Imagine having a job where you travel a lot, work a lot of overtime and are often under a lot of stress.

If you found a better job with less overtime that paid much better, would you be upset if your boss lied about why you were quitting, or would you not really care?

In this story, one guy is in this exact situation. It was easy for him to find a better job, but he’s so fed up with his boss that he doesn’t know if he can handle working through his last week.

Let’s read all the details.

My Boss knows exactly why I’m quitting my job

Okay, so first a bit of background. I started my current job half a year ago. It is nothing fancy, but a legal job in a governmental agency.

When I was employed, there were plenty of red flags: I couldn’t negotiate my pay with HR, and was asked “well, do you want the job or not”, so I was placed at the lowest graduate pay.

My new boss, let’s call her Molly, also informed me that she was sceptical of men, because “they have a tendency to have a showy attitude”.

In the trial period Molly was joking about her right to have me dismissed without a reason… yeah, that made me feel great about the work.

It’s a stressful job.

Anyway, I started the work, and quickly discovered that there is a lot of stress in the workplace. We have had a lot of resignations, people calling in sick and last minute tasks.

The three remaining in my function is covering the work of 7 people.

My function requires me to travel very often, so imagine getting 20 hours notice that you have to travel for 8 hours, in your weekend… having a 70 hours workweek, though the contract says 40, and never being able to do our daily tasks, because there is always an urgent task…

It is a mess, and due to people resigning all the time, especially us who holds a law-degree, have to work a lot of overtime, with frequent travel to other parts of the country.

Eventually, he had enough.

My colleagues are amazing, and we have a lot of fun, even though we are stressed all the time, and colleagues break down crying due to the stress from time to time.

Molly is actually quite nice, but should never have been put in charge of this department. Due to her boss being nasty to her, she will often take it out on me and my colleagues.

After six months of verbal abuse, I started checking out the job market. I was quickly offered a job, closer to my speciality, with less overtime and a massive jump in my salary (+40 %).

I accepted it on the spot, and called Molly to resign.

Here’s how Molly took the news.

She took it sort of well, in five minutes she was through all the grief stages:

Denial – You couldn’t already have found a new job!

Anger – who has stolen you from me, give me his name and number (I didn’t!)

Negotiation – I’ll match the pay (I told her that she can’t, but agreed to not taking my stored up vacation, and getting it payed out instead.)

Depression – you have been the biggest success story in employment that I have had, I can’t replace you. This is saddening.

Acceptance – okay, it is closer to your interests, I will miss having you working with me.

The company realizes the employees are stressed out.

Now all I have to do is to work through my 30-day resignation period. I can manage it.

A few days ago we had an extraordinary seminar on well-being and stress at work (yes, that is how bad it is here). We had to talk in groups, and in my group was Molly, another college who has resigned, and a recently promoted colleague.

My recently promoted colleague made the point that with better well-being, better communication, respect of the work-life balance and less stress the retention would be better.

Molly is a liar or in denial.

Molly knew better: “OP and Quitting Colleague aren’t quitting because of stress and lack of well-being. They’re a part of generation “me first”. I can’t blame them for being a part of an unfaithful generation, that does not respect the workplace, and is ungrateful for the chances provided.”

Yup, she really said that.

I’ll might take the last week of now. I’m done with Molly!

We have both told her why we are quitting, and she is not even respecting our reasoning, but making it a problem that we don’t live to work, but work to live.

I feel bad for Molly. If she were nicer, she wouldn’t have so many people on her team quitting. Good for OP for finding a better job.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

That is a long resignation period.

Same!

One person rants about employers.

Another person shares some insight about leaving a US agency.

At least he’s going to be off to bigger and better things very soon!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.