Surviving a Toxic Workplace: Social Anxiety, Bullying, and Quitting My Job

 

Trigger warning: This post discusses social anxiety, depression, workplace bullying, and quitting a job for mental health. Read with care.

College Placements That Weren’t Placements

I thought adulting meant a neat pay slip, a cup of office tea, and a reasonable number of passive-aggressive emails. Turns out adulting sometimes means staring at fluorescent lights while your stomach does interpretive dance.

Post-college, I dove right into job searching — Naukri, Google, and those "freshers welcome" job ads that secretly require five years of experience. My college "placement" was a politic ease: one bank came, employed individuals from a particular category (they assured me they were even, and I laughed like it was business as usual). I cleared the tests, did the in-person, and the interviewer even complimented me — but the final roll call was like a drama I wasn't a part of.

The Waiting Game: Freshers Need Experience?

So I spent over a year looking. The ads demanded "experience" — hi?— or midnights in another town that my parents rejected. The actual hunt for a job felt like training for a race that's constantly moving the track.

Job One: A Storeroom Lunch and a Bathroom Gauntlet

A year later, a professor sent me an in-town opening. I interviewed, was selected, and experienced the delight of a new beginning — until the job struck me with a reality plot twist.

The job was nothing like they'd promised. There was one older woman I'd work with; she'd head home for lunch and I'd sit by myself in a storage room eating. The bathroom arrangement? One dimly lit toilet, no trash can, and guys building something outside in the hall — so using the bathroom felt like running a gauntlet. Not nasty, but little unpleasant things accumulated into a large stack of "this isn't for me.

Job Two: The Office Soap Opera

And then I discovered what seemed to be a decent job attached to my degree. Nice office, proper equipment, and even a colleague recruited on the same day — I thought things had finally turned around.

The initial days were okay. Seniors were nice. Then office politics played out like a poorly scripted soap. I was to do someone's job, but that individual had been moved around and not replaced. Some seniors obviously did not like teaching me; others were passive-aggressive. One "bad senior" could make anyone feel inferior — sarcasm and yelling were their weekend hobbies.

Surprise! You're Doing Extra Work Now

The actual issue started when the job evolved without notice: additional duties, client calls, and anticipation that needed in-depth background knowledge the former never imparted. The pay? Low as ever. The training? Half-cooked.

My mentors taught in pieces, contradicted one another, and when we inquired, we received "figure it out" vibes or beration. And when instructional disagreements between multiple trainers resulted in errors, the fault rested squarely on our shoulders. The ultimate set-up for anxiety.

The additional job was never mentioned during hiring. And if done wrong, it could cause losses for both us and the client. But we never received proper guidance. Everyone there did it their own way and taught in their own way. So when I followed one senior’s method, another senior said it was wrong. The irony? They’d all been doing it their way for years. 😑

Social Anxiety Meets Client Calls

My own social anxiety made client calls sound like screaming into a void with a clown nose. The individual I wanted to learn from shrugged an "I don't know" when asked for historical client information, so I was supposed to call clients in the dark and pretend to know what I'm doing.

The manager had entrusted them to teach me and carry on the work of the replaced person, but every time I asked both my seniors and that replaced person, the answer was always “I don’t know.” On top of that, they’d say “You can ask the client.” Yet when I first joined, they clearly told me: “You should never say ‘I don’t know’ to the client.”

The novice who accompanied me was outgoing and immediately compatible with the seniors. When I slipped up, the other individual was right there with me. But they did not correct me—I did not even realize it was a slip until the seniors queried. That is when they apologized to the seniors (not to me) and explained that it was my error, not theirs. That stung more than I anticipated.

After that, they began being sarcastic whenever I spoke. I was the one who got scolded, yet they acted as if I had blamed them. I even apologized—because the seniors called them out—and this was the treatment I received in return. Soon, they and the seniors together started isolating me.

Getting a Friend, Losing  Grip

And another newbie arrived — this one nice and shy, just like me. We clicked right away and studied together. For that, the seniors hated us. They would yell at us for sitting together, interrupt us in mid-conversation, or toss scornful remarks that stung like tiny paper cuts all day.

And that newbie wasn’t rude or anything—they were also being nitpicked and slowly pushed into isolation. If we were ever seen laughing together, the seniors would point fingers and say, “Don’t talk during work.” The irony was that everyone else, including them, freely chatted while working.

Then one important staff member, who had a lot of work, went on long leave. The manager asked us to take over some of their tasks since our work was similar. Their assistant gave assignments to my seniors and that backstabbing novice (sorry, couldn’t help 😅). I even asked multiple times each day if they needed help, but the assistant kept saying, “It’s okay.” I had already finished my own tasks, so I started reviewing my work carefully to avoid mistakes. Out of nowhere, my seniors showed up and snapped, “Why are you going through the same work again and again instead of helping?” They said it in such a rude tone, like I was just chilling. Honestly, I had no work left because I’d finished it early 🙃.

Even the newbie who had just joined comforted me, saying, “You’re the only one in our section who is always working hard since I came here.” We only had each other, and I’m grateful for that. That newbie actually had it worse—seniors hated teaching them and constantly belittled them. I taught them everything I knew, including the mistakes I’d made, so they wouldn’t get scolded.

The stress began manifesting itself physically. I would pinch or slap myself whenever anxiety was high, cry to my mother every evening, and feel like I was shrinking. My mother, not familiar with social anxiety firsthand, instructed me to toughen up and cease crying. I made efforts, but the continuous sarcasm, lack of backing, and biased office politics wore me down.

The Breaking Point

Later I informed my parents that I wanted to leave. They cautioned that I would regret it and that others would accuse me of cowardice or incompetence. But remaining was to be ill in both body and mind, and I had already mastered taking orders from everyone else my entire life — this time I needed to take orders from my own limits.

So I quit.

“Funny thing is, I sometimes wonder if being the eldest child, always trained to ‘be responsible,’ made me tolerate toxic environments longer than I should have. (I unpack more of that eldest-child baggage in Eldest Child Problems: The Struggles Nobody Speaks About.)”

For those wondering what happened to my newbie friend: when I told them about quitting, they encouraged me. They said, “If seniors keep treating me like this, I’ll quit too. Don’t worry about me.”

Relief, Regret, and Choosing Myself

Quitting was relief and sorrow knotted together. Leaving was a weight, but it left marks that didn't heal fast: nightmares, jolts of panic at the ringing of a phone, and times when I doubted myself.

But I decided not to be hurt all the time for the sake of a job that was sucking me dry. If that makes me a "coward," so be it — I'd rather be a living, breathing coward than a working shell.

Now I experiment with small work-from-home projects. They don't pay a full salary, but they allow me to breathe and learn skills without everyday emotional sabotage. 

Takeaways

• If working conditions endanger your mental or physical health, quitting is okay.

• Poor training, contradictory instructions, and blaming are red flags.

• Niceness at first can hide toxicity — trust actions over small talk.

• You’re not cowardly for choosing your mental health.

• You deserve workplaces that respect your boundaries and mental health.

Be kind always❤️💜💙