I'm sorry if this is long, but I have a tendency of letting things bubble up under the surface for a while before I explode, and I need somewhere to feel enraged properly. With the help of starting therapy earlier this year and the last few straws in the office this month, I am finally ready to move on.
I'm so burnt out that I don't want to give them a 30-day resignation, I don't even want to give them 2 weeks. But I know the extra work will fall on my fellow under-paid, people-pleasing coworkers and eventually may even get one fired (once they replace me bc they'll need her for now, lol). These people have families and I just feel stuck because I want good karma and I know what I'm about to do to them.
I am a soon-to-be 26 yo female in the US taking home less than $30,000 per year at a small business owned by a literal millionaire. His family is local royalty, like $80M net worth. I took this job out of desperation during the pandemic almost exactly 2 years ago and was overqualified from the start. The original job description I signed onto is just a quarter of what I actually take care of now.
We are in the events industry so I've worked many, many weekends of back to back 12 hour days, all unpaid on top of the work week. I bring in literally all of the money for the company because I'm the one that runs the only marketing that we do, which is only online because it's what I specialize in. I am the one that built the website for e-commerce to even exist as a revenue channel for them, and with it revenue is now close to doubling per quarter.
My boss thinks I am computer wizard. He has me do everything “tech” for him and is under the impression that I can make anything happen online, probably because I gave him that impression due to his ignorance of my profession. My position came to be because my “manager” (that “books” the events for our venue, through leads that I found for her through my work online, and then gets commission off of on top of her salary but I get nothing) couldn't handle the marketing on top of her job too. He had no idea what the work entailed and to this day could still care less because I just take care of it all.
I try to explain the details of my online marketing processes and basic digital media/web work and his eyes just glaze over. He refers to it as “tech-talk”. I'm realizing he doesn't really know much at all about owning a business and doesn't care because he has enough money to pay brainwashed mules to do it for him. I am not kidding when I say that he would have no idea where to begin in hiring for marketing 2 whole years after trying the first time, but now with an even more complex selling model than before and not a person on his team besides me with the ability to teach it to a replacement.
I very often am given projects that are out of my job description and sometimes my scope, but I figure it out or find workarounds. In May or early June, my boss told me that he'd signed us up for an industry expo out-of-state in August. It's a 3 day expo over the weekend. Didn't ask me, he just told me, and made me responsible for all of the design/collateral/flyers/merch/etc. for it. I came from an agency that did these often, so I asked him to outsource and he approved.
The whole process has been hell to say the least and taken up 90% of my time even though we outsourced the work to prevent this. He has no fucking clue what to do for it, I have no fucking clue, the agency doesn't know what to design for us if they have no fucking clue. It's just embarrassing. And now falling back on me and my skills and efforts when I never said I could handle it, and would get z e r o of whats made at this expo, using the e-commerce platform I built to do so. I have no commission-based pay at all, just salary with a “bonus structure” aka $800 ($590 after tax) added to my check once a year in the last 2 plus some cash for Christmas. He is asking me to work like 36 straight hours on my feet, 300 miles away, over a precious weekend of my life that I never made available to you in the first place? Suck my fucking dick.
The problem is that I have been a team player the entire time until now. I never really noticed how much I was doing for free until my boss let his emotions get the best of him at a bad moment and suddenly it clicked. He is otherwise awesome, very hands-off and lax and I don't mind dealing with him at all, we had an easy working relationship. But now I am disgusted and actually think I hate him literally overnight.
One of my closest friends in college dropped dead of a heart attack at 31 years old last Tuesday. I am still good friends with him and even more now his girlfriend of 4 years… that just gave CPR to his corpse on their kitchen floor. He was so special to me and was so supportive of my new job, he is actually one of the models for a product we sell online. I don't even know if my boss knows that.
I found out last Wednesday morning and pretty much have not worked at all since that moment. It has been probably the hardest week of my life. I told my manager immediately, and for the first time ever in my almost 2 years, completely unplugged from my job and gave her a run down on how to be bare-minimum-me until at least the funeral which was today. She picked up my slack no questions asked and told me to take care of myself.
Apparently some shit went down at work on Monday and it was chaotic without me, go figure, because nobody knows how to handle any of the things I've implemented (that make them so much money) without my help. My boss had an absolute fucking meltdown about me being unreachable and taking “paid time off” without his approval, and used that moment to text me his condolences while also letting me know I wasn't allowed to do that and have left them shorthanded during a “very busy period”. And me being “completely unreachable” right before an expo puts a lot of stress on him, so he wants to know if I will still have what is required of us to go handled in time. And that it was not personal, but a business concern for him as the owner.
I responded (very respectfully) and apologized for seeking approval for time off by middle management and explained that I was genuinely just in shock and not thinking clearly about work. I have never looped him in on any of my schedule at any point in time previously because I am hybrid and only in-person when my manager needs it, so I go to her with scheduling directly and always have. I explained how close this death was in proximity to me and that I was not capable of producing quality work right now because of it.
Then I reminded him that I've never taken sick pay or PTO ever at this job, even when I was on vacation, sick, or “off” previously because I was still available completely by phone or email. I obviously have the PTO then, so I'm using it and will still not be working at this time. I also asked him for an in-person meeting for Thursday (tomorrow) or Friday so we could discuss my position. His response was immediate backtracking and apologies, and reminded me about the bonus he'd recently given me for all of my work to show his appreciation (first one since Feb 2021) and that he was unavailable to meet in person this week but could take a call if I needed him, and reminded me that my job is not threatened by any means but just wanted to give me a warning. I replied and asked for the meeting again but no answer this time. And in that moment I realized everything.
I found another job, not exaggerating, within the same day working for another colleague. 100% remote, double my salary plus 10% equity. Obviously I'm quitting and taking it.
At first I was going to give them until October 1 because of everything we have going on plus time to train. Then I got angrier and decided September 1. Now I want to just leave because… I'm not going to that fucking expo!!!!!!! The more I think about it the more I get PISSED. The only thing stopping me is that it will come so blindly to my coworkers and I know it will be so hard for them to do it alone. They will probably not go at all and we've got everything in the print queue already lol.
One of these coworkers is our financial manager that is such a genuine idiot that she might actually have a heart attack herself under the pressure of me leaving. To give you an example, she changed the accounting number for my direct deposit to a hacker's through a phishing email she fell for that I caught after reading the first sentence. She. CHANGED. The. Numbers. Like, just did it real quick because she got an email that told her to. I only saw it happened because of the confirmation email I got from Quikbooks and caught it. What the fuck. MY PAY!!! She cannot have that job!!!
Plus some security codes and authentication things for their online assets go to my cell phone, so I'm nervous that somewhere down the line they're going to have to contact me for something but I guess maybe I just don't have to help them or answer. I don't know the answer to that actually.
Tomorrow I want to make sure my hard drive is clean of anything non-work, emails are cleaned, find any access codes or log-in credentials I can remove myself from and over to the company, leave my keys and a resignation effective immediately letter on his desk, and never look back.
I am nervous but might find courage with your help. Thanks for letting me rant lol. FUCK my boss, y'all.