The salary keeps coming. But so does the Sunday dread, the hollow promises, and the slow erosion of everything else.
There is a version of loyalty that is admirable. Staying through difficult times, growing with a company, building something over years. That kind of loyalty is real and worth something.
And then there is the other kind. The kind where you know, somewhere deep in your gut, that this job is wrong for you. That the environment is toxic, the management is unreasonable, the promises are hollow. And yet you stay. One more month. One more appraisal cycle. One more bonus that may or may not arrive.
Malaysia is quietly very good at this particular kind of staying.
The Numbers Behind the Silence
59% of Malaysian employees have either left or would leave their job due to a toxic workplace, making Malaysia the highest in the entire Asia Pacific region for resignations driven by toxicity, according to Randstad's 2025 Workmonitor survey. That number sounds like Malaysians are actually quite willing to walk away.
But here is the other side of that statistic. The 59% who said they would leave includes a significant portion who said they would, not that they already have. Because knowing something is wrong and actually leaving are two very different things. Between the moment of realisation and the moment of resignation sits a long, complicated middle ground filled with financial anxiety, cultural pressure, and the very human tendency to hope that things might still get better.
48% of Malaysians said they would reject a job offer from a company known for poor workplace culture. Which tells you that in theory, most Malaysians know what they value. In practice, when you are already inside a bad job with commitments to meet and options that feel limited, theory becomes harder to act on.
The Financial Cage
Let us name the most common reason people stay in jobs they know are wrong for them. It is not complicated. It is money.
The car loan. The housing loan. The children's school fees. The parents who need monthly support. The credit card balance that is quietly climbing. The emergency fund that does not quite exist yet. Every one of these is a real and legitimate reason to stay put, because the gap between one salary and the next, even a few weeks of it, can unravel a household budget that was already stretched.
This is the financial cage. It is not a trap that employers deliberately set, though some employers certainly benefit from the fact that their employees feel unable to leave. It is a cage that most Malaysian workers build for themselves, often in their late 20s and early 30s, when the loans and commitments accumulate faster than the financial buffer does.
The cruel irony is that the worse the job, the harder it often is to leave. A toxic workplace drains the energy you need to search for something better. A bad manager erodes the confidence that makes you believable in interviews. A culture of excessive hours leaves no time to quietly send out CVs or attend interviews without your absence being noticed.
The Loyalty Trap
There is a particular kind of employer manipulation that is so common in Malaysia it barely registers as manipulation anymore.
It goes like this. You ask for a raise. Or you consider leaving. And the employer responds not with a competitive offer, but with a promise. The bonus is coming in Q4. The increment is being reviewed next cycle. Stay just a bit longer and your loyalty will be rewarded.
Sometimes the promise is genuine. But often it is simply a delay tactic used by companies who know they need you more than they are willing to pay for you. And because Malaysian workplace culture has historically valued loyalty and deference to authority, the promise lands. You wait. The bonus arrives smaller than expected or not at all. A new excuse appears. And another cycle begins.
I left a job I genuinely loved when a new CEO changed the entire character of the company. What had been a positive, professional environment became something else entirely under new leadership. No phones on the desk. No conversation between colleagues. Only 30 minutes of break per day. And while the contract said 8 hours, the reality was closer to 12.
To be clear about what 12-hour working days mean legally. Under Malaysia's Employment Act, the maximum total working hours including overtime cannot exceed 12 hours in a single day, and overtime itself is capped at 104 hours per month. A company that regularly operates on unofficial 12-hour days without proper overtime compensation is not just culturally toxic. It may be operating outside the boundaries of Malaysian employment law.
I left. Not because I was brave or financially carefree. But because I knew that staying was costing me something that no salary could compensate for. My sense of professional dignity. My work-life balance. My feeling of being treated as a human being rather than a resource to be maximised.
The Signs People Ignore
Most Malaysians who stay too long in a bad job did not miss the warning signs. They saw them. They just interpreted them as temporary rather than systemic.
Being excluded from meetings that your role should be part of is one of the clearest early signals. When your presence is no longer deemed necessary in discussions where you previously had a seat, it is rarely accidental. It reflects a shift in how leadership sees your value or your future at the company.
Being left off team building invitations and company events is similarly telling. Social exclusion in a workplace is rarely casual. When you notice it happening consistently, it usually means something about your standing is being communicated without words.
A sudden shift in management behaviour toward you, particularly after a new leader joins or after a company reorganisation, deserves serious attention. The way I describe it is a gut feeling that something has shifted in how you are being regarded, and your role in the company's future plans. That feeling is worth listening to.
61% of Malaysian workers say they would leave their jobs if they felt a lack of belonging. That number suggests most of us understand, at some level, that belonging matters as much as salary in making a job sustainable. The problem is that we tend to act on this understanding too late, after months or years of quietly absorbing the signal that we no longer belong, rather than months before the situation becomes untenable.
What Actually Helps People Leave
The employees who manage to exit bad jobs most effectively tend to share a few common behaviours.
They start the job search while they are still employed. The worst time to look for a job is when you are unemployed and visibly desperate. Hiring managers can sense it. Counter-offers are harder to negotiate from a position of obvious need. The best negotiating position is always one where you have the option to stay if the new offer is not right.
They rebuild confidence deliberately. A toxic workplace often does damage to how you see yourself professionally. Reconnecting with mentors, former colleagues, and professional networks reminds you of what you were before the bad job started making you doubt it.
They set a timeline with a condition rather than a vague intention to leave. Not "I'll leave when something better comes along" but "I will actively apply to five roles a week and if I have not received a meaningful offer within three months, I will reassess my financial situation and consider the next step." The vagueness of "I'll leave eventually" is one of the main reasons people stay for years longer than they planned.
And they get their finances in order before making the move. Even a small emergency fund, two or three months of basic expenses, changes the psychology of job hunting completely. You are no longer negotiating out of desperation. You are negotiating from a position of choice.
My Take
I am not someone who stays when I sense something is fundamentally wrong. I know what I am worth professionally and I have never found it useful to remain in an environment that actively undermines that sense of worth.
But I also recognise that this is easier said than done, especially at certain life stages and income levels. The financial commitments that make leaving hard are real. The scarcity of good opportunities in certain fields and regions is real. The fear of explaining a short tenure to a future employer is real.
What is also real is the accumulative cost of staying in a job that drains you. Not just financially, but in the less visible ways. The gradual erosion of professional confidence. The health effects of sustained workplace stress. The opportunity cost of time spent somewhere that is not growing you. These costs are harder to measure than a monthly salary but they are no less real.
The job that pays your bills while slowly taking everything else is not a good deal, regardless of what the payslip says.
Know when the price is too high. Then leave before it costs you more than just the time you already spent.
Kamarul Azwan (k.azwan@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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