Reasons To Leave Your Job

The title might lead one to ask when it is time to leave his or her current position. Although the the answers will differ and for some seem more obvious than others, there are many different situations that we find ourselves in and there is no formula that will fit each person, but below are a few things to keep in mind.

As a little boy there were two things that interested me- music and foreign languages. Since music turned out to be a path that I wasn't meant to take, I started to learn Russian when I turned eighteen. I had a four year plan- take all of my college classes, live in Russia for a year and then after graduating with my undergrad degree, I wanted to go forth into the world and earn money.

Well, finding a job didn't happen as quickly as I had wanted it to, so I went to graduate school and got a degree in applied linguistics. After this, I found my first corporate job in the United States where I was hired initially as a contract linguist and eventually hired full time.

I loved my job, at first, I was learning new things and found that my work ethic was respected and, in fact, that I was respected because of the work that I did. However, the new wore off and I steadily began to hate my job more more as each day passed.

When the worker begins to feel unhappy at work it could be the result of many different things. Co-workers, bosses, and clients are just a few of these uncontrolled variables that the entry level worker has absolutely no control over. This is just something that one needs to deal with, they say, however, I must say that being completely passive at the workplace will eventually cause the worker to leave.

My decision to start looking for another job was the fact that my bosses and their bosses didn't have a clue about what was really going on. They would have meetings all day long and and not actually take part in the operations aspect of our work. In fact, a former co-worker once told me that all managers just kind of sat around and jerked each other off. Which, by many estimations is true.

As the economic crisis began to deepen our salaries were reduced without question, people were let go, and the normal work week began to consist not of the usual forty to forty-five hours, but of sixty and seventy hours. Everyday I woke up in the morning nauseous at the thought of going to work. In fact, each day was compounded by the worry that I had better not get sick because the company had taken away all of my paid leave, too.

While many of my co-workers would say that this was something that we had to endure and had to deal with because of the falling economic situation, and the lack of other jobs in the country, I felt that even though there were hard times, the company shouldn't make them more difficult. However, no matter what corporate environment you are in, the company is the most important thing, while the people who do the work are the least important.

There was a point after working seventy hours one week that I was standing on my balcony looking down the twenty stories to the ground and I seriously thought about jumping off of it. This was my wake up call. It was either that I was going to stop working like an indentured servant or I was going to have to quit my job.

I was lucky enough though that my boss listened to me and did re-route some of my work and gave me a more manageable workload. However, for those who are not so lucky, my advice would be to quit the job or do something to get laid off (so you can receive unemployment) before you get to the point of considering death as a better option.

There is no corporate job that is worth dying over. The only one that will miss you is your family and your close friends. People at that company will put you in a category that defines you as weak and unable to handle working for a living or even as crazy. Chances are that you aren't any of those things, but remember the company and its employees do not and will not care about you. You have to take care of yourself.