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If you’re unhappy at work, I’m sure that the thought “Man, I really should quit!” crosses your mind occasionally.

So why don’t you?

Even if you long desperately to quit, to get away from your horrible workplace, annoying co-workers or abusive managers, you may hesitate to actually do anything about it, because right on the heels of that impulse come a lot of other thoughts that hold you back from quitting.

Each of these excuses may sound to you like the voice of sanity, offering perfectly good reasons why it is in fact better to stay and endure that bad job just a little longer, but look a little closer, and they don’t really hold up. What they do instead is keep you trapped in a job that is slowly but surely wearing you down.

Here are 10 of the most common bad excuses for staying in a bad job.

#1 “Things might get better”

That jerk manager might be promoted out of there. That annoying co-worker could quit.That mound of overwork could suddenly disappear.

On the other hand, things might also get worse. Or they might not change at all. If you’ve already done your best to improve your job situations and nothing’s happened, just waiting around for things to improve by themselves make little sense.

#2 “My boss is such a jerk but if I quit now, he wins.”

Who cares. This is not about winning or losing, this is your life. Move on, already.

#3 “I’m not a quitter.”

Well guess what these somewhat successful people have in common: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Tiger Woods, Reese Witherspoon, John McEnroe and John Steinbeck?

Yep, they all dropped out of Stanford.

The old saying that “Winners never quit and quitters never win” is just plain wrong and leaving a bad job is just common sense.

#4 “I’ll never get another job”

Well not if you stay in your current job while it slowly grinds you down, you won’t! Move on now while you still have some self-confidence, motivation and energy left.

#5 “If I quit I’ll lose my salary, status, company car, the recognition of my peers, etc.”

Yes, quitting a job carries a price and that makes it scary. We all know this intimately.

But few of us ask this question: What is the price of staying in a job that makes you unhappy?

That price can be very high. It can ruin your work life but also your marriage, your family life, your health, your self-esteem and your sanity. Not all at once, but a little bit every day.

#6 “Everywhere else is just as bad”

That’s just nonsense. There are plenty of great workplaces in every industry.

#7 “I’ve invested so much in this job already”

You may have sacrificed a lot of time, energy and dignity already in attempts to make things better. This will make it more difficult for you to call it quits.

I’m reminded of how Nigerian email scammers sucker in people. At first it’s a small investment, but then the amounts grow and grow. At each step the victim is reluctant to stop because that would mean losing all the money he’s spent so far.

Quit anyway. Staying on is just throwing good time after bad.

#8 “I’ll lose my health insurance.”

I have a lot of sympathy for this argument. Where I live (Denmark), everybody gets free health care regardless of their employment situation so I can’t imagine the leverage this must give employers.

One answer: Start looking for another job with similar health benefits.

Also: Ask yourself what good job related health insurance is if your job is actually making your sick – which bad jobs can absolutely do.

#9 “My job pays very well”

I have zero sympathy for this argument. I don’t care how well your job pays; if it makes you unhappy it’s not worth it.

Quite the contrary, if you make a lot of money now, use that financial security to quit and find a job that’ll make you happy.

#10 “Quitting will look bad on my CV”

Whereas staying for years in a job that grinds you down and goes nowhere will look excellent.

The upshot

Many of us would be much happier at work if we quit bad jobs sooner. I’ve talked to many people who have finally managed to quit a bad job and only wished they’d done it sooner. I have yet to meet a single person who quit a crappy job only to wish they’d stayed on longer.

You may have perfectly good reasons to stay in your crappy job – all I’m saying is that it pays to examine those reasons very closely to make sure that they hold up.

‘Cause it may just be the fear talking.

Your take

What do you think? Have you ever been stuck in a lousy workplace? What kept you from leaving? What finally made you quit? Please write a comment, I’d love to hear your take.

Related posts

• Find your quitting point
• Never stay in a bad job. Fix it or leave.
• How to find a job you’ll love
• Top 10 signs you’re unhappy at work

Here’s an interesting question that I got yesterday:

My husband and I are currently sitting on the sofa, enjoying our day off and writing down our goals for 2008. While doing so, my husband has brought up the topic of work. Here is his statement in a nutshell: I think you are very angry about work in general and need professional help.

In searching for “help,” I came across your website.

Here’s my question: after being laid off in September and being forced to change careers from the mortgage industry to a more secure industry is there “help” out there for dealing with the anger I now have because I was forced to change careers at 39 years old and what can I do in the meantime so that my “anger” doesn’t spill into my new career?

Thank You,
Yvonne

This question is interesting for many reasons, most notably because this is obviously making Yvonne unhappy at work in her new job. If it’s come to the point where her husband believes she needs professional help, it’s probably also affecting her at home.

Also, Yvonne is far from alone. A lot of people face major changes at work. When they are laid off, when their company is bought by a competitor or when major reorganizations fundamentally change their working conditions. Large scale change has become a fact of corporate life and many of us react to it by getting mad.

Below you’ll find my top 5 tips for dealing with anger when when you’re going through major change at work.

I apologize in advance for venturing maybe a little too close to therapy-land in this post. I honestly don’t want to go all Dr. Phil on you guys, but dealing with anger is not possible without taking a look at what goes on inside your head. OK? OK!

5 steps for dealing with anger at work

Step 1: Accept that being angry is perfectly natural
When we’re faced with large changes in life and at work, we all have to go through the grief cycle, which has the following stages:

1. Denial: The initial stage: “It can’t be happening.”
2. Anger: “Why me? It’s not fair.”
3. Bargaining: “Just let me live to see my children graduate.”
4. Depression: “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”
5. Acceptance: “It’s going to be OK.”

I’m honestly not sure how scientifically established this model is, but I certainly find it very useful in the work I do with organizations that are going through major change.

Last year, I did some work with a branch of the Danish Tax Authority – an organization that has gone through enormous change and reorganization in the last year.

When I presented a simplified version of this model to them, I could see people breathing sighs of relief. One participant even exclaimed “NOW you tell us!” Many of them had been angry or depressed about these changes, but nobody had told them that this is normal. Consequently, many of them felt bad about what they were feeling – which of course only made them more angry or depressed.

It’s important to accept your own anger as perfectly OK. Being angry is hard enough. Being angry while telling yourself “I really mustn’t be angry” is infinitely worse :o)

This does not give you blanket permission to throw tantrums right and left – it just means that being angry is OK, not that every display of anger is allowed.

Step 2: Find out what your anger does for you – good or bad
What does being angry do for you? Think back to previous situations where you have been angry at work and ask yourself how it affects eg.:

1. You
2. Your relationships with co-workers
3. The quality of your work
4. Your energy
5. Your well-being and health
6. How you feel outside of work
7. Your relationships with friends and family

For each of these, include both the good and the bad. Maybe being angry gives you a lot of clout and influence on the job… but it also means that co-workers tend to avoid you. Maybe being angry feels stressful… but it also saves you from being taken advantage of at work.

And here is a crucial question: What other emotions, questions and doubts are you free from dealing with because you’re angry? When your anger consumes you, which other painful or difficult considerations are you free from thinking about? What would you have to feel/think about/deal with/do something about if you were not angry?

Step 3: Find out what makes you angrier and less angry
What makes you angrier? Which thoughts, situations, people, conversations set you off?

Conversely, what makes you less angry? I’m sure you’re not angry every second of every day :o) What gives you peace – or at least distracts you from the anger?

Find out – then start doing less of what makes you angry and more of the things that calm you down.

Step 4: Focus on gratitude
What are you grateful for? As I mentioned above, anger is part of the grief cycle which is associated with loss. Gratitude is the polar opposite of loss, because it obviously comes from the good things you have in your life.

It’s simple. Every evening, sit down with a piece of paper (and maybe a glass of wine) and make two gratitude lists:

1. 3 things I was grateful for at work today
2. 3 things I was grateful for in life today

It can be big things or small things – obvious stuff or weird stuff. Whatever makes you feel happy and grateful.

If you need some inspiration, check out Scott Nutter who has been doing daily gratitude posts on his blog for 334 days running now.

Step 5: Shift your focus from “What was done to me” to “What I can do”
I know, I know – this is the basic staple of all self-help advice.

As in “When life gives you lemons make lemonade.”

As in “Life is 10% about what happens to you and 90% about how you deal with it.”

As in “You must take responsibility for your own situation, rather than be a victim of.”

That kind of advice can get pretty nauseating. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

3 things NOT to do

There are also some things you should avoid doing.

1: Don’t vent
Common knowledge holds that when you’re angry, you should vent to get it off your chest. Interestingly, studies indicate that venting just makes us even angrier.

2: Don’t try to justify your anger
When you’re feeling angry don’t waste time and energy justifying it – either to yourself or others.

Well that guy was a jerk at the staff meeting and the way I was treated in the last reorg was totally unfair and my manager still hasn’t apologized and some guy cut me off in traffic on the way home and…

You’re angry, that’s enough. You don’t have to list all the reasons why you’re angry. Again, that just makes you even angrier.

3: Don’t stay trapped in your job
There is an amazing amount of peace and calm to be found in the simple fact that “I’m free to leave and find another job.” Conversely, knowing that you’re trapped in your current job makes everything much worse.

Read my previous posts on How to lose your fear of being fired and the Top 10 advantages of low-rent living for more on this.

Your take

What about you? Have you tried being really angry because of major changes in your work life? How did it affect you? How did you handle it? Please write a comment, I’d really like to know!

Related posts

1. The Feel Factor – Why no workplace can afford to ignore what people feel
2. How not to let annoying people annoy you
3. How to turn around a bad day at work

How do you know that you’re unhappy at work? That something is not right and that it’s time to either make some changes at work or move on to a new job?

In my work, I talk to a lot of people who are not happy with their jobs. Here are the top ten symptoms of unhappiness at work that I’ve observed. How many apply to you?

1: You procrastinate
You really, honestly try to get some work done. But somehow you never really get around to it. Or you only do it at the last possible moment and then only do a half-baked effort.

Many people view procrastination as a personal weakness. To me, it’s one of the strongest warning signs of unhappiness at work.

2: You spend Sunday night worrying about Monday morning
“I never sleep on Sunday night very well because I’m worried about going to work on Monday morning. My job is very stressful and you kind of have to gear up for Monday and getting back into that.” (source)

One of the worst things about being unhappy at work is that the unhappiness bleeds over into your free time. If you’ve had a lousy day at work, it’s difficult to go home and have a great evening. If your week sucked, it’s hard to have a fun, relaxed, carefree weekend.

3: You’re really competitive about salary and titles
You don’t like the job itself, so you focus much more on salary and perks. Knowing that someone in a similar position is paid more than you, or is promoted when you’re not, really eats at you.

When we’re unhappy at work we get a lot more competitive, for one simple reason: When work doesn’t give us happiness and enjoyment we want to get something else out of it. And what else is there but compensation and promotions.

4: You don’t feel like helping co-workers
Your colleagues may be struggling. But you don’t really feel like lending a hand. Why should you?

One very interesting psychological study started by putting subjects in either a good mood or a bad mood. They were then asked to go down the hall to another room where the experiment would continue. In the hallway the real experiment took place – the subjects passed a man holding a big box struggling to open a door. Would the subject help that person? The experiment showed, that when we’re in a bad mood, we’re much less likely to help others.

5: Work days feel looooong
The first thing you do in the morning, is calculate the number of hours until you can go home.

Ironically, this makes the work day feel even longer.

6: You have no friends at work
Friends at work? They’re mostly all jerks anyway.

Gallup have found in their studies of workplace engagement, that one of the strongest factors that predict happiness at work is having at least one close friend at work.

7: You don’t care. About anything.
Things can go well or they can go badly for your workplace. Either way, you don’t really give a damn.

When you’re unhappy, you care mostly about yourself and not so much about the workplace.

8: Small things bug you
Small annoyances bug you out of all proportion. Like someone taking up too much space in the parking lot, someone taking the last coffee without brewing a new pot or someone talking too loudly in the next cubicle.

When you’re unhappy you have much thinner skin and a shorter fuse. It takes a lot less to annoy you.

9: You’re suspicious of other people’s motives
No matter what people do, your fist thought is “what are they up to?” Good or bad, big or small, all decisions and actions made by your co-workers and managers are seen in this light.

Studies show that we’re also more suspicious of others when we’re unhappy.

10: Physical symptoms
You suffer from insomnia, headaches, low energy, muscle tension and/or other physical symptoms.

Studies show that when you’re unhappy at work you’re more prone to experience these physical stress symptoms.

Your take

How many of these apply to you in your current job? Did I leave any important symptoms of workplace unhappiness out? Please write a comment. I’d really like to know your take!

Related posts:

• Never stay in a bad job. Fix it or leave.
• Find your quitting point
• How to find a job you’ll love

Back when I was still working in the tech industry (I was a software developer for a small consulting company in my second job out of university) I had a boss that was… shall we say unpopular. My co-workers and I hated his guts and we complained ceaselessly about him.

It got to the point where we couldn’t start a meeting, have lunch in the cafeteria, or even go out for a beer without spending half an hour complaining about him.

We whined about his attitude, his stupidity, his meddling, his spinelessness … hell, even his dress sense came under fire. But then again, he is the only manager who has ever interviewed me wearing a narrow 80s-style purple, fake-leather tie.

But did we ever tell him? Nooooooo! While we were bitching and moaning to ourselves, he blithely went on as usual because no one ever complained to him. Which might’ve made sense when you think about it…

Looking back, I’m not sure that complaining to him would have worked – I think he was incorrigible – but one thing is for damn sure: Out bitching about it, fun though it may have been, did not improve things one little bit.

Because that kind of chronic complaining, justified or not, in the workplace leads to no good. In fact, in can be downright toxic and can make a department or even a whole company a terrible place to work.

Here’s why constant complaining is so bad:

1: It makes things look worse than they are
When people complain, they focus only on what’s wrong. Things may be mostly fine in the company, but complainers only talk about the problems, annoyances and peeves they perceive.

If things in a company are 80% good and 20% bad and you spend most of your time thinking and talking about the bad 20% – the situation will look a lot worse than it really is.

2: It becomes a habit
The more you complain, the easier it gets. In the end, everything is bad, every situation is a problem, every co-worker is a jerk and nothing is good.

The more you focus on the negative, the harder it gets to switch into a positive mindset.

3: You get what you focus on
According to Wikipedia, Confirmation bias is:

…a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and avoid information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs.

In other words, what you already believe influences your perception of everything around you. That’s why constant complaining makes you see everything in a negative light, because your subconscious mind tries to make new observation fit with what you already know.

4: It leads to onedownmanship
A complaining session might go something like this:

The other day, my boss came in 5 minutes before I was leaving and asked me to finish two huge projects for him. I had to stay two hours and missed my football game.

Yeah, well my boss told me to work this weekend AND the next.

Hah, that’s nothing! My boss…

This type of interaction rewards the person with the worst story who can complain the loudest. Not healthy!

5: It makes people despondent
Not only does constant complaining make you see the workplace as worse than it really is, but because you’re constantly hearing stories of how bad things are and how they’re constantly getting worse it also destroys all hope that things can get better.

This of course makes people less likely to take action to improve their situation, because everybody knows it’s doomed to fail anyway.

6: It kills innovation
Because the situations looks so hopeless, people become less creative and innovative. What’s the point of coming up with ideas and implementing them – it’s never going to work anyway.

Also, chronic complainers are the first to shoot down any new idea.

7: It favors negative people
The way to get status among complainers is to be the most negative. To be the one who sees everything in the most negative light.

Any attempt to be positive or cheerful will be shot down and optimists will be accused of being Pollyanna, naive and unrealistic.

8: It promotes bad relationships
People who complain together unite against the world and can create strong internal relationships based on this. But these relationships are based mostly on negative experiences. That’s not healthy.

It also means that you can only continue to be a part of the group if you can continue to complain, miring you even deeper in a complaint mindset.

9: It creates cliques
Being positive, optimistic and appreciative makes you more open towards other people – no matter who they are. It becomes easy to connect to co-workers in other departments, projects or divisions.

Complaining, on the other hand, makes people gather in cliques with their fellow complainers where they can be critical and suspicious of everybody else.

10: Pessimism is bad for you
Research in positive psychology has shown that people who see the world in a positive light have a long list of advantages, including:

• They live longer
• They’re healthier
• They have more friends and better social lives
• They enjoy life more
• They’re more successful at work

We sometimes think that pessimists and complainers have the edge because they see problems sooner but the truth is that optimists not only lead better lives, they’re also more successful because they believe that what they’re doing is going to work.

The upshot

Constant complaining in the workplace is toxic. It can drain the happiness, motivation, creativity and fun from a whole company. Wherever it’s going on it must be addressed and handled properly.

I’m NOT saying that we should never complain at work – quite the contrary. If you see a problem in your workplace, complain to whoever can do something about it.

What we should avoid at all costs, is constant bitching and moaning, where we’re always complaining about the same things, to the same people, in the same way, day in and day out.

So what can we do about it? Well first of all, each of us can learn to complain constructively. This means learning to complain in a way that leads to the problem being fixed – rather than to more complaining. Here’s my post on how you can How to complain constructively.

Secondly, we can learn to deal with the chronic complainers we meet at work. Unfortunately, our traditional strategies like trying to cheer them up or suggesting solutions for their problems don’t work because complainers aren’t looking for encouragement or solutions. Here’s my post on how to deal with chronic complainers.

Finally, you can train your own ability to be positive. Just like complaining can become a habit, so can being appreciative, optimistic and grateful. You could declare today a positive day, you could take a few minutes at the end of every work day to write down five good experiences from that day or you could praise a co-worker.

Try it and let me know how it goes!

Your take

But what do you think? Do you know any chronic complainers at work? What is their impact? How do you complain, when you see a problem?

Please write a comment, I’d really like to know!

Related

Here are some related posts about workplace complaining:

• A real-life story on how being positive helps at work
• Go complain. Right now!
• Some negative phrases to avoid

When your company screws up majorly – what do you do?

You can play hardball and stick to the rules, only apologizing and compensating your customers as a very last resort. For a wonderful example, check out this story of a Continental flight that was delayed 32 hours while plane toilets malfunctioned so sewage was running down the aisles.

What compensation did Continental offer?

…32 hours into the whole ordeal, we are in Newark, ready for the fun of customs and immigration, and on our way out of the gate Continental issues the final slap in the face—a voucher for one free drink the next time we fly with them! I wanted to tear it up and tell them where they could shove that drink, those bastards.

Continental HAS since apologized but I suspect that it’s just too little too late.

Alternatively, you can do what Southwest Airlines does and have a person in charge of apologizing:

No airline accepts blame quite like Southwest Airlines, which employs Fred Taylor Jr. in a job that could be called chief apology officer.

His formal title is senior manager of proactive customer communications. But Mr. Taylor — 37, rail thin and mildly compulsive, by his own admission — spends his 12-hour work days finding out how Southwest disappointed its customers and then firing off homespun letters of apology.

He composes about 180 letters a year explaining what went wrong on particular flights and, with about 110 passengers per flight, he mails off roughly 20,000 mea culpas. Each one bears his direct phone line.

I think that’s incredibly cool for a couple of reasons:

1. Taylor writes homespun letters that carry his direct phone number. No pre-written form letters with the company’s 1-800 number on’em. Direct responsibility and accountability.
2. These cases aren’t handled by lowly customer service reps who stick slavishly to company regulations and scripts – these are individual decisions based on what’s right and wrong in the given situation.

There’s also a Business Week podcast featuring Fred Taylor and here’s a story of how this works out in practice, from a traveler stuck on a Southwest flight that got delayed for 5 1/2 hours:

Bob Emig was flying home from St. Louis on Southwest Airlines this past December when an all-too-familiar travel nightmare began to unfold. After his airplane backed away from the gate, he and his fellow passengers were told the plane would need to be de-iced. When the aircraft was ready to fly two and a half hours later, the pilot had reached the hour limit set by the Federal Aviation Administration, and a new pilot was required. By that time, the plane had to be de-iced again. Five hours after the scheduled departure time, Emig’s flight was finally ready for takeoff.

A customer service disaster, right? Not to hear Emig tell it. The pilot walked the aisles, answering questions and offering constant updates. Flight attendants, who Emig says “really seemed like they cared,” kept up with the news on connecting flights. And within a couple of days of arriving home, Emig, who travels frequently, received a letter from Southwest that included two free round-trip ticket vouchers. “I could not believe they acknowledged the situation and apologized,” says Emig. “Then they gave me a gift, for all intents and purposes, to make up for the time spent sitting on the runway.”

I suspect that what really mattered here is both the formal apology and compensation that arrived a few days after the event, but especially the fact that the Southwest employees present handled the situation well. In Emig’s words the “seemed like they cared”.

Contrast this with the Continental sewage flight story above:

At one point I went up to the gate and one of the crew happened to be there. He was either the pilot or the co-pilot. I was trying to speak to the women behind the counter, telling them that we’d been waiting for hours and people were getting really upset about the lack of communication. This pilot stepped in and snottily told me that they were working on and I should just go sit back down. When I told him they needed to keep the passengers better informed of the situation he literally screamed at me, yelling “Don’t tell me how to do my job!” and then he stormed away. From that point on he earned the nickname Captain Customer Service.

There are two major points I’d like to make here:

1: Apologizing is good business.
Studies show, that a well-timed, honest apology from the company makes customers more understanding of the situation, less likely to cause problems and more likely to remain customers.

Studies from hospitals show that when doctors honestly apologize for medical mistakes, people are also much less likely to sue:

Colorado’s largest malpractice insurer, COPIC, for example, has enrolled 1,800 physicians in a disclosure program under which they immediately express remorse to patients when medical care goes wrong and describe in detail what happened. The insurer compensates patients for related expenses, including insurance deductibles for follow-up medical care; lost time at work; and baby sitters…

Buckley said malpractice claims against these 1,800 doctors have dropped 50 percent since 2000, while the cost of settling these doctors’ claims has fallen 23 percent. The University of Michigan Health System has cut claims in half and reduced settlements to $1.25 million from $3 million a year since developing a disclosure policy in 2002, said Richard Boothman, chief risk officer.

This runs counter to traditional thinking:

”Doctors worry that if they talk to the patient, they’re more likely to be sued,” Hanscom said. ”Our feeling is just the opposite. It’s the shutting down that angers patients. We’ve heard from patients in this situation that everyone almost shuns them.”

2: Employees who care handle these kinds of situations much better
This is crucial, because you can only care what happens if you’re happy at work. If people hate their jobs, dislike their coworkers and loathe their managers, there is no way in hell you can make them care about the job and about the customers.

When employees feel good at work, when they like their coworkers and, indeed, the company, they will go to extraordinary lengths to make customers happy. This means that any problems that do occur become nothing more than another chance to demonstrate good customer relations and make your customers even more loyal to your business.

Related:

• Top 5 reasons why “The Customer is Always Right” is wrong
• Create a culture of forgiveness in the workplace
• Monday Tip: Make an apology
• Four Fantastic Phrases at Work

Btw: I can’t believe I’m the first to suggest that after a flight where the toilets malfunction so sewage is leaking down the aisles, maybe it’s time Continental changed their name to Incontinental airlines. Ba-da-boom. Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week!

Check out this comment from a reader in Hong Kong:

I’ve been visiting your site on and off for quite a while now.

I’ve been miserable at work and, although it took me almost a year, I eventually built up the courage, and I’ve finally quit my job!!

I think it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made!

I’m now working out my one-month notification period…then hopefully go on a vacation to Europe with my family…then travel to Beijing to visit my love….

And most of all, I’ve found a new job too! No one knows how it’ll go, but a change is definitely due and I’m looking forward to a fresh start.

Your site has definitely pushed me on.

:) One happy Office Lady in Hong Kong

First of all: Wooo-hooooo! Good for you, Office Lady, and good luck in the new job!

This of course raises an interesting question: How do you know it’s time to quit a bad job?

Should you quit at the first sign of trouble? As in “The cafeteria doesn’t have Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee and besides the boss gave me a funny look at the last staff meeting – I’m outta here!”

Or do you only quit when all hope is gone. “Yes, I know my boss is a total jerk, my salary is lousy and my co-workers just covered my cubicle in mayonnaise-smeared saran wrap for the third time this week. But you never know – things might get better tomorrow!”

When is it time to quit? It’s a question I keep getting – and no wonder. Leaving a job has become one of life’s biggest decisions. It’s something that may affect every aspect of your life including your finances, your work life, your identity, your family and possibly even your social status and friendships.

I’ve quit three different jobs in my career and in every single case my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. In two of those cases I quit without having the next job lined up – it was simply time for me to move on NOW!

It seems most of us tend to stay in bad jobs waaaaay too long. I have talked to any number of people who have told me some variation of “I quit my job last year and my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.” However, not a single person has ever told me that “I quit my job last year and it was a huge mistake. I should definitely have stayed on.”

This does not mean that it’s always the right decision to quit, but it does show that when in doubt, most of us stay on in bad jobs. Perhaps longer than is good for us.

We’ve been told that quitting your job is bad because:

• It makes you look less dependable to your next employer.
• It costs you money.
• It reduces your status.
• Quitting means giving up – and that’s bad. You should stay and slog it out.

And this may all be true or not, but here’s a question you must also ask yourself: What will staying in a bad job cost you? Because make no mistake: A bad work situation can cost you your energy, motivation, self-worth and even your health. Worst case, it can kill you.

Worst of all, staying in a bad job where you repeatedly feel demeaned or useless robs you of precisely those things you need to move on and find a new job. To actually get up and go out and find new work or finding the courage to quit without having the next job lined up takes energy, motivation, passion and confidence.

How do you know..?

Which brings us back to the original question: How do you know?

First of all: You will never know for sure. It’s not like you can calculate the exact optimal moment to quit your job. It will always be a judgment call, and like any other major decision in life, it’s not so much about making the right decision – it’s more about making a decision and then making it the right decision.

Secondly: You probably do know. Call it intuition, gut feeling, inner wisdom – if it’s time to quit, then somewhere inside of you a voice is probably going “I hate my job. It’s time to quit.” The trick is to listen to that voice.

That voice is often very quiet and very easy to quell. You’re maybe at work, in the middle of a meeting or an important task when suddenly you get the feeling that you really, really need to find a new job. That’s certainly not productive in the moment – right then you need to focus on whatever it is you’re doing. Also, as mentioned above, having to quit is a scary proposition. So you ignore that feeling and focus on work.

I firmly believe that you’re doing no one a favor by staying if you’re not happy at work. Not yourself, not your family and certainly not the company. The rare exception is the case where your or your families survival or fundamental welfare is at stake. If quitting a bad job means your family becomes homeless, the choice is clear – you stay until you have a better job lined up.

Barring this, it’s simple: If your job does not make you happy you should first try to fix it. If there’s no realistic hope that you ever will, it’s time to get out of Dodge.

The upshot

So here are my top six tips for finding your quitting point:

1. Give up the idea that you can know for sure whether or not it’s time to quit. It’s always going to be a leap.
2. Listen to your intuition. Your gut may know before your mind.
3. Remember what quitting can cost you – but also remember what staying in a bad job can cost you!
4. Remember that the longer you stay in a bad job, the harder it gets to leave.
5. Most people stay too long in bad jobs – mostly because they fear the uncertainty that comes with quitting.
6. Most people, once they’ve quit, find that their situation improves. Maybe not immediately, but certainly after a few months.

What about you? Have you tried quitting a job? What was your quitting point? What happened – did you end up regretting it or being happy that you finally quit? Write a comment – I’d really like to know!

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• How to find a job you’ll love
• Never stay in a bad job. Fix it or leave.
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