Leaving a Job

2011

(Date not known)

            It’s supposed to be a trauma, and the leaver is supposed to grieve, like after a divorce or a death.

            One might leave because of ‘better prospects’, another phrase for more money or because of retirement (inevitable) or retrenchment.

            I remember how I howled when I left my job about ten years ago. I walked all over the hotel where I’d been working for five years, convinced that every tile was precious. I gazed out at the sea liked I’d never see it again. Lots of crappy emotions. I say crappy because the real ones happen when people’s lives are involved, like in the Defence Forces. Hanging up the uniform is a real pain in the heart. Years of camaraderie, a closed and secure society, the passion of serving the country, are wrenched away. Like when teachers retire after a fifty year innings, having moulded three generations under their canes (that would be politically and psychologically incorrect these days, but my generation would understand), knowing that now they’re being put out to graze; private tuitions somehow don’t match the sentiments of a class teacher. Like when a doctor sells off his dispensary because the nursing home down the road has killed his practice. In each of these, other people’s lives are involved in one’s job. In the corporate sector, whether hotel or bank or airlines, it’s the colleagues and the routine that takes priority over customers when it comes to ‘missing’.

            I began working at a regular job rather late in life, in middle age, actually. So there’s no way I can be working anywhere for forty years before retirement. Before these regular jobs, I’d taken locum jobs in different fields: three times I was a teacher, once in a private coaching class; once I sold greeting cards to raise funds for the UNICEF; for two years I worked on the editorial teams of two periodicals…. I knew each was temporary and the parting was inevitable. My first ‘proper’ job in Goa had me working alongside colleagues half my age. Kept me on my toes, kept me up-to-date with what was happening in the industry.

            Our move to Mumbai, and my joining a multi-speciality tertiary care hospital catapulted me into a world of technology, systems, training, frenzy. My face contact was with people who had extremely high IQs, rare qualifications and skills and unbelievable humility and hunger to learn, learn, learn more. I also saw sly greed and wiliness amongst those very same educated lot. Literature has taught me that human nature doesn’t change. Experience has proved it.

            When other hospitals and healthcare providers began to spring up, many of my junior (in age) colleagues began to step out to advance upwards on their career graphs. That was when I discovered that post giving in a resignation, even with a notice period intact, the leaving was kept under wraps. It made the exit ugly, for it prompted rumours to float. Why was the person going? Where? Who instigated him? Who ‘stole’ him? competitors are considered evil enemies. I’m told that soft drink companies and banks used to severely ‘punish’ employees who left one to join another by making their life miserable by making them run around for gratuity, reference letters, etc. Now they request the latter to not join a competitor for a six or twelve months, but which time the memory of whatever valuable information they want to carry in their brains apparently gets ‘diluted’ or perhaps the business itself changes in that much time.

            The recent recession and subsequent loss of jobs has spouted a lot of ‘how to leave’ pop ups on google. The internet now teaches us how to write resignation letters, ask for retirement benefits, get along with ex-colleagues, not to bad-mouth unpleasant bosses and so forth. It tells you how to get fired without stress and how to retire with grace. Who writes and posts these things? Do they get paid for them? Not all have advertisements alongside. The advent of the internet has also meant a lot of people have quit jobs to do their own thing without having to rent an office, or maintained parallel sources of income from the comfort of their homes. One generation before mine, a job was held for a lifetime. My generation has quitted and flitted a bit. The next generation is shifting not just jobs, but careers, too. Leaving a job is no longer as traumatic as… divorce used to be, I guess. It’s an opportunity to do better things and move ahead. Farewell parties now don’t say goodbye, they raise a toast and shout Cheers!!          

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