Epstein’s intentional walk has us full of envy
By Beth Teitell
Thursday, December 29, 2005
I don’t know Theo Epstein personally, or even impersonally, but from a distance, it sure looks like he’s living out every disgruntled employee’s dream: If I walk, the whole place is going to crumble. They’ll see. Just wait. I’m outta here! This organization can’t survive without me.
For the rest of us mortals, this is the stuff of fantasy. More likely you mention to your boss that you’ve gotten feelers from other firms, hoping he’ll go into woo mode, and instead he breaks out the bubbly (it’s better not to ask why it was already on ice) and calls in your suspiciously cheerful co-workers for a toast. You may hope for wailing and gnashing of teeth, but it’s more like: ”Can I have your filing cabinets?”
”Part of the reason I don’t want to leave my job is that I’m afraid my accounts will actually do better once I’m gone,” one sales rep confessed. ”Think how embarrassing it would be.”
Right. You want the party to fizzle after you take off. ”You don’t want to hear that that’s when the lampshades went on,” she added.
But Theo? He leaves the Sox, the star player takes off for the Yankees, the team’s rebuffed by a hot free-agent pitcher and his bosses become a public laughingstock. As if that’s not enough of an ego boost, the Sox hire two people to do the job he did alone, and Sox president Larry Lucchino says, ”We’ll keep a light in the window and the door ajar,” in case Theo wants to return.
”It’s every ex’s fantasy,” one professional ex-employee (and -girlfriend) said. ”I’m going to vicariously revel.”
And she did: ”You want to know that your ex isn’t homeless,” she began (disingenuously), ”but you don’t want to hear they’ve won the Pulitzer Prize or the lottery or dated a supermodel. You want to hear they’ve let themselves go, or lost the great summer cottage on the Vineyard.”
Too often you don’t even get to hear about your ex-company or -lover without making calls. ”Theo’s lucky,” she added. ”He can read about the troubles in the newspaper.”
But the Boy Genius is in a one-of-a-kind situation. Not only aren’t many of us missed when we’re gone, we’re not made to feel particularly crucial while we’re on-site. It hits you when there’s a big snow storm and your manager suggests you take the day off because you’re not ”essential.”
Ouch.
Meanwhile, Gov. Mitt Romney’s just made an ”I’m outta here!” announcement of his own. Let’s just hope he’s not harboring any petty ”See how you do without me” dreams.
