I Only Quit The Best Job I Ever Had

Looking back over your career, it’s clear you’ve worked for a lot of crazy people.
One angrily threw a cell phone at you.
One used to drunkenly go in and change the copy on stories you had edited, turning words you’d labored over for days into gibberish.
One calmly informed you a few days into the job that HIS boss was actually in prison and you were to now report to said prisoner. Said prisoner then explained that your first duty was to write an introduction for a book his prison pal wanted to publish and to help that prison pal get an agent.
The worst part of it all? You didn’t quit any of those jobs. No, you were fired from all three (the last one when you said you couldn’t write the introduction for the prisoner manifesto).
The one job you quit was, in retrospect, the best job you ever had. It was your first job.
You had no idea when you entered the working world and your boss was kind, generous and respectful that this was actually a rarity. You imagined this was what the working world was like; you didn’t envision a future of cell phone throwing and prisoner orders.
But you also knew that there was a big world out there, a world that offered far more opportunities than this job provided. You’d always loved the Fitzgerald quote — “I want to go places, and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale” — but you didn’t know how to make it a reality for you.
And so, after college, you moved back to San Francisco, where you grew up, and took this job that didn’t have anything to do with going places, seeing people, growing your mind or things happening on a big scale.
You did that because you were scared. And you were too scared to admit you were scared.
So You Stayed at This Job For Three Years
While was technically a good job, that really does depend on how you define the world “good.”
You were able to write and get published in a national magazine for the first time.
Your boss was so kind that he allowed you to write the rejection letter to the woman you interned for years before who’d told you she wouldn’t write you a recommendation because she didn’t like you. He took you to lunch once a month, gave you mountains of career advice and even helped edit your work when you freelanced for other magazines.
You took full hour lunches, got paid vacation time and were surrounded by a staff of bright people.
At the same time, you were making just above the poverty level and your 2% raises over the three years you were there did nothing to change that. And you weren’t writing about anything you cared about. You were working for a parenting magazine and so your stories were about nipples cracking from breastfeeding and Barney the dinosaur.
You knew that Fitzgerald may have sullied himself with Hollywood but he definitely never wrote about dinosaurs, purple or not.
You Fantasized About Leaving
You became so bored at this job that some days, between writing about nipples cracking from breastfeeding and Barney the dinosaur, you wrote fantasy resignation letters you never sent anyone.
“I am writing to tell you that commencing today, I am giving you my notice,” you’d write.
(You were not a very good writer yet, no matter how many Barney the dinosaur articles you’d written.)
The next day, you’d try a new approach.
“While I’ve loved the opportunities you’ve given me here, I’m afraid that in two weeks, I will no longer be able to accept them.”
You trashed that one, too.
Then You Moved to LA
Because it made sense to you at the time, when you met a man who lived in LA and the two of you fell in love, you ended up moving to LA to be with him and in the end you quit your job without a resignation letter. Your boss was such a mensch that he actually helped line up a freelance gig for you in LA that paid better than the job you had working for him.
That’s when you started going places, seeing people, growing your mind and living where things happened on a big scale.
Still, here’s what Fitzgerald didn’t tell you (but you could surely have gathered by observing his life): you pay a price when you start living where things happen on a big scale.
Sure, you ended up working for a series of insane people but you also become pretty insane yourself. The relationship you moved to LA for didn’t work out and for quite a while, you didn’t either. No one would have called you easy to deal with. That girl who wrote about Barney the dinosaur became a distant memory as you saw and tasted and felt the best and worst of LA. Eventually you washed ashore as a sober 30-something who felt like she was just starting out.
And thus began your trip through the land of terrible bosses.
Here’s the Thing About Terrible Bosses
While you wouldn’t wish those terrible bosses on anyone, you now see that they all led to something better than you could have imagined.
You wrote a book for the cell phone throwing man which became a New York Times bestseller.
After working for the guy who drunkenly changed your copy, you were able to start your own website, which you sold for a profit.
And as for the prisoner? Well, when you were fired from that job, you allowed yourself to cry for a day. Then you picked yourself up and committed to never working for an insane person again. Because you knew: you knew with the cell phone thrower, the copy changer and the prisoner connector…after all, your Moon is in Cancer, which means you’re intuitive (something you surely wouldn’t have known had you never moved to LA). But it was also painfully obvious to anyone who encountered these people you worked for that they were not well. Yet you took those jobs anyway, because you were scared you wouldn’t get any other and because you were too scared to admit you were scared.
You hadn’t changed as much as you’d thought.
But that last one, with the prisoner, taught you that working for yourself couldn’t be any scarier than working for the people you’d worked for. And so you started building a business where no one could change the copy or throw anything at you or threaten to fire you if you didn’t write an introduction to their book.
Yet you took all those experiences with you as you built your business. And they helped you — not just to make you grateful but also as a reminder that nightmare bosses can exist everywhere. And now that you’re your own boss, you know you need to avoid doing anything they did if you want to be happy.
In the end, you did go places, see people, grow your mind and live where things happened on a big scale.
And you survived.
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