You can never go home again

Funny how after you leave a job behind that your office mates pretty much stop calling for a few months until something happens that they know will totally tick you off.  That's exactly what happened to me last week.  While busy taking meetings in Manhattan for my new business, I got an email from a former office confidante who wanted to know where I was and asked that I call her ASAP.  

In a matter of seconds, I was dialing her number and in minutes, I was transported back to that toxic place where everyone is bitter and tired of working there but won't actually do anything to make a change.  But what pissed me off about the news she shared was that my former boss was actually creating the job I wanted but he wouldn't offer to me while I was there.  The reason - I worked in the office three days a week and he wanted someone who would be committed to a five day a week schedule.

But here's my beef:   He assumed that I wouldn't even consider the job because of the work schedule - but he never actually bothered to call and ask if I'd come back five days.  I probably would have said no, but the fact that I wasn't even considered really hurts and makes me painfully aware that you really can't go home again.  Not that I would want to, but it would have been nice to have been asked. 

In the meantime, I will forge ahead and build my business, but sometimes news from your past office life can really get you pissed and make you second guess if you did the right thing by jumping off the corporate ladder and into the entrepreneurial abyss.  I'm sure in a few months or years I'll look back and say leaving that job was the best possible thing I could have done for my career, but when you're in the middle of rolling that boulder up Success Hill, the last thing you want to hear is that you've already been forgotten from the place where you thought you had made your mark.