I quit! Or not.

Yesterday, after nine years employment with the same company, I submitted my resignation.

But I didn't resign.

And if you're confused, then join the club.

Here's the short version of it. I had plans to resign on July 13th (Friday the 13th), since my mom tells me it's a day of luck for the Jews. So yesterday morning I decided to finally write my letter of resignation. I wanted to be ready a week ahead.

Three weeks ago my company announced that my boss's boss's boss is retiring, and that my boss's boss will be replacing him. Two days later, my boss put in his resignation. Totally unrelated event. He had planned it, and it just happened that the retirement was announced two days before his scheduled resignation.

This rapid evolvement made me determined to resign by the time I finish my current project (end of this month). July 13th would have made for the perfect two-week notice.

But yesterday things started happening very quick. I got a call from my boss (who knows I'm quitting) that his boss and the retiring boss would like to know what I plan to do after finishing the project I'm on at this point. They had two projects they wanted to put me on, and they wanted to hear what I wanted to do.

I decided for the sake of not misleading them to resign right away. So I double-checked my resignation letter and requested my boss to confirm that indeed the hours on the contract were to be depleted by July 25th.

Within two minutes I got a call from my boss telling me, "No! There's a mistake on the spreadsheet. Your hours have been depleted as of today!" I hesitated for a second and said, "What are you saying? That I'm fired?" He then explained that because he's already told the client that I'm staying til July 25th, that the company will have to eat up the costs of my employment between now and July 25th. He sort of hid the fact that after he leaves the company I'll be left with explaining to his boss why I've billed the last two weeks against a non-billable account.

I packed up my stuff, printed the letter and drove to DC to submit my resignation.

Or so I thought.

Came into the top boss's office and explained why I'm resigning (I wasn't promoted like I asked). I'm not sure what I expected to hear, and maybe I didn't think this quite through. But I most definitely did not expect to hear the response I got: "I respect your opinion, but I disagree with you."

Ok, let me get this straight? I'm trying to quit and you're refusing to let me go?

We have projects for you. We need you. We want you to take your boss's place.

Ok, maybe you didn't understand. I'm quitting because of the past! Because I wasn't promoted when I should have been. I'm quitting because this company doesn't care about Project Management and the focus is only Construction.

I beg to differ. This office has a lot of project management.

But the promotions last year were company wide only for construction managers and none of the project managers were promoted (throwing out names of a few for proper factual impact).

Wait, you're talking company wide?

Boss, I'm quitting the COMPANY! Not this office, not you, not the project. THE COMPANY.

Ok, let me hold on to your letter this weekend, and we'll talk again next week.

HUH?

Have a great weekend!


Ok, what just happened? Did I resign or not? WTF!