Confession

I love my previous firm, actually, very much, and it is so far the most satisfied place I have worked. The reason I left, was actually embarrassing.

Once during tax season, I was reviewing a very low profile client』s personal tax return, who was a single mother with two kids, earned minimal salary. Actually, my previous boss keeps quit a few clients like this and charge them next to nothing for the services, we call them 「goodwill clients」.

Despite it was late at night, after 12 hours working straight in the office, I quickly scanning through the file, without wasting my time thinking, I signed as reviewer, and sent the file to my boss for the final review.

The next morning, my boss showed up in my office, with the file in her hand, asked: 「tired?」 Quickly I knew there must be mistakes in that file.

My boss gave me back the file and told me: 「You know, our job to some people is very important, and I am not talking about our high profile clients, but clients like this. You could never imagine once a mother crying in my office because I told her there would be tax penalty for her to pay while I knew she had used up the last penny in her bank account buying foods. Oh, by the way, I think you missed some tax credits for this one, and could you please fix it.」

I was sitting there for long time after my boss left. It was just not easy to find any excuse for myself.
After that tax season, I handed in my resignation letter. Partially because I thought it was a punishment to me, but mainly, I couldn』t handle the stress and guilt from imagining a crying mother in front of me, so I chose to run like a coward.

Until now, my used-to-be-my-boss still joked about that I should go back to the firm , she just doesn』t know, deeply inside me, I still call myself a selfish coward, because I just can』t over come the fear of another mistake like that.