First time posting here. I'd like some advice on what to do after I turn in my two week notice at a workplace I have been loyal to for nearly 8 years now.
Some background: This is a manufacturing job. It pays well enough, the hours are flexible, and they've worked with me around my school scheduel during college. I've been with them for nearly 8 years now, right when they were selling out of their own house, to now with their own warehouse. I've been working for this business to the point of my health and sanity taking a complete nosedive…and yet I've been stuck putting lids and stickers on our products for 8 years. No promotions, no changes in routine (despite asking numerous times), no benefits of any sort (there had been discussion fo dental, but it never went through), and only a $2 pay raise in those 8 years.
Within the last three years or so, I've burned out, but still kept going because of skewed loyalty and the simple fact I need money to live. In those three years, we've since had someone new come in to be hired at first as a another manufacturing tech, but she very quickly got promoted to management. She's since made work hell due to a percieved supperiority complex and evidently sees me as below her in intelligence (I partly blame myself because I had let slip I have autism and her tone has changed since to condescending and overly exlanitory, as if I cannot comprehend how to pour our product after nearly a decade). Due to her now basicallyr unning the palce, the CEO (my original boss) has been mostly absent and taking trips on his boat or out of town. He's at the office maybe four days a month.
The manager recently took away the ability to listen to certain media during work hours with no warning, she dropped the ball the day before the new policy, which I found increadibly odd because I had been listening to these platforms (ie youtube) while working for the entire eight years I've been there. I don't watch the videos, I just listen to it since the new content keeps my brain from rotting, and I wasn't about to drop $13 a month to be able to listen to youtube with the lockscreen on. She seemed under the impression it was a distraction. Things went downhill fast as a result. After some time sitting for 5 to 6 hours a day, five to six days a week, my health imploded.
Just last week the stress on my body had me reexperience a relapase in childhood asthma. I haven't had a flare or attack since I was ten. I'm 28 now, and have no inhalers since I haven't needed one since childhood.
I'm in school now and taking a summer class, and will roll right into a more loaded fall semester in late august. I have had zero energy and motivation to so much as reach my needed chapters after work due to sheer depression, hopelessness, and random lapses in health brought on by stress. Due to this, I am in danger of bombing school a second time and losing my financial aid due to a poor grade. I thinkt his was the end of the rope for me. Thus, I'm giving my two weeks notice tomorrow.
That said, income is something I need and want. I have looked online and in person for work, but so many postings are either demanding so many years of experience, or going so far as to demand a bachelors degree to even gain an enty level position. Nothing is actually “entry level” in the listings I search!
School is absolutely going to take precidence for me, and I consider myself lucky to be living with family that understands and will see that I'm not homeless. But I would LIKE to contribute to them in some way, or at the very least have the means to pay for my own things.
Any advice or even work recommendations would be appreciated. I guess the ideal would be some online/work from home job so I can focus on school, but I won't be picky. I just want help so I'm not 100% dependent on my family, regardless of their adament understanding.