It sounds like you’ve been sold a pup, as they say in the classics. Presumably, this organisation has a highly effective recruitment department that’s been judiciously separated from the odious puritans who run the show. They’ve deceived you, and you have every right to be shocked by the truth you’ve discovered.

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I think it’s sensible to be immediately considering ways out. Nobody wants to work in a grim, dour work-world dominated by killjoys and prigs. And it sounds to me from our correspondence following your first letter that you would have no problem quickly finding a job elsewhere.

Returning to your old role, though? That’s tricky. It really depends on how you parted ways.

If you eloquently expressed your reluctance to leave to important people at your previous place of work, they may welcome you back quite happily. Especially if they clearly understood that this seemed to you at the time like an opportunity too good to miss.

I think things could be more complicated if your erstwhile employer desperately wanted you to stay, and perhaps countered the offer made by the organisation you’ve now discovered to be intolerable. If they put a significant amount of time, effort and resources into convincing you not to leave, they may have legitimate reason to feel you turned your back on them. They may accept you back, but not with great enthusiasm. In a worse-case scenario, they might have taken your rejection as an outright insult, and consider your return a bad idea.

And, of course, that’s all before considering that they may have already filled your vacancy.

My advice would be to make honest enquiries to one or two people you trust at your old workplace straight away. Don’t hold off out of embarrassment, but do make it clear you feel you’ve made a mistake. Get a sense of what’s happened since you left - whether any progress has been made on replacing you, and what the candid sentiment on your departure was among people with decision-making power.

My guess from what you’ve told me is there’s a good chance you can return without upsetting anyone - in the same role or a similar one. But it’s best not to assume anything just yet.

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