I have been the team lead in a wet lab (microbiology) for years. I'm great at my job and in essence I do love the work itself, but the field is so toxic. My workplace gives the guise of a work-life balance in the form of a 7.5-hour day, but they also refuse to adequately staff and basically require overtime daily, so we're lucky if we get to leave after 8 hours. The standard day is closer to 9 or 10 hours. My boss brushes this off as “the grass is always greener on the other side” when we say we need more staff and as team lead I'm encouraged to tell staff they're wrong when they criticize company practices or standards even though I'm suffering the workload just as much, if not more, than they are. The work is constant and overbearing; some days we don't get a chance to even take a bathroom break when we need to because there's simply too much to do. I've held it in for up to 3-4 hours before because my task list is too long and I'm balancing too many things at once that I genuinely can't leave the lab until my lunch break.
I've complained so many times about my schedule and about burnout. Whenever I mentioned burnout my boss would tell me I didn't have a reason to be, or point out how there was a time that I was constantly doing 11 hour shifts, why am I complaining now that I'm only doing 8.5-9. Last year I took a month-long stress leave, and this year I mentioned burnout again and my boss said I need to be mindful of how stressed out the junior staff members are because they're starting to get burnt out and she doesn't want to lose them. I've been doing 2pm-10pm since I started 6 years ago but I've been begging for earlier shifts so I can do things in my spare time, and my boss has always shot me down because apparently they NEED me that late and they rely on me. Meanwhile, a junior analyst has been given a 9-5 because they don't want him to get “too stressed out”.
Well, this year I applied into a school program that can actually give me a work-life balance, and I just got my letter of acceptance today! I've never been so excited to write a letter of resignation, and I hope my boss can reflect on how valuable it is to listen to her staff and validate how they feel. I'm the last remaining senior staff member who knows how to do the job backwards and front, I've personally trained half the staff, and I've dedicated too much of myself to that job. Now they get to learn to do the job without me, and I couldn't be more relieved to burn that bridge completely.