I Quit!

Dear Mr. Mason

I am writing you this letter today to let you know that I am quitting, immediately.

Before I explain, I want to start by thanking you for the opportunity to work for you all these years. You gave me a chance, a shot, when so many others wouldn't. You claimed that you saw something in me when you first met me -  you couldn't say what and you claimed that "the words escaped you" and not even the provided dictionary and thesaurus helped. Oh, I was young and naive and far sighted in those days. I had finished school and moved out. Most of my friends had moved west or east, but I always liked the middle of things and moved central. It just never sounded good when I said that out loud, which I often did, and usually in your office on Fridays after a long week in the factory.

I wasn't initially sure that factory work was for me, but you wouldn't take no for an answer, even when it was the correct answer and all others answers were horribly wrong and confusing. I kept asking you to just take the 'no' and be done with it, but you adamantly refused - it was something that I both admired and hated about you, and I still do. And yet, I grew to love this work; this slaving away over machines creating an infinite amount of seemingly random parts that were instantly shipped away never to have their usage or value explained to us no matter how many times we wrote letters and signed petitions.

The work was almost literally back-breaking at times and other times the loud roar of the machinery coupled with the near blinding incandescent lighting that you installed based on your interpretation of your horoscope caused me to feel like I was trapped in some sort of soundproof pod that would have had the most ridiculous electricity bills. Not to mention the dry cleaning bills! "How are you dirtying so many socks" my wife wondered during our evening chats by the fireplace. "Always with the dirty socks!" she'd mutter under her breath with a level of anger that was really really hard to quantify. She almost came across as happy. She was always so concerned with the condition of my socks and my lungs, and usually in that order. But I loved her. I also loved the work in a very different way, for a time, although that time has now come to an end, as all periods of time do, mostly by definition.

Yes, I am quitting. In case that isn't clear - you will stay and I will go, as that is how it works and I won't negotiate! My time has come to leave. You can't make me stay or convince me to change my mind, but you can try all you want, with the only catch being that I will already be gone and you'll be talking to yourself in the mirror as per usual. I am not making this decision lightly, as I believe you deserve the darkness and not only because of your high sensitivity to light.

You may be wondering if I am leaving solely because of you and your propensity for strictness and tough love and your unique management style you often refer to as "starving-wolf-around-slow-lazy-deliciously-fatty-pigs" which I always found borderline offensive as well as being borderline a great idea for a series of hilarious children's books full of moralistic messages. Well, rest easy my old friend - I am not leaving because of you.

But why then? It is just so hard to put it into words why I must go. It's sort of like you are a monkey and I am a banana supplier who is either out of bananas for the foreseeable future or has raised the prices from nothing to $20 a bunch fully knowing that a monkey has no access to money. Does that make any sense to you? Oh why is this so hard! Is it because you were like a father to me when my own father was quite supportive and it just felt repetitive and strange and you both got so upset and jealous of the other? Is it because I can't look you in the eyes without crying as you have always kept an ample supply of all of my allergens nearby for reasons beyond my capacity to understand? Is it because you need me and would be lost without me especially because the factory is way too "maze-like"?

Well, I am sorry - I have to look out for myself and do what is best for me and after doing that, I then have the option to do what is best for someone else of my choosing and then I have to leave. I know, in time, you and your business will be equally fine, but my money's on the business to win. You have my backing to hire someone to replace me, though if they have too many similar characteristics or physical traits to me or if you force them to dress and walk like me, it will raise eyebrows and that will only be funny if they are big and black and bushy like large caterpillars.

I am excited to see what is next for me out there. I anticipate that there will be many doors and windows and potentially stairways linking the doors together and, if they decided to splurge, the occasional floor or ceiling or electrical outlet. Look, please don't take this overly personally, or, if you must, at least take it only slightly personally, but you have micromanaged me so much so that I think the micro part lost all connection to the truth. I should resent you for it, but, I also have to thank you as you have helped me develop a resiliency that I thought only cartoon rabbits or the occasional actual rabbit, could achieve.

I now see that I am just a screwdriver and you are not only all out of screws, but it's like you have evolved beyond the need for screws or screwdrivers at all and you have forgotten how great those good ol' days with all of the screws really was. I feel redundant and superfluous and a little tight in my hamstrings and should probably go see my physiotherapist, but I will probably put it off and put it off, as many of us do, until it turns into a debilitating injury.

Part of me doesn't want you to cry, while another, much larger and infinitely more significant part, wants you to cry for days just so can see how it felt for some of us who worked for you and had our hopes and dreams and extremities crushed repeatedly and ritualistically while you stood there and watched with your eyes. But, I don't want to leave like this, angry and vindictive and efforting to make you, of all people, cry, so instead, I have written you this paradoxical letter to say thank you for all you have done in my attempt to "take a higher road" and "be a better man" and "use up my stationary". I have also decided, against my best judgement, to give you this vase. Why would I give you an empty vase? Why would I not give you a vase with flowers? Why would I, an adult male, give you, my adult male superior, a gift that has anything to do with vases and flowers at all especially considering neither of us is at all comfortable with anything that isn't extremely masculine and macho like ground beef and car tires and charcoal? Am I attempting to be cryptic or euphemistic or mystic? Why would I write you a letter doused with perfume, covered with rose petals, and including overexposed photos of myself dressed like a pink fairy? Why indeed?

I will leave you with these questions.

Larry