Failure of the Day: The 14-Day Xmas

Chris says quitting your job is like Christmas. ‘Course, he also says “Look out for leprous pirates!” whenever it’s foggy so sometimes it’s a bit of a challenge to separate the words of wisdom from the just, y’know, words.

It took some doing but thanks to fine bit of insomnia last night I was able to dredge up the fact that the last time I gave notice and actually quit a job, it was in early 1989, and from the Wherehouse records store on 9th and Irving. (It’s a Jamba Juice now, and I dreamed about it once.) All the jobs I’ve had since then I was either fired, laid off, became too crippled to work, or just completed the contract.

I gave my two-week notice yesterday at Software R Us. Which is not to say that my notice has actually been received yet—both my boss and my boss’s boss were out of the office so I had to do it via an email that was cheerfully greeted with Out-Of-Office Autoreplies. It’s hard to quit, it turns out.

Things at Software R Us are a little unsettled these days—as usually follows an explicitly stated corporate promise of No Merger! No Layoffs!, we recently underwent a merger with some layoffs, so everyone there has a kind of maniacal fear laughter thing going on. There has been quite a rash of conversations, all of which can be distilled into: “Do you think they’ll keep you?” and I deemed it unnecessary to keep the fact of immanent departure much of a secret. I spoke about it with the fine folks in my department last week and some other people as well.

I have to say, everyone at work has been especially nice to me ever since. That is likely because I have been less my usual asocial self and a good bit chattier than I have ever been before. But I suspect what Chris says is also true—like during xmas, people are just a little bit kinder, a little bit more thoughtful when they know they will probably never see you again before too long. Can’t complain about that, really.