I quit my
desk job yesterday. I feel like
Kevin Spacey in
American Beauty when he extorted a year's pay (or whatever it was) and commenced immersion in
hedonic engineering. -Except I don't have a whole year, more like 2-3 months at the outside, but then I didn't have to extort. I actually ate breakfast, something other than a hard roll stuffed with egg and/or taylor ham and/or cheese. Paid bills, mailed mail and returned a couple overdue videotapes. Cleared the last of Dad's stuff from storage in the spare room, vacuumed a bit, and put a bed in to make it a
guest room. Laundered whites (especially guest bed-ding), returned some overdue videotape, did a little Web research on home-distilling
applejack while exploring Laird's Blended Applejack.
I gave no advance notice when I resigned my position yesterday. That's "unprofessional", and I've tried to rationalize it half a dozen ways, but, like,
duh, I know it's rationalization... I suppose it boils down to this: My assistant was laid off, along with other lab staff. If my job takes 40 hr/wk, and her job took 40 hr/wk, and I am expected to cover her responsibilites in addition to those of yet other layoffs, how many hours am I expected to work per week? I was given freedom to work as much overtime as I wanted to get the job done. If my overtime exceeds my former assistant's pay, what then was the point of firing her? Has no one here heard the phrase "burn out" in the context of employers who ask too much?
Oddly, my next-most-recent employer gave me pretty much the same "opportunity", moving the
lead programmer to another department, promoting me to her position, but then neglecting to maintain meaningful assistance. I can't decide if I'm doing something to provoke this, or if it's some sort of evil standardized management-material test. There's a reason the standard work week is 40 hours, why am I consistently getting tapped to contribute so much more than that? The last time I took on all the overtime I could manage, it was all for less than nothing.
If the employer need give no notice to terminate employment (indeed, without notice is the standard), why should the employee feel such a burden to give notice of resignation?