I had been working at this job for 7+ years, it was my first job right out of college. I enjoyed most of the people I worked with at my company. I enjoyed the work that I did for the most part. I worked operations and helped with logistics. I was a 1-man team who kept track of millions of dollars worth of assets for my company.
It wasn’t always a 1-man team, I had a coworker who quit about 1 year ago. When that coworker quit I knew my life was about to become hell. In the job we had some of our operating facilities open 24/7 and it was just the two of us who kept track of everything and kept them operational.
My coworker quits so I now know that I am going to be taking on double the responsibility but also saw a chance where I had some leverage at my company to get more money and maybe enact change that could improve our process of doing things.
So I emailed my direct boss and HR and asked for a raise, pointing to the amount of extra work I would be picking up on after my coworker quit. I detailed out how I could train some people at our facilities to handle something outside of my normal hours of work (730-5) so I wasn’t on call 24/7.
I asked for this raise and changes to be implemented 4 times. Twice on emails, twice in person. My boss never responded to a single email, when I asked in person the first time my boss said they were looking into bringing in a new team member and that would help take the massive workload off my shoulders and then that would solve my raise problem. A couple months went by, no new employee, I hear through the grapevines of the office that they never planned on bringing anyone new in they just didn’t want to fork over a few extra dollars to a person who was the only person within the company who knew how to do my job.
So I asked for a raise again in person after months of nothing happening and I got “we are having internal discussions about that issue”. That was it. Another month passed and nothing happened.
So I start looking for a new job as I’m just burnt out at this point, working until 10-11pm most nights and every weekend.
So I found a new job at a company that is already showing they value me more than my current job and I’ve just been interviewing with them. They offered me the job, a 10% raise, guaranteed yearly bonus, guarantee that I won’t be on call at all let alone 24/7. Many more benefits that just sweetened the deal and I accepted the offer. Didn’t even want to take it to my current job and say hey can you do better than this and I’ll stay.
So the next day after accepting the new job I write a very thoughtful message when I put in my two weeks, thanking the company for helping me become the man I am today and how proud I was of the work we accomplished. What followed was both hilarious and so insulting.
Firstly my direct superior just responded with “thanks”. Okay kind of fucked up but I get it. I’m making their job harder so they aren’t happy, but I gave them 7+ years of my life both during and outside of work hours. My bosses boss then comes to me and talks to me about it. He has the look of surprised pikachu on his face and asks me “are you sure you want to quit?”
I said yes, that I was a 1-man team working crazy overtime hours, I asked for a raise 4 times and they ignored those pleas, I told them 4 times way in which this job can improve and they ignored it. Maybe they should have listened to the person who was doing the job on what was needed.
So I gave them a 1 week notice instead of two weeks, they scrambled to try and learn my job before I left, realized how much I did and tried to convince me to stay but it was too late. My last day was last week, and after my last day they tried calling me to help them and they weren’t going to pay me to help them they wanted me to do it for free after I had quit. The audacity of this place.
Moral of the story is management and companies don’t care about you until it affects them. Once they realized how screwed they were they finally tried to address the issues I had been bringing up for months. If they would have just addressed them at the start chances are I would still be helping them, now they have no one who is keeping track of millions and millions of dollars of their assets, they are completely screwed why else would they call me the very next day of me quitting. They brought this on themselves for not listening to one of their hardest working employees and now they are all shocked I quit and won’t help them.