My Co-worker's Resignation Is Not a Goodbye
We will still remain in touch with one another, and that is a balm to a hurting heart.
Our last day together as co-workers wasn't long enough
Friday, May 09, 2025, came quicker than I expected. It appeared with lightning on its heels and predators in the shadows. I dreaded the day because I have a problem with... letting go of those who have crept into my heart.
Although she exited our contracted company in style and gracefully, she will not be by my side (loosely speaking) for the remainder of my time with this company. And that, when I truly dwell on it, is scary.
We have been Frick & Frack since December. I could bounce an idea off her or confirm a new guideline without pause. She could inquire about insurances, coverage, and certain criteria to be sure she was assessing patients accordingly.
We were sounding boards amid a mess, and we sustained because we had each other.
The future will see us with the same company, still working at different sites, but we will no longer need each other's helpful and resourceful information.
Her role, effective Monday, May 12, 2025, will be completely different from mine when we once shared the same role of Patient Navigator. She'll be moving throughout mazes that will lead her to different paths.
We will still have patients, but this will try our patience.
Our last day together just wasn't long enough. But it is not the last day for us.
Our Operations Manager was silent - she hid in the shadows
I noticed that our Operations Manager kept to herself. She did not call a Friday morning meeting out of nowhere just so she could see our smiling faces via our respective Teams message windows.
She barely typed a full sentence to us. She hid in the shadows so much on Friday that my co-worker said, "I'm going to reach out to T****, because I haven't heard from her all morning." And she did.
She took at least two hours to respond. I am told the response was sporadic, unclear, and lacking a measurable tone. We are all grieving in vastly different ways.
We are bearing witness to a company crumbling before our eyes and the people that make up our peaceful environments are making and have made their exits.
When our Training Manager resigned on Friday, April 11, 2025, I knew we would soon recognize the turmoil waiting behind closed office doors to pounce on us.
And here we are. Our Operations Manager did not have much to say because she was losing yet another employee and she cannot do anything about it. She is watching the walls tumble down and she doesn't have the strength to hold them up.
This is not "goodbye" - this is just "see you later"
My co-worker and I know that we will still have access to one another via Teams when I begin my new role on Tuesday, May 27, 2025. We will also keep in touch via text message on our phones.
We will find time to meet up and do things we long to do in the presence of one another. There are more memories to be made, and I am prayerful that time and God will allow us all of this.
There is no room for final exits when we both know the doors are open for us. She has full access to my open door, and I have full access to hers.
We are forever bonded by the trauma that tried to break us within a company that still doesn't know the damage it has done.
She has moved on, but she isn't moving away from me. And there is solace in the knowledge of that statement.
Change can be challenging on its own, but what you've had to endure is unenviable. I guess Kendrick was right when he said everybody grieves different.
I'm glad you and your esteemed colleagues are made of sterner stuff.
>> We are bearing witness to a company crumbling before our eyes and the people that make up our peaceful environments are making and have made their exits.
Went through one of those in the late 1990s, Tre. Our company (programming and documentation consulting and project management) got bought out by a "body shop" — a company that hired out programmers and tech writers individually. Our purchaser came in explaining that they wanted to adopt our business model (assigning teams to a project, then handling it from start to finish before turning everything over to the customer) and that everything would be the same, only better. 😐
Two years later, after a sequence of cascading failures proving things were *not* the same, my former team and I were rented out piecemeal to companies and state government organizations that needed skilled headcount. I went job shopping and was lucky to find an almost-local company that needed a new MIS manager. They liked me!
I sent a gleeful email to my former group, wishing them good luck and taking the opportunity to bad-mouth my soon-to-be-former employer. Alas, I filled in email addresses from memory, and one of my recipients turned out to be a VP... When we would keep in touch for the next couple years, my former coworkers would remind each other "not to pull a Herlocker" and use the directory. 🙄
Two months after I left, the SVP in charge of my old group called together the remaining survivors to tell them that unless someone knew about new contract opportunities, the remaining employees would be terminated in a week. And so it went.
On the plus side, some years later I needed someone to rewrite my new company's IT documentation, and I was able to bring on one of my old colleagues through a temp agency. She did a great job. 😊