How true is the saying, "Don't leave a job unless you have another job to go to."

[cubiclejockey]

Just looking for opinions and experiences. I have never quit a job in my life, not that I deserve a medal for that. In fact, I think I have poor boundaries and have put up with more than I should have over the years. I am in a career that is not unionized nor is it in the private sector. I have been an educational administrator for about 25 years. Long story short, I have been in my current job for about 2 years and it has almost brought me to my knees in terms of workload and other issues. For each day I work, I wake with intrusive thoughts of everything I have to do and have horrible anxiety even sending emails for fear of responses (which I lovely refer to as "email bombs"). I am, on the face of things, calm and capable but I am struggling massively at the moment. Because of my age (fuck it, 50), I fear if I quit, I will not get hired again, or at least not for a long time. I know several woman, senior to me, who have lost jobs and have struggled to find employment again. But I feel I can't continue to live the way I am living right now in terms of my work situation.

My home life is good, and my partner works fulltime but enjoys the job more than I do. We are pretty equal in terms of workload and salary. We live in a major city and need the double income to remain there. My partner's career means we need to be central. I have a 15 year old daughter and I don't want to model my current job situation for her (at the very least, I hope I am a deterrent for the conventional office job model). I am not looking to internet strangers for permission to quit, but I would welcome life experience stories of either coping with a bad situation, leaving a bad situation, or otherwise. Thank you.

I have left jobs without one to go to four times over my life - about once a decade in my working life, I suppose - on the assumption (correct, as it turned out) that I could always find a way to earn a pound. It is a fantastically liberating feeling (I stuck at stuff that made me desperately unhappy and ill while younger, so may invest disproportionate value in the ability to walk away from unfulfilling situations) but I did always have a plan in place. And as my life has become more complex and my responsibilities more onerous and expensive, those plans have had to be more detailed.

Lots of good advice here already, but I'd emphasise"

• saving - cut your expenditure to the bone - to build a buffer and remind yourself of all the things you don't need. Do you have a spare room you could let? Or some other way of making a bit of extra money without too much effort while you plan your exit?
• planning and practice. Sign up to agencies, go and eyeball the recruitment consultants, just to get practice at saying out loud what you're good at and what you contribute. Update your CV and LinkedIn profile or whatever people commonly use in your sector. Go to networking events.
• you don't mention what kind of therapy you're having. Make space for career-oriented coaching as well.
• Be ruthless about the job - clock on, clock off, focus on what is really important and detach yourself from the crap with the thought that you're leaving soon.
• Look after yourself every day: no booze, good food, exercise, sleep, HRT if you need it. It's not that easy being a middle-aged woman sometimes and you are working on making quite a big change.

Good luck! handing in your notice is going to feel great!

Oh, and in the last job I had (which I also quit, but this time with enough money and alternative income to walk away from paid work) my jobsworth, time-serving boss asked about my previous 'career break'. And I took great delight in telling him that while on my career break from the civil service, I had taken over the reins of my rental property, so maximised my income from it; qualified as a TEFL teacher and worked part-time in a local language school, and taken on some private pupils; set up a dog-walking business; did some occasional editorial work for local businesses. and used the nanny suite that I no longer needed for live-in childcare now that I was able to work flexibly to rent out to foreign language students. I followed it up by saying that I'd got in the habit of always having more than one source of income my entire working life, so I never had to rely upon just one employer. And watched his balls shrivel.

@AlternativePerspective

At the moment recruitment in this country is crazy. There has never been a better time to look for a job. Salaries for new starts are up 10-20%. And employers are competing for good candidates. I’m interested to know where this idea has come from, and if it’s true, why is unemployment so high?

I think it’s fair to say that it’s easy to get a job in hospitality, but in other areas it definitely isn’t. I’m in London area and it’s routine for job adverts to be closed early because of numbers of applicants, for essential criteria to be increased because of numbers of applicants. Admittedly I have a disability and it’s therefore almost impossible for me personally to find a job but in terms of others I know it really isn’t as simple as others seem to be saying.

This is the case is quite a number of sectors - charities, science, health care, social care, hospitality, transportation, construction, retail are just a few of the areas that I know are really struggling with recruitment.

And this is UK wide.

Unemployment is currently only 3.9% which is actually really low.

I’ve left jobs without lining up another a couple of times. The first I had the cushion of a redundancy payout and the second I had enough in savings to keep me going for a while.

Both were very positive for me, galvanising change and new opportunities.

I realize this thread is old but had to comment if anyone else is in this predicament.

I quit my job without another lined up. I was put off for ages as people did say it’s easier to find work while in employment however my mental health couldn’t take anymore! My job was ok prior to covid however the problems we had were exacerbated by covid. Gaslighting, lying managers, staff shortages, awful customers, unhelpful colleagues & very unsociable, long hours (I was expected to start at 3am even though I wasn’t meant to start until 8am!)

I planned for months what I would do during my time of unemployment (I wanted to retrain to become a tax advisor) so I paid off all of my bills, drastically cut back on spending a few months prior to quitting and saved as much as I could before I handed in my notice as I didn’t know how long I would be unemployed for. DH offer to help also. I also researched courses to help me retrain.

I handed my notice in and immediately felt relieved. I felt a sense of satisfaction that I hadn’t felt in years. During my notice period, I applied for work in the relevant field like crazy as I felt like the prospect of being unemployed pushed me harder than anything else! Amazingly, I was invited to four interviews in one week. On the last day of my notice, I was offered a job at 3 of those work places who interviewed me. I accepted the one which I viewed as most favourable but had a month off before starting my new role (was lovely to have a holiday for the first time in ages not stressing about work!) now earn more money doing fewer hours, flexible/remote working, lovely management & team!
My advice to those who want to quit their job - do your homework on what you would do once you quit. I wouldn’t recommend quitting your job without any plan unless where you work is unbearable and is affecting your daily life. It’s also important to be honest with yourself.