agonyaunt | ask a manager

ask a manager

There’s an intern at my office who signs off all her emails with “Stay gold.” For example, an email from her might read, “Thanks for sending me the TPS reports! Stay gold, Jane.” I asked her about it and she confirmed it’s from the quote “Stay gold, Ponyboy” from the book The Outsiders. We work in a pretty casual industry so it’s most likely that people will write it off as a weird quirk, but I’m afraid that if she tried using that sign-off in a more formal industry or office that people would think it’s unprofessional. Should I encourage her to start using a more common sign-off?

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First, this is hilarious.

But yeah, that’s going to come across weirdly in many (most?) offices, and as an intern she won’t have the capital built up to make it read “amusing quirk” rather than “inexperienced worker who doesn’t take work seriously / has no sense of professional norms.”