Crawled back briefly the day before to put in one’s notice (8)
I believe the answer is:
perceive
'notice' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'crawled back briefly the day before to put in one's' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'put' could be 'per' and 'per' is present in the answer.
'one's' could be 'ive' (I've) and 'ive' is found in the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
(Other definitions for perceive that I've seen before include "Understand" , "Become aware of by using senses" , "Apprehend - sense" , "Observe, make out" , "Recognize" .)