Why Do We Stay in Toxic Workplaces?

How many of us, over the span of our work lives, have experienced the Sunday evening dread of the approaching work week, and mounting stress as we approach our place of work (or our desks to fire up our labtops)?  So many physical, mental, and emotional cues are trying to alert us to the fact that we are in a toxic work environment: headaches, GI distress, asleep disturbance, difficulty focusing and concentrating, anxiety and depression, to name but a few.  And yet we stay as months and years pass, the symptoms persist, and we may even start to develop chronic disorders that can be directly linked to stress.  

The American Job Quality Study of 2025 (https://www.nff.org) which surveyed over 18,000 American workers between the ages of 18 and 75 across many industries, occupations, and types of employment, looks beyond the statistics regarding employment rates and earnings because  “…these numbers tell only part of the story.  They miss whether jobs actually allow workers, their families – and businesses – to thrive.”  This study finds that more than half of those employed are dissatisfied with their current jobs for reasons related to financial well-being, workplace culture and safety, growth and development opportunities, agency and voice, and workplace structure and autonomy.  The reasons for staying in jobs that do not provide many of the necessary ingredients for job satisfaction range from obvious, to less obvious, to counterintuitive.

In a capitalistic society such as ours, supporting ourselves and our families through our occupations is crucial.  Certainly, the inability to provide food, shelter, and other necessities precludes well-being of any kind.  While how much income beyond the bare minimum for survival correlates to increased happiness has been debated, it is universally accepted that money cannot “buy” happiness.  The most obvious argument for staying in a job that provides income despite making us miserable is for the paycheck.

Less obvious, but likely providing the most diverse array of rationales, are to beliefs that we hold about ourselves, about the workplace, and about what it means to be a good employee, worker, boss, etc.  When we don’t feel that our work is being valued, it is easy to start to see ourselves as incompetent or lacking.  We may want to stay in our position and keep trying to prove ourselves until we get the recognition we feel we deserve – or we may lose confidence in our ability to find employment elsewhere.  We may believe that we should stay because the situation is unfair and we shouldn’t have to leave a position that, at one point, did meet our needs, or that things will turn around if we just hang in there.  We may feel that we should stay out of a sense of loyalty – to the company that took a chance on us, to our clients, our colleagues, those who report to us, our work friends, etc.

And perhaps the reasons the farthest from our awareness relate to the way that humans and other mammals instinctively react to stress.  The “fight or flight response,” an automatic, hard-wired survival instinct that allowed us to fend off or flee from predators in the jungle has a way of producing behaviors that are not so useful for the “jungle” that is the workplace.  In particular, instead of literally running away from the toxic work environment, the instinctive urge to avoid danger instead results in putting our heads in the sand, laying low, not rocking the boat, and certainly not engaging in something that feels so scary and unpredictable as engaging in a job search.  Uncertainty, manifesting as questions like “Is there a better job out there for me?” or “Is the grass really greener on the other side?” or “Is this dog too old to learn new tricks?” or “So much has changed since I last looked for a job. How can I navigate all the new technologies and procedures related to the job search process?”  

Whereas survival in the jungle correlated with quick action and finding safety as soon as possible, navigating modern stressors most often requires acknowledging and tolerating distress in the short-term while we use our higher reasoning powers to research and gather information and resources.  Responding intentionally, instead of reacting instinctively, we are more likely to identify options and make decisions aligned with successfully transitioning to a healthier work environment.  In conclusion, many factors, often working in tandem, conspire to keep us stuck in toxic workplaces.  However, the goal of workplace satisfaction is achievable by bringing insight to the challenges, and meeting them with effective job seeking strategies and resources.