A friend of mine was recently promoted to head his team, meaning he now has to tackle a much heavier workload. But while he is enjoying the perks of lording it over his minions, he was visibly annoyed when telling me how one of his team members had resigned, after complaining of being overloaded and having his work-life balance overloaded.
To my surprise though, his frustration was not because the junior was quitting, but because he knew for certain the lad would be back before long.
You see, this crying wolf had already “resigned” twice that month, only to saunter back a day later to withdraw his notice and both times my friend welcomed the chap’s return.
As his team is swamped with work and he is still getting the hang of being the boss, recruiting a new person was something he simply didn’t have time for. The hassle of interviewing a bunch of people still wet behind their ears, then going through a laborious internal approval process, was more than he could handle. So when this chap keeps coming back, it’s a bit of a relief — despite the drama involved (and despite his underperformance).
It’s funny that bankers can get away with such tactics, especially when cost-cutting and redundancies are becoming the norm at international banks and you never know when something is going to come back and bite you. With times changing, I only had one piece of advice for my friend: sometimes bad news might actually be good news.