Charity’s Column: Quitting time

A week ago, I finally flung off the mask, and started hugging people in public. Some of them hugged me back. The collective feeling of a new start is palpable. I’m ready for a change; to stop buying off-brand paper towels in bulk and keeping a supply of hand sanitizer at the ready.

It’s quitting time.

There’s been a lot of quitting here lately, and why not? The democratically-elected council and volunteer committees that keep Shelter Island running are made up of human beings who are free to step away anytime they want to. A number of them are calling it quits.

It’s not just on Shelter Island, this is a global phenomenon. The World Economic Forum reported in June that up to 40% of post-pandemic workers are planning to quit their jobs.

I used to work at a women’s clothing store. My boss wanted me to be enthusiastic and upbeat, hang out in the dressing room, and tell every customer they looked great in the dresses we sold. I was bad at this, and so I quit. I had to scramble to find another way to make money, but it was worth it for the feeling of freedom when I told Mrs. Levy I had to go, and walked out the door.

The Shelter Island Historical Society’s musical production, “Hill of Beans,” is a light-hearted look at Shelter Island’s worst business failure, which took place in the 1950s when 12 local lima bean farmers invested in a processing plant for their crop, hired scores of workers and lost it all four years later when hurricanes, power failures and pestilence left the beans flattened and rotting. The owners were forced to quit, and the workers lost their jobs.

Today, where 2,000 acres of lima beans grew, there are first homes, and second homes and a golf course. The Town has contemplated using the site of the old processing plant for affordable housing. You can debate whether Shelter Island would be better off today if the lima bean business had boomed instead of going bust, but at least when change came, those post-war Islanders knew when to quit.

Marie Bishko, who is playing Phoebe in “Hill of Beans” told me about the time she quit a perfectly good job, a decision that proved to be a turning point in her life. A French major in college, she decided to enter a financial analyst program. “I did not know the difference between a credit and a debit, but I studied like crazy and I got a job.” The job was glamorous in the sense that it paid well and she was expected to dress up, but she longed to work with people rather than spreadsheets. After two years, she quit.

The problem was, she needed to make money. “I left my office at 48th and 6th, went into a bathroom in an Au Bon Pain, changed out of my suit and high heels, put on jeans and a T-shirt, interviewed at Virgil’s BBQ in Times Square, and was hired on the spot. I went from being a fancy suit-wearing analyst to a barbecue sauce-covered waitress, and I went to school at night.”

While slinging ribs and jalapeno poppers to pay tuition and rent, Marie said a customer at Virgil’s found out about her business degree, and suggested she should consider interviewing with his partner for a position in the restaurant business they were starting. Eighteen years later, Marie is in operations services at the company, working with people every day, and loves her job. She married the barbecue-eater’s business partner (the interview went well) and they have two children.

Heights resident Kiki Boucher remembers her fateful two-year stint at Bloomingdale’s in the late 1970s as vividly as yesterday’s quarantine. She started in linens, “The white sale … it was insane. My floor would make $3,000 in one hour, mostly cash which I had to collect and drop off in a safe deposit. I started catching people — our own employees — who were stealing.”

She transferred to a Bloomingdale’s furniture store in Maspeth, Queens, where she managed deliveries, including a truck driver who left a sofa on a customer’s lawn. “My life became being yelled at by the staff, the customers, everyone. The customers were shoplifting, the employees were yelling at me. I had to quit,” she said. “I guess I was never meant for retail.”

Not everyone leaves a job because they hate it. Before he went into teaching, School Superintendent Brian Doelger had a marketing position that allowed him to travel the country. “I really loved it, but I wanted to become a teacher,” he said, a decision that worked out well for him and the Shelter Island School he now leads.

Sometimes quitting is the best revenge. Janet D’Amato left a job as an assistant to a department head in a medical school when she found out he passed her over for a bonus in spite of her exemplary work because she had a husband working at the same institution who was getting his own bonus. Her boss figured it covered her, too. The boss was surprised when she quit, “He said if he had known it was so important to me, he would not have left me out.” She found another job that paid better.

After Sylvester Manor Farm Manager Cristina Cosentino graduated from college, she wanted to be a sommelier, and started out selling a line of Italian wines to restaurants in Manhattan. It was a dream job until it wasn’t. “I got paid to taste wine with people every day, and my boss was great,” she said, “but I walked into these restaurants and got ripped apart by the managers and owners. I developed irritable bowel syndrome from that job.” She quit, and her digestion improved.

Former Town Councilman Paul Shepherd recalls the days before quitting jobs became so stylish. “I have quit jobs three times … two were full-time jobs, one a part-time job. It was never a bad thing in the long run,” he said. “Quitting beats misery every time.”