When you resign from a job because of the unethical behavior of superiors, are you committing professional suicide-or taking a new lease on life?

     "Ten years ago my husband and I were told we could never have children. A year later, we had to put our independent bookstore on the market to avoid bankruptcy. I've lost my father to a heart attack and two close friends to cancer." Sara, an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, glances ruefully at the cigarette between her fingers, then extinguishes it. "But losing the career I loved was one of the most devastating experiences of my life. I still grieve for what might have been."

     Sara has experienced firsthand the anguish known to victims of an employment Catch 22. Euphemistically termed "voluntary resignation" by employers, it is actually a choice between evils-leaving a job only because remaining has become impossible-that is responsible for the death or maiming of many promising careers.

     Following high school, Sara declined to attend a four-year college as she was expected to do, opting instead for a one-year secretarial program at Katharine Gibbs School, where she excelled. Thus equipped at age 18 to earn her living, she spent 10 years as an executive secretary, first for a university-based television station in northern California, then for a 12-institution community college system in the East. She met and married a Connecticut native and settled close to her childhood home.

     Four years later, Sara and her husband opened an independent bookstore. "At this point, we had been told by three different medical specialists there was no way we would ever have children, so I made the business 'my baby.' Within six months, I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. The store was in a small suburban strip mall that had no major anchor like a supermarket or department store to create local traffic. About two months after we set up shop, the largest shopping mall in the state opened five miles down the road, and I sat behind my silent cash register watching the people drive by on their way to it. I knew we'd go bankrupt if we didn't get out, so I put the store on the market and finally sold it at a terrible loss-at which point, despite the predictions of the specialists, I discovered I was pregnant."

     A bit thrown by these events, but undaunted, Sara spent the next few years caring for her infant son-and 17 months later, her infant daughter-and working part-time to pay off the residual debts from the bookstore. Simultaneously, she entered and completed an external bachelor's degree program offered by the State University of New York, an alternative to traditional, in-classroom collegiate education about which she remains enthusiastic.

     Her bachelor's degree safely in hand and her children happily situated in a small, homelike day-care program, Sara returned to full-time employment, this time as a promotional copywriter. With two positive, long-term experiences behind her as an executive assistant, Sara naively assumed that reciprocal respect based on honest communication between employer and employee was a given in the workplace. Having worked for managers who were both capable professionals and valued friends, she was totally unprepared to deal with the manipulative, political senior managers in her third place of employment, the advertising/public relations department of a major insurance company.

     "I was always a wordsmith and had long been intrigued by the fun and creativity of commercial ad writing, but the ultra-competitive atmosphere I'd heard about in advertising agencies prevented me from looking for work in that kind of setting. After a long search, I finally landed a copywriting spot in the sales promotion unit of a nationally recognized insurer. It seemed ideal … skillful writers and artists working together to promote worthwhile products and services in a professional environment. I felt very fortunate and was committed to making a success of my work there," she remembers.

     For the first two years, all went well. Brought into the department on trial during the temporary absence of another copywriter, Sara was repeatedly lauded for her competence and speed. She was awarded the corporation's top employment rating for two consecutive annual review periods, along with raises totaling more than 30 percent. Continually sought out for major assignments, Sara was clearly being groomed for advancement to a supervisory role. "I looked forward to every day, no matter how hectic, and felt sorry for anyone who didn't enjoy work as much as I did. It's still inconceivable to me how something so right could go so wrong," she says.

     But that summer, Sara's unit supervisor retired, and a challenging new position he had proposed for her "just evaporated. I had seen the write-up of my new job description. I had even begun supervising an assistant on an informal basis, and I believed the paperwork would be processed just as soon as the new unit head was appointed. I never dreamed it was the beginning of the end."

     No explanation was offered to her on the lack of progress surrounding her promotion. When she finally inquired, senior managers stalled; and when the new unit head was appointed, things went from bad to worse.

     The man who became the new unit head was a person I had worked with off and on over the previous two years. I admired his creative talent and thought of him as a friend, the kind of friend you have during the work week, though you don't socialize after hours. He knew my kids' names, and I knew his kids' names, and we spent more than a few breaks over the years talking about our work, our families, Merl Reagle's latest crossword puzzle. But when he became my boss, he seemed to assume a whole new personality. To my face, he led me to believe that I was one of the most valued players on his team, but his inexplicable actions continually belied his words. Clearly, I was losing my status as fair-haired girl, but for the life of me, I couldn't get a handle on why."

     In August, her new boss assigned the writing and production supervision of a key business theater project to Sara. Her task was to create more than 300 pages of script for in-person presenters to follow during a series of two-day seminars for field personnel and to supervise the creation of some 800 visuals to back up the speakers.

     "Beginning the Saturday before Labor Day, I worked for 31 straight days, often until midnight. I came in at 4 a.m. once to meet an interim deadline, and I delivered all the drafts and the completed project on schedule. Following the first presentation of the business theater on the West Coast we got a call from a representative of our client department who said it was the best presentation of its kind they had ever seen. When they got back to headquarters, they took my unit head and me out to lunch as a special thank you. Everyone was pleased."

     But when the company created the position of Business Theater Writer/Producer to accommodate the demand for this new service, and Sara expressed interest in the job to her unit head, he kept her dangling for two months, then turned her down, saying she wasn't as well qualified for the position as other applicants.

     "The head of the audio visual department had come to me and said he'd be delighted to have me fill the new position. The art director made it a point to tell me and our unit head the same thing. My boss, however, just said he 'would have to help them rethink' their decisions. It was a bitter pill to swallow. Obviously, I thought he was dead wrong … but at the time, I still believed that he believed he was making the right decision, not wanting to take the time to develop my AV production skills when he could hire someone from outside the company who already had those skills. But the person he eventually hired turned out to need a lot of help to develop other skills and knowledge about the company I already had," she recalls.

     Perplexed and discouraged by the conflicting messages she was receiving, Sara interviewed for, and was promptly offered, the position of communications director in another division of the corporation; but before she accepted the offer, which included a raise and a promotion, the senior vice president in charge of the corporation's total promotional function intervened, persuading Sara to remain with her original unit and assuring her of a promotion in the near future.

     "This man, one of the top most senior executives in this huge corporation, went out of his way to tell me he wanted me to be happy within his organization. I was to be his 'special project,' he said, and if I still wasn't happy at the end of six months, he would personally help me find another position within the corporation or outside of it. In retrospect, I see how naïve I was, but at the time I persuaded myself that a senior vice president had nothing to gain by misleading me. I had to believe what had gone before was all a big misunderstanding. And it was. Mine."

     In the ensuing six months, Sara vacillated between hoping things were going to get better and knowing they weren't. When another friend in the corporation recommended her for an outside position, he was harassed by senior management. And when her unit head finally offered her a promotion-director of sales promotion for a new satellite unit-she tripled the length of her commute and performed significantly more responsible functions for a month without receiving additional compensation, though her new status had been confirmed by memo to everyone including the CEO of the corporation. Then came the last straw.

     Summoned by the unit head, who had persuaded her to take the position in the first place, to a department meeting at the home office, Sara listened in disbelief as he publicly stripped her of her new authority.

     "There was no phone call, no private meeting with me, no dissatisfaction expressed with my performance," she says. "He just sat there and calmly informed the group that henceforth, another copywriter would assume my responsibilities, a copywriter whose performance ratings had never equaled mine. After 15 months of trying to convince myself this guy would ultimately do the right thing, I had to admit the truth. He was gunning for me, and the senior vice president who had persuaded me to stay was allowing him to do it for reasons I would probably never know. I typed my resignation and walked out."

     While her personal ethic wouldn't allow her to remain, Sara agonized over leaving the job she loved. Her deteriorating relationship with senior management aside, she had become genuinely fond of most of her colleagues and clients, and she hated to leave them behind.

     "I didn't want to lose touch with these people. I really thought of many of them more as friends than just co-workers," Sara says, but she was in for yet another revelation about corporate culture.

     When she submitted her resignation, Sara expected some gesture of support from her colleagues; but from the people with whom she had shared daily work and personal crises for three years, pulled all-nighters to meet tight deadlines, attended weddings and funerals, she got nothing. No commiseration, no offers of recommendations, no goodbye luncheon, "not so much as a 'so long, Toots.' I'd expected the big freeze from my senior managers, but when the people I had tried to support over the years just turned their backs on me, it was a real eye-opener.

     "My immediate supervisor, in particular, had been a special buddy, someone I thought I could count on for moral support. I realized, of course, that he was caught squarely in the middle of a pretty heavy situation, and as the sole support of his family, he didn't dare side with me in an open confrontation. Still, I made it clear I didn't hold what had happened against him and thought he would stand by me as a friend, at least."

     The unexpected desertion of her colleagues was the first of a series of shocks in store for Sara. Within two weeks of her resignation, she began to realize the full consequences of her "voluntary" departure. Besides coping with the dispiriting reality of unemployment and rapidly diminishing savings, she found herself facing the skepticism of potential new employers as she interviewed for other positions.

     "As negative as my experience had been, I didn't feel right bad-mouthing a former employer. After all, I had no quarrel with the corporation per se, only with two of my managers there. As a matter of fact, several of my clients within the company had come forward, when they learned of my resignation, to offer job leads, the name of an executive placement consultant, and letters of recommendation. They were terrific."

     Despite this support, Sara was unable to obtain another job immediately. "I had 27 interviews in the two months following my resignation, and every time, the problem was the same. I longed to tell the whole truth. I'm a truthful person. But I was afraid to tell my interviewers this, because I thought they'd feel I was just another chronic malcontent, so I found myself stammering through unconvincing explanations of a lack of challenge and opportunity for growth."

     After two months on the interview circuit and no job offers, Sara's confidence ebbed. Clearly, in spite of her impressive credentials and an extensive portfolio, her interviewers weren't buying her vague explanations of why she had resigned from her last position, so she decided to be candid with a potential employer with whom she discussed an interesting advertising position. His reaction was precisely what she had feared.

     "I could see the doubt forming in his eyes as I sat there," she recalls. "The very next morning, there was a form letter in my mailbox, kissing me off for the job."

     In addition to the difficulty of explaining her situation during interviews, Sara fretted that her former employer might be discrediting her during reference checks. Living on her husband's income alone was proving very difficult, and she suffered additionally from knowing her resignation had put the family in a financial bind. "I was raised to believe that you pay your own way, if at all possible-by washing dishes, if that's what it takes. So I signed on with a temporary secretarial service, hoping to parlay my typing skills into money for household expenses while I continued to look for a permanent position."

     But even here, Sara's honesty worked against her. Assigned by the agency to do clerical work in the purchasing department of a local distributing plant, she admitted to her supervisor there that she was looking for full-time work.

     "When he found out I might not stay there long if I got a full-time offer, he dismissed me-from a temporary clerical job. He'll never know it, but that had to be the low point of my 38 years. I just barely drove home without wrecking the car, I was crying so hard."

     It was rock bottom for Sara, a well of despair so deep she could see no way out; but just when she thought her professional life was over, one of her job interviewers threw her a lifeline.

     "By the time I met with this man in one of a series of interviews for a technical writing position at a nonprofit organization, I literally had nothing to lose. As unemotionally and discreetly as I could, I told him just enough of the events surrounding my resignation to let him know there had been an ethical conflict I'd been unable to resolve. Fortunately, he was a savvy person with an ear for the truth. He took the time to get to know me, concluded I'd had a bad experience but had something to offer his organization, and recommended that I be offered the job. Needless to say, I took it."

     A month later, Sara was engrossed in learning her new craft, writing persuasive funding proposals to support new programs and plant development, a position she has held for more than a year now. Surrounded by the clutter of research sources in her cheerful office, she attempts to put her experiences of that terrible summer and fall into perspective.

     "Even if I had known what I was facing at the time I resigned, I probably still would have done it. It was awful. There's just no other way to say it, but it was still better than prostituting myself for that fat corporate paycheck. Even now, acquaintances will say to me, 'If you'd been the sole wage-earner in the family, you wouldn't have quit,' but my real friends know better. If I'd wound up cleaning other people's houses to support my kids, I wouldn't have enjoyed it, but I would have done it.

     "As bad as it was, it wasn't all bad. I was fortunate to have good friends outside of the company who supported my decision. 'You were right to do it,' they told me. 'I would have done the same thing in your place.' I'll never forget the attorney who paid me a special visit and told me she admired my integrity for resigning. I really needed to hear that, to know I was right not to allow myself to be treated that way."

     Sara's family also offered badly needed reinforcement for her decision. "My husband was a brick, totally accepting of my decision to resign. What I choose to do, he backs me up, whether he agrees with me or not. He never offers a lot of unsolicited advice, either. Maybe that explains why we've been married for 15 years! My father died several years ago, but my mother … well, she was my mother, right in character. 'Stop whining and get moving,' has always been her attitude, and I'm grateful for that."

     To others in a similar situation, Sara offers this advice: "When it comes to picking up the pieces, there's no easy way, unless you're very, very lucky. Once you've resigned for what you feel are good and just reasons, you've got to live with that decision and go on. For a person to whom work is an essential part of his or her identity, being out of a job is a nightmare. But you just have to keep going, answering ads, working the search engines, following up every lead, hoping that eventually the odds will work in your favor. Above all, you've got to believe that there are human beings out there who will appreciate your dilemma and will respect your reasons for quitting. If I hadn't clung to that belief, I might have taken to the bottle and given up; but I did, and I was right."

     It has taken time, but her psychological wounds are finally healing. Over the past 18 months the process has been aided by former clients who approached her on freelance writing assignments when they learned she'd left the company, assignments that have lead to other commissions and a now flourishing freelance writing business.

     "It hasn't been totally rosy," she reflects. "Where there are people, there are inevitable conflicts, even when you're a freelancer and not actually on an organization's payroll. For example, one of my new clients for whom I'd really gone out of my way, begging favors from every artist and photographer I know to fit a major print project to his wildly inadequate budget, dropped me like a hot rock a few weeks ago just because I'd sent him a perfectly conventional reminder of a past-due bill. That hurt my feelings, but I'll get over it. The great majority of clients are square shooters, and you can't win them all."

     Despite her negative employment experience, honesty and fair play are parts of Sara's personal code of ethics that she will never abandon.

     "It's really a matter of basic, human respect. All through that terrible summer, I watched reruns of the old M*A*S*H series on late-night TV. One episode really stuck in my mind. In it, Hot Lips Houlihan tells Hawkeye Pierce what she demands from him, from her prospective mother-in-law who's giving her a hard time, and from everyone else. 'Respect, simple respect,' she tells him. 'I expect nothing more, and I'll accept nothing less.' I don't think I can improve on that."

Available in a variety of downloadable formats [ISBN 1-59374-321-1], or as a trade paperback [ISBN 1-59374-320-3], at www.WhiskeyCreekPress.com