You Can’t Pretend to Quit This Time
This happened years ago, but still makes me smile. I started working in a corporate office in a secretarial position for my first job after college. There were two older ladies who were also secretaries working in the office. One of them was just fine, but I spent most of my time sitting beside and working with Agnes.
Agnes was quickly approaching retirement age and wasn’t going anywhere without a big push. This was in the days where we just started getting computers and she was absolutely hopeless. She’d pull stuff like “I can’t answer the phone—I’m on the computer.” Multi-tasking was not in this woman’s repertoire.
She was also super fussy and annoying. If I ever came back from lunch five minutes late, she would exclaim loudly “Oh my god, there you are! I was wondering what had happened to you!” making sure the whole office knew I was late.
Meanwhile, she was usually late coming in in the morning and often left early for various appointments. If I made a typo in a document, she would make sure the rest of the staff knew about it, loudly.
She tended to pout when things didn’t go her way, and she would “quit” her job when someone ticked her off, and then my boss’s boss would talk her into staying.
I’d heard about this tactic of hers and one day, our boss did something that annoyed her and she “quit” again. My boss’s boss was away that day, so I took my chance. I quickly advertised and planned a big retirement party for her. It was a done deal by the end of the day.
People were dropping by and congratulating her, and everyone looked forward to the party. At that point, I guess she figured it was too late to pull her usual shenanigans and she actually retired.
I told my boss to not bother replacing her because it was darn easy to cover the little work she actually accomplished every day. And guess what? It was.