I got a job with a small software company about 1.5 years ago and was excited at the beginning. I wanted to learn a lot and progress within the company. My first 9 months were remote work during Covid times, and being a software company this was easy.
After this I had to move to the head office (3000km away). This is where things started going downhill. The boss was an obscene micro manager, to the point where if he went away on holidays all other work essentially stopped.
Whilst I (along with several other staff members) was expected to turn up to work every day, the other staff worked from home.
I have a spinal injury which causes severe chronic pain. This was bought to my bosses attention at the beginning of my employment. Some weeks are manageable but others are so bad I essentially have to remain lying face down to manage the pain. I battled a flair up for about 3 days, was in severe pain to the point where I was breathing heavily in the office. My boss noticed and said nothing, expecting me to work through it. The next day I called and said that I couldn’t come in to the office but could work from home, and would likely need to do so for two weeks to let my back settle down. He’d had no problem with me working from home in the past, but for some reason decided that this was no longer an option. He instructed me to take leave, I said that I couldn’t as I was going away at the end of the year and needed every bit of leave to cover this. I also knew that I needed sick leave for real bad days in the future. So he instructed me to take leave without pay. I said I really couldn’t afford this, reminded him that half his staff work from home and asked if he had a problem with me working from home, asked if he believed I’d been dishonest in the past. He avoided the question and said “I’m the boss, I make the rules”.
I said well ok looks like I’m going to have to quit then, and he said yep!
So I handed in my resignation and he had the audacity to ask me the following day if I still wanted to contract to him working from home! I said yea nah I’m good thanks.
I’ve never felt better than I did in those few days after I quit. I didn’t realise how much the stale work environment had been affecting me. It was like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders and I was free as a bird. I had no job to go to, but some savings to keep me going for a bit. I’m now in a job that I absolutely love and can’t believe I worked there for so long whilst being so miserable and dealing with the pain everyday.
If you hate your job and you hate giving your time to a horrible work environment, please save a little if you can, then quit. Just do it. It’s the best decision you’ll ever make! Life will work out afterwards 🙂