1. First impressions of people are usually wrong
The most friendly guy in the office can be the one casually overstepping your boundaries. And those who seem most unapproachable might keep you accompanied until the last moment.
During my first week, this guy approached me in person, eagerly asked me to lunch and told me all about office politics. I thought he was considerate and wanted to help me familiarize with the project.
Later on, he free-rode off our work multiple times. I called him out on his unprofessionalism, after which he lashed out and said “being aggressive is part of the job”, and that I should apologize to him for daring to tell him that I didn’t appreciate when he canceled a group meeting last minute.
I realized sometimes people befriend you so that they have an excuse to make you do the work, and to guilt-trip you when you say no. They don’t tell you the tea because they trust you, they do it because they just need someone to vent to.
Meanwhile, the quiet guy in our project was so surprisingly understanding when I told him I was leaving, told me to feel proud that I have found something that suit me better. He took me on a team lunch as a farewell meal — I was not even in his team. So yes, let time and people’s behaviors speak for themselves, not the first impressions you’ve got on them.
2. No one cares, it’s just work
Be grateful, but really no need to pour your heart out. It’s not personal.
What I mean by this is, sometimes people help you out at work one way or another: answering your questions, explaining a new concept to you, going out of their job scope to help you with a task, or letting you have off time during your anxiety-filled days. If work has been tough, and you have been going through a rough time, it is unavoidable that you would feel so indebted that you go the extra miles to repay.
This year, I idolized this guys so much I wanted to buy him an Hermes tie as a farewell gift (I am in my twenties and am no millionaire daughter, by no mean I buy Hermes on a casual shopping spree). When I was going through my burnout at work, he consistently helped re-delegate my work, let me have time off. He did this throughout 6 months , and I only found out from someone he was fencing off other people’s questions about me, never compromising my secrets.
It was appropriate to be grateful, but not to a point where you have to go out of your way (financially and emotionally) to repay them. When I was more settled to look back, I realized he was always considered the nicest person in the office. Some people are just really nice and polite, so you don’t need to overthink and feel like you owe them the world.
If it were someone else, they probably would have done the same. It’s not personal.
3. It’s not personal
Again, but for the way some people make you feel frustrated, looked down, or as if you did something wrong at work. As much as people’s decency is not necessarily personal, so is people’s criticism and anger directed towards you. Often times, they have issues they have not resolved on their own yet. CoVid has been tough, and corporate is the capitalism hell hole so when combined, expect to see somewhat of a messed up somebody at times.
4. Let people do their work
It’s their work for a reason. That’s the responsibility they have to fulfill to get paid. Delegate.
If you’re a perfectionist like me, there’s a high chance you find it hard to delegate work to people. Or if you do, you find yourself reviewing and giving comments on their work (or worse, doing their work for them) more often than needed.
For my case, I was working on my handover documents, and I really wanted to give the next person a holistic and informative view of how to work and trouble-shoot the IT system as a business user.
Because my company’s IT team does not have a well-established documentation system, I ended up doing all the technical guideline for the business user — while it falls under their umbrella.
It might not be a lot if just IT guideline, but there were other departments and systems. This inflated the workload significantly and created tremendous stress for me.
Looking back, I could easily have asked IT to fill their team’s documentation gap. Life could have been easier, and I would have had more time and energy for other things like packing to move to another country in a few weeks.
5. Chill. There will always be a gap after handover
Even if your handover document is perfect, people do things differently. Just do what you can.
You could probably tell how much stress I went through doing this handover. It’s quite funny knowing that most people have quite a relaxing exit and chill handover once knowing they are leaving anyways. I guess it’s the opposite for me.
I was afraid that if anything went wrong when the new person took over, people would think I did a poor job handing over, not giving enough documents, not explaining things well, etc. When the stress got to me that I had to take a day off from this. I looked back at my last few times taking over projects from others.
I realized however the handover was, I always had to clarify things with other team members again, or found a missing piece of information, or dug up something the predecessor was not even aware of.
We are human, there are the known unknown, and there’s the unknown unknown. I barely remember the way they did the handover, not to mention blame them for doing a bad job. People figure things out — I figured things out, the next person probably will.
So yeah, don’t leave taking all you know away. But remember to enjoy your last few days in the company — you might see and feel things differently than however you had felt in the past.
There’s a power in transitioning periods, about having options, knowing nothing will really matter at the place you thought would matter so much.
I hope this can elevate part of the burden of quitting your job. It’s an exciting journey ahead, and I wish you all the best!
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