It all started with an email from my husband that told me to stop being a coward and just quit. So I did. Suffice it to say that my husband will never half-jokingly call me a chicken, coward, or other similar term again.
Let me back up so that you can understand who I am and what the heck happened to make me up and quit my job.
I married my husband at the age of 32. Before that, I pretty much did whatever I wanted and paid for it all myself. Since the age of 21, there has never been a month that I haven’t personally paid my bills, raised some heck, and I’ve never asked my parents for a nickel except when I had to buy a washer and dryer for my new condo in 2003 and immediately paid it back the next month. I guess you could say I’ve always taken care of my business and never relied on anyone, especially a man, to help me. I’m not saying that in a boastful manner. It’s just that it never occurred to me to ask one to help or seek one for that express purpose. I realize that some people go to school and may need a spouse to help. I just never fell in that bracket. Some people also choose a mate specifically for money. I married for love and that’s that.
So what happened at work to make me snap and just make the decision to stay at home?
I worked as a corporate trainer for a company that shall remain nameless since I genuinely like most people there and think they have good hearts. I’ve worked there for a year since leaving a company I LOVED because my husband worked there. Upon hire at the new company, hereforth Company X, I was told that I would not have any need to travel or be expected to work odd hours.
What do you think happened? Besides me walking through an Arizona outside rental car facility in the middle of a spring heat wave when I was 5 months pregnant and them wanting me to travel when I was 35 weeks (I had a Dr. note though, thank God), I was also required to work until 7:00 at night to cover the shift of a woman who was "released" 3 months into my employment. At first that was 1 night a week. Then it was 2. I was to do supervisory work and make sure people weren’t spending ridiculous amounts of time in the bathroom. Number one, I’m not a supervisor. I have no desire to be one. In my eyes, the life of middle management sucks and you have to be in middle management to get to upper management where you can sit with your finger in your nose all day if you like. I’ve never felt that the emotional distress of the years in middle management was worth it. So it’s not something I aspire to. I want to do the following: Create a curriculum, write the training material for it which entails me sitting in a cubicle and making screen shots all day, and then deliver the program. Add evaluation to it if you like, but that’s the basic functionality of my job. I was not able to do the basics of my job because I was taking calls from people that were peeved off and apologizing to them or chasing disgruntled temps out of the bathroom where they’d been on their cell phone for an hour.
If there was a fire, I had no idea who was in the building and what to do. This was something I pointed out several times over 9 months. I begged for supervisor training if I was to perform those duties. Did I get it? No. Did I get a raise? Nope. I didn’t get that either.
All I got was a kick in the guts when my boss called me in November while I was on maternity leave saying that I would be required to stay more nights in a week to “help out.”
I remained quiet through this phone call because I knew I had to go back to work. But I fumed and that wasn’t a cool way to spend maternity leave.
So I went back and the first bliven email I opened was from somebody (who wasn’t even my manager) who had scheduled me for random late working evenings until the end of the year. At that point, I went to the person who used to be my boss (my boss works in AZ) and complained. Actually, I lost it and believe that the phrase “advanced degree and over 10 years of corporate experience. If you’re going to take a yard when I give an inch, you can pay me for the yard” was used.
No dice. I was told “We all need to pitch in when we’re understaffed.”
Skip ahead 3 working days. I’m pulled into former boss’s office with the other person who thought she managed me and was told to pick dates for me to stay late.
Now folks, I have a new baby at home so I have to know that my husband who is working on his MBA and freelances on the side can watch my daughter before I commit to anything.
I asked, “can I step out and call my husband?”
Their answer: “No.”
Am I in third grade? I don’t need a hall pass to contact my spouse.
My former boss said, “You can call him after we commit to dates.”
My husband had sent the coward email earlier that day so I replied in all my glory, “Here’s a date, December 30th. It will be my last day.”
And I walked out, called my hubs and told him that I did it, and packed up my office because I was sure I would be asked to leave that day. I wasn’t. I stayed until the 30th which surprised me because I wrote an official 2 page resignation letter which I thought was hilarious, but the CEO didn’t chuckle too much.
In short, I have never been so unprofessional and felt so great about it. I mean, it felt amazing to speak my mind and stick up for myself in a way that a lot of people can’t. I felt like Jennifer Aniston in Office Space when she says, “You want me to express myself? Here we go (flips off the restaurant.) This is me expressing myself. I don’t need this job. I quit.”
So I decided to stop paying daycare which is highway robbery and just take the hit to stay at home with my beautiful daughter.
I went home and cried. Not because I was sad or angry, but because I’ve never been so damn petrified in my life. I’ve never NOT had money in MY bank account. I’ve never not got up and gone to work unless I was on vacation which doesn’t count because it’s always in the back of your head that you’re going to go back.
So this is my experiment. Can I survive as a stay-at-home mom? Will my fears come to fruition? We are not rich people, so will my bargain shopping ability and coupon clipping personality come to bear fruits or will I be on TLC’s show Extreme Couponing anytime soon? Will my hubs expect dinner on the table at 7:00 every night even though I am still in pajamas because the baby is sick? Can I truly save money and become super mom by taking my daughter to the park instead of Chucky Cheese and then feeding her homemade baby food instead of Gerber? How does one perfect the art of baby food anyway? Where the heck is my bread maker? What is it like to be in a playgroup during the day? What is Kindermusik all about? Does the Jewish Community Center allow us to enroll in 6 month old swimming lessons if we’re not Jewish? Why does the library offer baby sign language classes? Why the blazes do babies need sign language anyway? How do I buy my husband’s birthday gift this year if I’m using his money anyway? Will I be able to find the time to write or will projectile poop problems get in the way? (And all mom’s out there know about the projectile poop and how, after 5 minutes of cleanup, there is somehow more and the cycle repeats.) Will I be able to do all of the house projects that my husband used to do but I am now in charge of? Christ, I’ve never caulked a bathroom. Isn’t that something I should have picked up in high school instead of drinking and sitting in the back of a Buick Skyhawk with my boyfriend? Why didn’t I ever take home economics? It would have come in handier than that college prep algebra my mother insisted on or Honors English time decoding the intricacies of Beowulf. I know it was enriching and everything, but I have never needed that in my life. I mean, even my old bookclub read things by Jennifer Weiner instead of anything heavy. In fact, the only class in high school, college, or grad school that I currently use is typing. It seems that consumer education instead of that college prep economics class would have been more useful. I didn’t even take the jerk around foods class that everyone took when they wanted to bake and get drunk in the high school kitchen instead of taking something harder.
Hopefully, I won’t bang my head against the wall and call my mother crying 6 months into this experiment that I call “indefinite weekends.”
Stay tuned. But if I don't write for awhile it's because I'm dealing with projectile poop.
