Guest Post: What Would Gail Do?

 Hello! My name is Vanessa and I write a little about everything at Random Thoughts & Acronyms. I’ve just finished my major requirements in Economics at McGill and am working on my minor in Urbanism. Coupling my BA with a technical degree and experience as an immigration paralegal and I will be qualified to get a job as… hmmm, not much… when I graduate in December. I am an English Québécoise and adore personal finance, TV and cooking. I try to live as simply and as minimally as possible with the hopes that one day I’ll get an amazing job that will require me to immediately leave Montreal and never return.

I’ve been watching Gail do her stuff for years now – first on ‘Til Debt Do Us Part and now on Princess. I love her in-your-face attitude towards money and my exposure to her advice at such a young age definitely shaped me into the financially responsible person that I am today.

Throughout my teens and early twenties ask myself, “What Would Gail Do?” (WWGD) mantra – Should I buy new shoes? No, I should save this money. Can I afford to go on vacation? Nope, I don’t have enough saved up yet.

So recently, when I thought about quitting my job, I did my WWGD mantra. When you first look at the facts, I sound really flaky – “My job is boring”, “I don’t like my boss”, “I have better things to do” and for many weeks I continued to go to work based solely on Gail’s voice in my head saying “You think you’re better than this? Do you think that you’re special and don’t have to work?”

Recently I got accepted into Canada’s Explore program and I will be studying French in Winnipeg for five weeks in July. My boss told me, in no uncertain terms, that I will not be able to use my vacation time to go and that my only option would be to quit. I accepted this and resounded myself to being unemployed come June 30^th.

After this conversation with my boss, things at work went from bad to worse. I began to feel sick just thinking about going into work and began to miss more and more days of work. Throughout all of this, I still had Gail’s voice in my head that was telling me to get back to work and deal with the problems. I began to come home every night in tears, complaining to my boyfriend about how horrible my boss had been to me that evening.

Finally my boyfriend suggested that I quit my job. I confessed to him that I didn’t feel comfortable doing so as I had bills to pay and I was already planning to not work for the months of July and August – what was I supposed to do, tap into my savings? Gail would not approve.

Fortunately, new episodes of Princess were online and, as I was watching these spoiled GTA girls get their comeuppance, I had a realization – savings are 100% for cases like mine – I wasn’t being princess-y at all! I discussed it with my boyfriend (who incidentally, thinks I’m absolutely nuts) we decided that the answer to “WWGD” in a situation where I’m six weeks out of quitting my job anyways and coming home every day in tears but, oh yeah, have a large cash reserve, is “quit your damn job”.

And so, one day last week when my boss slammed his office door in my face as I was telling him that there was a mistake in the schedule (I was scheduled to work a position I’m not trained for on a day that I’m not available), I waited until he calmed down and politely told him that I would no longer be working at that company. Thankfully, WWGD-ing all these years has allowed me to save enough to not be forced to work at a horrible job just to pay my bills.