When you are a high powered, shoulder-padded business executive, the general rule of thumb when it comes to employment is that you should never quit one job before you have another lined up. I guess this makes sense – particularly for people with mortgages, and families to support, in an uncertain economic environment with Brexit looming. This same rule applies if you are an administration mule working in the Wastelands of county Dublin. Sometimes however (perhaps when the moon is full) you think to yourself ‘Screw this. I quit,’ without anything lined up, and you write an email to your boss giving your notice ‘for the sake of my physical and mental health’.

And so it happened for me yesterday.

I won’t bore anyone with the details of what lead to this situation – suffice it to say that the weekly lunchtime yoga class in the canteen doesn’t quite alleviate the pressure that’s been building over the past few months.

Yesterday I received an email. Upon reading it my brain clouded over with a red mist. A steam of rage started hissing from my ears. I wrote my resignation email. The details are not relevant.  I did not send it. I knew that I had to wait an hour before making such a momentous decision. An hour passed. I read the email again. Quite calmly I hit the ‘send’ button. And waited. I had included my end date on the email. I was well aware that this was a nuclear reaction on my part. However having been on the employment rodeo for almost a quarter of a century, I know that if you send an email like this then you are accepting the consequences.

I had made a calculation – I have some savings for a few months, so financially I could take the hit in the short term, without having to flog  my tired old bones down the Dock Road in Limerick for a fish supper of a Tuesday evening. I could surely find a job within that time-frame – perhaps a job on a level paying field with my current one. Failing that another job.

I was asked for a meeting this morning to discuss my decision. The night’s sleep had convinced me that while my decision was perhaps not the wisest one I have ever made, I needed to be able to stick to my guns.

I have just emerged from said meeting. We had a frank discussion where I vented my frustrations (I longed to end my spiel with a heart-wrenching ‘And I never learned to read’ but decided against that).

The outcome is that I have unquit for a trial period to see if the situation can be improved. We shall see how this goes.

In the meantime I guess it is time to start circulating my CV.