After giving my verbal and written resignation to the hiring manager on the job, I rescinded my decision two days later.
Yes, I know. That’s so double-minded of me. A double minded person is most often unstable, and for the life of me, I felt great instability.
I’m not exactly sure what caused me to waver in my decision, but waver, I did.
Second Guessing
To say the least, I was in an emotional upheaval. I’d still not spoken about my resignation to anyone at work at all. I’d only shared my decision with my two closest friends who have no affiliation with the workplace.
In fact, I’d walked by several of my coworkers, team leads, and manages wondering if they already knew what I wasn’t prepared at all to announce until my last day. To my knowledge, no one had a clue about the secret anguish I bore in terms of no longer wanting to be their work associate.
I’d only had brief encounters with the hiring manager since presenting her with my resignation, and I wasn’t even sure she’d opened it to read it. I’d given her the letter the day before my two days off work. So, when I returned to work and saw her in passing, she mentioned to me that she would need to tell my team leads and managers, within the department that I was assigned, that I had given my notice. Her reasoning for doing so was to make sure the team leads and managers had time to train someone else how to do my job.
Frankly, I found the hiring manager’s comment quite laughable in hindsight because no one was ever truly trained on how to do anyone’s job unless team leads and managers had to scramble to find coverage for someone who hadn’t shown up for the day. Only then would someone be trained if they truly didn’t know what the job entailed in that moment.
Nevertheless, the mere mention by the hiring manager that she needed to let others know that I had given notice sent me into a state of freeze. I don’t recall any emotion that I felt in that moment. I simply froze, and almost instantaneously, I found myself asking her if it was too late for me to rescind my resignation.
To my surprise, the hiring manager was ecstatic that I would even consider remaining at the job. “We’d love for you to stay with us!” I stopped to stare at her. The corporation employed at-will, and I could have easily been shown the door even though I was considered by most to be an ideal employee. She further stated, “I won’t mention a word [now] unless you tell me to do so. We’ll just keep this between us, and when you’ve thought it over and made your decision, let me know.”
Oddly, I had second thoughts. Oddly, I thought that maybe I’d been rash about my resignation days before. Oddly, I considered that maybe I’d reacted on some type of emotion and hadn’t truly considered the implications of having no job. Oddly, I was backtracking on all the boldness of having walked away from a toxic work environment.
To be honest, I was afraid. I had a fear of the unknown. Yet, I also felt emotions of utter sadness. Since I hadn’t been successful in all the time I’d been on the job with hearing back from hundreds of other jobs I’d applied for, I was fearful that I’d face a great dilemma without the job. Knowing that I can secure a job based on my current skills and actually securing a job based on my current skills are two totally different concepts.
I’d like to say I walk by faith, but I can also say that I’m a realist. I have bills to pay, and as toxic as I found the work environment, it was no more or less toxic than the job I held within my previous career. In fact, I remained at the workplace within my previous career for a little over two decades before deciding to call it quits. It’s just that the toxic atmosphere within this workplace seemed to be a lot more intense, and I had less control over the interactions I encountered compared to the interactions I encountered within the other workplace.
Needless to say, I folded like an article of clothing on laundry day and found myself in limbo when the hiring manager was before me. I’d rescinded my ability to let go of a place that I had previously felt good about leaving. Yet, I hadn’t considered my emotional state, and I was quickly fearing my descending financial state. However, there was a lot more going on too. I just didn’t understand why I felt so emotional about walking away from such a toxic place I actually wanted to leave.
After my interaction with the hiring manager, I retreated to the break room for my break time. I had to ask myself why I froze in the moment. What had caused me to cave in? Was it strictly a financial fear? Or was there something else? Within those moments of deep thought, tears welled up within my eyes. I felt a major inner turmoil that I didn’t understand. How could it be so difficult to walk away from a place that’s toxic? I truly hadn’t considered the impact leaving would have upon me.
Perhaps I felt I was letting some of my coworkers down in some way. Not all of them behaved in toxic ways. Some of them were quite nice. Not to downplay those who did behave in toxic ways, but many of those part of the group I called the mobsters aren’t such mobsters when they aren’t together. Much of the time, I simply ignored their behaviors and remained silent, but on the day I decided to resign, I’d had enough. Considering that day, I had to wonder what triggered me. Why did I finally snap?
I wasn’t openly reactive though. In fact, I’d been so secretive about the resignation; I hadn’t uttered it to a soul outside of telling the hiring manager. To my surprise, the hiring manager hadn’t said anything to anyone either. She’d only mentioned to me that she needed let the appropriate people know simply because I had planned to leave within a two-week time frame. She also mentioned that she’d let it be known that I didn’t want my resignation to be a topic shared with my coworkers.
I don’t know what came over me while I was sitting in the break room, but I felt the hurt within my cries as the tears slowly trickled right above my cheeks. I felt sorrowful, and I didn’t completely comprehend the emotions behind it all. I felt utter grief. Despite having taken action to walk away from the toxicity, in that moment, I felt something within me fighting to remain. I was in dilemma, but I didn’t understand why I even needed to be. If the goal was to be free, why did it hurt so badly to leave?
I already knew the outcomes of remaining within the toxicity. Nothing was going to change and talking myself into believing things would change was just a way to justify that it wouldn’t be so bad to stay. It was crazymaking behavior, but I felt that I had probably made a mistake. It was not like me at all to vacillate between decisions. I usually make decisions after a lot of careful thought, and I usually know when the decision is right for me. Even when I’ve prayerfully considered the best course of direction, I always feel peace about my decision.
However, in this situation, I felt absolute confusion, and I was baffled by reaction. So, I backtracked in my memory the events of the day I decided to resign. Perhaps this is one of the effects of remaining in toxic environments too long in the past. In those moments of considering my plight, I felt so unstable. I wanted to leave, and I made the plan to leave. I wrote a letter and resigned, and in the past when I’ve done this, I was done with the job. I knew it was time to move on, and in this case, I wanted to move on to get away from toxicity.
In fact, it actually wasn’t difficult to walk away. I’d already done so in many other situations of narcissistic abuse, but now I was recanting and attempting to prolong my time on this job. I’d quit a job years ago without having another job, but back then, I felt I had a lot of faith. At this time in my life, however, I felt the heavens were brass. I felt that God was simply not hearing me on this. I’d cried out and prayed about this situation in agony, but maturity has taught me that God leaves me free to make my own decisions about what to do with my life.
By now, I should already have the tools and wisdom to do what’s best for me. Of course, this doesn’t mean it’s always easy. It’s just that I felt like I didn’t have a sense of direction at this time, and I felt it would be so much easier if God would just swoop into the situation and make things plain for me. I know that’s not how it works at all though. Faith without works is dead.
For the most part, many people remain at toxic work places for years and for various reasons. Even I’ve done so in the past. I remained long enough at my last workplace, and looking back, I know that if circumstances hadn’t aligned the way they did at that time, I might have still been there.
I looked at the current workplace situation and often wondered how coworkers managed to stay for two decades and more when the place was so toxic. I don’t know their answers, but I do know why I managed to remain. Workplaces don’t always “feel” toxic, and I couldn’t always see the toxicity either.
Despite dealing with toxic people, I’d definitely say that there will always be those types of people in almost any workplace. What’s the balance that I need to find in all of it that makes me want to remain? For me, I believe in my previous workplace, I became comfortable enough, but I was always able to steer clear from much of the drama.
Within my previous workplace, I also found connections with a few like-minded people, and I didn’t place my life into my work. When it was time to go, I left, and when circumstances warranted it, I didn’t mix business with my personal life. Once I did the latter, chaos broke out into my life, and I paid a heavy cost which had lasting effects. Plus, I also talked myself into the frame of thinking that the grass isn’t always greener just because I go someplace else. Although the grass definitely isn’t always greener elsewhere, I reserve that right to find out for myself if that be the case.
Walking away from toxicity isn’t necessarily a piece of cake. It’s difficult … or at least it has been difficult for me. It’s not a cut and dry process, and I had to question if I was being too rash and emotional in my decision to resign on the day that certain events unfolded. I even wondered had I suffered a meltdown because of my frustrations with the mobbing behaviors of some of my coworkers against me. After all, mobbing behaviors are designed to push targets out.
In all of the past work situations I’ve experienced, I’d often threaten to myself that I’d leave, but I never actually left. I’d look for jobs and even place applications while still choosing to remain within that toxic work environment. I’d say I had the hopes that things would actually change even though I was well aware that change for the better was not going to be the outcome. I’d wait with promise, however, when someone new in leadership would show up, or I’d have hopes that the atmosphere would change every time there’d be a new turnover rate of coworkers.
These changes would always give the work environment a sense of “newness”, but it wouldn’t take long for that toxicity to creep back into the forefront like a dormant leviathan awakened from its slumber. I would imagine that’s why I rescinded my resignation on this job. A new manager that had appeared in January presented a breath of fresh change to the environment. This new manager was well-liked by everyone, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that the power behind this manager’s gaze rested upon them using manipulative, gaslighting ploys to get what they wanted from everyone.
In fact, I’m not sure how that new manager did it, but I went from being a part-time employee basking in the exquisiteness of relaxed days to a full time employee struggling to keep my head afloat because I was too tired to relax. In reflection, I bought into this new manager’s vision only for it to turn into a partial nightmare. This narcissistic manager had literally smooth-talked their way into the lives of employees and gotten many to commit more time to the job without them reaping any additional benefits outside of their paychecks.
In fact, this new manager made a lot of promises that were never kept and blind-sighted so many employees that many of them still haven’t realized how they’ve been duped. On the flip side, there are others who came to realize the games this new manager played and made several attempts to call this manager out but to no avail. This new manager had already accrued a following of supporters who were hard-pressed to see any negativity regarding their character.
Although I liked the new manager’s personality, I documented quite a few conversations I’d had with them that I found to be confusing. It was at those moments that I realized the gaslighting ploys this manager used to get their way. They lied a lot about a lot of things, and they never came through on the things they frequently presented as their visions for the departments they led. It was all talk but no action.
Because I pressed for things to be done according to the new manager’s vision, I was immediately sized up as a troublemaker to their future-faking activities. So, to effectively gaslight and stonewall me, this new manager began changing my duties on the schedule. It’s interesting how the changes on the schedule directly coincided with the formation of a mobbing group against me. So, I can only conclude that this new manager’s actions were all by design even if they had nothing to do with the direct elements within the mobbing group.
Nevertheless, this new manager was indeed an instigator. In fact, I took note of how this new manager became “buddies” with the ringleader of that mob against me. Eventually, however, that new manager was cast out of the spotlight and sent packing to another destination. Then, as if overnight, right on the cusp of my resignation, the schedule was turned back to normal, and I was not only given my spot back in my original position, I was given additional training for another position that I’d been promised by that new manager which had never materialized while that new manager was present.
In retrospect, that change wasn’t enough to immediately cause me to want to stay, but I still froze in place and decided to rescind my resignation. I felt as if there was something else that I simply couldn’t explain that occurred within that moment. Whatever the case, I had to spend time prayerfully pondering over my decision again even though I was certain I was done. For reasons I didn’t understand, resigning from that toxic work environment wasn’t an easy task. In fact, removing myself from the toxicity wasn’t as easy as I had needed it to be for me.
In the end, I realized there was an even greater reason for me to stay, and it had nothing to do with having a trauma bond with toxicity, but it did have a lot to do with me. Stay tuned for more …
My Voice Unchained 