My Bosses Gave Me a Chocolate Bar for a Raise, so I Sorta Quit
What did they expect?
That was the year I took over someone else’s job, without extra pay. It was a lot of extra work. It was supposed to be temporary.
I was taking the conventional advice: You move up in your career by making yourself valuable.
Don’t complain.
Contribute.
I did the extra work. I published in top journals. I won awards. When my mom died, I went straight from her funeral to a conference. When another teacher got sick, I took over their classes.
At one point, I filled in for one of my bosses while they went on vacation for two months. I did it for free. I canceled my own vacation. Everyone told me it would be a great learning experience. Once, I left my office to go to a meeting. When I got back, there was a note from my boss’s boss, criticizing me. He’d decided to pop in. I wasn’t there.
The note said:
Make yourself more available.
Then Christmas came around. I came into the office on a Saturday night in late December, to do “a little bit of work.”
I checked my mail.
There it was, an envelope from the dean with a little note thanking me for all my contributions. Here’s a summary:
