Good ol' LinkedIn inspiration

I saw this recently on a LinkedIn post, and it was a punch in the gut – how truthful these words are!

1. You don't resign when you resign. Mental resignation happens much before. Physical resignation is the outcome of a complete loss of hope more than anything else.

2. Money motivates, but only to a point. Rarely will an employee leave just for money.

3. Every single job will plateau at some point in time. Create a training plan and a career path for each employee and structure it to the point where the employee knows the dates for his/her next training session, and the outcome of performing well in training.

4. Act in ways that constantly assure employees that their problems are your problems. You own up to their problems, they own up to yours.

5. Trust is not a word, it is an attitude. Only trust can inspire trust. Your policies should constantly reinforce trust in employees


I’ve “resigned” from a few jobs. Most were retail jobs I worked while in college and/or grad school, and the reasons ranged from a new job to “oh my gosh, I hate everyone, I need to not be in this place right now”. This results in what some employers might see as “job-hopping”. I’ve held multiple jobs, most, if not all, for periods of 1-3 years. Now part of this is when I first graduated with my MLIS in 2010, there were very few FT jobs for someone with two internships, but no other practical library experience. So I did what I could, and I took any job which came my way. This had me working as a Consultant fresh from library school, with a three month job here, or in one such lucky case, a 12-month gig. It saw me working at Borders in the five months before they closed completely, archiving photographs for the Perkins School for the Blind, and building a library from scratch for a photographic center (the lucky 12-month gig). My first “stable” gig was still part-time at an academic library, and had me working a second job as security for an art museum. While perhaps in the rare case, I’ve had to defend myself for being “job-flaky”, these experiences have provided me with a wide range of skills, which have helped to prepare me for full-time librarian life.

But my first true resignation, the one which really highlighted the five points above, was not a retail job, or a “I got a new job reason”. It was a slow decline into me no longer trusting those who I worked with.

1. I think in some ways, I had mentally resigned a full year before I ultimately left the position. I was still 100% capable of completing the job requirements, but my heart was no longer in it.

2. Boston is one of the most expensive cities in which to live. But I could have been making twice what I was making, and it would not have been enough.

3. I plateaued. I was never in a position to ascend the corporate ladder. I worked the same job for the 3 years and four months I was there. It never changed, it never offered more than what it was.

4/5. These two are connected. Certainly, there were problems with this job, as there are with any job. Some of it had to do with how I was trained. Some of it had to do that the way I approached customer service was different than how I was expected to approach customer service. But what it came down to, in that last year I was there, I no longer trusted my team to be there if I had a problem I alone could not solve. Too many things taken out of context, or not understood (on both sides), and when I needed my team to be there in one particular case, they weren’t.


If I’ve learned anything in my seven years in the workforce (longer, if you’re counting those retail jobs and consulting gigs), it is that trust and communication are two-way streets. I admit I’m not always the best communicator. I have trust issues.

When I was most recently looking for a new job, I took these things into consideration. And I’m working on improving them. On being more open with what I am doing, and trusting those around me to tell me if what I am doing is not helping them. Working with them to change the status quo, so what I am doing does help them.

My job history will likely always have me approaching customer service and reference work differently. I like to think that is a good thing.