5 instances when it’s okay to quit your job

03.04.2016

alligator

Even if you love your job, you probably have days when putting yourself on a permanent vacation sounds amazing. If you’re a Wendy’s employee that was working at the Jupiter location in Florida that had a live, 3 foot alligator thrown through a drive-thru window, you’re probably ready to call it quits. In addition to large toothed reptiles showing up uninvited, here are 5 instances when you’re feeling like it’s time to quit, and you’re completely justified.

 

1.Personal Safety
Whether it’s alligators showing up unannounced, or inadequate security in a dark parking ramp, if you’re regularly concerned about your personal safety, it’s probably time to start looking for your next role. If there’s a specific incident that you can bring to your manager’s attention and discuss potential solutions, you might want to try that before you abruptly quit. Additionally, if it’s an incident that seems improbable, but management seeks to review the situation and put forces into motion to insure it doesn’t happen again, you’ll hopefully see positive changes that make you and your co-workers feel like your company cares about your safety and well-being.

 

2.No more career runway
When you were hired, you might have been told that your role would eventually lead you to executive leadership and you were given a generic outline with key dates to get you there. Fast forward to today. While you have been promoted and given every possible opportunity, you’re stuck in a Manager role. You’re happy enough. You enjoy the people you work with, you’ve built a great team, and the title on your business card isn’t the most important thing to you. However, you’d still like that executive leadership role you joined the company to pursue. You’re realizing that you still have a lot of room to grow and lead in your career, it just seems like you’re limited with your current company. After open and honest dialogue with your leadership, your suspicion will likely be confirmed, or your leadership will work with you to reach your career aspirations.

 

3.Change in Responsibilities
As an organization grows and evolves, the roles and responsibilities of its employees need to change with the new direction it’s taking. Sometimes, the evolution of a role is too dramatic for the skill sets of current employees to handle leading to frustration and oftentimes, disillusionment. The transition can go more seamlessly if there’s in-depth training around the new responsibilities being added to the role. However, if there’s no training, and an expectation that employees are going to learn on the job, it ends up being an exercise in Darwin’s “Survival of the Fittest.” Those people who have some previous inclination or natural tendencies to be successful with these new parts of their roles will likely excel. Those who had a specific skill set well-matched to the previous requirements of the role end up feeling left out, and are likely headed toward the exit. Start up organizations, and rapidly growing companies experiencing the growing pains of unfettered and uncharted success are where you are more likely to see this kind of scenario. However, you will also see this situation arise in industries that have done business the same way for 100 years, but there’s a new competitor in the space that’s turning the business model on its head. For example, Airbnb is having this impact in the hotel industry, and hotels are clamoring to figure out how to compete with a company that has no real estate or actual rooms to rent.

 

4.“Honesty is the best policy” hasn’t worked out
Let’s say that you’ve been fairly unhappy in your role for months. You have been open with your boss about what is making your life at work more difficult than you’d like it to be. Your boss has been open with you about where you’re meeting expectations, exceeding expectations, and what you can do to contribute to your success. There have been some improvements, but overall, your boss can’t do what you’re asking for. Your boss can’t give you a promotion into another area of the company that you have no experience in, your boss can’t give you their job, and the things that are within your boss’ control have been improved. However, you feel like the limitations of your role are prohibiting your upward trajectory, possibility of success, and overall job satisfaction. If there is a role internally that you would like to pursue, you can do some investigation to see who you’d need to meet to be considered for the role, but ultimately, it might be time for you to kick off your job search.

 

5.You want to get out of your industry
If you have a great boss, and you’ve enjoyed your time in your role, leaving your industry might feel scary and frankly, risky. On some level, every decision is a risk, but if you’re losing sleep over the fact that you’ve always wanted to be a zamboni driver, it might be time to figure out if you can support yourself and your family on a zamboni driver’s salary. CNN reported this week that there were 5.6 million jobs open in the U.S. in December according to Labor Department data. That’s slightly lower than the all-time record of 5.7 million openings set in July. Do your homework on who is hiring in your desired industry, brush up your LinkedIn profile and your resume, and see if you’re excited about this career change.

 

There are a couple of things you might want to keep in mind before you hand your boss your letter of resignation. If you can have a new job lined up before your exit, you’ll avoid the financial pressures of not having a paycheck. In addition, you’ll avoid having to explain the gap in your resume if you have a new employer before you move on.  Lastly, make sure you’re not suffering from a momentary episode of “the grass is always greener on the other side.” Sometimes the other side is just what you’ve been looking for, but sometimes you aren’t actually ready to leave. Make sure you can logically explain what’s driving your departure before you start sending out resumes.