A while ago I extricated myself from a rather unpleasant professional situation, which is to say I quit a job I didn’t like. I am fortunate enough, and mostly always have been, to be able to do that sort of thing pretty much whenever I need to; it’s always an excellent professional rule to structure your work and your career in such a way that you can never not walk away from something awful. And boy, you all know how good it feels to walk away from a bad job. A bad job is a pretty life-consuming sort of thing. It doesn’t necessarily have to be—there are ways to sort of isolate your work from the rest of your life so you don’t lose your mind, and sometimes it’s necessary to do that if you simply can’t get out of a job— but regardless, quitting a job you hate is always a fine feeling, like getting out of jail. It’s less like getting parole and more like getting pardoned and having your record wiped. You are free.
I left this job because I had a bad boss. This happens. I would speculate that among the people who hate their jobs probably a majority of them hate it because of their boss. Really there are a ton of unpleasant jobs you can tolerate if you have a good boss to make it better, but even the best job is usually rendered unbearable if you have a bad boss to make it worse. That’s what I had. This fellow was actually personally a very nice guy, but professionally he was just chaotic and unreasonable and prone to fits of moodiness and weird anger and incomprehensible demands and sharp reversals of strategy that made it just impossible to anticipate any of his professional wants or intentions. I don’t want to exaggerate here, it’s not like I was being abused, but these sorts of things are really the hallmark of standard-issue abusive relationships: Someone who is (i) arbitrarily, randomly angry, who (ii) makes constant, endless demands of you, and (iii) whose demands are completely unpredictable and essentially un-satisfiable, leading to an endlessly stressful feedback loop that kind of looks something like this:
It’s rough stuff. So here is my advice to you, especially if you’re a younger someone just starting out in business or maybe even getting your first high school job: Sometimes it’s not you, it’s your boss. Sometimes that’s just the case. This is actually a more controversial proposal than you might think, at least in America, where your professional title has historically been viewed as sort of a synecdoche of your body and soul. Lots of times people will just take this sort of thing on the chin and sort of convince themselves that it’s a problem with themselves rather than the boss. Sometimes this is true. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes, really, it’s just that you have a bad boss.
It’s important, of course, to take an inventory to determine if that’s true. If you’re starting to feel like your boss is just kind of not good, ask yourself: Am I a good worker? Do I get my work done capably, and well, and in a timely fashion? Do I make infrequent mistakes? When I make mistakes, do I admit them and learn from them? Do I anticipate the needs of my boss, my coworkers, and the job more generally? Am I proactively adept at my job? If you answer “yes” to all of these questions, I’ve got good news for you: You’re a good worker and your boss should be happy to have you. If he seems really unhappy with you all the time, if his complaints about you are bizarre and irrational and make no sense, it might just be him, not you, that’s the problem.
Learning to spot the difference is key, and feeling confident in walking away from that sort of thing is a necessary part of ensuring that you have a happy and reasonably stress-free life. A surprising number of people will never consider doing such a thing, at least not in any sort of proactive way. Many people will simply stay in an awful job for a long time, allowing it to poison their lives and make them profoundly unhappy and discombobulated. You do not have to do that! If you’re even a halfway decent worker, somewhere else will be happy to have you, to pay you well and treat you well at the same time. That’s the way of American business. Don’t hesitate to take advantage of it.
Of course we all sometimes have to put up with weird and unpleasant workplace foibles and frustrations, including from our bosses. It happens. You don’t want to leave a job, especially a good job, because of minor annoyances and inconveniences. But there’s a world of difference between workaday hiccups and the sheer unbearable aggravation of a bad boss. They do exist. If you encounter one, don’t waste any time getting away from him as soon as you can. You’ll thank yourself later.