Was It Worth It? Your Last Day At Work

In the middle of my career, I had this rare opportunity.  I had spent 22 years and over 50,000 hours of my life building a business.  It was a great run.  I had started in maintenance as the 9th employee and spent my last 10 years as the company president.

I was leaving to pursue a new opportunity with my brother.  As I was sitting alone in my empty office, it was completely silent.  Having spent so much of my life doing this thing, I was trying to find the meaning of it all.

My mind didn’t go to the things you could see – the building expansions, the 200 people we had hired or the amazing financial results.  

The only things that truly mattered and gave me peace in that moment, came from the culture we built with Threads.

Have you ever thought about your last day at work?  How will it feel for you when your office is empty and your boxes are packed?  

In that moment, you will ask yourself “Was it worth it?”

Hospital Visitation

Several years ago, I was meeting a friend in the hospital, a guy that I had looked up to from work.  He had been a mentor when I was younger and he was facing surgery for cancer.  As I was at the hospital and we were visiting, the visitation pastor from his church came in.  And we all sat and talked for a little bit.  The nurse came by and said our visit had to be over.  My friend had to have some additional tests done.

You know, it takes forever to walk out of a hospital. I was stuck next to his pastor the whole way.  After a while, I felt uncomfortable at the silence, so I made a comment to this pastor.  I said,

“It must be tough to do what you do every day, to be with people at the end of their lives, or facing surgery or the loss of a loved one.”

And what he said to me was actually kind of surprising.  He said,

“You know, it’s actually been a gift to me.  I have learned a lot about people.  I’ve learned that maybe I judge people for who I thought they were until I actually sat down and talked to them.  Until you’re in those moments and you talk to people, you really don’t understand what they are all about.  And what I’ve heard from them causes me to view my life differently.”

A Piece of Advice

I was really kind of taken back by that and then he asked me if I’d like a piece of advice.  I said,

“Yeah, I would love a piece of advice.” 

And the pastor said, 

“I’ve been with a lot of people like you.  A lot of people who’ve had very successful careers, doing very well, managed people, run successful companies.  At the end of their lives, at the end of their careers, and in every single instance, what they talk about in those moments are things that you wouldn’t expect.”

He continued,

“They are stories about people.  They are stories about individuals accomplishing great things or people who have worked for them and gone on to start their own business and employed people.  And my advice to you today is to invest in those things when you’re young, so that when you face a moment like this in the future, a significant change, or the loss of a loved one, or a surgery, or maybe even the end of your life – you’ll have those things to draw on.  It will be very important to you.”

I thought about this advice quite a bit at the time, but it sort of escapes you as you return to getting busy with the day-to-day stuff.

My Last Day After 22 Years

About 15 years later, I was sitting in a spot pretty much like that pastor had told me about.  I had resigned from a company that I’d worked at for 22 years and people I’d cared about very deeply to pursue a brand new opportunity for myself.

I loved the people I worked with.  I loved the company and I loved what we did.  And I was walking away from it. 

It was my last day and I was on my way out the door. It had been emotional. I decided it was a time I needed to leave through the side door and not the front door. 

I had already said my goodbyes and I had a half of a box of just stuff that you collect over 22 years.  It’s stuff you can’t throw away.  It’s a tape measure or a cigarette lighter or a picture, some memento that a salesman dropped off to you one day.

I looked at this box that was left.  One box.  And it had things in it that were meaningful to me at some point in my career. But on that day it, didn’t seem very meaningful at all.  I found myself asking this question of myself,

“Did it matter? What did you do?  What did you get for this investment of how you spent your life?”

Was It Worth It?

When I looked at that box, it just didn’t seem to satisfy me.  It was at that moment when I could kind of feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  I felt almost a little short of breath because this was ending.  I looked at that box and asked myself,

“Was it worth it?” 

When looking at the contents of that box, something didn’t feel right.  Then everything that pastor told me 15 years earlier came true.  Every single thing he mentioned to me that day was exactly what went through my mind.

The things that I thought about at that moment were only the stories about people… the kind things we did to help one another, the ways the people on our team developed and grew as human beings. 

A specific story stood out in my mind as I sat at my desk. The one thing that mattered most to me walking out the door that day was a story about this supervisor on our team. A while back, he told me:

“I really didn’t understand our company or really know what it was like to work here, until I saw 30 people from our company at my Dad’s funeral.  I had worked for us only 3 months.  I didn’t know a lot of people in town yet and felt like a could really use a friend.”

“You know, that made a difference to me.  That was something that made me understand that this can be more than just a job.”

I remember that day specifically because when I sat in the pew and looked up at him when he walked in to the church behind his father’s casket, I could see it in his face.  I could see the shock and surprise that we were all there.

On my last day, alone in my office, what mattered most was remembering that supervisor telling me this story. It was more meaningful than anything else I had accomplished.

The part that made it even better was there was no manual consulted. There was no employee handbook rule and no policy or procedure to allow this to happen.  The people on our team chose that path willingly on their own. They chose to do this because of our culture.  It was who we were as individuals, and who we were together as a company.

Your Time Is Short

When you walk out the door on that last day and are faced with how you spent your career, how will you handle it?

From my experience, the culture you built as a leader is what will matter most in that moment. Leaving will be difficult, but the thing that will make it alright is having created memories like this.

A Threads Leader makes the commitment in their heart and mind to lead the people on their team differently. There is a limit to the time assigned to each of us. Start today. Put your focus as a leader on building an environment where things like this will happen.