Five and a half years at the same company equals roughly 270 Tuesdays, and today is my last. Three more days. Please, hurry up and give me my farewell cake. I’m the walking dead.
I’ve thoroughly documented the transition of my responsibilities and assisted with the job description to advertise for my replacement. I spent today stuffing recycling bins with papers from 2003 and listening to office doors shut all around me. The dearth of work-related email confers a strange and unreasonable feeling of rejection from my co-workers. What, you don’t want my input anymore? I’m off the project?
I’ve said my final farewells to a few who left for business trips or vacation. The mutual cracks in our voices is surprising. When I came here, I was a 25 year-old girl with a liberal arts degree, aiming no higher than getting through the 9/11 recession without resorting to customer service. I was one of few women in a company of older men. I worked hard but resented the menial nature of my tasks. Twice, I tried to quit on the spur of the moment. Twice, they convinced me to stay “until you find something else.” That was five years ago. (Finally, I found something else.).
Technical communication is more than dictating procedures. Users can figure out HOW to delete or create something in a well-designed software program, but they want to know WHY they should. Why is clicking that button so great? Why are the numbers in the report so high? Why is this software so freaking useful? To explain the WHY, I synthesized a large amount of domain-specific information about facilities management. As the company grew, my co-workers turned to the user’s manual to understand WHY they should sell, market, and develop facilities management software. My terminology and phrasing became the standard way to refer to concepts. I was the voice of the software.
It’s startling when people say I am a key person who will be sorely missed, because I was never the most important person in the room. But then again, I was always in the room.
