The job is fine but the commute is destroying me — is this a legitimate reason to leave?
by Sandra Koo·May 24, 2026
Two hours each way. Four hours per day. Twenty hours per week. That's half a full-time job worth of my life, spent in traffic or on public transport that's often overcrowded and delayed.
The job itself is good. Good manager, interesting work, fair pay. But I arrive home after 8pm every day depleted. I have no life outside work and sleep.
What I've tried:
- Negotiated 2 WFH days, helped but wasn't enough
- Moved slightly closer, still 1.5 hours each way
The question I'm sitting with: Is a good job worth a life built around it? Because that's what this has become.
I know people will say "the commute isn't a reason to leave a good job." But 4 hours per day is a quality-of-life issue, a health issue (cortisol), and a relationship issue (no time for anything else). That seems like a real enough reason to me.