4 Signs You Should Bail From Your Job While You Can
The daily trudge. That 9-5, that even if you like your job, prevents you from binge watching television for hours on end. A tragedy, I know. (If work didn’t steal forty hours of my time a week, I wouldn’t have fallen behind on Syfy’s futuristic drama Defiance and it wouldn’t have been canceled.)
Maybe the connection between work and the cancellation of another Syfy show I love aren’t directly related, but work places can directly and indirectly negatively affect your life. And when that does happens, it might be in your best interest to jump ship and seek employment elsewhere. Here are five signs, you might want to begin the process of finding a new job.
Blasé About Crime
If your workplace seems to be the epicenter of various criminal activities, now might be the time to bail. Robberies and various other criminal activities, could put your life at risk. Most jobs aren’t worth the risk of physical injury or death.
You might be thinking, it’s just a bad neighborhood. Other jobs I find would have the same issues unless I left the area. Not exactly true. According to a lecture given by John Eck at Portland State University, managers who make it harder for individuals to commit crimes tend to have less crime. Likewise, managers who don’t do anything to prevent crime will experience more crime. This means that even in “bad neighborhoods” managers can increase the likelihood that they’re employees will have a safe work environment.
If you have managers who don’t do enough to prevent the crime that occurs at your workplace, now is the time to begin looking for another job.
Blasé About Safety
Are workplace injuries an epidemic at your workplace? Do people regularly need to file for workers compensation? Workplace injuries unfortunately are a common occurrence in professions that require manual labor. In 2013, for every 100 employees, 6.4 experienced work related injuries and illnesses.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has safety standards to prevent workplace injuries, but some companies do not meet those standards for a variety of reasons. Whether or not those standards are not met due to managerial pressure or employee habits, it doesn’t matter; both circumstances can lead to an injury that can linger for the rest of your life.
You might want to try to talk some sense into your managers and HR department, but if no moves are made to make the workplace safer, you might want to find a job with a company who has higher safety standards.
Stagnation
Have you been trudging through the work day without any end in sight? Does it feel weirdly like you’re in a very bad version of Groundhog Day? The same easy, menial tasks every day for what feels like a millennia.
While everyone has different career goals and don’t truly seek a management position, your job should still offer some sort of progression. Whether that’s intellectual, emotional, social, or career progression doesn’t really matter. What matters should be that you get some type of value from the job other than a steady paycheck. For some the pay check is all that matters (and that’s all right). Just be prepared to bail if you ever get to the point where you begin to wonder what you’ve been doing with your life.
Empty Promises
Have you been up for a raise, a promotion, or even a new project for years? Have you heard, we’re not ready, it’s not time yet, just a few more months over and over again? I have to ask, why are you still waiting?
Yes, your company and manager might not be dangling the promise of a better job within the company just to keep you around, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve slammed the brakes on your career due to that promise. After a while, you should probably stop patiently waiting and begin looking for a better opportunity elsewhere. If the job does magically appear, you halt the job search. If it doesn’t than you have at least increased the chances of finding a better job.
The need for a job is required for most of the population of the world for a lucrative life. Jobs should be more about earning a buck. Jobs should also offer a secure and safe environment that leads to some sort of personal progression. When the workplace fails to deliver, employees should seriously consider finding a new job.
