Been there, Marla.
Actually, been on both ends. I had one boss at a place where we had a change in ownership and top management. My boss and I worked wonderfully well together. His new boss and I really disliked each other. It was only a matter of time, and I don't think it could have been pleasant being the fellow in the middle.
Had another similar situation about 25 years later, only the guy in the middle was the boss and the pressure came from his wife. I felt less sorry for him because he owned the business, but she owned him, and I knew whose fault that wasn't.
The first time around, the sword over my head was awfully oppressive, but, by the second time, I'd picked up (and even lost by then) some gray hair, and I played a cool hand and just made sure I didn't do anything that would justify the cut and let them weasel out of my getting unemployment.
And there was a certain macabre entertainment value to it: By the end, she was like a tourist at Buckingham Palace trying to get the guard to flinch.
The only negatory -- well, besides finding myself out of work -- was that the payoff for Caine in being so passively agreeable through the first three-quarters of an episode of Kung Fu is that, at the end, he gets to finally unleash all that bottled-up whoop-ass, and I didn't get to do that.
You always have these fantasies of making some grand dramatic that'll-learn-ya gesture as you leave, but it mostly happens in comic strips and TV sitcoms, not real life. Not only does it rarely happen, but, when it does, it rarely works.
The grand gesture, if they notice it at all, just convinces them they were right.
At a couple of places where I quit because things were falling apart, I did write letters to management explaining why I was leaving, explaining things that really needed to be corrected in order for the company to ... gah! ... it sounds as lame writing those words now as those stupid letters probably sounded to them if and when they bothered to read them.
If they wanted things done my way, they would have made sure I didn't quit. Duh.
But I've also been on the Marla side a couple of times.
The first time, there was no way around it: The new hire was so insubordinate that "look, just go home now and we'll talk about it tomorrow" escalated quickly into, "okay, then just go home and don't come back tomorrow."
And the case of the fellow in our band who got drunk in his first gig with us and threw a drink at the barmaid was pretty obvious, with the only rotten part being that, the next day, his wife called the guy who had always insisted that he was in charge, begging for us to give her hubby another chance, and didn't he tell her it was my decision, give her my phone number and then call me to make sure I didn't buckle?
Up until then, the only decisions I ever got to make were what we played next, and half the time, he overruled me on that. A few tears on his shoulder and suddenly I'm the boss.
But in a more corporate setting, I once hired an assistant who was very much like Courtney in Retail in that she didn't do anything outrageous enough to force my hand, but it turned out that her idea of "knowing Excel" meant "knowing how to plug numbers into an existing spread sheet and hit 'save'."
Things like "sorting," "filtering" and "totalling" were beyond her, she also couldn't figure out our word-processing program and she wasn't real clear on what we did or why, nor did she seem terribly interested. It was a job.
Not one she could do, mind you, but there she was anyway.
And, yes, she got through the 90 days before this all began becoming obvious.
Like Marla, I agonized, only instead of unburdening myself to a subordinate (tsk!), I burdened my boss with it all.
I felt maybe I was expecting too much: My previous assistant had been a crackerjack and only quit because she had outgrown being anybody's assistant. She found a job that not only paid more than we were paying her but nearly twice what I was making myself.
So maybe it wasn't fair of me to expect that level of above-and-beyond performance, or to demand that kind of enthusiasm, or to want some basic competence or at least a willingness to just do your freaking job ferchrissake.
We decided to (at our expense) have her take a course in spreadsheet applications at the local community college, and, in the meantime, I loaded some interactive self-instructional materials on her computer to help her get through until the next start date for the class.
And she didn't wanna. And she pouted. And became surly. And we finally, reluctantly decided that, well, the ax was just gonna have to fall.
The morning I was going to invite her for that fatal cup of coffee, my boss saw me come into the building and my phone was ringing as I got to my desk.
She had quit, and not only had she quit, but she had blistered us in her exit interview for being unsupportive and refusing to help her figure out how to do things.
We had a quick laugh over that parting gesture, and then I hired an energetic assistant who not only wanted the job but who could do spreadsheets, charm the clientele, stay one step ahead of my disorganized ass and basically make coming to work fun again.
Pull the chain, Marla.
Trust me, corporate won't even bother to read what Courtney says in her exit interview, much less care why she left.
If they cared about their employees, they'd still be spinning their wheels down at your level.
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