So I’ve been working in-person in an office building that’s roughly an hour away from my home. The drive just completely blows, and I feel like I’m losing so much of my day that I want to be spending with my family to just drive time. Long story short, I found a new job that’s going to be completely WFH, better benefits, and the people just seem way nicer too. Plus on top of that they’re paying me 50% over what I’m making right now. Literally no downsides I can see.
Salary negotiations took way longer than me and my new manager thought they would, so while I was pretty sure I was going to take this job as of last Wednesday, my new manager wasn’t able to get approval for my salary requirements until yesterday afternoon. I wanted to give my two-weeks notice to my current company because, per company policy, they will mark you as “not rehire-able” and will report you as such if prospective employers ask unless you give and complete a full two-weeks from your notice date. Now though, this new company wants me to start on the 23rd, so a full two-weeks is completely off the table.
I decided that I’m going to take all of next week to get an office area prepared in my house, plus just take some time to relax. At my current company, I’ve only been able to take about 5 days off in the 1 year that I’ve worked here because their PTO accrual policy is a complete joke. Basically if you’re on the executive team, you get to do whatever tf you want. Everybody else can go eff themselves in their eyes.
I went in to my boss’s office with a resignation letter in my hand this morning. I let him know the situation and told him that I’ll only be able to work until this Friday. His immediate response was, “Wow, well you’re really going to be destroying the relationships you’ve built here if you do that. You know, [city that I live in] is not that big of a market. It’d be a shame if other companies around here knew about the bridges you’re about to burn here.” So high key he’s threatening my career and future ability to get a job. It’s a crazy response and I was just shocked to hear it tbh. I didn’t even respond because I didn’t know wtf to say to that.
After he gave me that threat, he said he wanted an opportunity to counteroffer and wouldn’t accept my letter of resignation until he could present one to me. I told him sure, he can do whatever he wants. I think he’s been frantically working on that all day. I’m not accepting anything that’s presented to me because I know that the trust is broken at this point and I’m just going to have a target on my back if I stay, but I’m just curious to see how much they’re going to offer to see how much I’ve been getting exploited by them.
My boss has since come over to my desk and was acting almost overly nice. He came up to me and he was like “Listen, I just wanna say I appreciate how professional you’re being about all this. It’s not the best situation for us but I really appreciate the way you’re handling it” in this overly nice tone. I feel like it’s just a manipulation tactic to try to get me to reconsider. I’m the head of my department, and the other people in my department depend on me a ton. If I leave (and I am leaving), it’s going to take a hot minute for my department to ramp up productivity to where we are right now.
Is the threat he gave me anything I should be concerned about? Definitely not using him, or anybody from this company for that matter, as a reference or anything because it’s just a trash company with trash culture and mostly slimy people. Also do companies really give a shit if you’re not rehire-able with a previous company you worked for? I feel like I have a solid explanation for not being able to give a full two weeks at this job if it ever came up in a future interview process. Basically should I be concerned at all with either of these things?