My job is toxic — do I quit or fight?

Neither, today. The library’s page on a workplace gone hostile hands you a move that works in every version of the story and lets you decide the rest later, from a stronger position.

Start the file and line up the exit, in parallel. Start the file and line up the exit answers the quiet question first: if you are keeping score of slights just to stay sane, you are not overreacting, and the harm is real; people there describe stress that followed them out of the building and into their sleep. Then: start documenting today, and start building your exit at the same time. Whether you also stay and fight is a decision you make later, with evidence in hand and, ideally, an offer on the table. The file is free and cannot be built backward: each incident the day it happens, date, who was present, what was said as close to exact words as memory allows, factual and emotionless, because a ledger that reads like a diary gets discounted and one that reads like minutes gets believed. After important conversations, the polite written follow-up, confirming what we discussed. Keep all of it on your own devices, at home, and build it knowing the coworkers who saw everything may stay neutral when it counts. The exit, because leverage is a job offer: the warnings on that page say it twice, do not quit without a signed offer in hand. The page lays out the fight-or-leave argument with both sides and no winner, and names the deciders its accounts name: whether you can afford the fight financially and psychologically, whether your jurisdiction and documentation give it teeth, and whether you want justice or relief.

Bring HR a company problem. Bring HR a company problem gives you the test before you knock: HR works for the company, structurally, the way an insurance adjuster works for the insurer, so ask, if I win, does the company win too? Harassment, discrimination, safety hazards, being asked to break rules expose the company to lawsuits, and on those the desk can move with surprising force. An unpleasant manager or a conflict with a colleague costs the company nothing, and people on the wrong end of that discovery describe being the one managed out of the story. Three rules whichever door you use: everything important in writing; your own record off work systems, in your own words, without forwarding company emails to a personal account, which two warnings there say hands the company a clean unrelated reason to let you go; and assume nothing you say there is confidential. Where a union exists, the rep answers to you in a way HR cannot. Most of that page is written from US workplaces; readers in the UK or Europe likely have stronger official routes and should use them.

Look while you still can. Look for the next job while you still like this one says three separate conversations agree on when to act, while you are still secure, because desperation is a bad time to choose, and two add that unhappiness makes bad jobs look good. Its safety line stands above the strategy: do not bluff. An outside offer used as leverage has to be one you would take, because your employer may simply let you go, and a counter-offer is often temporary. For US readers it carries one checked correction: the health-insurance continuation you are offered when you leave has a sixty-day window to elect, not ninety, and is retroactive.

Then name your door. Three doors to liking your work offers the menu once you are out or steadier: make your job something you love, make something you love your job, or find the middle ground. It exists to dignify the middle door, a job that pays the bills while the loved thing thrives evenings and weekends, because some passions grow best unmonetised and some seasons of a life make the middle door simply the adult one.

Who this is not for. If the conflict is one overstepping peer rather than a hostile dynamic, the file page says that is a smaller problem with smaller tools, and one account there warns against spending the word toxic on an annoyance. And if what is happening to you is tied to who you are, pregnancy, race, disability, age, a complaint you filed, do not stop at coping advice; that page’s first question is about the moment this stops being a personality problem and becomes a legal one. The Legal Services Corporation finder, cited here from the Resource Bank, locates free civil legal help by area.