Don't Let the Door Hit You...

If the three most wonderful words to say are "I love you," the world's most satisfactory two-word utterance has got to be "I quit." (On further thought, "I quit" is actually just one of them. The other was spotted recently on a t-shirt worn at Yankee Stadium by Mrs. Alex Rodriguez. The one that Mrs. A-Rod sported may, in fact, win a few more points because of the call and response that it can evoke: "F-you." "No, f-you." "No, f-you." Not exactly "I love you, too." But still...I digress, however. Back to "I quit.")

Typically, by the time you've decided to leave a job, you are fed up with something or other about it. Your boss. Your pay. Your colleagues. Your commute. Your position. Your hours. Your company. Their politics.

Sure, there are situations when you're lured away by what appears to be the "Mr. Right" (ha!) of jobs - that one special offer you weren't even looking for but just can't refuse.

Generally, however, you started to look for a new job for a very good reason: you're sick of your current one.

Most of us, of course, however much we fantasize the "I quit," end up blowing out the match well before we set fire to that bridge. We pen a courteous resignation letter, tell everyone that the decision was a difficult one, and move on.

Not so the author of a recent resignation letter supposedly authored by someone leaving JP Morgan/Chase that's been making the blog rounds in the last week or so. (My brother-in-law Rick sent me an unattributed copy; the first source that came up when I googled was an Invictus post on Blah3, which notes that the letter remains unauthenticated.) 

Those who want to see the entire screed in it's full power and glory, can check it out at the link above.

Real or not, it ain't pretty.

First shot taken is a buckshot blast at all of co-workers and managers:

For nearly as long as I've worked here, I've hoped that I might one day leave this company. And now that this dream has become a reality, please know that I could not have reached this goal without your unending lack of support. Words cannot express my gratitude for the words of gratitude you did not express.

Surely, viperish nest that JPMorgan/Chase may well have been, it's inconceivably that in a several year stint there, not one co-worker or manager provided any support, uttered an encouraging word?

The writer does signal out one manager here as an exception, but the letter is so woefully written that it's not clear whether the exception is indeed "wonderful" or the worst of all.

The years for this poor unfortunate were full of miscommunication, misinformation, ignorance and "intolerance for true talent." Undoubtedly the author's.

Instead, it was a steady diet of "absolutely interchangeable supervisors on a wide variety of seemingly identical projects", where the prime takeaway was figuring out how to "overcome daily tedium."

With this true talent for overcoming daily tedium shining forth, it's kind of a surprise when the annual review was "meets expectation."

He - for our scribe has admitted to being a man - then goes on to single out various managers, name by name, as blame-shifters, racists, credit-grabbers, blabber-mouth keepers of "disgusting secrets." (Hmmm. Wonder why he holds back on this one.) Managers are backbone-less; guilty of cronyism, racism, sexism, and jealousy; profiteers who benefited from "the suffering of scores of people but then again, with this rooted history in the slave trade it only makes sense. "

Okay. Who - other than the profiteering executives themselves - doesn't have a slightly unsettling feeling when big bonuses accrue to those  who lay-off thousands of employees? But the connection to the slave trade is a bit tenuous.

The letter rambles on a bit about the "over worked and mistreated", "faceless little people" who are "still loyal not to those who abuse them but to the greater mission of providing excellent customer support."

And then we hit the main rub: the letter writer's position is heading off to a lower-wage slave in "India or Tampa."

Which is just as well, since he would "sooner kill [him]self" rather than have to work there again despite the co-workers that he now acknowledges he did have a great relationship with.

I can understand and empathize with the bitterness and pain that this fellow is experiencing. Just like everyone else who has worked in an organization for longer than 3 weeks, he's taken a practical, hand's on course in Bad Management 101 and Introduction to Less than Edifying Human Behavior. Deal with it. Learn from it. Or if it's so god-awful, get the hell away from it.

But if you're tempted to write about it in the form of a flame-letter that names names: think twice. This sort of thing can do you a lot more harm than it will ever do to the organization you're trying to get back at.

I'm sure, of course, that the writer found tremendous satisfaction in writing up his final manifesto and blasting it off in a universal e-mail.

I'm also sure that many of the "faceless little" co-workers got a little buzz while reading it, and that it provided fodder for more than one water cooler, cafeteria, and ladies' room conversation, where the author is either a ballsy, tell-it-like it is hero; or a bitter ex, foolish enough to put it something widely-circulatable writing that could keep jumping up and biting him in the professional butt for years to come, once his name gets attached to it - which it will if the letter is at all for real.

So, two years from now when I'm thinking of hiring Joe Blow and I google him and find this, am I going to think 'Here's a poor, misfortunate, good guy, badly mistreated by a cruel, heartless, slave-trading institution," or am I going to think "Do I need to take a chance on someone who goes off half-cocked like this"?

Surely the latter impulse will arise more often than the first.

Good luck to this guy as he starts looking for another job.

I'm guessing that he got a thrilling little moment of satisfaction when he hit the send moment. That he's received a handful of calls from former colleagues who lauded him for being such a truth teller. I'm sure that he got a truly exhilarating, heady rush of freedom when he gunned out of the parking lot for the final time.

But those thrilling little moments may prove to be a high price to pay for what many prospective employers may view as a rash, immature, foolish act.

Of course, it could well be that, even though it appears to name some real names, the e-mail is not "for real". Or that the sender covered his tracks well enough to avoid being ID'd (although there do seem to be some incriminating "fact prints" in it). So it does sound for real enough to me...

As for all those managers, those cronyist executives, those racists, those sexists, those gossipers, called out by name in the note?

Maybe the higher-ups won't give it a New York minute's worth  - of bother - other than to make a mental comment: "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, pal." And maybe a call to HR to see if it's worthwhile trying to void the guy's severance pay or something. They may, in fact, be so fully insulated that they haven't even seen thenote.

But for those lower down in the food chain. You can be guaranteed that they're all mega-steamed, and will remember this guy for quite some time. All those informal reference checks that get made by someone looking for someone who really knows the job candidate? Easy to imagine what will be said and not said.

Some return to sender for a few minutes of "I'll show you."