Despite risk, some say quitting is the way to go

The last straw for brokerage-firm account manager Anne Marie McClaran came three months ago and didn't seem like the end-of-the-road moment it became.

She was trying to complete three different projects while being barraged by phone calls and e-mails. Then one of her co-workers asked her nicely for help. Normally, she would have been happy to provide it, but not that day.

"I just wanted to turn around and take a swing at him. And I wanted to yell and scream at the top of my lungs. And I wanted to hurl my computer and my phone through the window," McClaran says.

She had thought about quitting before, but fear had held her back. Still, after 10 years on the job, she had migraines and neck aches and was frequently irritable. "It doesn't do me any good to have a secure future if I don't have any future," she says. So even though she had no savings-account cushion, she walked into her boss's office and quit.

Everyone knows that the best way to leave an old job is to start a new one. But there can come a point when no job, no matter how financially necessary, is better than the last one. And despite all the good advice about lining up new work, stockpiling emergency funds and avoiding rash decisions, some people do discover that the devil they don't know is better than the one they do.

It's hard to predict your breaking point, particularly when work-oriented platitudes can cause self-doubt. Technically speaking, there probably is another possibility to exhaust. Maybe you've given your work situation only a "pretty good shot" as opposed to your best. Maybe your efforts amounted to merely 109 percent.

For many people, there's no flashing sign that says "turning point" ahead, just plenty of bootstraps that need pulling up and yourself that needs dusting off. That's why even terrible office events are sometimes only the second-to-last straw.

"I have never in my life done 'the best I could do,"' says Tim Orr, an ad executive who spent six years in a job he couldn't stand before ultimately becoming self-employed. "I know full well I could always have tried just a little bit harder."

A noncompete clause prevented him from working for another local

agency, so he spent a great deal of time trying to improve his job situation. He even read books on psychological disorders in an effort to decode his boss.