Scent Notes: Ripe peaches and peach blossoms mingle with smoky Indian sandalwood.

Today was the day. Norah had been an admin assistant for several years now, slowly working her way up with more responsibilities in the company. She currently assisted her main boss (the head of the company) along with three others slightly down the company food chain, while also picking up one-off tasks and helping around the office with anything anyone needed. Norah was also basically IT as the company was too small to employ someone full-time, and being the youngest in the office by a good ten years, she was the de facto expert (though honestly she just looked online for all the answers and often restarted people’s computers and that fixed 95% of their issues).
It was becoming increasingly clear, however, that her boss was never going to let her move into other positions. She’d hit the ceiling of progress and was now stuck there, which was demoralizing in and of itself. 

Recently, however, every single day at her job was spent putting out multiple fires, most occurring simultaneously, and almost all of which she had to extinguish of her own accord. As a result, her day-to-day tasks were piling up, because there just wasn’t enough time in a day to do every single thing that needed doing. Plus, she kept being asked to do things that were well outside of her job description. Her nerves were fraying; every day felt like whiplash. That was why she’d decided she had to get out.

Thankfully, her friend had started a small business and needed someone with her exact skill set to come in and work a job with lower responsibilities, better benefits, more flexibility, all for more pay. Her boss hadn’t exactly taken the news well when Norah had told her about this a week ago. She was on the verge of tears, absolutely beside herself, calling Norah “selfish” for giving “only two weeks’ notice, not a full month at the VERY LEAST. Six weeks would be better for the company and for me, personally. It’s like you don’t care about me at all.” Norah had calmly explained that, no, she couldn’t give a month’s notice, she had a start date just over two weeks away at her new job. Her boss had been cold to her the rest of the week, having Norah pull resumes and screen candidates by phone on top of trying to wrap up all her other work. 

On Friday, things ended on a weird note. Her boss had called her into her office and asked Norah, “What about our relationship?” That had sent Norah’s head spinning. “What relationship?” “The one where you work hard for me. I can’t talk about this. I don’t like you right now. We’ll talk more on Monday. Have a good weekend!” Norah had stood up, puzzled, and had ranted to her partner about it all weekend. She knew what she had to do. She walked through the door, confidently, and went to her desk. Her boss ignored her. Norah sat at her desk, and from the outside looking in at her, it appeared that she was working quite diligently. In actuality, she was signing out of all of her personal information, erasing her data, backing up important documents, and generally erasing her existence from this company. Certainly, she still had a week left of her notice period, but her boss had made it abundantly clear that she was not ever going to give a good reference or be understanding about her decision to leave, so this morning was her last morning, on her own terms. 

Her boss came up to her desk just as she was finishing up. Her boss slammed down a pile of paper on her desk. “I’ve spoken with these people, and I have a stack of others to call and speak with today. Go pick up my lunch.” Norah rose to her feet as the computer shut down. “Oh, I don’t think I’ll be doing any of that, actually. I’m leaving now, and I’m not coming back. Good day.” She opened her purse and put her keys on the desk and started to walk out. Her boss screamed out her name, starting yelling obscenities and threats at her back. “You still have a week, and you should be here even longer! You owe me!” Norah turned around calmly as her boss’s words sputtered to a stop. “You must not have heard me. I said: GOOD DAY.” And with that, she turned on her heel and walked calmly away from the nightmare she’d been working in for far too long.

Scent Notes: Ripe peaches and peach blossoms mingle with smoky Indian sandalwood.