The Inevitable has Happened

The Hippie is dead! Long live the hippie!

Well, no quite dead. But her career with the Public Service is.

She has announced to all and sundry that she is leaving us, and going to work for the local council organising a festival. Apparently she used to do this a bit.

So, she is off, and escaping from the fun and frivolity of outbound calls to our select clientele.

When she announced this news, one of my co-workers and I looked at each other, and said: "Are we surprised?"

Nope. We are not surprised that The Hippie has taken the first opportunity she could find to get out of here. I am surprised though, that she has gone back to a situation that she has told us all a number of times that she had to get out of before because she couldn't handle it. Just like when she had to quit her photography job because she couldn't handle it.

I am starting to see a repeated pattern here.

This reminds me of a young lady I used to work with at my previous employer. She had come to our team, and although she was a nice enough person, she could get a bit negative at times about her previous work, and sometimes about the work she was doing with us at the time.

Anyway, after a short while, she left us to go work for a different company, in a different industry. A couple of months later, my then manager had to contact another company, and found himself talking to this young lady. She had gone through 2 different jobs with different companies since she had left us. Shortly after this brief reconnection, she called me directly and asked if there were any jobs available with our team. We had obviously refilled her position since she had gone, but she was asking because apparently she didn't realise how good our work place was before she left. She said she wasn't happy in the places she had been since she left us. I felt for her, but asked her if she will ever be happy in a workplace. She insisted that she could be.

Unfortunately we were not able to bring her back into the fold. But at the same time, I do tend to feel that you should never go back to a previous employer without a very good reason, and not just because everywhere else you have been to sucks.

This young lady didn't know what she had until she lost it. I hope she learnt from her mistake and was able to chalk it up to experience.

Anyway, I digress. The Hippie is now leaving us. I played the role of the encouraging team mate: "This should be a good move for you", "That sounds like a good challenge", "Its a better move, career wise", etc. But inside I am jumping cartwheels and shouting WOO-HOO! and spinning on the floor, a-la Homer Simpson style.

God, I am a hypocrite.

But a happy one.

DPS

PS, no image for this post. I wanted to find images of a "dead hippie" and "office escape" or "work escape" and "homer Simpson" Flor spinning. Nothing that Google images found was quite right, and I can't be bothered looking elsewhere. Besides, if it ain't on Google, it doesn't exist.