On Getting a New Job and Quitting your New Job

An inquiry into Value

I am a pretty smart and capable person. I don't mind being underpaid if I'm not spoken down to, and I don't mind being spoken to like I'm an idiot, if it pays 30 dollars Australian. My dignity has a price and it's not much.

It's tough to make a call. Especially when it's a call against safety and stability. Happiness and joy and all these things, we like to think these are our motivations and goals, but they almost never are. Only in weird crazy outlier situations where you have nothing to lose, or nothing to win, or if you're just kind of dim and don't know who you are and what you're doing. You're never choosing for happiness. You're choosing for comfort and stability. Some of the time those overlap, but when they don't you really have to keep your wits about you.

The choice for me was between having the next day job solved, and working two jobs for the rest of the month. Or, going back in the job hunt with all the uncertainty that entails, and just working the old job on the weekends. I honestly wouldn't have thought this is what I would do. For the part very long time I've been taking every bad deal I could get, financially. I thought I would always choose stable humiliation over unstable dignity. If history is any indication, that's me. It’s all just kitchen work. I spent 4 years in Denmark cooking and cleaning, and it just seemed like it would be the easiest thing to make lateral career moves with. But now I’m thinking maybe it doesnt have to be more of that.

It is frustrating that it didn't work out, I would have liked it to. Not a bad place, not a bad job, and I would have liked the stability. Any new place I start is going to have the same rough edges and social problems and period of adaptation. The trouble is I'm so smart and good at arguing that I can make bulletproof cases either way, stay or go. Stay, because every other place is going to have the same issues, and I'm quitting right as we are settling into things. Good point. I can write a list of pros and cons. But that path is dark and leads to utilitarianism and coping, and letting yourself be exploited. It's one thing to have to make the case for your own exploitation to your employer - here's why you should exploit me. It's another quite more sinister thing to make the case to yourself, on their behalf. Then you are truly enslaved.

So that's the spirit I'm following.

I was unsure of what do to, and frankly how much I could do. I once wrote on the blog, a hurtful thing about my relationship with my parents: the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is, whenever they tell their parents their plans, successful people's parents say "you can do it, we believe in you" and trust in their ability to do whatever they say. Because of my childhood accident, my parents first response to anything is, unconditionally, "are you okay? Are you sure? I don't think you can do it", despite me succeeding at literally everything I've ever tried. Because they were traumatized by the experience. That’s not to rag on them, I love my parents very much. It is just to illustrate a point. And, when I told my mother I'd found a new job at the start of the month and would be working two jobs for a little bit, instead of being excited for me, the first thing she said was literally "are you sure that's a good idea?"

Part of that point I’m illustrating is not about my actual parents, but about my inner parents. It really is all a point about confidence, rooted in my particular beliefs about psychology, and how familial relationships inform and shape psychology. Once you know how it works, and you can distinquish between the outer and the inner parents, its less so about your actual physical parents, and you can become a source of stability for them, rather than the other way around. I hope thats what we are doing now. I’d like to think so.

It was kind of daunting to me to work 7 days a week, and it is very possible that I have miscalculated in all of my rumination, and I just underestimated how much of an impact that would have on me. But if that is the case, and I just needed a day off, I am still in the midst of that madness, because I currently dont think so. It was kind of daunting to me to work 9 hour days. I havent done that since I was painting houses for my uncle, and that was a familial arrangement which also changes things in a lot of ways.

The new job was quite a lot more hectic, worse pay (although “promised” to increase), but with the option of working a lot more hours. Old job is decent pay for what it is, but has been very limited. Old job was always more of a jumping off point, and to stay in the green. Both have made me feel nostalgic about my old danish kitchen job - “I feel like the fights I was having there were better somehow”. But, unironically. I had some sick benefits there, and it was in a lot of ways a pretty sweet gig, I didnt appreciate at the time, because I was in a bad time in my life.

What is a job worth? What am I worth? What is my time worth. The past month has really motivated me to finish making those books I’ve been promising. And the proof is in the pudding, we are currently meeting, right now, in the middle of a 3-4 page essay about my thoughts and feelings. My girlfriend inadvertently made an excellent point a while back, without her knowing it, in the context of how I have often been referring to the internet and substack and ebooks as “me leaving a bunch of money on the table”: It’s not just MY money I’m leaving on the table any more. It’s also hers. And that has changed things quite drastically for me.

But like I am always saying about work in general, and at my new job I quit: Talk is cheap and the proof is in the pudding. Saying you are going to do things is useless, and its always using other people to tell yourself something, not actually communicating something to the other. It’s very hard to make a commitment in language, and I mean that technically.

So instead what I’d like to do today is invite you into my every thought and feeling about why I quit my new job.

People are assholes and you don’t have to take their shit

Alternative title, people will treat you how you let them.

Initially I bonded with my new employer about both being immigrants. They are japanese. However, they miscalculated exactly what that meant. When over the interview we shared humorous anecdotes about the immigrant lifestyle and the oddities of the locals, discovering we were both woke on the tab-water question, this was not taken to be a sign that we were on the same team, and could cooporate, but, also, as a sign that I was fucked and didnt have options. That they would be able to run me around because I was desperate. And as a tragic happenstance of my identity and cultural upbringing, I am indeed desperate to please. I failed to express this difference in the time we spent together. My attempts at good will and putting in effort was deliberately on my end, to show “we are on the same team, I am on your team, we can be on the same page and work together in harmony”. It was, I think, taken to be simply “I am desperate and I need the job, and you can pay me less than minimum wage and I wont complain about it because I’m just a dumb immigrant”.

There was a lot of miscommunication between us. This was ultimately the downfall. I tried to politely express it as, “my first language isnt english, and neither are yours, and we need to have really efficient communication to run the rush hour kitchen efficiently, so I’m just not the right man for the job”. But even that point, and that attempted politeness of skirting the issue, did not fully communicate either. Even though it is also true.

I speak english of course, but the double language barrier really is like having to shift gears manually every time someone yells out an order, and it is a hurdle to get over. We probably could have gotten over it. But I didnt feel like it was worth it, at the price point, and the attitude point.

I didnt just slam the door and leave, although in retrospect I think I should have. I went in and did another day today, because I am such an eager people pleaser. Went out of my way to be all “well I know it’s causing problems for you too for me to fuck off, so I can just help out setting the kitchen up today if you want”. And I left them every opportunity to give me a counter offer, they didnt take it.

My impression the last couple of days was that they were hustling me. Especially after giving notice at my other job, where I was met with high praise for my professionalism and work ethic. New Job have been on my ass all day every day. Part of it is a cultural thing. They have a different work culture, and I was ready to be molded and primed into that. I do love a good professional, efficient, minmaxed environment. But I don’t like being treated with suspicion the more effort I put in. That is a cultural hurdle we could not overcome. As a fellow immigrant, I think we both have a duty to aclimatise to the local culture. If I was working for them in Japan, things would be different. I’d take a bigger beating. But here, there’s a push and pull on both of our parts, and I dont think I have mismanaged anything. I’ve gone above and beyond, and if they can’t take the deal, that’s their lack of cultural assimilation, not mine.

I think I can do better, I don’t think they can do better than me, and I tried to communicate that to them, and failed. I think they are missing out, and made a bad business move. It is however a bad business move on me, that I failed to communicate this effectively.

I felt very justified in all my worst assesments of the situation when, after relaying my “I am not coming back in tomorrow” message, where we were running on a “training” not “fully employed” agreement, my employer tried to talk me into finishing the week. So much for “training”! They were indeed hustling me. And that level of distrust and economic haggling is just no way to build a mutually beneficial economical relationship on. It would have been a relationship built on lies. Because they wanted to save 2 dollars an hour, for a week. Quite petty, honestly.

I am a big believer in applied christian morality. I believe in giving yourself, and making an effort. I believe in turning the cheek, which I think is a very complicated thing. But I also think that if you are consistently and ruitinely punished for your good will and effort, and it is treated as weakness to be exploited, at a certain point, Matthew 10:14 applies. “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet”. This is explicitly instruction in regards to preaching christian doctrine, but I also think that christian doctrine should be embodied and enacted. When that point is, is a judgement call. Nobody’s perfect, and I could probably have tried more, suffered harder, to illustrate the point, provoke understanding. But life is short, and the world is fallen, and in this life we have to make calls about what to do with our limited time and scope. And this was not the best way of using my talents. We’ve talked a lot about the parable of Talents. I think if I was staying there and trying to make it work, that would be me being the wicked and slothful servant, because I am capable of much more.

My worst suspicions were confirmed about the situation and they were not interested in making things work, because they would rather get an actual fucked immigrant who doesnt have any options. A shame, but you cant lift people up by leading by example, if you are not in a position of leadership. And if you try to raise the level of discourse, and they dont follow you, thats where I think “shking the dust off your feet” applies. That doesnt ever mean giving up on anyone. It just means, you have places to be and things to do, and you can’t be dragging them along if they dont want to. People make their own choices.

I am pretty sure I am the only one writing an essay about it, and that this whole affair matters very little to everyone other than me. That’s also a little bitter. It’s hurtful to have tried to do right by someone, and not be reimbursed, or met with reciprocity. But when it happens, you can either take the L and move on, or you can double down on your own humiliation hoping something magically changes, and waste your life stewing in indignation. I think today was a good day for me.