I Quit!
He was sitting at the back of the restaurant, in the bar, surrounded by random Asian women, laughing, drinking, cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
“Hey, Trevor,” said my friend as we walked towards him. “This is Jacqui, remember I told you about her?”
I smiled politely with my hand outstretched as the aroma of stale booze and cigarettes engulfed us.
“Right on,” said Trevor as he lurched forwards with an over lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He vigorously shook my hand, awkwardly blew a cloud of smoke out of his mouth and flopped back down onto his chair. “Looks like you’ll be coming over next month to work for me is it?”
I smiled politely and the two Asian ladies sitting on either side of him giggled nervously.
What was weird about my first interaction with him was that I didn’t like the man and I didn’t know why. Was it the fact that I’d met him outside in a bar? I don’t know. All I know is that my encounter with him was by far the weirdest employment encounter I’d ever had with someone who I was set to refer to as ‘my boss.’
Now, Trevor wasn’t from Asia. He’d come over to this part of the world, like most fair skinned, blue eyed Westerners do, looking for work and easy money. So, like most Caucasians his age with an engineering degree and no sign of work back home he became a teacher.
Hold up, let me back track a bit. The year was 2014 and I was just completing my two-year contract with a well-known education company in Singapore. The job was good, it paid well, I made a lot of good friends and I was enjoying the many conveniences of the country.
It was about three months before my contract was set to expire that my good friend Veronica, who just happened to work in the company’s main office, approached me and asked if I wanted to help them grow in Malaysia. Seeing that my family was there and she knew how much I’d missed them, she thought I would be the best candidate to undertake the job when the idea was brought up at a managerial meeting.
I was totally open to this idea and quite keen to be a part of something new, in addition to being able to spend more time in Malaysia where my mom, stepfather and sister were living.
So, I took up the position and I felt excited. Finishing up my tenure in Singapore I fantasised regularly about my new life in Malaysia and of all of the amazing things I could do such as afford my own apartment, goodbye share houses, get my driving license, buy a car and hopefully a dog.
As excited as I was about the idea, I also felt nervous but it was a healthy nervous. Of course I would miss all of my friends and the connections I’d made during the two years I had lived there, but I knew deep down that it was time for a change.
After months of daydreaming, my dreams of moving to Malaysia were finally becoming a reality. With my suitcases and boxes packed, I helped my van driver, I chartered a van from Malaysia to come pick my up, load up the last two years of my life and together we crossed the border out into the tropical wonders of Malaysia, and that, was that.
I was pretty lucky in the sense that my contract had ended during the Christmas holiday season. We had family from Canada visiting and I had planned the start of my new job in such a way that I could spend a solid month with family, which turned out to be a good thing because my step-dad got really sick, needed surgery and in the end passed away. So, it was just perfect we were all together in the same place and at the same time.
So between that and my career change, it would be fair to say that things were more or less quite rough for me come the start of the new year. However, I soldered on, found myself an apartment and started my job on time as promised.
The office I reported to in Malaysia while beautiful, extremely quiet and there was NOT a lot going on. Trevor, the American manager who gave me the willies from the moment I met him, proved to be quite clueless when it came to a lot of things, and I say that in the most honest way possible. From the status of students to marketing plans and my working visa, no matter what i asked him I was always met with the same reply,
‘We’re working on it.’
When I asked for extra tasks and jobs, he’d send me to the mall with another expat teacher from another branch who was also bored out of her mind to buy classroom supplies, we’d oblige and spend the afternoon doing as we were told in between looking at makeup and clothes. Tee hee!
When I wasn’t at the mall ‘buying supplies,’ I spent the majority of my day staring off into space, getting lost on mind numbing websites or walking down to Starbucks for endless cups of coffee because quite honestly, there was nothing to do and the centre I was at was not ready. And when I complained to upper management back in Singapore, I was met with the exact same response time and time again,
“We’re working on it!”
And as for Trevor, wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! I have NEVER, EVER felt so unsafe, unsecure and unsure of a boss, honestly I find it even hard to put into words. He’d disappear for months on end, fail to pick up his phone and when he did show up to work he’d bring his foreign girlfriend and she’d snooze on the couch in the waiting room while the handful of students who did attend the centre meandered around her. Oh and there was a time too when he lost the company car, he left students and a teacher locked out of the centre for hours because he’d ‘over slept.’ And throughout his endless blunders I continued to try my best to ‘stay on top of him,’ I’d ask important questions like,
When will I get my visa? What are we doing to market this place? Are there new students coming?
To which he answered every single question with the same exact answer I’d heard since day one,
“We’re working on it.”
I think it was probably about the tenth time I’d heard the words that I lost my shit! I mean I’d had enough.
I think it was about six months into my job I decided enough is enough, I was not happy. I literally felt as though I was ‘wasting my life away.’ And despite the fact that countless friends and family continually told me,
“Wow you are so lucky, you are getting paid to do nothing.”
I knew I had to go.
Plain and simple, this place was not for me and I could not stomach another day with a boss and a company who didn’t put their employees first, so I gave my notice. Let’s just say that when I sat down with Trevor he was less then thrilled. He sarcastically lamented,
“Oh, ah, um hm. Okay, I knew this was coming.”
And when I failed to reply he continued with,
“You know Jacqui, I expected a whole lot more from you.”
Honestly, his words failed to get in. If anything, I was grateful for the experience because it taught me one valuable lesson, I have to put myself first. Really, when I think about it now, no amount of money, no position of power, no person, no role, no whatever can bring me happiness, that job is up to me. And while I did give this company and boss the ‘old college try,’ in the end I realised that I had to put the ‘oxygen mask’ on myself and move on because I felt like I was literally ‘flogging a dead horse’ upstream, and it was not working.
The funny part to this whole story was that I actually didn’t serve my whole three months’ notice, I just went to work one day, luckily I was working a shift on my own, finished what I needed to finish and on my way out the door sent Trevor an SMS that read a little something like this,
“I know I handed you my three months’ notice the other day but actually, I won’t be coming back anymore.”
And just like that I left! If I am being truthful I’d always dreamt of quitting a job in some sort of a dramatic fashion!
