A friend who owns a children’s clothing store in San Francisco recently told me about one of her employees quitting via email.

This twenty-something didn’t give any notice and offered little explanation in her email, and she left my friend, who was on her way out of town, scrambling. Nonrefundable plane flights and hotel reservations were canceled.

Quitting a job via email? When did that become acceptable?

It seems America’s youth lack the guts and gumption necessary to confront difficult situations in person. They’re quick to break up with boyfriends, tell off friends, and quit jobs through emails, text messages, and Facebook. If they were to deliver bad news in person, they might be forced to learn that they’re hurting someone. That’s painful! Who wants to experience pain?

As we all spend more time online, we’re doing things that were traditionally done through face-to-face interactions in the virtual world. It’s easier and faster to do everything from our banking to our thank-yous online. But should everything be done online? Don’t our young people need to learn how to look someone in the eye and deliver bad news?

A few years ago my brother’s 20-something girlfriend broke up with him via email. He was living with her and she sent the message while she was on an art class trip in Europe. She instructed him to pack up his stuff and move out before she returned home. My brother was crushed and even more so when he later learned through friends that she had met someone in Italy. But she’ll never know about his pain because she didn’t see his tears or bloodshot eyes.

When my mother hears stories like this she’s quick to point out that when she was a kid people had more class. I’ve always found her tendency to put her generation on a pedestal annoying, and I swore I’d never do the same thing. But I’m realizing this is a hard promise to keep especially when it comes to kids quitting their jobs via email.

I quit a job only one day after starting.

This was in the late 1990s, the dot-com days when playing ping-pong while drinking a Belgian ale was part of the work day–and when writers and editors were actually in demand.

The job was a part-time, contract gig managing a website called the Go Guide, which featured a database of hiking trails. It seemed like the perfect job. I was in the midst of an outdoorsy phase, wearing Patagonia fleece, reading Outside magazine, and riding my mountain bike on weekends.

But a day after starting with the Go Guide, I got a call from VIA magazine and was offered an even more perfect situation: a full-time job with benefits, 401K, the works.

I quickly decided that I needed to take the job with the American Automobile Association publication, so I could afford my rent. This meant delivering the news to my supervisor at the Go Guide–not an easy task for a twenty-something.

On my first day at the job, my boss told me that the former Go Guide editor quit after a month on the job, so she was thrilled to hire someone dependable like me.

But the next day I went into the office, and told my supervisor that I was accepting another job. I apologized profusely and offered to stay on for two weeks to help her out.

She was upset and asked me to leave immediately–and I will never forget the look of anger in her face.

At the time, it seemed like the hardest thing I’d ever done, but really it was only training for confronting people in the future in far more difficult situations.

Is it acceptable to quit a job via email?