How's this for a very delayed FU story?
At the end of 2023, I was the highest performing person on my team and in my group for 5 years running. As an individual contributor, I regularly had meetings and interactions with the executive team because of the level of impact my work had on the organization's bottom line. Often, they were looking for my opinion on ways we could improve the organization since I was one of the few people who could both talk openly and strategically with the executives who also had a boots on the ground view of the organization. I was considered one of the top people in the entire company and had personally trained about 2/3rd of the employees when they were hired - not because it was part of my job but because the relationships i built and the long-term value real training provided the organization (and my paycheck) was worth the investment.
Oh, and I was burned the fuck out.
Not only that, I wasn't sleeping well. I had been sick for a few years - pretty much a constant cold (turns out it was allergies). My marriage wasn't even much of a relationship anymore, just two people living in the same house. On top of that, I'd spent the previous 3 years slowly losing everything in my life that defined who I was. I was depressed, riddled with anxiety, and deeply unhappy.
And so I went to my boss in November of 2023 and told him I needed a 2-month sabbatical. A few weeks later he pulled me aside and let me know that he personally was blocking the sabbatical. You can read the whole interaction
earlier in this thread. It was toxic as fuck.
I talked to my partner, did some budgeting, and figured out I could easily take a 1+ year sabbatical without any issue. And so I saved up a few extra months and picked March 1st as the day I'd give my notice with March 15th as my last day. And then I vanished from this forum for awhile. During that time I got divorced, estranged myself from my family, got therapy, learned I have ADHD and Depression, got medicated, and changed most of the things about my life that had previously defined who I was. I'm much, much happier now. And I am finally figuring out who I am and what I want.
But that's not what this thread is about. What happened in March? What happened when I actually turned in my notice to the boss who told me he was forcing me to stay burned out?
In some ways it was satisfying, in other ways it was anticlimactic.
During my 1:1 with my boss on the 1st, I let him know right away that I was turning in my notice, that I didn't have another job lined up, and that I was taking the sabbatical I'd asked for. He asked me why (which I wasn't expecting) and I decided in to tell him: I was depressed, my marriage was falling apart, I needed a mental, emotional, and physical reset to figure my shit out. He got sort of choked up and asked me why I didn't tell him any of this in November, but the truth is I tried to, and I told him that. If he had asked and not assumed my reasoning, I would have told him all of it. He didn't have much to say about that. He didn't really apologize, but he didn't
not apologize. It was weird. From there, most of the company wanted to talk to me. The entire executive team had various one-on-ones with me to either congratulate me on "getting out" and confiding that they weren't far behind or they were trying to manipulate me into staying. I got to talk to every employee I wanted too, made sure we had each other's contacts, said our goodbyes. Folks asked me to stay but no one was too serious about it - most of them were burning out too.
On my last day, the CEO had an exit interview with me. He's someone who thinks he's much smarter than he is. Not that he's dumb or anything, he's mostly very smart, but not nearly as smart and strategic as he thinks. He ended up spending most of the interview telling me I didn't really need a sabbatical and getting away from working doesn't solve anything which offended me deeply. Then he told me he wanted to plan a call in May to see how things were going and if I wanted to come back. I told him no thanks and then asked him some questions I'd been wanting to ask for a long time. His answeres were pretty weak, honestly. Mostly non-answers and, "i don't remember, that was awhile ago." kind of stuff. He tried again, at the end, to push me to setup a time to talk to him in May and I very clearly said no, I wasn't going to do it.
Because, dude, fuck you, it's too late.
A year later and I still get texts from folks periodically, updating me on their lives, asking how I'm doing, looking for someone to talk to who understands the frustrations of that place. I'm privileged to have made so many friends at that job.
Six months after I quit most of the ELT was gone - they'd quit or been fired. The CEO "voluntarily stepped down" (yeah right!) the exact month I predicted he would be fired by the Board of Directors for failure to achieve any of his goals. Seven months into my sabbatical I accepted an offer at a new job doing exactly the kind of work I'd been asking to do at the old one for years. it turns out - I'm really good at all the stuff they didn't want me to do. And I'm enjoying it so, so much. It's stretching me every day and I am happy.
So if you feel completely lost and burnt out, if the things in life you thought were important are taken away from you, if all you want every morning is a break from the pain and horrors of the job you do, and you're a mustachian who knows what it costs to live day-to-day and how much financial runway you have - then do it.
Quit your job.
Take that sabbatical.
Give yourself a break. The world is about a lot more than retiring early. It's about living a life you can enjoy and be happy with. We privileged few need to remember that more than most.
Oh, and I'm SO GLAD I didn't end up doing the sabbatical. What i thought would take me two months took me seven. Man, if I had gone back to work in May I would have been an absolute wreck. My decision to quit my job and take a no-specific-end-date sabbatical changed my life for the absolute better. Quitting that job was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Topic: Epic FU money stories (Read 3019556 times)
