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The original was posted on /r/antiwork by /u/Impossible-Noise5526 on 2023-11-01 09:52:47.

Apologies for using a burner account; I intend on deleting this post in a few hours.

I recently provided 1 month’s notice at my job. My main reasons for leaving were the commute (2 hours or just under each way, by public transport as I don’t drive) and expectation to be in the office 4-5 days a week. I am in my mid-20s and since graduating from my Master’s degree two years ago, I have been lucky enough to land a few short-term (3-6 month) entry-level research positions with a university and have also been commissioned to conduct research on the side for a small non-profit. Far from impressive, but it’s what I enjoy doing and I enjoy the flexibility it offers with the drawback of course being that the contracts are only temporary/short-term.

I accepted my current entry level job in a completely different role to what I had been pursuing, purely because I had gone a few months without work. The plan was to stick with it for a while, save up some money, and hope that something more in my wheelhouse would come along sooner or later. The pay is lower than my previous jobs and I find the work to be quite stressful and unreasonable in demand at times, the ~4 hours per day spent on public transport obviously not helping.

Before I knew it, though, I had passed my probation and had nothing to show for it. The lifestyle of waking up too damn early in the morning to commute to a job that makes me miserable only to jump back on public transport, eat and head straight to bed 4-5 times a week had completely shot my energy and motivation to apply for as many other jobs as I had wanted to, or even to do much of anything with friends by the time the weekend rolled around. I had started communicating my struggles with the job to my manager a few months ago, and continued to do so in each review meeting we had subsequently, each time being sympathized with but told that the higher-ups in the department would not approve of additional remote working opportunities for the role no matter how many times they were approached about it or employees they would (and have!) lose because of it.

All that to say that I finally bit the bullet and gave my notice a few days ago. On Monday, I received a call on my personal phone (rather than Teams; I do not have a work phone) from the head of HR asking me to reconsider. I won’t give too many details of the conversation for obvious reasons, but I felt that the tone bordered on unprofessional. They asked me whether I had another job lined up, to which I made the mistake of saying ‘no’ as the call had caught me off guard. They said they would see what could be done with regard to blended working/fewer days in-office, which I can’t imagine anything will come of as I understand that this has been an ongoing problem with staff retention for this role since things opened up more after lockdowns.

The part that bothered me, though, was when they began speaking to me on a ‘personal’ level, about how leaving a job without another lined up will affect my career. I ultimately decided to quit in the first place because 1) The job was having a serious effect on my mental health; 2) This is not an industry I see myself progressing in outside of some very particular roles; 3) I have managed to save up a nice amount of money to support myself while I search for something more in my wheelhouse. Surely this is just something people in HR say to psych you out, right? I’ve been out of work before so I know how difficult it can be to find a job (that’s why I took this one!), but I also know that I haven’t had the motivation to apply for nearly as many as I would have liked to as a direct result of this job’s poor work-life balance.

I am expecting another call at some point this week… Any advice on how to play this? Do I negotiate, or just stick to my guns and confirm my intention to leave the company on the date stated in my resignation letter? Any advice would be very much appreciated, and thanks for reading if you made it to the end!