My boss retired yesterday. She hired me three and a half years ago and has mentored me and helped me with my career. She has taught me an incredible amount and built into me and believed in me. And now’s she retired. I am so happy for her, but I am definitely sad for me.
My work is in a bit of flux at the moment. My organization is making some decisions about how things will be in the future. My new boss is a CFO we are contracting with from a nearby facility. He is going to be very different from my old boss.
My boss was a ‘working’ CFO. She was an integral part of our office and participated in many of our duties and activities. For such a small office (not counting her position, there are three of us to do all the business functions of a nursing home and assisted living), it has been helpful and comforting to have her as a safety net. Our new CFO is not that type of CFO. He will be working on higher level functions only – such as contracts, budgets, financial reports. This means that my boss has been farming out her work to us. I have gotten the bulk of it, it seems. I have payroll, taxes, quarterly reports, annual reports, pension, supervising our accounting assistant, and god knows what else. All on top of my regular workload. We did all get pay raises this year to help, but do you know what we did not get? More time. I am still hourly and still constrained by the 40 hour week as overtime is a four letter word in my office.
Yesterday felt rushed and ineffectual. Our new boss was there and seemed too jovial for the occasion. My emotions went everywhere. But mostly I feel overwhelmed and angry and unsure. After I left work, I cried most of the way home, then got home, and when my wife started asking about how it went, cried again. This is the first time she’s seen me cry, so I think it was a bit surprising for her. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve cried the entire time we have been together. (I do not cry often; it is usually a culmination of a ton of things going on that would bring me to the brink.)
I am trying to be positive because these changes can bring good things. But they are still change, and we still do not know what it will truly look or feel like. We will find out soon, surely. In the meantime, in these last few days/weeks/months of uncertainty, I know I need to pull myself together, to be willing to be a team with new people, and to fake it until I make it.
But, god, change is hard.
Under the Cherry Tree 