Yesterday I turned in my two weeks notice at Safeway.

This was something that had been weighing on my heart for a long time and now that I’ve finally done it I feel so much lighter.

Why’d I leave? To quickly sum it all up: working in the deli at Safeway was no longer in alignment with my goals. I had originally only intended on letting my stay at Safeway be a short temporary jumping stone while I looked for someplace more suitable to my long-term plans but I ended up taking the easy way out and stayed just a little bit longer then I had planned. Not that that was a bad thing. I certainly gained a lot from my stay there and I was able to grow a lot. I’m actually rather glad that my first job experience was here.

The people there were also pretty awesome. They were fun to work with and are just great people overall. For the most part. It almost breaks my heart to leave but I must in order to continue growing.

So where am I going next? That’s a good question. The wise plan would’ve been to complete my job search and then to turn in my letter of resignation. However, knowing myself, I needed to set a fire under my feet in order to get myself going which is why I’ve gone about this process in this particular order. I am confident that I can find myself new employment more in line with my needs within my two weeks. I just only need that extra motivation.

Also, my deli manager is trying to work things out to convince me to stay. She’s going to be talking with her boss about having me take the final test to finalize my position as assistant deli manager as well as increase my compensation rate. We shall see. She, along with the rest of the department, does not want to see me leave and is trying to fight that entire process. I knew I’d break their hearts doing this and I almost wavered but thankfully I was given strength to stand firm.

Even if I do get offered a wage increase, I’m not sure whether I’ll accept it or not. First off, the amount of money I received, though being a large concern, was not my sole reason for leaving. I think it would do me much better in the long run to acquire work experience with jobs that’ll better prepare me for my future and I know now that I have no desire to work in the grocery industry. I know I can work my way up to deli manager or store manager pretty easily but that’s not where I envision my future to be.

With that in mind, even if I did receive a pay raise and stayed, I’d be leaving in a quarter later anyway to set myself up with internships that would better prepare me for life. I don’t know if it would be morally right to accept a raise and hold off on my process of leaving only to resume it three-four months down the road. I guess if I laid it all down off the get go then I’d be morally absolved of that.

My manager asked me at the very least to give her until the end of the year. That’s only a week or two longer and I had initially thought about setting my end date for that time so I think I will do that. It’ll give me another couple weeks to finalize things with my job hunt and I was planning on asking for a couple days off this December for various events which I wasn’t all that comfortable with doing at a new job.

So while I cleared up my mind on my decision to jumpstart things, I ended up with giving myself even more things to consider. Whether I will accept a proposal to remain or to sell my services to another company. That’ll become much easier to answer as time passes and the results (or lack thereof) of my job hunt turn up.

Overall my situation has improved and I’m rather excited to see what happens next.

Much thanks to Rabenstrange for being a good source of encouragement and allowing me to use him as sounding board as I wrestled with this decision. He may now consider himself to be in a win-win-win situation.

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