Should I stay or should I go? Eh like I have any options

I hate my job and I don’t want to be there. I know that doesn’t make me unique or special. In fact, I think if I liked going to work there I’d be unique, not the other way around.

I watch enviously when someone reaches their limit and walks out. Or when they’re put out of their misery and laid off first. That makes their decision easy.

I’ve worked in this hellhole retail store for nearly nine years now. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way, but it did. And somehow I’ve lingered and lingered, I know not how. I’ve survived many a layoff. I’ve been one job ahead of position eliminations. I even somehow magically had more seniority than someone who had been hired twenty years before me. Why has God spared me thus? Who knows.

I shouldn’t call it a hellhole. There are far worse, more abusive places. But the constant negativity, fear, pressure, stress, anxiety, misery begin to wear on a person. There’s been times when I can’t even eat breakfast because my stomach is like a fist.

I’ve said thousands of times that I’m going to work on my resume and find a new job. But I’ve probably applied to five other jobs over the years. For some reason, it never seems so bad when I go to search for jobs. I think they’ve instilled so much fear and low-self esteem in me that I can’t get up the strength to do what’s right for myself.

Given everything I’ve just said, I don’t know why it’s so hard to quit my job and leave. It’s like being abused. They make you feel like they’re doing you a favor because no one else would hire you. It’s your fault that you’re in this position. Oddly enough you develop this bizarre attachment to it.

I’ve accepted the smackdown so many times that I’ll probably have to be in therapy for a long, long time before I get over this. You just get used to it after a while. Speak out, say the obvious, even in the most meek way, and prepare for a fist to come down and flatten you.

People complain all day long about how they hate being there. Yet few do anything about it. And believe me, we’re not staying because of the pay.

I said to someone the other day, “Well, maybe we’ll all be dead from the coronavirus by next week and none of this will matter.” His reply: “One can only hope.”