To quit my job with nothing lined up

[Vinividivici]

I have been miserable in my job for a long time. It has impacted my physical and mental health. I am now fully burnt out and on sick leave (and I have other threads on this!).

AIBU to resign with nothing new lined up, with a possible plan to take a career break?

We would be able to pay our bills, though we would have to tighten our belts. But I could spend more time with my child and relieve a lot of daily household stress so that my husband and I can get regular exercise and more sleep. We are mid 40s and I am beginning to worry that our current lifestyle will lead us to be very stressed and unhealthy into old age.

Lodgers aren’t the end of the world, when my mum needed to pay her mortgage years ago she did this, got lodgers.

You seem to be making generalisations about ‘work’ based on your experience with specific employers in law.

Law has a reputation!

Don’t make negative assumptions about other workplaces due to your current situation and feeling low.

When I was at my lowest mental health wise, I quit and the next week I signed up to a temp agency for secretarial roles. Within a week I had a (very low paid) job at a council. I mean it was embarrassingly easy to do as a job. They'd told me "nobody has kept pace before with the workload". I was regularly done by lunchtime and asking people if they needed any work doing.

Anyway, I shared that because while my mental health has been a bit of a rollercoaster over the years, doing that low stress job for a bit was fine. It built up a bit of confidence and covered some costs.

I say this gently though, with your therapist, there is some work to do. The way you present your history in your workplace is very much how people have done things to you. You do not know their motivations and the stresses they were under. So, for example, your ex friend may not deliberately have recruited you into a role beneath your grade. Or may have been forced to make changes by someone senior.

There is a reason sickness absence is so high right now and that's in part because most workplaces are a bit brutal. That's not saying "don't work" but the time you're spending with your therapist now will be for nothing if you don't build your resilience out of your experience. And I type this as someone who has fallen over again and again in terms of their own mental health but for every fall, I've tried to get stronger. So I'm not saying I've cracked it. Just sometimes when you're in the midst of a bad psychological space, it's hard to see that there are things you didn't do which you could have, like advocate for yourself, negotiate or even just trying to see the perspective of those who are making life hard for you (as sometimes you don't have the full picture).

Walking away from this job will ease the immediate pressure (which might be the right thing right now) but it won't make life better overall from now on in. Every workplace has it's shitty boss, it's excess workload. Shouldn't be the case, but it is. If you leave now, make sure you prioritise how you action plan for when that next happens not if. Then this is a good experience which you've learned from. Not a bad experience you had to escape from.

I am in a similar position and have made the decision to go. I need to step away from work, reset and go again. I’ve been here before about 10 years ago, and in hindsight I wished I’d gone sooner.

If you really need money, temping is definitely an option. I know two friends that have done the same and both found perm jobs through it.

I know this is all right. It's like there is a code that I can't crack at work. Either I am just mediocre or there is something about me that means I am incapable of engaging with people in a way that helps me to succeed.

It's super hard for me to ask for what I want and need at work. In this case, I believe that if I had regular catch-ups with my manager (which she declined), I would have been able to raise concerns and issues organically in such a way as to head off this disaster. Maybe I should have insisted on meetings? But she was so irritated the few times that I raised issues, and acted like I was stupid. I don't know how others would have succeeded in this situation.

Or maybe I should have said no to getting married or having a large-ish wedding. When I agreed to this, work was easier to handle. The takeover of my time and all the new responsibilities post-dated the engagement. I just didn't know how to balance it all, and there was zero support available on my matters.

YANBU for wanting a break but your expectations for job searching, afterwards, could be?

Hard to go back into work, after a break, and hard anyway in your 40s.

Just depends on what hard you're prepared to undertake for comfort now.

I have done this and it was a good decision for me at the time - in the interim signed up with a teaching agency - not a teacher btw) to be an exam invigilator at schools and colleges and the timing would work maybe for you atm as exam season - found a new job in 4 months however the job market is fierce at the moment- take control and make decisions right for you as work should not define you - your mental health is more important - 🤔

Ps I also told them why, and was honest, always the best policy - we have the right to be authentic if comfortable being so - I interview a great deal and honesty is refreshing and appreciated -for me it was the decision to whistleblower or not - HR felt I had a strong case but left instead -

Your manager is an idiot. Having said that though I’m not sure if 1:1s are common in most law practices.

An acquaintance of mine works for a small firm with seemingly little pressure or not as much as in a big firm. Another friend wfh as she has an adult autistic son, but was having to work long hours (commercial law).

A civil litigation lawyer I knew did an in house job, then worked for our firm and now is a teacher in his son’s private school.

My DB’s MIL is an ex conveyancing lawyer and teaches law and English at A level I think now. Loves it.

Organising a big wedding can indeed be stressful, presumably that’s done now?

What’s done is done regarding how you’ve handled things at work to date.

As PPs say there could be other options in your current field of work with employers with a different type of culture.

It could be that counselling could help. Does your employer have an employee assistance type thing, or health insurance?

I work for a corporation. One to ones are standard for everyone else. Presumably I was just considered very very low priority.

These stories are helpful! There may be hope for me...

Yeah, as noted above, part of what has driven me mad with this role is that my job title is pathetic and humiliating for someone of my age, and I have been desperately working towards promotion so I can have some hope of a future.

Now I have hit a wall and I feel that I have given up on myself and any future career. I really need time to recover from this horrible experience and the awful state I am in.

That said, I'm not making any permanent decisions right now because I also realise that I am probably not in a fit state to make long term decisions.

I did this last summer best thing I could have done. Finished in July, had summer with kids and started new job in November x x

You can make a permanent decision not to be bullied anymore though and put your own oxygen mask on first as the saying goes.

I would hand in my notice definitely and I have done this before without a job to go to and I’m a lone parent so high risk but I am so glad I did. The mental pressure of finding a new job was wayyyy better than the situation I found myself in at work. It was an instant relief.

Said with kindness.

I can read so much victimhood in what you've written.

What if you're not mediocre?

What if getting married is nothing to do with it?

What if your boss was a complete idiot but some people still manage to thrive despite that? What if there's a way to take more control? That's what I'd work on with your therapist. What you let go of, and what you change or fight.

At the moment, I don't see myself returning to this particular organisation because it is too dysfunctional and I have put myself in such a bad position with my sickness leave. (Though I am not making any decisions just yet because I am still burnt out and reeling).

However, I know that you're right about finding a way to be assertive in the future.

Part of me wants to retreat from work life because I feel that I have been such a failure. But I do think I would be letting myself down if I did not at some point in my life find a way to exist and own my space with confidence in a work context.

have you tried to access counselling about this? It could help.

‘really need time to recover’. you could get this for much lower risk, without further sick leave or quitting, by job seeking hard.

You’ve ‘hit a wall’ at your current place, so getting out makes sense, there are high and lower risk ways to do that.

How does job seeking hard on top of working give me time to recover? (Serious question).

I submitted one application last week and it took basically all of my extra energy. Doing this while also working and parenting doesn't seem easy in the best of times, and certainly not now.

Yes, I am seeking counseling.