So most people who know me already know this, but yeah, I did – I quit my job about a month and a half ago. Just sorta bailed, without any prospects for a new job or any real desire to get one.
A little background: for the better part of the last four years, I worked in the athletic department at the University of Colorado. I operated alongside two mostly excellent gentlemen, got a front row seat to a lot of games, made a lot of videos, and drank all of the beer. It was a great job; it challenged me to be better almost daily, and I had a good deal of fun.
Last December I realized that, for me, that fun/great job had run its course. I’d filled that position longer than I’d ever done anything else in my life, and I’d known for a while I was ready to try something else. Sports are fun, but the hours are long and the pay is modest. The opportunity for advancement wasn’t there, and I thought it might be fun to have weekends.
So I took a “normal” job. I worked standard business hours and left my work at the office. I wore a collared shirt and dress pants, and pretended to be interested in my new coworkers’ lives. I made more money. I attended frequent meetings and sat in a cubicle. I commuted to the office and fought traffic. I saw how the other half lived.
That all lasted six months.
Turns out the other half isn’t really for me. Almost immediately after taking the job, I saw signs it wouldn’t be a long, illustrious career at Techcomm Systems International, Inc. (a name I made up but only sort of). I was told when to show up and when to leave, how long to make my lunch break, and what the consequences would be if I violated any of these guidelines. I was given a multi-page packet on the IT policy, outlining which websites I was allowed to visit, among other things. I was not to download anything, not even a simple Google image, without first seeking direct permission from the IT director.
One afternoon in my first month, the office was quiet and I had finished my work for the day. I told a friendly coworker that I was going to cut out a few minutes early.
“Be careful,” she said. “There are always eyes watching.”
Eyes?
“Yeah,” she said. “They like butts in seats.”
The thing is, it wasn’t a bad job – I worked for a good, stable company that took care of its employees very well, and provided opportunities for advancement. Though I’d only been there a week when Christmas came around, I still received a holiday bonus. This job was everything a “grown-up job” was supposed to be, and yet I was already plotting my exit.
I kept thinking about what she told me.
“They like butts in seats.”
And she was right. In my first months with the company it became obvious my supervisors valued little as much as their employees being there, as if that was the key to productivity and achievement. So long as you were at your desk between the specified times – and not a minute less – and followed the IT policies, the employer seemed content at the very least.
Butts in seats. I wondered to myself, how does that make any sense?
If I can get my work done in six hours, why would I stay another two just for show? Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to get outside, clear my head, spend sometime enjoying my life, and come back the next day recharged? Conversely, if I’m working to meet a deadline, why not go at it until midnight one evening and push the project to completion, and then mosey in around noon the next day? Aren’t these things more logical than sitting down and getting up at some arbitrary times?
Yes, I will answer my own rhetorical question and say they are. But the system in which so many of these “grown-up job” companies operate is not designed to foster rational, pragmatic thought. It’s designed for the lowest common denominator.
At CU, my boss always used to say, “we get our shit done, then we leave.” Purely results-based, which, to me, makes the most sense. Sometimes getting our shit done would keep us in the office long past normal working hours, but that was part of the deal. We were there to get it done.
The lowest common denominator cannot be trusted to get their shit done. They aren’t smart or honest enough to determine when they do or don’t need to be working in order to make sure the complete their tasks. So the rules are created for them, and the rest of us are forced to play by them.
For me, it didn’t work. So I saved some cash and planned my escape, and six months into my new stint, I informed management I was leaving. My immediate supervisor was surprised, but most everyone else understood. Since then, I’ve been freelancing full time – photography, web design, and video production, mostly – and God willing, I’ll continue to do so.
When I decided I’d be leaving the new job, I did some reflection and tried to determine if I should regret leaving my good gig at CU. We’re all programmed to justify the decisions we make, and I’m no different, but even after taking that into consideration, I still settled on “no.” See, I’d always thought of going into business for myself, pretty much since I started working. The more contacts I made and the more side gigs I did, the closer that came to being a feasible option. But I was never going to take that leap from my CU job, ever. The job was too fun, too familiar. I was too comfortable, and leaving to try to work for myself was scary. Hell, it still is scary, but the choice was made much easier because of my situation.
I’m glad I took the Techcomm job, because I needed to see it. I needed to experience firsthand how that part of the world lived, and it needed to scare the shit out of me. As scary as jumping off into the great unknown was, the idea of staying in that corporate machine for the rest of my life was downright terrifying.
Man is not supposed to be told when to show up and when to leave and when to take lunch, to be herded from conference room to conference room every day, to sit and let their talents and energies and unique personality traits rot underneath fluorescent lights. Man is not supposed to conform to the lowest common denominator.
An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna.
It’s weird meeting your heroes.