When it comes to military service, “quitting” is difficult to applaud. The first sentence of Staff Sergeant Paul J. Wiedorfer’s Medal of Honor citation reads, “He alone made it possible for his company to advance until its objective was seized.” When it comes to serving in the military, you just don’t quit. So that the larger team can achieve the objective, service members literally sacrifice everything for the people to their left and right rather than quit. Generally, they don’t do it for the money, or at least not for very much or anywhere nearly enough money. They never quit because of those high ideals of duty, service, and honor.
I QUIT
You can hardly say, “I quit,” without feeling . . . like a quitter. After nearly a quarter century in the Army and appropriately putting ideals of duty and service on a high altar, stomaching the notion of quitting anything is difficult. But with some notable exceptions—and there are many worth addressing elsewhere—what “quitting” civilian jobs or projects means is a far cry different from what quitting means in the military. While most all of us owe fidelity to our colleagues simply as a matter of being a good human being, and probably some loyalty to our boss and perhaps even the larger organization (depending on what the organization is about), from a private sector perspective, you don’t have to vomit the word quitting from your body like a dozen White Castle burgers after a case of National Bohemians.
I CHANGE
When I retired from the Army, I tried law school. I’d wanted to go law school for 25+ years. Halfway through, however, I came face-to-face with the fact that law school and the life thereafter wasn’t what I was about. It wasn’t fulfilling. After missing a good part of my kids’ lives deployed, I was abandoning them once again (save but for Sunday mornings) for the sake of a J.D., for the sake of gutting it out. Once I realized that I didn’t want or need a degree in law, and once I realized that my kids at six and seven care more about seeing their father every day than they’ll ever care about saying “Daddy’s got a degree in law,” the decision was made.
I quit. The only time I’ve ever quit anything that I can remember, and it was exactly the right decision.
I was sort of proud of myself for having the guts to do it. And that experience gave me a new, what I’d call a civilian perspective on quitting, or, better, making a change. I’m not even sure quitting is necessarily the right word at all: its connotations are simply too pejorative to overcome (unless, of course, in quitting you mean to be pejorative, and there might be a time and place for that). The connotations of quitting can be unhealthy and unproductive for you and inappropriately impede your confidence in making the right decision for you, for your family, even for the organization (or another organization to which you might be headed).
By definition, to quit simply means to leave, to depart. Arguably, you could leave the office every evening by saying, “I’m quitting work,” with every expectation that you’ll be welcomed back the next morning. If you’re thinking about leaving your job and moving on to another, or putting yourself back out on the market for any number of reasons even if you don’t yet have something solid lined up, I think it’s more appropriate to think about it as a transition, as a change, as a positive and productive move. Resignation works, as well, though I usually associate resignation with positions a lot higher than mine . . . unless I’m resigned to make the change.
WAYS TO QUIT
On the topic of quitting, here’s a study worth . . . studying. It’s about how people quit jobs. According to Harvard Business Review contributors Anthony C. Klotz Mark C. Bolino, few have ever really considered in a comprehensive way all the different reasons and ways people quit. After surveying several hundred who had recently left jobs, Klotz and Bolino count about seven distinct ways people resign: By the Book, Grateful, In the Loop, Perfunctory, Avoidant, Impulsive, Bridge Burning. As they explain, four of those ways are pretty acceptable. You’re not necessarily putting a stake in your professional heart.
Three, however, are less productive for you—Avoidant, Impulsive, and Bridge Burning (which is the pejorative connotation to which I referred earlier). By the Klotz-Bolino definition, Bridge Burning means the “employee tries to harm the organization or its members, often by launching verbal assaults.” In the short- and long-run, the company, like the Army, will continue to churn without you, so don’t be so egotistical about it. You only hurt yourself. Yet Klotz and Bolino found that “about one in ten employees seeks to harm the organization . . . thereby burning any potential bridges between themselves and their former employer.” That’s a surprisingly high rate, I think, but entirely believable.
Whether there are seven ways to leave or fifty ways to leave, what should matter the most to you is how you position yourself and your family for future successes.
Good luck.
