8 signs it's time to change jobs before you get fired

Yahoo ^ | 25 September 2007 | Anne Fisher, FORTUNE senior writer

[shrinkermd]

From your e-mail, I'd say you are suffering from more than three. Check out the list and see if you agree.

1. You don't fit in. Your values don't match the company's.

2. Your boss doesn't like you and you don't like him or her.

3. Your peers don't like you. Feeling isolated, gossiped about, and excluded from the inner workings of the organization is a very bad sign, as is feeling that you're not part of the team and wouldn't socialize with your colleagues even if they asked you.

4. You don't get assignments that demonstrate the full range of your abilities.

5. You always get called upon to do the "grunt work." 6. You are excluded from meetings your peers are invited to. Sound familiar? If it's painfully clear that your ideas aren't valued, why stick around?

7. Everyone on your level has an office. You have a cubicle in the hallway.

8. You dread going to work and feel like you're developing an ulcer. Ah, here's yet another of your symptoms, and a particularly nasty one at that.

"If the idea of going to the office makes you anxious or physically sick, and you're counting the hours from the time you arrive until the second you can leave, it's time to move on," says Bayer.

[Jeff Gordon]

The first rats to abandon a sinking ship are the ones that can swim the best.

[Just another Joe]

If you got to go down...go down fighting and take as many of the enemy with you as you can.....

And you just might go through all of them and not go down.
That's been my experience.

[Kevmo]

Good enough place to bump this thread. Funny movie. But a little too close to home here in the silicon valley.

[SeaHawkFan]

I was once unjustly fired from a job within a division of a large international corporation by a woman who was an incompetent bi$%h. I told the VP of sale in that division that he was making a mistake in allowing me to be fired. He didn’t stop it, but I got his ass fired two weeks later. He was married and screwing a young sales rep in another part of the country. Didn’t get my job back, but his butt was gone, too.

[Kevmo]

The article wasn’t that long. The preface to the list seemed important:

“To top it off, most of my colleagues have been avoiding me ever since an incident a few weeks ago when I questioned a practice that seemed to cheat one of our clients, and I’m starting to think I should have swallowed my ethics and kept quiet.”
***NO. Once you start swallowing, you can’t stop. You have to look at yourself in the mirror. And 30 years from now, chances are you won’t know any of these people but you’ll remember the moral damage.

[river rat]

Ah yes..... Sounds like the “man with his whore on the payroll” ploy.

For several years during my 37 year career with a MAJOR Worldwide High Tech Corporation, I was the designated assassin for folks who needed to be fired by one experienced enough to avoid a “wrongful termination” case...

The very easiest technique to fire the higher level folks, was to simply talk to the newest or youngest employees on the “target’s” staff.. They KNOW all the dirt, or have been victimized.....
Often, within days you will have the name of the "target's" girlfriend or girlfriends.. Amazingly -- I have never had a target wrongly accused or an innocent girlfriend named... Amazing how accurate the office rumor mill can be. Usually, when confronted with this very sensitive violation of company policy and coincidentally his “marriage vows” - the more intelligent jerks resigned rather that put up a fight.

I’m also ashamed to admit how many corporate clowns believe they have the right to dip their pen in the company “inkwell”, so to speak... Without exception — all were married.

The other most lucrative source of ammunition - was a careful review of travel expense accounts - to make a case of theft.

Finally - and most time consuming is to resort to the “performance” issue — this takes the most time, since goals must be set and performance evaluated over time...

[FreedomCalls]

"I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were merry, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire..."

[SeaHawkFan]

The other most lucrative source of ammunition - was a careful review of travel expense accounts - to make a case of theft.

Firing someone on the basis of expense report violations would be tough unless is was super blatant. The target could always go after the expense reports of his higher ups in any litigation for wrongful termination.

I’m also ashamed to admit how many corporate clowns believe they have the right to dip their pen in the company “inkwell”, so to speak... Without exception — all were married.

Who do they think they are: judges?

[anymouse]

Peter Gibbons: You see, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

Bob Porter: Don't…don't care?

Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's another thing, I have eight different bosses right now.

Bob Porter: Eight?

Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

[river rat]

" Firing someone on the basis of expense report violations would be tough unless is was super blatant."

Trying to roll the expenses of employee and "guest" into one TEA is often obvious....

Turning in a TEA with hotel "expenses" when there was no hotel is almost too easy to catch.

TEA violations in each case I am familiar with -- involved jerks who viewed TEAs as a second source of income, or a vehicle to be manipulated to cover the expenses of an extra -marital guest, and I've never had an employee who wished to fight a tight case laid before him....

[Christian4Bush]

mark

[hawkeye101]

Just remember: the secret to success is knowing how to blame others for your failures!

[SeaHawkFan]

O.K., that’s blatant.

[woofer]

your company now offers cheap prizes and phony, unrealistic incentives in lieu of raises, and suddenly everyone goes from salaries to being paid on a commission basis.

That's what my former employer did!

To the salesmen. And oddly, almost all of them stayed on. I left earlier this year (Field Engineer) because the first couple of field hands to get their annuals told me the raise was capped at 3%.

Next February will be interesting to watch as 400 field hands reach their ten years of service and are supposed to qualify for retirement insurance benefits.

[Redcloak]

9. They take away your stapler.

[dragnet2]

Instead of deserved raises, your company now offers cheap prizes and phony, unrealistic incentives in lieu of raises, and suddenly everyone goes from salaries to being paid on a commission basis.

When this happens, you know things are going down hill fast.

That's what my former employer did!

Sign of the times.

Everyone just keeps getting screwed.

[Old Professer]

If you have tenure you wait until they slash your tires.

[pray4liberty]

If you got to go down...go down fighting and take as many of the enemy with you as you can.....

What happened to me was apparently, not the first time they did this.

I joined a class-action lawsuit. http://www.bbdiscrimination.com/websys94.pl