The end of an era

Today may be my last day in the office but........this has been a very strange week at work with the client I am leaving.  I announced some weeks ago that I intended to leave and gave them oodles of notice so there would be plenty of opportunity to handover work.  I would have expected that my manager would have wanted to discuss the handover and agree a leaving date but, no, that was not the case until I got more persistent.  In the end I got a short meeting that, to me, was very unsatisfactory.  This has left me in a strange position....wanting to be helpful but feeling I do not know who they want me to handover to or when my final day will be. In reality, I now believe that they do not have anyone for me to handover to and I am just not important to them any more.  Ever feel like you have been dropped like a stone after they have squeezed everything out of you over the years?

It's funny but in conversations with friends and family in the last few weeks I have detected a feeling of unhappiness and tensions in the workplace that are all caused by a 'dog eat dog' attitude that seems to have become more prevalent of late.  Is this a result of the recession or is this what the current workforce think is right and acceptable? What comes across to me very strongly is that managers can't manage but think they can manage.  Most are totally oblivious to the feelings of their workforce and most think they work as part of a team.  (I suspect this is partly to do with the fact that there are still many, many more male managers than female managers). More and more I have seen individuals working to their own agenda because they do not have consistent (or any) direction from above.

So, today I will do some training to people I have organised and finish off a few things then....bye-bye client.  (I have given them a final leaving day of 14 Nov 2012 so they have a few weeks to contact me with questions but, after that, they are on their own).  I doubt I will ever know how much or if they will miss me but that's life.