This is your sign to quit your job.
I quit my job almost a month ago and holy shit it feels so good. I feel like I’ve started a new chapter, entered my new Taylor Swift era, reset my brain drive and wowowow I cannot recommend quitting your bad job for a good job enough.
Feeling burnt out? Quit your job.
Told for years and years that — we promise — there’s opportunity for you, only to see that opportunity eliminated or goal posts moved each time, but you’re just over here giving 110%? Quit your job.
Feeling like you’re going crazy because you’re encouraged to speak up about an overwhelming workload but then told you’re coming off as negative once you do? Quit your job.
Told to take PTO but you are literally quintuply booked on a Friday morning? Quit your job.
Crying in your car in the parking lot at 7:35 p.m. after a review where everything was wrong and now you have redo everything you just scrambled to do in 24 hours with no direction in the first place? Quit your job.
Crying in your car on a Saturday afternoon because a global retailer thinks right now this very second is the right time to get socially woke and you’re just a mid-level writer (so you’re told) on a second thought of a sub brand and the world’s going to shit and you’re kind of wondering if these people realize they sound a little like they were just mad that Nike beat them to it? Quit your job.
Crying in your bedroom on a Tuesday afternoon because your only other teammate, your boss, your mentor, was just laid off and you’re all alone (again) and it’s been made clear that while you’re going to continue doing a role with responsibilities two steps on the ladder above your title and pay grade, you’re not getting anything but “experience” for it, because now that you’re doing it, that role doesn’t actually exist anymore? What?? Quit your job.
Bored? Quit your job.
Just fucking feel like it? Quit your job!!!
Okay, this is where I editors note in some of the good stuff.
I have mixed emotions about writing about my past job(s). I am a professional writer with many personal feelings, and I am aware that this is a public blog on the internet and I’ve got kitty mouths to feed. But, trust me, I’m keeping the juicy stuff for the memoir, and even the tea that is spilled is only done so because it shaped me‚ or it traumatized me, LOL, and it’s told with the bias of my experience and my sarcastic tone. No place is perfect, no place will ever be perfect. But I’m also not going to pretend like it was.
So, anyway. My first job really sucked—getting holidays off was like the Hunger Games, the production-level work was mind numbing but you were forced to pretend like it was important, and there was literally nowhere to go, career-wise, because we were just a branch of the marketing department and all the fun shit happened in Seattle. But, it taught me how to be a baby adult in the big creative work place. I met a group of writers who have become great copy world contacts and who I’m always happy to see succeed. When it was time for me to “escape the zu,” my manager was thrilled for me and, more importantly, honest with me—I had reached the ceiling and she could give me 100 more SPANX events to crush, but she knew I’d be happier somewhere with an actual copywriting role.
And I was! For the most part.
My second job was a huge part of my life—while working there I moved in with my boyfriend, took my first cross-country vacations, my sister moved away, all my friends moved away, I got my first promotion, I got my first car, my boyfriend became my fiancé, I got another cat, my fiancé became my husband—and it came with many, many lessons that I’m taking with me. But I think it’s okay to also acknowledge that parts of it were toxic, and that frustration was festering to the point where I wasn’t being good to myself—and it was in part because I didn’t feel like the company I had been so loyal to was being loyal to me.
When my first boss was laid off about six months in, and I was thrown into a Black Friday campaign, I stayed. When my second boss decided this gig was not for him (because they’d told him he would be leading the team and then hired someone to lead it above us), I stayed. When my third boss was let go the week before my only other coworker was leaving for a two week vacation, I stayed. When my fourth boss and I were told our growth opportunities were suddenly “different” because we were on a smaller team, and so the title/role I had been so eagerly working toward didn’t exist anymore, and her growth was oddly convoluted, too, and everything got weird— I stayed. When she left for maternity leave and there was a global pandemic, but I wanted to show ‘em what I could do, I stayed. When she got back, only to be laid off a little while later, I stayed because I thought that meant the role would go to me. But it didn’t, it was eliminated (in theory and on paper, but not by responsibilities and expectations) just like my other growth opportunity the year before, WTF, my head hurts… and I didn’t know how much longer I could stay.
I am, obviously, talking about big corporate America. I am talking about an entity that exists solely to make money by selling clothes. I am talking about a brand, and brands aren’t people.
Brands aren’t people, even when they use cuss words in their leadership standards.
Brands aren’t people, even when they’re giving you free snacks.
Brands aren’t people, even when they’re “celebrating” working from home for a year with a mandatory 2-hour virtual meeting disguised as a happy hour, totally tone deaf to the fact that you only worked from home for a year because you were forced to, because of a global pandemic that… killed… 500,000 human beings. But, um, cheers?
If brands were people, they would know their people just wanted a damn day off.
Where I’ve worked is not unique. Corporate culture is a thing. And I’m still coming to terms with being a creative who decided to work in a creative field. Holy moly. They don’t tell you that in school. Good at writing? Be a writer! Good at art? Be a graphic designer. Hope you don’t hate yourself!!!!!
For me, compartmentalizing those feels looks like learning how to love my job and still love writing. That’s going to be hard to do, because in my experience so far, being a professional writer typically demands your heart, soul and occasionally your first-born child.
But I spent a lot of time in the last year thinking about what I wanted out of a job. I want to work somewhere that makes me feel excited to go to work, but where it’s not the end of the world if I shut down my computer at 5:03 p.m. and if I want to take every Friday before a national Monday holiday off. I want a team that I enjoy working with, and who enjoy working with me, but who know how to handle shit when I’m on PTO. I want to leave work feeling accomplished, not exhausted, so that I can at least pull up the last page of my work-in-prog novel and stare at it, if not, maybe, MAYBE, add a sentence.
I guess what I want is work/life balance.
Where I was, that looked like laying on the couch practically comatose until 10 p.m., answering a Teams message at 10:33 p.m., waking up to another Teams message at 7:02 a.m. and doing the damn thing all over again.
Beyond that and other things I won’t get into right now, I just wasn’t inspired anymore, after 3598686798 emails about jeans, and 38556967906 of the same fricking problems that leadership kept dancing around and/or implementing new ways to make them worse, but then not listening to us when we were all like, “Hmm, this feels worse”—because in the end we really just needed to sell 348936895689 jeans.
I had started there with a clear mission (total domination), and a clear path to get there (eligible for promotions every 18 months). But in the last two years, and especially in this last Twilight Zone hell dimension of a year, the rules changed.
I’m not an idiot, I am down to embrace some change. I am down to learn new rules. I love rules! I am an ISTJ, it is how I WIN. But it’d be great if every time I mastered the new rules, and it was time to give me something for that, the rules wouldn’t change again. Eventually, I don’t know, it starts to feel like maybe what you want, and what you’re working toward, and you know you’re working toward it in the right way because you are a rules follower and them’s the rules, is never going to happen.
I’m not saying that my experience was everyone’s experience. There were a lot of factors. And despite the shade it probably sounds like I am throwing, I am grateful.
It was hard, it was scary, it was rewarding and it was, overall, a place for me to get my copywriting chops and meet mentors and friends and connections I’ll never forget. I left on a high note, with closure (compliments from the creative director) and so much encouragement from people I adore.
I cried after I told my boss I was leaving. I cried a lot the last time I had a virtual happy hour (an actually happy hour) with my team. And I cried in my car in the empty parking lot after I carried my box of shit out and turned in my card, which had the best ID photo I’d ever taken, enormous sigh.
I still have a lot of friends there. I still have endless respect for a lot of the people who work there, especially the people who worked with me. Everyone is there for their own reasons, whether it’s later in their career, or the first step, or they just have the willpower and maybe the alcohol supply to put up with the bad to keep making it good. I really, really wish them all the best, and I hope we work together again someday (Columbus is small).
It’s true that the people are the best part about the second place where I worked.
Anything else you might have heard?
No comment.
____
When I put my two weeks in, all I could do was spout excuses.
Well it’s a title I wanted. Well it’s a 20% salary increase. Well it comes with responsibilities I had been very vocal about wanting, for years. Well it’s something new. Well it’s a really exciting creative challenge. Well I have a great relationship with my boss. Well well well.
And while all of that was absolutely true—if I had to name one, core reason for wanting to look for another job, it was because I wasn’t getting the growth I deserved—it would have been fine if it wasn’t.
Because, um … people quit their jobs every day. (And let’s not forget, I’m a Millennial. The fact that I had any sense of loyalty to any one place for 1,825 days is a fucking miracle.)
But, really.
As someone who is very personally invested in her career (see: the writer is a professional writer thing), and someone who had fostered a lot of really great, positive relationships with people there over the last half decade—this was something that was tough for me to accept.
I immediately felt like I was letting someone, everyone down by leaving, even though I was just doing something to better myself.
It was immediately, “sorry, this is such bad timing,” and “I know two weeks isn’t a very long time, but.” and “I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry.
But, like, what IS that? What is that, that makes an ambitious 30 year old feel so incredibly rotten for making a totally obvious positive decision for herself and her future. What! Then I felt bad for feeling bad! Gah!
Can we—PLEASE—normalize quitting our jobs?!
There is nothing wrong with quitting your job. There is nothing wrong with putting in your two weeks.
Two weeks is the cultural standard. And it’s a courtesy! No one is forcing you to give 10 days notice. No one! I am too much of a people pleaser that it would take an actual mental breakdown for me to storm out of a place, probably, but, shit. People do it! And after all, I certainly wasn’t given a two weeks heads up the one, two, three times my bosses were let go and I was left to cry and panic all alone. So!
And there is never good timing to quit a job—for the job. For you, the best timing is whenever it happens.
This move was a pivotal one for me, because it felt like breaking up a relationship, considering all the shit that had happened to me there—stuff that had made me happy, made me sad, made me proud, made me cry, made me cry, made me doubt my self worth, made me panic, made me cry, made me hella marketable, made me better. But at the end of the day, I had made my professional goals clear, and I had worked hard toward them… and another company noticed first.
And in my heart (ugh so dramatic), I knew I couldn’t give this company any more of my loyalty while I waited around a year, or two, or five more, for them to give it to me.
During my last week, when I was battling severe senioritis, a newish co-worker was telling me she had hopped jobs pretty frequently already, and that it sucks, because sometimes you really care for the people, but it turns out this is the best way to care for yourself.
Absolutely mind-blowing. Wow. WOW.
THAT is something I’m going to steal. THAT is something I am going to tell my direct reports (!) when they inevitably move on. Something I’m going to tell my friends. Something I’m going to tell myself.
You have to take care of yourself.
Maybe your boss will feel blindsided. Maybe your team will feel stressed for a bit. Maybe you will turn your Teams camera off and cry a little after your last weekly review, because it’s a chapter of your life that you are choosing to close, and you know it’s the right thing to do, but now you feel like everyone hates you. But:
You’re allowed to leave if there’s a better opportunity.
You’re allowed to leave if there’s an adjacent opportunity.
You’re allowed to leave if you want to leave.
(And nobody hates you.)
___
My new office is within walking distance of 1) a Starbucks 2) a Sephora 3) a Trader Joe’s and 4) a plethora of places that sell happy hour-priced glasses of rose.
My new team has been so welcoming, and so genuinely happy to have me. And I have my own team now, which if you’ve ever talked to me for more than 14 minutes you know I have wanted since I was the editor-in-chief of an online magazine in college. (Speakeasy post pending.)
Guys.
It is… unreal what a week of something new, something fresh, something challenging can do for your mental and emotional health.
UN. REAL.
There is a whole lot of opportunity here to mold it how I —and a team of likewise pretty new leadership —want it to be (absolutely no TBs before 9, don’t need to write a novella of an excuse to justify a day off, cats on camera, etc.) But it’s not perfect, either. It’s got a start-up mentality, so a lot of shit to get done and just now starting to feel like enough people to do it. It’s a little crazy. The team who have been here have been through a lot the last few years. They need structure, and happen to have just hired someone who loveeeeees her some structure. COVID is still technically around to make everything weird. But I was brought on to help make it better, and I want to make it better, and my ego feels really good that I was entrusted as talented enough to make it better.
For the first time in a long time, I am actually looking forward to going back to work on Monday. I am looking forward to helping build something great with a team who cares about their job but not so much that it is their entire life.
I am excited to get to work.
And if the day comes when I’m not—well, then, I’ll quit my job.
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hi, i’m holly. 