Quit while you’re ahead

A lot of people I know have decided to leave the company we all work for at the moment. The reasons for this departure varies with the individual, depending on mood, behaviour, level of contentment and, of course, alternative offers from other sources of income and occupation. One person I know will work from home; another is not happy with what she is doing at the moment at work; another says she has no clue what her next move will be, though we all know she just doesn’t want to talk about it for now. But they all do what has never failed to mystify me in its etymology: put in their papers. Put them in where? What papers? Why put papers anywhere? Why not hand in your resignation? Or just plain ‘QUIT’?

All that apart, I have always found it good policy to quit while I am ahead of whatever the game it is that I am playing at the time. Like an old-time movie star, I work to get on top and then walk away…or so I would like to believe. I have never and will never use a potential or threatened walk out to negotiate for more money or a better position or even a new job. Which a lot of the people who have put in papers are actually doing, or so I suspect. In fact, when I was interviewed for my current position, I promised the chappie who offered it to me that I would abide by a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ between us, not to use his offer to bargain for more of whatever I wanted at the place I would be leaving.

But leaving a job is easier said than done. Even if you have no intentions of finding a new one, your ego demands that you are offered at least one, if not four options. Then you demand, somewhere hidden in your psyche at a level even you do not easily admit to yourself, more money and a higher designation and status. If you do not get it, you say you are leaving to take a break, to find yourself, to decide what to do next, which you have no possible clue about for now. Then, when you are on your last day, hugs and presents and best wishes all around you, you triumphantly announce that you have a new job at such and such place and so and so salary in this or that position, with thus perks attached, etc, etc, hopefully making people not just envious, but regretful that you are going to be with them no longer. You hope.

And then you go, your papers put in by you and taken out by whoever has that particular job. You go through all the hassles of signing out of the job that you signed on for all that time ago. You argue with HR people and accounts people and people to whom you need to hand over your responsibilities. Other people you call ‘friends’ remember you for a few days, miss you at lunch time or near the water cooler or when it comes time to go shoe shopping, then they move on, as do you, in different directions. And then, you find new ones, new work, new status, new hassles and, one day, a new job. For which you start all over again with the putting in papers thing!