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Antiwork

How to explain short tenure in interviews? I keep landing in toxic wasteland jobs and don’t know if I can keep quitting.

Basically I worked a job out of college for a year, got a way better opportunity and left and worked there for 5 years. Since then, I had a job for 6 months (my boss had literal dementia symptoms and the company was doing some illegal stuff, so I lined up a new job and quit) then a job for 18 months (tech startup did 5 layoffs in a year and I was being worked like a dog, started having panic attacks so I secured a new job and opted into the next layoff), now I’ve been at a new job for 5 months. The new job is a large company so I thought I could just do my job and go about my life. But no, my boss is a monster. She’s passive aggressive, very threatened by me, and takes out her frantic anxiety and hatred for her kids…


Basically I worked a job out of college for a year, got a way better opportunity and left and worked there for 5 years.

Since then, I had a job for 6 months (my boss had literal dementia symptoms and the company was doing some illegal stuff, so I lined up a new job and quit) then a job for 18 months (tech startup did 5 layoffs in a year and I was being worked like a dog, started having panic attacks so I secured a new job and opted into the next layoff), now I’ve been at a new job for 5 months. The new job is a large company so I thought I could just do my job and go about my life. But no, my boss is a monster. She’s passive aggressive, very threatened by me, and takes out her frantic anxiety and hatred for her kids on me. She was on vacation for a week recently, and it was incredible. I got SO much work done and didn’t have any anxiety. My anxiety reached a point where I requested ADA accommodations (really really basic ones to have assignments assigned via writing vs verbal) and she went full blown retaliation. She started speaking to me like a toddler in meetings, telling others I’m “a mental incompetent” etc. apparently in her culture disability is very taboo and seen as karmic retribution for being a bad person or born to bad people. HR is still on her side of course. And they won’t give an answer on accommodation 6 weeks later.

Obviously I want to quit. But how do I explain this? Prospective employers don’t wanna hear any of this and idk how to put a positive spin on the fact I’m an anxious person on the spectrum and can’t sniff out red flags in the interview process. I feel like an idiot. I’ve been consumed with thoughts of killing myself (I won’t and I’m safe) and what makes this worse is the cost of living is so insane I need a somewhat high paying job to afford my 700 sq ft apartment. So I feel like I’m choosing between mental abuse and homelessness.

Also, there’s always the possibility the next job will be even worse. That worries me too.

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