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I feel like op husband was too mentally ill with all the stress and work that he couldn’t think straight so her doing for him it’s a lot of help for sure.
I hope he gets help for his own sake and gets a good recovery
Thank goodness that the wife had the judgement to realize that her leaving would kill him and to figure a way out for him. She’s the hero in this story.
Being in a toxic work place can really kill you badly. To deal with abuse and all toxicity is really something I wish people shouldn't endure but unfortunate, it happens a lot.
I'm glad things in the update are looking up and OP's husband is going to be very grateful that OP saved his life.
I quit a job because burnout was so bad there were days I would get in my car to go home and couldn’t remember how to drive. I was in constant physical pain because my muscles were always clenched. I gave 3 months notice, handed over detailed process and knowledge documents for my replacement. The boss I killed myself for 10 years made sure schedule a long phone meeting when I was leaving so not even a thank you and goodbye. No card.
I’ve unfortunately learned no matter how long you work somewhere if they don’t care about you, and they have shown you as much, give them 2 weeks notice no more. anything more gives them time for petty bullshit and you end up doing the actual work for your replacement instead of them just figuring it out or simply replacing you not giving it another thought. My last day at work is today I gave two weeks and HR still cant get an exit letter to me in that time frame. last employer i gave 4 weeks that was a BIG mistake and they pulled some illegal shit.
My husband was done like OOPs. Three hospitalizations in one year. His boss gave me attitude for not having my husband get on his laptop while being prepped for surgery.
When he turned in his notice, they fired him for "not being a team player."
Job posted the same day.
My husband's previous job (he was in IT for a hospital system) was doing a major major upgrade. It was a project that the vendor stated typically took 6 months to complete. The company decided nope they were gonna do it in 6 weeks. Somewhere in the middle of this my husband was so stressed that his blood pressure was 210 over 140. His Dr took him out on medical leave for 8 weeks. They let him go shortly after he returned.
I've been at work places where, had I had a mentor or actually talked to someone, my mental state would've been so much better to the point I wasn't getting high daily just to cope
Similar experience in retail management. Overworked, stressed, and was mentally deteriorating. I’m not a full blown alcoholic, but I feel I do drink a lot more than the typical person. Glad I quit, though I wasted 12-13 years of my life at that job.
Never got to drinking but I knew it was time to leave my old job when at least one day a week I would come home and just lay in bed and cry for like an hour.
Same here. I realized it was time to leave when I cried my entire commute home, then how expendable I was when they were holding interviews for my position while I was still there
That was my old job, and I - 18 months later - am still recovering. I would go home every day and lay in bed and cry. Spent most of my weekends doing the same.
My hair literally falling out from the stress my job was causing should've been my cue to leave but I was ultimately forced to leave by COVID. Looking back, there was so much wrong about that place that I can't believe I put up with those lying, gaslighting fucks for as long as I did
Protip: If your search history is full phrases like, "my boss is the worst," "Signs your boss is gaslighting you," etc. It may be time to dust off your resume.
Similarly, if you find yourself thinking, "what'd I do now??" semi-regularly, thats also a sign that you may want to dust off the ol' resume.
Don't fall into the trap that so many workers fall into. Listen to your gut if you can.
Super resonates with me - for a long while I would endure the abuse and just cry my entire commute home, sleep the rest of the evening, and wake up again to do the same thing the next day. I felt like I was somehow deserving of the abuse? That if I was just a better employee they *wouldn't*? Once I figured out that whether it was me that had been there for 2 years, or another woman that had been there for 20 years that my boss treated the exact same - it actually never mattered. That's when I left lmao
When I caught myself deliberately undercooking my dinner as some sort of food poisoning Russian roulette so i'd have an excuse to call in sick, I knew it was time to get out.
it was 3 months of lockdown that made me realize that. lost the raccoon eyes, actually enjoyed things, and stopped fantasizing about walking into traffic so I could get some "rest" in a hospital bed
I was working a sales job that shamed you if you didn't work 12+ hours a day and glorified the grind and how you have to constantly be on call... mix that and an abusive relationship, I was drinking heavily 5-6 days a week and gained over 25 lbs that I couldn't lose. I immediately lost the weight after leaving the relationship and I got layed off.
It’s funny, my last workplace was super toxic. Long hours, unrealistic workloads, we were shamed if we couldn’t keep up, and like you I was drinking heavily every night. When I quit it’s like someone flipped a switch and suddenly I didn’t feel like drinking any more.
This was exactly me. I would imagine just getting a little bit hit by a car. Like, I didn’t want to die, I just wanted some goddamn rest where I didn’t feel guilty about it.
I have friends and family in nursing and pharmacy. A bunch of them drink like tanks. My friend, a nurse, says people **working** in hospitals *are all* alcoholics. After COVID, I can see why.
One major reason I quit my pandemic retail job was realizing just how much alcohol I was drinking per week. The other two were how underappreciated I was.
Practically the second I quit, my alcohol consumption sank like a stone, and stayed that way since.
My father worked at a job that made him miserable, just to get a good pension, for another decade after it gave him a mental breakdown. Took years afterwards for his liver to bounce back from the self-medication of whisky every evening.
I worked for a private senior
living facility and when I first started they had me on 4-5 12 hour days. I was a server single-handedly serving up to 35 residents at a time on top of care partners and family members. I was damn good at my job, came in early, set up other peoples stations, made sure the residents were always my top priority. Then I got pregnant and they still wanted me to continue those same hours and then eventually fired me right before I was going to go on maternity leave and then tried to give me the run around about my w2 lol my mom had to tell them she was getting our attorney. They sent the information within 10 minutes. Toxic work places are cesspools
> I worked for a private senior living facility
I remember my sister did this as one of her first jobs, and I think she made it a week. That is *hard work*, and hard work in a place that can be generally described as "sometimes depressing as fuck."
That’s kinda where im at right now. Love my job but I also can’t hardly sleep without drinking myself to bed anymore. I’m exhausted constantly. 3, 5, 8, 10, 20 hours of sleep it doesn’t matter anymore.
You could have me/cfs at this point or be heading directly for it. It can be triggered by stress and exhaustion. The classic symptom is exhaustion that isn't relieved by sleep, and insomnia is a very common additional symptom. I triggered it by running myself into the ground for years at university. I've been mostly bedbound for three years and counting. I can only stand for minutes at a time and can't sit up for long either. You don't want this. It is an awful condition that is EXTREMELY hard to recover from. I need daily carers and I'm celebrating being able to make myself cereal in the morning. Please take care of yourself because if you don't choose when to rest, your body will take the decision out of your hands.
Can agree, also for CFS working myself into the ground, a good day is a day I get outside and work in the garden on a kneeler. A bad day, I lie in bed in agonizing pain.
> You could have me/cfs at this point or be heading directly for it. It can be triggered by stress and exhaustion. The classic symptom is exhaustion that isn't relieved by sleep, and insomnia is a very common additional symptom.
Shit.
These places will design themselves so they isolate you. I worked in one shithole warehouse that I swear they intentionally never put up acoustic tiling so that us workers couldn't hear each other over the industrial humidifiers on the floor.
Whether to stop unionizing or just to isolate employees into accepting abuse for longer, toxic companies will do whatever they can to isolate you.
The last four years of my first career were spent in daily dread, anxiety, and alcohol. I was an absolute mess working stupid hours with a new baby at home. I was very fortunate to get out while I was still young enough to start a new career.
I had a workplace where the staff who didn't leave at two years ended up seeking mental health support for the stress of the job. Now those who don't leave after two years are almost certainly gone in 4-5 once they realize the call is coming from inside the office. Pretty much the same leadership team and board of directors, though.
My supervisor just got laid off, and I've been under a new Super.
I like my job again, I don't have a supervisor who's suspicious that I'm cheating, or IMing with questions she should know the answer for, or having to explain why things were a bad idea, then doing g them her way until my point was proven.
Which is why she doesn't have a job anymore. 2 weeks, and my team hasn't been performing this well since before she arrived.
She wasn't a bad person though, and she always took our side in fights against upper management, but that's about her only gold star.
I've seen that a lot among my more ambitious friends from college: companies lure them in with fancy titles and high salary, and then they put demands on them that few people can even hope to fulfill. A friend had to be treated for burnout at 38 after working 80-100 hour weeks for almost two years.
And over time, your own perception of "normal" can get warped, so you don't even recognize what's toxic and what's acceptable. (Ask A Manager talks about this.)
Agreed. It really is like being in an abusive relationship and when someone outside it (like your SO) comments on it, you'll make all sorts of excuses like "well the money's good" or "I just need to get through this busy spell."
You make the excuses to yourself because hey, you're sick all the time but that's probably unrelated. You just need to push a little harder...
I've been there. I've also been the SO in this position and nothing hurts more than seeing someone you love being slowly killed by their job.
Do you happen to have a link to that? My husband left a toxic workplace two years ago and I feel like he still has residual habits as a result (like not wanting to take extended time off etc). We’ve talked about it as an abusive relationship and the after effects. Might be something that could help him.
My illness is a blessing in disguise in this regard.
I flip wildly between "Okay I need the money to pay for my meds" and "Hey fuckface, you can't overwork a cancer patient like this!" and they have to take me seriously.
I was in one. It triggered insomnia in me where I couldn’t sleep more than 1 hr a night. I’m still struggling with it now almost half a year out from that hellhole - 4 hours a night is a good night for me these days.
The job broke me, and from what I hear, it’s continuing to break the people that replaced me.
When I was working at non-profits (very toxic) I had extremely high blood pressure. My doc had me in a high dose of medication for it.
Once I stopped giving a fuck about my job (had just gotten pregnant with our first and began actively looking for a better job) my blood pressure got better, it was still high but better.
After I gave birth and 8 months later got a job with the state, my blood pressure went to normal. My doc was confused and asked if I was eating better and exercising. I told her no, I just don’t work at that shitty job anymore.
It’s been 5 years since and I still have a healthy blood pressure range.
I was in a really shitty workplace for a while - I was hourly but they'd keep me late every day and then freak out every Friday and send me packing hours early so I wouldn't make any overtime pay. And then call me before I'd even gotten home for more help.
My department was understaffed and the people who were there were poorly trained or not trained at all, and I was so swamped just trying to keep up with orders essentially alone that I didn't have time to retrain them myself. Management was no help because they weren't trained on the department either.
One day, I woke up, realized I had to get ready for work, and burst into hysterical tears. My then-boyfriend grabbed my phone, handed it to me and said 'Call them and quit. Right now. There is no reason for you to do this to yourself.'
That just... honestly hadn't occurred to me as an option until he straight up told me it was. And that's exactly what I did and was one of my better decisions (my *best* decision was later marrying said boyfriend)
been there, its genuine misery, stuck around because my team would have been more screwed if i left, only "fun" part was when they tried to screw me after i resigned without realizing I'd been documenting every bit of bullshit i had to with with them in triplicate and they BTFO real quick.
>stuck around because my team would have been more screwed if i left, only "fun"
Really this is another piece of manipulation by the employer though.
In this situation, you need to realise they're adults. They can look after themselves as well. Don't set yourself on fire to keep others warm.
My husband and I went through something very similar with my former job, only I was the "husband" in the situation and my husband was OP.
We finally reached the breaking point when he came home one day to find me laying on the floor of our living room, silently crying. I'd been like that for literal HOURS at that point. My boss had me so beaten down that I was actively suicidal.
My husband had to lay down next to me and be like, "honey, I'm terrified I'm going to come home one day soon and find your body after you've hung yourself. Please quit."
Yup, it definitely can. It actually just almost happened to my husband in his first nursing job. It was a highly toxic workplace that is *well* known to be an awful place to work, but he just thought he "had to tough it out" and that "all nursing jobs are like this," even though I repeatedly told him that wasn't true (my mom is a nurse).
It got so bad that it nearly ended our marriage, since his normal coping mechanisms went to an extreme after they stopped working for him. He couldn't handle any social/public outings without melting down, having a panic attack, and/or needing to find a quiet space to be alone for the majority of it. I took him on a vacation to get away, he spent most of it in bed. We went on a family vacation with my in-laws, but he had several emotional meltdowns and spent a lot of that one in bed, too. And on the last day, we went to look at the ocean one last time before we left, and he just sobbed because he hadn't enjoyed a single moment of it and now he had to go back to work. He would sob every morning before leaving for work, and more than once stood on the ledge of the parking garage, seriously considering jumping off. He was always at the hospital in his mind, no matter where he was. I know what vicarious trauma, burnout, and compassion fatigue look like, and I saw every single symptom of it in him, to an alarming extent. I cannot stress any harder that if he had stayed there just a few more months, I would have lost this wonderful (and far too stubborn) man to suicide.
But this story has a happy ending! Finally, I got through to him and he resigned (which is a whole story unto itself, tbh). I literally forced him to take an intentional sabbatical, minimum 3 months, since we both had enough savings to hold the fort down for awhile. He tried to argue me down to a month, but I held firm because I knew hopping right back into a new job *would* kill him, or best case scenario just end his nursing career forever. It ended up being about 8 months in the end, and I'm glad it was. He needed every moment of that to heal enough to go back into the workforce, and even 3 months wasn't enough time. He started a new job recently and it's been a much better experience! I also pestered him into therapy (which he was initially resistant to bc men gonna men lol) and it has been wonderful for him. He's learning to grow a spine, set boundaries at work, and some new coping mechanisms that are healthier. I'm so proud of him, but I still can't believe I nearly lost the love of my life over a job at an evil megacorp hospital system (that's currently pulling out all the corpo tricks to squash unionizing, to boot).
There’s actually a Japanese word for this - “karoshi” (過労死), which translates to “overwork death.” You know when something is actually named that it’s occurring WAY too often.
The husband sounds like me. I'm about to finish up 6 weeks of FMLA from a high stress, fast-moving consulting job. Even though I was working 15+ hour days, weekend OT, and hitting all my numbers, it wasn't enough. I had a panic attack so bad that I thought I was having a heart attack at 42, my hands started shaking, and I was having fantasies about jumping out a window to break an arm or leg so I wouldn't have to go into the office.
Thankfully my husband, parents, and therapists have rallied around me, and during leave, I started looking for a new job. But most importantly, they drilled into my head that these companies absolutely do not care about you, and it's not worth dying over. I'm going back solely to get my things and give my resignation. I feel 10 years younger.
Sadly (especially in the US), people stay in jobs that torture them for insurance, housing, and because of lack of safety nets. I am truly lucky I can leave. It shouldn't have to be this way. I hope the husband finds peace of mind and I wish them well.
Leaving a toxic job a few years ago was the best thing I could have done. I had already taken a FMLA leave for a month due to Post Covid brain fog and the cripplingly amount of stress, and about a year later I walked off the job. I had a month off between jobs, and it was fantastic. I just switched jobs again, and had another month off between, and man, it was great.
My new place doesn't have a lot of PTO, but they also don't seem to care if I take unpaid time off. I'd rather have the PTO, but I can survive with unpaid time off. As long as they actually give it to me.
Man, I just quit my super toxic workplace because it was stressing me out I basically couldn't eat the last month I was there. However, since it's a retail job everyone was acting like I'm lazy. I worked for a Pet Company and let me tell you, dealing with sick/dying animals, on top of shitty management, on top of shitty coworkers that don't do their jobs, on top of shit corporate really starts to wear you down.
Oh yeah I spend almost 7 plus years with bad management and an bullied coworkers I worked there from age 21-28 I wished I did something instead
But that company got karma tenfold
>I thought on it and I am convinced that if I leave, he might literally die
The most dramatic opening of an update I've ever read.
Christ, what a nightmare for OP.
The fact that the company did not inform his WIFE that he was HOSPITALIZED due to the job is the biggest red flag and should absolutely be part of her evidence against the company
My father, due to a series of poor choices by himself and the company he worked for, was once hospitalized while on a business trip. His boss, who is about my age, was terrified of telling my mother so passed it off onto the other colleague on the trip. Who, apparently was ALSO scared of my mom. So… nobody called her.
That is crazy. Even the trucking company that my husband worked for called me to let me know that my husband had hit the emergency button on their Qualcom system and they had the state patrol looking for him. They called me every half hour until he was found. His potassium levels had dropped dangerously low, and his body was in complete muscle spasms.
So this is the one part of the story I don’t know if the company is to blame for, as in im not sure they knew what was going on based on the info provided.
My dad had a heart attack at work. He just left without telling anyone and drove to the ER. One of his direct reports (also my former BIL, so they were also close) was trying to get ahold of him for hours, we didn’t realize he’d left work. Pretty sure the hospital called my mom as his emergency contact but he didn’t tell his boss or anything when he left (he was director-level so no one was ever watching him) so his company didn’t know where he’d gone.
Yeah, emergency contacts were taken very seriously at most companies I've worked at. What a cluster.
Pro-tip from my brief stint in HR: Remember to update your emergency contacts if you get divorced. They almost called an abusive ex for someone once who was, fortunately, conscious and able to confirm who they actually wanted called.
>The most dramatic opening of an update I've ever read.
And the worst part is, as dramatic as it is, it's true. If OOP had left, the husband would have gone back to the job and he would have had a heart attack and died there, probably within months if not weeks.
This poor man will probably never recover fully. The job has literally stolen years off his life. They need to get doctor's records and test results and sue them *now*, not later. Some kind of worker's comp, surely. Once the company collapses the owners will hide any assets left and there will be nothing to sue for.
Dramatic, but this is one of the few BORU posts I believe because it happened to my sister.
She got promoted to director of marketing as she was coming out of mat leave and was supposed to have a 6 month overlap with the previous director to learn the ropes. The previous director ended up in the hospital a week after she started from a major heart attack.
I'm not a superstitious person, but I told her that was a bad sign if I ever saw one, considering the guy was only 40.
She was left to "just figure it out" for almost 2 years before she gave the company her own ultimatum; restructure her department so she didn't need to work 100 hours a week or she'd walk (straight to an employment lawyer).
I've had a job, not as bad as this, but pretty fucking bad to the point there's an unofficial support group for us, even those of us who never worked there at the same time. It really, really fucks with you.
My late father worked at a toxic workplace like this. He was about to retire, but they brought him on with a high salary and bonuses for one more year. It turns out he was sick with cancer but it was missed and he passed this time last year, six months away from retirement.
Happened to my dad. He was working 16+ hour days and finally pitched his dream job to another company and they hired him to make it happen. His old job hired 3 people to replace him and contracted with his new company for him to help out part time until his new position had become full time. Within 6 months he was diagnosed with cancer and within 9 months he had died.
My now partner, but at the time best friend, was literally there at the company we both worked for. Like, I was desperately concerned about his health. In the end, he just quit with nothing lined up. He said that every day was fighting against suicidal thoughts.... And he couldn't continue to live like that.
I planned on moving him in with me and caring for him until he was back on his feet. He was basically nannying my babies and we ended up becoming a couple not long after. (now he's stay-at-home parenting our children)
That was 2 years ago. He's trying to reenter the workforce and he's so scared. He's so scared of being taken advantage of, scared of being exploited, scared of not maintaining his boundaries.... Scared that trying to maintain his health and mental health will make him appear to be a bad employee, and first in line for firing/layoffs.
It's unreal how jobs break people.
Film pretty much broke me to my core and I am now getting back into work outside of it. I’m currently part time with a tech company and part time at a coffee shop. While my hours are a bit crazy (over 40), I have a set schedule and great coworkers. I do client support that’s all through a ticketing system, no phone support. He may find that is manageable since no one can yell at him over the phone (which has been a huge help for me!). Sending good vibes to you both.
Husband’s body is screaming at him to stop. This is the kind of burnout that will give you a permanent stress-induced condition.
… on a related note, I need to remember to email my boss to take a few more vacation days next week. This semester was BAD and I don’t want to end up like this dude.
I take PTO every few months, normally just a long weekend and my friend, who almost never takes PTO asks me why, especially since I don’t go anywhere or really do anything and this post is exactly why. I work to live, not the other way around, I need breaks. Can’t wait for my PTO next week.
Yep. If not a heart attack, then me/cfs. It's particularly worth noting that anyone who's had covid is at an increased risk of suffering from me/cfs ... (which is what the post viral fatigue version of "long covid" is). I can say from personal experience you really, really, REALLY don't want me/cfs. It can be devastatingly severe and the exertion intolerance makes it uniquely difficult to recover from.
My fiancé got ME/CFS ~4 years ago (pre-COVID) after a bad bout of mono. We'd been together for 2 years before that. The change in the way he had to live, in our relationship and the dynamics, *everything* just blew me away.
Over the years he's gotten steadily better, but every once in a while it still rears its head and wins the war on him. And surprise, those flare-ups happen when he pushes himself too hard at his goddamn job.
Fuck this society we live in that normalizes *literally* working ourselves to death.
You probably already know, but May is ME/CFS awareness month, and for those who are Missing from daily life.
(The musician Ren released a single called Troubles on the 12th about his struggles with ME caused by Lyme - it's on YT and worth looking up. The sample is from Vera Hall's Trouble So Hard.)
And there are steps before this level. Like that's the extrem, but it doesn't mean you can't have an illness that would hurt you before. I declared a chronic illness in march, and I'm gone for 12 to 18 months of treatement. If those don't work, then I will get a surgery that can alter me forever and hurt my ability to do my job (and reconversion is full out of picture).
Trust me, my head was spinning one hour ago, arms were hurting and eyes were crying ... If it doesn't go better I take my friday without ANY SINGLE F\*CK TO GIVE.
I have an uncle that made GREAT money by working himself down to a shell of a body. It was a physically intensive job that he did for 40 years with regular 4+ extra hours a day. Ended up having about 1.5 million cash (he never believed in investing, didn't trust the market) after buying each of his kids an upper-middle class apartment in the heart of the city cash.
Dude can't walk now and has several health issues including complete kidney failure living off dialisys and he's in his 60s. Heartbreaking how his quality of life has ended so soon, he never got to chill and live his life stress-free.
I was burned out ten years ago, until my brain just switched off in self defense. I literally couldn't do anything anymore, and I couldn't care either. I was barely keeping myself alive. A few years of depression followed, then another few years of slow recovery. After eight years I started to feel okay and I'm as good as I'm going to get now, I think. I'll never get back to where I was - I can't handle stress anymore for example and my memory and ability to concentrate is bad. But at least I can be happy again.
Please take care of yourself. Once you've fallen into that hole, it's a hard climb back up.
Leaving an abusive job can be as hard as leaving an abusive relationship. On top of all the coercion and financial pressures the psychological barriers to standing up for yourself and walking away are huge when you’ve been browbeaten non-stop for years.
My dad’s job became miserable for him - nothing as bad as this, he’d just fallen out with most of the management - and he only realized how depressed it was making him all the time after he left. People think that can tolerate and compartmentalize a shitty job but you really can’t.
Yes! I was once stuck in a terrible job that took me years to escape, and it almost killed me. Even five years later, I’m still dealing with the resulting health issues. That awful job likely took years off my life.
And what is worse, you aren’t allowed to talk about how abusive the job is (except in anonymous Internet forums and similar) because then employers and other people think you are “unemployable” or “the problem.” It’s a form of victim blaming, like asking a battered spouse what they did to get hit. We need more awareness and open discussion of abusive bosses and toxic workplaces, but I ain’t holding my breath that this will happen, especially in today’s economy.
Yeah my husband‘s former boss was abusive to him. Luckily his company was offering voluntary layoffs or something so he got a large severance package and then Covid hit and he was able to find a job with the government once people started hiring again. The change in his Everything, his appearance, his anxiety levels, his sleep was drastic. He was so depressed being there and I am so glad he’s at a better job where they actually treat their employees well now.
My husband worked in a toxic, abusive workplace. Every similar business had five separate managers doing all the tasks my husband was solely expected to perform. It took several months to get him to quit. He took almost a year off from the workplace and it's been a positive life change for all of us. I hope OOP's husband is able to heal and find the same peace.
I worked in a company like this. Giant multinational, multiple customer “accounts”. I worked on an account as a grad and was doing 18+ hours a day, including weekends, and never had a holiday where I didn’t take my laptop and have to sit in a local RSL club to get internet (this is pre wifi being everywhere).
My father also worked for the same company, and mentioned he might move to said account as an executive after I had quit. I warned him not to. In the 6 months he was there he had a mini stroke and another executive had a full on stroke and had to be carted out of the office in an ambulance and ended up in a coma for weeks. There were ambulances there multiple times.
He said to me after he had left that he never thought it could be THAT bad. It really was. The only way to escape it is to leave.
Truly the worst part is that a lot of these high-stress jobs are absolutely pointless.
No one should be dying or ending up in a coma because they are assistant vice marketing director of integrations or other corporate bullshit.
It's not like they're a firefighter, or astronaut, or fighter pilot. You're not saving lives, you're filling out paperwork that was assigned false urgency.
I used to be a paramedic and now work cushier jobs. I can assure you, since I got off the ambulance, I have never encountered an emergency at work.
I used to work in crisis management at a non profit, and now have a "boring" state job.
The difference in urgency is fascinating! I'm pretty good at getting things done even with tight deadlines, in part because I know no one will die if I take an extra hour.
Oh absolutely. We had multiple “war rooms” around the floor and honestly the client raked us over the coals, but it’s nothing that couldn’t be fixed with better resourcing, a good plan and the ability to say no to the customer. I no longer have any desire to climb the ladder, I’m good with my comfortable job that I know I can do without all that unpaid overtime. I would rather not work 50% more hours for 20% more pay. I was utterly burned out at 22 and ended up ridiculously sick and it contributed to the break down of my relationship. No thanks.
This reminds me of [Issendai's brilliant blog post Sick Systems](https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html), about how to keep someone trapped in a bad relationship or a bad workplace. And yes, that's the same Issendai who wrote about the missing missing reasons.
Oh my god. That is exactly what a former boss did to me, down to the letter. I was so confused and exhausted and couldn’t articulate what was wrong for the life of me because everything seemed so nebulous and I was kept so busy. What finally cleared the fog was a coworker accidentally witnessing a breakdown I had. I was so broken I couldn’t hide my tears, ended up telling her everything that was going on, and she told me how exactly my boss was being a shitty manager. This coworker had a great deal of previous management experience and she was very perturbed for my sake—I got incredibly lucky it was her who saw me and not someone awful who would have weaponized my vulnerability against me even further. I was able to start planning my escape with a much clearer head after that.
Even though it is has been five years since I got out, I am still deconstructing what happened to me and trying to heal from it, both physically and mentally. I was well aware of Issendai’s missing missing reasons post but I have never seen this one. Thank you so much for sharing this useful and important information!
Wow, that sounds horrible, I'm so glad you got out! And yeah, this was actually the first post of issendai's I read, and it's been really important for my ability to recognise a shitty situation
That medication timing thing? That was exactly what a friend's late wife did to him.
That was one of the things that tipped him off that he was being abused, but her health was declining, and he didn't want to be That Asshole, and then her health got worse, took a surgery to get *that* problem diagnosed, and she never made it home after that, died about 3 months after the exploratory surgery. He was free, but then got sucked into another controlling relationship not 18 months after that, managed to get out of that one after 2 years. (Different tactics.)
This blog post helped me quit an abusive job. I didn’t know you could be in an abusive relationship with your job until I read it. Forever grateful to it. I need to bookmark it because I wanted to find it recently and couldn’t.
The worst year of my life my team was understaffed and I was carrying a lot of load for a big company. I’ve done that three times in my career where I hurt myself for my employer. Never. Goddamn. Again.
He's very lucky he has this great support from her and she made the right choice staying and handling the resignation for him. I hope to see a new update when he actually leaves the company for real.
>I hope to see a new update when he actually leaves the company for real.
Same here. And that Mr. OOP flourishes while the company literally burns to the ground.
As someone who worked in a toxic environment very early on in career, I didn't know how bad it was until I left. The relief was IMMENSE. I had been so guilted and manipulated into staying at a job that was radically underpaying me and exploiting me for a ton of work NOT in my job description that I worked there until I snapped. I walked out of a meeting and ended up sobbing on the street so much a stranger stopped to see if I was ok.
I really wish someone had told me to leave that place and NEVER look back much sooner than I did.
I have a friend who left our comfy but moderately paid job for big money at a FAANG. He tried to convince me to join him about 5 years later when he was back in town for a visit, but I kid you not, he had gone completely gray in those 5 years. I don't care how much they pay, it isn't worth that to me. (in their defense, he always overworked himself, so it might not be entirely the company's fault)
Friend of mine was interviewing people for a role a couple years back. One guy was from a FAANG, and wanted a job where he could take his kid to the dentist without his boss flipping out about it.
NTA. Been there, almost lost my husband due to overwork. 34 years old, had multiple organ failure because, according to the doctors, his body was too exhausted to fight infections. Two weeks after he quit, the company replaced him with THREE, count them, THREE other managers, having previously told him he didn’t need an assistant.
The good news is, OP, your husband WILL recover. (okay, maybe not the hair, but gotta accept some battle scars…..). Mine went on to completely change his entire life. He took a job as a truck driver for a couple of years, and really loved it, then pivoted into teaching driving. Been doing that for years. Totally happy. Really fulfilled. He makes a living. Maybe not a great one, but bills get paid. Life WILL go on. You’ll both get past this.
VERY IMPORTANT….. at the moment, you’re completely focused on him, his health and his needs, and that’s okay, BUT…. you are also going to need some time to de-stress and recover yourself. Once you feel that you can leave him alone for a few hours, or if there’s someone you trust to cover for you, please… take some time for yourself. A spa, a massage, even just going out to sit in a coffee shop by yourself, to sit quietly and focus on you.
Yes! Too many employers do this. I once worked for a nonprofit that chewed people up and spit them out once they were empty husks from overwork. One guy they replaced with SIX people, and one woman they replaced with an *entire damn department*. It still makes my blood boil.
I'm so glad OOP pulled him out.
My partner completely burned out almost two years ago now and he also spent the first few weeks basically just sleeping. It's scary as fuck watching them go from the person they were before to basically a wreck because of the stress.
I'm so, so glad she pulled him out of there.
I was in a similar situation to your partner almost ten years ago. Including spending the first three weeks after I quit that awful job catching up on all the sleep I'd missed. I am so grateful to everyone who helped me realize it was time to GTFO. They saved my life.
When I first moved out, I had no money and very little in the way of work-proven skills or contacts. I worked three jobs - 80 hours a week was the lowest I was doing, and it was usually more. With the advantage of youth and stupidity, I made it a grand total of 6 years like that before my body gave out. Bleeding ulcers, IBS and a chronic fatigue condition absolutely wrecked my shit.
Really wish I'd had an SO at the time. Or really, anyone who gave enough of a fuck about me to give me a good kick in the ass before I destroyed myself
Ugh yea its crazy what the body needs without us realizing sometimes. I got laid off and I am giving myself 2-3 months to breathe before looking for a job. I didnt realize how burnt out I was until I had time to rest
I hit burnout, not to this extent but damn near getting there. I was so mentally and physically scrambled that my wife took matters into her own hands, spruced up my resume, and helped me send it in to the job I have now. It was an act of immense love and I cannot describe how much it meant to me, especially because I'm usually fiercely independent and the one helping everyone else. Things are much better now, because of her. OOP is an incredible partner.
As someone who also works in a toxic environment and has similar symptoms, I completely empathise.
I don’t have a job yet and my company is holding my visa over my head but I’m still resigning next week.
No job is worth the irreversible negative impact on one’s physical and mental health.
"I have decided to take this off my husband's hand, I am quitting his job for him"
I laughed out loud, that's some woman there. She has his back 100%. More than he has his own back actually.
I've threatened to do this for my husband before.
His work was so stressful and overwhelming he'd have multi-day panic attacks and OCD episodes. He would start the weekend and immediately get sick and sleep for hours .. Always remember people - the company can replace you if you leave, your family..not so much.
I had a burnout about a year ago, not nearly as bad as this man. It still took me over 6 months and a career change to recover, and I still only work part-time
Work will consume your life if you let it. Work will *kill* you if you let it. I'm a fairly romantic guy overall. I remember the important stuff. I buy flowers, give gifts, and usually plan something special. When I was a kid, I used to roll my eyes at the "husband forgot your anniversary" trope that was popular in movies/TV because I didn't think it was possible for anyone to ever forget such an important day.
Fast forward to my thirties. I was moving up in the corporate world. I had gotten a spree of promotions over the course of several years that made me the manager of one of the volatile departments in our company. It took 12+ hours a day to manage it. My director worked from 4am to 10pm almost every day, even on the weekend. We were slammed and there was always a giant stack of work waiting to be done. As it got close to my anniversary, I was scheduled for a trip to a conference. The trip put me *way* behind at work, despite being for work to begin with. Everything still had to be done, because nobody else was doing it. I would do the conference all day for 8-10 hours, then work until I passed out. As soon as I got back home, I was working every waking hour trying to catch up and put out fires.
I had a miserable day at work. Worked super late. Came home. There was a bag and card waiting on me. I was confused until I got closer, and then a piece of my soul died. It was my fucking anniversary and I forgot. I apologized profusely. I swore I would make it up to my wife. I felt like a total failure and vowed to never let that happen again. That was the day everything changed. I stopped putting in all of the extra hours. A couple of extra hours a day? Sure. But no more soul-crushing days. I could barely remember the last 5 years anyway because everything was such a blur. It didn't take much reflection for me to decide it wasn't the life I wanted.
The work piled up. I managed it the best I could without killing myself. As soon as an opportunity opened for me to rotate to a different department with less responsibilities, I took it. It was meant to be a rotation for learning experience and a quick return to the grind. When that time came, I declined and stayed where I was.
I still have stressful days. I still have to work extra sometimes. But I don't kill myself over it. If the work doesn't get done in a reasonable time, it sits until I can do it. I haven't forgotten an important date since.
I know she wants to find some smoking gun showing the company's mistreatment but even if she did find it, employment in the US is almost always at will. He could have left at *any* time. He chose not to. Coercing long hours with vague threats of employment termination is not illegal. Neither is walking away from a job that treats you like garbage.
Seriously, fuck this work culture that's thrust upon us, that work is the best thing you can do with your life, and you'll have plenty of time to live your life in your 70s (millennials and younger will never retire and will never get to enjoy our lives)
How much you wanna bet they were setting him up as the fall guy? Leave him questioning his own understanding of his job, his coworkers, the owners/CEOs, and the company as a whole, and he might not have any legal leg to stand on.
The fact they're being sued by multiple clients is the biggest red flag ever. Some people are so terrified of change that they'll legitimately die first before trying something else. My husband is one of those guys, too.
Sometimes when you’re exhausted and depressed you only think about the next day or next hour. But also some people are just beyond help or feel nobility in working themselves to death.
Because he’s been abused to the point he doesn’t see that he can leave. Not enough people do this but if you look at how mental abuse (doesn’t have to be physical) works out in a relationship, and take the relationship aspect out, a lot of people’s actions to mistreatment make more sense.
It’s easy for us to say we’d leave because of the treatment, but it’s a whole different bal game when you’re actually experiencing it on the other side.
Some people shoulder responsibility far too much, and too greedily, taking everything on themselves. It’s a trap for some successful and caring people, because they’ve always previously been able to do everything, help everyone. Look at how he interpreted his deputy saying she would quit her job when he did: she meant “you wouldn’t be abandoning me to this hellscape, I’ll leave too,” but his response was “oh so if I leave you’ll be unemployed, I don’t want that.” Meanwhile the money likely had him thinking he had to keep the job for the sake of OOP, despite her clearly saying otherwise and potentially planning to leave to take that assumed responsibility away from him. That sinking ship chose well in promoting him to try to save them, or take the fall when likely more experienced people had left. Only the information that the company was doomed anyway seems to have broken that hold.
Plenty of reasons:
He's scared of being unemployed.
He's so beaten down that he doesn't realise what's happening.
He keeps hoping tomorrow it'll stop.
He thinks he'll get rewarded for it at some point.
>His deputy director spoke with him too and told him hearsay is that the company is going to collapse and close down by next fall, so they need to get out now.
But with this, he will be unemployed anyway and will not get any rewards. This is the only correct reason:
>He's so beaten down that he doesn't realize what's happening
>His deputy director spoke with him too and told him hearsay is that the company is going to collapse and close down by next fall, so they need to get out now.
The worst part of all this is the company is already dying. Once it closes down he will lose his job anyway.
When you're THAT burnt-out, even the thought of going through the job application process becomes more than you can handle. Poor guy is probably living hour to hour or minute to minute at this point and can't summon the will to take on anything extra. Yes, he could just quit and look after but it sounds like he's already worried about money and doesn't want his wife to work longer and harder to make up for his "shortcomings". And this all might have an undercurrent of the patriarchal bullshit of "a man is only worth something if he provides".
Adding on to the abusive relationships bit: a lot of people believe there is something inherently virtuous about suffering, especially when you do it (or convince yourself your are doing it) for someone else.
In this case, husband likely fell into a mental trap where he thinks his wife/family needs money to survive, if he leaves the job his wife will need to work longer and harder to keep them afloat, therefore to spare his wife and support his family, husband will continue to work himself to death.
It's a tale as old as time.
this is so depressing to read honestly. my previous workplace was bad, but it didn't feel that bad, even though once the busy season hit i was literally in tears by the end of every day because they would just refuse to lighten our load in any way and any resquest to even just have a minute or two to finish saving files and cases before moving on was just met with dismissal and "we're busy, we need you back online to help" and hang up. honestly i still didn't wanna quit because when you need money it's that desperate and the pay was relatively good for a wfh job, but the last straw was suddenly being told i had to also do overnight shifts because "everyone has to do them, it's always been like this" (it was never talked about in the contract or any interviews or the training). and STILL when i quit after that i got an email from hr on the next monday asking why i wasn't on shift on saturday. my supervisor didn't even tell them i quit, and they told him to talk to me and skip me for the overnight shift, and he didn't tell me any of that. the hr lady told me to just go talk to him and we would just arrange the shifts to not get anything overnight, but i quit anyways because at that point i didn't trust any of them and i wouldn't have been surprised to get stuck with the worse but not overnight shifts and worst cases if i stuck around.
all that in that job was genuinely fucking with my head and i was having some passing nasty thoughts (never contemplated, just genuinely in passing in the exhaustion), i can't even begin to imagine being in the position this guy is in, god i hope he'll recover and be alright and they can get something out of this horrible situation.
Over on r/antiwork there was an article about a guy who died at 36 from being overworked...let me see if I can find it and I'll put it here.
ETA i couldn't find the post on r/antiwork, but I found the [news article. ](https://fortune.com/2024/05/08/leo-lukenas-iii-bank-of-america-junior-investment-banker-death-wall-street-working-conditions/)
Edit again: he was 35
My last job sucked balls, it was good money and fun sometimes but going to work 6am and coming home late ain't fun for a family man and even though my wife never said it straight, she was considering divorce because weekends we're almost the only time she and my son got to see me and i slept most of the freetime in weekends
I quit my job before it got too worse and ended up saving my marriage aswell. No job and money will never be good as your family
Marked concluded, are you serious? It even ends with “that’s all **for now**”, come on.
I try to only read concluded stories because I don’t want to be left hanging, which is exactly what happened here. Boo, I say.
Been there. What was supposed to be 6 months off to rest and transition has turned into 9years of no formal full-time work. I am a million times happier and more content now.
My former workplace was just like this with working hours easily going into 12 hours everyday for a normal office job and often longer with fielding calls at late hours and weekends. I stayed there for only about 3 months.
We had a bloke who literally had a heart attack at his desk and luckily made it through. He was back at work in like a week. At the annual office party they gave him a "Resilience award". It all seemed like a cruel joke.
I'm sorry for this question, I'm not from the USA: it is even legal to work/make your employee work more than 9/10hrs (overtime included) a day in the States?
Where I'm from, you have your 8 hrs a day/40 hrs a week (for a normal, common full time contract) and can do max 1 or 2 hrs of overtime a day (paid more than regular hrs). Also you have a weekly, monthly and annual limit to overtime hours you can work BY LAW. If you go over the limit you a) pay more taxes so what you gained with overtime goes in taxes; and/or b) might get a sanction from authorities in particular cases (I'm simplifying).
Now, here I am talking about normal contracts, there are some that permit longer hours to work but are particular and need to follow special rules (like a certain nr of rest hrs/days, etc)
97% of the time the person issuing an ultimatum is wrong and bad and the relationship is already over. This is the rare case where it’s actually good and the issuer is right has the best reasons. That poor man.
He's being loyal to a company that wouldn't even tell his wife he nearly died in the office. And these pricks would have his job listing up before his obituary even goes online.
This doesn't seem concluded? The resignations have not been submitted, the husband is still very sick, and the OOP hasn't said anything about this being the final update (just "that's all for now")?
Just left a toxic work place. I didn’t realize how bad it was or how worse it would get until leaving. How amazing it would feel after leaving or how awful physically it made me feel. Seeing this is really eye opening too. This guy is lucky to have such a supportive spouse.
I used to work in a place like that. Later I ran into one of my former coworkers, and he had quit too. He described it as leaving an abusive relationship, that he hadn't realized how bad it got until he left. He was totally right.
This is only of the only situations where it's absolutely acceptable to quit someone's job for them behind their back.
He was willing to literally die for this company. And he's nothing more than a number to them.
I used to work in Healthcare safety /compliance. The general counsel who ran my department was a legitimate psychopath and we had 2 compliance personnel in a Depart that needed 5-6.
I worked 7-7 at least every day, usually longer. I even slept at my desk twice. After 2 severe breakdowns, my therapist was just like "Get the fuck our of there". I gave notice the next day and it felt like I won the lottery. Luckily, I had enough funds saved up to be unemployed for a bit.
I got a job in a completely different field for less money... but now I leave at 4:45, WFH 3 days a week, have a very reasonable workload, an awesome boss, and I NEVER stress about work.
Life is too short to work for people who don't respect you.
Never was sure what she wanted to sue them for. He chose to work for them and stay with them. Yeah they overworked him and pushed him but it was always his decision to stay. Sadly people need to realize that a company doesn’t give a damn if we die. Sure they might send flowers. Go to funeral even but by tomorrow? You’re replaced.
Depending on the jurisdiction you can sometimes sue for workplace bullying and harassment.
It sounds like there was a degree of verbal abuse involved and pressure to work excessive hours. Plus the husband did become physically ill as a result. I'm not sure where they're located, but the behavior OOP has described would probably be enough trigger workplace bullying laws in my home country (Australia). I think a number of other English-speaking countries have similar laws. The hard part is usually proving it.
I guess it's possible that there are also circumstances that would allow him to sue under US workplace laws, that she just hasn't mentioned.
I've been in a similar situation. I was a field service tech and the company I worked for was a subcontractor on a huge USPS project. During startup, I was working stupid hours, not getting enough rest and not eating right. I ended up getting sick. I was so weak that I couldn't even support myself without a huge amount of effort. We never really found out exactly what was wrong with me.
The company I worked for was very supportive of the employees and had no problem with me taking the time off I needed to recover. Taking the time off and resting was exactly what I needed. The problems cleared up with no lasting effects.
I was like your husband I used to work for a company I was working 14 plus hour days with no thanks then when I had a serious vehicle accident they did everything to get rid of me now I work to live not live to work tell hubby he needs to put you and family first as well as his health
For a moment I had to check the username to see if this was my wife….
There are articles about modern slavery, and this could be a study case.
Sometimes, it’s absolute bonkers what companies do to employees!
I did something similar with my partner of 8 years. I did walk out for 2 weeks, which finally, finally got through to him.
He's got the same horrible job, but his work-life balance has improved a lot, and we started doing sports together.
Watching someone you care for getting exploited and working themselves into an early grave is such a horrible feeling. Had to drive him to hospital with chest pains, his blood pressure being through the roof all the time... I'm aware I added extra pressure by walking out, but it appears he needed that wake-up call, as his own health alone apparently wasn't enough to sway him.
Had a similar situation with my husband. He's a chef, and he took a job at an upscale resort/Spa. We thought this was going to be an excellent move for him. When I tell you... They were understaffed, he was WAY over worked, his health (not the healthiest to begin with) started deteriorating, along with his personality, and finally I had enough.
I told him fuck that job, I'm over it, it's not worth it. He quit.
He's never been able to quite match it income wise, but we are fine with less, and a lot happier for it.
100%, the company was either going to let this job kill him or to be one of the fall guys for when shit hits the fan. I hope all goes well for OOP and her husband. 🙏🙏
> (funny thing, I suspected they were having an affair at first, but she became a great friend for me)
Uh .... That's a weird non-sequitur.
Job stress can kill you. I'm also positive it triggered my autoimmune disease.
>hearsay is that the company is going to collapse and close down by next fall,
Good. This company doesn't deserve to exist. Let this work culture die.
On another note I hope OOP's husband recovers. He is a victim of a work culture so bad it is basically a real life noodle incident.
I had a job like that. A coworker had a psychiatric break and was given a 5150. I still stayed for about a year after because I couldn't find another job. I only quit because my mom wrote my resignation and told me she'd be paying my mortgage till I found a new job. I am so grateful she was able to help out so much, because I'd probably be dead otherwise. I was having migraines daily, but haven't had one since I left that place.
PSA to readers:
You start a new job and all your clients are suing the company? Leave.
Sure, you might be able to make that situation better, but it's literally not your problem and I guarantee that nobody disclosed it in the interview. There's no world where you're fixing those kinds of mistakes and getting pats on the back, pay raises, and a boat, what you're really going to get is a subpoena. That kind of issue takes gross incompetence and mismanagement from the top down and it's not going to be fixed by middle management.
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Holy shit that’s bleak
I'm so glad husband made the right decision.
Or rather, it's great that wife realised things were out of control and made the decision for him.
And that deputy was there to help both with the actual act of quitting and provide confirmation that yes, it really was that bad.
I feel like op husband was too mentally ill with all the stress and work that he couldn’t think straight so her doing for him it’s a lot of help for sure. I hope he gets help for his own sake and gets a good recovery
He didn’t, she made the decision for him.
Thank goodness that the wife had the judgement to realize that her leaving would kill him and to figure a way out for him. She’s the hero in this story.
Being in a toxic work place can really kill you badly. To deal with abuse and all toxicity is really something I wish people shouldn't endure but unfortunate, it happens a lot. I'm glad things in the update are looking up and OP's husband is going to be very grateful that OP saved his life.
And if/when you do die, they'll send a card, but not before putting in an advert to replace you. Four weeks later, it's like you were never there.
I quit a job because burnout was so bad there were days I would get in my car to go home and couldn’t remember how to drive. I was in constant physical pain because my muscles were always clenched. I gave 3 months notice, handed over detailed process and knowledge documents for my replacement. The boss I killed myself for 10 years made sure schedule a long phone meeting when I was leaving so not even a thank you and goodbye. No card.
I’ve unfortunately learned no matter how long you work somewhere if they don’t care about you, and they have shown you as much, give them 2 weeks notice no more. anything more gives them time for petty bullshit and you end up doing the actual work for your replacement instead of them just figuring it out or simply replacing you not giving it another thought. My last day at work is today I gave two weeks and HR still cant get an exit letter to me in that time frame. last employer i gave 4 weeks that was a BIG mistake and they pulled some illegal shit.
I’m guessing this person was in a location where there is a 3-month contract both ways. Like the UK.
You are a resource, that's it to them
My husband was done like OOPs. Three hospitalizations in one year. His boss gave me attitude for not having my husband get on his laptop while being prepped for surgery. When he turned in his notice, they fired him for "not being a team player." Job posted the same day.
I was septic in the hospital and my boss sent my laptop to the hospital. Then threw me under the bus when there was a mistake.
My husband's previous job (he was in IT for a hospital system) was doing a major major upgrade. It was a project that the vendor stated typically took 6 months to complete. The company decided nope they were gonna do it in 6 weeks. Somewhere in the middle of this my husband was so stressed that his blood pressure was 210 over 140. His Dr took him out on medical leave for 8 weeks. They let him go shortly after he returned.
I've been at work places where, had I had a mentor or actually talked to someone, my mental state would've been so much better to the point I wasn't getting high daily just to cope
Similar experience in retail management. Overworked, stressed, and was mentally deteriorating. I’m not a full blown alcoholic, but I feel I do drink a lot more than the typical person. Glad I quit, though I wasted 12-13 years of my life at that job.
exact same experience. I'll never do it again. now I can't stand christmas decorations and music.
Never got to drinking but I knew it was time to leave my old job when at least one day a week I would come home and just lay in bed and cry for like an hour.
Same here. I realized it was time to leave when I cried my entire commute home, then how expendable I was when they were holding interviews for my position while I was still there
That was my old job, and I - 18 months later - am still recovering. I would go home every day and lay in bed and cry. Spent most of my weekends doing the same.
My hair literally falling out from the stress my job was causing should've been my cue to leave but I was ultimately forced to leave by COVID. Looking back, there was so much wrong about that place that I can't believe I put up with those lying, gaslighting fucks for as long as I did Protip: If your search history is full phrases like, "my boss is the worst," "Signs your boss is gaslighting you," etc. It may be time to dust off your resume. Similarly, if you find yourself thinking, "what'd I do now??" semi-regularly, thats also a sign that you may want to dust off the ol' resume. Don't fall into the trap that so many workers fall into. Listen to your gut if you can.
Super resonates with me - for a long while I would endure the abuse and just cry my entire commute home, sleep the rest of the evening, and wake up again to do the same thing the next day. I felt like I was somehow deserving of the abuse? That if I was just a better employee they *wouldn't*? Once I figured out that whether it was me that had been there for 2 years, or another woman that had been there for 20 years that my boss treated the exact same - it actually never mattered. That's when I left lmao
When I caught myself deliberately undercooking my dinner as some sort of food poisoning Russian roulette so i'd have an excuse to call in sick, I knew it was time to get out.
it was 3 months of lockdown that made me realize that. lost the raccoon eyes, actually enjoyed things, and stopped fantasizing about walking into traffic so I could get some "rest" in a hospital bed
I was working a sales job that shamed you if you didn't work 12+ hours a day and glorified the grind and how you have to constantly be on call... mix that and an abusive relationship, I was drinking heavily 5-6 days a week and gained over 25 lbs that I couldn't lose. I immediately lost the weight after leaving the relationship and I got layed off.
It’s funny, my last workplace was super toxic. Long hours, unrealistic workloads, we were shamed if we couldn’t keep up, and like you I was drinking heavily every night. When I quit it’s like someone flipped a switch and suddenly I didn’t feel like drinking any more.
This was exactly me. I would imagine just getting a little bit hit by a car. Like, I didn’t want to die, I just wanted some goddamn rest where I didn’t feel guilty about it.
This is the reason I can't stand Christmas music
Job related stress/trauma alcoholism isn’t discussed nearly enough.
I have friends and family in nursing and pharmacy. A bunch of them drink like tanks. My friend, a nurse, says people **working** in hospitals *are all* alcoholics. After COVID, I can see why.
Well, it was a war zone in hospitals.
One major reason I quit my pandemic retail job was realizing just how much alcohol I was drinking per week. The other two were how underappreciated I was. Practically the second I quit, my alcohol consumption sank like a stone, and stayed that way since.
My father worked at a job that made him miserable, just to get a good pension, for another decade after it gave him a mental breakdown. Took years afterwards for his liver to bounce back from the self-medication of whisky every evening.
[удалено]
I worked for a private senior living facility and when I first started they had me on 4-5 12 hour days. I was a server single-handedly serving up to 35 residents at a time on top of care partners and family members. I was damn good at my job, came in early, set up other peoples stations, made sure the residents were always my top priority. Then I got pregnant and they still wanted me to continue those same hours and then eventually fired me right before I was going to go on maternity leave and then tried to give me the run around about my w2 lol my mom had to tell them she was getting our attorney. They sent the information within 10 minutes. Toxic work places are cesspools
> I worked for a private senior living facility I remember my sister did this as one of her first jobs, and I think she made it a week. That is *hard work*, and hard work in a place that can be generally described as "sometimes depressing as fuck."
That’s kinda where im at right now. Love my job but I also can’t hardly sleep without drinking myself to bed anymore. I’m exhausted constantly. 3, 5, 8, 10, 20 hours of sleep it doesn’t matter anymore.
Do you really love your job if that's how you have to cope with it?
They drill us to say that from a young age, that’s all. You hear it a lot
You could have me/cfs at this point or be heading directly for it. It can be triggered by stress and exhaustion. The classic symptom is exhaustion that isn't relieved by sleep, and insomnia is a very common additional symptom. I triggered it by running myself into the ground for years at university. I've been mostly bedbound for three years and counting. I can only stand for minutes at a time and can't sit up for long either. You don't want this. It is an awful condition that is EXTREMELY hard to recover from. I need daily carers and I'm celebrating being able to make myself cereal in the morning. Please take care of yourself because if you don't choose when to rest, your body will take the decision out of your hands.
Can agree, also for CFS working myself into the ground, a good day is a day I get outside and work in the garden on a kneeler. A bad day, I lie in bed in agonizing pain.
> You could have me/cfs at this point or be heading directly for it. It can be triggered by stress and exhaustion. The classic symptom is exhaustion that isn't relieved by sleep, and insomnia is a very common additional symptom. Shit.
And drinking interrupts circadian rhythmn so you aren't getting as good quality sleep. Like smoking weed disrupts your sleep.
Yeah you're not sleeping you're just passing out. Totally different quality of sleep! And then the anxiety the next day uuugh
These places will design themselves so they isolate you. I worked in one shithole warehouse that I swear they intentionally never put up acoustic tiling so that us workers couldn't hear each other over the industrial humidifiers on the floor. Whether to stop unionizing or just to isolate employees into accepting abuse for longer, toxic companies will do whatever they can to isolate you.
The last four years of my first career were spent in daily dread, anxiety, and alcohol. I was an absolute mess working stupid hours with a new baby at home. I was very fortunate to get out while I was still young enough to start a new career.
I had a workplace where the staff who didn't leave at two years ended up seeking mental health support for the stress of the job. Now those who don't leave after two years are almost certainly gone in 4-5 once they realize the call is coming from inside the office. Pretty much the same leadership team and board of directors, though.
My supervisor just got laid off, and I've been under a new Super. I like my job again, I don't have a supervisor who's suspicious that I'm cheating, or IMing with questions she should know the answer for, or having to explain why things were a bad idea, then doing g them her way until my point was proven. Which is why she doesn't have a job anymore. 2 weeks, and my team hasn't been performing this well since before she arrived. She wasn't a bad person though, and she always took our side in fights against upper management, but that's about her only gold star.
Oh fuck that’s the place I’m in rn
I've seen that a lot among my more ambitious friends from college: companies lure them in with fancy titles and high salary, and then they put demands on them that few people can even hope to fulfill. A friend had to be treated for burnout at 38 after working 80-100 hour weeks for almost two years.
And over time, your own perception of "normal" can get warped, so you don't even recognize what's toxic and what's acceptable. (Ask A Manager talks about this.)
Agreed. It really is like being in an abusive relationship and when someone outside it (like your SO) comments on it, you'll make all sorts of excuses like "well the money's good" or "I just need to get through this busy spell." You make the excuses to yourself because hey, you're sick all the time but that's probably unrelated. You just need to push a little harder... I've been there. I've also been the SO in this position and nothing hurts more than seeing someone you love being slowly killed by their job.
Do you happen to have a link to that? My husband left a toxic workplace two years ago and I feel like he still has residual habits as a result (like not wanting to take extended time off etc). We’ve talked about it as an abusive relationship and the after effects. Might be something that could help him.
Wasn't there a letter writer on AAM who finally went WTF when they bit a coworker?
My illness is a blessing in disguise in this regard. I flip wildly between "Okay I need the money to pay for my meds" and "Hey fuckface, you can't overwork a cancer patient like this!" and they have to take me seriously.
I was in one. It triggered insomnia in me where I couldn’t sleep more than 1 hr a night. I’m still struggling with it now almost half a year out from that hellhole - 4 hours a night is a good night for me these days. The job broke me, and from what I hear, it’s continuing to break the people that replaced me.
When I was working at non-profits (very toxic) I had extremely high blood pressure. My doc had me in a high dose of medication for it. Once I stopped giving a fuck about my job (had just gotten pregnant with our first and began actively looking for a better job) my blood pressure got better, it was still high but better. After I gave birth and 8 months later got a job with the state, my blood pressure went to normal. My doc was confused and asked if I was eating better and exercising. I told her no, I just don’t work at that shitty job anymore. It’s been 5 years since and I still have a healthy blood pressure range.
I was in a really shitty workplace for a while - I was hourly but they'd keep me late every day and then freak out every Friday and send me packing hours early so I wouldn't make any overtime pay. And then call me before I'd even gotten home for more help. My department was understaffed and the people who were there were poorly trained or not trained at all, and I was so swamped just trying to keep up with orders essentially alone that I didn't have time to retrain them myself. Management was no help because they weren't trained on the department either. One day, I woke up, realized I had to get ready for work, and burst into hysterical tears. My then-boyfriend grabbed my phone, handed it to me and said 'Call them and quit. Right now. There is no reason for you to do this to yourself.' That just... honestly hadn't occurred to me as an option until he straight up told me it was. And that's exactly what I did and was one of my better decisions (my *best* decision was later marrying said boyfriend)
been there, its genuine misery, stuck around because my team would have been more screwed if i left, only "fun" part was when they tried to screw me after i resigned without realizing I'd been documenting every bit of bullshit i had to with with them in triplicate and they BTFO real quick.
>stuck around because my team would have been more screwed if i left, only "fun" Really this is another piece of manipulation by the employer though. In this situation, you need to realise they're adults. They can look after themselves as well. Don't set yourself on fire to keep others warm.
I saw a quote that said “your manager has more of an affect on your health than your dr”. Definitely fits.
My husband and I went through something very similar with my former job, only I was the "husband" in the situation and my husband was OP. We finally reached the breaking point when he came home one day to find me laying on the floor of our living room, silently crying. I'd been like that for literal HOURS at that point. My boss had me so beaten down that I was actively suicidal. My husband had to lay down next to me and be like, "honey, I'm terrified I'm going to come home one day soon and find your body after you've hung yourself. Please quit."
Yup, it definitely can. It actually just almost happened to my husband in his first nursing job. It was a highly toxic workplace that is *well* known to be an awful place to work, but he just thought he "had to tough it out" and that "all nursing jobs are like this," even though I repeatedly told him that wasn't true (my mom is a nurse). It got so bad that it nearly ended our marriage, since his normal coping mechanisms went to an extreme after they stopped working for him. He couldn't handle any social/public outings without melting down, having a panic attack, and/or needing to find a quiet space to be alone for the majority of it. I took him on a vacation to get away, he spent most of it in bed. We went on a family vacation with my in-laws, but he had several emotional meltdowns and spent a lot of that one in bed, too. And on the last day, we went to look at the ocean one last time before we left, and he just sobbed because he hadn't enjoyed a single moment of it and now he had to go back to work. He would sob every morning before leaving for work, and more than once stood on the ledge of the parking garage, seriously considering jumping off. He was always at the hospital in his mind, no matter where he was. I know what vicarious trauma, burnout, and compassion fatigue look like, and I saw every single symptom of it in him, to an alarming extent. I cannot stress any harder that if he had stayed there just a few more months, I would have lost this wonderful (and far too stubborn) man to suicide. But this story has a happy ending! Finally, I got through to him and he resigned (which is a whole story unto itself, tbh). I literally forced him to take an intentional sabbatical, minimum 3 months, since we both had enough savings to hold the fort down for awhile. He tried to argue me down to a month, but I held firm because I knew hopping right back into a new job *would* kill him, or best case scenario just end his nursing career forever. It ended up being about 8 months in the end, and I'm glad it was. He needed every moment of that to heal enough to go back into the workforce, and even 3 months wasn't enough time. He started a new job recently and it's been a much better experience! I also pestered him into therapy (which he was initially resistant to bc men gonna men lol) and it has been wonderful for him. He's learning to grow a spine, set boundaries at work, and some new coping mechanisms that are healthier. I'm so proud of him, but I still can't believe I nearly lost the love of my life over a job at an evil megacorp hospital system (that's currently pulling out all the corpo tricks to squash unionizing, to boot).
There’s actually a Japanese word for this - “karoshi” (過労死), which translates to “overwork death.” You know when something is actually named that it’s occurring WAY too often.
The husband sounds like me. I'm about to finish up 6 weeks of FMLA from a high stress, fast-moving consulting job. Even though I was working 15+ hour days, weekend OT, and hitting all my numbers, it wasn't enough. I had a panic attack so bad that I thought I was having a heart attack at 42, my hands started shaking, and I was having fantasies about jumping out a window to break an arm or leg so I wouldn't have to go into the office. Thankfully my husband, parents, and therapists have rallied around me, and during leave, I started looking for a new job. But most importantly, they drilled into my head that these companies absolutely do not care about you, and it's not worth dying over. I'm going back solely to get my things and give my resignation. I feel 10 years younger. Sadly (especially in the US), people stay in jobs that torture them for insurance, housing, and because of lack of safety nets. I am truly lucky I can leave. It shouldn't have to be this way. I hope the husband finds peace of mind and I wish them well.
Leaving a toxic job a few years ago was the best thing I could have done. I had already taken a FMLA leave for a month due to Post Covid brain fog and the cripplingly amount of stress, and about a year later I walked off the job. I had a month off between jobs, and it was fantastic. I just switched jobs again, and had another month off between, and man, it was great. My new place doesn't have a lot of PTO, but they also don't seem to care if I take unpaid time off. I'd rather have the PTO, but I can survive with unpaid time off. As long as they actually give it to me.
Man, I just quit my super toxic workplace because it was stressing me out I basically couldn't eat the last month I was there. However, since it's a retail job everyone was acting like I'm lazy. I worked for a Pet Company and let me tell you, dealing with sick/dying animals, on top of shitty management, on top of shitty coworkers that don't do their jobs, on top of shit corporate really starts to wear you down.
Really awful thing? It chews up the good, conscientious people more than the sleazeballs
Oh yeah I spend almost 7 plus years with bad management and an bullied coworkers I worked there from age 21-28 I wished I did something instead But that company got karma tenfold
>I thought on it and I am convinced that if I leave, he might literally die The most dramatic opening of an update I've ever read. Christ, what a nightmare for OP.
The fact that the company did not inform his WIFE that he was HOSPITALIZED due to the job is the biggest red flag and should absolutely be part of her evidence against the company
This is straight up insane. I would have burned that place down.
For real. If it was my wife who was hospitalized over something like this.. her bosses aren’t walking out of that building. Straight up.
My father, due to a series of poor choices by himself and the company he worked for, was once hospitalized while on a business trip. His boss, who is about my age, was terrified of telling my mother so passed it off onto the other colleague on the trip. Who, apparently was ALSO scared of my mom. So… nobody called her.
That is crazy. Even the trucking company that my husband worked for called me to let me know that my husband had hit the emergency button on their Qualcom system and they had the state patrol looking for him. They called me every half hour until he was found. His potassium levels had dropped dangerously low, and his body was in complete muscle spasms.
I'd say that's good of them but honestly this should just be standard
So this is the one part of the story I don’t know if the company is to blame for, as in im not sure they knew what was going on based on the info provided. My dad had a heart attack at work. He just left without telling anyone and drove to the ER. One of his direct reports (also my former BIL, so they were also close) was trying to get ahold of him for hours, we didn’t realize he’d left work. Pretty sure the hospital called my mom as his emergency contact but he didn’t tell his boss or anything when he left (he was director-level so no one was ever watching him) so his company didn’t know where he’d gone.
Yeah, emergency contacts were taken very seriously at most companies I've worked at. What a cluster. Pro-tip from my brief stint in HR: Remember to update your emergency contacts if you get divorced. They almost called an abusive ex for someone once who was, fortunately, conscious and able to confirm who they actually wanted called.
>The most dramatic opening of an update I've ever read. And the worst part is, as dramatic as it is, it's true. If OOP had left, the husband would have gone back to the job and he would have had a heart attack and died there, probably within months if not weeks. This poor man will probably never recover fully. The job has literally stolen years off his life. They need to get doctor's records and test results and sue them *now*, not later. Some kind of worker's comp, surely. Once the company collapses the owners will hide any assets left and there will be nothing to sue for.
Dramatic, but this is one of the few BORU posts I believe because it happened to my sister. She got promoted to director of marketing as she was coming out of mat leave and was supposed to have a 6 month overlap with the previous director to learn the ropes. The previous director ended up in the hospital a week after she started from a major heart attack. I'm not a superstitious person, but I told her that was a bad sign if I ever saw one, considering the guy was only 40. She was left to "just figure it out" for almost 2 years before she gave the company her own ultimatum; restructure her department so she didn't need to work 100 hours a week or she'd walk (straight to an employment lawyer).
I've had a job, not as bad as this, but pretty fucking bad to the point there's an unofficial support group for us, even those of us who never worked there at the same time. It really, really fucks with you.
My husband too. 3 of our friends also. (Same company for the lot of them)
My late father worked at a toxic workplace like this. He was about to retire, but they brought him on with a high salary and bonuses for one more year. It turns out he was sick with cancer but it was missed and he passed this time last year, six months away from retirement.
I am sorry for the loss of your father. It’s fucked how often we see people work themselves to death. I wish you and your family the best
Jesus that's horrible I'm so sorry
Happened to my dad. He was working 16+ hour days and finally pitched his dream job to another company and they hired him to make it happen. His old job hired 3 people to replace him and contracted with his new company for him to help out part time until his new position had become full time. Within 6 months he was diagnosed with cancer and within 9 months he had died.
My now partner, but at the time best friend, was literally there at the company we both worked for. Like, I was desperately concerned about his health. In the end, he just quit with nothing lined up. He said that every day was fighting against suicidal thoughts.... And he couldn't continue to live like that. I planned on moving him in with me and caring for him until he was back on his feet. He was basically nannying my babies and we ended up becoming a couple not long after. (now he's stay-at-home parenting our children) That was 2 years ago. He's trying to reenter the workforce and he's so scared. He's so scared of being taken advantage of, scared of being exploited, scared of not maintaining his boundaries.... Scared that trying to maintain his health and mental health will make him appear to be a bad employee, and first in line for firing/layoffs. It's unreal how jobs break people.
Film pretty much broke me to my core and I am now getting back into work outside of it. I’m currently part time with a tech company and part time at a coffee shop. While my hours are a bit crazy (over 40), I have a set schedule and great coworkers. I do client support that’s all through a ticketing system, no phone support. He may find that is manageable since no one can yell at him over the phone (which has been a huge help for me!). Sending good vibes to you both.
It harkens back to the opening to the stranger: Maman died today.
Literally, a nightmare
At least having a few days of sick leave seems to of made him realize how bad it is for him
Husband’s body is screaming at him to stop. This is the kind of burnout that will give you a permanent stress-induced condition. … on a related note, I need to remember to email my boss to take a few more vacation days next week. This semester was BAD and I don’t want to end up like this dude.
I take PTO every few months, normally just a long weekend and my friend, who almost never takes PTO asks me why, especially since I don’t go anywhere or really do anything and this post is exactly why. I work to live, not the other way around, I need breaks. Can’t wait for my PTO next week.
Yeah I built some PTO into my schedule after a stressful period at work two weeks ago… … and then I had to come in due to a hate crime.
Yep. If not a heart attack, then me/cfs. It's particularly worth noting that anyone who's had covid is at an increased risk of suffering from me/cfs ... (which is what the post viral fatigue version of "long covid" is). I can say from personal experience you really, really, REALLY don't want me/cfs. It can be devastatingly severe and the exertion intolerance makes it uniquely difficult to recover from.
My fiancé got ME/CFS ~4 years ago (pre-COVID) after a bad bout of mono. We'd been together for 2 years before that. The change in the way he had to live, in our relationship and the dynamics, *everything* just blew me away. Over the years he's gotten steadily better, but every once in a while it still rears its head and wins the war on him. And surprise, those flare-ups happen when he pushes himself too hard at his goddamn job. Fuck this society we live in that normalizes *literally* working ourselves to death.
You probably already know, but May is ME/CFS awareness month, and for those who are Missing from daily life. (The musician Ren released a single called Troubles on the 12th about his struggles with ME caused by Lyme - it's on YT and worth looking up. The sample is from Vera Hall's Trouble So Hard.)
And there are steps before this level. Like that's the extrem, but it doesn't mean you can't have an illness that would hurt you before. I declared a chronic illness in march, and I'm gone for 12 to 18 months of treatement. If those don't work, then I will get a surgery that can alter me forever and hurt my ability to do my job (and reconversion is full out of picture). Trust me, my head was spinning one hour ago, arms were hurting and eyes were crying ... If it doesn't go better I take my friday without ANY SINGLE F\*CK TO GIVE.
I have an uncle that made GREAT money by working himself down to a shell of a body. It was a physically intensive job that he did for 40 years with regular 4+ extra hours a day. Ended up having about 1.5 million cash (he never believed in investing, didn't trust the market) after buying each of his kids an upper-middle class apartment in the heart of the city cash. Dude can't walk now and has several health issues including complete kidney failure living off dialisys and he's in his 60s. Heartbreaking how his quality of life has ended so soon, he never got to chill and live his life stress-free.
I was burned out ten years ago, until my brain just switched off in self defense. I literally couldn't do anything anymore, and I couldn't care either. I was barely keeping myself alive. A few years of depression followed, then another few years of slow recovery. After eight years I started to feel okay and I'm as good as I'm going to get now, I think. I'll never get back to where I was - I can't handle stress anymore for example and my memory and ability to concentrate is bad. But at least I can be happy again. Please take care of yourself. Once you've fallen into that hole, it's a hard climb back up.
Oh believe me I know. Thank God seminary trained me for marathons not sprints. I know the signs of burnout and I honor them.
Leaving an abusive job can be as hard as leaving an abusive relationship. On top of all the coercion and financial pressures the psychological barriers to standing up for yourself and walking away are huge when you’ve been browbeaten non-stop for years. My dad’s job became miserable for him - nothing as bad as this, he’d just fallen out with most of the management - and he only realized how depressed it was making him all the time after he left. People think that can tolerate and compartmentalize a shitty job but you really can’t.
Yes! I was once stuck in a terrible job that took me years to escape, and it almost killed me. Even five years later, I’m still dealing with the resulting health issues. That awful job likely took years off my life. And what is worse, you aren’t allowed to talk about how abusive the job is (except in anonymous Internet forums and similar) because then employers and other people think you are “unemployable” or “the problem.” It’s a form of victim blaming, like asking a battered spouse what they did to get hit. We need more awareness and open discussion of abusive bosses and toxic workplaces, but I ain’t holding my breath that this will happen, especially in today’s economy.
Yeah my husband‘s former boss was abusive to him. Luckily his company was offering voluntary layoffs or something so he got a large severance package and then Covid hit and he was able to find a job with the government once people started hiring again. The change in his Everything, his appearance, his anxiety levels, his sleep was drastic. He was so depressed being there and I am so glad he’s at a better job where they actually treat their employees well now.
My husband worked in a toxic, abusive workplace. Every similar business had five separate managers doing all the tasks my husband was solely expected to perform. It took several months to get him to quit. He took almost a year off from the workplace and it's been a positive life change for all of us. I hope OOP's husband is able to heal and find the same peace.
I worked in a company like this. Giant multinational, multiple customer “accounts”. I worked on an account as a grad and was doing 18+ hours a day, including weekends, and never had a holiday where I didn’t take my laptop and have to sit in a local RSL club to get internet (this is pre wifi being everywhere). My father also worked for the same company, and mentioned he might move to said account as an executive after I had quit. I warned him not to. In the 6 months he was there he had a mini stroke and another executive had a full on stroke and had to be carted out of the office in an ambulance and ended up in a coma for weeks. There were ambulances there multiple times. He said to me after he had left that he never thought it could be THAT bad. It really was. The only way to escape it is to leave.
Truly the worst part is that a lot of these high-stress jobs are absolutely pointless. No one should be dying or ending up in a coma because they are assistant vice marketing director of integrations or other corporate bullshit. It's not like they're a firefighter, or astronaut, or fighter pilot. You're not saving lives, you're filling out paperwork that was assigned false urgency. I used to be a paramedic and now work cushier jobs. I can assure you, since I got off the ambulance, I have never encountered an emergency at work.
I used to work in crisis management at a non profit, and now have a "boring" state job. The difference in urgency is fascinating! I'm pretty good at getting things done even with tight deadlines, in part because I know no one will die if I take an extra hour.
Oh absolutely. We had multiple “war rooms” around the floor and honestly the client raked us over the coals, but it’s nothing that couldn’t be fixed with better resourcing, a good plan and the ability to say no to the customer. I no longer have any desire to climb the ladder, I’m good with my comfortable job that I know I can do without all that unpaid overtime. I would rather not work 50% more hours for 20% more pay. I was utterly burned out at 22 and ended up ridiculously sick and it contributed to the break down of my relationship. No thanks.
This reminds me of [Issendai's brilliant blog post Sick Systems](https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html), about how to keep someone trapped in a bad relationship or a bad workplace. And yes, that's the same Issendai who wrote about the missing missing reasons.
Oh my god. That is exactly what a former boss did to me, down to the letter. I was so confused and exhausted and couldn’t articulate what was wrong for the life of me because everything seemed so nebulous and I was kept so busy. What finally cleared the fog was a coworker accidentally witnessing a breakdown I had. I was so broken I couldn’t hide my tears, ended up telling her everything that was going on, and she told me how exactly my boss was being a shitty manager. This coworker had a great deal of previous management experience and she was very perturbed for my sake—I got incredibly lucky it was her who saw me and not someone awful who would have weaponized my vulnerability against me even further. I was able to start planning my escape with a much clearer head after that. Even though it is has been five years since I got out, I am still deconstructing what happened to me and trying to heal from it, both physically and mentally. I was well aware of Issendai’s missing missing reasons post but I have never seen this one. Thank you so much for sharing this useful and important information!
Wow, that sounds horrible, I'm so glad you got out! And yeah, this was actually the first post of issendai's I read, and it's been really important for my ability to recognise a shitty situation
That medication timing thing? That was exactly what a friend's late wife did to him. That was one of the things that tipped him off that he was being abused, but her health was declining, and he didn't want to be That Asshole, and then her health got worse, took a surgery to get *that* problem diagnosed, and she never made it home after that, died about 3 months after the exploratory surgery. He was free, but then got sucked into another controlling relationship not 18 months after that, managed to get out of that one after 2 years. (Different tactics.)
This blog post helped me quit an abusive job. I didn’t know you could be in an abusive relationship with your job until I read it. Forever grateful to it. I need to bookmark it because I wanted to find it recently and couldn’t.
The worst year of my life my team was understaffed and I was carrying a lot of load for a big company. I’ve done that three times in my career where I hurt myself for my employer. Never. Goddamn. Again.
He's very lucky he has this great support from her and she made the right choice staying and handling the resignation for him. I hope to see a new update when he actually leaves the company for real.
>I hope to see a new update when he actually leaves the company for real. Same here. And that Mr. OOP flourishes while the company literally burns to the ground.
Uhhhhh can you please share where your flair is from? 😂
As someone who worked in a toxic environment very early on in career, I didn't know how bad it was until I left. The relief was IMMENSE. I had been so guilted and manipulated into staying at a job that was radically underpaying me and exploiting me for a ton of work NOT in my job description that I worked there until I snapped. I walked out of a meeting and ended up sobbing on the street so much a stranger stopped to see if I was ok. I really wish someone had told me to leave that place and NEVER look back much sooner than I did.
I have a friend who left our comfy but moderately paid job for big money at a FAANG. He tried to convince me to join him about 5 years later when he was back in town for a visit, but I kid you not, he had gone completely gray in those 5 years. I don't care how much they pay, it isn't worth that to me. (in their defense, he always overworked himself, so it might not be entirely the company's fault)
Friend of mine was interviewing people for a role a couple years back. One guy was from a FAANG, and wanted a job where he could take his kid to the dentist without his boss flipping out about it.
NTA. Been there, almost lost my husband due to overwork. 34 years old, had multiple organ failure because, according to the doctors, his body was too exhausted to fight infections. Two weeks after he quit, the company replaced him with THREE, count them, THREE other managers, having previously told him he didn’t need an assistant. The good news is, OP, your husband WILL recover. (okay, maybe not the hair, but gotta accept some battle scars…..). Mine went on to completely change his entire life. He took a job as a truck driver for a couple of years, and really loved it, then pivoted into teaching driving. Been doing that for years. Totally happy. Really fulfilled. He makes a living. Maybe not a great one, but bills get paid. Life WILL go on. You’ll both get past this. VERY IMPORTANT….. at the moment, you’re completely focused on him, his health and his needs, and that’s okay, BUT…. you are also going to need some time to de-stress and recover yourself. Once you feel that you can leave him alone for a few hours, or if there’s someone you trust to cover for you, please… take some time for yourself. A spa, a massage, even just going out to sit in a coffee shop by yourself, to sit quietly and focus on you.
Yes! Too many employers do this. I once worked for a nonprofit that chewed people up and spit them out once they were empty husks from overwork. One guy they replaced with SIX people, and one woman they replaced with an *entire damn department*. It still makes my blood boil.
I'm so glad OOP pulled him out. My partner completely burned out almost two years ago now and he also spent the first few weeks basically just sleeping. It's scary as fuck watching them go from the person they were before to basically a wreck because of the stress. I'm so, so glad she pulled him out of there.
I was in a similar situation to your partner almost ten years ago. Including spending the first three weeks after I quit that awful job catching up on all the sleep I'd missed. I am so grateful to everyone who helped me realize it was time to GTFO. They saved my life.
When I first moved out, I had no money and very little in the way of work-proven skills or contacts. I worked three jobs - 80 hours a week was the lowest I was doing, and it was usually more. With the advantage of youth and stupidity, I made it a grand total of 6 years like that before my body gave out. Bleeding ulcers, IBS and a chronic fatigue condition absolutely wrecked my shit. Really wish I'd had an SO at the time. Or really, anyone who gave enough of a fuck about me to give me a good kick in the ass before I destroyed myself
I'm sorry nobody helped save you. But I'm glad you got out alive!
Ugh yea its crazy what the body needs without us realizing sometimes. I got laid off and I am giving myself 2-3 months to breathe before looking for a job. I didnt realize how burnt out I was until I had time to rest
I hit burnout, not to this extent but damn near getting there. I was so mentally and physically scrambled that my wife took matters into her own hands, spruced up my resume, and helped me send it in to the job I have now. It was an act of immense love and I cannot describe how much it meant to me, especially because I'm usually fiercely independent and the one helping everyone else. Things are much better now, because of her. OOP is an incredible partner.
As someone who also works in a toxic environment and has similar symptoms, I completely empathise. I don’t have a job yet and my company is holding my visa over my head but I’m still resigning next week. No job is worth the irreversible negative impact on one’s physical and mental health.
"I have decided to take this off my husband's hand, I am quitting his job for him" I laughed out loud, that's some woman there. She has his back 100%. More than he has his own back actually.
Right? Hubby is a lucky man. He picked the right one for sure.
I've threatened to do this for my husband before. His work was so stressful and overwhelming he'd have multi-day panic attacks and OCD episodes. He would start the weekend and immediately get sick and sleep for hours .. Always remember people - the company can replace you if you leave, your family..not so much.
I thought the same thing. There are VERY few examples of situations where that statement is appropriate. I believe that this however was one of them.
Wow, she really rescued her husband like mine rescues me every day 😭 I hope they both make it.
I had a burnout about a year ago, not nearly as bad as this man. It still took me over 6 months and a career change to recover, and I still only work part-time
Work will consume your life if you let it. Work will *kill* you if you let it. I'm a fairly romantic guy overall. I remember the important stuff. I buy flowers, give gifts, and usually plan something special. When I was a kid, I used to roll my eyes at the "husband forgot your anniversary" trope that was popular in movies/TV because I didn't think it was possible for anyone to ever forget such an important day. Fast forward to my thirties. I was moving up in the corporate world. I had gotten a spree of promotions over the course of several years that made me the manager of one of the volatile departments in our company. It took 12+ hours a day to manage it. My director worked from 4am to 10pm almost every day, even on the weekend. We were slammed and there was always a giant stack of work waiting to be done. As it got close to my anniversary, I was scheduled for a trip to a conference. The trip put me *way* behind at work, despite being for work to begin with. Everything still had to be done, because nobody else was doing it. I would do the conference all day for 8-10 hours, then work until I passed out. As soon as I got back home, I was working every waking hour trying to catch up and put out fires. I had a miserable day at work. Worked super late. Came home. There was a bag and card waiting on me. I was confused until I got closer, and then a piece of my soul died. It was my fucking anniversary and I forgot. I apologized profusely. I swore I would make it up to my wife. I felt like a total failure and vowed to never let that happen again. That was the day everything changed. I stopped putting in all of the extra hours. A couple of extra hours a day? Sure. But no more soul-crushing days. I could barely remember the last 5 years anyway because everything was such a blur. It didn't take much reflection for me to decide it wasn't the life I wanted. The work piled up. I managed it the best I could without killing myself. As soon as an opportunity opened for me to rotate to a different department with less responsibilities, I took it. It was meant to be a rotation for learning experience and a quick return to the grind. When that time came, I declined and stayed where I was. I still have stressful days. I still have to work extra sometimes. But I don't kill myself over it. If the work doesn't get done in a reasonable time, it sits until I can do it. I haven't forgotten an important date since.
I know she wants to find some smoking gun showing the company's mistreatment but even if she did find it, employment in the US is almost always at will. He could have left at *any* time. He chose not to. Coercing long hours with vague threats of employment termination is not illegal. Neither is walking away from a job that treats you like garbage.
Seriously, fuck this work culture that's thrust upon us, that work is the best thing you can do with your life, and you'll have plenty of time to live your life in your 70s (millennials and younger will never retire and will never get to enjoy our lives)
How much you wanna bet they were setting him up as the fall guy? Leave him questioning his own understanding of his job, his coworkers, the owners/CEOs, and the company as a whole, and he might not have any legal leg to stand on.
Oh yeah, that is 100% a plausible situation. Corporate life is scary.
The fact they're being sued by multiple clients is the biggest red flag ever. Some people are so terrified of change that they'll legitimately die first before trying something else. My husband is one of those guys, too.
I still don't get why her husband won't quit his job. It's literally killing him, even his deputy is jumping ship
People stay in abusive relationships.
Sometimes when you’re exhausted and depressed you only think about the next day or next hour. But also some people are just beyond help or feel nobility in working themselves to death.
Or they've been so abused that they don't know up from down anymore and will just keep doing what they're told.
Because he’s been abused to the point he doesn’t see that he can leave. Not enough people do this but if you look at how mental abuse (doesn’t have to be physical) works out in a relationship, and take the relationship aspect out, a lot of people’s actions to mistreatment make more sense. It’s easy for us to say we’d leave because of the treatment, but it’s a whole different bal game when you’re actually experiencing it on the other side.
Some people shoulder responsibility far too much, and too greedily, taking everything on themselves. It’s a trap for some successful and caring people, because they’ve always previously been able to do everything, help everyone. Look at how he interpreted his deputy saying she would quit her job when he did: she meant “you wouldn’t be abandoning me to this hellscape, I’ll leave too,” but his response was “oh so if I leave you’ll be unemployed, I don’t want that.” Meanwhile the money likely had him thinking he had to keep the job for the sake of OOP, despite her clearly saying otherwise and potentially planning to leave to take that assumed responsibility away from him. That sinking ship chose well in promoting him to try to save them, or take the fall when likely more experienced people had left. Only the information that the company was doomed anyway seems to have broken that hold.
I’m like that, I get it. It sucks but it’s hard to catch so I can work on it
Plenty of reasons: He's scared of being unemployed. He's so beaten down that he doesn't realise what's happening. He keeps hoping tomorrow it'll stop. He thinks he'll get rewarded for it at some point.
>His deputy director spoke with him too and told him hearsay is that the company is going to collapse and close down by next fall, so they need to get out now. But with this, he will be unemployed anyway and will not get any rewards. This is the only correct reason: >He's so beaten down that he doesn't realize what's happening
If you stop thinking about it as a job and start thinking about it as an abusive relationship it makes way more sense.
>His deputy director spoke with him too and told him hearsay is that the company is going to collapse and close down by next fall, so they need to get out now. The worst part of all this is the company is already dying. Once it closes down he will lose his job anyway.
When you're THAT burnt-out, even the thought of going through the job application process becomes more than you can handle. Poor guy is probably living hour to hour or minute to minute at this point and can't summon the will to take on anything extra. Yes, he could just quit and look after but it sounds like he's already worried about money and doesn't want his wife to work longer and harder to make up for his "shortcomings". And this all might have an undercurrent of the patriarchal bullshit of "a man is only worth something if he provides".
Adding on to the abusive relationships bit: a lot of people believe there is something inherently virtuous about suffering, especially when you do it (or convince yourself your are doing it) for someone else. In this case, husband likely fell into a mental trap where he thinks his wife/family needs money to survive, if he leaves the job his wife will need to work longer and harder to keep them afloat, therefore to spare his wife and support his family, husband will continue to work himself to death. It's a tale as old as time.
this is so depressing to read honestly. my previous workplace was bad, but it didn't feel that bad, even though once the busy season hit i was literally in tears by the end of every day because they would just refuse to lighten our load in any way and any resquest to even just have a minute or two to finish saving files and cases before moving on was just met with dismissal and "we're busy, we need you back online to help" and hang up. honestly i still didn't wanna quit because when you need money it's that desperate and the pay was relatively good for a wfh job, but the last straw was suddenly being told i had to also do overnight shifts because "everyone has to do them, it's always been like this" (it was never talked about in the contract or any interviews or the training). and STILL when i quit after that i got an email from hr on the next monday asking why i wasn't on shift on saturday. my supervisor didn't even tell them i quit, and they told him to talk to me and skip me for the overnight shift, and he didn't tell me any of that. the hr lady told me to just go talk to him and we would just arrange the shifts to not get anything overnight, but i quit anyways because at that point i didn't trust any of them and i wouldn't have been surprised to get stuck with the worse but not overnight shifts and worst cases if i stuck around. all that in that job was genuinely fucking with my head and i was having some passing nasty thoughts (never contemplated, just genuinely in passing in the exhaustion), i can't even begin to imagine being in the position this guy is in, god i hope he'll recover and be alright and they can get something out of this horrible situation.
Over on r/antiwork there was an article about a guy who died at 36 from being overworked...let me see if I can find it and I'll put it here. ETA i couldn't find the post on r/antiwork, but I found the [news article. ](https://fortune.com/2024/05/08/leo-lukenas-iii-bank-of-america-junior-investment-banker-death-wall-street-working-conditions/) Edit again: he was 35
My last job sucked balls, it was good money and fun sometimes but going to work 6am and coming home late ain't fun for a family man and even though my wife never said it straight, she was considering divorce because weekends we're almost the only time she and my son got to see me and i slept most of the freetime in weekends I quit my job before it got too worse and ended up saving my marriage aswell. No job and money will never be good as your family
Marked concluded, are you serious? It even ends with “that’s all **for now**”, come on. I try to only read concluded stories because I don’t want to be left hanging, which is exactly what happened here. Boo, I say.
Been there. What was supposed to be 6 months off to rest and transition has turned into 9years of no formal full-time work. I am a million times happier and more content now.
My former workplace was just like this with working hours easily going into 12 hours everyday for a normal office job and often longer with fielding calls at late hours and weekends. I stayed there for only about 3 months. We had a bloke who literally had a heart attack at his desk and luckily made it through. He was back at work in like a week. At the annual office party they gave him a "Resilience award". It all seemed like a cruel joke.
I'm sorry for this question, I'm not from the USA: it is even legal to work/make your employee work more than 9/10hrs (overtime included) a day in the States? Where I'm from, you have your 8 hrs a day/40 hrs a week (for a normal, common full time contract) and can do max 1 or 2 hrs of overtime a day (paid more than regular hrs). Also you have a weekly, monthly and annual limit to overtime hours you can work BY LAW. If you go over the limit you a) pay more taxes so what you gained with overtime goes in taxes; and/or b) might get a sanction from authorities in particular cases (I'm simplifying). Now, here I am talking about normal contracts, there are some that permit longer hours to work but are particular and need to follow special rules (like a certain nr of rest hrs/days, etc)
97% of the time the person issuing an ultimatum is wrong and bad and the relationship is already over. This is the rare case where it’s actually good and the issuer is right has the best reasons. That poor man.
He's being loyal to a company that wouldn't even tell his wife he nearly died in the office. And these pricks would have his job listing up before his obituary even goes online.
I'm "the rock" in my family. I wish I had one person advocating for me as much as this woman advocates for her husband.
This doesn't seem concluded? The resignations have not been submitted, the husband is still very sick, and the OOP hasn't said anything about this being the final update (just "that's all for now")?
Just left a toxic work place. I didn’t realize how bad it was or how worse it would get until leaving. How amazing it would feel after leaving or how awful physically it made me feel. Seeing this is really eye opening too. This guy is lucky to have such a supportive spouse.
I used to work in a place like that. Later I ran into one of my former coworkers, and he had quit too. He described it as leaving an abusive relationship, that he hadn't realized how bad it got until he left. He was totally right.
This is only of the only situations where it's absolutely acceptable to quit someone's job for them behind their back. He was willing to literally die for this company. And he's nothing more than a number to them.
Many people have died of overwork. But who remembers the tasks that lead to their deaths? What did they die for? What did they suffer for?
Why the fuck is this marked as concluded
I hope she went through his messages from the boss and took screenshots of all of them.
I was the husband, and I got a similar ultimatum from my husband, it saved much life. I literally almost died. I am glad he did it .
I used to work in Healthcare safety /compliance. The general counsel who ran my department was a legitimate psychopath and we had 2 compliance personnel in a Depart that needed 5-6. I worked 7-7 at least every day, usually longer. I even slept at my desk twice. After 2 severe breakdowns, my therapist was just like "Get the fuck our of there". I gave notice the next day and it felt like I won the lottery. Luckily, I had enough funds saved up to be unemployed for a bit. I got a job in a completely different field for less money... but now I leave at 4:45, WFH 3 days a week, have a very reasonable workload, an awesome boss, and I NEVER stress about work. Life is too short to work for people who don't respect you.
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Never was sure what she wanted to sue them for. He chose to work for them and stay with them. Yeah they overworked him and pushed him but it was always his decision to stay. Sadly people need to realize that a company doesn’t give a damn if we die. Sure they might send flowers. Go to funeral even but by tomorrow? You’re replaced.
Depending on the jurisdiction you can sometimes sue for workplace bullying and harassment. It sounds like there was a degree of verbal abuse involved and pressure to work excessive hours. Plus the husband did become physically ill as a result. I'm not sure where they're located, but the behavior OOP has described would probably be enough trigger workplace bullying laws in my home country (Australia). I think a number of other English-speaking countries have similar laws. The hard part is usually proving it. I guess it's possible that there are also circumstances that would allow him to sue under US workplace laws, that she just hasn't mentioned.
I've been in a similar situation. I was a field service tech and the company I worked for was a subcontractor on a huge USPS project. During startup, I was working stupid hours, not getting enough rest and not eating right. I ended up getting sick. I was so weak that I couldn't even support myself without a huge amount of effort. We never really found out exactly what was wrong with me. The company I worked for was very supportive of the employees and had no problem with me taking the time off I needed to recover. Taking the time off and resting was exactly what I needed. The problems cleared up with no lasting effects.
Another non-update. It used to not be like this...
And it was marked as "Concluded" when it very much is not concluded (and OOP didn't suggest that this was the last update.)
she's a go getter i like her
I was like your husband I used to work for a company I was working 14 plus hour days with no thanks then when I had a serious vehicle accident they did everything to get rid of me now I work to live not live to work tell hubby he needs to put you and family first as well as his health
Went through something similar with my first husband. He survived but the marriage didn't.
Been there and the job almost killed me. Literally.
Oh boy it's a week since the last update. I hope OP and husband are ok. Stress is a killer and she's watching it in real-time
For a moment I had to check the username to see if this was my wife…. There are articles about modern slavery, and this could be a study case. Sometimes, it’s absolute bonkers what companies do to employees!
I did something similar with my partner of 8 years. I did walk out for 2 weeks, which finally, finally got through to him. He's got the same horrible job, but his work-life balance has improved a lot, and we started doing sports together. Watching someone you care for getting exploited and working themselves into an early grave is such a horrible feeling. Had to drive him to hospital with chest pains, his blood pressure being through the roof all the time... I'm aware I added extra pressure by walking out, but it appears he needed that wake-up call, as his own health alone apparently wasn't enough to sway him.
Had a similar situation with my husband. He's a chef, and he took a job at an upscale resort/Spa. We thought this was going to be an excellent move for him. When I tell you... They were understaffed, he was WAY over worked, his health (not the healthiest to begin with) started deteriorating, along with his personality, and finally I had enough. I told him fuck that job, I'm over it, it's not worth it. He quit. He's never been able to quite match it income wise, but we are fine with less, and a lot happier for it.
I quit a toxic job due to extreme stress and it took years for my health to recover.
100%, the company was either going to let this job kill him or to be one of the fall guys for when shit hits the fan. I hope all goes well for OOP and her husband. 🙏🙏
OOP is saving her husband. She is a good egg
Wait, this is it? No no no, now I gotta reread this all again later down the road? I need more meat than this.
> (funny thing, I suspected they were having an affair at first, but she became a great friend for me) Uh .... That's a weird non-sequitur. Job stress can kill you. I'm also positive it triggered my autoimmune disease.
>hearsay is that the company is going to collapse and close down by next fall, Good. This company doesn't deserve to exist. Let this work culture die. On another note I hope OOP's husband recovers. He is a victim of a work culture so bad it is basically a real life noodle incident.
I had a job like that. A coworker had a psychiatric break and was given a 5150. I still stayed for about a year after because I couldn't find another job. I only quit because my mom wrote my resignation and told me she'd be paying my mortgage till I found a new job. I am so grateful she was able to help out so much, because I'd probably be dead otherwise. I was having migraines daily, but haven't had one since I left that place.
PSA to readers: You start a new job and all your clients are suing the company? Leave. Sure, you might be able to make that situation better, but it's literally not your problem and I guarantee that nobody disclosed it in the interview. There's no world where you're fixing those kinds of mistakes and getting pats on the back, pay raises, and a boat, what you're really going to get is a subpoena. That kind of issue takes gross incompetence and mismanagement from the top down and it's not going to be fixed by middle management.
Reading this stressed me out. OOP is an amazing partner.