Leadership at Work

My Friend’s Son Quit With 30 Seconds Notice

At his performance review, they sought his commitment to an unbalanced life

Giving Management Hell

I am glad I am retired from corporate American. The latest generation of our children is giving them hell.

My friend’s son quit his job with literally 30 seconds’ notice, the time it took him to tell his boss goodbye. He graduated as a Mechanical engineer last year and was heavily recruited by Fortune 500 companies. He researched the companies carefully before accepting an offer.

The cause of his quitting was a 1-year performance meeting his boss held to discuss his commitment to the organization. His work was excellent, the junior engineer turned in his designs on time, and they worked; he was on time for work and seldom took off. He kept his shared engineering notes up to date for the team.

Working During Work Hours Only

The young man’s infraction was that he did not answer phone calls or emails after work hours. He was not available to work on weekends and seldom stayed late. He felt once his work was completed, he moved on to his next task. He did not volunteer to help other slower team members. The boss told him his level of commitment would need to improve to remain with the company and succeed.

He responded to his boss by telling him he liked the position and the company but would not change his after-hours habits if his work was acceptable. If he could do his assignments in the allocated time, why would he stay longer and work nights and weekends? His manager repeated the company’s philosophy, the team was family and needed to help each other. He must join the culture, or he would not do well in the organization.

His reaction to his boss’s statement was, “Thank you, but no thank you. My time outside of work is my own. I’m done.” He stood up and walked out of the meeting. He packed his desk and left. There wasn’t a resignation letter. There were no emotional goodbyes. He was just gone.

His mom found out because the company called her trying to find him. He was not responding to their texts, emails, or phone calls. He “ghosted” his employer. Within a few weeks, he started a new job. A standard work week is forty hours, so he has no regrets. He said he was not donating his time to support a multibillion-dollar organization so his free labor could enrich the company.

No Free Work

I compared his attitude to my own when I was newly hired. I worked 60-hour weeks with no additional compensation. No matter when the call came, I answered it. I did a much better job setting boundaries in the last ten years of my career. A salaried employee is not the means to a resource to be exploited for free.

The workers today have decided there is more to life than work. They are following a different path to happiness. There is some balance in their lives. The need for this balance is making companies wake up to the fact they had a real good thing going with earlier generations. They could not maintain that loyalty when they broke the social contract by laying people off at their whims as they sought more profit for shareholders.

Loyalty of a business organization to its employees and vice versa is becoming a myth. When your services are no longer required, employees are walked out of their former place of employment, no matter their sacrifice for the company. The number of years you have worked at the site will not stop them from firing you.

It will be interesting to see where this leads in the next ten years. We are entering an exciting time for the workers and any company that understands their motivations. We shall see.

More From Toni Crowe

Toni Crowe retired from corporate America as an Executive Vice President for a Fortune 500 Aerospace company. She learned many hard lessons on her way to success, which she shares in her book, Bullets and Bosses Don’t Have Friends — available on Amazon.com. A must-read for those trying to get ahead.

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