I was sitting at my desk, working away. I had been there, without a lunch break, since I started work that morning. Other than one desperate toilet break I hadn’t stopped for anything.
It got like this a few times in the year. There were deadlines to meet, everyone was frantic, and the pressure was felt by everyone from top management all the way down the hierarchy.
As I typed away my manager approached me and asked to see me in her office. While this wasn’t unusual (she was a huge micromanager and loved to check in regularly), by the way that she asked me on this occasion, I had a feeling that it was something out of the ordinary. I was right.
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As I entered the office, I saw another member of management sitting there, I was told she was there as a witness. My manager then proceeded to explain that I was here because of a complaint made by another staff member who, I was told, had witnessed me stealing stationary from the stationary cupboard.
As soon as they said it, I knew who it was and what they were referring to. It was a co-worker of mine who I didn’t get along well with who had been around an evening the previous week where I had taken a glue stick from the cupboard one evening after working three hours overtime. The only reason I’d taken it was because I had run out of time to stop on the way home to buy one myself and my son needed it for a school project that was due the following day.
Once they had finished their official spiel and mentioned that I would have to be given a verbal warning, I started to laugh.
Then I stood up, said nothing and walked out the front door of the building, slamming the door behind me. I never returned.
While could have explained the situation and probably worked it out, I was just at a point where it had become so ridiculous and so toxic that I knew there was nothing else to do but to move on.
A handful of days later I sent my official resignation email to the manager who had called me in. I provided the bare minimum details in the letter, just I resign, this is my four weeks’ notice. I then asked a colleague and friend who worked near me, to pack up my personal items and used my stockpile of sick leave for the next month, until my four weeks was up.
To be honest this was the best four weeks of my life. The sense of relief after quitting my job was immense. Although I rage quit and it wasn’t planned, I knew really it was a long time coming.
The build-up of interoffice politics, that hierarchy where my job was viewed at the bottom of, as a full-time member of the administration staff and being reprimanded over a three-dollar glue stick after working hours of overtime, it was nonsensical.
The fact was, no one ever viewed my colleagues or myself as critical, at least not critical in the same sense as they were ‘critical’. While we were thanked a few times a year after a big event, it was more of a keep us happy thank you than a genuine one. A please don’t complain about this and please do it again next time ‘thank you’.
As well as feeling undervalued, the micro-managing just created an environment of distrust, of inadequacy and a reluctance to ever suggest any ideas you had yourself. There was no room to grow and no motivation to succeed and it was nearly always tense.
Covid-19 of course didn’t help and intensified these dynamics which before the pandemic I had managed to tolerate for years. The combination of stressors just created the perfect storm.
I know this situation isn’t unique and that I was lucky that my husband had a job that could support us short term, which I know not everyone has in order to be able to just up and leave. To be honest though, even if I didn’t have this, I still think I would have done what I did, I just knew I had nothing left in the tank for that place and for many of the people who worked there. In the end its toll on my mental health was just far too great.
Three months on, I started a new part time job which I love while also studying at uni the other days. This was always a dream of mine which I never thought would happen. It’s funny how new doors open when you walk, or in my case storm out, of others.
Shona Hendley is a freelance writer and ex-secondary school teacher. You can follow her on Instagram here.
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