note inside adding: "My last day at work is the 28th of July."
"Corporate culture can be so arbitrarily stiff and Truman Show-ish," Dye said. "I think the younger generations appreciate when people are a little unserious about it."