Calling it quits on twits
By Penelope Whitson,
When your workmates roll with Voldemort, perhaps it's time to consider quitting.
I recently received a text from a good friend stating: ‘Walked out of job.’
My first thought was: how satisfying that must have been. Closely followed by: I wonder how her savings account looks? I have yet to find out what the final straw was but I’m pretty sure her workmates were probably the deciding factor.
Some nice person commented a couple of blogs back that workmates are important – your job could be spankingly fabulous but the colleagues might roll with Voldemort in their spare time, consequently making your job’o’radness into one of sadness.
In my many years of ‘gainful’ employment I have had several delightful and ‘mildly insane but in a good way’ workmates that I would gladly work with again. However, no doubt like most people, I have also worked with some utter, utter plonkers. The bitchy, the chauvinistic, the mean, the passive aggressive and the downright stupid.
There are also the people who aren’t exactly terrible; they just annoy you without even trying. I have a suspicion that my knuckle cracking might put me in this category. However, as I bake for the office I am above reproach for such a little thing that, now that I think more about it, is probably quite revolting for some people to have to listen to.
A manager once admitted that people who ate apples when it wasn’t lunchtime really annoyed her because of all the crunching. We’d been working together for six months and I’d been loudly crunching my way through apples every day at the Wrong Time. I liked her so I promptly stopped. If I hadn’t liked her, I’d have upped my apple intake.
It can often take time to work out why you find the prospect of going to work slightly less desirable than cleaning the oven with your tongue. But if your friends point out that you spend a lot of time complaining about that wanker in marketing, perhaps you should ponder that. And, just to get a bit thoughtful on you – is it actually that person or is it just you being a whiney pants? This is always slightly irksome to have to admit, but most of your workmates probably don’t get up each morning with the intention of ruining your day.
If you can’t get your nice pants on around your colleagues, how long can you put up with someone for? How badly is it affecting your self-worth, your happiness, your home life and your bank account due to your drinking habit?
And if you do quit, do you admit that to future employers?
‘I quit because my workmates were all utter psychos? But I’m not. No siree.’
Alternatively, your workmates can be the reason you won’t leave a job that’s going nowhere. They’re your other family. But the likelihood of you all staying with the company for years and years is unlikely and just a bit too high school romance. It probably won’t last forever.
I have never walked out of a job. I’ve been tempted but my lack of dosh has prevented me. I have been made redundant. Not because I was a terrible employee, of course. I am an excellent employee – I only steal the good pens.
If you were going to quit, how would you go about it? I’m quite fond of the idea of delivering a truly fabulous one liner and then flouncing out of the office. The thing is – I’d have to come back to delete files, burn notebooks and check what I’d left behind under my desk.
Flouncing would also be restricted by having to carry the many packets of Tim Tams I currently have hidden in my desk drawer.
Comments
Morgan
oh to walk out of a job! The closest I came was to leave, slowly, and take all the pot plants with me (they'd been refugees on my desk anyway).
I've had both the second family kind of workmates, and so many of them I am still very good friends with. And the horrid ones. Well, the ones that make work feel like an arranged marriage with someone you don't like. Mostly these people have been patronizing and very 'straight' men (in the lifestyle sense, not the sexy sense, or only incidentally…).
In the end, does it just come down to people you naturally get along with and people you don't? There are all the inbetween ones which make no real impression either way… and they just seem to fade off into oblivion once not in direct line of sight.
You're right in that you can stick it out cos you like the people… And you can stick it out (for the job) if they're just 'neutral'. But the ones that make you want to break your ruler in half just by being in the same space as you… hmm. Will it ever work beyond the self-set goal of lasting long enough to pay off your credit card? I've not got to that point to find out, shamefully!
Jody
After all these years, I am still wistfully hoping to stumble across that office utopia where everyone is efficent, professional, calm, excellent at their jobs, and uninterested in the private lives of their colleagues.
If you know where it is, I am available immediately.
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