Yesterday was a colleague's last day. He was the only person in the company with whom I'd discussed the possibility of leaving, and even then I didn't go into great detail as to why I might be doing so. We had similar complaints about the company and its direction, we'd been through the same advanced management training, and we had similar thoughts on what really mattered in our business. So it made sense to confide in him, and he'd confided in me about his own explorations for employment outside the company.
Even so, he was shocked that I'd taken the leap. Especially as I don't have a job lined up.
He called me, mid-afternoon. “They think I'm a flight risk,” he said. “They had my assistant manager come in first thing this morning in case I decided to bolt so there'd be someone there.”
The night previous we'd done an inventory at his store. He wasn't there, and because it was his last week no one really expected him to be there. The jiggering of Friday's schedule had been talked about, extensively, at the inventory. I told him so.
“Maybe I should leave, then,” he said. “If they think I'm a flight risk. Why go to all the trouble.”
I told him the decision was up to him. So it came as no surprise when he showed up an hour later at my store.
He wanted to talk, to vent about the company one last time. He wanted to see how I was doing. He wanted to know the response I'd gotten from my district manager.
He told me about this, a lawsuit filed in Louisiana against GameStop by store managers who believe they're owed overtime as store managers aren't actually managers. My colleague was excited — possible class-action! Possible retroactive pay back at least a year (to when the merger closed)! (Exclamation points are his.) Me? I was a little more restrained in my reaction. I wish those Louisiana managers well in the lawsuit — I think it's absolutely true. We don't make decisions anymore. We don't have any say in the way our stores are run. That's certainly an aspect of my frustration with the company.
It's not my fight anymore. That's quite a liberating feeling. It's like a weight has been lifted and I can breathe again.
So… I'm going out to dinner tonight. I hesitate to call it a date; I'm not sure that it is. I'm not even sure where we're going — I haven't thought that far ahead. Doesn't matter a whole lot. I'll ask her — maybe she has some ideas.