How to Quit Your Job

And yet, she felt obligated to stay for the first full year before seriously looking at other options. She felt a certain inertia even at the bad job, she says, and despite the mid-week depression she often experienced, she had some trouble dumping her routine and felt "trapped."

"People get stuck in jobs that they hate or are dissatisfied with for the same reason people get stuck in other situations in life that they're not satisfied with," Dickter says. "People can get stuck in a bad job just like they can get stuck in a bad relationship."

After mulling over her job options again and again, Kathryn eventually interviewed for and landed a freelance design job at another magazine, where she was so thrilled at the interview that "I had one of those moments," she says, "like a Beatles fan, like a squealing girl." Excited as she was about the new job, she said she would have to hold off to give her current boss sufficient notice.

It wasn't until Christmas, during a family vacation, when Kathryn had the epiphany that it was really time to get out: Her boss tracked her down on a ski slope and called non-stop, berating her because boots she sold on eBay and told Kathryn to ship hadn't arrived on time in Scandinavia. At the same time, Kathryn received a friendly email from her prospective employer at the other magazine, offering to push back her start date.

"The juxtaposition of those two experiences made me know: I want out, and I don't feel bad about it," she says.

The three-month freelance gig would become a full-time position.

"I'm so much happier now," Kathryn says. " It's amazing how a bad job will just really make you sad."

The boss-from-hell scenario comes in more subtle flavors, though. Although Ryan, 25, wasn't eBaying any shoes for his supervisor, his job satisfaction bottomed out because his boss quashed his creativity.

An equity researcher, Ryan says he knew the field would be a good fit for him because he wanted to be challenged, tackle tough math, and report his findings.

"I got this job because I wanted to think," he says.

And think he would in his first job at a major bank, where it quickly became apparent that thinking meant thinking like the boss, who led a "very established team" that approached problems uniformly and left little room to innovate.

"No matter what came to me, there was a very standard way to answer it," Ryan says. "It became very robotic and mechanical."

Meanwhile, working as part of a team of six associates assigned to one supervisor made it hard to get enough mentoring or facetime with his boss. That lack of facetime likely made it easier for Ryan to detach himself from the work situation. Stephen Stillman, a work psychologist who teaches a graduate-level course on career and lifestyle, blames digitalization in part for the workplace disconnect that frequently leads to turnover. The hiring process has become less personal, he says, since many employers now hire by screening thousands of resumes online, and telecommuting reduces face-to-face contact on the job.

Luckily, Ryan had identified one of his job requirements early on: room to grow. Once he established that the growth potential he needed wasn't to be found at his bank, he knew it was time to go.

"Make sure you know what improvements you need before you go and quit or go and accept a job somewhere else," Stillman advises. "A lot of times you have it better than you think."

Staying on board to try to make it work was his "biggest mistake," Ryan warns. "It's kind of like dating somebody and hoping they'll change -- it just never really happens."

"What people often don't realize is that the people who employ them have accountability," since the employee is the one who gets reviewed, has to ask for raises, and so on, Stern says. "The way to hold them accountable is to ask questions like, do you plan to correct this? What is your strategy for my career development?"

Once his boss had conveyed that change was "not going to be an option," Ryan decided it was time to seek out an office where he could be more creative, and a little under a year into his tenure he began researching jobs at other banks, talking to employees and interviewing. Within a month or so, he had landed a job at another bank.

"I really knew what I wanted and I was just able to align that with the jobs that were out there," Ryan says, noting that the "very honest conversation" he had with prospective employers helped him find a position where he is working one on one with his boss. And despite working even more hours than he did at the old job, where he had a mandatory six-day week, his satisfaction is much higher.

That honest conversation with prospective employers is key, Stern says. "Use the let's-get-real factor," he suggests: Start with a compliment -- tell your interviewer what impresses you about her company, and then ask what she thinks could use improvement.

Getting the facts before any job or career move is huge, according to Stern.

"There is no science to this decision making. It can't be derived just from a spreadsheet," he says. "The problem is if you don't get information, then your instincts are based purely on emotion and that creates a high probability of poor instinctual response."