“Just get through the day,” I whispered, gripping the steering wheel.
The first sign wasn’t the insomnia or the Sunday night dread. It was the morning I sat in my parked car outside the office, unable to open the door.
Twenty minutes passed. My reflection in the rearview mirror showed dark circles under eyes that once held ambition. When did I start looking so… defeated?
Thirty-four years old, senior systems engineer, working for a company that topped “Best Places to Work” lists. My LinkedIn profile read like a success story — driving innovation, exceeding targets, leading high-performing teams.
What it didn’t mention was the hair falling out in clumps. The nights spent staring at the ceiling. The eye twitch my doctor called “stress-induced.”
The loyalty scam
American work culture runs on a mythology: work hard, sacrifice enough, and the company will take care of its own. The unspoken contract.
That belief unraveled during an all-hands meeting when the CEO praised the “family-like culture” while announcing layoffs. Forty positions cut. Three of them belonged to colleagues who had postponed surgeries to meet deadlines.
That evening, I watched those same colleagues pack up their desks. Decades of loyalty reduced to severance checks and awkward goodbyes.
The next quarter, skeleton teams covered double the workload while the CEO sent an all-company email celebrating “resilience” and “adaptability.” Profits exceeded projections.
Corporate families only exist when it’s convenient.
What corporate loyalty cost me
The layoffs weren’t surprising. What stunned me was my own reaction. Not relief that my job was safe — relief that I finally had permission to question the terms of engagement.
I started tallying the cost of my professional devotion:
- The relationship that ended when I canceled an anniversary dinner for a client emergency.
- My mother’s 60th birthday celebration, attended via FaceTime from a hotel bathroom.
- The chronic back pain from years hunched over laptops on red-eye flights.
- The panic attacks in meeting rooms, gasping for breath in bathroom stalls while colleagues assumed I had stomach trouble.
These weren’t sacrifices. They were losses.
American culture frames burnout as the price of ambition, a necessary down payment on success. The executives who sleep under their desks are idolized. The founders who work 100-hour weeks are celebrated. No one talks about what happens when the body stops cooperating.
I had given my company unfettered access to my time, my health, my peace of mind. In return, I received a paycheck and the constant anxiety that it could disappear at any moment.
I was part of the problem
The breaking point came during my performance review. My manager praised my dedication, then denied my request for a mental health leave.
“We really need you right now,” she said, sliding a box of tissues across the table as I fought back tears. “Your project is at a critical stage. Maybe you could try one of those meditation apps instead?”
I left her office angry. Plotting revenge. Maybe I’d quit without notice right before the project would be launched. Maybe I’d send an all-company email exposing the toxic culture.
Then something shifted. The anger drained, and in its place, I felt something closer to pity. Here was a woman in her late forties, imprisoned by the same corporate mythology that was destroying me.
She wasn’t a villain. She was another casualty of a system that demands absolute devotion while offering conditional security in return.
And I had played both roles. How many times had I pushed team members to prioritize work over their lives? How often had I upheld the very values that were now crushing me?
Walking away without a plan
That night, scrolling through job listings, it hit me. I wasn’t looking for a healthier workplace. I was looking for a new place to continue the same self-destructive patterns, just with a different logo on my business card.
According to Gallup, nearly two-thirds of full-time workers experience burnout. The suffering is normalized, treated as an occupational hazard instead of a systemic failure.
Six months later, I resigned without another job lined up. My parents were horrified. My colleagues were confused.
“But you were on track for director,” my mentor said, genuinely baffled. The ladder I had spent a decade climbing had led to nowhere I wanted to be.
The first month of unemployment felt like detox. I slept ten hours a night. The eye twitch disappeared. I remembered what my laugh sounded like.
When I returned to work, it was on different terms. I turned down the most prestigious offer for one with explicit work-life balance policies. I turned off notifications after 6 PM. I took vacation days without apology.
Most importantly, I stopped believing in the mythology. The company I work for now is not my family. It’s not my identity. It’s a contract — one that deserves my expertise during working hours, not my soul in perpetuity.
What companies fear most
Companies don’t fear employees who perform poorly. They fear employees who know their worth.
Corporate loyalty is a one-sided contract designed to serve institutional interests, not individual well-being. The most professional approach to work isn’t unbounded dedication — it’s calculated, boundaried engagement that preserves personal agency.
I still deliver exceptional results. I still care deeply about my work. But I no longer believe that sacrificing my health, relationships, and sanity constitutes a fair exchange for a paycheck.
This stance has cost me opportunities. I’ve watched less qualified colleagues advance faster because they answer emails at midnight. I’ve been passed over for leadership roles because I leave at 5:30.
I don’t regret it. The unspoken contract was never written for my benefit.
Each morning, I sit in my car for a different reason — to finish my coffee, take a breath, and decide how I want to spend my day. There’s no dread. No bargaining with myself to push through.
Just the quiet understanding that the life I build outside of work will always matter more than the one I leave at my desk.
