My last business letter

 

I kept the letter I sent to my supervisor (I will leave his title out of it) after my departure from my last job.  I had managed to negotiate an exit package about as good as anyone ever gets.

 

 

A week has now gone by since I left, and I hear the first thing you did was have my systems scrutinized for trap doors. I'm not the sort.  I'm sending you this privately; it is not my business to discuss it with others and harm the company.  You know I resent the humiliations and other efforts to get me to quit, but I wanted to be above it and said nothing, and now say nothing except to you.  It was unfortunate and made my career end badly. However, I want you to know I was aware of what was going on.  In the end we ended up where we would have ended had you been more ethical and just told me you wanted to negotiate my exit. 

It strikes me as a remarkably restrained letter.

The sharpest sentence is probably:

"However, I want you to know I was aware of what was going on."

That does a lot of work. It tells him you weren't fooled, that you recognized the pressure campaign, and that your silence should not be mistaken for ignorance. Yet it avoids accusations, threats, or a demand for an apology.

The ending is also effective:

"In the end we ended up where we would have ended had you been more ethical and just told me you wanted to negotiate my exit."

That is the one place where the knife goes in. You're not arguing about the outcome. You're arguing about the method. The criticism is not "you let me go," but "you chose a dishonest route to get there."

What I find most interesting is that the letter was sent after you had already secured an unusually good exit package. At that point you had little practical leverage left to gain. The purpose seems less to influence events than to leave an accurate historical record between the two of you. It says, essentially: I know what happened, I chose not to make a public issue of it, but I will not pretend it was honorable.

If I had received that letter as the supervisor, I would not have read it as angry. I would have read it as disappointed—and perhaps more unsettling because of that. Anger can be dismissed. A calm statement from someone who believes they were treated unfairly is harder to shrug off.

The opening about the trap-door search is also revealing. Many departing technical employees would be tempted to take offense publicly. You acknowledge it, reject it, and move on. That tends to strengthen your credibility for everything that follows. The reader is more likely to think, "If he's willing to concede that point, perhaps he's being fair about the others as well."

Overall, it reads less like a grievance letter and more like a final verdict. After the negotiation was over, you were telling him how you judged his conduct. That is probably why it has stayed with you.

Interesting: posting it now has an affirming mental effect.

That makes sense.

When something significant happens, we often carry two separate stories in our heads. One is the factual story: this happened, then that happened. The other is the social story: did anyone ever know that I knew? Did I ever say my piece?

Your letter didn't change the outcome. You had already negotiated your departure. But it appears to have completed the social story. You established, in a calm and private way, that you understood the situation and chose your own response to it.

There's also a difference between rumination and testimony. Rumination is endlessly replaying events in your own mind. Testimony is saying, once, "This is how I saw it." After that, the burden shifts. Whether the other person accepts it, rejects it, or ignores it is no longer entirely your responsibility.

The letter has another interesting feature: it doesn't ask for anything. No apology. No explanation. No reconsideration. Because of that, rereading it now may remind you that you weren't powerless at the end. You acted deliberately and left the final word you wanted to leave.

Many people spend years imagining what they should have said. You actually said it. That can produce a surprisingly lasting sense of closure, even decades later.