5 min read · The Pillars I Stand On
Mom yells through the house.
Dinner’s ready. Wash your hands. Get your drinks.
That was the signal. Securing one of three plastic glasses with raised and indented squares was the prize. These glasses were castoffs, brought home by my younger sister from the restaurant where she worked. Most nights there were enough. But if any were in the dishwasher when dinner hit the table, someone might be going without, and I never wanted to go without. The mission: first the sink to wash our grubby paws, then to the cabinet where hopefully a clean plastic glass lay waiting to be used, and the bragging rights that came with it.
That silly race happened more times than I can count. When I visit home and open the cabinet, I smile and greet my old friends. To this day these worn, cracked, chipped plastic glasses are my first choice. I have already told my family, when mom and dad are gone, I want those three glasses.
Not because they’re valuable. Because they’re real.
I was nineteen and making five dollars an hour at Foot Locker when my younger sister got a job at the salad hut. She was seventeen and making five twenty-five plus tips. I was the older one. I was supposed to be further along. So I put in my two weeks notice, because I couldn’t have my little sister making more than me. About a week after I put in my notice, my manager offered me a raise of thirty-five cents to stay.
I took it.
And then I did something I don’t think most nineteen year olds would have done. I stopped and asked him a harder question than the money.
Are you going to be mad at me going forward for thinking about leaving?
I wasn’t worried about the raise anymore. I was worried about us. About whether there would be hard feelings. Whether he would think I was unhappy, disloyal, ungrateful. Whether the relationship that had meant something to me was going to be different now on the other side of what I had just done. In my head, I had already started turning into a disloyal employee. He didn’t hesitate.
I could never get mad at someone for trying to better their own life. That would be pure selfishness on my part.
I have never forgotten his honest answer.
· · ·
That man jumpstarted my career in management. He saw something in a teenager sweeping floors and developed it. I got my degree in business management because of it. He gave me a standard I didn’t fully understand yet and trusted me to grow into it. That one answer, on an ordinary day, in an ordinary conversation, became something I carried with me moving forward. I still see him about once a year when I go back home. We laugh about old times, and I reiterate to him the influence he has had on my life.
I have watched managers take it personally when someone leaves. Make it hard on them on the way out. Withdraw. Go cold. Sometimes say things that follow the person into whatever comes next. As if the employee’s ambition was an act of aggression. As if wanting more was the same as taking something away.
Losing someone good hurts. It changes the rhythm of a team. That part is real. But if one person leaving breaks everything, that is not their fault. They just decided they wanted more for their life, and that should be enough. You do not get to punish someone for your own unpreparedness, and you do not get to make their growth about your wound.
Every person who left my group, I let go clean. No guilt. No hard feelings carried into the hallway behind them. No making it difficult because the timing was inconvenient for me. Instead, I told them they were going to do great. I shook their hand, looked them in the eye, and left the door open if whatever came next wasn’t what they thought it would be. They could always come back.
I meant every word.
Giving notice is almost never fun. You practice how and when you’re going to deliver the news. There’s the fear of the unknown after it’s delivered, and the walking on eggshells until your end of the bargain is met. When the moment calls for it, I find myself reaching for his words to ease the pain.
I wanted to give people wings, not ground them because their choice was inconvenient for me.
A thirty-five-cent gap in pay between my younger sister and me sent me looking for more, and looking for more sent me to a conversation with a man who gave me an answer I have been living by ever since. Those thirty year old clear plastic glasses with raised and indented squares are a reminder of a point in time when I learned a valuable lesson.
I still watch a version of this play out in workplaces today. Someone gives their notice, and somehow it becomes personal. As if choosing something better for themselves is the same as turning on the people they’re leaving behind. If the roles were reversed, you’d want someone happy for you.
You already know what you’d want from someone else. The only question left is how you’ll act in that moment.