THE BIG QUIT: Workers seize their chances to leave bad jobs behind.

• Author: Herman, Alice

A national labor phenomenon known as "The Great Resignation," or "The Big Quit," began to take hold in January 2021 and has since grown. Millions of workers in the United States have turned the turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic into opportunities to rethink their professions and reframe their lives.

The trend is especially pronounced in the accommodation and food services sector, which experienced more than 5 percent worker attrition each month from June to October of last year.

By fall 2021, the quitting mood had become something closer to a movement, with many workers leaving their jobs in a conscious rejection of stagnant wages and inadequate workplace protections during the pandemic. Online, people flooded a Reddit forum called "r/antiwork" for commiseration and solidarity; by year's end, the page had reached 1.5 million members. In the streets, thousands of unionized workers in manufacturing, health care, and higher education went on strike last fall for fair pay and protections.

The Progressive spoke with five people who left their jobs recently. Here are their stories, told in their own words:

"I realized I'd been dead-ended. I was like, 'Why? What am I working for?'"

Benjamin Harder, thirty, quit two jobs during the pandemic, the first at a warehouse, and the second stocking frozen goods at an Aldi supermarket. Although the stress of working during the pandemic took its toll, he says it was the long-standing poor working conditions that led him to leave each position. After six months of unemployment, Harder took a job in road maintenance and snow plowing, where he currently works.

Initially, in the pandemic, I was working at Nebraska Furniture Mart, assembling furniture.

At the end of 2020, when I got a fifteen-cent raise, not even a cost-of-living raise, I realized I'd been dead-ended. I was like, "Why? What am I working for?"

I found another job within the week, at an Aldi's freezer warehouse. It was supposed to be thirty-five hours a week, but soon I'm working over sixty. [To get] a lunch break, you have to request it. Most people don't, because it isn't paid, and most people who take that work are desperate, I would say.

So you don't take lunch, you're working twelve hours a day and having only two fifteen-minute breaks. You're in negative ten degrees, and you're driving around a pallet truck, so there's no socialization. In the freezer rooms, everything is just bright white, and you don't see sunlight all day. You go in to work in the dark and you leave in the dark.

You go home, you're cold. You wake up, you're cold.

Once, I went to Hy-Vee after work. I got out of the car and I passed out before I made it into the store. That's when I learned that I have to go home, shower, and wait for my temperature to normalize before I can go out and do other stuff. It could take an hour to an hour-and-a-half. I'd have a bowl of ramen or oatmeal or something hot, and spend an hour playing video games or something, in a hoodie...