Very unhappy people can do some unusual things, especially when it comes to venting pent-up frustrations at work.

I was recently told of a particularly striking case. Employees in a City law firm suspected something amiss in the men’s toilets. It was the hand-wash dispenser. It didn’t seem quite right. After some brave souls made a closer inspection the cause of the trouble was discovered. A disgruntled worker had removed the soap bag, defecated into it, and replaced the unit back on the wall.

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Now, one thing is clear: this person was very bothered with their workplace and everything about it. And they went to great lengths, even creative some might say, to express it. But why put up with a job that had become so unbearable? Why not simply quit and find something else?

It turns out that things are not so simple. When you enter “how to quit …?” into the Google search engine, the number of results on how to quit your job are exceeded only by “how to quit smoking” and “how to quit smoking weed”.

Entire websites are dedicated to helping us send that special email to the boss. Articles in business magazines and newspapers tackle the issue with zest, usually relying on kitchen-sink psychologising and glib “life is short” platitudes. It’s as if an escape industry has sprung up to offer its services to tired middle managers who want to throw it all in, move to Provence and start their own cheese business – but don’t quite know how to break the news to their spouse and bank manager.

Philip Larkin nicely captured the futility that often accompanies exit fantasies like these in his ode to the despondent office worker, Toads:

Ah, were I courageous enough,

To shout Stuff your pension!

But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff

That dreams are made on

Why do sensible thoughts of escape seem so difficult to pull off in reality? It is no coincidence that highly addictive drugs like nicotine appear in the Google search result. The analogy is apt, as anyone who has tried to give up smoking will confirm the stress involved. Part of nicotine’s evil spell is to persuade us beyond reasonable doubt that life without cigarettes would not only be “difficult” but straight-out impossible. The same applies to the desperate worker who is unable to quit: sure, I realise my horrible job is hurting me but the bills still have to be paid, don’t they?

The “how” part of the question is easy to answer. Just resign. So that’s not the real issue. The real question being asked is how we can quit an intolerable job or workplace without incurring all the risks that this implies. Many of those risks are very real, of course. In a world of unemployment, outlandish energy bills, mortgages and childcare fees, no wonder people stay in roles that are slowly killing them.

Trapped in what feels like an insurmountable impasse, many of us just zone out and wait for the work day to finish. Years can pass by like this. According to a 2013 Gallup survey , around 63% of the global workforce is disengaged (compared to 13% who are engaged). More telling is the growing prominence of a group described as actively disengaged: 23% at last count. These people definitely hate their jobs. and for whatever reason cannot leave. So they devise ways to wreak revenge on their employers, fellow workers and even themselves. Self-sabotage, including alcohol abuse (and, in my opinion, yoga) is reaching epidemic proportions.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘We are bombarded with dire warnings about how bad things will be if we don’t put up with our zero-hour contract, dilapidated pension scheme and vindictive boss.’ Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

It’s easy to understand why people feel so imprisoned. Not a day seems to pass without another policy or trend announcing the degradation of paid work in the UK. We are living through what some commentators call a long “capitalist restoration” period . The postwar compromise between big business and labour has been entirely rolled back. Now it is only a one-way street. It’s not a good time to be a worker. Stagnating wages, a public sphere in tatters, the disease-like spread of credit debt among the working poor, the abrupt halt of class mobility, gender inequalities deepening and the list goes depressingly on. In this climate, we know what the response will be if anyone is brave enough to speak out: “Oh, so you don’t like your job? No problem. There are literally thousands of others very keen to do it … and for less than we pay you!”

The philosopher Michel Foucault called neoliberalism a “culture of danger” for this reason. To base a society solely upon the image of competition means convincing its citizens that life itself is a kind of life-and-death struggle, with only winners and losers left at the end. And rightwing governments and technocrats are more than happy to artificially manufacture such conditions if the population is unwilling to fully buy into the idea that life is only about the survival of the fittest.

The fear of financial destitution is by no means unfounded. The risks are real. But we also need to remember that this “loss anxiety” is a crucial facet of the ideological system that has emerged under neoliberal capitalism as it attempts to maintain a frequently unworkable system. Power no longer seeks to garner our consent by telling us fanciful lies about how great and wonderful society is. In fact, the opposite. We are bombarded on a daily basis with dire warnings about how bad things will be if we don’t put up with our zero-hour contract, dilapidated pension scheme and vindictive boss. Our natural instinct is to recoil and flee. Instead, we become more dependent on and even attracted to institutions that inflict pain. Others call it austerity.

To keep a society fixated and obsessed with work, especially when the problem of collective material wellbeing has long been solved, it is redelivered to the public in strict, black-and-white terms. The rationale goes like this: if you are not willing to put up with your job the alternative is complete penury; say, spending the rest of our days in Stoke Newington cemetery drinking super-strength White Ace cider wondering what went wrong. (Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad.) Here is another one: you don’t like your job?! Compared to what some have to do around the world – such as the rat catchers of Mumbai, deemed one of the worse jobs ever – you really don’t have anything to complain about. Stop your bourgeois griping (#firstworldproblems).

This forces us into a false double-bind. You either do the “right thing” and put up with your own private nightmare or, by default, consider yourself a privileged whining snob who is just one step away from social oblivion. The choice is yours.

In the end no one can tell you “how” to quit your job. It might seem like a mere technical problem but it is really an ethical one. However, it is worthwhile being aware of the ideological traps that lie in wait, carefully designed to preserve a world of work that is slowly spinning out of control.

• Peter Fleming is the author of The Mythology of Work. He will be in conversation with Joanna Biggs, author of All Day Long, on Wednesday 23 September, 7pm, Sutton House, Homerton High Street, London