Wow, that’s stupid even for exit interviews. Bosses are one of the major, if not the major, reason for people quitting, so trying to find out reasons when the culprit is asking the question isn’t likely to do much good. Mine have always been with HR.
Yeah, this is part of a patten with fuckstick. He gets personally involved where it’s inappropriate for him to do so, and shirks his responsibilities to handle the things he should be focusing on.
Damn. I kinda thought I had done my grieving over this job already, but it’s hitting me hard now. I’m feeling a lot of sadness and self-doubt, and I’m stupidly finding ways to turn everyone’s kind words about my departure into something hurtful. IDK what’s wrong with me.
So you’re saying it’s the Kobayashi Maru, day after day? I could see that.
Nothing is wrong with you. As to how to overcome such feelings… I found it passed once I was well set along the path to something new. In you’re case, you’ve got a whole new job lined up already!
It’s my last day. Well, technically Monday will be my last day for stuff like the exit interview, but this is the last day I’m actually working. Still having mixed feelings. Setting up my out-of-office auto-reply to say I no longer work here was a gut punch. I’m still trying to convince myself I’ll be able to stop caring soon.
Congratulations!
Just keep repeating, “it’s not my problem anymore.”
YOU are what has value: your core personality, soul if you will.
Your job is separate from that. Before I quit, I was worried that I’d be losing part of my identity… I was very invested in being a designer, being an artist, being part of a team doing meaningful work for non-profit clients. Who would I be without a job?
HA! Was I ever overthinking things!
Within a day or two I discovered that I really did believe all that “WHO I am is more important than WHAT I do” stuff.
And I was deliriously happy sitting on a porch with a dog, a drink, and a stack of books… and NOT even thinking about the old job, or what anyone there thought of me.
I have some sympathy for those who are burned out. My current job has morphed into something that is outside of my wheelhouse. I have a great deal of acquired skill that is specific to the job but it’s so fast paced that it wears me down.
It’s been 8 days since I walked out the door for the last time, and my blood pressure is back to normal. My last doctor’s appointment before things got bad was a year ago last March, and I was under 120/80 then. In November, when I saw my doctor in the midst of a burnout crisis, I was at a terrifying 144/92, at age 38. It stayed high every time I had it checked, except for the one time I gave blood toward the end of a weeklong vacation in February. Shortly before I quit I bought a home blood pressure monitor and initially got similar readings to what I was seeing at the doctor’s office, so hopefully that means I’ve been doing it right. I’ve been checking almost every morning since I quit, and it’s been on a steady downward trend. Today it was 118/73.
I have another week to relax before I start my new job, and it sounds like the first week will be pretty low-key anyway. So I feel like I struck the right balance between leaving myself time to recover and tying up as many loose ends as possible to help my clients and colleagues. But to those who said or implied that quitting was the only way out, you were right. It wasn’t getting better, and now it is.
I decided to be honest while striving for tact and constructiveness in my exit interview. I didn’t tell the big boss he was a fuckstick, but I did point out the specific things he had promised and failed to follow through on. He mostly said the “right” things (apologizing, thanking, etc.) but didn’t show me that he was really taking responsibility (e.g. saying he wished I had come to him sooner about an issue he had told me six months ago he would handle and I could relax and forget all about, and instead he did nothing and I had to clean it up.) I also haven’t forgotten what he said about another recently-departed employee. When word of his resignation spread throughout management, everyone said “oh, that’s such a shame; he’s so great!” And fuckstick, who five minutes earlier would have agreed that this guy was great, replied, “let’s save ‘great’ for people who don’t desert us in our hour of need.” So yeah. Not banking on fuckstick’s sincerity or character. It helps to have something to be a little mad about as I walk away.