You Can Take This Job and Shove It
I’m calling this the I Quit Series: Story after story after story…
A friend of mine started a new job a few months back, and was stoked to be feeling so welcomed. She swore she would stay long enough this time to get the gold watch, so to speak. She had job-hopped pretty strategically over the past three years, so this latest change was not a surprise to me. But to the employer she was leaving behind, they were shocked and tried everything to keep her. Too bad it was too little, too late.
The cause and effect reasons she was leaving were plain as day. Her ex-employer had not only reversed their own recruiter’s promises in her geographic location (you’ll only do training out in the suburbs, after that the job is right downtown near where you live…) but they also ignored her repeated requests to make those promises real. This meant a daily commute in the three-hour range, all for arbitrary reasons at best. There was no team in the ‘burbs that she needed to meet with after the first month or two, and her boss was even in another location altogether, so the decision to keep her in the boonies made no sense. On top of that, or maybe because of that, it made her miserable.
One day a facilities manager came to her desk – out in the boondocks – to inform her they were going to be adding a new team over here in this corner where she sits. She would need to pack up her desk and move to accommodate this change. Uh. Ok? Does my boss know about this, she asked? Does this mean I’ll be giving up my commute and working in my local, desired destination?
If you’re familiar with the normalities of remote work, or even if you’re not, maybe you know that conversations with your boss, who is not in the same office location as you could take place in any number of communication channels; email – text – slack – phone call, zoom meeting, zoom chat, yammer, FB messenger (god forbid)… the list goes on. In this particular case, a slack channel was used and the boss said – just ignore that guy. Stay at your desk, don’t pack it out and we’ll talk to the facilities guys.
My friend did exactly as she was told by her boss, and she pushed back to the facilities manager by holding her ground: not packing out a desk she didn’t really want to be sitting at. After another day of back and forth emailing and who knows what all kind of communication going on above her pay grade, she then receives an email from her bosses’ boss – stating she is to “report to her desk tomorrow.”
“Report To Your Desk Tomorrow”
your boss’s boss
That was the subject line. The loss of sleep that night…the anxiety anticipating the meeting…the dread of having to face her bosses’ boss. I don’t even have to describe it, you can imagine it yourself.
When the bosses’ boss shows up at her desk, where she reported as instructed and had been doing all along, and he proceeded to scold her and chew her out “like a 3rd grader,” saying she’d caused this unnecessary swirl and territorial fight between departments that all could have been avoided. Uh. What? Have you talked to my boss, your direct report? (because that is not what she said.)
It took a minute, but within a few weeks my friend had given a proper two week notice and was onto a better gig, one that not only paid better but was much closer to home. Being treated like a piece of furniture, or a third grader, (or both) is detrimental to anyone’s relationship, and in the workplace can cause the resources (er, I mean, the people) to walk right out the door. I applaud her for 1.) giving two weeks notice and remaining professional and 2.) not calling HR and *Whatever – HR…. I just wish …. I mean I am not the type to call HR over anything, but it would be so satisfying to reign some of the similar dread onto those who’d wreaked such havoc on her life for over a year with an arbitrary desk location and poor interdepartmental communications. But she’s a better worker than me.