Quitting Your Job In A Recession Isn’t Genius, It’s Idiotic

***NOTE***
If the post title alone is offensive to you, then you're exactly who needs to hear this cold, hard truth the most! So keep reading.

Quitter. It’s one of the ugliest words in the dictionary and the word I loathe the most! However, it’s a word that describes many in my peer group. I’m talking about my generation, Gen-Y. Whether you like it or not, almost everything in life has a stereotype tied to it. Stereotypes are both good and bad, true and false. Unfortunately, the negative stereotype tied to Gen-Y is fairly accurate and sums up the vast majority of Gen-Y. The one word stereotype - quitter. That’s right. I said it. Someone needed to say it. And who better to say it than a member of that generation? It disgusts me that I’m grouped with a generation of people who are labeled as a bunch of lazy, self-entitled quitters! Quit the team. Quit school. Quit your relationship. Quit your job. Quit your payments. I quit, quit, quit! What’s next? What’s left to quit? I’ll tell you what’s left. It’s time for all the "wantrepreneurs" (wannabe entrepreneurs) and starry-eyed 20-somethings with their heads in the clouds to come back down to earth and take a look around at this little thing called reality and the real world. Yes, YOU! The one who is unemployed not by force, but by choice.

In case you didn’t get the memo, we are in a recession. That means people are being laid off left and right and the chance of you landing a decent job right now is more difficult than ever. Jobs are scarce and competition is fierce. So you quitting your job in the midst of a recession thinking you will inspire people, change lives, and do big things is laughable at best. Seriously, who’s buying that spiel because I’m not! It’s transparent fluff. Smoke and mirrors. Basically, it’s complete bullshit. Mindless droves of 20-somethings are being spoon fed this crap online via Twitter and countless blogs. These days everyone and their brother has a story they want to share about how they just up and quit their job and moved to "insert city of choice" to pursue life unrestricted. Then they pause while their brainwashed followers applaud them for their bravery when really they should be booed for their stupidity!

Quitting your job in a recession isn’t genius, it’s idiotic! And encouraging your peers to join you by quitting their jobs too when a solid foundation isn't laid for the next big step in their life is insane! You're only adding to a higher unemployment rate and propelling our country into rescission even deeper! I want to grab these people by their shirt and bitch slap them across the face while saying, "grow the fuck up!" You’re acting no different than a rebellious teenager. Although these days it’s no longer cute or tolerable behavior because you are an ADULT acting like a child.

Let me stop you before you say this post doesn’t apply to you because even though you quit your job in a recession, you say you did so to follow your dream. Aww, that sounds cute and all, but it’s also very immature and naive. I hate to be the bearer of bad news and ruin the fairytale, but this story doesn’t have a happy ending. You and I both know that behind the curtain the great Oz will be exposed! Anyone can make anything sound more glamorous online. If you honestly saw what the day to day life of these people actually entailed, you wouldn’t be so quick to rally around them and jump on their "quit your job in a recession to follow your dream" bandwagon.

So you’re self-employed now, gainfully self-employed? Are you really? Because if you aren’t living on your own and paying your own way through life without any assistance from your parents or the government, then you aren’t self-employed. What you are is a burden to society. And to put it simply, you shouldn't have quit your job. You should have kept working and quit your whining instead. The smart thing to do, especially in a recession, is to hold on to whatever full-time job you have now while pursuing your "dream" on the side. People who do this are the ones that should be embraced and placed upon a pedestal. They are the true heroes! The ones that understand the value of hard work in trying times. The only situation in which it is ok to quit your job in a recession, or any other time for that matter, is...

• If you have another job already lined up that you can immediately go into. That means you've already been hired and you have a starting date marked on your calendar. If you don't have something that concrete, DO NO QUIT YOUR JOB!
• If you're sucking on a pistol. Tons of people hate their job and say they would rather die than spend another second there even though they don't have another job lined up ready to go into. However, if you don't have the glock cocked, the hammer pulled back, an itchy trigger finger, and your lips wrapped around the loaded barrel...you're not serious. So DO NOT QUIT YOU JOB!

Being a quitter is even worse than being a failure because at least when you fail, you gave it your all and that’s nothing to hang your head about. But when you quit, you simply gave up and there’s nothing admirable about that. I don’t care how you try to sugarcoat it and the billion excuses you give as to why you quit, you’re still a quitter and it leaves a rancid taste in the mouths of all future employers.

I’m not saying you should stay in the same job for 40 years like your Grandfather did and that you shouldn't pursue your dream, but I am saying to have some common sense! People my age can’t commit to anything and jump from job to job like we’re 8 again playing a game of Hop Scotch. It’s ridiculous. They feel they are too good for entry level jobs even when they are fresh out of college. You have to start somewhere and not wanting to start at the bottom and work your way up just shows your poor work ethic. You have a righteous, arrogant attitude. From an employer’s point of view, if I look at your resume and see that you can’t stay put at a job for a year or two at best, it looks awful! Seeing huge time gaps in employment will also get your resume tossed in the trash. It’s just the way it is. And like it or not, that’s life. Welcome to it.