I had a conversation with my old manager recently that shook me up quite a bit.
We had a good relationship and I was asking if I could use him as a reference, throughout the conversation he was giving me advice. One part stuck out to me and it was “never go into the sewer, or you'll never get the stink out to you”.
My ex-manager highly favors working ethics. He told me that when he left us, he went to another company, which he left because of personal differences. He then came back to our president offering “right to first refusal”, basically admitting he was wrong for leaving the company for the other job. Not only did our president reject him, he went around to the subcontractors who he worked with talking shit.
And it shook me, because he went through all this effort not to burn bridges, to not go “into the sewer” and was still treated like this. He worked for 8 extra weeks to ensure a smooth transition before he left. I do not have the same admiration of worker ethics, I do not have the same motivation he had to give my all in my final weeks to ensure a smooth transition. I wonder how I'll be treated when I head out as planned.