Right after graduating from university, Moriah received a management trainee position at a big corporation. She was destined for greatness, as the role was meant for her to rapidly move up the career ladder and be trained by the best in the business.

Through the years, she was always appreciated and respected by upper management. She brought great results for the company and was the reason for a lot of their successful campaigns.

One day, however, a new employee engagement manager was hired. His role was meant to create different programs that promoted work-life balance for the company’s employees and to create useful incentives to inspire them to work better.

To get to know everyone working in the company and their interests, he decided to do one-on-one interviews with everybody. When it was Moriah’s turn, she happily walked inside the new manager’s office with a smile on her face.

“Hello, Mr. Drew,” she said, extending a hand for him to shake. “I’m Moriah, I’m the Senior Manager for Customer Experience.”

“Hi,” Mr. Drew said without moving from his seat. “Let’s skip the pleasantries. Please sit down,” he said, motioning to the seat in front of his table.

“Well that’s rude,” Moriah thought to herself. She assumed that Mr. Drew was tired of all the people he had interviewed before her, so she let it slide.

“So, what do you bring to the table? I’d like to know about you and your role a little bit more,” Mr. Drew asked.

“As I’ve said earlier, I’m Moriah. I’ve been working in this company for 35 years now. I handle customer experience,” she began to explain.

Before she could say some more, she was distracted by the wild expression on Mr. Drew’s face when she mentioned she had been with the company for 35 years. “That’s quite a long time… more than half my age!” he exclaimed. “How old are you, even?”

“I just turned sixty,” Moriah replied. “Still young. Also kept young by the team I handle here at the office,” she noted with a smile on her face.

Instead of smiling with her, Mr. Drew had a bewildered look on his face. “60? Shouldn’t you be retired?” he said frankly.

Moriah could no longer take the man’s passive aggressiveness toward her, so she decided to confront him. “I’m quite bothered by the tone of your voice and your body language towards me, Mr. Drew,” Moriah admitted. “Do you have a problem with me?”

“No,” Mr. Drew replied. “But I do have a problem with how you’re leading the customer experience team at age 60. What do you know about our target market? Shouldn’t your position be held by someone in the same generation as our consumers?” he asked her.

“Well that’s quite rude,” Moriah said, feeling her cheeks turning hot with anger. “I don’t think our bosses would put me in a big position if they didn’t think I was capable. Maybe if you just wait and see, you’ll understand why I’ve been in this company for 35 years.”

“You know what? Fine,” she told him. “YOU tell all the bosses that I quit. Go ahead and broadcast it to the company,” she said, walking straight to the office to get her things.

Mr. Drew shrugged. “Or maybe it’s time for you to accept the fact that the position is better off with someone else? At your age, you should be enjoying time with your family anyway,” he suggested once more.

Moriah shook her head. She wasn’t about to give Mr. Drew the satisfaction of watching her go. She left his office and continued on with her business, working on yet another award-winning customer experience program that the company’s CEO called “a work of art.”

After launching her newest campaign, Moriah bumped into Mr. Drew again. “How many more campaigns do you have up your sleeve?” he asked her.

“I can keep going,” Moriah replied.

“Or maybe you can give chances to the rest of your team,” Mr. Drew suggested. “Maybe they would have fresh new ideas if you just allowed them to take over.”

At this point, Moriah had had enough. She couldn’t understand what Mr. Drew’s problem was with her, but she no longer had the energy to argue. “You know what? Fine,” she told him. “YOU tell all the bosses that I quit. Go ahead and broadcast it to the company,” she said, walking straight to the office to get her things.

“Where are you going, Moriah?” some of her officemates asked.

“Go and ask Mr. Drew!” she said before entering the elevator without looking back.

Moriah spent the next couple of weeks at home with her grandchildren. While she realized that spending time with her family for an extended period of time was nice, she still missed working at the office, as it was all she ever knew for a while.

One day, while she and her grandkids were at a carnival, she received a call from the company’s CEO. “I had just found out about the true reason why you decided to quit,” he told her. “Why didn’t you tell me that the new hire was pestering you?”

“I just didn’t think it was necessary. I no longer wanted to argue with him, so I gave him what he wanted,” Moriah admitted honestly.

“Well, Moriah, to tell you the truth, I’d rather have him gone than you. The results of our customer experience campaigns are no longer as good as they were when you were still handling them. I need you back, please,” he asked.

“I can’t be in the same area as Mr. Drew,” Moriah told the CEO. “He’s just going to keep insulting me like he did all those months!” she said, remembering all the times she felt so low because of the new hire.

“Well, I’m promoting you as a managing partner. He can no longer speak to you that way. Besides, did we ever need him anyway? As your first line of business once you’re back, please check on his employment. I don’t think he’s bringing much to the table,” the CEO told her.

True enough, Moriah returned to the office and found that they were operating with unnecessary expenses because they hired too many redundant staff members. One position that was found unnecessary was Mr. Drew’s.

With human resources in place, there was no need for an employee engagement manager to begin with. So, Mr. Drew was fired, and there was nobody left to insult Moriah or any other staff member at that. What can we learn from this story?

• Age is only a number and does not define a person’s capabilities. Mr. Drew thought Moriah was too old to be working for the company and kept bugging her about retiring. In the end, he learned the hard way that age doesn’t affect one’s capability to do a good job.
• Respect your co-workers and treat them the way you want to be treated. Moriah felt disrespected by Mr. Drew to the point that she no longer wanted to work for the company. In the end, it was the CEO who asked her to come back, knowing what an asset Moriah was to the company.

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