Tuesday Morning (How To Leave Your Job!) by Alfred N.Muggins : Part 1

7/2/23

    Sitting here at a local beauty spot. Alfred had never given up a job in such a way before! Always previously he had given notice in that polite way all people were supposed to follow. But it had got to the stage where he knew he could give it up, without causing a scene, in a natural way, which felt right. The adventure of this particular job had run its course and come to a natural conclusion.

     It wasn’t the first time he had contemplated finishing this job. Ever since they had pushed him into the customer firing line on the second day of Week 3, answering calls, and then, putting his hand up to attract the more experienced floor walkers to come to his aid and to tell him what to do on the computer, he had been ready to leave, in a sense, at any time. It was actually quite a miracle how long it had all lasted, about 2 months in actual fact, and 2 months two weeks if you count the initial two week training course!

10/2/23

    So Alfred was feeling the time had come to throw in the towel, and not go back into work. He had got home yesterday evening and thought it was time to quit. The difficult adventure had run its course, but it was time to end it. There were too many gripes, too many reasons why the job didn’t suit him and why he couldn’t do the job properly, because there were too many impediments to doing a good job!

    Alfred’s well meaning work colleague rang in the evening to encourage him not to give in, to persuade him that things could be worked out. Alfred said he had had enough, but his colleague would not accept his answer, and was expecting a lift to work the next day.  Alfred decided that the best way to placate his colleague would be to give him his lift to work. He was due at work half an hour or more before Alfred was due there, so it would be an easy matter to stay in the car for a while as his colleague went in to work. He would be able to drive off and not go in, hopefully without his other novice team members or his team leader noticing. Then he would be free! Free of work and effort and pressure, and stress. He had come to a decision, and this was the way to show his decision. He had always handed notice in in the past when he had given up a job before, (only once before had he given up a job, although he had given up a couple of career paths before), But this time he would not be able to work a notice once a decision had been made and the job was not so easy to continue.

     The knowledge that he was not actually going to work made it much easier to get up and ready on time! He didn’t really mind the daily adventure of driving to work so much if he didn’t have to actually do a day’s work. He was able to enter into the pretence of going to work, without the stress of it, although he knew this act (or omission!) was a significant one in his life at the moment. (There had been at least one film about the pretence of getting ready and pretending to go to work, particularly to keep the wife happy. He particularly remembered Michael Douglas going right off the rails as he pretended to still have a job and be on his way to work in one very memorable film (which title he could not of course currently remember!). He was not of course going to do anything resembling a Michael Douglas reaction to losing, or giving up his job!)

    He picked up his work colleague and they made pleasant conversation or listened to the car radio and his colleague looked at news stories and information on his phone while he drove him to work.

    Unfortunately this morning was turning out to be a longer journey than Alfred had hoped, as an initial good speed and not too busy roads turned into a crawling traffic light controlled queue into town to join the ring road and the direction to his erstwhile Workplace. He wasn’t going to be much earlier than the ideal ten minutes or quarter of an hour before work. Tension rose as he wondered whether he would actually see his own team workmates arriving at work and his team leader, making it awkward to drop off his colleague without having to make some additional excuse to stay in the car and not make his way into the building. Despite Alfred’s rising tension they managed to make it about quarter of an hour before he needed to be taking calls at work. He dropped his work colleague off, who was due to be working half an hour earlier than himself officially, and said he was going to eat some breakfast before going in. He waited a minute as his colleague disappeared into the building, unaware that he was not going to go in, and then swiftly pulled the car out of his space and back to the entrance of the workplace car park, indicating to rejoin the stream of pre 9 am traffic. He kept his blind down so he might be less recognized.

    Once he was safely back in the stream of traffic he did indeed catch sight of his team leader walking along the footpath towards work with another employee. Pulling the blind further towards him to hide his face, and avoiding eye contact, he was sure the team leader never noticed him, why would he? And then he knew he was free! Free of the place, free of the colleagues he had met, who he had got on fine with and had often enjoyed their company, free of the tensions and pressures of the job.

    He had decided it would not be appropriate to return home too quickly. Mrs Muggins would probably still be in bed and would try to use all command and force to send him back to this job, as he was earning more here than he had done in a long while, and she thought that a better paid job should never be given up. She had already given him ultimatums, a number of times, whenever he had suggested he wanted to give this job up. Quite extreme ultimatums they had been indeed, that she would give her nasty 12 hour night shift up too, and then neither of them would be earning any money. If he could give up his job, she should perhaps give up her job too! Then neither of them would be bringing money into the household!

    No he didn’t want her sending him back before it was too late, or refusing to let him into the house he lived in. No he would drive to a beauty spot, one well known to him, and do some contemplation. Indeed he would do some writing about the very events which were happening to him. And so that was how he started writing this very piece!

7/2/23

    The training had been quite fun, and he had got to know the other members of the group quite well, although it had hardly set him up adequately for the trials to come.

    At various points around and at Christmas, and just after the New Year it would have been easy to just not turn up, and try to take on at least a bit more work from his old job, which he refused to give up totally, while this new job played out. He had been giving the new job enough time to test whether he could really do the job. He had therefore continued to work for them, sometimes quite a lot, and sometimes less, at the weekends and a couple of calls in the evenings, most evenings. Naturally it would have been easier for him if he had been only working in the new call centre job. Then he would have had more relaxation at weekends, and felt better rested for the new main job. But Alfred knew this new job was a gamble for him, and that there was no certainty he was going to last in it. He knew from the short period near the end of Training to the shock of taking calls with real customers that this immersion into the job was tough, and likely to fail. In retrospect it was a miracle that the job had lasted as long as it did. He had surprised himself at how long he had stuck to it, at how long he had forced himself to keep doing it. He accepted work from the old job because he wanted to keep some options open, knowing in his heart of hearts that he was not likely to keep doing this new job for long!