Does anybody remember how people used to quit their jobs because they were unhappy? New entrants to the job market will think you’re making things up when you tell them that folks used to resign for petty, trivial excuses such as feeling unappreciated, being passed over for promotions, getting paid 40% less than the market rate or merely having an abusive boss who swore at you and called you a useless idiot.
Folks used to simply walk away from such jobs and find another one within three months. Those were the good ol’ pre-Covid and pre-Ramanomics days. I remember three fellows who left gainful employment at that Imana factory in New Germany, in quick succession, some 20-odd years ago. All because they used to be ribbed mercilessly for perpetually smelling like soya soup powder.
Fast forward to 2025 and they would think long and hard before quitting. This is even if your job at MoliCare entails drinking copious amounts of senna tea every morning, just so you can walk around the office dressed in incontinence diapers so that focus groups can ascertain their efficacy.
In this Ramanomics era, folks are acutely aware that the job they’re in could be their last. About five years ago a 41-year-old New York woman discovered on a Friday that she had won $3m in a state lottery. Apparently, she spent the entire weekend eating chilli nachos and burritos and, through sheer willpower and sphincter control, bottled it up internally until Monday, when peristalsis could deliver it on her boss’s desk.
About 78.3% of the people reading this would tender their resignations by 8.01am tomorrow if you could guarantee them their salaries for the next 12-18 months
Now, no reader of this column would be that childish and uncouth. The first two times I let my bosses know I was leaving, I got them really excited by sending cryptic texts asking for a meeting to share some news that “you will love hearing”.
Both were, at the time, gleefully planning to subject me to nonsensical disciplinary processes for insubordination. And by that, they really meant that I wasn’t prepared to obey instructions that made no sense to me. So, my resignations were merely pre-emptive strikes. And few things annoy managers more than being robbed of the opportunity to sit on a junior’s chest and pinch their nipples until they’re purple-black. So, both spent the 30-day notice period I spent at work sulking because I had taken the wind out of their sails.
Given the working conditions many folks are subjected to, it is a miracle not more people are wandering the gardens of psychiatric farms across the globe. My unscientific thumbsuck is that about 78.3% of the people reading this would tender their resignations by 8.01am tomorrow if you could guarantee them their salaries for the next 12-18 months.
The only people in my circles with little or no appetite to leave their employer are civil servants. And I get why. A government job is a sweet gig. Most of my friends who work for the state are unapologetic about why they’re sticking to their jobs. They paint a picture of a comfortable, down-lined nest in which they plan to remain cocooned until they turn 59 years, 11 months and 29 days old.
Just so they can hand in their laptops and access cards and walk away into the sunset with their pensions. I hear tales of folks with master’s degrees in engineering reporting to bosses who have BAs in Bible studies from dubious online institutions. The latter walk around the corridors of power, hiding behind the invisible body armour of uncles with “struggle credentials” — they got on the wrong side of Oupa Gqozo and fled into “exile” in the Transkei.
Endless meetings, workshops, symposia, flying all over the country and the globe, presenting the same technical report they wrote in 2013 every year in roadshows. At my age, this is the sort of sweet gig that is right up my alley. I wouldn’t even mind making my Biblical studies boss their cup of Ricoffy with eight teaspoons of sugar and four of Cremora and calling them mphathi (leadership). And should I decide to quit, there will not be any deposits on the desk of any progeny of a struggle hero.
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