I’ve been working part time in the legal field at a small company for the past year after staying home full time for 2.5 years. Prior to that I was in the financial industry for over 10 years.

In the past few months my boss has been EXTREMELY stressed out due to personal stuff as well as an extremely busy period at work. He’s been taking it out on his employees. He’s apologized to me in the past for doing this, (see previous post) including as recently as last week. I was in tears all day yesterday on and off and basically hid in my office all day. By the end of the day, I was ready to walk out and never come back. I had cleaned out my office and left my keys on the desk. I didn’t talk to him in person yesterday because I was so upset, I didn’t think it would be productive (I also don’t want to use my emotions in the workplace). On the way home I was having second thoughts about quitting because of the money. My husband makes enough to support us with zero extra so we’ve really enjoyed having some additional income over this past year. I wrote him a very long email last night telling him I’m unhappy and can not work in an environment like that. I have not checked to see if he’s responded because I just want a day off from the drama. I’m already on meds for depression/anxiety but the thought of going back to the office is causing me some extreme anxiety that I haven’t experienced for a long long time.

I don’t know where to go from here. I know he values me, he’s made it very clear, but his communication is terrible and causes him to expect things from his staff that were never communicated to us, which ends up with us getting berated for these things. The first time it happened I was willing to forgive and move on but it’s becoming a pattern and I’m not confident it will change. (There are other issues as well like him not billing clients on a regular basis which leads to back owing on bills, etc).

I have been looking for something else but I’ll have to take a significant pay cut anywhere I go. What would you bees do?