I Quit My Job Just Over a Week Ago

I quit my job on Monday, April 12, 2021. My boss wanted me to sign a contract starting that I would work whatever hours he wanted me to, when he wanted me to without notice if someone were to call off. My hours were 9a-4p Monday – Friday. I refused to sign the contract so he immediately cut my hours and took away Fridays. Then a few hours later, he took away Wednesdays as well and claimed there wasn’t enough work available for me. I got fed up of the bull shit and tension and told my boyfriend to come pick me up and I quit at 2pm.

I tried so hard to keep this job, but working with my boss was torcher. He would put me down in a round about ways because of my lack of education, medical problems, or whatever he felt like putting me down about that day. I dreaded going to work every morning. Some days, I wish I could have had the guts to throw myself down the stairs just to be able to get out of work.

My former boss emailed me verifying my voluntary resignation. So I replied back that I confirm my voluntary resignation due to an hour reduction because not enough work was available. Which is exactly what was said to me when he took Wednesdays away as well.

He replied back that there was enough work but that I was always outside smoking and on the phone. Most of the time I was on the phone with his staff and since he was a non smoker he told me to pick set times to take smoke breaks which is what I did but that still wasn’t good enough apparently. He was just trying to make me look bad in an email so that I can’t claim unemployment.

I sent him an email back asking why he said it was a hour reduction due to lack of work unless it was just retaliation for not signing that stupid ass contract. He sent one last email basically trying to make me look bad but didn’t address the hour reduction so I brought it up again in my final email to him and he has yet to respond to. Probably because he doesn’t want the truth in writing because I know he keeps every email.

I feel lost now that I don’t have a job. I hated working for my former boss, but it gave me somewhere to go everyday and something to do when there was actually work available for me to get done. I feel like I failed horribly. This was my first job in three years and I couldn’t handle it after only 7 months and ended up quitting.

This whole thing started about a week before I quit when he told me that I would have to leave the office to go to work as a fill in for a DSP that needed to leave work early that day. The house he wanted to send me to was about an hour away and I told him I really couldn’t work that far away that day because I was scheduled to leave at 4pm and that shift ends at 5pm and I told him I had to go help care for my mom after work since she just had surgery a few weeks ago and isn’t allowed to bend or twist for 6 weeks.

He told me that it’s been three weeks since my moms surgery and that he isn’t trying to tell me what to do but that I could either care for my mom or work. I wanted to slap him upside the head and remind him that his precious company was his baby and his world but it’s not mine and that I still have a life outside of work.

I even compromised and told him if I had to go I would but that I could only stay until 4pm which was the end of my normal shift and that’s when he told me my end of shift time means nothing because when he needs me to work, I need to work..

My boss made a big deal over me saying I couldn’t fill in for him one time and he pretty much said my shift is over when he says its over despite only being scheduled until 4pm. I was beyond frustrated with him and we got into a disagreement. I was so infuriated that my whole body was shaking while I was talking to him. I kept feeling like I was going to have a dissociative episode right then because I felt like I was floating in and out of the moment and I tried my hardest to keep myself grounded while feeling the way I was.

The next day, he gave me that contract to sign with a list of job duties and what he expects from me which was for me to do whatever he feels like telling me to do and I had to be okay with it.

That contract was total bull shit and I had over a handful of people look over it for me and every single person that read it told me not to sign it.

I ended up not even being needed at the house in the end that one day anyway, so my boss started this bull shit chain reaction over nothing. After that day, I had this gut feeling that things were about to get worse at work and they definitely did. I feel like my boss pushed me and pushed me until I just couldn’t take it anymore and I quit close to the end of my shift. I couldn’t even deal with my boss for two more hours to resign at the end of my shift instead. The tension was so thick in the air that you could cut it with a knife.

The turn over rate at the company I worked for was ridiculously high and now I can see why most of his staff told me they weren’t really fond of the boss man for one reason or another. He holds himself to incredibly high standards and expects others to live by those same standards as well and if people aren’t up to his expectations he would look down on them. Arrogant, is the word I think I am looking for here.

Until he created this contract, I had planned on working there for a while (a year minimum) and gaining experience on the administrative side of care giving especially seeing as how I just passed the certified investigator training course to be able to investigate incidents for ODP (Office of Developmental Programs).

In the emails between my former boss and I, he even had the audacity to accuse me of only working for him for 7 months so that I could just quit and collect unemployment. He thinks I planned on this happening all along. He thinks so lowly of me that he would accuse me of working long enough just to be able to collect like it was my intentions from the get go. Unemployment wasn’t even a thought to me until he started throwing that word around. I told him to stop assuming things he knows nothing about.

He said my timesheets speak for themselves. So, I reminded him that every time I called out, it was because of something medical and that he knew when he hired me that I had been trying to apply for disability because I have medical conditions and he was even aware of what some of my conditions are. After I quit, I started thinking of so much more that I could have said before I left on my last day of work, but it probably would have been pointless anyway since he feels like he did nothing wrong or shady as he very well stated as I was walking out the door.

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I’ve been trying to stay busy since I quit, but that gets hard to do sometimes, especially now that my boyfriend and I won’t have my income as extra, we have to watch what we spend. Today was the first day I left the house in two days. I am giving myself some time off before I start looking for a new job. I was originally going to start looking for work this week, but decided to take an extra week off. I plan to start looking Monday.

It’s just hard to find jobs that I can physically still do that are comparable to work I’ve done in the past. The fibromyalgia, chronic pain syndrome, and chronic back pain tend to hold me back from being able to fully care for individuals with special needs like I used to since I can’t lift much or twist and turn the way I once did. I’m only in my mid-30s but my body feels much older than that.

I can’t even bend over the sink to do dishes without the need to take breaks because it strains my back too much after a bit and it ends up hurting like hell. The same goes for vacuuming and mopping. I also can’t really stand or sit still in one spot for to long anymore without my back pain acting up. So I frequently get up and down when doing things like working in an office or even sitting at my desk at home. I can really feel it when I don’t get up and down enough to move and stretch because my back and legs will tense up and hurt really bad by the end of the night or by the next morning at the latest.

Finding a decent paying job that I can handle both mentally and physically is definitely going to be challenging.

The last group home I worked in as a DSP (Direct Support Professional) was back in 2017 and my pain conditions have worsened since then. I haven’t worked as a medical assistant since 2012, so I am way out of practice to try to find another job as an MA. I also have shop lifting on my record from a manic blackout I had in 2010, and even though it was over 10 years ago, no stores out here will hire me and I’ve tried to apply to quite a few in the past without even as much as a call back.

It really sucks how mistakes we’ve made in the past can follow us around for all of eternity.

Mood-wise since I quit my job, I feel like I could be doing a lot better but that I could also be doing a lot worse as well. I haven’t really gone into a full depression like I anticipated I would after quitting. Not wanting to fall into a major depressive episode is part of the reason I am trying to stay busy… so I don’t have too much time to overthink every little detail of my life. I have had some very minor depressive episodes that came on, but they didn’t really last long and I usually woke up feeling better by the next morning.

I kind of feel like I am stuck in some kind of limbo, though. There’s no going back or even moving forward until I can figure out my next move since I quit my job without another one lined up. I’m trying to take things as they come. I am trying to stay positive and hope that some good will come out of all of this. It’s all I can do to keep myself sane-ish. I have to keep telling myself that things will be okay and that leaving my job was just a minor set back and that I can handle whatever life throws my way next.

Well, thanks for reading and I hope everyone is well and safe on this lovely Friday afternoon!