Dear Chris: Should I Resign?

Following last week's post posing a very important question to the Screaming Viking, we here at the Swimbrief have seen a sharp uptick in questions to the writers of this site. Here is one we received from Chuck W. in Colorado Springs, Colorado:


Dear Chris,

I am the the most powerful person in a major youth sports organization. I've always really enjoyed my job- great salary, benefits and no one bothered me: in fact many of the people in my own organization had no idea who I was. But lately, it just hasn't been very fun working here. Let me explain: somewhere around 2010, er, 2009, or possible a few years before that give or take, I discovered that there were some bad coaches doing some bad things of a sexual nature to some of their athletes. And when I found this out, and honestly I can't remember almost anything that happened during that whole time period, I mean, you could swear me under oath and ask me about it and I really wouldn't be able to recall much, honestly. But what I do remember is that when I found this out I realized I had to do something about it. If news got out that coaches were abusing athletes it would be terrible for me, my salary and my organizations top goal: winning the most Olympic medals.

Along the way, I found out that the guy I was employing to run our national team had raped a girl some time in the past, so I did what anyone else would do: I called him in my office and confronted him on it and then followed up with the worst punishment I could think of: I let him resign without any public disclosure. Turns out, he went down the street and worked at a local country club on an effusive recommendation from one of the few people I work with- I had no idea!

In any case, things were getting worse and I knew I had to step up my game. So in 2009, at the biggest convention of coaches in my sport, I stepped up and told those guys to cut it out already. I thought I had finally put the issue to rest when a couple media types and bloggers came sniffing around and actually started talking about how I had handled the situation. I was absolutely shocked, SHOCKED, to find out that they didn't think I was doing the absolute best job. One of them even asked me to apologize- can you believe that? Since then I've gone declined any and all interviews since they were being so unreasonable about the whole thing. Still, the bloggers won't stop writing about me and while I don't read the intranet or get on the web computers very much it's still pretty annoying. I even tried hiring a young woman to answer all the sex abuse related phone calls and e-mails so that no one would get mad at me and even that didn't work!

So, my question is this: what is the easiest way to make this all go away? Do you think if I got my salary above a million dollars a year that people would finally show me some respect? I mean, I hate to bring this up, but do you think I should just say "screw it" and resign?

Dear Chuck W,

Yes.