My Bosses Gave Me a Chocolate Bar for a Raise, so I Sorta Quit

What did they expect?

That was the year I took over someone else’s job, without extra pay. It was a lot of extra work. It was supposed to be temporary.

I was taking the conventional advice: You move up in your career by making yourself valuable.

Don’t complain. Contribute.

I did the extra work. I published in top journals. I won awards. When my mom died, I went straight from her funeral to a conference. When another teacher got sick, I took over their classes.

At one point, I filled in for one of my bosses while they went on vacation for two months. I did it for free. I canceled my own vacation. Everyone told me it would be a great learning experience. Once, I left my office to go to a meeting. When I got back, there was a note from my boss’s boss, criticizing me. He’d decided to pop in. I wasn’t there.

The note said:

Make yourself more available.

Then Christmas came around. I came into the office on a Saturday night in late December, to do “a little bit of work.”

I checked my mail.

There it was, an envelope from the dean with a little note thanking me for all my contributions. Here’s a summary:

Sorry we can’t give you a raise. Here’s some chocolate. Stay sweet!

After the holidays, my bosses gave me some more great news. I was going to be doing the other person’s job permanently. Apparently, I should’ve been doing it the whole time.

No raise.

I’ll tell you why we quiet quit.

I hate the phrase, “quiet quit.”

I think everyone does.

Some columnist came up with that phrase, because he’s never had a real job. He’s never worked at a restaurant where the manager had you doing the work of three cooks, and then threatened to fire you when things got backed up. He’s never had a boss offer to help, and then ghost you in the middle of a shift.

We’re not quitting our jobs.

We’re quitting all the extra things we were pressured or tricked into doing, for the promise of raises and promotions that never came. We’re investing our time and energy elsewhere.

I’ve got one friend who secretly spends the bulk of her day running her side hustles. She understands. Her side hustles pay her bills. Her job merely provides health insurance.

She can do her job just fine, while pouring her extra time and energy into things that benefit her.

That’s reality now.

We’re not dropping everything for meetings.

Here’s something my bosses do a lot:

They’ll schedule a meeting at the last minute. Then they’ll call you or text you five minutes before it starts.

Hey, we need you in this meeting. Drop everything. It’s urgent.

Other times, they’ll schedule a meeting at 8 am. They’ll ask you to prepare a bunch of notes. Then they’ll cancel it.

Sorry, something else came up. It’s more important.

They do this on purpose.

They don’t care if you’re getting kids ready for school, or if you stayed up all night doing something they wanted. Maybe they’re not totally conscious of it, but they’re routinely sending us the message that our time doesn’t matter. It’s up for grabs.

It’s disposable.

We’re not giving up sleep and showers.

Here’s another thing my bosses do:

Let’s say something goes wrong, like the internet goes down, or there’s a budget problem. An entire team or department stays awake all weekend fixing the problem, while our bosses sit around griping at them. Finally, the team gets the problem fixed.

My bosses send out this email:

Thanks so much to Team X for their hard work! They went an entire weekend without sleep, eating nothing but junk food to solve my problem. Let’s give them a big round of applause…

Over the years, my bosses have made it very clear they want everyone to live in their offices, never shower, and subsist on a diet of energy bars and gas station burritos. They’ve bragged to the local media about how little they have to pay us.

They’d work for free if they could.

Our bosses condition us to work all the time. They praise us for sacrificing our physical and mental health. The minute you stop, they call you “burned out,” and say you need help.

They throw you away.

Wine. Selfies. Soccer.

My bosses don’t work as hard as we do.

It’s not even close.

On any given day, you can find my bosses drinking wine, taking selfies, or watching soccer games. They spend a lot of time in meetings, but they’re really just hanging out together.

It’s a club.

Some of them do torture themselves by spending all day and night in their offices, typing up memos and coming up with 5-year plans. Then they drop by our offices to talk about how hard they work, how tired they are, and how much they miss their kids.

They think that if they perform penance, it justifies their $200,000 salaries. They think it makes them relatable.

It doesn’t.

We’re not answering 100 emails a day.

One of my bosses used to send me seven emails a day.

She sent me an email every time something popped into her head. They started at 9 am and ran late into the night. Then one night she sent me an eighth and final email. I was sitting on the couch, doing work while trying to watch a show with my husband.

That was the night I decided to quit.

I tossed my laptop on the floor.

I screamed.

We’re not going to kill ourselves anymore.

It’s hard to believe, but my friends and colleagues are actually starting to die now. For years, they joked about working themselves to death. Now it’s actually happening. It’s not a joke.

It’s real.

They’re having heart attacks in their 40s. They’re developing chronic illnesses. They’re having mental breakdowns. They’re getting divorced. Their families are leaving them.

It’s because of work.

We’re finally waking up. We’re learning the truth. The only way you can advance your career isn’t by working harder. It’s by turning into the kind of boss that works everyone else to death. Well, we’re not going to kill ourselves for work anymore.

We’re not going to kill anyone else, either.

We’re done.

It’s not worth the chocolate.

Economists sit around and talk about the GDP. Politicians talk about employment rates and stock prices.

They ignore people.

I’m writing this while I sit through another meeting, but this time I’m barely paying attention. There’s a young woman here who’s doing too much. I’ve already had the talk with her, but I don’t think she gets it yet. She keeps volunteering to do more and more. I know she doesn’t want to do any of it. She feels obligated.

One day, she’ll get a chocolate bar.

Then she’ll get it.