What Do You Say?

Resignation Speech (What I Would Have Liked to Say)

by Gareth Pike

This is the speech I WANTED to give, when I resigned big business to take up a post at a fledgling creative studio.

Yes. It's my time now. I get to be HEARD, rather than ignored at the coffee machine because I don't know what 'spinning' is. This could be anywhere, really. It happens to be America. Connecticut, more precisely. Yet I could be anyone amongst millions, talking to a group of tired people, people who have...shrunk somehow, over time...anywhere on the planet.

Look, let's face it. Most of us would rather not be here, of course. We all harbour dreams, don't we? Some of us would like to be movie stars; others are potential marine biologists or volunteer medical doctors in war zones. We'd like to do something more meaningful with our lives than attend meetings about customer retention, which last so long you can actually feel your behind spreading out over the cheap office chair as your body grows into stout middle-age; while you peer myopically at Ted's excellent AV presentation on customer interest in Two Horse Gulch. Ted, I know you're really an S+M addict on the weekends, and that's OK,
I applaud. Your porcelain owl collection also is a noble expression of self. However, your AV presentations are the pits, and they will never make Dorothy Anders sleep with you. Never.

Most of us believe we have a 'book in us', right. It's our last comforting thought as we slip off the end of the bar at someone's farewell - 'oh, he got promoted to Birmingham, you know.' It's OK, you think, as you wipe beer from your tie - one day I'll be famous. Well, I'm sorry, but you probably won't be. In every provincial town there is an author who only ever gets read by their grandmother, for the simple reason that she can't get out of the chair and sprint away in protest a having a post-modern re-interpretation of 'Great Expectations' shoved in her face.

If we had had our choice at birth, I don't think any of us would have said, "Yes please, oh Lord, I'd like to spend forty years slouched at a desk in a cubicle, under over-bright strip-lighting, making a salary 1/10th that of a rock star's, even a rubbish rock star's, doing my miniscule bit that will go unrecognized by history or even Marketing Weekly, to make sure the company sells more calculators per month over the year to come. Please, Oh Our Heavenly Father, let me become one of those gray, tired people walking home with the shopping, the evening paper clutched in one mouse-weathered hand.

However drunk we get at the traditional Pinemead Hotel Christmas party (theme: Hawaii 5-0, floral shirts get you two free cocktails), we will never feel that what we do from 9 to 5 has any real meaning. Oh sure, some of us will climb the slippery corporate ladder, and who knows, one day maybe even enjoy one of those luxurious orthopedic chairs; perhaps even get a cubicle in the corner, with a view out of the window over the downtown industrial area. One day, some of us will be able to steer strategic planning sessions and act manly in the eyes of 'that Canadian girl from Research.'

Most of us, though, will work stolidly for most of our lives, getting sad little ego boosts at our annual reviews, which soon sputter away into the stupefyingly boring eternity that is our office career. Some of us will face redundancy ­ "Sorry Bill, we like you and we know you'll be great out there, but the market's just turned in Japan ­ you know how it is. Do come and visit the old gang, though; always welcome. Been a real brick, you know that." You may have to work all your life for people you don't respect, who won't respect you in turn. You may even fall down the stairwell during the weekly fire drill and break your neck a month before retirement. Your last words might be "Šd-don't forget the Comms. Bulletin, Sandra please (Oh, the pain!) print it for me this afternoon. Don't let them say I died without having fulfilled my daily schedule."

Well anyway, my friends: I'm sorry; I can't do it any more. I just can't. I'm leaving.
I think it was Tuesday: being told that I wasn't showing enough enthusiasm for the group dynamics session with that expert from Dallas. That did it. So thank-you, Morris, for breaking the camel's back with that last little straw.

I have no plans, other than walking out of the front door just now, past the fake palms in the lobby, across the dingy smoking area out front, through the bus rank filled with gum-tossing school urchins, and away, like a hobbit onto the great road out of the shire. Who knows what I will find? Or where I will end up?

I only know that I would rather take all the risk of life in the raw, than die a slow death in the security of corporate life. One day I might be a property millionaire - or a colic-ridden bum on the street. But I certainly will not be, like some of you - Errol, Maeve - sitting in conference room G7, celebrating the introduction of a new staple technology from Germany. If you look into my eyes, in twenty years' time, you'll see that by God, however hard it may have been - and I'm ready for the hardship, I accept it of my own free will - I have seen existence.

Many underprivileged people don't have a choice in the matter; they are forced to spend their lives just ...trying to stay alive. Whereas I earn a living, but I want to live, really live, even if it may be the death of me. I choose this path willingly.
I join those less fortunate, the multitude of unknowns; the destitute, the homeless. I will move among them with compassion and do what I can to help, because
I know how dearly they'd value what I am just about to throw away right here. Anybody is welcome to my job. I don't do this frivolously. My ticket is not 'return'.
I will not 'come round' or be 'talked out of it' - no Frank, don't even think it! There is probably more hard-won honesty around a jerry can fire under an overpass, than there is in our very own Litigation Department. I'm going to discover the world out there.

I leave with lightness of heart ­ but for the fact that all of you very special people, who have been so dear to me during my life in the trenches of Snipton Office Park, will not be coming with me. Farewell! I surrender my security pass, Styrofoam coffee cup holder, novelty giant calculator and collection of blue files. Clarise ­ I always loved you deeply. I'm sorry I never made my intentions clear, merely flirting with you over e-mail and getting small thrills from your witty responses.

Prand: you were a dear friend, even though you used my terminal to surf Candygirlzzz.com. Ha - Remember the night we broke in after karaoke at The Admiral, and raced chairs up and down the hall, and you knocked over that pot plant! Then we vomited on the carpet and it was blamed on the office badger the next day? Now they all know. Sorry, badger. We needed a believable fall guy and I feel bad about that night.

Mr. Merkton. Well hello, sir. Or rather, hello you absolute moron. Up until now you were my boss, so I couldn't say anything about you bonking Ms. Prunella in the stocks room. However, after six months, maybe it's time your wife and her fiancé knew. Also, you have very bad breath.

Well, that's all. I'll be leaving my gel-filled mouse pad, the nodding dog on top of my terminal, and a photograph of my butt on the kitchen notice board. Burn all my stationary if you wish, or make a shrine to me. Or give it away. To those of you going into the next battle at tomorrow's one-on-one staff feedback sessions: I salute you, and I say with all fierce conviction:

Don't fight for your commander. Not ever. Fight only for the brave soldier at your side ­ and by God, may the two of you get out of this innervating place alive, soon, and with all your natural born passion intact.

Thank you, and goodbye.

Best,
Gareth Pike,
Senior Copywriter and Creative Manager
Modern Museum, South Africa.

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