Should I quit a job I hate?

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Hatred is a verdict, and you have not yet told me the evidence. Does the work degrade you, or merely bore you? Does the man who runs it ask you to lie, or only to wait? I served Nero for years and hated parts of it, and I cannot claim I left cleanly. I stayed too long, because my wealth held me, not he. So before you quit, count what holds you: the rent, the pride, the fear of being ordinary. Then count the hours. Tonight, write two columns, what the job takes from you and what you take from it. If the second is empty, you have your answer.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Hate is a fine instrument, and you are using it as a verdict. Ask first what the hatred knows. Does it hate the work, or the hours it steals from something you have not dared to begin? Those are different diseases. I left my chair at Basel at thirty-four, when my eyes and head had made the decision for me, and I will not pretend it was courage. But I found that what I had called my duty had been mostly my fear of poverty dressed as a virtue. So: what are you protecting by staying? Name it honestly, even if it is only the rent. Then decide whether you would choose this life again, endlessly. If not, you already know.

Marcus Aurelius

Hate is a judgement, and judgements can be examined. Sort it first. The colleagues, the temper of the master, the dullness of the task: none of these you chose, and none will change because you resent them. I sat beside a co-emperor I had not wished for and a Senate that whispered. They were the material. Is the work itself shameful, or merely hard and unloved? If it makes you act unjustly, leave. If it only wearies you, the hatred is partly your own addition. Then do the plain thing. Count what you owe and what you could earn elsewhere. Look for the other place while you do this one well. Leave when you have somewhere to go, not only something to flee.

Søren Kierkegaard

Hate is a curious word to build a life on, for it tells you what you are against and nothing of what you are for. A man may hate his post at the customs house and still have it as the one thing that keeps him from facing his freedom. Leave, and you must stand up and want something. Stay, and you may go on hating, which is far cheaper than wanting. So the choice is not quitting against staying. It is this: do you will a life you can name, and pay for it in money and in safety? Or do you will your security openly, and give up the right to complain? Both cost. Only the grumbling costs nothing, and buys nothing.

Michel de Montaigne

I hold no office now, but I held one, and I can tell you what hating it taught me. As mayor of Bordeaux I hated some days and loved others, and I could not say which was the truer me. Hatred is a loud witness; it speaks first and drowns the rest. So I would ask the body, as I consult mine: does it dread Sunday evening, or only Tuesday afternoon? A hatred that lasts a season is weather; one that lasts years is climate. Then look at what the quitting costs. Some men leave for liberty and find they have only exchanged masters. Others stay and keep a small private room inside the work. I cannot tell you which you are. I am not sure you can yet.

Questions people bring, and how Seneca, Nietzsche, Marcus Aurelius, Kierkegaard and Montaigne answer them — each in his own way.

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