Hello blogosphere at 5:30 A.M.! As of yesterday I handed in my two weeks notice at my place of employment. This may seem unwise considering I need it to pay the bills and support my insatiable online and thrift shopping obsessions.
In reality, I have been mulling over this decision for a very long time, since last year to be exact. Actually, ever since I started talking everyone at work into joining an union because there had been absolute no workers/supervisor egalitarianism or job security. It has been a year since that fiasco and even though we voted and won our rights to join the union, I have never stopped fighting my boss over issues such as fair treatment of every staff, gender discrimination (it is still the unspoken rule that male staff are not allowed to be left alone with the children we provide care for, because it "looks bad" by virtue of the fact that males are seemingly "more dangerous" and "more likely to molest kids") and managerial accountability. After all, he does run a non-profit society for children for fuck sakes! Shouldn't us adults lead by example by advocating equality, freedom and the rights of everyone? You see, this is where people get lost on, the whole rights for everyone thing. Most people think unions only protect workers and make managers and supervisors jobs difficult. Yes, this can certainly be the case however, from what I understand based on the basic functions of what unions do, they actually provide as an impartial, third-party scrutinizer for worksites. This means, accountability and responsibility need to come from both the workers and the managers. My boss, on the other hand, thought unions are going to make him lose his job or give his employees too much right that we'll go and ransack his office, or somehow get away with kidnapping his family or something. Seriously though, he was fucking paranoid.
So ever the past year; after our winning of the union vote and during our "pre-unionized limbo", I've been nothing but brutally honest with my boss about just how unhappy I've been with the practices and philosophies at WCASS (workplace acronym). I have had many a shouting matches over the phone and in person with various managers about their hypocritical and ludicrous way of dealing certain cases. Though all of which have something to do with fair treatment and equal rights but they ultimately affect the lives of the kids we provide care for. Thus, putting my self-righteous ego aside, a huge part of me is tormented by the paradox and irony of all of it. I sometimes find it hard to face the kids and teach them about being fair and respectful for every person and living creature whilst putting away cheques signed by people who think it's perfectly ok to execute brilliant plans such as relocate an unwilling staff because another staff complained about her being "too pretty" which "distracted" the kids from their daily activities and fire people during the middle of a union movement.
In a way, I feel like I've failed the kids for leaving and having to lie to them why I will be leaving. Through I know that it will not be fair for me lay the real reason behind my leaving nor would it be productive in a sense that trying to explain something like this to them now would only do more harm than good. The shittiest thing about this whole thing is that I feel selfish for not sucking it up and do it for the kids. I just hope someone else would come along and set a better example for them.
Moving on to the future, my unofficial last day is next friday but really I'm suppose to stay for another week after that. At this point, I don't think it'll make a difference how long I stay because the human resources department which consists of only one person - my boss (autocracy much?) will "have time" to find someone to replace me. I am going to look at job postings on craigslist now. Wish me luck.
