Moving On Is A Mixed Blessing

by Audrey Ference

The news of my co-worker rattled another work friend and I enough that we got in this weird fight on the way home from the after-work drinks thing we’d been at. The crux of the argument was whether it was better to resign yourself to a day job if it meant having lots of time to work on the “real” stuff you care about, or whether it was smarter to try and find a job closer to your actual interests.

Before we’d found out about the possibly departing colleague, neither of us had had any plans to leave any time soon anyway, and here we were hashing out some dumb hypothetical scenario about where we’d go if we ever left.

A person quitting just sends out a pulse of strange energy, is what I’m saying. I don’t know why many people’s first reactions are so selfish and insecure. I suppose it has something to do with age—none of my friends are at the age where we feel settled into a career exactly, and the possibility of something better is always over the horizon.

That’s why quitting is doubly hard, because when your friends should be really happy for you, instead they’re secretly sort of mad at you for rocking the boat. Those last two weeks at any job are always so passive-aggressive, your office both celebrating your great news and begrudging you leaving for greener pastures (and often sticking them with your work until someone can be hired.)

The weirdness is temporary, though. People get over that pretty quickly, and then they’re just happy for you and sad to see you go. Frank-wise, I’m just really excited that he might possibly finally be doing something that doesn’t make him angry all the time. As far as the stuff at my office goes, it can just be hard to remember that though you can and should love certain people at work and be emotionally invested in their lives, it’s important to remember not to get too invested in the group psyche at the office, or you’ll end up getting upset to hear your friends are moving on instead of being proud of them.