Naïve Quitting

My first real job was as the librarian at Warner/Chappell Music.

I loved it. I was 20 years old, just graduated college, just moved to New York City. I took it really seriously and learned a lot.

After 2½ years, though, I decided to quit to be a full-time musician. (Partially because I was too happy there! I was scared that if I didn’t force myself to quit, I’d never leave. Too comfortable.)

Since I had never quit a job before, and didn’t know how, I did what seemed to be the respectful and considerate thing to do: I found and trained my replacement.

(It wasn’t my boss’s fault I wanted to quit, so why should I make it his problem? If I want to quit, it’s my problem.)

I called on my old friend Nikki, who I knew would be perfect, and offered her my job at my current salary.

She came with me to the office for a week while I trained her in every aspect of the job.

Once she had it mastered, I went into my boss’s office on a Friday afternoon and said, “I need to quit now, but I’ve already trained my replacement. She’s great. She’ll take over for me starting Monday.”

My boss just looked a little stunned, then said, “Uh. Well. OK. We’ll miss you. Tell her to see HR about the paperwork.” And that was that.

Ten years later, I was running my own company, and for the first time, an employee told me he needed to quit.

I said, “Drag. Well. OK. I wish you the best! Who’s your replacement?”

He looked confused.

I said, “Have you found and trained a replacement yet?”

He looked a little stunned, then said, “No.... I think that’s your job.”

Now I was stunned. I asked a few friends, and found out he was right. People can just quit a job without finding and training their replacement. I had no idea. All these years, I just assumed what I did was normal.

There’s a benefit to being naïve to the norms of the world — deciding from scratch what seems like the right thing to do, instead of just doing what others do.