r/QuitCorporate

I work in FMCG marketing with 7+ years of experience (6 years in sales, 1+ in marketing), and I’m seriously considering quitting without another offer.

The confusing part is that I actually like the role and the work itself. But after a restructuring and manager change about a year ago, my experience at work completely changed. I have been saving for fire and have 3-4 more years for fire number. I have 86 lakh NW . And my expenses would be around 50k /month

Since this was my first marketing role, I initially assumed the struggle was because of me. I had major impostor syndrome and kept thinking I just needed to work harder or adapt faster. So for months I pushed myself — longer hours, constant overthinking, reworking things repeatedly, trying to improve on every feedback point.

But the environment became extremely draining:

• micromanagement,
• constant criticism,
• unclear direction,
• indecisiveness leading to endless rework,
• reactive working and last-minute escalations.

Two people from the team have already quit, and others also seem constantly stressed, so I know it’s not only me.

What scares me now is that I don’t feel like myself anymore. I used to be proactive and confident at work. Now I procrastinate, overthink every message, dread opening my laptop, and feel mentally exhausted all the time.

The bigger realization is this: even if the manager suddenly improved tomorrow, I don’t know if my motivation would come back. I feel so mentally checked out that I can’t imagine going back to feeling normal in this job again.

Financially I can survive for some time without a job, but I’m scared about the market and the consequences of quitting without another offer.

For people who’ve gone through something similar:

• How did you know you were truly done vs just temporarily burnt out?
• Did quitting help you recover mentally/confidence-wise?
• And how did you explain leaving without an offer in interviews?

Corporate slave here, considering building a side hustle into a small business to do things on my own terms.

Has anyone done it? What were your experiences? Obviously getting going is tough hence starting as a side hustle in the beginning. I can imagine it’s liberating once you’re going. I just can’t deal with jira tickets, corporate psychos and just the bullshit with it all anymore.

I’m not after career advice just stories of those who have escaped and are now doing their own thing.

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I was with my company remotely for 4 years and honestly the entire situation ended in a way that feels incredibly unfair and traumatizing.

Things started going downhill in 2024 when we got a new manager. She had a really nasty management style — unrealistic expectations, constant pressure, disrespectful attitude, and overall just created a toxic environment. Around the same time, it ended up mostly being just me and one coworker on the team because so many people kept leaving.

That coworker was extremely territorial and competitive. She never wanted anyone to outperform her and would gatekeep work and opportunities. It became very obvious that people who threatened her position were pushed down.

The stress got so bad that I eventually had to go on FMLA for mental health reasons. The very first time I even tried to use a few hours of FMLA, my coworker guilt-tripped me and made it difficult. I reported both her and my manager to HR for bullying and issues surrounding my FMLA treatment. Nothing came of it.

Shortly after that complaint, I was suddenly placed on a PIP in early 2025.

I actually passed the PIP, and for a while things seemed calmer. But looking back now, I think they had already decided to push me out. They quietly restructured work assignments and slowly removed a large portion of my workload without really explaining why.

Later in 2025 we got another manager who was new to the department. At first things seemed totally fine with her. Then in early 2026 her demeanor toward me completely changed. During my performance review, she and her boss gave me an unexpectedly negative review filled with exaggerated or inaccurate criticisms that honestly didn’t even match my actual role expectations.

I immediately went to HR because I felt blindsided. Even HR seemed surprised, but again, nothing really happened.

Meanwhile my workload stayed extremely uneven. I repeatedly asked management to redistribute work more fairly because I barely had assignments compared to others, but they ignored me.

Then a couple weeks ago, my coworker basically tried assigning me an entirely new job function without any discussion. I scheduled another meeting with HR because I felt something was seriously wrong.

HR moved the meeting to Monday, added upper management to the invite, and when I joined the call they terminated me for “performance issues.”

It honestly felt completely calculated.

What hurts even more is they sent an email announcing my termination to multiple teams. In all my years there, nobody else had been fired like that. It was humiliating.

I genuinely tried to succeed there. But between toxic management, favoritism, retaliation after complaints, workload manipulation, and constantly being undermined, it feels like they slowly built a paper trail to get rid of me.

Now I’m left feeling really traumatized by corporate environments in general. I keep wondering if this was retaliation or if any of this was even legal. I’ve never felt so disposable in my life.

I had such a long, stressful day yesterday. I was on at 6:30 am until about 6:45pm. I turned my phone off and crashed at 7:45pm. This morning, I wake up to a text from boss sent last night. Check your email. I checked it this morning and he's asking me to check flights for him at 8pm, because he's not going to make his flight. I just now emailed him explaining that I was dead tired and asleep and asked him how he made out. I didn't get a response, yet. I don't understand why they feel the need to just intrude on our lives like this! After hours, be a grown up and handle it yourself. I did have one executive who actually took care of rescheduling his flights after hours without bothering me. unbelievable.

So this job I work for. It is terrible. When I first started I loved it, it seemed much more cruiser than most jobs but after being there over a year, I realised just how bad it is. There are a few reasons why I'm leaving

1. making us scam people. Pretty much they are making us bill people for something we shouldn't be and lying about what it is.

2. questioning why we call in sick. And also being upset if we do. I don't call in sick often but when I do it's always some sort of annoyed sighing or them asking why, which makes me not want to call it sick even when I am.

3. they cut my hours in half because I called in sick for 5 days because I was exhausted and overworked (which we are told not to come to work if we are)

4. not allowing us enough time to book holidays and then refusing them. We aren't allowed to book holidays after 6 months in advance....so if it's January and you book holidays for August it won't allow you too. But then if ya plan a trip a year in advance the chances of you getting that off are slim

So ive booked in holidays for 2 weeks, if I get them I'm going to be sending an email saying I quit day 1 of the holidays and then not going back!