Jager
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2012
- Messages
- 103
Turning around and gazing out my office window, the 6am darkness is strangely appealing. For someone with a hundred-mile-a-day round-trip commute, Daylight Savings Time is a wondrous thing. It’ll still be light when I get home.
The streetlight at the end of the alley casts a pale glow. The side street the alley abuts to is quiet. If I sat and watched for a few minutes, I’d see the odd pedestrian wander past, another early riser on their way to whatever work awaits them. A hundred feet south is K-Street. Further down, the White House is a few blocks away.
I don’t wait that long. I ponder the question for a moment, turning it quietly in my mind. Swiveling the chair back to the PC, I read the message one more time.
Then I hit Send.
One of the tragedies of corporate America is the periodic dysfunction of managers – the political intrigues, the intimidations, and occasionally the outright bullying that gets exhibited. You can’t work at a megacorp and not experience it. And it becomes more prevalent the further you climb the corporate ladder.
Our CFO is generally a good guy. I like him, mostly. But he’s a big, hulking guy, physically. He’s assertive. He’s quick to anger. And he casually intimidates nearly everyone around him.
One of his directors pinged me the other day and said his boss – this CFO - wanted me to formally sign off on a particular report. A report that is internal to the IT department, but which we share out of professional courtesy. The CFO wanted to make sure I was properly “invested” in the process.
It would be a trivial thing to do. Thirty seconds, once a month. But given that IT does not report to him, it was an inappropriate request. So I politely declined. The message I sent this morning said that, with all due respect, it was beyond his purview.
I can imagine I might soon be the brunt of his infamous wrath.
The backdrop, of course, is that I can. I haven’t yet inked the ‘RE’ part. But the ‘FI’ is in place. My plan – unbeknownst to anyone at work - is to leave in September, giving ten weeks of notice in late June. But if things get ugly in the meantime, knowing that I can give two weeks’ notice and be perfectly fine… is huge.
The reciprocal to that first tragedy is that most people are stuck. They need their jobs. There is an undercurrent of quiet desperation that lies just beneath the surface. And so they do what they must. They suck it up, absorbing the drama and the politics and the dysfunction. They live with the ever present anxiety of potential loss.
The notion of being able to take a principled stand is a luxury very few have.
We mostly think of financial independence as simply the near prelude to an enjoyable retirement. It’s more than that, though. For those still working, it is perhaps the most liberating thing they can possibly experience.
The streetlight at the end of the alley casts a pale glow. The side street the alley abuts to is quiet. If I sat and watched for a few minutes, I’d see the odd pedestrian wander past, another early riser on their way to whatever work awaits them. A hundred feet south is K-Street. Further down, the White House is a few blocks away.
I don’t wait that long. I ponder the question for a moment, turning it quietly in my mind. Swiveling the chair back to the PC, I read the message one more time.
Then I hit Send.
One of the tragedies of corporate America is the periodic dysfunction of managers – the political intrigues, the intimidations, and occasionally the outright bullying that gets exhibited. You can’t work at a megacorp and not experience it. And it becomes more prevalent the further you climb the corporate ladder.
Our CFO is generally a good guy. I like him, mostly. But he’s a big, hulking guy, physically. He’s assertive. He’s quick to anger. And he casually intimidates nearly everyone around him.
One of his directors pinged me the other day and said his boss – this CFO - wanted me to formally sign off on a particular report. A report that is internal to the IT department, but which we share out of professional courtesy. The CFO wanted to make sure I was properly “invested” in the process.
It would be a trivial thing to do. Thirty seconds, once a month. But given that IT does not report to him, it was an inappropriate request. So I politely declined. The message I sent this morning said that, with all due respect, it was beyond his purview.
I can imagine I might soon be the brunt of his infamous wrath.
The backdrop, of course, is that I can. I haven’t yet inked the ‘RE’ part. But the ‘FI’ is in place. My plan – unbeknownst to anyone at work - is to leave in September, giving ten weeks of notice in late June. But if things get ugly in the meantime, knowing that I can give two weeks’ notice and be perfectly fine… is huge.
The reciprocal to that first tragedy is that most people are stuck. They need their jobs. There is an undercurrent of quiet desperation that lies just beneath the surface. And so they do what they must. They suck it up, absorbing the drama and the politics and the dysfunction. They live with the ever present anxiety of potential loss.
The notion of being able to take a principled stand is a luxury very few have.
We mostly think of financial independence as simply the near prelude to an enjoyable retirement. It’s more than that, though. For those still working, it is perhaps the most liberating thing they can possibly experience.
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