I quit my job today. Yep, I really did. And I did it in high fashion, some may say. Some knew it was coming, others were perhaps shocked. Others, shocked and appalled. And angry. The way I chose to go out is, as you will see, morally or ethically ambiguous; many I think are proud, and I hope inspired, while others, namely, those who are stuck with my work now, are calling me a coward. I don't disagree, because that is both true and false.
A while back, a woman (who you will see mentioned later) decided she had had enough of the firm where we worked. She decided to send her boss a very angry email (but blind copied everyone in the firm so we could all enjoy it). Within minutes the entire firm was abuzz about this juicy news, everyone was hysterical. She simply hit 'Send' and ran. We all applauded her attempt, her getting to leave with at least the feeling of having the last word, of doing something for The Greater Good. She left satisfied with herself, I'm sure.
I liked it. And I had a story to tell as well. So I decided to borrow her strategy, which I hope will now become tradition, The Tradition of the Disgruntled. The Final Email. The Send-n-Run.
I stayed up late the other night and typed my farewell message, saved it as a draft. I waited for today. I got out of bed, got ready for work, showed up on time. I made sure I said my goodbyes which were the most essential, and then I waited for the most opportune time.
Copy.
Paste.
................Send:
//////////////////////////////
Honestly, I wasn't going to do this today, but...surprise. I quit. But allow me to explain.
First, let me warn--for those who were here to witness it--that this won't be as nuts as Candace's email when she escaped; in her defense however, she was the third Candace/Candice to be moved to the exact same desk and soon after fired by the exact same person. Surely she saw it coming...? So on some level, she had reason to go out with a bang. I never got a chance to get the history of BJ's prejudice against Candaces. But that isn't the point here...
It's no shock that I long ago reached my breaking point here. Anyone with eyes or ears has seen it on my face or heard it from my mouth. But why? What makes me hate this job so much? It isn't the small things, the perhaps petty complaints that many of us share-- a stressful, exhausting commute, the $50+ a week for gas. Those details can and usually will be standard with any job. And after all, I didn't have to move to Kennesaw after our office moved to Buckhead. Per se. I had decided to let Jeremy (friend/roommate/former employee here, for those who didn't know) move to Kennesaw alone, since I knew he planned to quit the firm but I would still be working here. But the day I was going to check out some apartments closer to work, I was threatened with termination. Well, I have always hated Buckhead anyway, and why live close to a job that I was ostensibly being pushed out of? So hey, Kennesaw, why not.
At some point I came to yawn at the threat of being fired. I realized I had been here over 3 years, been "in trouble" probably dozens of times, yet nothing ever happened. Why? Because thus far, if I can say this with as little arrogance as possible, I have been needed here. The things I have taken care of here are by no means simple. The manager of every department, and most everyone else, knows what happens on a day I'm not here. The endless complexities inherent in my job can be an intimidating beast, to say the least, for someone who hasn't spent so much time face to face with it as I have.
But an "I don't kiss ass" attitude doesn't get your value formally recognized by the check-signers. But what can I say? I don't kiss ass. I don't shy from giving all-out honesty. I don't cower at the limp flex of authority. I don't respond "well" to hollow threats and bluffed ultimatums, at least not from the perspective of the one giving them. And I never, ever, accept blame or "punishment" for a problem that either wasn't my fault, or isn't a problem at all.
After about a month of working here, I was accused of "slacking" and "getting lazy"--as one giant aspect of our foreclosure process (back then), for which I had sole responsibility for, grew exponentially right before our eyes. Some time later, when I tried to make the case that my overall job had grown to become disproportionate to the unchanged expectations held over me, I was told I was wrong, only to see a handful of new admins working at my side in the weeks after.
And I can't count all the times I was scolded--even to the point of being accused of hiding--because I was "never at [my] desk", when fundamentally, the very job I was hired for required that I be anywhere, perhaps everywhere, at any given moment. My rebuttal was always that if I was seen at my desk, that's probably when I wasn't working.
All of us know about my daily routine of coming to work to be blamed for the alleged loss of an overnight package, most of which are then found right where they are supposed to be, or are shown--by my little list I have to keep specifically for this ridiculous reason--to have been lost by the recipient. People, I have even been accused of misplacing (or diabolically hiding) things that I "definitely signed for"...that were delivered when I was out sick.
Then there is my all-time favorite. The week we moved here to the Buckhead office, my desk was searched (why?) and there were serious concerns about the discovery of some mail that I had "never" delivered. This was the major part of why I was moved out of the Foreclosure Dept. to the Facilities Dept., stuck under John's command to be watched over. Note how I still wasn't fired. When the "undelivered mail" was finally produced for me, I knew exactly why I never delivered it: it was trash. But on the big moving day in Decatur, everything on my desk was swept into a crate, to be sorted through later. It should have already been shredded, sure, but did that really matter? No. But of course, who but me knew that it was nothing? No one, because only I know how to do my job.
And herein lies my point. I do my job, but I'm not trusted to. If I can't be trusted, why do I still have the job? This is how words have always contradicted actions around here. Have they grudgingly kept me here because I have been in fact valuable? That is worthy of pondering.
I really hadn't planned on quitting today, until a couple days ago when John confronted me with how he was told that I had been telling people exactly that. The idiocy of those of the rumor mill inspired me. In the sharply witty comedy Easy A, Olive (played by the brilliant Emma Stone, who I'm psychotically in love with) decides that, after noticing how the treatment given her by her misinformed peers parallels that of Hester in The Scarlet Letter, she will proudly conform (for appearances) to the image and reputation now expected of her, "giving them what they asked for". In a stretched way, I decided something similar. If there must be a rumor about me, I might as well make it true.
But you could have at least made it a good rumor. Like the good old days, when everyone in the office thought I was sleeping with Meagan Zasa. It never happened; we're best buds! She did spend the night once, on the futon, and my devilish cat Loner made it a deliberate point to puke on her pants. And laughs were had.
Comparatively, this new rumor was a snorefest. And was an outright lie. When asked if today would be my last day, I explicitly said it would not be, because of money and blah blah blah and because it would be Fair Debt Day. I have only missed one Fair Debt during my employment (I think that's around 46), which I requested off 6 months in advance, and that was to see Beth Thornton become Beth Birberick, so obviously, there was no way in hell I would have let my request be denied. Otherwise, with me being "the mail guy", and despite my deep, inexorable hatred of this place, Fair Debt just isn't something I would walk out on.
But now, here we are.
People have been full of advice: "Don't just walk out", "Don't burn bridges", stuff to that effect. But it's come too far now, and I just don't care. I needed a drastic change before insanity struck. So I'm starting school in a couple weeks, and I'm not looking back. Some of you offered that concern too-- "What if you need to come back to this job?" I'd rather die poor and nameless. "Is it really that bad?" Yes.
Risky? Of course. But what is life without risk, without freedom for adventure? What is the use of a life stuck perpetually in routine, and a negative one at that? It isn't a life at all. It's fucking boring is what it is. It's working here.
I went with a group once to Cafe Istanbul in Decatur, a place with belly dancers (though disappointingly not that night), hookahs wafting sweet, flavored smoke, where you sit on the floor, try Turkish cuisine, a place where the whole atmosphere is just teeming with good times. Two of my friends were displeased to not find chicken fingers and fries on the menu. And this is what I'm talking about. Why are so many of us afraid to take risks, to step outside of what we feel is safe? Yes I know it is reaching desperately to compare any of this to trying an unfamiliar food, but admittedly, I was obligated to have at least a brief mention of food somewhere, because this piece is later going to be Entrée 7 of my long-neglected, not-so-much-about-food "food blog", Shrewd For Thought, which you can find at shrewdforthought.blogspot.com and enjoy! Usually it is required that I be completely drunk when I write for my blog, but in this case I think my few readers (if I haven't lost them in the interim) will forgive me, given the monumental significance of what is happening for and to my life here. The pressure of my life crisis has risen recently to a heretofore unfathomed level. The need for change outweighs the risk of doom.
This world is designed for us to become enslaved by the necessity of that steady paycheck, so much so that even the most rebellious turn sycophantic, the most ambitious forget their every dream. Everyone caves to fear, and so inevitably, becomes a doormat. If that works for you, then hey, do it. But I have always been naturally resistant to agreeing with the idea that to survive is to succumb.
So I can't take another minute of this. I have to get out. I don't care about what little PTO I won't be getting paid for; I don't respect this place enough to give proper notice. Just send me that Notice of Separation. I have been long beyond the point where there is absolutely nothing this firm could have done to repair this relationship. The only apology I offer is to those in the Decatur office-- I in no way aim any of this disrespect there. Mr. Drake is a great man, and the Candlers always had me cracking up, whether they knew I was listening to their conversations or not. I've always found it unfair that the historic Candler name has to be associated with what happens over here in Buckhead. So I feel the need to specify, I don't hate McCurdy & Candler, I hate THIS place and what it did to me.
If I love you, you know it, and if I don't like you, I'm sure you know that. If you love me back, find me on Facebook or something. And with that...SEE YA.
//////////////////////////////
And I walked. Walked through the office. Threw my stupid walkie-talkie in the trash...but it bounced out onto the floor. No matter. There's always a minor hiccup in a solid plan. Kept walking. Got to the door, and flicked my ID card behind me as I stepped out into the now free world. Just like THAT.
Ok ok...once out that door, I still had to get out of the building, and here's the truth that heroes try not to admit: I took the stairs, and I took them with heart-pounding quickness! I had been worried that, although I definitely wanted to do my victorious office walk-through, this could allow enough time for my boss to realize what was happening and give chase. I did not want to be chased. I didn't want to answer questions, or face confrontation. I just wanted to get my Candace on and get the hell out. Luckily, I made it out with no interference, and THEN, met the free world. And I smiled the whole way home.
Cowardly? Sure. Necessary? Abso-fucking-lutely. Satisfying? You have no idea.
I won't deny that this plan was executed maybe a wee prematurely, being that this is only the halfway point of the current pay period. So I may be on "The Ramen Regimen" for a while, but hey, that will probably give me something to write about, yeah? But this was never about the consequences, it was about necessity. It was about my life. So regardless of the here-and-now consequences, they are only temporary. At times, we must all remind ourselves of that. Because what is truly worse-- temporary setbacks, or wasting the rest of your life being drowned, spirit broken, in a pile of shit? You prove your worth by proving it, not by allowing others to tell you what it is.
Make your own life what you want it to be. Make anyone who doesn't want that for you kiss your ass.
A while back, a woman (who you will see mentioned later) decided she had had enough of the firm where we worked. She decided to send her boss a very angry email (but blind copied everyone in the firm so we could all enjoy it). Within minutes the entire firm was abuzz about this juicy news, everyone was hysterical. She simply hit 'Send' and ran. We all applauded her attempt, her getting to leave with at least the feeling of having the last word, of doing something for The Greater Good. She left satisfied with herself, I'm sure.
I liked it. And I had a story to tell as well. So I decided to borrow her strategy, which I hope will now become tradition, The Tradition of the Disgruntled. The Final Email. The Send-n-Run.
I stayed up late the other night and typed my farewell message, saved it as a draft. I waited for today. I got out of bed, got ready for work, showed up on time. I made sure I said my goodbyes which were the most essential, and then I waited for the most opportune time.
Copy.
Paste.
................Send:
//////////////////////////////
Honestly, I wasn't going to do this today, but...surprise. I quit. But allow me to explain.
First, let me warn--for those who were here to witness it--that this won't be as nuts as Candace's email when she escaped; in her defense however, she was the third Candace/Candice to be moved to the exact same desk and soon after fired by the exact same person. Surely she saw it coming...? So on some level, she had reason to go out with a bang. I never got a chance to get the history of BJ's prejudice against Candaces. But that isn't the point here...
It's no shock that I long ago reached my breaking point here. Anyone with eyes or ears has seen it on my face or heard it from my mouth. But why? What makes me hate this job so much? It isn't the small things, the perhaps petty complaints that many of us share-- a stressful, exhausting commute, the $50+ a week for gas. Those details can and usually will be standard with any job. And after all, I didn't have to move to Kennesaw after our office moved to Buckhead. Per se. I had decided to let Jeremy (friend/roommate/former employee here, for those who didn't know) move to Kennesaw alone, since I knew he planned to quit the firm but I would still be working here. But the day I was going to check out some apartments closer to work, I was threatened with termination. Well, I have always hated Buckhead anyway, and why live close to a job that I was ostensibly being pushed out of? So hey, Kennesaw, why not.
At some point I came to yawn at the threat of being fired. I realized I had been here over 3 years, been "in trouble" probably dozens of times, yet nothing ever happened. Why? Because thus far, if I can say this with as little arrogance as possible, I have been needed here. The things I have taken care of here are by no means simple. The manager of every department, and most everyone else, knows what happens on a day I'm not here. The endless complexities inherent in my job can be an intimidating beast, to say the least, for someone who hasn't spent so much time face to face with it as I have.
But an "I don't kiss ass" attitude doesn't get your value formally recognized by the check-signers. But what can I say? I don't kiss ass. I don't shy from giving all-out honesty. I don't cower at the limp flex of authority. I don't respond "well" to hollow threats and bluffed ultimatums, at least not from the perspective of the one giving them. And I never, ever, accept blame or "punishment" for a problem that either wasn't my fault, or isn't a problem at all.
After about a month of working here, I was accused of "slacking" and "getting lazy"--as one giant aspect of our foreclosure process (back then), for which I had sole responsibility for, grew exponentially right before our eyes. Some time later, when I tried to make the case that my overall job had grown to become disproportionate to the unchanged expectations held over me, I was told I was wrong, only to see a handful of new admins working at my side in the weeks after.
And I can't count all the times I was scolded--even to the point of being accused of hiding--because I was "never at [my] desk", when fundamentally, the very job I was hired for required that I be anywhere, perhaps everywhere, at any given moment. My rebuttal was always that if I was seen at my desk, that's probably when I wasn't working.
All of us know about my daily routine of coming to work to be blamed for the alleged loss of an overnight package, most of which are then found right where they are supposed to be, or are shown--by my little list I have to keep specifically for this ridiculous reason--to have been lost by the recipient. People, I have even been accused of misplacing (or diabolically hiding) things that I "definitely signed for"...that were delivered when I was out sick.
Then there is my all-time favorite. The week we moved here to the Buckhead office, my desk was searched (why?) and there were serious concerns about the discovery of some mail that I had "never" delivered. This was the major part of why I was moved out of the Foreclosure Dept. to the Facilities Dept., stuck under John's command to be watched over. Note how I still wasn't fired. When the "undelivered mail" was finally produced for me, I knew exactly why I never delivered it: it was trash. But on the big moving day in Decatur, everything on my desk was swept into a crate, to be sorted through later. It should have already been shredded, sure, but did that really matter? No. But of course, who but me knew that it was nothing? No one, because only I know how to do my job.
And herein lies my point. I do my job, but I'm not trusted to. If I can't be trusted, why do I still have the job? This is how words have always contradicted actions around here. Have they grudgingly kept me here because I have been in fact valuable? That is worthy of pondering.
I really hadn't planned on quitting today, until a couple days ago when John confronted me with how he was told that I had been telling people exactly that. The idiocy of those of the rumor mill inspired me. In the sharply witty comedy Easy A, Olive (played by the brilliant Emma Stone, who I'm psychotically in love with) decides that, after noticing how the treatment given her by her misinformed peers parallels that of Hester in The Scarlet Letter, she will proudly conform (for appearances) to the image and reputation now expected of her, "giving them what they asked for". In a stretched way, I decided something similar. If there must be a rumor about me, I might as well make it true.
But you could have at least made it a good rumor. Like the good old days, when everyone in the office thought I was sleeping with Meagan Zasa. It never happened; we're best buds! She did spend the night once, on the futon, and my devilish cat Loner made it a deliberate point to puke on her pants. And laughs were had.
Comparatively, this new rumor was a snorefest. And was an outright lie. When asked if today would be my last day, I explicitly said it would not be, because of money and blah blah blah and because it would be Fair Debt Day. I have only missed one Fair Debt during my employment (I think that's around 46), which I requested off 6 months in advance, and that was to see Beth Thornton become Beth Birberick, so obviously, there was no way in hell I would have let my request be denied. Otherwise, with me being "the mail guy", and despite my deep, inexorable hatred of this place, Fair Debt just isn't something I would walk out on.
But now, here we are.
People have been full of advice: "Don't just walk out", "Don't burn bridges", stuff to that effect. But it's come too far now, and I just don't care. I needed a drastic change before insanity struck. So I'm starting school in a couple weeks, and I'm not looking back. Some of you offered that concern too-- "What if you need to come back to this job?" I'd rather die poor and nameless. "Is it really that bad?" Yes.
Risky? Of course. But what is life without risk, without freedom for adventure? What is the use of a life stuck perpetually in routine, and a negative one at that? It isn't a life at all. It's fucking boring is what it is. It's working here.
I went with a group once to Cafe Istanbul in Decatur, a place with belly dancers (though disappointingly not that night), hookahs wafting sweet, flavored smoke, where you sit on the floor, try Turkish cuisine, a place where the whole atmosphere is just teeming with good times. Two of my friends were displeased to not find chicken fingers and fries on the menu. And this is what I'm talking about. Why are so many of us afraid to take risks, to step outside of what we feel is safe? Yes I know it is reaching desperately to compare any of this to trying an unfamiliar food, but admittedly, I was obligated to have at least a brief mention of food somewhere, because this piece is later going to be Entrée 7 of my long-neglected, not-so-much-about-food "food blog", Shrewd For Thought, which you can find at shrewdforthought.blogspot.com and enjoy! Usually it is required that I be completely drunk when I write for my blog, but in this case I think my few readers (if I haven't lost them in the interim) will forgive me, given the monumental significance of what is happening for and to my life here. The pressure of my life crisis has risen recently to a heretofore unfathomed level. The need for change outweighs the risk of doom.
This world is designed for us to become enslaved by the necessity of that steady paycheck, so much so that even the most rebellious turn sycophantic, the most ambitious forget their every dream. Everyone caves to fear, and so inevitably, becomes a doormat. If that works for you, then hey, do it. But I have always been naturally resistant to agreeing with the idea that to survive is to succumb.
So I can't take another minute of this. I have to get out. I don't care about what little PTO I won't be getting paid for; I don't respect this place enough to give proper notice. Just send me that Notice of Separation. I have been long beyond the point where there is absolutely nothing this firm could have done to repair this relationship. The only apology I offer is to those in the Decatur office-- I in no way aim any of this disrespect there. Mr. Drake is a great man, and the Candlers always had me cracking up, whether they knew I was listening to their conversations or not. I've always found it unfair that the historic Candler name has to be associated with what happens over here in Buckhead. So I feel the need to specify, I don't hate McCurdy & Candler, I hate THIS place and what it did to me.
If I love you, you know it, and if I don't like you, I'm sure you know that. If you love me back, find me on Facebook or something. And with that...SEE YA.
//////////////////////////////
And I walked. Walked through the office. Threw my stupid walkie-talkie in the trash...but it bounced out onto the floor. No matter. There's always a minor hiccup in a solid plan. Kept walking. Got to the door, and flicked my ID card behind me as I stepped out into the now free world. Just like THAT.
Ok ok...once out that door, I still had to get out of the building, and here's the truth that heroes try not to admit: I took the stairs, and I took them with heart-pounding quickness! I had been worried that, although I definitely wanted to do my victorious office walk-through, this could allow enough time for my boss to realize what was happening and give chase. I did not want to be chased. I didn't want to answer questions, or face confrontation. I just wanted to get my Candace on and get the hell out. Luckily, I made it out with no interference, and THEN, met the free world. And I smiled the whole way home.
Cowardly? Sure. Necessary? Abso-fucking-lutely. Satisfying? You have no idea.
I won't deny that this plan was executed maybe a wee prematurely, being that this is only the halfway point of the current pay period. So I may be on "The Ramen Regimen" for a while, but hey, that will probably give me something to write about, yeah? But this was never about the consequences, it was about necessity. It was about my life. So regardless of the here-and-now consequences, they are only temporary. At times, we must all remind ourselves of that. Because what is truly worse-- temporary setbacks, or wasting the rest of your life being drowned, spirit broken, in a pile of shit? You prove your worth by proving it, not by allowing others to tell you what it is.
Make your own life what you want it to be. Make anyone who doesn't want that for you kiss your ass.
