Several weeks ago I noticed that someone had written the phrase “Nobody likes a quitter.” on a white board in my office. I’ve been pondering this for quite some time now, and I have a few thoughts.

It seems like at least a few people would in fact like quitters. For example, the runner up in a contest comes to mind. Wouldn’t it be nice if just before winning the person in first place decided they couldn’t hack it anymore?

If your a quitter do you not like yourself? What about the guy that quit before you did? Seems like you’d always be telling yourself, “yeah I quit, but Joe quit first!”

What about all the attempted homicides? Sure maybe some of them are fuck ups that just didn’t do it right, but I’m sure there are a few that just quit before completing the task. I bet their victims are thankful for quitters.

Initially I wasn’t sure why someone had written this on my whiteboard. Was it an attack on my character? Had I in fact quit doing something? I’m sure I had, but was it something that I should not have quit? No, I’ve finally come to a conclusion. The person who scrawled those words was self loathing and full of guilt. They in fact quit after only telling part of the story. It may be true that some people do not like some quitters, but certainly not all people have a distaste for all quitters. Feeling remorseful in their inability to follow through on a train of thought they decided to declare to the world, or at least the subset of people in the world that enter my office, their distain for themselves.

I do have one alternative theory. I may have written this on my whiteboard myself, and simply forgot what I was doing. Of course the implications of that scenario go well beyond the scope of the current monologue.