By the second day, my replacement understood the truth: she hadn’t been hired to fill one role. She had unknowingly stepped into a position that had been held together by unpaid overtime and fear of rocking the boat.
She wasn’t upset with me—in fact, she thanked me for being honest. She realized she had been promised a tidy, well-defined workload that had never existed.
I gave him the same line he had repeated to me over the years:
“That’s not my responsibility.”
For the first time, they felt the impact of my absence even while I was still there.
My Exit, On My Terms
On my final day, after completing the last duty listed in my official description, I printed and signed a simple resignation letter. It included no notice period, no explanation—just a clear decision.
My replacement hugged me. She wished me well and thanked me again for showing her the truth of the position. She wasn’t the problem. She was another professional trying to build a life, just like me.
My boss, on the other hand, stood frozen. The department he thought would run itself now had no one silently covering the gaps. Every last-minute crisis I used to fix was now his burden.
