Has anyone here actually gone back to a normal job

Had a beer with someone last week who did this for six years and now works in a warehouse office doing rotas. Said it was the best decision he ever made and he wasn't performing it, he genuinely meant it.

I've been at this since 2016 and I've never once seriously considered going back. But I'm also aware I've never seriously considered it because I'd have to admit something, not because I've thought about it and decided no.

So has anyone here actually done it - gone back to a normal job with a manager and a payslip - and how long did it last? Not asking for advice. Just want to know if anyone's on the other side of it.

Twice. Both times for the same reason and I didn't recognise it either time.

Go on then.

went back in 2011 for fourteen months. quit the day the second raise came through, which tells you something

couldn't do it. wouldn't last a week!!

Both times I went back it was three months after a good year, not a bad one.

Bad years you fight. Good years you look at the number, realise it changed nothing about how you spend a Tuesday, and start reading job listings at midnight like they're pornography.

The job cures it in about five weeks. Then you leave.

Is very true what you say. Good year is more dangerous than bad one.

My friend i go back in 2019, eleven months, sales job in Sao Paulo.

Actually the money was terrible but the first three month i sleep like a baby. No dashboard, no email at 2am, nothing is my problem after 6pm. Then i start to hate it, not the work, the fact that i cannot fix anything myself.

I leave and i never think about it again. But i dont regret the eleven month.

I came from the other direction, so my answer is the mirror image of the thread.

Fourteen years in corporate finance before this. What I miss is not the salary and certainly not the meetings; it is that someone else was responsible for whether the company existed next year. That is a genuinely restful thing to hand over and nobody who has never had it seems to believe me about it.

I would not go back. I understand entirely why people do.

Going back means an employer, a payslip and a name on a system. Some people can't. That's the real filter.

I did it in 2014, which is roughly when everything in my life gets dated from.

Agency job, SEO manager, forty grand and a lanyard. Lasted nineteen months and honestly the first year was fine - back then agency work was still mostly the same job I did at home, just with worse tools and a standup. What killed it wasn't the work, it was watching a client burn a monthly retainer on something I'd told them wouldn't work, and having no authority to stop it, and then being in the room when it didn't work.

That's the thing nobody puts in these threads. It isn't the freedom you miss. It's that when you're wrong on your own you at least learn something, and when you're wrong on someone else's instruction you just get to be angry about it for a fortnight. I lasted until the second one of those.

Never gone back, but I've had two Januaries where I updated the CV and told nobody. Does that count?

That absolutely counts. That's most of the thread I think.

I went back for eight months in 2021, a contract role, and I'd do it again in the same circumstances.

The honest reason was that I needed a payslip for something administrative and there was no other way to get one. It had nothing to do with wanting the job. Once the paperwork it was for went through, I left, and the whole thing was a transaction.

That's the version nobody mentions: some people go back because a bank or a landlord requires them to, not because they wanted out.

wait thats such a good reason and I never thought of it