Colm O'Regan: I have resigned twice in my life... pure bliss
Colm O'Regan: "As the email traffic quietens down and he gets Lotto ad lie-ins and gets asked to hand back his Taoiseachy laptop and any ceremonial novelty socks that he’s not allowed keep, the question must be: What next?"
The AMOUNT of times I’ve said “I’m not the best person to lead the organisation forward.”
If I had a penny for each one, I wouldn’t need to work anymore. I’d resign straight away.
(And yes I have made All of This about me. But what kind of columnist would I be if I didn’t make it all about me.)
Whatever about his legacy and reasons, there was one thing that struck me watching The Resignation. I am jealous of the relief. Suddenly so many things that were his problem are no longer his problem — whether they’re his fault or not is a different story. But no longer his problem. I have resigned twice in my life. Both times were because I wasn’t the right person to lead the organisation forward. Well not the organisation, just that small team. Or actually lead myself.
I remember the period just after it. Pure bliss. Waking up and knowing that every email could be forwarded and very soon there were no more emails. Well, there might have been one or two about “can you give back the laptop” and “was it you wrote that on the toilet wall” (jk) but nothing about meetings, status reports, or issues. Obviously, the bliss doesn’t last long as I worried then about where the money was going to come from but still August 2010 was a series of delicious wakings-up. Like a Lotto ad without the money.
I should have savoured resignation-bliss more because once you become self-employed you don’t really resign as much. Some people resign directorships and cushy numbers on company boards after A Bad Thing Happened That Got Into The Papers. But by and large, the Form 11 crew don’t do much resigning. Apart from to our fate.
No, instead, jobs sort of just stop or you never heard from them again or you meant to get back to them and “whatever happened that?” but there are very few emails that begin with “It is with regret that I announce...”
There is no boardroom to flounce out of. No swipe card to hurl dramatically. For the most part that’s fine. Missing the opportunity to resign in fury is like missing cut knees because you like plasters. As the boss of me, an angry resignation letter would be an act of self-loathing in any case.
Neither are there the pleasing resignation day-dreams. I definitely had them in the old days. First I imagined writing a poignant, funny, and thought-provoking email to GLOBAL.ALL.PERSONNEL. The chief executive reads it, gazing thoughtfully into the middle distance, wondering if the company has just made a BIG MISTAKE. But it’s too late. I’m off painting an old fishing boat on a Mexican beach. Morgan Freeman is walking towards me. The local villagers are grateful to me for some reason.
At a — as yet unspecified — later stage in the fantasy, a small plane shudders to a halt on the dusty landing strip. The CEO, having shed his suit and dressed in blue shirt and chinos, comes out to offer a new deal. "Maybe I can learn something from you," he says. It turns out he always wanted to play the ukulele. The villagers expel him shortly after.
Even taking Morgan Freeman out of it, real life is rarely like that. The main thing about resignation is that no one joins you. Everyone else moves on. Unless you are like Alex Ferguson and keep turning up to watch company meetings from high up in the stands, you are irrelevant to Whatever’s Going On Now.
As the email traffic quietens down and he gets Lotto ad lie-ins and gets asked to hand back his Taoiseachy laptop and any ceremonial novelty socks that he’s not allowed keep, the question must be: What next?
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