Dear Boss,

Please accept this as my letter of resignation. I have come to the conclusion that I am ‘not a fit’ for the company. I know that you will file this letter in my file which will then be stored in a cabinet to be moved to a box in a dark room where it will sit until it passes the cut off period and you can legally destroy the record but formality dictates that I submit it to you. It will occupy about 1 millimeter of space in your mind and will be purged as soon as you finish reading it. It would be nice if you absorbed the information but you are too busy so you won’t and let’s be honest, you really don’t care. My position will either be replaced or absorbed. Everyone will move on. Sort of.

I say ‘sort of’ because even though I am one of millions of dissatisfied employees, the pot is simmering and a collective of disenfranchised, discouraged, stressed, angry, depressed, unmotivated, alienated and disheartened employees is boiling. You will look at me with your Dolores Umbridge smile and your sightless eyes and shake my hand and wish me well. I will go somewhere else and for a year, maybe 3 or 4 if I’m lucky, I will think, “This is a good company to work for, they are different here, not like my last place.” Soon the honeymoon phase will be over and I will be part of the collective of workers bees trying to compensate for their job dissatisfaction with boats and toys and more shoes than I can possibly need. You will move on also because deep down inside you feel the same as I do, you just don’t admit it to yourself. You call it, ‘advancing my career’ but it is really that you are equally disenfranchised with the lack of respect and consideration for your thoughts and ideas. You may be a bigger cog in the wheel of the working world but you are still a cog, just like me and millions of others.

Yours truly,

I never did find a job I loved until I retired although there were a few that came close to being in the category of, “I’d do this even if I wasn’t paid.” I was like ‘most people -- 80% according to Deloitte's Shift Index survey -- who are dissatisfied with their jobs'.  Now that I have the time to look back and reflect I notice a common theme in my own personal job dissatisfaction and the dissatisfaction of others- management. I had one great boss out of about 20, mostly they were mediocre and a few even diabolical, some tried to be great bosses but their boss was a jerk and it filtered down. The letter above was never given to a boss because one has to pretend every job is fantastic and the only reason we are looking for a new one is because we want "advancement" or were let go through no fault of our own. We have to play our part in the, ‘we are all great employees and all the companies we worked for are great”. I was tempted to give my last boss a letter similar to this one but the 10 people who had resigned in the 6 months ahead of me had tried to explain why they were leaving but they were given the, “I guess you just aren’t a good fit.” speech as they walked out. What’s the point if you won’t listen?

Why was I dissatisfied? It seems for the same reason many others are; I didn’t have a voice. Sure I sat in meetings and offered suggestions, created presentations, and made goals but I was only regurgitating what management wanted to hear, with my own spin. There is not a lot of room for dissent. If you try to bring up issues or raise warnings about problems you find yourself being subtly ostracized and it happens very insidiously and slowly. You ask your boss why you weren’t promoted and you get vague comments like, ‘they were more qualified’, yet you met every point on the list of qualifications. Getting a direct answer in corporate America is impossible because everyone is afraid of repercussions for honesty and you receive phrases like, ‘not a good fit’, ‘just a different place on the bus’, ‘more valuable in this (lower) position’, etc, but you know that it is time to polish up the old resume and start looking.

What do most employees want? More money and the time away from work to spend it without being made to feel guilty because their cell phone isn’t permanently on and attached to their ear. Are they given that? Hell no! Not even a few executives at the top who do get the salary have the freedom of a personal life. Trying to suggest you might want a work free space at your home or vacation is the sure path to job death- ‘she just isn’t a team player’. "I think a lot of people are fearful of the workload they'll come back to, and some know they'll be on call during their vacation anyway," John de Graaf, executive director of the nonprofit Take Back Your Time said. "The increasing inequality plays a major factor in the U.S. because people are feeling they have to work longer to keep pace. Other reasons include workers who don't want to be seen as the office slacker and career couples unable to schedule their vacations at the same time." 

It’s pretty simple, really, humans like to be happy, they want to do things they enjoy and if they can’t do what they enjoy then they want to be compensated in some way, so why are people unhappy at work? Because management doesn’t care, or if they do they are not doing a very good ‘job’ of showing it. It seems their bosses are largely to blame as 2/3 of Americans don’t like their boss. The rules at work are made by bosses and if bosses are the problem then changing them seems to be the solution. "Here's something they'll probably never teach you in business school: The single biggest decision you make in your job — bigger than all of the rest — is who you name manager," wrote Gallup CEO and Chairman Jim Clifton, according to CBS News.  However, it will probably not happen because, like the work place, this is a hamster circle; employees don’t have a voice, bosses won’t listen, employees are unhappy that their bosses won’t listen so they don’t use their voice.

Now that my children are grown and working in their chosen profession I hear workplace stories from them, their friends and acquaintances at social gatherings. Apparently with all of our technology, data collection, mentoring, seminars, surveys, meetings and specialists nothing has changed. The information is right there but they don't want to see the real answer, money and respect, so they spend time and money trying to find a different answer. In fact, it seems that things have gotten worse. Employees are working longer hours with less staff and less money for themselves and for their departments. The most popular phrase is ‘due to budget cuts’. Is it any wonder we feel like nothing gets accomplished or that our efforts aren’t valued? Add to this the worry of ‘when is the next lay-off’ employees do not want to stand out for any reason.

In the early 90’s the corporation I worked for embraced TQM, Total Quality Management. We were sent to seminars, had strategy meetings and dinners to determine what was wrong with our company and how we could be #1 instead of #3 in the industry. After thousands of hours and even more thousands of dollars the employees told us, management, that we weren’t listening to them and they felt they had no voice in the decisions that were made. So what did the executives and CEO do in response? They fired the plant managers, replaced salaried and longtime hourly workers with outside contractors and temporary labor. So much for having a voice, more than half the company lost their jobs. It cured one thing; the desire to speak out about problems. "Yet studies find that “what actually lands many companies high satisfaction ratings and a place on "best workplace" lists is often a culture that encourages workers to voice opinions.”  Along with no voice, “nothing extinguishes passion quite like the feeling of being paid less than you deserve. Poor management can ruin even the most passionate and well-paid employees love for their job.” Epic fail for that corporation. By the way, they are no longer in business.

Before you say it: “My company isn’t like that.” Are you sure? Or maybe you are just incredibly lucky OR maybe you are part of the problem, tough to think about it. Do I have an answer? Yes, do you want to hear it? If not, then stopping reading here. My solution is to actively listen, not judge and don’t make a mental note to dismiss the person’s next promotion because they said something negative about the company. There are good places to work and people to work for, certainly, Nick Hanauer appears to be one that has an idea of what is wrong. “Which is why the fundamental law of capitalism must be: If workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Which makes middle-class consumers, not rich businesspeople like us, the true job creators. Which means a thriving middle class is the source of American prosperity, not a consequence of it. The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.” He also talks about wages and why it is important to also pay employees a living wage. 

If you live in a home with 24 bathrooms and six kitchens you  probably don’t understand what I am trying to get across. If you have a closet just for your shoes, you also probably don’t understand what I trying to express. I will try to sum it up for you simply: People hate their jobs and they hate working for you because you aren’t listening to them and aren’t paying them a decent wage. If you haven’t figured out that happy employees make quality products then please open your mind, your ears and your wallet or sooner or later your business will be impacted negatively. Soon you will hear them and you won't like what they are saying.

Revolutionary France

When employees come to you and tell you that their boss is a jerk to them and treats them badly don’t tell them, however politely, to ‘suck it up’, actively listen and then have a conversation with that boss, don’t ignore or continue to promote a boss employees don’t like. It may seem logical and financially sound to do so because his/her department numbers look good on the books but people will leave if you do nothing and you will have to recruit and train all over again. If you have 6 kitchens and your employees barely have one then, I’m going to say something offensive here, are you sitting down? You make too much money! There, I said it. Yes, you make too much money. The current US average is: $12,259,894 to $34,645. Don’t finish that thought...... No, you don’t work that much harder than other people in your company. No, you don’t shoulder that much more stress and responsibility than others in the company. You have convinced yourself you do to justify your million dollar salary, your triple million dollar bonus and your stock options but you really don’t work that much harder. CEO-To-Worker pay ratio has ballooned to 1,000 Percent Since 1950. Have your work efforts increased 1000%?  Sorry, I had to be the one to break it to you. You really don’t work that much harder, a little, but not as much as you have convinced yourself. Wait, before you finish that next thought...... Yes, I do know because I was once you. I had a lovely office with floor to ceiling windows overlooking manicured gardens, I wore expensive suits to the office, sat in a comfy chair, attended fancy dinners with suppliers, shared in your meetings and received a great salary and bonus. Unlike you, when I went on the production floor I felt guilty because I knew those people were wearing themselves out for hardly any money. You didn’t listen to the employees, or me either, when I tried to suggest that we should keep work here in the US instead of sending it overseas. The compensation wasn’t enough for me to turn my back on those people so I left, I just didn’t tell you why I left because I knew you didn’t really want to know. We can all keep going down the same oblivious road we are on and the economy will crash, again. Or we can do something different. Maybe you won’t listen to me or your employees or Mr. Hanauer or Costco CEO and President Craig Jelinek, (who has came out in support of the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, which aims to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, then adjust it after that for inflation) but when you don’t have enough customers to buy your product maybe then you will listen as you shut your company door for the last time and you will finally undertand the value of treating employees fairly.

In summary, actively listen and modify company policies and direction according to reasonable input from your employees and pay them well for the hard work they do, from your ridiculous profits. And if you don’t think I’m talking to you, I hope you are right but maybe you should ask the people who work for you, do they want free donuts on Friday or do they want a voice and a living wage?