Feeling betrayed as beloved worker joins the competition
DEAR CAROLYN: My husband is a dream boss. He treats his employees like a family. He pays them well, gives them generous bonuses, paid vacations, etc. — way beyond what a regular employer would do. His staff is loyal, and they know he plans to retire in two years. They all are part of a profit share that he set up when the business sells.
His favorite employee is “Jill.” She’s terrific. My husband saw potential in her when he hired her. He paid her college tuition, so she could learn the business. He bought her a car. Helped her with a down payment on a house. Helped pay for her wedding and vacations and encouraged her to get more education, which he paid for. Through my husband’s connections, he helped Jill and her husband adopt a child. Jill has thrived. Every now and then, she would write him a thankyou letter referring to him as the father she never had. He has told me over the years that he loves her like a daughter.
Yesterday, my husband came home so distressed. Jill told him she is leaving. She was hired away by a competitor. My husband matched the offer and asked her to stay through his retirement. Jill refused, saying she is tired of the job and the commute. She was abrupt and callous.
Jill has broken my husband’s heart. I am so angry at the ingratitude. My husband cannot retire until he trains another replacement, and Jill knows this. He feels betrayed. What can I do to help him and contain my own sense of betrayal? — Distraught Wife
DEAR READER: Jill was always your husband’s employee, not his daughter, no matter how much he cared. I am sorry to put it so bluntly, but it’s the entire answer, if you let it be. It is not a betrayal to leave for a job that fits better. Even with a competitor. Even when it upsets his plans. Even when he bought her a car.
Since I suspect you won’t let that be the entire answer, here’s another one from the family angle:
Dad dotes on Daughter and thinks she’s the sun and the moon and the stars. Daughter loves Dad and shines in all the ways Dad knows she can.
All along, Daughter has been land- and ocean-curious, but the sky arrangement is so generous, she can’t even think about breaking Dad’s heart and telling him she’s ready for new things.
Until she can think about it — because she can think of little else, because the years are adding up and she’s still in the sky, no closer to testing out the land or the ocean.
Dad, meanwhile, is about to hand over the reins to the sky not even knowing it’s not what she wants anymore, if she ever really did want it — it’s so hard to separate a doting parent’s vision from one’s own — because all along, as generous as he’s been, it has always been Dad’s idea of the life he wants for her, with each “gift” an investment toward that return.
So she has to make the break. It’s clearly too-late-ish to be a good time to leave, but it’s only getting later.
Plus, when guilt, power imbalances and implied debts are involved, things can get “abrupt and callous” fast.
Does that version help? Just because something hurts doesn’t make it a betrayal. Jill, for her reasons, had to leave the professional nest. “Kids” do that.
I hope the passage of time will help you both see it that way — as it often does for parents and kids.