People always tell you to trust your gut like it’s some kind of magical superpower. It isn’t. Your gut is nothing more than years of experience stacked on top of each other. Every mistake, every success, every shitty boss, every bad decision, and every lesson gets stored somewhere in your brain. Eventually you stop guessing and start recognizing patterns. That’s what people call a gut feeling.
The best example for me was leaving Domino’s after more than ten years. I saw the good years, and I survived the bad ones. After you’ve been somewhere that long, you know when things are just having a rough week and when the whole damn place is about to come off the rails. The mood changes. Good employees get burned out. Management starts making questionable decisions. You can almost feel the place starting to crack.
I didn’t need someone to tell me things were headed downhill. I already knew.
My gut kept telling me, “Get the hell out while you still can.”
So I listened.
I put in my notice, finished my last few weeks, and walked away. Some people probably thought I was crazy for leaving after spending over a decade there. Loyalty is great, but loyalty doesn’t pay your bills or protect your sanity. Staying just because you’ve already invested years into something is a terrible reason to keep doing it.
About a month after I left, everything unfolded exactly the way I expected.
Two employees got fired.
Three managers quit.
That left the general manager and one assistant manager trying to keep the entire store running. That’s not a job anymore. That’s a daily exercise in surviving complete chaos. Every shift would’ve been another round of putting out fires while corporate acted like everything was perfectly fine.
That could’ve been me.
Instead, I was already gone.
Now I drive Meals on Wheels, and when my route is done, my day is done. I don’t spend my evenings wondering if my phone is going to ring because someone called off. I don’t spend weekends covering another shift because the schedule fell apart. I have time to work on my website, write blog posts, hang out with Jen, spend time with the dogs, and actually enjoy life instead of constantly waiting for work to ruin my plans.
The older I get, the more I trust my instincts. They’ve been right far more often than people who told me to “just stick it out” or “give it time.” Sometimes giving it time just gives a bad situation more opportunities to get worse.
Walking away wasn’t quitting.
It was refusing to sink with a ship I already knew was taking on water.
Trust your gut.
It’s been collecting evidence a hell of a lot longer than you’ve been making excuses.