I quit my job today.
Well, that’s not, in the strictest sense, accurate. This was not sudden. There was no sweeping of objects from my desk, no grand gestures or final straw that broke this camel’s back. I gave notice six weeks ago. Today was my last day.
Now, you may be wondering, why would I quit a full-time, low-impact office job with the economy in the shape it’s in, and (just so we’re clear) with no other job lined up?
There’s a few reasons.
The most salient of these, and the one that I relayed to my Former Employer by way of explanation, was that I was accepted to a graduate program. In exactly a week, I will start working towards my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge. The format of the program, however, is such that I could and will need to continue working, and probably could even keep working full-time if I wanted to do nothing but that and sleep.
I explained this to my Former Employer. They countered with the offer of staying on part-time, with as flexible a schedule as I could want. They are an educational publishing company, and summer is their busy season for the customer service department, so they would rather have someone who already knows all the books and procedures working part-time then have to hire and train someone. I’d still be working at my same hourly rate, which is much better than anything I can expect to find elsewhere.
I turned them down. Not because I was ungrateful, mind you. The business manager, who I’ve been dealing with in regards to this situation, has been nothing but kind and gracious. She’s only been with the company a couple of months, but has made an excellent impression on me. I appreciated the offer a great deal, and told her so.
I had simply had enough of that place.
On the surface, it’s not a bad job. Not intellectually stimulating, no, and you do have to answer phones and talk to occasionally irate and often misinformed customers. But it’s inside, air-conditioned, pays reasonably well, and has decent benefits. Much better than any number of other things I could be doing.
But none of that matters if the job makes you miserable.
The company is very small, and is owned and operated by the founder, who remains very involved on a day-to-day basis. While she clearly has a great deal of business savvy to have started a company in her basement thirty-odd years ago and grown it into one of the leaders in its field, her personality is not conducive to a mentally healthy working environment for her employees. She has a very particular way she likes things done, but tends not to explain it fully until after a mistake has been made, if at all, which stifles creativity and innovation. She’s very condescending, especially to younger members of her staff, which further inhibits any suggestions of new strategies or initiatives. She instructs us that she wants us to operate on our own recognizance as much as possible, but then pries into everything and tries to micro-manage it. She’s very particular about inter- and intradepartmental communication, and goes on tirades about how certain people do or do not need to know certain pieces of information, which naturally makes everyone disinclined to tell anyone anything, just to hedge their bets. She’s very stingy with salaries and benefits, and seemingly has little regard for her employees’ comfort or even safety. (Anecdote 1: At several points during this winter and the previous, the building’s heat broke. We were expected to keep working, despite being huddled in winter coats and not being able to type, and if we wanted to go home needed to use vacation or sick time. Anecdote 2: I had to use one and a half vacation days to attend my grandmother’s wake and funeral. To be fair, I know many companies do not offer paid bereavement leave, but they should.) During my time here, several employees have been fired over what, to my understanding, were fairly minor errors. Many others have quit. Some have been replaced, and others have not, but either way creates a lack of continuity and inability to create long-term plans that greatly inhibits efficiency and functionality. And, lastly, the owner is starting to get on in years, but seems unaware or unwilling to accept that she’s somewhat slower on the uptake, which only provokes further lashing out on her part.
All of this combines to create a workplace culture built on fear, frustration, and anger. I have too much of all three in my life already. I’ve been here for just over a year and a half, and I would honestly rather take my chances on the current job market than subject myself to intimidation and ignorance on a daily basis.
I do have an interview this afternoon for a part-time job in a field much more closely aligned with my actual interests, i.e., film and television production. If I get the job, I should be in decent shape; the summer will be tight, but Kara and I are moving to a place with substantially lower rent in September. If I don’t, I’ll be continuing the hunt. I’m also considering going into tutoring, either privately or through an agency of some kind.
The key here, though, is that I’m going back to school, which I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years. I’m going to get to write in a focused environment again, with my biggest goals being to get in the habit of a disciplined writing schedule and to improve my grasp of the craft as a whole. I’ll be doing what I love, and honestly, whatever job I get is going to be a secondary consideration. I have the luxury of having no obligations to anyone other than myself, and if I don’t do this now, I never will.
So, off we go.
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