ever thrown in the towel because of impossible work conditions?

[thatgui]

I sort of "quit" my last employment:
The last company, I had worked in, used the last financial crisis to get rid of a lot of workers by declaring insolvency (there had to be some shady action involved, because the company was doing quite fine only weeks before) and the creation of a new company only a week later with a slightly different name, but using the same buildings, the same inventory, with exactly the same management and all of the clients the old company had. Just with less employees they would have been responsible for. This mainly affected people which did low skilled labour and where already 45+, with all of them beeing at least 10 years in that company. They asked me if I wanted to get into the same position as before in the new company, but I was so disgusted by that, that I immediately refused to come back.
I always had the feeling that the management saw their employees more like steeping stones to success, they would really need to step on, instead of partners to their success.
But this had a happy ending: soon after that, I found the company I currently in: the work is diverse and interesting, the work environment is great and the coworkers are awesome - not everything is perfect, of course, the company is in the energy business, so my company has no natural interest in people saving energy :^(

Edit: after reading it again, I feel the need to add, that for the rather short period of time I looked for a new job, I had my doubts whether it was a good decision or not and two days before I found my new job, I heavily considered calling the old company again to ask if they are still interested...

 

[Klumpen]

Of course, all those unpaid pseudo internships aside I left the first job were I actually made money because everyone made smoke breaks all day and I as the only non-smoker (well pipes don't count since they take a while) got harrassed immediately when taking a 20 second brake for my sanity while all the others were smoking outside yet again. The disgusting way those people talked about the only girl on the job while orbiting her nice and friendly all the time when she was around and the fact that one of the guys simply refused to work with me because he just didn't like me for some reason were other things.

The moment people work on a job although the athmosphere, admission of worker's rights and level of effectiveness is terrible (regardless of the wage), it will get worse and we end up like it is in so many companies where people are thinking about getting home all the time instead of the task at hand. If I ever have employees, I'd be happy if they have the courage to say if things aren't like they should and I'll discuss it with them without them having to fear to be thrown out just for some critique and I'm not a fan of the 40-50h weeks that are so common around here too since effectiveness goes exponentially down the drain after about 6hours of work anyway so I'd rather offer 20-35h weeks depending on how the employee wants to structure his life (build another carreer at the same time for example).
My boss does things my way if he has the feeling it's actually increasing a nice athmopshere and production quality so I'm quite lucky, it was a long way to this point and I don't make a lot of money but this will change too if my plans work out.

 

[moxie]

I'd like to say that "No job is worth more than your (mental) health". That might be a bit strong - sometimes you might be economically forced to stay at a horrible workplace because responsibilities (family and so on). But still - Unless your other option really is to starve, I'd stay with the above.

When we bought a house (me and my wife), we did put in the calculations that whe should be able to keep up with the mortgage payments even if one of us felt we had to quit our jobs.

 

[bukkit]

I also worked in a theatre quite a while ago. It's a peculiar place, I believe, because it's rather common that it absorbs you more than the usual. It will be your social sphere, your job, your entertainment and sometimes your sleeping place, and I guess most will pay shitty for anyone but the top names.
And all that also means leaving sth like that leaves a rather huge hole in your life, more than just leaving a job. After a while I ended up learning sth else and doing sth rather completely different. After a couple of years, I even could go to theatres and concerts again.
My recommendation would be to accept that you have changed a rather big part of your life, more than a job, and that it will take time to find another perspective, and to allow for that time. As much as you can afford. Follow where your enthusiasm lies.

(It seems to me, if you like what you did essentially, you might be able to use your talents for documenting touring bands. Maybe you offer that to a booking agency. You would reduce your dependancy on a single outfit rather much, too.)