Is your job killing you? If you are experiencing some of the symptoms of a miserable workplace listed below, the answer is probably yes.
What follows is my story and why I needed to set myself free from my job.
I worked at the same place for 25 years. I started at the age of 20. Basically, I was just a kid. You can say I grew up at my place of employment. When I started. it was just a job to make money to help pay for college. The plan was to quit and get a real job. But life happens and we don’t always end up where we thought we would.
Twenty five years later, and I was a 45 year old man who felt more like a 65 year old man. I never chose my career, my career chose me and boy did I ever pay for my lack of ability to decide what to do with my life.
I know I am not alone in that. Most of us have no idea what we want to do with our lives when we are young. We get sucked into this work thing and before you know it the majority of our time is spent in a job we never really wanted to do in the first place. But we tolerate it, we may even enjoy certain aspects of it, but if you poll the masses, we do it in spite of our lack of love for it.
I created earlyretirementearl.com because nobody ever warned me about the road that lied ahead for the working man. I spent 25 years learning the hard way. Once I discovered my path out, I felt a sense of responsibility to pass along my experiences to others in a way that was never done for me. So here goes.
Why financial independence is the only way out
As I approached my breaking point at work I began to realize that I could never be happy if I stayed the course. I needed a change. At first I thought I could simply find another job. But I quickly realized, that unless I found a way to make money doing something I absolutely love, I would end up in the same place. Furthermore, I would be making less money thus actually extending the total time I would need to work until I could quit forever.
For me, the only way out was to quit forever. In order to do this I would need to achieve total financial independence as quickly as possible so I would never again have to worry about relying on a shitty job for an income.
Here is a list of all the things that drove me to unhappiness and lead to my feeling of hopelessness at work. I call it…
Reasons why I need to be free!
If you are experiencing some of these at work, you might want to start planning your exit strategy now.
Regular 12 hour days
In my 25 years, I have worked countless 12 hour days. At times, it was almost expected that you would just stay for 12 hours. The work was never done and you could spend 24 hours a day there and still have loose ends. I think it was designed this way for them to suck the most out of you.
Commute – 90 minutes each way daily:
If you think working a 12 hour day is bad, imagine adding another 3 hours to commute to and from. I had days I would wake up at 4am only to arrive back at home at 8pm, go to sleep and do it all over again the next day.
Non-Stop emails
Technology is a wonderful thing. Advancements have given us the power to answer any question in seconds with a device we carry around in our pockets. Unfortunately, that same device allows your work to contact you at all hours of the day with often pointless and mostly redundant information, requests and even discipline. I can’t tell you how many times on my day off I would pick up my phone only to find a passive aggressive disciplinary email from my boss.
Stupid phone calls on my day off
If it wasn’t an email, I would often get phone calls on my day off. The majority of the time it was to ask me a stupid question that would have taken a mere few more minutes to answer had the person just taken the time. But it is much easier to inconvenience someone on their day off.
Working 24 hr shifts
You read that right. I can still remember the first time I worked a 24 hour shift. It was exciting. I had about 4 2nd winds. By the end of it though, I was drained and cramping in my calves. That was the first time. Subsequent times I was just pissed off the whole time and then relieved when the day finally ended.
Being stuck when an emergency happens
The main reason for the majority of the long shifts I worked were emergencies. Remember when all of the power went out along the eastern seaboard in August of 2003? Yup I was at work that day and could not leave until well after power was restored. That was a 19 hour day for me
Being called in the middle of the night
Part of my responsibilities was to be called in the middle of the night in case of an emergency. Which I was. Countless times. I remember being at a wedding once and leaving my cell phone at home. I got home to about 15 messages from work.
Working on a holiday
If you work on holidays, you know how much it sucks to work on holidays while everyone else is out enjoying the holiday. There is nothing worse than having to turn down an invitation to holiday festivities because you have to work. Its bullshit. We work hard enough every other day of the year, we should at least get to enjoy the holidays.
Being Micro Managed
Working in an environment where you are micro managed sucks. Sometimes it is necessary, however if you are constantly under the thumb of your boss, it can make going to work a miserable experience. Having every one of your decisions questioned. Being told you are doing something wrong even though the end result is the same. Micromanaging takes the person out of the equation. It dehumanizes the person performing the work when all you focus on is the result. And no amount of money is worth being treated like a fucking robot.
Constantly being told I suck
Ok so nobody literally told me I suck but that is the feeling you get when all you receive is negative feedback. Nothing is ever good enough, you are too slow, your work quality os poor, your team is failing, etc. When all you receive from your boss is feedback stating how much better things could have been done, it destroys your confidence and begins to take on a self fulfilling prophecy effect. And why wouldn’t it when you are given…
Unrealistic expectations
There were days when I would start my day and there were already over 50 emails in my inbox. And they would keep coming all day long until I had over 200. It would take half the day just to read them let alone address the issues contained within, on top of my normal daily responsibilities. When expectations are unrealistic, failure is guaranteed and it leads the employee to not even try.
Being responsible for other’s performance and constantly being let down by those people
As a team leader, I was responsible for the performance of others. So not only do I have to live up to my own unrealistic expectations, when others fail to do so as well, I am a failure. If you work in a company where expectations are normal and you lead a team that is successful, there is no better feeling. But it seems more and more, companies are tightening the grip around their staff to the point they are trying to choke the results out of them. This just don’t work.
Accelerated removal of creative allowance
One of the side effects of the tightened grip of my company was that creativity was completely removed from the process. Where I once looked forward to the creative aspect of my job, that would disappear as more and more facets of the business became micro managed.
Government intervention making it harder to be rewarded for hard work
The government sure has made it easy for people to be lazy. FMLA, Paid Family Leave, workers compensation. Perhaps the stupid ones are the hard workers that are left after the lazy and unethical have abused these programs. When the system rewards those that abuse it, it destroys the morale and motivation of the rest.
Re scheduling vacation
I have had to schedule my vacation around work activities countless times in my 25 years. It was only a handful of times I would need to re schedule a vacation or work in the middle of a vacation. The vacation time my company offered was very generous (5 weeks a year) but when you feel guilty taking it, what the point. When you can’t take it when you want whats the point. And when you take it but then need to work regardless, there truly is no point. When this happens time and time again, it becomes just one more straw upon the camels back.
Working my day off
When the expectations are so high, sometimes you need to work your day off to try to acheive them. Again, this only lasts so long until you become burnt out. You will also become immune to the guilt trips that are laid on you for not coming in to work on your own time. The same applies to the endless barrage of discipline.
Paradigm shift in the company
Towards the end, I began to notice a paradigm shift in my company. it was not the same company that had hired me. My position became less about coming up with creative ways to run the business and drive results and more about covering our ass, compliance with new rules and laws and trying to keep up with accountability for an ever increasing group of unmotivated, uncaring, and sometimes just plain despicable employees.
Feelings of anxiety about work on my day off
I knew the end was near when I began to stress about work even on my day off. It consumed my every thought. I was suffering from severe anxiety and depression. It was the most unhealthy I had ever felt and even when I was spending time with my family, I wasn’t really there. My thoughts were either at work or what the hell I could do quit forever. I was motivated, not to do good at work, but to get the hell out of there forever.
Physically feeling sick, dizzy, nauseous, diarrhea
Once I realized my emotional and mental feelings were manifesting themselves physically, I knew I had to quit. Maybe I didn’t walk in and quit my job, but I was checked out long before I resigned. I was going through the motions and I was so burnt out and uninterested that there was no turning back. Where I was once toxic in my non stop complaining, I just didn’t even engage any more. I went to work and just pretended to be invisible hoping to get through the day unnoticed and un-bothered by the other assholes around me.
Those are just 19 reasons why I needed to claim my freedom from a job that was killing me. I worked in the same company for 25 years and could probably write 25 reasons for each year and give a million examples. I only hope if you are experiencing some of this, you realize before it is too late that you deserve to live a life free from this type of bullshit.
Reclaiming my freedom through financial independence wasn’t easy. i needed to eat a lot of shit along the way. But it was essential and absolutely the best decision of my life. I only wish I had started sooner.
Earl