I'm a high performing worker who consistently put in unpaid overtime, always helped coworkers, and implemented systems/processes for better quality and efficiency. When I left, they opened up 4 new positions at lower pay grades to try and fill my gap.
I was relatively happy with the work and rate of pay. However, due to idiot coworkers up in my business, I had enough.
I already have a job lined up, part-time hours with my previous job, they can't afford me full time. However, instead of a large agency with 50 idiots running around, it's family owned, and I will have quiet workspace with my boss/business partner, in office a few days per week instead of 5.
As an introverted high performer, this is necessary because I need people to fuck off, so I can sit on a computer. This way, I can focus on the 100 tangential tasks that add up to a cleanly executed project over a 3-week period or less.
Reasons I quit are below. I am known as one of the hardest working individuals, one who bleeds for these companies time-wise, an employee you like having on your team. Someone who comes early and stays late, unpaid, without complaint. While commuting the farthest on public transit (3 hours per day, 1.5 hours one-way).
Reasons I Quit:
1. Fake Social Happy-Go-Lucky (Disruptive & Loud) Bullshit.
All it does is disrupt and distract, I'm talking about the loud extroverts who talk and laugh all day but sit on their ass working for a maximum of 2 or 3 hours.
The rest is performance, to appear as if one is “collaborating” but really trying to build some bullshit social aura or impress someone you're interested in.
2. Disruptions.
Along with point number 1, these people will find excuses to disrupt your workload for simple questions that can be sent via messaging or email if it's not urgent, fuck off, really. You don't need to force collaboration all the time, you fire me an email and I can take care of it
3. Following, Watching and Staring.
a) Bosses and hr watching in camera, checking in on a fingerprint machine, and being messaged about it constantly.
I would come in early, stay late, work for 10 hours instead of 8, tell them “just pay me for 8, and I'll work 10” only for this woman to bother me about specific check-in times. I would even skip lunch breaks. I swear it was her way of getting attention, and she was disruptive, while watching my every move and trying to trap me in small talks directly after I leave the bathroom.
b) I'm a guy, tall and not ugly. Obviously my ego doesn't mind with women, but with other males, the attention seeking behaviour is strange and uncomfortable:
- Posturing and showing off around me, laughing loudly or talking very loud when in their presence
- Jumping out of their chair for “collaboration” with each other when I walk past to use the bathroom 3 to 5 times per day.
- Wanting to force a friendly bullshit conversation by watching for me and trapping me in the bathroom or by the coffee machine.
The women can get excessive and disruptive, too. Everybody wants attention and conversations when I have literally hundreds of things to get done. Literally hundreds, and I enjoy cranking through it all, getting into a state of flow with it. Lots of client emails too and small fires.
4. Idiot Time-Wasting Emails.
We can type paragraphs back and forth and send 13 separate mail threads about one client, spending 60 percent of our day doing that instead of the associated, actual work. The meat of the sandwich. Also, let's use 8+ spreadsheets for internal collaboration, and rudimentary methods for all aspects of our work, creating so much inefficiency and refuse to change.
5. Motherfuckers who work the least amount and try to throw their work onto others,
while doing the absolute bare minimum and trying to look like they're the one making it all happen to the client. They spend their day copying and pasting shit, then disrupting, following and watching your coworkers the rest of the time, coming up with excuses to meet and ask questions and even start coworker drama (which I was an expert at squashing). These silly motherfuckers running having my team do 60+ months of work on a monthly basis on top of a larger volume from another side of our responsibilities.
6. Unappreciated.
Nothing you ever do will be good enough, you're never enough, it's always wrong, always a mistake, which would be fine if anything positive that you have done was acknowledged more than 3 percent of the time. Coworkers expect you to continue to deliver at a high level, and will try to throw as much work your way that they could easily do themselves, but refuse to do anything outside of the direct contract responsibilities. Me? I would design, I would help with clients, anything for the overall good. Others: “It's not my responsibility, I'll just throw it onto him” and emails flying in x20 per hour. Literally.
For stupid, inane shit they could do on their own. Then, they'll walk over to my desk and ask if I saw the email they just sent, drop everything, go here, look at this. No. I have other responsibilities. I do not cater to you and your needs on a whim.
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If you're still here, thanks for reading. I am crafting a life of freedom while still doing meaningful work to help a family business grow. I'll have extra time and freedom to exist and enjoy some semblance of life. Economy and rent is a bit rough stuck amidst all the greyness of concrete, steel and everything artificial.
I like to sit in a forest for an afternoon, I have plenty of data and a laptop for side projects as a freelancer which I've done successfully in the past, to supplement income. I have a little side business that I can commit to, part of the reason I quit. Then office work when I feel like it for this business, a few days per week. Fucking wonderful, truly.
This is a better barter-for-service type of arrangement, rather than a corporate prison inmate slave, trapped on their property surrounded by a bunch of other idiots trapped there with you.
There are ways to circumvent this b.s. system and create your own reality; with time, trial, and error. I've been at this 10+ years, all alone, I have had no money, 0 dollars, and been homeless before. It wasn't that bad. I've seen behind this systematic veil, and I'm ready for what I WANT to happen next.