Today is Friday. I got into the office this morning and decided that in order to do the “right thing” according to how the company operates that I should talk to my lead and pull myself out of the active access systems at work. Not a permanent thing, just following best procedures and practices until we’ve had a chance for everyone to sit down and discuss the situation. We had a long talk about it but, in the end, he agreed and watched me decline my own access so that there would be no question of me attempting to have access when maybe I should not.
When we did so we noticed that my access has already been revoked. So my judgement call was good in that, without knowing it, I was agreeing with decisions already made.
Once we had a chance to have a meeting with my lead and my boss it was determined that I had done exactly the right thing, as weird as it felt at the time and as much as people on the outside are likely to second guess my judgement on it. It was a calm and collected decision based on company policies and practices. I had really felt that I was doing what I was supposed to do given the situation and that turned out to be correct. A bold move, I suppose.
The decision was made that I was not needed in the office, at least for now, and that I should head home and we will discuss the situation on Monday or Tuesday. For now, I am getting a long weekend (paid, of course) to relax until we have time to get everything worked out.
Obviously this move comes with plenty of stress of its own. While it is not the end of my career at Bridgewater, the unspoken understanding is that it is, of course. I have already put in my notice and am just working out my notice period right now. So this is not a big surprise. The events from last night were a pretty big shock and pretty much make the long term potential of staying at Bridgewater a non-option from my point of view. But in the big picture, while that is disappointing, it does not fundamentally change how things are going to happen going forward. The process of me leaving Bridgewater is already fully underway and not stopping now. Now we just have to figure out the transition plan.
Dominica and the girls were pretty surprised when I arrived home around noon. I had grabbed a tuna melt at Dunkin Donuts on my way home since I had missed lunch at the office. So we just spent the afternoon together as a family and relaxed for a bit. My final denial has not come through yet so the only thing that we can do at this point is sit and wait and hope that everything works out. It is going to be at least a week like this, maybe more. We will know something more early next week, but very little. End of the week, we hope, we will have much more solid information.
Feeling stressed, but also feeling confident in having maintained cool composure and solid decision making. It was the right and proper response. Anything less would have been some awkward combination of begging to stay in the office (even if unspoken) or being told I had to give up access rather than acknowledging it from the outset. I really did think it through for a long time before making the decision and it was in no way a heat of the moment thing or anything of the sort. It was principled and logical.
Now the waiting begins.