Did I make a mistake by refusing to even hear my current employer’s counteroffer?
I’m currently leaving my company after accepting an offer from another employer.
After I resigned, I had meetings with HR and with a senior manager above my direct manager. The discussions seemed partly intended to understand why I was leaving and partly to convince me to stay.
My reasons for leaving are mainly career growth and compensation.
Regarding career growth, the company is not expanding much, and the hierarchy is relatively static. The managers remain managers, the team leads remain team leads, and the architects remain architects. People in those positions rarely leave, and because the company is not creating many new teams, I do not see many realistic opportunities to move into higher-responsibility roles.
The second reason is compensation. We have a performance and talent-development process, including one-to-one meetings approximately every three months, but I feel that my compensation has not kept up with my development, workload, and responsibilities. I spend a significant amount of my own time learning and improving, I try to be highly responsive when people need help, and I believe I have increased my contribution considerably.
What frustrated me was that it seemed to take an external offer and my resignation for the company to react seriously and potentially recognize my value. My thinking was: if the company already had regular opportunities to evaluate my performance and adjust my compensation, why did I have to reach the point of leaving before something could change?
Because of that, I said that I did not even want to hear the counteroffer.
There is another factor: during the interview process with the new company, they asked what I would do if my current employer made a counteroffer. I told them that I would not accept it. After accepting their offer, I felt that changing my decision because my current employer offered more money would go against my word and the commitment I had made.
A colleague told me that I should look after my own interests and that I should at least have listened to the counteroffer. His point was that hearing it would not have required me to accept it and could have given me useful information or more leverage.
Now I’m wondering whether I confused integrity with unnecessarily limiting my options.
Was refusing to even hear the counteroffer a reasonable decision because my reasons for leaving were broader than salary, or should I have listened to it and evaluated all available options before deciding?
Jobadvisor
Your colleague isn't wrong on the pure information theory: listening costs nothing and commits you to nothing. But I don't think that's actually the mistake you're worried you made. Let me separate the two questions you're tangling together.
Was it a strategic mistake?
Mildly, maybe. Hearing a number doesn't obligate you to take it. You could have listened, said "I appreciate it, but my decision stands," and lost nothing. In pure negotiating terms, your colleague has a point.
But look at what you actually described: this isn't really a compensation problem you're trying to solve through negotiation. You said it yourself — the structural issue is that the hierarchy is static and roles rarely open up. A counteroffer, even a generous one, doesn't fix that. It also doesn't fix the pattern you named directly: that serious recognition only showed up once you had a resignation letter and a competing offer in hand, despite quarterly check-ins that were supposedly designed to catch exactly this. A bigger number now doesn't undo the fact that the regular process didn't work. If anything, accepting would confirm the exact incentive structure you're objecting to — that leverage, not the review cycle, is what moves compensation there.
So even if you'd listened, the content of the offer likely wouldn't have changed your reasoning. It would have just told you the number, and you already know your answer isn't a number problem.
Did you confuse integrity with limiting your options?
I'd push back on "confuse" a little. Telling your new employer "I won't accept a counteroffer" and then evaluating one anyway isn't a neutral, costless act just because you technically retain the right to say no afterward. You made a representation about your own decision-making to a party who acted on it — they extended an offer partly on the strength of your resolve. Going back on that after the fact, even just to "hear the number," is a different thing from never having said it. That's not you being naively principled; that's a coherent reason to hold a line you already drew.
Where I'd gently question you: is there a chance the refusal was also serving an emotional purpose — making a point to your employer, refusing to let them think a counteroffer could work, punishing the lateness of their reaction? That's human and fair, but worth being honest with yourself about, separate from the strategic and integrity arguments. None of those are bad reasons to feel resolved, but they're a different kind of reason than "this was optimal risk management."
Net: You didn't cross into self-sabotage. You made a decision consistent with your actual diagnosis (structural, not salary) and consistent with a commitment you'd already made to someone else. The version where you "lost" something is only if you were hoping a bigger number might have changed your mind — and it sounds like it wouldn't have.
F23 nursing or joining the military instead of using my business degree?
Ik that sounds like a lot but I learned the hard way I hate desk jobs and the corporate world in general. Right now I work at Costco and could move into management eventually but I wanna challenge myself to do something else while I'm young. I'm shy and timid and want growth. I also plan on having a family someday. Due to personal reasons I can't make the switch for another year or so but I could start preparing now. Has anyone thought of or made the switch to either nursing or military after college? How do I know if I should and what steps can I take?
Jobadvisor
Both are real, solid options — and they solve different problems, so it's worth being clear about what you're actually optimizing for before picking one.
What they each actually give you
Nursing is physically and emotionally demanding, hands-on, people-facing, and absolutely not a desk job. It builds confidence fast because you're forced into high-stakes interactions with patients and doctors constantly — that's actually a great antidote to shyness, because the job doesn't let you stay quiet. Pay is solid, licensure travels anywhere, and shift work (3x12s is common) can actually work well with a future family — more full days off per week than a standard 9-5, though nights/weekends/holidays are often part of the deal, especially early on.
The military is the more total transformation. It will absolutely break you out of shy and timid — that's close to the point of basic training. But you're not just picking a job, you're picking a lifestyle: deployments, relocations on the military's schedule, less control over your own life for the length of your contract (typically 4+ years). If you want a family relatively soon, this is the bigger variable — some branches and jobs are much more family-compatible than others, but you'd be signing away a lot of control over timing and location right when you might want more of it, not less.
A way to think about the choice
Ask yourself which discomfort you're actually chasing:
- If you want structure, discipline, and a hard reset on your self-confidence and you're genuinely fine with deployments/moves/losing autonomy for years → military.
- If you want to be challenged and pushed out of your shell but want more control over where you live and when you have kids → nursing.
Your business degree isn't wasted either way, by the way — it'll help if you ever move into nurse management, hospital administration, or (for military) officer-track paths that value a degree already in hand.
Steps you can take now, in your ~1 year window
If leaning nursing:
- Look into accelerated BSN programs for people who already have a bachelor's (usually 12–18 months) — your business degree won't need to be redone, just prerequisite science courses (A&P, microbio, chem) if you haven't taken them.
- Shadow a nurse or get a CNA certification in the meantime — cheap, fast, and tells you fast whether you can handle the day-to-day (bodies, fluids, death, difficult families) before you commit to a program.
- Talk to nurses about which specialty fits a shy personality — ER and ICU throw you in the deep end fast; something like med-surg eases you in more gradually.
If leaning military:
- Talk to recruiters from more than one branch — they will not volunteer the downsides, so also look for r/military or r/AirForce style communities for unfiltered accounts.
- Since you have a degree, ask about Officer Candidate School / OCS routes rather than enlisted — different lifestyle, more pay, more responsibility, though a different set of tradeoffs.
- Get honest with a recruiter about family plans — ask directly what deployment tempo and family policies look like for the specific job (MOS/AFSC), not the branch in general, since it varies a lot.
Either path, the Costco management option isn't nothing — it's worth asking yourself if the real complaint is "corporate/desk work" specifically, or "this particular job," since retail management still has a fair amount of structure and low autonomy too.
If it'd help, I can put together a side-by-side comparison table (timeline, cost, physical demands, family compatibility, pay trajectory) so you've got something concrete to look at while you decide.
Started a job but its more than I expected. Advice?
I recently started a full-time landscaping job. Im 18 years old and due to some mental health and health issues I am undergoing a "delayed graduation" im in online summer school to finish my last required class and in the fall I will be taking some upgrade courses anyway to be able to meet the requirements for automotive tech at a college near me. Before I applied to this job I thought I would be able to handle keeping up with my studies and work as normal but I have noticed I have zero energy physical and mental.
It is starting to get in the way of my schooling im starting to slip behind as I did not expect the course to be so heavy. The issue isnt the job I can handle it buts its balancing both school and work that is really starting to eat away at my mental health. I actually enjoy the job but its really not my future im only working there to save up for a car to be able to take that college course in January. The thing is that this job was given to me from a family friend and my brother didnt really leave a great impression when he worked there, so far I have been told im working hard but I have only been at this job for a week and a half. I feel like I have an obligation to change the impression that my brother left and I feel guilty for even thinking about leaving it to focus on my school.
The job itself is easy although tiring and the pay is well not really the best ever but its income at least. I feel such an idiot for taking too many things on at once and even more of an idiot for the fact that I want to leave when the job market is already bad I am very not sure what i should do.
Jobadvisor
First — you're not an idiot. You took on a job to help fund a concrete goal (a car, then a program you're excited about) and you didn't yet know how heavy the summer course would be until you were in it. That's normal calibration, not stupidity. Calling yourself an idiot for this isn't fair to you, and it also isn't helping you think clearly right now.
Here's the thing that stands out to me: your summer school class is temporary. It has an end date. This isn't "balance work and school forever" — it's "get through a few more weeks of an unexpectedly heavy course while also working." That's a specific, short-term crunch, and it deserves a short-term fix rather than a big decision like quitting.
A few directions to think through, roughly in order of "try this first":
Talk to your employer about reduced hours, temporarily. You said the job itself is fine and you actually enjoy it — the problem is the combination right now. Many physical/seasonal jobs like landscaping can flex hours for a few weeks, especially for someone who's already shown up and worked hard. You don't have to frame it as "I might quit" — you can frame it as "I'm in a summer course that ends [date], can we look at 25–30 hours instead of full-time until then?" That alone might solve most of the exhaustion problem without touching the guilt/obligation piece at all.
Talk to the family friend directly, honestly, and separately from your brother's history. You're carrying a weight that isn't really yours — you're trying to correct an impression your brother left, on top of your own job, on top of school. Those are two different people. If the family friend is decent, telling them "I want to finish this course well because it matters for my future, can we figure out hours that let me do both" is more likely to build a good impression than silently burning out and having your work quality slip because you're exhausted. Overworking yourself into no energy for either thing doesn't prove you're better than your brother's impression — it just means you might struggle at both.
Keep the actual end goal in view. You're working this job to save for a car to get to a program you want in January. That's the real priority. The summer school class is the immediate, most urgent priority since it has a deadline. The job matters to the extent it serves the plan — it's fine to protect it, but not at the cost of the thing it's supposed to be funding your path toward.
Quitting isn't the only alternative to "push through and get worse." Reducing hours for a few weeks, being upfront with the employer, and taking pressure off yourself about your brother's reputation are all things you can try before the nuclear option. And if none of that works and it really does come down to protecting your health versus keeping this specific job, that's an acceptable trade-off too — jobs are replaceable, your ability to function this fall isn't.
How many weeks does the summer course have left?
unemployed for over 2 years. my life's been sliding ever further downhill. finally applied at mcdonald's out of desperation after swearing off food service for life. had a great interview, said i'd hear back in 3-4 days, i tried to follow up after 5 days of silence and got hung up on
like i just don't know anymore man!! i just don't know. i've applied to every role in my city that i know i could actually perform, i've gotten four interviews out of 100+ applications, every interview went really well, and i was always passed over. i kept lowering my expectations and applying to worse and worse jobs with more and more manual labor before finally ending up at general maintenance for a mcdonald's that's across town from me, to boot.
and i haven't heard a peep! i called them today and whoever picked up hung up on me before i could even get through saying "i had an interview earlier this week" and a dial-up tone screeched out of my phone so loudly that my ear STILL hurts. i called them back immediately and it rang into the abyss before going straight to the dial tone. waited about 45mins in case they were busy at the time and called again. and again. and again. and again. no answer, dial tone every single time. i've got no clue what else i could possibly do because the one temp agency i can make it to in this town just seems to... not exist. one of the elevators doesn't have a button for their floor, the other elevator is perpetually out-of-order, and the stairwell for the building ends at their floor which is carded entry and i knocked and waited repeatedly for about 20 minutes to no avail.
i'll be real, y'all. if i can't get hired to clean the grease traps at mcfuckingdonald's with my resume and after the interview i had, there's straight-up nothing left for me to try. i've run the gauntlet start to finish from "dream job that's actually attainable" to "please for the love of god give me anything" and no matter what i can't even get the time of day. if mcd's is going to cold-shoulder me as well, there's nothing left for me to try. i've applied for public works, social services, at homeless shelters, gas stations and bodegas, smoke shops, custodial work in office complexes, library staff, etc etc etc ad infinitum without a drop of luck from any of them and i'm at my wit's end. i do not know what's left for me to try!!
if it turns out that i did get passed over for mcdonald's then i'm probably just gonna throw my hands up, admit defeat, and wait for the economy to crash completely at this point. i've spent 5 years now in gritted-teeth survival mode fighting off stressor after stressor and powering through roadblock after roadblock and i don't have much energy left in me for this rat race. i want a fucking break from the suffering. i can't remember the last time i could sit and be alone with my own thoughts and not panic over uncertainty and insecurity.
Jobadvisor
That's an enormous amount to carry, and today especially sounds like it kicked you while you were already down. Getting hung up on, then a screeching dial tone in your actual ear, then radio silence after calling back over and over — that's the kind of thing that would rattle anyone, and it's landing on top of two years of exactly this.
I want to say clearly: none of what happened today proves what you're afraid it proves. A hang-up and a broken phone line is at least as likely to mean their phone system is glitchy or the person was slammed and clumsy, as it is to mean anything about you or your candidacy. You had a good interview. That's real information about how you came across — a bad phone connection five days later doesn't erase it. I know that's not very comforting when you're in it, but I don't want you to take today's chaos as a verdict when it's genuinely unclear what happened on their end.
I also want to gently push back on "if McDonald's doesn't hire me there's nothing left to try." I hear that this is what it feels like right now, and after 5 years of gritted-teeth survival, feeling completely tapped out makes total sense. But four good interviews out of 100+ applications, ending up at general maintenance across town — that's not a story about you having no options left. That's a brutal, unfair market doing what brutal, unfair markets do, and it happening to squarely land on you.
Can I ask — when you say you want a break from the suffering and you're at your wit's end, are you having thoughts of hurting yourself, or is this more "I am exhausted and don't know how much more I have in me"? I'm not asking to check a box, I'm asking because I want to respond to where you actually are.
On the practical front, right now, today:
- Try calling McDonald's tomorrow morning right at opening, when it's least likely to be slammed. If it goes to the same dead end, consider going in person instead of calling — a five-minute "hi, I interviewed earlier this week, just checking in" in person is much harder to have fall through the cracks than a phone call.
- The temp agency situation is its own small nightmare — a building that's functionally unreachable is absurd. If there's any way to email or call them instead of showing up, that might get you further than fighting a broken elevator and a locked stairwell door.
But before any of that — how are you doing right now, in this exact moment, underneath the McDonald's situation?
had my crew dissolved today at work and i’m really struggling. not sure if this is the right place to talk about it.
So i work for the parks department of a medium sized city and i am the crew lead for the night crew. We handle events and locking up the parks things like that. A couple months ago bosses come to me and say they will be posting a new roll for a night shift supervisor, great i think i’ll go for that role and get a little pay raise. Well the job finally closed two days ago and they should start doing interviews but yesterday i am called in the office and told that for budgetary reasons that job has been cut and on top of it the night crew is being dissolved. I am told i’m not out of a job but i will now need to report for 6am shift. i’m at a loss. I am taking a $2/hr pay cut because i no longer will receive my night differential not to mention i’m not sure i can switch to 1st shift after working 15 years on 2nd and 3rd. i have a wife and a 3 year old and i really thought i would get promoted and make a little more money for them but now i just feel like a complete failure. On top of all this they have had me showing security guards around at all the parks and it seems the guys i’ve trained will now be contracted to take over my own job at night. Real kicker? this all happened on my birthday lol. Anyways if you read my rant thanks for taking the time.
Jobadvisor
This is absolutely the right place to talk about it, and honestly — happening on your birthday is a special kind of cruel timing.
I want to name what actually happened here, because I think "I feel like a complete failure" is doing something unfair to you: you didn't fail at anything. You did your job well enough that they were about to promote you into a supervisor role. The job got pulled for budget reasons, and it sounds like part of that budget move involves handing your responsibilities to contracted security guards — guards you personally trained. That's not a story about you falling short. That's a story about a city government making a cost decision and you absorbing the consequences of it after 15 years of doing right by them.
A few things worth sitting with separately, because I think they're getting tangled together:
The financial hit is real and immediate. A $2/hour cut plus losing your differential is a serious blow, especially with a wife and a 3-year-old counting on you. That's worth being angry about and worth problem-solving around — is there any room to push back on the shift change, ask about severance-style considerations, or is this genuinely take-it-or-leave-it? Are you union or covered by any civil service protections that might apply here, given the "promotion pulled + involuntary shift change" combination?
The shift change itself is its own animal. Fifteen years on 2nd/3rd shift means your body, sleep, routine, and probably your whole family's rhythm is built around that schedule. Flipping to 6am after 15 years isn't a small adjustment — that's a real physical toll, and it's fair to not know yet whether you can sustainably do it. That's not weakness, that's just what circadian rhythms do to people.
And then there's the specific insult of training the guys who are taking your job. That would sting for anyone. It's reasonable to feel a mix of anger and grief about that part specifically, separate from the money and the schedule.
You've given this place 15 years and you were doing well enough to be in line for more responsibility. That doesn't evaporate because the budget got cut out from under you. Is the plan right now to take the 6am shift and see how it goes, or are you weighing other options — pushing back internally, looking elsewhere, something else?
Anyone else notice how job postings now require you to be grateful for the opportunity to apply
I've been looking at postings lately and the language has gotten so weird. It's not just listing what they need anymore. Now they're writing things like we're supposed to feel lucky they even let us submit a resume.
Saw one yesterday that said applicants should demonstrate enthusiasm for the company mission in their cover letter. The company sells industrial cleaning supplies. What mission? I'm not curing diseases here, I'm trying to pay rent. Another one had this whole paragraph about how they're looking for someone who's passionate about data entry and sees it as more than just a job. It's literally data entry. No one dreams about that.
The worst part is you know if you don't play along and write some fake passionate cover letter, your application goes straight to the trash. So now we're all pretending to be thrilled about the chance to work for below market rate doing something we don't care about, and they're pretending they're doing us a favor.
I remember when job postings just said what the role was, what they paid, and what experience they wanted. Now it's like they expect you to audition for the privilege of being exploited. And they still don't list the salary half the time.
Jobadvisor
You're not imagining it, and the "passionate about data entry" thing genuinely is as absurd as it sounds. There's a real gap between what these jobs are and how they're marketed, and it's worth separating out why that gap exists, because a few things are getting mashed together.
Part of it is copy-paste corporate culture. A lot of this language comes from templates and consultants selling "employer branding" — companies get told that mission statements and culture language attract better candidates, so it gets bolted onto every posting regardless of whether the job has anything to do with a mission. An industrial cleaning supply company probably didn't sit down and decide their purpose in life is inspiring passion in data entry clerks; someone in HR copied language that's now standard across postings, the same way every LinkedIn profile says "passionate" and "results-driven" regardless of what's actually being described.
Part of it is a genuine power shift, though, and I think this is the part that actually bothers you most. When there are way more applicants than openings, companies can afford to filter using effort as a proxy — if you're willing to write a fake-enthusiastic cover letter, you're also probably willing to tolerate a certain amount of nonsense once hired, or at least you're motivated enough to jump through hoops. It's not really about wanting genuine passion for data entry. It's a low-cost way to filter out people who won't bother, in a market where they can afford to lose some good candidates on that filter without it costing them much.
And the salary omission is its own thing entirely — that's not culture language, that's a straightforward negotiating tactic, keeping you anchored low and unable to screen out underpaying jobs before you invest time in applying. A growing number of jurisdictions have pay transparency laws forcing disclosure now, so where you are might affect how often you actually see it.
On the "pretending to be thrilled" part — you're right that it's a weird ritual, but I'd push back gently on it being pure exploitation theater. It's more like a low-trust equilibrium: they assume applicants will lowball effort unless required to perform enthusiasm, so they demand the performance, so applicants perform it insincerely, which confirms the need for the filter next time. Everyone kind of knows it's theater. That doesn't make it less grating to participate in, especially when you're doing it for below-market pay in a role you're doing purely to pay rent — that part's a legitimate thing to be frustrated about.
Is this coming from job searching yourself right now, or more general venting about the state of things?