I almost resigned for saying no.

A story about how I almost signed my resignation which could’ve led to my freedom. It’s one of those moments where I just had a, oh well, fuck it, let’s just get this over with so I don’t have to wake up early and time in and out doing a job that kills my creativity.

A phone rings. It’s the head and they want to talk to the one on duty.

I made the usual greeting and introduced myself. He states his intro and purpose and then asks if we could have a meeting as a department on X date. I immediately said ok and will check if there are any activities within the department that may be in conflict with his proposed meeting.

Did you just say no to me?

I paused at his reply and reviewed what I said but before I could make a reply they followed up with

You’re the only one that said no to me after calling the other departments! My meeting is more important!

More than a decade ago, if I received this type of phone call or reply, I’d let panic kick in when the trouble came from an authority figure. But then my experience with life and talking to small to medium sized business owners, working with real bosses that give you shit on my side gigs, and psychiatric patients with unreasonable demands, this was one of those events that I’m thankful I kept my cool and just reflexively said

No Doc, I just wanted to check our sched so that we can inform our consultants to block out the slot for your meeting.

This was in direct response to the claim whether I said no. I just did. Call it the inner devil that doesn’t want to be pushed over but being tactful with my monotonous tone. I said no. And I said it with some rationality that the no came from a place where it was being accommodating to the demand, but I said no still.

Perhaps it struck a nerve that any signs of defiance were going to be swatted.

I didn’t have a baseline on how bad it was but if my chief told me to just be stationed as a skeletal duty covering everything in the floors instead of going to the meeting because they didn’t want to risk the attention, that says something. Hopefully this blows over and the director forgets the phone call.

I could envision the scene the day before the meeting. There’s going to be that one segment during the open forum where the director would call out my name from Pathology Department and mentioned how I’m the only one that said no. And that my face and name would be known by all within the room. I’d probably going to have a hard time with the hospital’s bureaucracy after this.

Great, the perfect spotlight. There was no way to reason things out there. That move was for power tripping (if it were to happen). I’m going to spoil it right here that it never happened and the meeting just went smoothly like the phone call never happened.

But if it did go towards the worst case scenario, I already prepared the script for apology and finally sign my letter of resignation. The paycheck here is nice but I know I’m just working for financial security. There’s no stopping me from just earning the same if not, more than my monthly income just moonlighting in some beach or city clinic for a few hours.

I’d take a reputation hit but it wasn’t a grave one. I lose a job but it’s not the end of the world. I know with the skill sets I got has diversified enough that I’m not going to be dependent with a career I worked to earn for a decade. That line of thinking made me more confident to say fuck it, I’ll just quit and move on.

Now for doctors that can’t picture their lives outside of the profession, it must be difficult for them to grasp the idea where I just say medicine is a side gig for me. For people that are outside the profession looking, they may think I’m being the fool because I traded a high paying job just because my ego got hurt. Nah, I’m just looking for a close to believable reason to quit when I already wanted to quit from the start.

It’s never about the money. I worked for the institution without pay for half a year and took another half a year to challenge myself not using any money I earned from my work and reliant only on my side gigs to live. But I don’t expect my peers would understand this part because they would be attached with the idea that being employed is the only way to be stable.

When I expanded my knowledge about financial literacy, it just opened up some new doors that I thought weren’t viable. I have a habit of planning for future scenarios within my head and one of those scenarios was an answer to a question:

What if you suddenly got fired?

And that’s why I spent a lot of time exploring stuff outside my profession to confidently say I don’t need the job. Investing in thyself to have more marketable skills so that I can sleep in peace if it came to that point. Most people never entertain this idea because job security even if some jobs, by their nature, are seasonal.

I listened to the meeting and the ideas being tackled were something that caught my interest. He was tackling a need for change in the system, finances, management and human resource. He was talking about solving problems for the long term benefits. Now if anyone knew me well, they would know that my love language included answering problems with long term solutions. I found new respect for the guy. Probably had an ENTJ/ESTJ/INTJ personality to be so bold at management.

By coincidence, I was doing my interviews with the laboratory personnel asking how’s the bidding and the machines that were going to be replaced. It turns out there were a lot of problems with the labs finances, inventory reporting and etc. Just stuff a commerce graduate would have been suited for instead of a medical lab technician because these stuff tackled on cost benefit analysis.

Now I’m not going to bore you with how fun accounting is for me despite it not being my profession. It’s just one of those areas where I learned to be fascinated since it involved finance, management, and systems. An analytical problem solver by nature, spotting these problems were something of a hobby for me.

I just knew medicine wasn’t the only field I can find success and I could’ve earned that freedom if the power tripping ever happened. I still continue doing my usual job and nothing changed. I don't dislike my job, I'm just indifferent about it now. It didn't matter which route the events went down, I just created scenario ahead where I just win without a drama.

If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time.