Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Free at last!

I just hit the "Send" button on the email below:

April 28th 2004
Dear -----,

I regret to inform you that I have reached a point where I feel it would be mutually beneficial for me to leave ------ ahead of schedule.

Therefore, in accordance with Section C of my severance agreement, I am informing you that I wish to leave ------ before the June 11th termination date. With the stated two weeks notice period I believe my last day of employment will be Tuesday May 11th.

I apologize for the inconvenience of breaking this news while you are still out of the country, but I hope I can work with ----- to achieve a smooth transfer of any remaining work I have outstanding.

Blog Gently

It's a sign of the times when you can sit at work (which is the desk at the end of your bed), compose an email, send it to your boss (who's somewhere in Europe) and terminate almost five years of employment. All this without so much as a look in the eye, hand shake and without even putting pen to paper. Will anyone care about this so virtual of corporation-employee breakups? Well of course not. My termination was already pre-ordained to happen on June 11th anyway, and I've already been written off as a "restructuring expense" in this quarters financials, and I was notably absent from any invite to the company meeting today so really, why bother sticking around any longer?

What now?

Well if all goes according to plan, on May 11th I'll get my severance check and become "frictionally unemployed". If things go really well I may even fall out of the labor force all together and become a "discouraged worker", even though in reality I'll be a "putting my feet up worker". Putting my feet up activities will include some travel, some sailing, maybe even snowboarding in Chile, tons of reading, a trip to the gym once in a while, some volunteer work and who knows what else? When you're no longer chained to a corporate money making machine the world is your oyster.

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