I should have left abusive jobs sooner, but I didn’t.
Why? It would be easy to say that I was afraid of not having enough money to live, or how it might look on my resume, but the truth is that I thought they were good people at heart. I was wrong.
One of the hardest things for sincere people to understand is that other people are not sincere. There is an old quote that says “It is as hard for a bad person to imagine someone doing good, as a good person to imagine someone doing bad.” Fundamentally people who are abusive haven’t the social skills or emotional intelligence to know how to manage or behave, and you as a worker of them rarely get to teach them this.
This means that when someone is abusive there is really only one choice and that is to leave. I have had multiple bosses yell at me, not because I am a bad person or make a mistake but because they were jerks. If I had been less forgiving and understanding I would have just walked out. I worked for a company where I was told the boss can get angry and I decided before that happened I had enough of jerks and I would quit and walk out. At some point, you realize that your mental health and happiness outweigh any other considerations.
Yes, it is stressful if you need the money, yes it is stressful if you have a family or other obligations. However, you don’t have a choice. When you allow someone to yell at you once, it happens again. There were jobs that I was joyful when the company laid off people. I was literally walking out of the building in one job glad that they had laid me off so I wouldn’t ever be abused again.
Your happiness and health decrease when you suffer abuse. No job or relationship is worth abuse. Leave the first time someone yells at you. I promise you it won’t get better.