This year, an incredible amount of people quit their jobs. So many people left that media have started calling it The Great Resignation.
In August, 4.3 million workers voluntarily quit their jobs according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some believe that people are quitting in droves because of government supplements available during the pandemic are being taken advantage of, but that may not be the whole story.
While many are calling this a labor shortage, others are pointing to low wages for customer service work like restaurant workers, retailors, and hospitality workers, who are at hire risk for contracting COVID.
With so many people quitting, we wanted to know what was the final straw for the 4.3 million people who walked away.
Redditor daraand asked:
“Why did you quit your job this year?”
Here’s what The Great Resignation is really all about.
Too much stress.
“72 hour weeks, was stressed out constantly. Kept getting passed over for promotions.” – basic-fatale
“…this, plus the a**holes who made everyday miserable for me.” – sirlongbottom441
“Bloody hell. This makes me appreciate some of the employment laws we have in place. Anything above 48 hours is illegal, regardless if it’s on your contract or not. Your employer can ask but you’re in no obligation to accept.”
“This is in the UK.” – steelcity91
Goodbye retail.
“Found one that is Monday to Friday, same hours as my wife so we can carpool, and paid more for the starting wage than my last job did after working there for 2 years and getting a promotion. Win win win. Plus the actual work is more personally fulfilling. Goodbye retail!” – Ghiraheem
“What a huge relief. Good for you.” – LaserTurboShark69
“Because working retail is crap and working retail during a pandemic is just life-draining.” – anarchos1288
“I got out of retail in 19. Couldn’t imagine being in during Covid.” – ogier_79
Low Wages.
“Might do it soon. Wage has not kept up with inflation at all.” – Opie67
“I’m looking forward to my annual 1-2% best we can do right now raise, and giving my notice shortly after. Though I wouldn’t mind being wrong for once.” – tris_majestis
This has been predicted. Year end bonuses will be here and before you know it and January will bring the next wave of walk outs.
Time to switch careers.
“I was so tired of the politics, racism, and anger there. I just finished my second master’s degree and have decided after 20 years I’m switching careers and could not be more excited!!!” – Redditor
“Congratulations! That’s awesome! May your new job bring you a sense of peace and fulfillment.” – Ghiraheem
Left after seven years.
“Got taken off a team I started and was on for 4.5 years and moved to a newly created team with 0 notice. New team is under a different director and also had other people pulled onto it. ‘This team was put together to work on a project that’s very close to the CEO’ we kept getting told.”
“My experience is in a completely different tech stack. No idea why I was moved to this new team. Spent a month doing courses and trainings to learn this new tech stack at the behest of my manager and our lead engineer. Business kept changing their mind on what we were doing, so I had to keep changing what I was learning. (Flutter, Android, iOS, Kotlin, Spring) I was learning all of those from the ground up mostly. Nothing I was experienced in was useful on this new team.”
“Lead engineer submitted his 2 weeks. Was tired of dealing with our management chain.”
“After that, director pulls me into meeting. Says I’m not performing at the expected level. Why don’t I have as many tickets done. etc. I explain that I’ve been doing courses and pair programming with our lead to learn the new code base. That I’m from a completely different tech stack. He doesn’t believe me, says I should be learning outside of work hours. wtf.”
“That’s not how our company culture is at all. Lead engineer hears about this, pulls director into a meeting and yells at him for accusing me of not performing and lays out all the reasons as to why I am. Director pulls me into a meeting the next day to say ‘I guess I didn’t have the full story,’ doesn’t even really apologize. Like bro, I f*cking told you the full story…”
“I had a couple break downs during that whole week, so after that I took 2 weeks of vacation to think about shit and to de-stress. Came back, finished a small project in 2 days and submitted my 2 weeks.”
“And that is how I came to quit a company I had worked at for nearly 7 years that I really enjoyed working at. And how a tool of a director lost a Senior & Staff engineer from his 5 person team in the span of a couple weeks. I hope it reflects poorly on him.” – Shane75776
Your mental health should come first.
“I was in middle management, desperately trying to keep my small team together with no help or support from the higher ups who were content on playing golf and smoking their cigars. My team was overworked, stressed, yelled at constantly by internal and external clients, and were given tools from 1998 to fix 2021 issues.”
“Luckily a former co-worker asked how things were going, I might have an opportunity for you…he’s now my co-worker again, and I’m making 40% more than I was, no longer managing people, and back doing what I like doing: Learning new things and helping people.”
“Two things I learned:”
“Be nice to people because you never know what can happen down the road. They might call on you or you might need to call on them.”
“Mental health first. I had a mental breakdown and my former company said, ‘Are you quitting?’ as their opening statement when I opened up to them. If you’re not getting the support you need, go find it. I promise you, everything else will work out.” – jkra0512
They’re actually wanted as a worker.
“Worked so many hours, took so much on, and then was told I ‘wasn’t engaged’ so I found a job where they are thrilled to have me for 40 grand more a year. I feel like I’ve been de-programmed from a cult. I even have the energy to join a gym.”
“Took a few people to tell me I deserved my success before I started to believe it myself.” – teenabeans
No room for growth.
“I didn’t have any opportunity for personal career development because the business refused to hire another developer for 2 years to help share the load.”
“I was constantly needed to help support legacy systems that were ‘going to be replaced soon’ rather than allowed to work on anything new or things that would’ve helped me to improve.”
“After I gave my 2 weeks, they begged me to stay because they didn’t have anyone left at the company who had looked at the legacy code base within the last 2+ years.” – VonKoob
Hospitality nightmare.
“Constant eight day stretches. Sometimes up to twelve. Often made worse because schedules started on Sunday, but often weren’t posted until Friday, so I never had a chance to plan. Zero oversight from management, zero help or extra training while trying to keep a hotel’s breakfast area running through COVID, BUT others kept getting me in trouble for pointless things. (I was sometimes leaving stuff undone at end of day, and then doing it when I came in, but apparently that’s illegal.)”
“I stayed late often to help out other departments, but was looked at as not wanting to work if I went home an hour early once or twice during my eight day stretches. And then, they hired someone whose sole job was to do MY job, which wound up cutting my hours in half. Couldn’t take it anymore, so I left.” – Balsamwood
Done with CEOs.
“CEOs and journals like the Wall Street Journal keep telling me that it’s because I’m lazy or that unemployment benefits prevent me from going back to work.”
“The one thing that the NEVER mention statistics like the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that CEO compensation has grown 1,322% since 1978, while typical worker compensation has risen just 18%. In 2020, CEOs of the top 350 firms in the U.S. made $24.2 million, on average — 351 times more than a typical worker.”
“In 1980, CEOs at large companies made about 40 times what the average worker made. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, was paid $265 million in 2020. F*ck you, Tim Cook. Chad Richison of Paycom made $211.13 million in 2020. F*ck you, Chad Richison. Amir Dan Rubin CEO of 1Life Healthcare – $199.05 million. F*ck you, Amir Dan Rubin. John Legere CEO of T-Mobile – $137.2 million. F*ck you, John Legere.”
“And f*ck you, business journals who put the blame on the workers rather than the CEOs and executive suite.”
“Occasionally, there are actual righteous business owners, like CEO Dan Price. He raised the salary of everyone at his Seattle-based credit card processing company Gravity Payments to at least $70,000 a year. Price slashed his own salary by $1 million down to the same $70,000.”
“All the business journals claimed, at the time, that CEO Dan Price was a communist, and that his business would go down the tubes. These are supposedly the ‘free market’ people who should be on the side of Dan Price to do whatever he decided to do with his own company. Anyways, as it turns out, their business exploded. The workers appreciate him so much, they all chipped in to buy him a new car, because he couldn’t afford one on his new $70,000 salary. Now, that’s a real man.” – AutodidacticTactic
There’s no shortage of reasons to quit a job: low wages, terrible treatment, poor management, and being forced to keep going through a global pandemic are all valid reasons.
If there’s anything we can learn from this is that laborers have a lot of power, and that power is through their choice to work at companies that actually care about their wellbeing.