VENT (tl;dr at the bottom)
So for background, I’ve worked on and off for my current employer for a number of years now. It’s been the only company I’ve ever worked for (only really due to convenience, not choice). As of the past few months, corporate has been introducing changes to nearly all of our administrative functions, basically rewriting the way we do everything. They’ve given us multiple new reports to print and track daily, they’ve completely overhauled the programs we’d been using to schedule, track sales and performance, and so on. A simple two-step process of, say, “find and print daily file,” has become “find file, pull numbers for file from multiple reports and locations (some of which you need to tweak before they can even be readable)” and yet we are given no extra time to accommodate for how much longer these new processes take. This is only one among many of the changes, most of which are complete new additions that we had no old way of doing. Mind you, this is a low-end minimum wage job.
A handful of people (including the former manager!) have already left due these changes (among other reasons I’m sure) and that’s really opened my eyes to the possibility of myself actually leaving. I’d never planned on staying with this company forever, but it’s never seemed like a good time to leave in the past nor did I ever really have a reason to. There were quite a few times I’d get stressed, or feel burnt out or unappreciated, but those are things that come with most jobs. But in addition to the never ending changes, we also have ever-rising expectations from corporate and certain higher-ups. They don’t see the changes as that hard or overwhelming so it must be that the whole team is just stupid and lazy and bad at adapting to change. Especially: my new manager doesn’t quite understand my learning style or rather gets mad when I can’t instantly be good at things like him, and I feel that has lead to some unnecessarily cruel treatment. I’ve recently been reprimanded and publicly humiliated in front of other coworkers for not greeting him or sending a coworker to greet him upon their entrance to the building one day.
The toll my job is currently taking on my mental health and well-being is unbelievable. I wake up on days I have to work and feel such anguish that I want to cry and scream and go back to bed; on days I don’t work I’m too exhausted to take care of myself or even tend to important personal responsibilities. I don’t even give myself time anymore to enjoy any of my old hobbies. I just sit at home and wait til it’s my shift again. I feel like I’m just a company robot and I only go home to “charge” so-to-speak.
Anyway, I feel as though I’m not allowed to leave the company because any time I’ve ever gotten burnt out like this and begin to lose motivation, I’ve always been brought in the back to have a pulse check conversation. “We see you’re struggling, your work isn’t up to par, everything you’ve been doing is wrong and everyone notices,” meshed in with some “I know you’re a good worker, I’ve seen you succeed before, everyone is just worried about you” all to culminate in a “so what can we do to get you where you need to be?” I was taken back in for one of these today, the same day I had planned on giving a verbal two weeks notice at the end of the day. Instead of coming out with my plan to quit then and there, like a dog I agreed to the success plan that was formulated for me. Because if I quit when they’re reaching out to help me, it’ll look like I’m not trying and I’m refusing help, therefore making me feel like I’d be leaving on bad terms. I can’t afford to burn a bridge with the only employer I’ve ever had because it will make future job hunting all the more hard; I just want to be allowed to quit without any attempts to retain me — just a clean quiet exit. I’m stuck, but I know I can’t stay here. Help?
TLDR: I’ve wanted to quit my job for many months now due to increasing unnecessary corporate demands and harsh treatment from inside and outside of my direct workplace, but every time I’ve tried to quit I’m met with a pulse check and a new training program meant to fix what ever problem is making me want to quit, thus making me feel like I’m not allowed to quit.
PS: Financially it is not in my best interest to quit without another job lined up but I’ve been job searching for a little over a month now to no avail. I’ve been a little picky in my search because I don’t want to end up in the same situation just somewhere else and lose the extra dollar of pay I’ve earned myself an hour + my benefits I literally begged for.
Any advice is welcome.