A Kenny Wayne Shepherd song, Last Goodbye, seems to be the best way to describe my last day at the Northern Virginia Daily:
Now pardon me if I appear
To see beyond the now and here
To try to save myself
I'm not the kind to pin the blame
But I can't take more of the same
Livin' on your shelf
I could lose myself
I could curse like hell
But I've lost the will to even try
If you ever doubt
Listen to the sound
No lies, no no no
This is my last goodbye.
It particularly doesn't help that once you announce you're leaving, you become dead to a lot of people there higher up in the chain of command. You hate to see anyone take anything that personally.
I don't want to come off as totally unaffected by my time here. I enjoyed myself, and we did some great things. I always enjoyed the exchanges of "Doctor?" with Charles. I enjoyed blowing off steam after deadline with Kevin and Charles. And I always liked going to the budget meetings, if nothing else as a prime time to people watch.
But another memory will probably overshadow them all, one from my last day. As I was working, one of my cohorts came walking up to my desk, like many other people did over the course of the day. She looked at me intently, again following the script to the "gonna miss ya" spiel. Then she said, "Can I have your chair?"
All right... Back to packing.
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1 comment:
Hey David,
Since I discovered your blog and e-mailed you the other day, I've gotten kind of caught up in the saga. Now I'm really sorry we never got the chance to meet. We could have at least had a beer.
This post kind of blew me away because--except for the KWS song--it could have been written by me, who gave notice at my own job in publishing five days after you did. You're saying and not saying the same things I am up here. It's really kind of spooky. My boss and his boss had reactions similar to those you describe. And that came after a session of straight-talking with our publisher back in March. I couldn't believe how shocked, angry and surprised they seemed. What did he think I meant by "I won't work for this person anymore"?
I will say that I haven't had too many office sharks circling for my stuff--nobody really has any better equipment than anyone else and none of it is great anyway. We're all sympathetic to each other, sharing a common "enemy" as it were.
I've worked in a few publishing houses of varying size, and I'm still amazed at the power a single person has to make many, many others unhappy. And I'm not even talking about screaming and cursing, though that has happened. What gets me is that the source of misery for so many often stays and it's everyone else who leaves a job they may have been perfectly happy doing otherwise. Then you begin to wonder how much the people above really know as they continue to leave that person in place.
You seem to be in a pretty healthy place about it. Sometimes you start to wonder if it's you. Especially when you keep landing in situations that begin to feel way too familiar.
I have had a little satisfaction along these lines. One time, my boss was fired on a Monday after my last day was the Friday before. To be fair, the heads of every department in that division of the company were canned on the same day. The best part might have been that I found out about it by reading the NY Daily News "media biz" page.
Another time, my former boss wasn't fired until about a year after I left, after having her staff of four people completely turn over three times in three years.
Well, anyway, enjoy yourself back home in Ohio and maybe you won't have to move anywhere for a very long time. I know I sure don't want to.
Take care,
Kevin
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