7 min read · The Pillars I Stand On
I worked at Burger King for two and a half years. I’m not going to pretend that’s an easy thing to say or that it was an easy job to do. Fast food is hard work and most people who haven’t done it don’t fully appreciate that. But by the time I was seventeen and a half I was ready to be done with it.
There was a Foot Locker in the same mall. I had been walking in every few weeks for six months asking the manager if he had room for me. Every time he told me to come back. I kept coming back. Finally, around Christmas, he said yes.
I went home to tell my parents and I was ready to walk out of Burger King the next day and never look back. Instead my parents sat me down and told me I was going to give two weeks notice. I was going to go back to the job I had been trying to escape for six months, finish what I started, and give them enough time to find someone to replace me.
I was furious. In that moment it was entirely about me. I didn’t understand why any of it mattered. I had a new job. I was done.
I went back. I worked my two weeks. Later on I understood exactly why they made me do it. Because the standard they handed me that day didn’t have an exception clause. Not for a seventeen year old who finally got what they wanted. Not for anyone.
You finish what you start. Regardless of what it costs you.
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Fourteen years with a company, the call came. Move to Texas or take a severance package. I was not moving to Texas under any circumstances.
I won’t pretend the weeks that followed were clean. There was an alley. There was a panic attack. There were ten days where I wasn’t sure which direction was up. That story has already been told and it’s not what this piece is about.
What this piece is about is what happened after I stood up and dusted myself off.
At some point in those early days I said something out loud to myself. I wasn’t going to let this hiccup affect what I had spent fourteen years building. I was going to finish strong. I wanted the best possible reference when I walked out that door. More than that, I wasn’t going to let the people who were staying feel the cost of me slacking off. Something my parents had instilled thirty years earlier in a conversation about a two week notice I didn’t think I owed anyone.
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In those four months I worked on three things. Each one required a different version of what finishing actually looks like.
Loyalty
The first was a department transition that was already struggling under the weight of bad data, an offshore handoff, and a team that didn’t trust where things were headed. I could have let it sit. I was leaving. Nobody would have blamed me.
But the Director was a friend. A dear one, and I wasn’t going to let him down. When he found out I wasn’t making the move to Texas he looked at me and said:
I don’t know what we’re going to do without you.
My answer was four months of work. We cleaned the data, built the tools, and worked the overseas transition one project manager at a time until the foundation was solid enough for him to stand on after I was gone.
That’s loyalty. Not to an institution. To a person.
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Advocacy
The second was a platform migration that was quietly breaking things the people designing it couldn’t see. I knew who would feel the impact first because I had worked alongside them for years. I documented the gaps, built the proof, and fought for the fix until the day I left.
Whether anyone listened was no longer my decision.
That’s advocacy. Showing up for people before they know they’re going to need someone in their corner.
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Vision
The third was a vision. Fifteen years of company history sitting in disconnected systems waiting for someone to connect the dots. I knew I wasn’t going to be around to build it, but I documented it anyway. The roadmap, the opportunity, the value. Everything someone would need if they ever decided to look into it.
The person I handed it to said he couldn’t believe they were letting me walk out the door.
I planted that tree knowing I wasn’t going to sit under it. That’s vision. Building something because you believe it should exist, even when the benefit belongs to someone else.
· · ·
My parents gave me the practical version of this ethic. Don’t burn bridges. Give your two weeks. One day you’re going to need that person on the other end of the phone to answer one question honestly: would you rehire this person?
They were right and I’ve never forgotten it.
What I found in those four months was something bigger than a reference. I wasn’t just protecting what was behind me. I was fighting for a friend who was staying when I wasn’t. I was advocating for people whose names I knew and whose careers I cared about, who had no idea the floor was about to shift beneath them. I was documenting a vision I believed in because I believed in it. Not because anyone asked me to, not because it changed my outcome, not because there was a single thing in it for me.
The ethic my parents handed me was about not burning bridges on the way out.
What I found was that finishing well isn’t just about protecting what’s behind you. It’s about what you choose to build for the people who are still there, even when the institution has already moved on.
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There is a version of this story where I checked out. Nobody would have blinked. The end was already written and I could have spent those four months doing the minimum while the clock ran down. A lot of people would have. A lot of people do. Not just at the end of a job. In the middle of one too. When the promotion didn’t come. When the decision felt unfair. When the company stopped feeling like it deserved the best of what they had to give.
I understand that feeling. I’m not here to judge.
I want to ask the question underneath it. Because when you withdraw, when you give less than you’re capable of, quietly, where nobody can see it, the person who pays the price first isn’t the company. It’s you. It’s the standard you carry out the door. It’s the version of yourself you have to account for when the dust settles.
I didn’t quit on fourteen years by checking out for the last four months. I didn’t quit because the standard my parents handed me at seventeen didn’t have an exception clause for when things stopped being fair.
The company made their decision. That was theirs to make.
My decision, the one I could make, was who I was going to be on the way out the door.
So here’s the question I want to leave you with.
Not just for the person whose job is ending. For anyone who is somewhere right now giving less than they’re capable of and telling themselves the situation justifies it.
What is that costing you? Not the company. You.
Who are you becoming in the quiet moments when nobody is holding you accountable? When the consequence for slacking is zero and the only person left keeping track is you?
You already know the answer. The harder question is whether you’re willing to admit it.