Hate your job? Why you shouldn’t ‘rage quit’ in January

So, how are you feeling this Blue Monday? It’s probably been a struggle to get out of bed. Maybe you’ve been given an unrealistic deadline, or your passive-aggressive co-worker just made a snarky comment. Maybe someone used the last of your almond milk, despite the extremely polite Post-it note informing colleagues about your lactose intolerance. Everyone fantasises about quitting their job from time to time, right? Today is not the day to do it.

While it can be cathartic to picture your very own Jerry Maguire moment — storming out, causing a scene, sticking it to the man and taking a fish (and Renée Zellweger) with you as you leave, for most, such scenes stay firmly in the realm of fantasy. However, on days like today (officially the most depressing day of the year), a few will flip the fantasy into reality. According to a survey of more than 3,500 Brits, commissioned by international schools group ACS, one in 10 workers said they planned to quit their job this January. Nearly a quarter said their work was making them unhappy.

It’s hardly surprising that the temptation to walk out can be stronger in January than at any other time of year. The combination of having just had time off with loved ones, being plagued by January blues and feeling panicked by the “new year, new you” pressure is powerful, cautions Professor Anthony C Klotz of UCL’s School of Management. His upcoming book, Jolted, explores the science behind why people choose to leave or stay in a job.

He cites research that shows returning to work after any kind of holiday is a negative experience for many employees, despite the common expectation that time off will recharge and revitalise us. “You’ve experienced this completely different, more relaxing environment that gives you time to reflect on life — and then all of a sudden, you come back into the workplace, and there’s a really strong contrast effect between the stress levels you had on vacation and the ones you have now,” he says. Another piece of research asked participants to attribute different levels of positive and negative emotions to everyday activities over the course of a few weeks.

Unsurprisingly, work had the least positive and most negative emotions attached to it; spending time with family and leisure time were at the other end of the spectrum. “There’s this very normal contrast effect where we’ve all just spent two weeks with family and friends enjoying leisure time, and then we come back to work. There’s maybe nothing wrong with work, but it’s less happy and less satisfying than what we just did. It’s very normal to feel this roller coaster of emotions, says Klotz, pointing out that they affect everyone from junior staff to the CEO.

Julian Lighton, author of Navigating Your Next: Discover the Career You Want and the Path to Get There and one of Silicon Valley’s leading business coaches, describes returning to work after Christmas and New Year as the ultimate example of the “Sunday Scaries”. “You’ve been off for a week, two weeks, three weeks, depending upon your particular situation, and suddenly you’re immersed back. And so that pressure of being back in something, where you actually have to do something, is very often a significant trigger.” It could be that the employee is being asked to be accountable, or hop on a call they don’t want to be on, or “some proximate thing that really, really winds them up”. A common response to that feeling, particularly if it comes off the back of longer-term underlying frustrations, is “quiet quitting”: staying in one’s role but doing the bare minimum to fulfil the job requirements and nothing more.

For a select few, it will prompt something referred to as “rage quitting” or “impulsive quitting”: resigning as a reactive, unplanned manoeuvre because you’ve suddenly reached boiling point. According to research, only around 5-10 per cent of resignations fall into this category, estimates Klotz. “What precedes impulsive quitting is a spike in negative emotions caused by an event,” he explains. “It can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, where it’s the final incident in a long-term accumulation of stressors that have led to burnout. Or it could be that you’ve been on autopilot coasting along, not really thinking about your relationship with work very much, and a negative event happens that causes a negative spike in your emotions — it goes from zero to 60.”

Research has shown that the “event” itself typically comes from one of two places. The first, unsurprisingly, is a person’s manager. It could stem from a disagreement, personality clash or perceived incompetence; Klotz describes in his book an instance in which an employee threw in the towel immediately after his manager made a derogatory comment about his daughter. The second type of event is external — something has occurred in the worker’s personal life. Maybe you or somebody in your family gets some negative health news. “It puts things into perspective and makes you realise you can’t spend a minute more in your current job,” says Klotz. This can happen even to people who like their jobs; suddenly understanding in a visceral way that they have a limited amount of time on this Earth prompts them to rethink every aspect of their life.