It’s funny what people share with you when you’re on your way out of an organization. Once, when the announcement went out that I was moving on from a particularly toxic place, I found myself the confidant of a stream of colleagues with the same story: they were desperate to leave, too, but for reasons x,y, and z, they were going to “ride the wave”, an expression a number of them used. Having an overactive imagination, I developed a visual of this wave - it was very sharp and pointy with some hard stuff in it. Not a pleasant ride.
Were their reasons for staying valid? Of course! Were some of those reasons accompanied by the fear of being quitters? TOTALLY. Especially in this lot. They were a pretty competitive crew. And they were all women in or around their 40s, which I don’t believe to be a coincidence.
We Gen X women are straddling an unusual time in the workforce between Baby Boomers who stayed in place for entire careers, and Millennials who, I’m told, are notoriously on the move. As women, we often use our careers, intentionally or otherwise, as a way to define ourselves as individuals outside of relationships and kids. And, we have something to prove, man. Our predecessors in the 80s wore those sad floppy ties and monstrous shoulder pads to mannishly forge the paths we now so casually trod dressed in whatever we please. The hard work is supposed to be over, and we’re supposed to be reaping the rewards with epic amounts of gratitude.
Couple that expected gratitude with the additional expectation that we’d rather soldier on like martyrs than let any of our beloved coworkers down, and emotional baggage from a job can get weirdly heavy. (Don’t even get me started on the guilt for taking off for 3 months with a patchwork of short term disability, aggressive savings, and vacation days after birthing a new human being that gets laid on those of us who dared to have kids in the pre-family leave era.)
And all that’s just for a regular job that has regular ups and downs, or that maybe you’ve simply outgrown. Throw in an abusive boss, a sexist corporate culture, or a toxic set of coworkers that has you pounding wine at the end of every day, and still you stay. In my work with women who just straight up hate going to work every day, I’ve found that by the time they’re ready to accept how bad things are, their self-worth has gone way down because they blame themselves for letting things get so bad.
It helps to remind people in this position about their true value, their skills, passion, and unique style. And it doesn’t hurt to also remind them that patriarchy hasn’t quite been smashed yet, and that there are a lot of people running things that have no right to be. But even more evocative is encouraging women to think outside their current industry, job title, and expected career path. The “I’m a director now, so my next move must be VP” thinking. I like to encourage people who feel stuck to play fast and loose with search terms on Indeed.com, and to reach out to strangers who seem to love what they do, even if what they do is totally unrelated to your own ambitions. Ask, “how did you end up doing this? Did you have to give something up to get here? Is it worth it?” Bonus: you might make a new friend.
Job hunting can feel like a huge daunting project, another job on top of your job.
But if you’re at a place in your career where you can stay put through the trauma knowing there’s an exit in sight, and make scanning new jobs and meeting new people a slice of your everyday life, then it can feel as natural as going to the gym or the grocery store. It’s an exercise in stocking up on opportunity. When the right opportunity becomes a new job offer, all that imposed gratitude and martyrdom goes right out the window. And instead of quitting something bad, you’re moving on to something awesome. Opportunity isn’t necessarily a straight line. And quitting a bad job for a better one is actually way better than pounding wine. For real.
You don’t have to be miserable. You’re capable of creating change. Opportunity is everywhere. Pop that round of affirmations on a sticky note on your mirror and get the eff out of that terrible job.