have you ever quit a job in your first week?

by Alison Green on January 18, 2024

Have you ever quit on your first day? (Or should you have?)

If you’ve ever had a job so bad you quit on your first day — or okay, in your first week — we want to hear about it. Please share in the comments below and include:

  • why it was so bad
  • how you quit
  • how your hasty exit was received
  • and any other interesting details
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  2. wondermint*

    Not me but my boyfriend. He worked at a small law firm owned by a husband-wife team. He was working as a part-time office manager. On his first day, he witnessed a huge screaming match between the husband and wife, and sent an email that night that he wouldn’t be back.

    2. Elizabeth West*

      Yikes. I also had a job where this happened regularly. Married owners seem to treat their work like an extension of their home.

      OldExjob Boss and BossWife NEVER did this, though. I’m sure they argued from time to time, but we never saw it.

      1. Mister_L*

        Didn’t happen to me, but bonus points if they treat their employees like children that have to pick one parent.

    3. Chainsaw Bear*

      I used to work in a law firm where we shared office space with the active partner’s wife’s OTHER LAW FIRM, and the whole thing was just a mess.

    5. NoName*

      I worked for a husband and wife (they were Americans but descended from Austro Hungarian nobility, and had property etc restored after the fall of the Soviet Union. Their self importance was…embarrassing). They would pop their just-out-of-college aged children into senior/supervisory roles and bring family arguments to team meetings. I am pretty sure they’d use their kids roles as leverage, as in “we’ll demote you if you don’t do x.” I worked there for a year, and made it that far because I didn’t have to interact with them too frequently. But hoo boy. I didn’t understand how people could work with them directly and not quit immediately. They had no boundaries or respect for people’s private lives/personal time.

    6. Xwordmama*

      This also happened to me when I worked at a husband-wife owned accounting firm. She would come running out of his office and right into the single person bathroom where she would stay until she was ready to come out (our building was a converted house). The rest of use had to do the potty dance while the bathroom was being held hostage.

    7. Your Mate in Oz*

      Snap!

      I started a new job at an IT consulting company. Day one I wandered in shortly before the 9am start time and while the door was open there didn’t seem to be anyone in. I heard talking from out the back so wandered that way to introduce myself. A woman was on the phone, saw me, gave me the phone, burst into tears and ran away.

      So I said “hello” into the phone and got talked through restarting a server. Note that he was scrupulously polite to me, very “can you do me a favour”. The woman came back once the call was over and said “my husband gets very angry sometimes”. Not “angry with me sometimes” or “is having a terrible day” or any excuse, just “angry sometimes”.

      I made some excuse and left. Rang the recruiter who had sent me there and said that I wasn’t going to partitipate in an abusive marriage, sorry about that. The recruiter gave me some guff about my behaviour being unprofessional and I should have let him handle it and I think we mutually decided never to deal with each other again.

      The only amusing thing was that the same day I got a call offering me a different job. I’d done interviews with multiple companies and the one I quit without really starting was just the first likely prospect. So I was able to start the new, new job a few days later.

  3. Anon for this*

    Several years ago, I quit a seasonal retail job after 2 days. This was very out of character for me, but I did it because the store was filthy (which I did not realize before I started working there); the restroom was disgusting; the manager seemed really disorganized and did not seem to know how to use the store computer, which was required for onboarding new employees; the other employees seemed really sullen and disengaged; and while I took the job to make some extra money over the holidays, I realized I didn’t need the job so badly that I had to put up with all of those things. As it turned out, a better job came along shortly afterwards and I was much happier there.
    How did they react? They didn’t. I texted the manager that I wouldn’t be coming back and she never responded. *shrug*

    1. king of the pond*

      Did you get paid for the two days you were there? I’d honestly be surprised if they didn’t bungle that somehow.

        1. Distracted Procrastinator*

          have you checked that state’s unclaimed property website? Every state has one. It’s usually a pretty easy process to prove you are the owner of the funds and get a check. My husband had a last check from an old job in a state we no longer lived listed. We spent 10 minutes filling out the form and he had the check a couple of weeks later. It had been more than 15 years since he had quit.

    2. Tio*

      Ah, retail. Many moons ago, I took a job at Target when I had just graduated. It was supposed to be weekends only; I had a regular full time job, I just had a lot of bills to pay. I told them that upfront, they said it was fine. I was only being hired as part time and I knew weekends usually needed more people, so it seemed like a win win. Except the day of my orientation, they handed me my schedule, and it had several weekdays on it. I went to the manager and told them there’d been a mistake, I wasn’t available during weekdays. They said I had to show up or I would be fired. So I quit and didn’t go back.

      1. Anastasia Beaverhousen*

        It blows my mind that they think this is a threat when you told them it was a part time job lol.

      2. DeskApple*

        haha I got put on Targets “do not hire” list after I’d gotten tons of written customer compliments, and accolades from the store and regional manager during my one and only summer there. the reason? The school year started again and I (16) called out on my last day of the two weeks notice to finish my summer reading. “This will follow you your whole career” was a phrase used.

        1. Zombeyonce*

          That’s the equivalent of “this is going on your permanent record, colleges will care!” threat when you get detention.

          1. goddessoftransitory*

            Ah yes, The Permanent Record. Like, I really want to know what college is actually checking up on a detention someone got in seventh grade.

        3. Hedgehog O'Brien*

          I know someone who was fired from Target (on the customer service/non-store side) for “falsifying” their time sheet, when in actuality they made an honest mistake on their timecard and when they explained that it was a mistake they were told “well, we have a zero tolerance policy” and walked out of the building. Honestly ridiculous.

          1. Magenta Sky*

            To be fair, that *is* what someone who actually was falsifying their time sheet would say, and it’s common enough.

            (Still a hard-a$$ policy.)

            1. Lydia*

              True, but unless it’s egregious, it makes way more sense to go with benefit of the doubt the first time and keep an eye out for a pattern.

              1. Magenta Sky*

                I do not disagree. But I can see how a (bad) manager, or corporate person who hadn’t been in a store for years, could arrive at that point.

        4. Some People’s Children*

          How long ago was this? Like if you tried to get hired now would they tell you you are on the list because of something that happened in 1990?

          1. DeskApple*

            16 years ago for a 2 month cashier job. I’ve got an MBA now and could technically work in corporate, but your question has me tempted to apply just to ask about that mark that will follow me my whole career.

            1. Generic Name*

              Fanfic: You get a job in corporate and become the boss of the “this will follow you your whole career” person.

          2. Tio*

            My story was in like, 2010ish and I was also told that I would be put on the “do not hire” list. I now work in corporate supply chain for a major retailer in the country and just like Desk I am tempted to apply and see what they say!

            1. I forgot my user name againn*

              I know at retailers I have worked for, you drop off the do not hire list in about three years. Records aren’t held onto for that long. If someone was truly a horrible employee, you have to hope an oldtimer remembers them and tells you the scoop before you hire the person.

            2. Amanda*

              I was put on a “do not hire” list for a corporate record store chain that no longer exists. The reason? I caught one of my coworkers falsifying cash receipts. Turned out the owner was in on the scam but it was easier to just blame me.

      3. Bear Expert*

        Retail management somehow ends up being really disconnected from what the actual relationship between company – employee is and how much leverage they have.

        My current white collar business job that pays me decently and I have benefits and vacation days? I can tell my boss that I can’t work after 3 on Tuesdays starting next week and he shrugs and we all go on with life.

        The drugstore I worked at part time in college? I told the manager four months in advance when my final exams were (literally “I will be sitting an exam from 9-11 am on this Thursday and not be able to get to work until noon.”) and reminded him in writing a month before, and two weeks before, and then the week before he threw a literal tantrum complete with throwing objects off of store shelves and screaming that I needed to examine my priorities and figure out what was really important in my life. Weirdly, my priorities were to get my engineering degree.

        I am still impressed and confused by what his worldview was that a) his behavior was at all acceptable for someone over the age of four and b) that I’d do anything other than go sit the test.

        1. Richard Hershberger*

          This follows my human being/meat puppet theory of employee/employer relations. Many employers do not think of their lower level employees as human beings with all the awkward needs and wants that entails. They think of these employees as meat puppets. If your manager had thought of you as a human being, your taking that exam would have been regarded as perfectly natural, even laudable and cause for congratulations. But since he regarded you as a meat puppet, your taking that exam made you an inefficient meat puppet that failed to meet his needs. Often, but not always, there is a certain level of advancement where the employee turns into a human being. You have arrived at that happy state in your current job. Congratulations.

            2. Laser99*

              I saw a post here once where a commentator used the the term “meat shields”. It meant a person a boss or a superior would use to shield themselves for the consequences of their actions. As in, “Well I screwed up the Penske report. Let me call in a meat shield to deliver the news.”

              1. Em*

                I got hit by a car while in a crosswalk. In the first few years after my injury (esp when I was on crutches) I constantly referred to other pedestrians in my head as “meat shields” when I was crossing and tried to keep the meat shield between me and the oncoming lane lol
                I got the lingo from RTS games like Starcraft.

            3. Deejay*

              On notalwaysright they talk about bad customers and bosses thinking of life as a roleplaying game. “I’m the Player Character and everyone else is just a Non-Player Character. A mindless drone controlled by the gamesmaster/computer following a fixed script”.

              1. I forgot my user name againn*

                I may not completely get the reference, but I’m having flashbacks to my district manager whose behavior can be described as someone who is playing the role of district manager in the high school production of retail store where the sound system isn’t that great so make sure you over annunciate your lines. “Hellooooo WELCOME to retail store”. Everytime.

          2. kicking-k*

            Yep. When I was young and waitressing at a hotel, I was asked for any scheduling preferences. I asked for anything but Sunday breakfasts if possible (I was hoping to get to church sometimes). I never DIDN’T get scheduled for Sunday breakfast, but two of the other wait staff were friends and had a more-or-less standing golf date together on Sunday morning. This irked me no end, but looking back, they’d been there a little longer, the manager knew them better (and they were all men…) and I was going off to college soonish. I guess, also, they may have had other golf buddies who only had time off then – nobody ever said!

            1. Michelle*

              This is something I’ve noticed happening a lot. I haven’t worked retail in a very long time, but I have several young adult aged kids, and a few of them have had managers who, if you ask not to be scheduled a particular day, they’ll turn around and make sure you ALWAYS work that day. It’s some kind of weird power trip, IMHO.

              Then there was the time my daughter and her wife worked at the same restaurant. They asked to be scheduled on opposite shifts so one of them could be home with the kids. Their boss threw a FIT. Actually told my daughter that I should just babysit the kids (for free) every weekend instead.

          3. Heffalump*

            I’ve heard of the punk band the Meat Puppets, and I assume this is where they got the name. All this time I’d been assuming they made up the name out of whole cloth.

            In the early 1990s I was trying to make a living through temporary word processing assignments and not really getting enough work to live on. There was an online workplace-issues columnist whose name I forget, and I poured out my frustrations in an email to her. I don’t know if she routinely wrote back to everyone who emailed her, but she wrote back to me. Among other things, she said, “Temp agencies see temps as a bunch of interchangeable bodies. The really sleazy agencies see their on-staff employees the same way.” Different phrasing, same concept.

            1. Resentful Oreos*

              Oh my gosh!! I haven’t thought of them in a long time! I was in college when Kurt Cobain brought them out on his MTV Unplugged appearance. I saw it one afternoon in the dorm lounge and used up all my calling card minutes contacting my friends to see if they knew he had the Meat Puppets on stage with him!

              On the leaving the job topic: My car had been broken into while at a concert. They took my house keys and my purse, along with my friends’ stuff too, from the trunk. So these thieves had my address and keys. I refused to leave my place until the locksmith changed the locks so I had to call in late for my cashier job. I was 8 days into this job and they refused to allow me an excused absence, I was planning on coming in three hours late for an 8hr shift. Instead of taking the write up I quit, deciding that I didn’t want to work for people who weren’t willing to take my safety seriously.

          5. Elizabeth West*

            I think this is spot on. Lower level employees, especially in retail, are either robots or potential shoplifters (if you go by the tests you’re given when you apply).

            1. goddessoftransitory*

              Gah, those tests! A combination of insulting your intelligence and insulting your character.

            2. works with realtors*

              What’s worse is when a person who was in a little bit of power in retail is your boss in the office world and thinks they know how to manage.

            3. House On The Rock*

              Many, many years ago when I had a college degree from a fairly prestigious school, but not much else to my name, I applied for a retail job and was given one of those tests. I was rejected for being “dishonest” because I (naively) thought that providing nuanced, thoughtful answers to their questions would win me points for being smart. Ha!

          6. Phryne*

            I can see another explanation. In uni, I worked selling coffee at a train station. Almost all the workers at all these kiosks at the station were college and uni students part timing. The hours were flexible and easy to arrange around lessons and it did not pay terrible, but it was a large enough town that there were always plenty other gigs. So workers there were all pretty much in the position where this was just a temporary part-time job which we knew we would leave as soon as we graduated, and in the meantime, if it sucked too much we knew we could always leave and find something else.
            The managers on the other hand, where people whose career this was, whose living and income depended on it and who were pretty much at their intellectual peak in this small time managing job, so there was not a lot of scope of advancement either here or elsewhere. So there was a huge disconnect between workers and management’s outlook on the seriousness of the job, and how bad it would be to lose it. Not so much that they did not see the workers as not human, just that they did not really live in the same reality.

            1. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*

              I like this framing and think you are right, but I also think that “not really living in the same reality” is the same as “not seeing other people as human” – like, recognising that someone else is human IS recognising that they have different experiences, priorities, realities.

        2. Anon Again... Naturally*

          20-*cough* years ago, my husband and I were just starting out and he was working retail. He told his boss over a year in advance that he would need a particular week off for his sister’s wedding and was assured it was no problem. We got the plane tickets, and then the day before we were scheduled to leave, another employee quit. Said boss then said the hubby needed to cancel his vacation, and used the same “priorities” line when he quit without notice instead.

          The wedding was lovely and he had a new retail job within a week of our return.

        3. Magenta Sky*

          I took over a store where my predecessor was like that. He would literally throw things at people (and being a hardware store, these were things like brass pipe fittings.)

          I was there two weeks before I met everyone face to face, because they literally hid from me. I couldn’t blame them.

        4. PresidentBob*

          For a few weeks before I graduated high school (2000), I worked at a grocery store as a bagger/cart-getter. The manager of the front end was the absolute worst when it came to “get your priorties straight.” Most of the employees were highschool students and we went through so many because she just flat out refused to honor said requests, especially for Important High School Things. Like, say, graduation (but also prom, plays, school events, etc). We’d joke that she’d look at our requests off and would purposely put us on it. I ended up quitting on the spot because she scheduled me for graduation. I mentioned this and she said “Your graduation isn’t important. You did all the work already, it’s just a piece of paper. The paper that counts now is your check.”

          On a final note – I had to have a manager override the system every time I clocked in. When I collected my final (very important) check, another person said they found out why – a manager of a different department fired me, without telling me, because I didn’t immediately get out of his way when he started going down the stairs I was going up by turning around, going back down, and letting him pass.

          1. goddessoftransitory*

            That is bananapants. Like, all the bananas in that store were secretly running things.

          2. Chesire Cat*

            Is this the same manager wouldn’t give their best worker her college graduation off? Really hoping that there aren’t two bosses with that attitude!

            1. Goody*

              Oh, there are definitely lots of bosses with that attitude. We just don’t get to hear about most of them.

            2. Fishsticks*

              I still think about that LW all the time. Like, how did you write that long of a letter, with those details in it, and NOT realize halfway through, “Holy God, I’m the bad guy”?!

              1. Heffalump*

                “My employee wasn’t respectful enough after the company messed up her paycheck” doesn’t get the self-awareness prize either.

                AITA? Yes, YATA.

        5. Algernon*

          My little nieces think that I have a less important job than their other aunts and uncles. Why? Because I can call off at short notice if the kids need something and their other relatives can’t. I haven’t tried to explain that the opposite is true.

          1. Jayne*

            I am in academia and my mother had a medical episode. My siblings treat my job as less that either the one’s retirement and the other’s job because I was able to start driving the eleven hours to her retirement center after one email to my supervisor.

            Of course, in response, I despise the one for refusing to cut his vacation short to help and the other one who couldn’t be bothered to take time off his job for the first week and his vacation for the second week.

            Academia has many, many problems, but at my place, you can prioritize your family over your work.

            We have had people go to lunch and not come back, usually people who were in corporate and don’t expect the tolerance for weirdness and weird people that is academia.

        6. Steve for Work Purposes*

          I had a similar thing happen to me in college. I was in my last semester of undergrad, I’d already worked at this one small town law office for a year (as a receptionist/filing clerk/translator/general dogsbody) and halfway through the semester my manager tells me she needs me to start coming in on Wednesday afternoons when I’d said I was unavailable due to classes. She told me I was graduating anyways, why not just skip it? She needed me Wednesday and she also needed me to start coming in on Saturdays as well to do filing. I told her that wasn’t feasible either as Saturdays I was taking a different course (and when I wasn’t in that course, I was doing my homework for my other classes). She got mad at me for not telling her I had a class that day when I hadn’t put it on my availability either (the office was never open weekends so I didn’t see it as relevant) and how I was being inconvenient and irresponsible and college students were so unreliable and how unprofessional this all was, and then told me I could pick up my last paycheck that Friday. When I came to pick it up, she told me I was being let go because they found “too many errors” in my work (but couldn’t name any specific ones that I’d made when I asked). Funny thing is, if she had waited like 6 weeks she could have had me full time all summer until I moved cross-country to grad school.

          She thought it’d be brilliant to hire undergrads as receptionists/dogsbodies etc because we’d be accept $10/hour, but then got really frustrated when we had class schedules and so couldn’t be at her beck and call whenever she felt like it. She also told us it was unprofessional to discuss pay with each other and I actually got written up for it, so I think part of it was also taking advantage of people who weren’t very experienced, and using the fact that she was a lawyer to intimidate us. But she was also really frustrated that I didn’t back down when she tried to intimidate me into skipping classes because it was more convenient for her.

            1. Phryne*

              To be fair, this site specifically collects stories of unpleasant workplaces. No one writes for advice on how to deal with the best boss in the world.

              1. Laser99*

                You are correct, of course. I would like to suggest a “Best Bosses” in addition to the “Worst Bosses”.

              2. Avery*

                Yep. And it’s specifically unpleasant incidents and problems in the workplace that are collected, so even if a person really is a good boss 99% of the time, you’re going to hear about the 1% of the time where they’re causing problems here.
                Relatedly: my boss, a lawyer, doesn’t have the best reputation among other lawyers in his field. I think people think that he’s stuck-up, or a know-it-all, or something along those lines? To me, though, he’s the best boss I’ve ever had… but then, that’s exactly why I’m unlikely to write to AAM about him, while colleagues who had an issue or disagreement with him might well submit letters about that. (And I’ve written to AAM before myself about previous bosses that weren’t so good…)

        7. goddessoftransitory*

          Retail management is this bizarre pocket universe where managers are in a Schrodinger’s Box of having both massive and no power at the same time. I think it messes with their brains to the point where they just gorble and snap at anything that might bring Corporate down their necks.

          It’s commonest in big chain stores, where they’re between the Scylla of trying to actually manage the physical space and Charibdis of higher up dictates and policies.

        8. Michelle*

          I’ve mentioned this here before, but when my son was in high school, his manager at his part-time, minimum wage grocery store job regularly scheduled him to work 8 hour shifts starting at 8am on school days. I don’t know what part of “I’m 16 and in high school” was confusing for her. Then she’d make him find coverage when he couldn’t skip school to work.

          Eventually she figured it out, but then summer started and she kept scheduling him for after school hours only. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to have to explain everything again when school started back up.

      4. Anon for this*

        I have never understood retail scheduling. Some stores do it really well, and others…not so much. They ask for your availability, so you’d think they would note this somewhere important?

        1. Le Sigh*

          My experience, at least in the US, is they want to minimize costs, which includes having as few employees as possible in general (and scheduling as few as human possibly at a for each shift, and then they get mad when theft increases). They want employees available whenever they’re needed, whether for a scheduled shift or last-minute call to come in. They don’t provide consistent schedules to anyone (making it very hard to balance it with a second job, nevermind they’re not paying you enough to live on and keep you just under full-time), they “forget” about agreed-upon scheduling needs or requests for a day off and then make you fight to take it off, and very quickly shunt out the door at the slightest issue. A lot of that is about corporate — I’ve had some lovely but hamstrung managers, and some awful managers — but I can’t say much nice about major retailers.

          1. Anon for this*

            This has been my experience as well. I currently have a second, part time job at a well-known retailer who has the schedule thing figured out. They also treat their employees decently, which was a nice surprise. But this is definitely not the norm, unfortunately.

            1. Le Sigh*

              Yeah they exist but they’re rare. Especially if you live in an area with fewer employment options.

              And this isn’t even new or a post-pandemic thing. My experiences with retail are 10+ years ago. And judging from the comments here and the experiences of people I know who are currently in retail, the details might change but the general problem hasn’t.

          2. Looper*

            I currently work for a major US retailer and yes, this is it completely. I like the people who work within the 4 walls of my store but corporate leadership are ghouls.

            1. Le Sigh*

              Yup. Sometimes it is in fact the managers, but more often than not, they’re just trying their best in a tough job. I was asked more than once if I was interested in an asst manager’s job and I never took them up on it. As far as I could see, it was a steadier paycheck, but not a lot more money and likely not a living wage. The benefits were still pretty bad (if they had them at all) and the hours were so, so much worse — bc now you’re salary, no overtime, so they don’t care how many hours you’re working, and and you’re stuck trying to make a store run on not enough resources, knowing there’s almost no way to make corporate happy. The only managers I met who didn’t seem stressed out were people who just have some sort of natural zen to maintain calm or were stealing from the store, so they didn’t really care.

            2. MigraineMonth*

              I re-watched the Muppet Christmas Carol this year and struggled to remember why I thought Scrooge was so evil when I was young. Sure, he didn’t pay his employees a living wage, foreclosed on people who couldn’t make their mortgage payments, and kept the offices cold, but he did give all his employees a paid vacation day. Better than many corporations.

              1. Elizabeth the Ginger*

                Yeah, the main difference between Scrooge and the corporate brass at many big companies is Scrooge was grumpy and upfront about it, while big corporations put up cheerful signs about how much they care! about their employees! and their customers! while providing lousy workplaces and lousy customer service.

                1. HG*

                  I would love a modern adaptation of Scrooge as a disingenuous small business owner who pathetically thinks his employees are his family while underpaying them, constantly violates labor laws he doesn’t know anything about, and complains that no one wants to work anymore when the unemployment rate goes low.

          3. Laser99*

            I can confirm this. I used to work for CVS and corporation was constantly pushing to “reduce payroll”. The last time I was in one I asked the counter person for help finding something. “I can’t help you, my co-worker is on break and there’s no one else here.” This is a national chain we’re talking about. Oh, and the theft was through the roof bc there were so few employees around.

            1. Le Sigh*

              I had to ditch CVS for my prescriptions. It was never good before the pandemic, but it seemed to get a million times worse post-lockdowns (I know this is an industry-wide staffing problem but I swear it was so much worse at CVS). The pharmacists and techs were nice, they worked hard, but I kept having issues with refills, they would take far too long to get filled so I would run out, etc. At one point an issue came up that could have potentially been medically dangerous for me that had been overlooked for quite some time. At that point, I just cut my losses for fear there would be a dangerous mix-up one day.

              1. Elizabeth West*

                I try to avoid them even for basic stuff but I can’t, always.

                Same with Walgreens — they backed a pharmacist who refused to fill a legal prescription for a woman ACTIVELY having a miscarriage because Jesus.

                1. sagewhiz*

                  It is worse at both CVS and Walgreens. I recently heard an interview with a DOCTOR—not nurse or med office staff—put on hold for hours at each when trying to help patients. And not bc staffing isn’t available. Bc the co’s refuse to hire enough staff.

                2. a good mouse*

                  In a lot of areas, those are the only pharmacies available. A lot of smaller independent pharmacies were pushed out of business, and some insurance agencies deeply restrict where you can fill prescriptions. I had Aetna in Florida, and one day got a notice that if I wanted my medication covered, I could only get it from CVS. Luckily there was one near my office since there was nothing around my home.

                3. Autumn*

                  The Target based CVS and a local Walgreens pharmacy both refuse to answer the phone at times. I presume because of poor staffing. I wanted to ask a question and, because I can be stubborn, I let it ring for 20 minutes. I never got an answer. I also don’t go into that Walgreens…

                  The CVS in target I only know about 2nd hand. They used to be ok. But now often only have a single pharmacist on.

                4. VivaVaruna*

                  I get my prescriptions filled through Wegmans (a grocery chain on the East Coast). They have a whole branch of their pharmacy that is mail order only, and will ship anywhere in the US. IIRC, you don’t need to start your prescriptions at a brick and mortar location to be able to use the service, or need to live anywhere near the store itself. I lived in an area that didn’t have any locations for a while and didn’t have a problem getting my scripts filled, one of which was a schedule II ADHD med.

              2. works with realtors*

                Fun fact: you do not need to be a Costco member to use their pharmacy – they’re probably the least evil of the big chains if you want to support that kind of thing.

                1. Bruce*

                  I get good service at grocery store pharmacies (Lucky and now Safeway), so much better than the big pharmacy chains

              3. In the middle of nowhere*

                The CVS in my town was featured in the NYT for having a 20%(!!!) error rate I filling prescriptions.

            2. Elizabeth the Ginger*

              Theft is through the roof in general in my city and the response at grocery stores and pharmacies has been primarily to lock up often-stolen items (I’m not talking just the top-shelf liquor, but also the dish soap and toothpaste) so the customer has to push a button to summon an already-spread-too-thin employee to come unlock the cabinet. This means spending time waiting around in the toiletries aisle and also longer wait times at the checkout because the checkers are helping someone else get shampoo.

              1. JSPA*

                so one person pings for shampoo, then changes their mind, while a buddy grabs what they actually needed?

              2. birb*

                I couldn’t buy an under $10 iphone charger at a Wal-Mart last week unless an employee was called to unlock a glass case, and then I had to check out with just the phone cord in the electronics department because they can’t let you leave with it unpaid. The first employee I found couldn’t help me or even call for someone to help me with the case because they didn’t get allotted a radio. It’s absolutely absurd.

            3. Lydia*

              The theft thing is so aggravating. It is because of the lack of employees in the store, but instead of scheduling enough people, they put things behind locked doors (which is even more annoying because there aren’t enough staff around to unlock them), hire armed security guards, and put up barriers so it’s more difficult to leave. Gosh, the self-check-out lines make it really easy to walk out with merchandise? Maybe staffed check-out lines are better.

              1. a good mouse*

                Or just close the stores all together, in areas where they might not only be the only place to get these sorts of items, but the only pharmacy in the area.

              2. Michelle Smith*

                Especially since shoplifting and organized retail theft are a dramatically overexaggerated non-problem that the National Retail Federation admitted they lied about. Retail theft is actually down, so it’s not the reason these places are closing stores, but they published the lie so often in the news that people believed it.

              3. Leira*

                My local grocery store closed all the self checkout lines (I secondhand heard an explanation that managers can jump on those lanes if it’s busy) and there was only one checkout lane staffed. The cashier was trying to leave, but people kept coming up because she was the only one there. But there’s still security guards, and shiny new gates at the front of the store, and sometimes someone standing up front to advertise their rewards program.

            4. The Cosmic Avenger*

              The CVS closest to me is like that. But if I drive 10 minutes past that one, there’s one where, somehow, the employees are all helpful and pleasant. So I always drive to the further one when I need to go, I will NOT go in the crappy one any more.

            5. Long time gone*

              Long’s Drug-stan here. I was so furious when CVS bought them out and I found out how awful they were in comparison, I have seldom darkened their door since. Long’s was awesome! (at least from a consumer experience) CVS is the opposite in almost every way.

            6. WLP*

              I was in CVS not to long ago and had a coupon issue at self-checkout that seized up the transaction. There was one person there, but they were a vendor stocking product. Said there was no one there this morning manning the front since they had gotten there & wasn’t sure what was going on. They tried helping me, but it was hopeless. Only people in the entire store were in pharmacy in the way back.

          4. goddessoftransitory*

            And the pandemic drop in employment in retail and hospitality doesn’t seem to have changed much as far as those policies are concerned!

          5. Goody*

            Add in the fact that available payroll hours are determined by sales volumes.

            I had a manager once tell me that the starting hours for a pay period are determined by LAST YEAR’s sales. If sales are low (say, because there’s a storm and the roads aren’t safe), the store manager will send people home or cancel shifts last minute to save payroll hours. And while it would seem that higher than expected sales volumes (say, preparing for that storm) would generate more staffing hours, that never seems to result in actually getting more staff in the store.

        2. PresidentBob*

          It was easy at my movie theatre manager job. The person’s availability was entered into the scheduling program. It would automatically set-it up for that person. Either was white for available or darkened out for not. That’s just what it was unless they e-mailed the dedicated address for changes, overall or one-offs. The manager who saw it would fix it in the system and e-mail back that it was noted.
          Both parties had proofs if there was a goof-up, and accountability via the e-mail chain.

          1. Le Sigh*

            That sounds like a dream. Part of what was maddening to me is it’s *possible* to have a decent scheduling system (as you know!). But it felt like no one cared or bothered, and the consequences flowed downward. My friends currently in retail have apps they’re supposed to use…which work about as well as a bike without wheels.

            1. PresidentBob*

              The job was great overall, too. We had a great GM who hired a fantastic management team (with some exceptions of course). This GM was in the business for so long, but really put his employees first. Very much was a “happy employees mean happy customers”. Very fair and friendly, and he made it a great place to work.
              He would not put up with corporate shenanigans, and would step in between them and us if he thought we were right in a complaint or not following a policy he thought was dumb (he would also listen to constructive criticism from his underlings to how the theatre worked). He would purposely over-schedule so we’d not be SOL for call-outs or if busier than expected. As a movie theatre, sometimes things over perform from estimates, and we were one of the busiest locations of the company, and we did more than average for sci-fi movies.
              Sorry for long block of text, but in a post filled with awful managers and corporate cultures, it’s nice to yell out “my former boss was great!”

            2. Autofill Contact*

              Yes, 15 years ago I was a scheduling supervisor at a big box store and our app was AWFUL. I’m pretty sure I had to manually override almost every single shift it scheduled. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some of these retail managers just take the automated schedule and post it without giving it any thought.

          2. Chick-n-Boots*

            Yep. This is how it worked at the bigger retail store I was a manager for in the early 2000’s. That program was a dream and so much better than the paper and pencil worksheets I’d had to use at the prior job!

          3. WearAllTheHats*

            You’d think they’d all use that! But even if they do, sometimes there aren’t enough resources to cover it. I literally have to quit reading this thread, it’s making me enraged.

            1. WearAllTheHats*

              Clarification to first comment: enraged not because people don’t have availability and managers can’t schedule them but because corps are so egregious in their handling of what should be simple sh** in order to save $5k a year on a billion in revenues.

              1. Rex Libris*

                I forget where, but I read about an experiment years ago where researchers mailed random checks for miniscule amounts (like 2-7 dollars) to some randomly selected people, and also a bunch of millionaire and billionaire CEOs. I’m sure you’re unsurprised that the CEOs were far more likely to go to the trouble of cashing the checks.

        3. AnotherOne*

          and a lot is managers. are managers willing to come in and cover if they need to, so employees can go and handle their lives?

          I worked retail when i was in college at a big box book store that is still around. they had a standing policy that you couldn’t take blocks of vacation at Christmas. a rule I knew nothing about. i very innocently told my department manager when my christmas break was and she just told me to have a good time visiting my family.

          i mean- they were already hiring for the holidays, what was one more person? I’d be back in January. but i look back on my time in that store really fondly and a lot of that was because of the management, especially early on.

        4. Starbuck*

          It’s so wacky because it’s actually easier to do it right! At my college student job doing food service, they’d ask for everyone’s shift availability at the beginning of the quarter, then give us our shifts based on that for the next three months. They only had to re-do the whole schedule four times a year! And it made it much easier to plan around people asking for occasional shifts off. I kept that job all four years of college because management clearly knew well how to work with students. It was great.

      5. Random Biter*

        Target is notorious for this kind of stuff. My daughter had applied as a part time thing and told the hiring person she wasn’t available these days at this time because she was already working full time. Even though they had said they’d work with her over her schedule they ended up telling her nope, you either work the schedule we give you or you’re gone. She noped on outta there.

      6. Michelle Smith*

        I had a similar experience with Target!! I was told when Target hired me that they would accommodate my desire to keep both of my jobs (I was making $5.15 an hour in fast food working around 30 hours a week), scheduling me only at night and on the weekends. Instead, they just put me on the schedule for whenever and said I had to work that schedule or quit, so I quit and kept the food service job. That boss was great enough to give me a raise up to $5.50 but it was still 50 cents less than I would have made at Target. The job was so much worse though that it wasn’t worth it.

    3. Peon*

      Yeah, the only job I quit THAT quickly was also retail. It was a new mall store so the first two days it was a lot of unpacking and folding clothes, and it was after I’d had a full day of classes at college, which my boss knew. She made a comment about being tired, and I agreed it had been a long day. She responded with a snarky remark about how SOME people had been doing REAL work all day.

      I decided I really didn’t want to work for her and told her fine, find someone else to help with the REAL work and walked out. I came back a week later for my pay check and that was it; I already had a new job in the same mall.

      I had a bunch of jobs at different stores at that mall and they all eventually showed their crazy, it just took longer at some then others.

    4. Macropodidae*

      I am a widow with minor child. At the time he was 13 so could reliably walk home from school and get snacks for himself, so I said I could work occasional late shifts but would prefer not to and would need advance notice.

      This was as a pharmacy tech in a retail store. Day 3, I successfully shelved the entire drug delivery alone, while also working the register and doing training modules. KILLING IT. Like literally, the 3PM person came in and said, “Where is the delivery?” “Macropodidae finished it.”

      Day 4? The head pharmacist changed my schedule from 9-3 to 11-7. I never went back.

    5. Sarah U.*

      I was serving at a local restaurant for the summer before my new teaching gig. I bought my uniform (about ~$100) and showed up fresh-faced and ready to learn to my first day of training. Walked in and immediately had a flashback of emptying the grease trap while gagging when I was a server in high school. Food at this new summer job was crap. And then I asked how much a server made on an average dinner shift. $35. Thirty-five dollars in tips (for reference my rent was $700/month to rent a room). I went on my break, called my new teaching job and said “Now that I think about it, I AM interested in teaching summer school.” Went back into the restaurant and quit and they couldn’t give two hoots. I was stuck with a $100 uniform, a much higher paying summer job, and an easier school year because I had prepped my classes during summer school.

  4. IT Kat*

    In my teen years, I was looking for a job – any job. Got a job selling magazines over the phone to people who didn’t opt out of their credit card company selling their info. Did training for half the day (shadowing someone while they made calls) while the trainer complained that my questions slowed her down. Second half of the day I was thrown on the phones. On break, I went to my “supervisor” and told them that I couldn’t take it, I quit. He said “What do I put down, ‘you couldn’t take it’?” I said yes and walked out.

    Suite was empty next time I walked by (this was in the mall).

    1. Hlao-roo*

      Ha! I love that you told your supervisor he could put down “I couldn’t take it” as the reason for quitting!

    2. Former Retail Manager*

      This was literally my very first job! Found it via a newspaper ad in the 90’s. I also quit at the end of the first day. The way the script was written basically got the person to agree to a bunch of magazine subscriptions, at ridiculous prices, if they answered “yes” to a certain number of questions in a row. It all struck me as very unethical and most of the people who answered were elderly and seemed lonely and only stayed on the phone because they wanted human connection. The lady who sat next to me said she hated the job but had kids to feed. I gave her the only $20 I had on me at the end of my shift and just never went back. I didn’t feel that they deserved an explanation.

      The only cool part of it was the job was in an old bank building and the manager sat in the old bank vault, which was the first time I’d seen a bank be repurposed and they kept the vault….it was the mid 90’s.

      1. Shift Work*

        The town I work in has a bakery in an old bank building, complete with old vault. It is call “The Bankery” :)

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          There is (or used to be, anyway) an old bank in Harvard Square that got turned into an ice cream shop. You could sit in the vault and eat ice cream! It was so cool! It might now be the location of Mike’s Pastry in HarSq but not being a fan of cannoli I haven’t been inside to be sure, nor am I located within walking distance anymore. (If you ARE a fan of cannoli, you should definitely go to Mike’s.)

          1. Unladen European Swallow*

            This space has gone through a few different restaurants. It is now the Hourly Oyster Bar and very good. We ordered the seafood tower one time with friends. Spendy, but worth it! They have a nice large bar as well and make good cocktails.

        2. Formerly*

          My office building used to be a bank. The huge vault is now the lunch cafeteria, which is also open to people from outside the building. The only downside is that there’s obviously no daylight.

          The big room where the tellers used to work is now a clothes store. The floor where the bank managers used to work is still much fancier than the rest of the offices, and you can look down into the clothes store a floor below through a huge window.

        3. NotAnotherManager!*

          Last time I was in Boston, we stopped by a drugstore in an old bank building, and they had the vault open and some museum-like signage around it explaining its history. It was pretty cool that the left it available to the public.

            1. Bay Stater*

              NotAnotherManager! is probably referring to the Walgreens at 24 School St in Boston. I went there when it was a Borders bookstore and they had a book display in the vault.

            2. Cranky-saurus Rex*

              Not the person who replied, but I used to work in Boston, and I think this is the Walgreens on the corner of Washington and School St, across the street from the Old South Meeting House. My office was just down the street and at the time they had home goods in the vault.

        4. Not A Raccoon Keeper*

          Vancouver has a new event space in an old bank called The Vault! I think the vault itself often has a small second sound system going, as well as the larger space. It sounds really neat, but there’s zero airflow in there so I won’t be able to see it for a while yet.

        5. BatManDan*

          Charlottesville VA has a co-working space in an old bank. My town, Columbia SC, has a lofts-style apartment building in an old bank. One tenant has the actual vault as his bedroom. Up the street, a Sheraton in an old bank, bar in the old vault.

      2. Jessica*

        In Cambridge, MA there used to be a Herrell’s ice cream shop in Harvard Square that was in a former bank building. You could kind of tell that the counter where they scooped the ice cream used to be where the tellers were. And they kept the vault! You could eat ice cream in it! There was a massive permanently open vault door, and they had painted the interior of the vault like you were under the sea (leaning into the slightly claustrophobic vibe in a cool way!), and there were a few tables and chairs in there. There were more in the former lobby, so you didn’t have to eat your ice cream in the vault, but you could, and it was fun. This was also the 80s/90s.

      3. Slow Gin Lizz*

        Yeah, I think my brother also had a job like this, selling encyclopedias or something. He felt so bad that the only sale he’d made that day was to an old guy who just wanted to talk that he quit at the end of day 1.

      4. Turtlewings*

        I used to work at a library that was in a former bank building. The YA section was in the vault!

      5. kicking-k*

        I’ve been to several pubs in old banks (including vault) in the UK, and I once worked for a banking archive which had repurposed a vault as a archive repository. It was certainly secure! And opening the big door was pretty cool.

        1. Sharp-dressed Boston Terrier*

          Shout out to the Midland in Bearwood, Birmingham! Can’t drink in the vault, but the ex-bank atmosphere is perfect.

      6. sb51*

        There’s a grocery store in Cleveland that has back offices in an old vault – for MCU fans, it’s where they filmed the Winter Soldier chair scenes in before the grocery store took over the old bank building. (It’s also just a drop-dead stunningly gorgeous old building now that the grocery has restored it, though I’m not actually sure if you can see any of the vault as a customer.)

      7. Nancie*

        My mom’s childhood church purchased the vacant next door bank building back in the 70s or 80s. For a while, one of the Sunday school classes was held in the vault.

      8. Actually, WTF*

        I worked at a place like that too, in the late 90’s, for one day. Turns out it was a scam that I read about in the newspaper a couple of months later. The script was the WORST! It had objections for everything, including how to overcome an objection if a spouse has recently died.

    3. Miss Thymia*

      I was in a similar position at my university, their call center asking alumni for donations. Had one day of orientation and training — listening in on calls, role playing calls, and making a couple real calls by the end of it.

      But I hated every minute, so I just never went back. I never got a call or anything about why I ghosted. I’m guessing it happened frequently enough that no one cared.

      1. Richard Hershberger*

        My school’s alumni association has tracked me through going on forty years of moves. I joined it right after graduation because it gave me library privileges through the entire state system. Once I moved out of state that no longer was relevant, so I let it lapse. I have never notified them of any change of address since, meaning that they have paid good money to chase after me. I feel not the least urge to send them any, but back when I would get the occasional phone call from one of the students I was polite as I declined the honor.

        1. OMG It's 2024*

          I love the John Mulaney bit about this. “I paid you over a hundred thousand dollars to go to your school and you’re asking me for MORE MONEY?”

          1. Richard Hershberger*

            I can see two scenarios where someone might reasonably give the college money out of sheer sentiment: A small school where everyone, students and faculty, knew each other and this was a grand shared experience, or a football school where the donor regards this as paying back for a winning record. I loved college. I can honestly say that it was one of the happiest periods of my life, with the freedom of adulthood but without the responsibilities, and with a tightknit circle of friends spending practically all our free time together. But the school itself was a large state school with a student body in the tens of thousands. I have no sentimental attachment to the institution itself.

            1. OMG It's 2o24*

              True, and I get it, but also, SO MANY schools have enough in endowments etc… that every student could attend for free, and they make so much on athletic programs, etc… I left with 60K in student loans. I was NOT about to give MY college any more money for sure! And of course, John Mulaney is much funnier than I am ;)

          2. Zephy*

            That’s more or less what I said the last time the alumni relations office called me to hit me up for donations. I pinky-promise I’m not going to forget where I went to college, so if I should ever find myself in a position to make a donation, I’ll call you. To their credit, no one has called me in ten years.

            1. AnonORama*

              I’m always nice to the students who call asking for donations, because I remember some of my friends doing it for their work-study jobs and being miserable. I do have to admit that one year I said I was renovating the house and couldn’t donate, which was semi-true (I did have to cut back on donations, although I wouldn’t have donated to my college even if I’d had the money). Fine for then, but I’ve used that line now for at least 15 years, including the 10+ since I sold that house! I’m not a fan of lying in general, but it’s quick, polite and understandable.

            2. goddessoftransitory*

              I get hit up occasionally from my old school (online) and snort at the idea. Funny how you couldn’t track me down for the reunion but the alumni fundraising office had no trouble, school.

        2. elle*

          I flunked out of my first attempt at college (small community college) due to too much partying. They now send me the alumni newsletter and regular requests for $$$, just as if i actually graduated. *shrug*

        3. Some People’s Children*

          I try to be polite since they are students trying to pay for school. I made a girl cry one year when I agreed to let her update my info so they’d stop bugging my mom. She started crying when I wouldn’t actually give money. Apparently she made more money herself if I actually gave money.

        4. Jonathan MacKay*

          Could be worse – Two years after I graduated, and the same year my ex-fiancee cut all ties with me, I got a letter from my school’s alumni org addressed to us both. That was an ‘entertaining’ phone call, because I was talking to someone who knew us both pretty well, so it was almost hilarious to hear their reaction to my issue – forget bending over backwards apologizing, this was akin to body origami!

      2. LAM*

        The call center army university overscheduled almost nights and sent a number of people home if they had more people show up than phones. Toward the end of my lone semester, I volunteered to go home most days because I hated core of the work. I’m lying, I do like data entry and didn’t mind the data portion. I didn’t like the fake small talk.

        We did get to go on some cool tours and meet key figures to help us the different schools, programs, history, etc. And we got free food multiple times a month. I guess that helped with retention a bit as it seemed they just wanted enough warm bodies to make it through the semester. We had some people quit end of the semester, but I’m surprised most made it. Especially as it was in the early aughts.

        I went to work in the campus bookstore and library/archives/museum afterward. So much better for my sanity and resume.

    4. bishbah*

      My one-day telemarketing job was selling subscriptions to the city’s major opera company on commission. Good product (if niche), non-scummy tactics, but I knew firmly by the end of day one that it was Not For Me. I told my supervisor on the way out that I would not be back and she didn’t look surprised or particularly disappointed.

      Not longer after I had another job that involved cold-calling and I only stomached it because it was not 100% of the job, my success at it didn’t directly impact my pay, and the campaign was of short duration.

  5. Goose*

    Got an internship right out of college–it didn’t pay but they promised there would be space for a full time job soon. Learned on my first day that instead of writing content, we were writing SEO articles on “Top Five Rooftop Bars” and other stuff to lead people to the main website that sold…. something. I halfheartedly wrote one piece, then quit over email.

    1. Knope*

      Okay, but this is a legit content writing job. That’s a decent intern gig for those interested in becoming writers/communication professionals. SEO writing is a huge thing and almost all companies look for these skills. Perhaps this company was not one you were passionate about, but the concepts learned here would have been highly transferrable to another company.

        1. Swiss Army Them*

          listicles are actually where most content writers start. they’re a simple way to learn SEO basics while also producing fairly easy content. they’re also hard to mess up; you’re not gonna give an intern an article that represents the company’s ethos and thought leadership. from the reader side, yeah, listicles aren’t great, but they’re really excellent practice for beginning content writers. SEO writing isn’t intuitive.

      3. Starbuck*

        Still good that they quit because I highly doubt it was a non-profit they were writing SEO listicles for so there’s no way this was a legal unpaid internship.

    2. Belle*

      It sounds like this would have been writing content – just not content that you agreed with or found valuable. Totally understand it wasn’t a good fit for you but definitely could be for other interns.

    3. Swiss Army Them*

      As someone who works in content and SEO, though, that IS content writing. I’m honestly curious about what you were expecting. The vast majority of entry-level writing jobs are for marketing blogs and SEO purposes. Yeah, soulless listicles aren’t exactly fulfilling to write, but they are content and do serve a purpose. I started out writing those things and now I’m far enough in my writing career to craft interesting and fulfilling pieces to read, but still serve a marketing purpose.

      The fact is, you can write an excellent article for a blog. and pour your whole soul into it. But if you don’t know SEO basics, no one will see it. It’s not for you, but it is valuable.

      Were you thinking you would be writing pieces more akin to thought leadership? Because entry-level copywriters or interns rarely write those, they’re saved for leadership.

      1. Swiss Army Them*

        Also, “Five Rooftop Bars to Try” is the exact kind of assignment you would give an unpaid intern, so that their paid writers can craft the richer pieces. Again, totally fine if that isn’t for you, but I think this is a case of you misunderstanding the content writing industry.

        1. Starbuck*

          A for-profit content writing business shouldn’t be using unpaid interns for tasks like this. They also failed one of the other requirements for offering an unpaid internship by lying about the possibility of a job afterwards:

          “Courts have identified the following factors as part of the test:”
          …
          “The extent to which the intern and the employer understand that the internship is conducted without entitlement to a paid job at the conclusion of the internship.”

      2. k*

        It is certainly a legit job, but it’s one that actively makes the internet less usable and has contributed massively to the current decline in the usability of search engines (see: Cory Doctorow and the concept of platform decay with regard to Google Search). The writing is often low-quality and keyword-stuffed, and imo can be borderline unethical if content is not clearly marked as advertising/marketing. I don’t blame anyone for having philosophical problems with it or not wanting to produce it, especially unpaid.

        1. FionasHuman*

          Thank you! I’m a journalist and writer, and have been quietly seething reading the comments about how “content” writing supposedly serves a useful purpose. You have responded not only correctly, but with far more tact and grace than I would be able to manage. “Content,” including now the sewer of AI-spewed garbage, is leading to the enshitification (another Doctorow term) of the internet well beyond social media.

          1. Florp*

            Yeah, this drives me nuts. Half my Google searches these days return long essays on websites that are just stuffed with SEO spam or scraped from other people’s content. I just read a how-to article that stopped halfway through the steps (I guess it hit its target word count) and another was a wall of text that included the same unfinished sentence repeated in each paragraph. Probably most of them are AI generated. Meanwhile, I’m writing relevant high-quality content about a specific product I make, and Google dings me for not writing enough filler.

            Also, props to the Doctorow fans.

        2. Emma*

          Agreed, but we’re now entering an even worse phase with this stuff: where it won’t even serve the side purpose of helping people get a start in the writing industry, because it will all be produced by LLMs at horrifying environmental cost.

    4. Nameless*

      Isn’t an “unpaid internship” for someone who’s no longer a student just fraud (at least in the US)? My understanding is that internships have to be compensated with credit hours if they’re not paid, and if you’re no longer a student…

      2. Avery*

        It’s not necessarily fraud, but it’s suspect at least. An unpaid internship is only legal if it benefits the intern more than the company; the exact details of what qualifies can get hazy, but giving interns school credit is an easy way to a) give them something tangible for their work and b) connect it back to their school and education. Without that… it’s possible that an internship could still be legal, that they really are teaching an intern more than just using their work output for free, but a lot of the unpaid internships out there don’t actually live up to the criteria that would make them legal. As with so much else in labor law, the trouble is in getting it enforced when many employees either don’t know or don’t care about the laws being broken…

    5. BecauseHigherEd*

      I used to do this! To be fair, SEO is a factor in a lot of content writing nowadays, even if it’s not explicitly about marketing. It also taught me a TON about churning out good-enough content on a short timeline. Not a forever-job but definitely a good way to earn your stripes!

      1. BecauseHigherEd*

        Adding also–my husband is a marketer. A lot of “articles” you read today (even on news sites like The Guardian) are really just ads that have been sponsored by private companies with tons of sexy little keywords built in.

    6. Ancient Llama*

      For us non-writers, what is an SEO? Also how does an “content writer” differ? Legitimate question, but the 2 words together aren’t making sense to me. Are you a content writer if you write articles for a newspaper, including their website? Is writing the material for a retail company’s website not content because it is advertising? What about opinion pieces, advice columns or humor for a newspaper website? To me all those things are “content,” thus my confusion.

      1. Hi-C*

        I don’t have a good answer regarding content writer, because I kind of feel the same way. but SEO stands for search engine optimization. Basically, it is a way of using key words and phrases so your page will be a top Google result.

      2. BecauseHigherEd*

        You’re 100% correct–it’s all content writing. SEO is just a form of optimizing the content.

  6. red flag anon*

    I once had a supervisor in a call center spend my entire first day of training telling me (very dull) stories about her personal life and listing all of my soon-to-be coworkers and giving reasons why I shouldn’t trust each one. I should’ve left that day but unfortunately I stuck around for three horrendously toxic years.

      3. Technically a Former Director*

        “Have you ever quit on your first day? (**Or should you have?**)”

        Seems to fit the second half. :)

    2. FricketyFrack*

      Honestly, all call center jobs would probably warrant quitting on the first day. I’ve worked at 2 and they were both horrifically toxic because the job itself kind of sucks and the monitoring is so OTT that it’s usually the worst people who stay long enough to make it to management, and they perpetuate the cycle. I worked at the first one for almost 3 years and I wish I’d never even applied.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I had a friend who was extremely embarrassed by her retail job at a clothing boutique. (I never understood why it was so embarrassing; something about it being in a mall?). She told me she’d found a new, more prestigious job with growth opportunities… in a call center.

        I still don’t understand why she thought it was an upgrade.

      2. Bananaphone*

        I quit a job in my first shift. it was for adults with disabilities and they did not tell me I would need to transfer people who could not weight bear out of their wheelchair by myself. I couldn’t do it, and I was a very young not very strong person with absolutely no training. I also couldn’t reach my supervisor for help. this is over 30 years in my past so I barely remember what happened.

        1. pedant*

          “they did not tell me I would need to transfer people who could not weight bear out of their wheelchair by myself”

          what the unholy heck? how would even go about doing this without hurting themselves AND the client? I’ve worked 25 years with people who use wheelchairs, and I am at a loss, unless these adults weighed 65 lbs!

  7. Non techie tech editor*

    I did data entry for 4 days as a second job many years ago. I’d leave my day job, grab something to eat on the way, and report to the second job where I sat in a silent cubicle with hardly another person in sight and type for 4 hours. After 4 days I couldn’t take the mind numbing boredom and told my boss on my way out I wouldn’t be back.

    1. Spicy Tuna*

      I don’t know, a silent cubicle with no other people around for 4 hours sounds pretty sweet to me!

      2. Lenora Rose*

        It really really depends on the data entry.
        Entering a bunch of different data into a system, with some discernment needed, ideally with music allowed? Sure, I’d do it. Even enjoy it for stretches. It’s an easy job to not take home. I did a lot of temp jobs like that and even liked it.

        Entering the exact same code over and over into each already existing data line on the same system for hundreds upon hundreds of lines because the spreadsheet is proprietary and the (not-small, very solvent) business is literally unwilling to buy a $500 upgrade that will let them fill that info and any future such items into all lines in one shot? I literally sang every song on some of my favourite albums to myself to try and drill through and was still miserable. I called that one soul-killing when I asked the temp agency if I could be assigned to a different task. (I’d done other data entry and filing for the same company, but it was nowhere near that horrid. Although that’s also the company that caused me to lose my wedding ring, so I can’t say they’re on my favourites list.)

        1. Happily Retired*

          “Although that’s also the company that caused me to lose my wedding ring, so I can’t say they’re on my favourites list…”

          OK, I’m sorry, but I really need to hear the rest of THIS story!

    2. king of the pond*

      This would be my ideal side gig if I were allowed to listen to music or watch videos in the background. If not… yeah, I wouldn’t be able to handle the boredom either.

      1. The Original K.*

        I did a temp gig years ago that was basically this – enter the data (it was a finite amount, I had literal piles to get through), listen to or watch whatever as long as it was safe for work, you get an hour lunch that we’ll pay you for. My introvert self loved it!

        1. Smithy*

          I had a student job like this in a hospital, where I was scanning forms that tracked how long people were restrained to their beds and then cleaning the data from the scan into the system. As a part-time student job, this was great. I don’t remember if I could listen to music (I don’t remember if this was pre/post iPods and if the idea of asking to bring my discman would have occurred to me), but even so, I do remember it positively because I could do it largely independently, let my mind wander, etc.

          That being said, the content of this data was rather grim, so I could easily see how it would not be the job for everyone.

        2. kicking-k*

          I had a similar one pre-smartphone (and pre-YouTube etc. by over a decade) and we were all at dumb terminals, so no internet… I don’t recall if we were allowed headphones. (Maybe not. They were very focused on optics, and we weren’t allowed to come back to our desks during lunchbreak lest we be seen not working. Which wouldn’t have been an issue if there had been a breakroom.)

          It wasn’t so bad. The major snag for me was the pressure to exceed targets for the amount of data entered – and that they made you clock out to go to the toilet!

        3. Deejay*

          The best temp job I ever had was spending a week tracking desk usage at an office. Every hour I’d go round four floors with a handheld device inputting whether someone was sitting at a desk or not. I’m a fast walker and typist. And also, one and a half of those floors were unoccupied so all I had to do there was stick my nose in to make sure there was nobody there and input a line of zeros. So I was all done in about ten minutes and I could then spend fifty minutes sitting in the canteen with a good book. Repeat every hour for the working day.

        4. radiant*

          I had a temp job like this too, inputting grant applications for an EU grant (pre-Brexit obviously) for students. They had booked me for six weeks but had underestimated my typing speed, I got through the giant piles in three. But it was a lovely office and they liked me (and I’m still in touch with someone I worked with there, and it’s been 15 years since I did it!!) so they kept me on for the extra three weeks and I just hung out and did any ad-hoc admin stuff they threw my way haha.

    3. ferrina*

      I did this once upon a time. It’s definitely something that some people hate and some people love. I listened to a certain D&D podcast while I did it and found the whole thing quite lovely.

      1. OMG It's 2024*

        Dungeons and Daddies? (Yes, before anyone loses their mind and thinks it’s porn; it’s legit a D&D podcast that is often hilarious!)

    4. Panicked*

      I did this too! It was a fantastic summer job for me. No coworkers to talk to, no meetings, no real management to speak of as long as you were hitting your input targets. I listened to so many great albums that summer.

  8. Former Red and Khaki*

    Many many years ago in the ye olde days of phone books and finding jobs in the classifieds, I was in college and desperately needed money. I answered a classified ad about what I THOUGHT was an admin type position; even the short interview sold it as such. I showed up to the training the next day, and come to find out it was actually a telemarketing job where you literally sat at a cube with a phone book and phone, they told you what letter to start at, and you just started at the top and cold called people trying to sell them something. It’s been *cough* over 20 years so I don’t remember exactly what, but I’m pretty sure it was something insurance/medical related, and they definitely had a specific script if the person was older/vulnerable to try and trick them into buying whatever scam it was. I suffered through that first day, and then I went in the very next day and quit. I just remember telling the guy that this was absolutely not what I signed up for and I honestly didn’t care if I got paid for my one day. I don’t think I ever did get a check from them. A great many bees dodged that day.

    1. Spooncake*

      The exact same thing happened to me, except the company I worked for sold double-glazed windows and almost every call I made resulted in the customer yelling at me because the windows they’d already bought were garbage. Towards the end of my second day, I went into another room to ask a question and was told, “the girls don’t come in here when the men are talking.” I didn’t go back for a third shift- and no, I don’t think I ever got paid either.

      1. milkdudsnotdrugs*

        My eyes are bugging out of my head reading this. Not only is it just astoundingly offensive and demeaning, but the distinction in the sentence between “men” and “girls” is so very telling. Without a doubt, you made the right decision!

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        THE GIRLS.

        And the place didn’t burn to the ground because you are a better person than I.

    2. Merci Dee*

      Something similar to this happened to me. I was working with a temp service for a while, during a period when I was trying to find a full-time job. I told the temp service that the one type of job that I absolutely could not work was telemarketing/collections calls, but that I could work data entry all day long. No big deal — the lady that I was working with was great about finding jobs that fit in with my request.

      One day, the owner of the temp agency (a guy) called me up and said they had an assignment for me. One of the law offices in our city needed someone to do some data entry, so they were sending me and another person over for the job. We get to the law office, the office manager show us each to a separate office. As I sit at the desk that had a phone and no computer, the lady hands me two piles of stapled pages. As she explained, one was a script, and the other was a list of people I was supposed to cold call to sell the legal partner’s Very Important Guide to Legal Stuff You’re Not Smart Enough to Know That You Don’t Know (TM). The office manager whirled around and disappeared to her office while I sat there blinking. I briefly read through the script (which got more and more ridiculous as it went along) and went to the office manager’s desk. I gave her back the script and the list of targets, and told her that there must have been some kind of misunderstanding because I had been brought in for data entry to get their database up to date. She told me they never outsource any kind of data entry jobs like that because of confidentiality issues, so I needed to get to making the calls. I thanked her for her time, gathered my things, and walked out about 15 minutes after I walked in.

      When I got back to my car, I called the temp agency and talked with the lady that I had been dealing with for my entire tenure. Told her about the phone call from the owner about the data entry gig, the location where I was sent, and then about the cold calls I had been asked to do. She said that the owner had been sending people out to that gig for weeks, but most of them left after a couple of days. He had originally asked her if I would be available for the job, but she told him that I had opted out of telemarketing gigs, so she wasn’t going to call me about it. That’s when the owner decided it would be a great idea to call me up and lie about the kind of work that was required in order to get me over there. He thought I’d just sit there, suck it up, and do it rather than walk out. He was shocked (shocked!) when he found out I walked out of the job almost as soon as I got there.

      Turns out she had a much more suitable job for me that I was able to go to the next day, so that worked out.

      1. You want stories, I got stories*

        This reminds me of my own story. I was also working for a Temp agency and had said I wasn’t interested in any telemarketing jobs. They respected that I never offered me one.
        Until they did.
        I show up and they had been working on this project, and they needed me to call hospitals to find out who the CEO, CFO, a few other high ranking positions, their mailing address, so that we could send them information to invite them to something.
        Needless to say I was very slow at doing this, as phoning people was not my strength. I only lasted a day there.
        When I spoke with the temp agency and they told me that I didn’t need to go back, I said, “That is ok, that was a telemarketing job, I didn’t like it anyway.” The job was only for a few days, so sucking it up for that long was entirely plausible. But then the temp agency did inform me that “Cold calling people is not telemarketing.”
        But I did get called to go back the next day, because a slow worker is better than no worker, and the temp agency had no one else available. They also had no one other place to place me. So I went back one more day, still hated it.

        1. Princess Sparklepony*

          That isn’t really telemarketing. That’s more info gathering. You aren’t trying to sell anything, you are just updating databases.

          Telemarketing is trying to sell someone a product they likely don’t need at all.

          1. I Have RBF*

            Splitting hairs. Any time you are cold calling people to get something from them, money or data, could be considered telemarketing, IMO.

      2. Kayem*

        I was going to say, that feels so much like the temp job I posted about near end of thread but my temp agency straight up ghosted me after that. I wish I was surprised that there’s so many stories of temp jobs turning out to be call centers, cold calling, or telemarketing.

    3. Richard Hershberger*

      For me it was a pyramid scheme going from office to office flogging knock-off perfume. I figured out pretty quickly what it was, but not before I had foolishly gotten in my “trainer’s” car and rode to the next town over to hit the pavement. So I tagged along until it was time to drive back, then walked away.

    4. Bibliovore*

      I had one of these in the early ’80s. Lasted one day. Just didn’t show up the second day.

  9. Ex-prof*

    My first day working as a waitress at a subterranean cafe in Crystal City, Virginia. I was too slow, very confused (did not know at the time I have ADD), no one left me a tip, and one guy left without paying. When I was told that his $12.59 lunch bill was on me, and did the math on what I’d earned for my shift (12.54) I quit on the spot.

    1. Siren of Sleep*

      I’m not sure if you know this, but at the least for anyone who is serving and doesn’t know: This is illegal. You manager cannot force you to pay unpaid tabs/bills. Also, if you are a server and don’t make enough in tips to average out to minimum wage the restaurant is obligated to pay you the difference so you make minimum at least.

      1. i drink too much coffee*

        ^^^^^^ this!!! When I was a bartender I had a manager try to make me pay a walk out bill of about $150. He tried to say policy was that after 9 p.m. we had to have a card on the tab to pay. Which was true, but it was never followed. However, as it happened, I didn’t trust this dude and DID make him have a card on file. It just declined. Literally 0% of it was my fault.

        I’d worked there for probably 3-4 years at that point and told him he could take it up with the owner because if I had to pay it, I was quitting. It was never brought up again.

      2. boof*

        Yep; although I think the US fed law the tip min wage is only $2.13 per hour (less than regular min wage); and an employer will probably fire a server who doesn’t consistently make min wage in tips so still tip your server in any tipping place! This has been a PSA (I still kinda hate that scene in reservoir dogs where this notion that servers automatically get min wage and tips are on top of that goes unchallenged – no tips are pretty much their entire money – again for servers – tipping creep for a lot of other gigs has gotten weird and confusing to me tho)

        1. TG*

          No you have to be paid up to the states minimum wage so for example in MA it’s $15 an hour. At a fine dining pan e I worked out staff were paid 90 minutes at that rate for setup and then went to server rate of five something and wanted tips and if their tips were less than the $15 they were “grossed up” to that.

        2. Zombeyonce*

          I was a server at a breakfast-all-day restaurant for a month and made almost no money. The people there the longest got to choose their sections and always gave me the one where only 2-3 tables would be sat during my entire shift (I still wonder if they were paying off the hostess). After filling out the paperwork day after day to get paid the $2.13 minimum wage because I didn’t make enough in tips, I gave up.

          I’m still not sure how they thought making 2 servers incredibly busy with full sections all night and letting the third just sit there for hours was a way to keep new people, but I wasn’t management.

          1. Random Dice*

            I never tip less than $10 if I sit down and eat.

            That’s such a low bar, but most people don’t tip well.

        3. Parttimer*

          In some states, like Montana, servers do make minimum wage and get tips on top. Granted, when I was a server in VA my employer told us that we got no wage because we were “guaranteed one table per hour”. So only got tips. Definitely not legal, but it’s so hard to push back!

        4. Yorick*

          Employers are required to pay minimum wage if the tips don’t equal that. Let’s stop going along with the idea that employers can pass their expenses on to customers without actually putting them in the price of the product.

        5. Observer*

          Yep; although I think the US fed law the tip min wage is only $2.13 per hour (less than regular min wage);

          That only applies if you get enough tips. That is, your employer needs to pay that much no matter how much you get in tips. But if you don’t get enough to bring you up to the regular Federal minimum wage, the employer needs to pay it.

        6. fhqwhgads*

          The reason there is a lower min wage in some states for tipped positions is because the tips are supposed to make up the difference to the real min wage, and when they don’t the employer has to pay the difference. It’s rare for them to actually do it, but that’s a whole different illegal kettle of fish.

      3. Reality Check*

        Former waitress here. I waited tables for 10 years during the 90s. We knew it was illegal to make a server pay the tab for a dine & dash customer out of their tips, but restaurant owners made us do exactly that, All. The. Time. Hopefully things have changed since then, but somehow I doubt it.

      4. Ex-prof*

        I didn’t know it then, though I do now. The guy who left had committed a crime, and I just accepted that I had to make restitution. Ah, to be young again, but less dumb.

        Later I had another waitressing job and different violations, so I quit again. The violations in the restaurant biz just go on on and on.

    2. Ex-prof*

      Just saw Alison’s updated instructions:
      * why it was so bad
      Well, besides the above, on the one winter day I worked, I left my home in DC, took the metro, walked underground to the undergound job, worked underground, took the metro back to DC, and never saw the sun.

      * how you quit
      The manager started to ream me out for having done such a bad job on my first day. I told her I quit.

      * how your hasty exit was received
      She immediately changed gears and tried to talk me out of quitting.

      * and any other interesting details
      While I was there, I heard another waitress, who was Black, being scolded by the manager, who was not Black, for wearing black stockings instead of “flesh tone”. Hoo boy.

    3. Laura*

      Side note, but I used to love going to the subterranean mall there when I was a kid in the 90s. My grandparents lived nearby.

      Sorry about the job though

  10. Calpurrnia*

    Mine is very tame compared to some of these, but in high school I got hired at a mall store known for their scented soaps and lotions. My first day, after filling out all my tax paperwork and whatnot, they had me sit in a cramped back room and watch training videos for 5 hours. One of which was focused on repetitive close-ups of how precisely to rub sample lotion onto customers’ hands. I was really uncomfortable with the idea of having to demonstrate the concept of hand lotion in what felt like an overly intimate way, and told them actually this job was really not for me.

      1. Kermit's Bookkeepers*

        I kind of love this, because I’m a member of the population that a) hates being followed around stores by overly solicitous sales people and b) DOES NOT WANT TO HOLD HANDS WITH THEM. Hoping this kind of service is dying off a little in the pandemic.

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          I also haaaaaate overly solicitous salespeople. On the rare occasion when I actually am looking for a specific thing, I will talk to the salespeople, but otherwise, a quick, “Hi, welcome to our store, let me know if you need anything” is all I want. (Ironically there was one time when I really did want help at a store that normally did have overly solicitous salespeople and for some weird reason not a single person approached me at all. It was mind boggling.)

          1. Some People’s Children*

            Some salespeople seem to have a gift for bugging you except when you actually need help. Yes, you Best Buy!

        2. Yorick*

          OMG and this particular store has SO MANY employees bothering you, you can’t just go in and buy your item and get out.

      2. former recruiter*

        Definitely Bath and Body Works – I worked there in college and remember these videos from the mid 2000s. I definitely did not rub lotion on people but also didn’t get fired/talked to for NOT doing it, so there’s that.

    2. No Longer Gig-less Data Analyst*

      Was this Lush? Because my daughter worked there for about a year as a college freshman, and she said creepy guys would sometimes come in and ask for sample hand massages *retch*

      1. froodle*

        the Lush version of customer service is SO open to making their staff vulnerable to predators. I loved the scents and took a job just for the discount, but it was not worth it.

    3. Curtis E Interview*

      On a slight tangent, I’d love to hear more of people’s weird/terrible training stories. I had a retail job where the “training” was a quick session in the back room where we were told to smile and that the customer was always right, and then they sent us all out onto the shop floor knowing absolutely nothing about the store, the stock or the policies. (We were told we were expected to learn about this off the clock. I was a student, on a four-hours-a-week contract, so I simply didn’t bother.)

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          The customer is definitely always wrong. (Doesn’t AAM have a post or two about how “the customer is always right” is actually a terrible policy because it means that customers can abuse employees and management won’t do a dang thing about it?)

          1. Merci Dee*

            I really wish the whole saying had persisted in the mind of the general public: “In matters of taste, the customer is always right.” But when the original saying was meant to mean that customers can buy all the ugly-ass shirts they want to without the store staff telling them those are ugly-ass shirts, I guess I can see how the public has twisted the phrase into something that they believe can get them anything they want whenever they want it.

            1. Chirpy*

              THIS EXACTLY, it absolutely does NOT mean “throw all store policies and prices out the window per customer whim”

          2. Snailing*

            To my knowledge, the original concept of “the customer is always right” is more about what type of product/service sells and informs how to lay out your business plan and practices, not that the customer can demand anything and everything they want and they must get it. But a lot of retail establishments understand it the second way and thus let customers abuse their staff, which is really awful.

          3. Lowly office bod*

            the full expression is supposed to be

            “the customer is always right… in matters of taste”

            if a customer wants you to help them find the perfect pair of orange culottes to go with their purple shirt? of course, the culottes are in aisle 6.
            if a customer insists that they did actually get the owner to agree to give them a 20% discount the last time they were here? get out.

          1. Magenta Sky*

            Our philosophy is “The customer is always right, except when they’re wrong.”

            If there’s any doubt, give them the benefit of it. But when they’re wrong, they’re wrong. (And being abusive to employees is *always* wrong, even if they have a legitimate problem.)

            It’s good to work for a boss who understands that, in retail, *the* most valuable asset he has is his employees.

      2. Slartibartfast*

        Burger King, 1991. The training video had a plot, to make it more entertaining. It was about teaching aliens from outer space what hamburgers were and how to make them.

        1. Urban Fervor*

          Wait, I think I watched that recently on YouTube. I got a few minutes in before I said to my husband, “I would have quit on the spot if I’d been made to sit through this training.” Like it literally seemed to be marketed toward children, yet it was a training video for adult employees so, wtf?

        2. Wedge Antilles*

          As someone who has built training courses for a living, I absolutely love this idea. I’m sure the people taking the training thought it was super dumb.

        3. Ama*

          Target had a very similar one around 1997! The aliens were played by Dana Carvey and Victoria Jackson (who were still near the peak of their SNL fame at the time).

          I don’t remember anything except the weird network sitcom style intro that set up the premise.

      3. Distracted Procrastinator*

        I got hired as a dishwasher at a small town golf course restaurant. The owner was the cook. Obviously there was no training for the dishes other than “this is the on button.” But he also made me peel and devein the shrimp for the Wednesday night special and then at one point decided I needed to be the one to start making country gravy for the chicken fried steak. It was basically mix a packet and liquid but he just threw the stuff at me and told me to do it. No training. I guess I did it ok, because he started making me do it every time someone ordered it.

      4. Jane*

        When I worked at Starbucks years ago, the portal I had to log into on the store computer on my first day had a teeny-tiny Howard Schultz who would walk around the screen talking about the company after you finished one of the training videos and then tell you which video to watch next. Bizarre!

      5. MargoWin*

        The pulp knife (box cutter) safety training video at my summer mill job during college:

        Pat Cashman (from Seattle’s Almost Live tv show) played a tv news field reporter investigating a dangerous pulp knife on the loose.

        The script:
        ::Employee working with knife unsafely::
        :GIANT human-sized pulp knife lurking about::
        ::screams::
        ::Employee on the ground with fake blood::
        ::more screams::
        ::GIANT bloody pulp knife skulks away::
        Pat Cashman: “I’m here on the scene…”
        Repeat.

        To this day that remains the only training video I can remember in 35yrs of yearly work trainings. That giant pulp knife is legend.

      6. Steve for Work Purposes*

        I had a catering job at ~age 16 where the owner assumed (but did not ask) that I knew how to drive stick. He told me I would drive the catering truck to the event and he’d ride shotgun and navigate. I had to tell him that I’d only ever driven stick once in the mandatory ‘let’s get this over with’ day during drivers ed 2 years prior (they did the one day of state-mandated coverage and then said ‘if you actually ever need this your parents will teach you’). Instead of deciding to drive it himself, he decided he was going to teach me to drive stick as we were driving to the event. Turns out that’s not really the best way to teach someone how to drive stick, let alone a truck bigger than anything I’d ever driven before (I did have a car at 16 but it was a tiny sedan I used to drive me and my sibs to/from school and me to/from my various part-time gigs). We got to the event okay but I never got asked to drive the truck again. Haven’t driven stick since!

      7. goddessoftransitory*

        Yeah, inadequate training of all kinds has gone beyond a pet peeve into an entire menagerie of peeves for me. I work taking phone orders and we train new people for a solid week before they start taking calls. There is no point to dumping your employees cold into a customer facing job (or any job, really) and letting them flail.

      8. Kayem*

        In college, I used to work for a big blue retailer notorious for union busting. We had to watch these terrible anti-union training videos where the evil union reps would accost innocent workers in the parking lot to try and sign them up for their evil union scheme which for some reason involved handing cash over in the parking lot. Now the poor innocent employees are trapped in an evil union scheme when all along they had the benefit of an open door policy that was so much better because we’re all family!

        The actors playing the evil union reps were always POC while the innocent employees were always white. It was so gross. I wanted to sneak in and copy one of the VHS tapes while I was there so I could leak it but never could find a safe way to do it. I’d like to say this was the 20th century aughts, but this was the 21st century aughts.

    5. coffeeeecup*

      Ha, I worked for what I assume is the same shop many years ago and I got into a stand-off with one of the other assistants (I was a temp) who wanted me to do EXACTLY this, approach people in the queue and give them hand massages! I said no, firmly, and she acted like this was the most bizarre thing she’d ever heard. I can’t even imagine anyone would want to be offered this when they just want to buy soap.

      I found working there utterly hideous for the way they placed ‘being quirky’ ahead of ‘basic comfort and norms’.

      1. AnonORama*

        I worked at a smaller skincare/beauty/scent store in college and not only were we supposed to do hand massages with the lotion, we were expected to do small makeovers and offer to rub this super astringent peppermint oil stuff on folks’ temples as an “energy booster!” I’m a huge klutz and figured I’d probably blind someone if I got near their eye with the peppermint stuff or a mascara wand, so I didn’t offer and no one noticed. (If the manager was in the store, she LOVED to swoop down on people and suggest the weird touching stuff, which was weird but whatever. She didn’t make the rest of us do it, and it just didn’t happen when she wasn’t there.)

        I lasted a couple weeks, and mostly quit when I was ordered to follow younger customers and people of color around the store to see if I could catch them stealing. But the touching stuff was creepy for sure!

    6. Carrots*

      I know which store this is because I worked for them too in college in the 00’s. I can proudly say I never rubbed lotion on someone’s hand and never saw anyone else do that. Worked there for a year.

  11. Zona the Great*

    Yes. Two jobs ago. I was hired from an internal recruitment and it was mostly a lateral move. The interviews, all communication, and the job offer came from a man I really got on with and wanted to work for. When I started the job, suddenly I’m being told that my manager is actually a lady named Cruella. I had never met her and I now understand they deliberately hid her from new hires. On my first day, she looked at my body and, verbatim, told me I needed to be sure “control my tits” from bouncing as there were Muslim men working in the office (I was raised as an orthodox Jew so modesty was not foreign to me but I have DD cups). Next, she said she didn’t like working with women. She then told me she paid me too much money to train me (this was state government and she didn’t pay me a dime, the state did) so I was to figure out how to do a newly created job without asking for guidance. During lunch, I went to HR and told them I needed out right away and they told me I could only resign and that they couldn’t help me. I filed a Civil Rights complaint before I left and she’s still there two and half years later. Government, amirite?

    1. Zona the Great*

      I should add that when I told Cruella I wasn’t staying, she feigned ignorance at her stance that I couldn’t be trained because of my salary and said, “Wow! I didn’t know you made THAT much?!” basically gaslighting me. I know based on policy there that she got my full exit interview where I laid it all out there and I have seen her at industry conferences since then. She pretends she doesn’t recognize me.

        1. Zona the Great*

          Very well known. However, men will say, “I kind of like Cruella” and that’s because she loves men but they all seem to know that she’s utterly horrible. The bad thing is that she is very very good at her job.

          1. Llama Llama*

            Oh I had a Cruella as a manager. She was very good at her job but was hot and cold to people she managed. Everyone hated her but because she got stuff done and well nothing ever happened. She retired recently and management fawned over her and I honestly was ecstatic that she was leaving even though I hadn’t reported to her in 10+ years.

          2. Magenta Sky*

            She might be very very good at *parts* of her job, but a manager who quits the first day to get away from them is *not* “good at their job.”

            1. Observer*

              She might be very very good at *parts* of her job, but a manager who quits the first day to get away from them is *not* “good at their job.”

              Yeah, she is definitely costing the agency money, and she’s opening them up to trouble.

  12. Athenae*

    I’d just taken a part-time job working in an animal shelter. The place seemed kind of chaotic from the start but as a volunteer at another shelter I knew animal care could be like that sometimes. It didn’t pay great and the hours weren’t what I was promised, but … work hard and hope for improvements, right?

    The owner/manager was a screamer. On my second day she came into the shelter raging about her neighbor taking her parking space, complete with several racial and homophobic slurs, at the top of her lungs. I went home at the end of that shift and called the next day to tell them it wasn’t going to work out. She hung up on me before I finished quitting.

    The next job I took was sucky and chaotic in its own way but at least nobody screamed.

    1. Nuke*

      Animal shelters just seem like nightmares! I worked at one too, and it seemed like everyone there only had skills with animals, none with people. It was a non-profit, so we dealt with stuff like getting paid minimum wage for hard manual labor (which at the time was $7.25) while the CEO made six figures. The 2 supervisors were married to people working at my level, below them. These spouses were able to leave early all the time with unfinished work. We were “gently encouraged” to not take our 15 minute breaks, and shorten our lunches. I was written up for being 2-3 minutes late several times because I arrived to the building to find a locked front door, and was told it was my responsibility to find a way in (I was not given a key). When supervisors arrived with the keys, they would push ahead and clock in first, even if other people had been waiting 10+ minutes.

      Unfortunately I needed the job, so I was there for almost a year!!

      1. Dust Bunny*

        When you pay minimum wage for hard work you often get people who can’t command better pay and working conditions. Even my kennel tech days (at a vet’s office) paid better than that because my boss wasn’t stupid. He also wasn’t a screamer, and he trained kennel techs into veterinary assistants once he knew they were good workers.

      2. LCH*

        aw, i volunteered a lot at a shelter recently (during my unemployment) and they were lovely. yes, the majority of us were more comfortable with animals than with people, but none of us were missing stairs (unless it was me and i didn’t know). the manager at least was a people person.

      3. former animal person*

        I worked as a zookeeper for a while and a wise senior co-worker once said to me, “People don’t go into working with animals because they’re good with members of their own species.”

        1. Steve for Work Purposes*

          I use a similar version re myself when explaining why I went into animal science rather than following a lot of my family into healthcare. “I like dealing with cows more than I like dealing with people”. I am a people person but a lot of my relatives have to deal with people going through a lot of really difficult things and for me that’s a straight ticket to burnout. I do outreach/extension in my job, but it’s usually me collecting data from people, doing workshops/field days, or “here’s how [govt agency] can help you with this” so I see people on their good days. But if things are going weird, I’d much rather troubleshoot a cow or a sheep than a human.

    2. Allura Vysoren*

      I thought I didn’t have a story but you reminded me of mine.

      Horse barn. Paid under the table (like many of them are). The horses were well taken care of, this isn’t that kind of story, although I did side-eye the fact that the stone floors in the aisle crept into some of the stalls.

      I was hired to help feed, turn out, and clean stalls in the morning. The big issue, though, was disorganization. Two horses belonged to each stall–one horse in the stall during the day, a different horse in the stall at night. They had white boards with the names of the horses on the outside of each stall.

      Person I’m working with says, “Go get Cherry.” So I go to the stall that says Cherry. I do not find out that this ISN’T CHERRY until I’ve already turned her out with the others and the person yells that’s the wrong horse and takes off running to catch her again. I often wonder how I was expected to recognize all of these (very similar because it was a training operation for a specific breed) mislabeled horses when I spent about two hours total at this place.

      They told me they were trialing someone else and would let me know if they needed me back. Thankfully, I got a job offer for a full-time office job a week later and was able to tell them I wasn’t available anymore.

  13. Dances with Code*

    Yes, indeed I have quit a job within the first week.
    It was for a very small business, maybe a dozen employees total, in a bookkeeping/admin role. One of the things I was requested to do immediately for the job was become a notary public, and that was in process before my start date. On the first day of employment as I’m getting oriented, and procedures are being described to me, it was made clear that I would be expected to violate at least the letter of the notary public oath as I understood it on a regular basis in notarizing documents for other employees without actually witnessing their signatures. That and certain accounting procedures that seemed problematic to me regarding destroying documents including canceled checks on a very short time window convinced me it was not a job I could do without compromising myself. I quit the second day, having mulled it over after the first.

    1. Dances with Code*

      My immediate exit was received with disbelief and mild anger. The prior person in the role was due to be leaving, possibly retiring?, in a couple weeks, and apparently I was to be blamed for interrupting her departure. I didn’t feel safe enough to fully explain my reservations. I did cite the notary part, which was dismissed as me being hyper-fixated on rules, so I didn’t figure it would be of any use to explain my accounting procedures concerns.

      1. MassMatt*

        Wow. Since the only function of a notary is to certify that the signatures on the document are of the people they are professing to be, that’s not a minor detail. Those people had no ethics.

        1. Ama*

          Yeah I’ve had to get a couple documents notarized recently and even the online notaries require that you have a video call with them and show them your ID to prove you are both a real person and the real person you claim to be before you actually sign the document.

        2. Clisby*

          No kidding. That’s not some technical violation. (I hold a notary certificate, although I’ve never used it.) It’s a big deal.

      2. Claire*

        And who would be liable if someone took that document to court and tried to undermine it? The notary! You were totally right to not be willing to put yourself at risk of being sued for fraud!

        1. Dances with Code*

          Honestly I’m not sure, but I suspect not. I don’t even remember the name of the company, and of course it never made it on to my resume since I was there two days. This was almost 30 years and three careers ago for me.

      4. Distracted Procrastinator*

        I once had an employer who would have their assistant use their notary stamp when signing docs. So the assistant was signing and then notarizing with someone else’s stamp. No one thought anything was wrong with this. They did get more people registered as notaries so it stopped happening but it was a mind bender when I heard what was happening (first hand, not gossip.)

    2. JP*

      It is kind of crazy the attitude I’ve dealt with as a notary for my company. I’ve had employees’ family members come into the office to have me do (free) notaries for them. One even gave me attitude because I asked them for ID. I’d never even met them before. Another time I was asked by a coworker to notarize a signature of a client sent via email, who I’d never met before and wasn’t even in the same state as we were. When I explained to coworker that I couldn’t do that, he was like “yeah, I know, just thought I’d ask.”

      A friend of mine was also a notary for her company, and she ended up letting her commission lapse because she dealt with even worse than I did.

  14. Anon for this*

    Right out of university, I applied to work at a commercial art gallery. I had an interview and they asked me to come in the next day to do a “trial run” (read: unpaid!) in the gallery space itself. Once I got there, it seemed clear that the gallery was some sort of front for their kitchen cabinetry business that operated out of the back of the gallery and the whole thing seemed so sketchy that when I got home at the end of the day, I emailed them and told me it wasn’t for me. In retrospect, the “come do a trial run!” should have been the first clue something was amiss, but I was young and didn’t know anything.

  15. jen hen*

    One summer I got a job as a telemarketer. Cold calls, trying to sell a vacation package. I was sixteen and took it because it was close to my house and several dollars an hour more than the other jobs available to me at the time.

    It was awful. I had no idea what I was getting in to. I completed the two day training and spent one day on the floor, which was full of broken and half-working equipment. I figured most people wouldn’t answer – but they did. I was screamed at, cussed out, told to “get a real job”, and one memorable person asked me if I worked in a tall building, because if I did I should go jump off the top floor.

    On day four I went to lunch and just didn’t go back. I took a closer look at any job I applied for after that.

    1. Lenora Rose*

      Reading all of the telemarketer stories makes me so so so happy I decided I could not do that work and not even try.

      The folks I know who can still do phone-based work are all on incoming calls, outbound only on call-backs, usually tech support.

      I wonder who does actually thrive in cold call sales?

        1. Jaydee*

          My parents both smoked when I was a kid and I thought it was a gross habit and swore I would never smoke. Then I got a job in the call center for my university’s foundation. Calling the older alums was bad enough, but at least some of them had money and fond feelings and would make a donation. I wasn’t worried about my stats, just doing the work and getting a check. But then we started calling recent grads and it was so awful I started craving a cigarette every time I went outside with coworkers and some of them had a smoke break. I didn’t quit after only a week, but I did quit via a voicemail about 5 minutes before my shift was supposed to start one day, and I do not regret it at all.

      2. HavingWritten*

        In my early 20s I worked a few months part time in the call center of a prestigious regional theater in my area, selling season subscriptions. It was predictably awful in that mostly the people you called didn’t want to talk to you, and also the supervisor would hover and breathe down your neck while you were on the line and nitpick your responses afterward. They also advertised “bonuses” for hitting sales goals, but the goals were really high and then the bonus would be a $3 Starbucks gift card. But the really icky part, to me, was the way they aggressively recruited aspiring actors/theater kids, and framed the job as a way to get a foot in the door to the theater side of of things. It was very, very much not that at all, nobody from the theater side was EVER going to talk to any of us and I can’t blame them. After I’d been there 6 weeks I heard the supervisor refer to me as “one of our more seasoned callers” because turnover was so high, and soon after I ended up calling in to quit from public transit on the way to my shift, because I had texted the one friend I made there asking if she was coming in that day and she told me she had found another job. I got off a few stops early and met her for drinks instead. She was the only thing keeping me there, although I guess the hours were predictable and we did get free theater tickets sometimes. Not only have I avoided telemarketing since but it really soured me on that particular theater as a whole. I guess if you have too many bright eyed youngsters auditioning, funneling some of the poorest ones into a soul sucking non-theater job that will drive them away forever is one way to thin the herd?

      3. MigraineMonth*

        I’ve done get-out-the-vote calling (which I realize is very different from cold call sales in many ways), and I managed to get through it with a very low threshold for success. If I managed to tell one person in the entire shift where their voting location was, that was a superlative success.

        1. AnonORama*

          I did that once, and the organizer assigned me the list of people in the opposing party (apparently by accident). After three calls, having been called a dumb bitch, an f-ing communist, and various other delightful names, I walked.

      4. The New Wanderer*

        During college in the 1990s, I got a summer “receptionist” job at what turned out to be a telemarketing place claiming to support various charitable organizations. The receptionist job was basically just one of a half-dozen office helpers who did some data entry, envelope stuffing, and check collection from the mailed in responses to the stuffed envelope solicitations. The telemarketers sat in the adjacent building, which I entered exactly once for a very quick tour. The manager (son of the owner) liked to brag to the college-age office staff and told us to notice how the telemarketers dressed/looked – he said the ones who have dyed hair, lots of piercings, ripped clothes, actually make the best telemarketers because they don’t care about or aren’t bothered by the poor treatment they got during some calls. Obvious biases aside, there’s probably some truth to the type of people who can tolerate these jobs through an ability to prevent the faceless abuse from affecting them.

        I should have walked out and found a better summer job. I settled for removing the information of everyone I knew and all the obviously elderly check-writers from their phone directories so they wouldn’t be contacted again. There were a lot of problems with that place, nepotism was just the tip of the iceberg. It was investigated at least a couple times by the FBI and shut down altogether a few years after my summer working there.

        1. Zarniwoop*

          “ I settled for removing the information of everyone I knew and all the obviously elderly check-writers from their phone directories”
          Love it!

      5. goddessoftransitory*

        Yep. I’ve taken incoming calls for 20 years at this point, and there is no amount of money anyone could pay me to make cold calls.

    2. MadCatter*

      I worked at a telemarketing firm for several months in high school. The whole place was teenagers and retirees. Worst job I ever had, but it paid more than fast food I guess. I was told by one very angry man to walk into traffic.

    3. Pumpkin215*

      It is terrible. I had that job once because I had no options and was at the end of my rope. People could be so MEAN.

      I understood that no one wants to be bothered, especially at dinnertime. Just say “no thanks” and hang up! Women were the worst. I found it sad at how mean a woman would be to another female. I was yelled at, called names, told to find a “real job”, commit suicide, etc. You name it.

      The worst one, I will never forget. The name on the paper in front of me said “Mr. Smith”. So I called and asked for “Mr. Smith” when a woman answered. “Well he is down the street in the cemetery if you want to speak to him”, she growls at me. I’m in the middle of offering a horrified and sincere apology when she slams down the phone. It still haunts me.

      I didn’t know! I wasn’t trying to open a wound. I was trying to make enough money to buy groceries and pay bills, like every other human being.

      Please be kind. No one wants to be a telemarketer.

  16. Juliet O'Hara*

    I was hired to be a long-term substitute for a middle school science teacher. On the first day I showed up, I was handed a folder with all my class rosters, school emergency information, and a stack of what had to be 50 discipline referral forms. Naively, I told the school secretary she must have accidentally given me all the referral forms for all the subs that day. Nope. They were all for me. When I got to the room, there were no lesson plans. Generally, long-term subs are provided plans for the first week or so, and then they take it from there. I got nothing, so I had to wing it the best I could.

    Within an hour of students arriving, the teacher next door had called the school resource officer to try to help me restore order. That worked for about five minutes. In later periods, nobody would tell me their names, and I had no seating chart or pictures to figure out who was who. One student tried to tell me who she was when I took attendance, but the other kids drowned her out by chanting, “Snitch! Snitch! Snitch!” Kids started leaving the room without asking for or receiving permission and not returning. When I called the office to report this, I had to give physical descriptions, because I still didn’t know anyone’s name. I tried to get another staff member to come to my room to help me identify kids, but I couldn’t leave the room and no matter how many times I called the office, nobody came.

    By the end of the day, several fights had broken out, a desk was broken, and I hadn’t even had a lunch period because they pulled me to cover a different teacher during that time. I was done. I returned to the office after student dismissal, gave them back all the papers they’d given me, and let them know as politely as I could that I would not be returning the next day. Nobody seemed surprised and I walked out. With the eternal sub shortage, I had a different job the next day and nobody cared that I had quit the previous job. I subbed exclusively in elementary schools the rest of the year, then got a permanent job as a 4th grade teacher that I kept for almost 15 years.

    1. Neysalmd*

      I was working on an elementary Ed degree and started subbing for experience. I somehow got sent to a middle school one day. I came home in tears and swore I’d never work in a middle school again.
      (and mine wasn’t nearly as bad as yours)

      2. Ally McBeal*

        I volunteer at an afterschool program. We have a lot of paid-employee turnover because most of the teachers are in school for their teaching degrees and move on once their training hours are complete. The one guy who’s been there for longer than I have is the middle school teacher, and I literally dread the day he eventually leaves. Middle schoolers are ROUGH.

      3. NotAnotherManager!*

        My sister started out as a middle school teacher and almost gave up the profession entirely halfway through the first year. She moved to high school and love it. I just think middle school is terrible for everyone involved – teachers, students, and parents.

        1. Alison*

          As the parent of one middle-school student and one high-school student, I fully endorse your last sentence. The main selling point of my kids’ middle school seems to be that the teachers there genuinely love that age group and are happy to be working with these kids. You would have to, it is such a tough age!

          1. Ama*

            I taught after-school classes for middle schoolers and yeah, it’s rough even when it’s something they *want* to be doing.

            My mom likes to say that all three of her kids were very good for teenagers but the year we each turned 13 she wanted to send us to boarding school just due to the *constant* crappy attitude and boundary pushing.

        2. Lana Kane*

          My son just started 6th grade this school year and I’m already crying inside. And he’s a good student, I can’t imagine if he also struggled academically. I generally like his school, but you can definitely tell which teachers actually like and can work with this age group, vs the ones who are there for who knows what reason.

        3. MigraineMonth*

          Middle school seems like a bizarre institution. Let’s take all these young teenagers whose hormones are starting up, who are starting to rebel against authority, and who are focusing on peer social relationships above all else, put them all together, and see what happens!

          Not going to lie, I applied to private boarding schools just to try to get away from mine. Then as soon as high school started, all the same students who had been bullying and ripping each other apart mostly just chilled out an found their people.

      4. Katherine*

        Weird, I recently did a stint as a sub, mostly working at high and middle schools, and the one day I got assigned to an elementary school, I came home and said, “Never again!”

    2. ferrina*

      That’s awful. Part of me is impressed at the kids’ coordination, but chaotic middle schoolers are their own type of demonic torture.

    3. SarahKay*

      OT, but I love your user name – although I don’t think any of the Chalet School classes were ever that badly behaved; not even those naughty middles.

      2. Sharpie*

        The Chalet School had Miss Wilson, the terror of the Middles.

        (Great series, I much preferred the Chalet School books to Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers or St Claire’s books.)

    5. Richard Hershberger*

      I did a stint as a sub. I vastly preferred high school. I would probably do better that I did then with elementary school, now that I have had kids of my own, but at the time that age group seemed like aliens. Middle school? Always a challenge, but usually a manageable one. I was one of the few subs who could teach math at any level you would find in a high school, so the math teachers started requesting me. So that worked out. The advanced classes, where the kids were serious about it, even achieved rapport. I would explain things slightly differently than the regular teacher–not better, just differently–sometimes resulting in the light bulb turning on for a kid struggling with a concept: actual education!

    6. Irish Teacher.*

      Your experience sounds similar to, but even worse than, the situation I describe below.

      I will say in Ireland, it is pretty unsual for subs to get plans. Maybe if you are covering for a day or two, maybe. Though even then it would depend on why the teacher is out. If they are out due to bereavement or serious illness or something, you wouldn’t. If it was a planned absence, it’s possible. I did once get plans for the first couple of days of a longish term job but that teacher was super-dedicated. It was a maternity leave and she called me the day after her child was born to check in on how things are going. Just a cultural difference.

      1. not irish not a teacher*

        Wow, that’s interesting! Do you just come in and make an educated guess on what they’re working on, or is there some sort of “they should be learning about fractions, gravity and adverbs today” but it’s up to you on how to teach it?

    7. kicking-k*

      I was an English-language assistant, aged 20, in four schools in France. The elementary schools were delightful. The three hours a week I had in a collège… Well. It was middle school equivalent. The thirteen-year-olds were the worst. They wouldn’t tell me their names either (eventually I learned all but the identical two-of-triplets – thankfully the third brother was in another class). I wasn’t allowed to hand out disciplinary notices, and they knew this, so it was a free-for-all. I was not meant to be left alone with a class, but…

      Because I was only expected to be working in elementary schools, I was only trained for that, and I was useless. But it WAS only three hours a week. I didn’t quit, but I also didn’t go into teaching.

      1. Lana Kane*

        It’s really strange to me how kids can get away with not telling subs their names. I have a memory of this happening when I was in middle school…once. The sub passed around an attendance sheet for us to write our names, and many of the kids wrote things like Mickey Mouse, Superman, etc. The principal came over later and gave everyone a good reaming (I mean, she did have written proof!) Didn’t happen again.

    8. She of Many Hats*

      It takes a very specific soul to be a middle school teacher! May the Powers That Be rain eternal blessing on those who are happy teaching those hormonal, dangerously creative, boundary-stomping, life-is-changing-too-much kids!!

    9. virago*

      My sister has taught middle school (social studies) for years and wouldn’t teach either elementary school (not enough of a challenge) or high school (too jaded). So the goblins do have their fans!

  17. Kyrielle*

    I had just graduated high school and I took a summer job at a call center. I asked before taking it whether I would be making sales cold calls because I didn’t want to deal with how people react to those. They told me no. Truthfully.

    I was making non-sales cold calls, on the particular day I started, for the local teacher’s union pushing all their members to call their representatives and argue for a particular political position. Or if they wouldn’t call, write. Or if they wouldn’t write, let the union send a postcard on their behalf and in their name.

    There was, of course, a script. When they said ‘no’ to one you were to ask the next. About half of the recipients were willing, but I also got handed off to someone’s (based on voice and speech) preschool-age-kid, yelled at, etc. The most memorable one was someone who took the time to “educate me” about why the position was wrong and how stupid the union was, and how she wouldn’t be a member if she didn’t basically have to be. I chose to interpret that as ‘no’ to calling it in, and the ‘will you write in’ popped up. I looked at it, pressed no, pressed no on the postcard, and read the script thanking her for her time and got the heck off the call.

    I finished the day (I am not sure why, any longer!), went to the guy in charge, and told him I wasn’t coming back, I couldn’t do another day of that. It was very low-key all around; I was very shaken up and not aggressive, and meanwhile, he was resigned. I think he actually *said* something like “Yeah, that happens a lot”.

    When asking what I’d be doing, I should have just asked about cold calls, period. I’d rather be yelled at about someone’s customer service issue they’ve called in about than call someone who’s not expecting it, let alone about anything political.

    1. ferrina*

      My college does the thing where they get student workers to call alumni to ask for donations to the school. I was never rude to the students, but I told them exactly what my degree got me (i.e., nothing). My philosophy was that if I ever started getting a return on my investment I’d consider donating. I was factual and calm as I told these poor students my crappy career story (it was a really rough start). On the other end of the phone, I could hear the students regretting their life choices more and more.

      Finally someone put me on the do not call list.
      I really don’t get why they want you to go through the whole script. Surely your time would be better spent calling more people rather than wasting time with people who clearly aren’t receptive

      1. Ally McBeal*

        I feel really bad when my university calls me – I went on full need-based scholarship so I know that a lot of students in the call center are in the same scholarship program that I was in. But my university has made a lot of high-profile mistakes around race relations, and the Board is 98% white boomer men who don’t care at all about racial equality. So I tell the students “until the university comes up with a sufficient answer to deal with [Specific Issue that’s been plaguing us for 5+ years now, mostly because the Board collaborated with a white supremacist organization when making the decision] you will not see a penny of my money.” Fortunately they’ve all agreed with me (conservative board, liberal student body) and I can usually stop them before they run through the full script.

        1. Michelle Smith*

          I almost wish they’d call me instead of sending me mailers all the time. Calls are so much easier to ignore. Instead, they send me a chore (taking the unwanted mail to the building recycling bins).

          I am still high five figures in debt from that school. I’m not sending them a dime lol.

      2. Anonymask*

        I had to do a job like that for the week of spring break where I wouldn’t have had housing otherwise (non-working students had to leave campus, students working with the school got to stay). I was making cold calls to all current students living on campus and ask if they wanted to come back next year. I got a lot of “no” responses. I tried not to take it personally — we were calling long after students had already made plans for the next year, and many of them didn’t want the restrictions of living on campus. But man, it was rough.

        I got the award for most phone calls/engagement though. Most of the names on my list I recognized as seniors (graduating), or people I knew had already chosen to live off campus the next year, so I just marked them down as “left voicemail” in the system and moved on.

      3. Wendy Darling*

        I MA-ed out of a PhD program because my advisor was abusive. The donation calls started pretty much immediately (which really burned because I was broke from working for GSE wages for years and also unemployed because I had no job qualifications to speak of) and I kept trying to get them to put me on the do-not-call list but that would last maximum six months before they were back at it.

        I finally just blocked all the alumni association phone numbers. They haven’t called in a while so possibly they have my number down as nonfunctional now.

      4. A Little Birdie Told Me*

        I was one of those callers for a few weeks my spring semester. They had me calling either our fresh theater grads (who have no money but massive loans) or Boomer business school grads (who didn’t get their money by giving it away). The biggest givers were, of course, our social work grads. I quit because I was so stressed, I got a sinus infection. I swore if I were ever called, I’d donate just to prop up the poor kid on the other end of the phone, but I’ve never got a ring. I guess in the age of cell phones, they no longer have easy access to contact info.

      5. JustaTech*

        At my undergrad working the alumni donation phones was the best-paying non-work-study job on campus, but it paid well for a reason, ie, cold calling alums and asking for money.

        After I graduated I would either doge the calls or chat briefly about some school thing (“Oh it’s Sunday, how was steak night?”) because although I remembered my friends doing the job, I also didn’t have a great start to my career and felt very low about the whole thing.

      6. TaraGreen*

        I did the college alumni phone call gig for my school as well.worst/most awkward response I got was someone telling me (in an absolutely deadpan emotionless tone) that they were sitting at someone’s deathbed so could I call back later.

      7. Lily Rowan*

        If you don’t want the calls, you should ask to be put on the do-not call list proactively. It works!

      8. Not A Raccoon Keeper*

        One of the best side benefits of taking a job at my alma mater’s fundraising office (I was there in a non-fundraising role) was going into our system and marking myself as ‘do not call’. Chef’s kiss! I donate to research or scholarships I think are important, but on my own dang schedule.

  18. Gahhh*

    I got a part time job at a household goods-type retail store while working on my master’s degree in a big city. I thought it would be easy enough and not intellectually difficult. I was so wrong! During my first day of paid training, the existing employees were SO ENTHUSIASTIC about every item in the store. Really, they were just gushing about all the items and knew every little thing about every little aspect of those items. I could not imagine filling my brain with that much knowledge of household goods nor scraping together even half of their enthusiasm. One of the trainers was pretty cute (and was the most enthusiastic of all), but that wasn’t enough to stay. Plus it was an annoying bus ride downtown to get to the store. I quit after the one day of training.

    1. rahab*

      This sounds like a Store that sells goods that Contain things. They’ve got a reputation for being kinda culty.

    2. Cacofonix*

      Would be so nice to shop where employees knew a lot about their products tho’. My friend and I were thinking of going into business together once. She had a lot of knowledge and contacts in Europe in olive oil. We thought it would be fun to have a curated tasting bar and retail, before we ever saw such a thing. I loved the idea but hate olive oil. Anything but olive oil. Or any oil.

      Best be passionate about your product if going into business with it. Or interested enough as an employee. I would have been entirely bemused with all that household goods excitement too, and followed you out the door.

      1. JustaTech*

        When I worked at a used bookstore one of the general requirements of the staff was that we were at least sort-of interested in books, and vaguely knowledgeable about one general topic so we could shelve those books correctly (I worked Food and History).
        You would think this wouldn’t be super necessary, but then they had an employee shelve “Angels and Demons” (back when Dan Brown was *huge*) in the “Religion” section.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          I worked in a library during that time, and every time someone added their name to the absurdly long waiting list for ‘Angels and Demons’ I wanted to tell them it wasn’t even very good.

        2. goddessoftransitory*

          Oooof.

          I worked at Large Chain Bookstore years ago, and it astonished me how much customers expected us to A) have read every book in the place and B) be able to give them full essays on every topic under the sun.

          1. Laser99*

            Oh, I have direct experience with this. They think all bookstore employees sit around reading all day. Utterly absurd.

    3. Richard Hershberger*

      Back in my Walmart days, management (at least management above the store level) desperately wanted the hourlies to have this level of enthusiasm. There were a handful eager to buy in, but nothing like a critical mass. The rest of us quickly determined the minimum acceptable pretense required before we could get on with doing our jobs.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          That’s an above-minimum number of exclamation points. Possibly even excessive. *squints suspiciously*

  19. Busy Middle Manager*

    Temp office job that paid the equivalent of about $23/hr today. I could barely live on 40 hours X the amount but could make it work for a while. First day, find out “full time” = 35 hours because that’s when you get benefits. Got a few “why are you complaining” type comments in response as if it was some personality quirk that I live on a budget on a low salary.

    this was in 2009 and they processed foreclosure paperwork so in hindsight it was probably not a great environment to go into anyways.

  20. FormerProducer*

    I lasted one day at a fundraising call center at my university. The job was to call alumni and get them to give us money, there was an extremely rigid script we had to stick to with no deviations allowed. In my first call, the alumni said “this is a very awkward conversation” (couldn’t agree more, pal) and I quit that day and got a job as a nude model for the art department instead.

    2. Dust Bunny*

      Confession: I got a fundraising call from my college literally as I was walking out the door–I thought it might be my mom, whom I was going to meet, asking me to bring something that I had noticed she had left behind. I told the guy, sorry, I can’t talk now, I have to be somewhere, and hung up (which I will admit was pretty rude).

      I was headed back toward the back door when the phone rang again. I ran to answer it, again thinking it might be my mom, although I had already decided to bring the thing she’d left with me, just in case, but, no, it was the kid calling me back to chastise me for hanging up. “I’m just trying to make some money. My family can’t send me money for books.” (The tone implied that he thought my parents must have paid for all my stuff and I couldn’t understand.”

      “Neither could mine,” I told him, “So I scraped plates in the dining hall for four years.” And then I hung up again. When I was there, kids would deliberately make their trays extra messy before they sent them back. Dining hall was hard work. But it paid 10 cents an hour more than anything else.

      1. Goldfeesh*

        Oh, I loved my dining services job for the most part. It paid 7.75 to start in 2000, which is still higher than my state’s minimum wage. It was also a wonderful multicultural experience. I met one of my best friends there and my husband as well. ISU Dining Services 10/10.

        1. Dust Bunny*

          I loved mine, too. The lunch ladies were great. I’m sure they dreaded each year’s new crop of incompetent “help” but they never showed it. Even the ones who are retired come to school reunions because we all want to see them.

    3. Lita*

      I quit the exact same type of job after, I think, one week? And I’m someone who later worked in the same field – but those call center programs are awful.

      1. Elsewise*

        I lasted all four years in mine, and then later ran one at a different university for two years. Personally I learned a lot from having that job in college, our scripts were less rigid, and my boss was fantastic about making it as not-horrible as possible. We still had a lot of people quit in their first day or first week, though. It’s not for everyone. Or for most people. Or really for anyone long-term.

        (I’m also a fundraiser, predictably.)

    4. CallWaiting*

      I have a similar story! I lasted about a week at my Big 10 university fundraising center – a few days of training and then a few days solo. The script was very awkward/unnatural and the conversations were brutal. Most conversations resulted in people begging me to take them off our call list because they were being harassed by the university. After those first few solo days they pulled me aside to review my calls and I told them I quit before we even got to the critique. No regrets!

    5. College Career Counselor*

      It says something that cold calling donors was more awkward than nude modeling! The no deviation from the script is a killer as well. I did telemarketing one summer for “the nation’s newspaper” when it was first starting up back in the mid-80s. I was so bored with the script that I would conduct little experiments by changing the nature of my voice to see if I could get better results:
      1. Normal speaking voice (admittedly did not have the local accent, so I probably got coded as “not from around here” by people picking up).
      2. Variations on the local accent.
      3. “Broadcasting voice” (flat/midwestern).
      4. “Game Show Announcer” enthusiasm level.

      None of them made any difference that I could tell. I kept that job for the entire summer because I needed the money ($3.35/hour, but you could “be paid more by commission” once you sold 10 subscriptions in a shift). Never managed to get more than seven in one shift, and the usual number was 0-2 (I was so bored, I tracked it). There were 3-4 of us grinding it out in an anonymous office park weekday evenings and Saturday mornings, interrupting people at dinner or whatever. I don’t recall that anyone else ever got the commission level per shift, although some did better than me.

    6. Beth*

      I got paid better as an art department model than I did at most of my first several years of “legitimate” work.

      (Yes, I did undraped modeling — it paid twice as much, and the artists or art students were usually very serious and well-behaved. And they would kick out anyone who wasn’t.)

      No corporate team-building events, though.

    7. Lana Kane*

      This brings back a memory! I was less than a year out of graduating and got one of these calls. I tried to be nice to the kid, and told him I’m just out odf college and wasn’t making enough to donate. He replied with, “well, maybe you could cut back on the Starbucks”. (This was in 1998 and already there were smarmy aholes out there telling young adults to make their own coffee). I answered something like, “I don’t drink coffee so please explain where else I can pull money out from”. I still feel kinda bad because it is a sucky job and he was probably under pressure, but I also feel like he asked for it. I hung up before I could go into how he could look forward to repaying student loans once he graduated.

  21. LJ*

    I quit my first real office job (aside from a few internships) after the first week. I had been working retail and waiting tables previously. The training I got made no sense to me and I felt like I would never succeed (the outgoing person told me what keys to press on the keyboard but didn’t explain why or what I was actually DOING in the system). It was TOO MUCH for my early 20s anxiety and depression. I told them there was a family emergency and I had to go to NY for an indefinite amount of time (I lived in California at the time and remote work was not a thing back then).

    I don’t know how they received it; I was too absorbed in my mini-breakdown. But I did feel very guilty/ashamed about it for quite a while. I lobbied hard for the job bc it was in an industry adjacent to what I very much wanted to be doing.

    I saw one of the other staff out in the world a few weeks later. I don’t know if they saw me, but it was in the airport, so my story would have held!

  22. Lemon Squeezy*

    Early on in my career, I was desperate to get any job and interviewed at a company that billed itself as a company that helped other companies with their business taxes. I was part of a group interview of three (the first of many red flags that I ignored) where we were all hired on the spot. The actual business turned out to be a predatory call center, just barely bordering on a scam, where we would get a big list of businesses in trouble with the IRS and try to pressure them into using the company’s services. After signing paperwork, we were trained by being sat down with another person in the call center and going through the company’s script with them. While sitting with my second trainer, I made a call to a man who yelled that he didn’t want to be harassed and hung up. The trainer made me call him three times before moving on to the next company on the list. After three hours of “training”, we were set loose with a list of our own to start harassing other people. If you managed to get a “lead” (by which I mean, successfully pestered someone into agreeing to talk to an actual sales person), the manager would come by your desk and you could play blackjack for an extra fifteen minutes on your break. I finished out the rest of the day, numbly dialing phone numbers and getting hung up on, and then went home and decided I really didn’t need a job THAT badly. I called and left a message that I was not going to be in tomorrow, or ever again, and two months later got my first real professional job.

  23. Short timer*

    Should have quit first week but quit after a few weeks. I was in college and took a summer internship with Lockheed Martin. They wouldn’t let me come on-site before accepting my offer so had to accept it after just a phone call with the hiring folks. The building I worked in was OLD and had asbestos warnings at the door as you walked in. I worked in a tiny cubicle with about 6-8 middle aged men (I was 19F) who spent the morning counting down the days until retirement (literally years away) and chewing tobacco and spitting in their cups (so, so gross). They gave me NOTHING to do the whole time I was there, even after me asking multiple times. I spent the days playing computer games bored out of my mind (this was also 2005 so no cell phone or much internet to really spend my time on). One day I came in and the women’s ceiling in the bathroom had collapsed and there was, what I can only assume to be, asbestos all over the place. One day I’d had enough and my “boss” was even out of town, I called HR and asked how I could quit. They had me come down to the underground, windowless tunnels (I think they called the people working there tunnel rats?), and the (very nice) HR lady confirmed I wanted to quit immediately, I said yes fighting back tears because it was all so awful, and she said I just needed to give her my badge and gave me a big hug.

    1. Short timer*

      Clarify: not all in the same cubicle, lol, mine was tiny. They had a mix of cubicles and offices.

      1. Frank Doyle*

        Thank you for the clarification, I actually was picturing you in a cubicle with six or eight middle-aged men!

    2. i like hound dogs*

      My husband did a “co-op” for Lockheed Martin in college and had a similar experience. He said he had nothing to do and was bored out of his skull, but his dad made him do it because he was convinced being an engineer was the only valid career path :( (He did not become an engineer … at least this confirmed that wasn’t the right path)

      At least the HR woman was nice to you!

      1. Spearmint*

        I had an internship with a city government like this. Apparently previous interns had done a lot of manual data entry, but that had been recently automated and they didn’t really think whether they had anything for future interns to do. Since it was paid I stayed for two months though (they offered to let me stay longer, but I declined). No asbestos though!

    3. Anon for this*

      That sounds a lot like an internship I had in college many years ago – it was with a state government agency where most of the employees were just marking time until they could retire. I don’t think anyone there ever did a full day’s work. The admin asst would sit there and smoke all day while doing crossword puzzles (your tax dollars at work!).

  24. Spurs*

    I quit within an hour! I was supposed to be a tutor for my community college, and they really stressed how important I would be there since I could be an accounting tutor, but once I started my first shift they had me handing out flyers for the school’s donut day. When I asked when I’d start actually tutoring people, they told me that my first year would be mostly marketing the tutoring center (AKA handing out flyers). They told me that the mostly male “business school tutors” had decided they didn’t really need anyone who specialized in accounting (even though they had practically begged me to apply since they didn’t have an accounting tutor and the students were requesting one). It was apparent that the manager let this group of dudes run the tutoring center, and I knew that the “marketing experience” BS was just the tip of the iceberg on how dysfunctional this place would be. I already had a few part time jobs and only wanted this one for tutoring experience, so I turned in my little red tutor vest and bounced immediately.

    1. Wordnerd*

      As a university tutoring coordinator who is currently looking for accounting tutors, this makes me want to go sit in the corner and weep.

  25. cardigarden*

    This may not count because it was my first babysitting gig when I was 14, but I’ll tell it anyway.

    Close family friends wanted to use me as their babysitter for their 4-5ish year old daughter on date nights. We did a try-out Saturday afternoon while the parents were in the house but busy doing other things, and it was an absolute nightmare. This child was FERAL. Kicking, punching, screaming, throwing things the entire time I was there. Did the parents ever step in? No. Should I have called my own parents to come pick me up early? Probably. But I stuck out the 3 hours, which culminated in the girl yelling “Cardigarden, I hate you go home!”

    The real kick in the teeth was that after all of that, the mother only paid me $5.

    So I eventually got to my mom’s car and I told her “Never again. I you go way back, but their kid is a nightmare and I’m never doing this again.” Sure, I foisted that social grenade at my mom, but I figured hey I’m a kid, too, so…

    I did hear through the grapevine that the child actually did grow up okay and is now a well-adjusted and successful 20-something. So good for her.

    1. Name Anxiety*

      I had a babysitting/mother’s helper job that I got as a teen because we knew the family through church. I showed up for my first day and was watching the 3 year old while the mom was somewhere else with a newborn. The kid started throwing metal hot wheels cars at the windows and television and I said something along the lines of “Oh, no! Stop throwing cars, we do not do that!” and the mother came running in to yell at ME because “We don’t use that kind of language in this house.” She gave me a pack of Clorox wipes and told me to clean the bathrooms for the rest of the day. I told my mom that I was never going back and she would just tell them that I was unavailable if they ever called again. A few years later I was the regular babysitter for a different family and when I got there one of the kids had a black eye and his mom started telling me about how an uncontrollable child at his school was throwing rocks during pickup and the mom did nothing to stop it. I just said, “Let me guess…. was it [child name redacted]?” and she was both horrified that I guessed right the first time and very impressed.

    2. Spicy Tuna*

      I am not a “kid person” but there was a situation on our block where the neighbor’s husband had died, and her early ’20’s daughter, who had just had a baby, was living with her. Something urgent came up and mom and daughter had to go somewhere on short notice so my mom volunteered me to watch the baby for a few hours.

      It was summer and roasting hot (no one had a/c, we lived in a usually cool climate). The baby WOULD. NOT. STOP. CRYING. I had no clue what to do so I fled the house, ran across the street and got my mom to help. Of course, as soon as she picked up the baby, he stopped crying!

    3. Zombeyonce*

      I babysat for the most nightmarish children I’ve ever met in my entire life regularly when I was 12 because my mom made me (their dad was away in the military and their mom just…didn’t parent them). I was kicked, punched, bitten, and screamed at by 2 boys who were almost my size for hours at a time, and I was paid the handsome price of $1.50 an hour for the privilege. My mom finally let me stop when I came home crying a few weeks in.

      1. Artemesia*

        my first husband then fiance was hired for a weekend so a mom could get a break and a short vacation with her husband. Boys 4 and 5 — they had taken hammers to the basement plastered walls, while he was supervising they managed to flip the dining room table — just totally out of control. When he was first talking to the mother, the older kid grabbed the newspaper from under her arm and threw it in the sprinkler — guess that was his clue to say ‘no’.

    4. FashionablyEvil*

      Omg, I had totally forgotten about the time
      I was babysitting for these two girls. They had an older brother who was only about a year younger than me who was also there but not trusted to be left to supervise the girls. Which became immediately apparent when he pulled a knife on his little sister. I told him to stop being an idiot and took the girls outside where we waited until their parents got home about 20 minutes later. Still not sure what the parents must have thought when I said, “So, Stephen pulled a knife on Jenny…” It was BANANAS.

      3. Observer*

        It was BANANAS

        Sounds like it! What on earth were these parents thinking? If they had a half a brain between the TO think?

    5. NotAnotherManager!*

      I did a lot of babysitting as a teenager, and the one family I refused to schedule after the first job was my mom’s best friend at the time. Her child was a terror and kept hitting me (hard), and they paid far less than other parents did. Not worth the hassle, but I’m sure it occasionally made it awkward for my mom to maintain the facade that I was “too busy” when my regular sitting job was on the same block, and those kids and I were out playing or walking the dog all the time.

    6. AngryOctopus*

      I babysat once for a family where the only kid issue was that the kid didn’t want to go to sleep in his bed. I assumed fair enough, I’m not his parent, I’m only like his second babysitter, he’s not into it, but I eventually got him to sleep. Then the parents called late (at time they originally said they’d be home) wanting to stay out even later (it was a school night and at this point the earliest they’d be home was 11). I was taught well by my mom so I said “no, it’s a school night, you said you’d be home by now, which is late enough”. When they finally got home, they expressed surprise that I got the kid to sleep in his own bed (they never told me that he usually slept on the floor in their room), and then the dad said “Well, I GUESS I have to drive you home” (I didn’t live far, but there was no sidewalk and it was a windy country road). Got home and told my mom ‘never ever again for these people’.

    7. Susie Occasionally(formerly No)-Fun*

      I had a babysitting job that started ok. The mom said to just let the kid (~6 or 7 years old) watch tv while she was gone for a few hours. Eh, it was the 80s and not an uncommon thing. Except as soon as the mom was gone, the kid switch the tv to hardcore porn. I told him no and to turn it to something else. He swore at me and refused. I changed the channel myself. He turned it back. I turned it off. He physically attacked me—kicking and punching, while calling me names. I was only 15 myself and had no idea how to handle this. Eventually I shoved him into his room, which had a door that opened outward. I sat against the door while he kicked and hit it, shouting profanity of course. It seemed like an improvement over him doing so to me. His mom eventually came home and I told her everything. She shrugged and handed me $5.00. I went home and told my mom that I would never baby sit for them again. I have no idea what happened to that kid. Or his mom, for that matter. I hope things worked out ok.

    8. JustaTech*

      Oh, the babysitting gig I wish I could have left in the first ten minutes.
      I was 12 and lived in a rural/suburban area where this family lived across the creek from me and had a “model” farm, as in they had a few of your average farm animals (cows, chickens, a goat) but the parents both had day jobs *and* they ran a restaurant.
      They had 3 boys ages 4, 2 and 6 months and needed a sitter for a Saturday night, so I agreed. The Saturday comes and I arrive to find not the parents but the grandparents, who have done the day shift with the kids while the parents worked. I was told the parents would be home at 9.
      And then the blizzard warning start. I eventually got the kids to sleep and was waiting (impatiently) for the parents to come home so they could drive me home (walking back over the creek would have been very dark and I didn’t have boots). I see a car and am like “yay, I can go home!” but no, it’s only the dad, the mom went to the grocery store for milk, along with everyone else in the county. We can’t leave the kids, so the dad and I just sit there in the kitchen of this creaky farmhouse until like 11:30 when the mom finally gets home.
      I have no idea why I didn’t call my parents to just come get me.
      And the kicker? For my 6 hours of work with 3 kids, I got $20.
      The next time was worse, although didn’t have any snow, and after that I asked my mom to say I was busy.
      At least I was never the sitter when the cows got out.

      1. StarTrek Nutcase*

        At 15, I was the go-to neighborhood babysitter with the reputation that I could handle the worst of the worst. I went to sit for a 6-month girl for the first time. She was asleep in playpen when I arrived but mom still left. Girl wakes up 15 mins later and just sits there looking at me. I freak the heck out and call my mom to tell her I can’t stay so she has to come sub for me. We argue while kid just sits there. Mom returns early (gone only 45 mins). I run home. Mom is crazy laughing at me. Why? Because this little girl was the scariest looking kid ever – no deformities or disabilities, just *ugly ugly ugly*. Even telling this decades later, I get the shivers. I never sat there again but a year later saw her and she was just a normal looking kid. I can’t explain it – well I did watch The Exorcist the night before, but…..

    9. Slartibartfast*

      I did a lot of babysitting as the only responsible teen in a yuppie neighborhood. I had a new family, three boys age 6, 4 and 2. Oldest was severe ADHD, extra emphasis on the H. Youngest had cerebral palsy, he had some special leg braces but was doing pretty well with intensive therapy. Middle was normal but with 2 special needs siblings and both parents working full time, there was definitely some acting out for attention. I babysat them once. Youngest was climbing the picnic table and jumping off,braces and all. Middle was crying full on meltdown while I was trying to keep the baby from killing himself. Then I heard the oldest child yelling for my attention and look up to find him ON THE ROOF WITH A BIG ASS KITCHEN KNIFE.

      Somehow I survived the night with no injuries to myself or any of the kids, and I did get paid really well, but Never Again.

    10. Not A Raccoon Keeper*

      I had a babysitting gig where the kid had just received all of his 12 month vaccines in the afternoon, and they didn’t bother to tell me. I was 13? I was a busy and popular neighbourhod babysitter, but mostly for kids that were in preschool or older. I had zero ability to manage this screaming, crying, uncomfortable child and made my mom come over and take over until she finally got him to bed…and then pretended not to be home until the parents stopped calling our house.

      More than two decades later, I saw that house come up for sale and looking at the photos of the inside literally gave me the shakes. Yeesh!

    11. Chirpy*

      I babysat for a teacher, and it was supposed to go all summer while she was teaching summer school. I was probably 12. The second or third day, the toddler managed to climb up on a counter and get into some candy (so, sticky and blue) and I was never able to catch the one year old long enough to change her diaper. Absolutely the worst kids I ever babysat. Technically, the mom told me not to come back, but I was so relieved because I didn’t know how to quit.

      (I felt bad for a while for leaving her with no childcare for the summer, until I found out what a horrible teacher she was to my sibling. Parents literally started a tutoring group to re-teach the kids in her class correctly. )

    12. KYParalegal*

      Oh, this brought back memories of the worst family I ever babysat. I was 13-14 and my mom worked with one of the parents and volunteered me for the job when her coworker complained about how hard it was to find a babysitter. The parents agreed to pay me $10/hr to watch their 4 kids ages 2, 5, 7, and 10, and it was supposed to be a 6pm to midnight deal. The family lived about 20 minutes away, so the mom picked me up from my house and they were going to drop me off when the night was over.
      The first hour-ish went ok, but then the sun started going down and I tried to get them all inside (like their mom told me to!) and all hell broke loose. The two middle kids starting throwing things at me, the oldest refused to do anything I said because I was “practically her age”, and the baby started screaming hysterically when one of the kids accidentally hit her instead of me with whatever they were throwing (I can’t remember anymore; I think it was gravel). After 45 minutes of the shitshow, I called their parents’ cell phone and said “Your kids are out of control” and the oldest hung up the (landline, corded) phone in the middle of me talking to her mother. I stared her dead in the eye while I hit redial and told the mom “You need to come home. I’m calling my mom to come get me, so you need to be here before she gets here.”
      For the rest of the time until the parents got back home, I monitored the toddler to make sure she didn’t hurt herself, put the middle kids in their room, and ignored the 10yo freaking out that her parents were cutting their night 4 hours short because she and her siblings had been nightmares. The parents tried to lecture me about fulfilling my agreements, but my mom got there, saw my new bruises and scratches, told the parent she worked with to pay me the full amount for the night, and took me home. I never babysat for those people again. My older sister babysat them one time (more per hour and a shorter time frame) and also would never babysit for them again.

    13. A Genuine Scientician*

      It’s funny how among all the kids of my parents’ friends I ever baby sat for, the ones who a) asked rather than told me I was babysitting, and b) in some way compensated me were also the kids who were well behaved enough that it wasn’t a serious imposition. While those who just expected me to do it for free had feral nightmares.

      Imagine that.

  26. Momma Bear*

    Not the first week, but by about week 2 my then-friend went AWOL from a job I had gotten him. It was a lower level customer service job to help him through the summer and never advertised as any different. Unfortunately for me, he fancied himself a network engineer and felt it was “beneath” him so he just stopped showing up. I forget what his excuse was for no notice. We didn’t stay friends.

  27. Crazy Chicken Lady*

    I took a job working for a couple who wanted to become real estate magnates, and needed someone to help with their marketing. When I interviewed, they told me they would have an office, but for now it was working out of their house.

    I was told not to wear so much perfume the first day I showed up (I wasn’t, I’d just…washed my hair?). The first day, I was directed to watch all the recordings of the real estate coach they had paid thousands of dollars for to make sure I “knew the industry”. The coach was a mix of Rich Dad, Poor Dad + Tom Robbins, and absolutely horrifying.

    The second day, I had to pick up a birthday cake for their assistant, and got lectured for taking so long (I had to drive across town and wait in a long line at a tiny shop to get it). Myself and the assistant whose birthday it was had to each sit and eat a slice, but the real estate couple did not. When asked, they said they didn’t celebrate birthdays. A friendly “Oh, why’s that?” was met with “religious reasons.” and then just complete silence while we finished our cake slices. It was so. awkward.

    Every morning, the wife of the couple would text me to pick her up a Starbucks coffee on my way to their house, then lecture me about being late when doing so. The Starbucks was down the street from their house, and closer to her than to me.

    Nothing could be done without the wife of the couple editing it herself, lecturing about doing the task “better”, or simply taking over everything herself. I was assigned filing tasks, envelope stuffing, and general low-level admin work. All of this was done in a spare bedroom in their very large, very expensive home.

    I’d interviewed for a more senior level role and had thought I’d be running campaigns/larger scale marketing initiatives, not acting as an assistant that might someday be allowed to post to their social media. After the fourth day of being texted, while still in bed, about picking up another Starbucks order, I just texted back “I quit” and rolled over and went back to sleep.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Wait…they ordered a birthday cake and made you go get it even though they don’t celebrate birthdays??? And they made you and the other employee eat the cake while they sat there and watched???? That is absolutely bananas!!!!

      I really want to know how long ago this was and whether they ever actually did get an office for their obviously-going-to-be-very-successful-except-not real estate business or if they crashed and burned as of course we all know they did.

      1. Richard Hershberger*

        Yup. It really does cry out for an update. Are they now fabulously rich real estate magnates? Are they now homeless?

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        My brain is making this couple into the duo that was the subject of that documentary: the ones who were trying to build Versailles in their home town?

      3. Expelliarmus*

        I guess they were trying to be thoughtful of the assistant, who does celebrate their birthday, but yeah, just awkwardly watching them was weird.

      4. Crazy Chicken Lady*

        They did eventually have an office, and I’d drive by the sign occasionally (it was located next to my favorite sushi restaurant). This was back in 2014, 2015. The cake thing was *so* weird. It felt like they were trying on ways to “Be Good Managers” but because the rest was so bizarre, it just didn’t land.

        The office disappeared about a year later, so I assume they crashed and burned.

        Other weird things that I’m remembering –
        – They had a joint LinkedIn account (yes, like those Facebook couples who have a joint Facebook account? That, but LinkedIn)
        – They never removed me from any of their digital accounts; I removed myself about a year later when I got annoyed by the notifications
        – They only posted to social media a handful of times, pictures of the wife sitting at cafes. Never the houses they were selling, or neighborhoods, or anything.
        – When I first got there, they gave me a brief tour of their house, and made sure to mention that the view from their dining room made it worth extra (I want to say a million dollars, but can’t really remember). I think all I said was “oh, that’s nice.”

        When I went to pick up my check for the few days I’d worked, the husband gave it to me because the wife “didn’t want to see my face”. He asked me if I’d quit because of her. I said yes, and he thanked me, and then closed the door and we never spoke again.

  28. Ruby*

    I moved to a city right after college to join a startup which had everyone, c-suite on down, work two weeks in the call-center after a week of onboarding classes. It was basically a week of “here is the culture of this company, isn’t it great?” and I looked around and thought that it seemed like a good place for a lot of the people there, but I would personally hate it. Work drinks and overly vulnerable one-on-ones sort of deal.

    I had enough to pay rent for six months so I approached my training leader to tell her I’d like to terminate my employment. She was surprised and said “leadership has been looking at you as one to watch. This is really unexpected,” arranged a quick exit interview with one of the people leaders, and walked me out a side door. It was the right move.

    1. SquarePizza*

      “We thought you had a lot of potential,” is a tactic that toxic/culty places use to get people to stay in situations they intellectually know to get out of.

      Source: Was told I had a lot of potential once. I did not.

      1. HavingWritten*

        Sometimes it’s a tactic, yeah. But sometimes it’s genuine! As in, “we were really excited about you because you’re by far the most functional person who has ever wanted to work here.” Either way, big red flag.

    2. Hermione Danger*

      I once left an agonizingly awful job interview in which the interviewer was accusatory and hostile. Even though I desperately needed a job, the words, “No. Fucking. Way.” flew out of my mouth as soon as the door to the building closed safely behind me. I went home and immediately sent an email withdrawing my candidacy. Their response included the sentence, “We’re so sorry to hear that because you were our top candidate.”

      Well then, y’all should have treated me like it.

      1. linger*

        Nor were they lying! Though possibly the full sentence was:
        “You were our top candidate; all others we’ve contacted so far noped out too.”
        Because of course such outfits have to keep going down their list until they find someone desperate enough to say yes.

  29. Caz*

    I had been working at a job that I LOVED, but very part-time hours and they informed me they couldn’t offer more. I took a full time job at a local supermarket and – very reluctantly – resigned from the beloved job. I was at the supermarket for a week when the old job wrote a letter to me with my final payslip offering me increased hours and an increased hourly rate – so i could do 25 hours per week, instead of 40 at the supermarket, for the same take-home amount. I quit the supermarket on the spot. Supermarket job had such high turnover that they had deliberately over-recruited so they weren’t left short when people inevitably left! Stayed at the beloved job for another year then moved on to another org in the same field, where I’ve now been for nearly 20 years.

  30. NoBeesPlease*

    Showed up on my first day to learn that what I had been told was a full-time permanent position was actually a temp position being filled by two part-time people and they’d decide after a couple of months if they wanted to make one or both of us permanent. Oh, and it paid less than half of what I’d been promised per hour.

    I left at the end of my four hours and never went back.

    1. ferrina*

      Any time a place does a bait-and-switch with permanent vs temp position, run.

      I worked somewhere that did that. We had posted several full-time permanent positions at the same time. One of them got frozen within a week; I wasn’t allowed to look at applications, but I wasn’t allowed to take the job posting off the job boards. One of the jobs was hired…after another 18 months. The third job was the one that would make the most difference day-to-day. I moved quick to find a strong candidate. After arguing a bit with my VP, I finally put forth someone who was new to the professional world but had a bit of other work experience. The catch? He was in the reserves, and they didn’t want someone who would need to be away at training. So they hired him as a temp with a vague promise to make him full time maybe somewhere in the future.

      That was a trap. I knew this company well- I had started with the company when I had temped with them for a 2-week stint doing data entry and they had extended my work repeatedly, effectively giving me job responsibilities from full-time staff that had left. After 8 months temping with no end in sight, I told them I’d need to leave and find full-time employment. Suddenly they had the funds to hire me. I told the guy to enjoy the pay check but not stop the job search. Thankfully he listened and left after about 5 months (he did great work the whole time he was there)

  31. zolk*

    I worked at a card store in Canada for three days. It wasn’t my first job, but I was a teen and so was everyone else (all two people) on staff. The owner hired me and then vanished. I was trained by the other two, who had barely a week of training themselves. The store had been open for years, so that should’ve been a red flag.

    On the fourth day the owner came in and apparently all she did was watch us on cameras from her home. She yelled at me about everything I had done wrong (in my first three days being trained! By other newbies!).

    We all quit.

    1. goddessoftransitory*

      I once walked out, along with the rest of the staff, from a tee shirt store when the new manager hired by the East Coast headquarters of the business kept forgetting things, ordering stuff we didn’t sell, and yelled at me when I told her that her son’s school was on the phone. The final straw was finding her bottle of booze (in a vanilla bottle) hidden in her office trash.

  32. Public Servant*

    Ooh boy.

    It was a temp job anyway. I was working at a partially hydrogenated soybean oil flake factory. It was the highest pay I ever got – $7/hr! I was in college, and during summer break I was trying to save up money for a semester abroad. The job began on a Wednesday.

    Things were weird early. People looked at me and my girlfriend funny-we were the youngest people there. Despite the grossness of the product, no gloves (but beard nets were necessary?) My job was very physical, putting boxes together to catch the flakes as they came down a tube. There were prominent cameras recording everything. On the way to the tiny break room, I saw where bubbling oil was coming out of the machinery and out into the floor. When we left (stinky, greasy, and sore), a manager had to unlock the door so we could leave.

    Despite still being sore the next day, we came back. Everyone was in shock that we HAD come back. The night proceeded same as before, but just before leaving, the boss told me not to come back on Friday, but they’d need me again next week.

    I remember thinking—I reek, I’m in awful pain, and I’m not even going to get 40 hrs a week? Screw this. Called the temp company and said “nope.”

    1. Public Servant*

      Just saw the new comment from AAM:

      The temp agency was unhappy with me, and I never got another assignment from them. Considering how everyone acted when I came back on day 2, I doubt anyone at the factory was surprised.

      I still flip that place off sometimes when I pass it.

      2. Public Servant*

        I know. I told the temp agency I thought the place was unsafe, but …

        Their excuse for it was that employees were letting their drug dealers in before they started locking it.

      3. Observer*

        Had they not heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire?!

        It doesn’t sound like they would care. In any case, locking people in because illegal long enough ago that it was illegal when @Public Servant worked there.

  33. Harper*

    I grew up in a very rural area. When I was 15, too young for a “real” job, some representatives from a local farming company came to our high school to recruit kids to “detassel” corn. This meant walking between rows of field corn taller than we were in the hot sun, reaching up, and pulling the tassel out of the top of the corn for the purpose of promoting cross-pollenation. We walked acres and acres of fields. It was hot, dirty, exhausting, and the edges of the leaves on the corn cut any exposed bare skin to shreds. We were bused in and couldn’t leave until the end of the day. I really, really wanted the money, so I stuck it out 4 days, but I think I cried every single day. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and I didn’t go back. This was around 1993 and I don’t even know if it would be legal today. LOL

    1. Be Gneiss*

      My randomly-assigned roommate my freshman year detassled corn in the summers! I’ve had several occasions to explain to people that this is a real thing, and I don’t think anyone has ever believed me! When I asked her if she liked it she said something like “I can wear my walkman (this was late ’90s) and I don’t have to be nice to anyone.”

      1. Certaintroublemaker*

        C suite boss in my group grew up on a farm in Nebraska—he spent many a summer detasseling corn!

        1. Detassler*

          I feel like it’s a rite of passage for farm kids in Iowa and Nebraska. Like Harper, I grew up in a very rural area and there weren’t any other options for jobs besides that or babysitting until you were a little older and/or had a car.

        2. She of Many Hats*

          In northern farm states, Rock Picking rivals corn detasseling as worst first rural kids’ jobs. The fields can be strewn with glacial rock that keeps coming to the surfaces and need to be removed before plowing. You’ll often see piles of rocks in the corner of crop fields that have been “picked”.

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        I know about corn detasseling thanks to the MST broadcast of The Starfighters! The main character’s love interest worked as one.

    2. Detassler*

      Can confirm this is not an exaggeration! I detasseled for one summer. While I’m not a princess by any means, my parents were skeptical that I would not quit after the first day. I’m not a morning person (I think we had leave at like 5am?); it’s hard, dirty work; and the older high school kids definitely hazed the younger (13-14 yo) kids by threatening to tip over the port-a-potties while you were in them. I would have dreams (nightmares?) about pulling tassels and my forearms were covered with cuts from the corns leaves. There was a girl one grade ahead of me who I thought was kind of prissy and I was like, “If she can do it, I can do it.” Plus we got a bonus if we had perfect attendance. I finished that summer, and then promptly got my lifeguarding certification and was a life guard for the next 8-9 years.

    3. E*

      My grandma grew up in a medium town surrounded by farms and detassled corn one summer. Farm reps would come recruit the “city kids” that didn’t know any better to do the same thing, and this would have been back in the late 1940s.

    4. Zombeyonce*

      I worked with a group of friends to “rogue rye” for a week one summer in high school. We were supposed to walk through wheat fields and pull up any rye growing there. The only explanation we were given was that “rye is taller than wheat” so I never actually could tell if I was pulling the right stuff or not. I got paid to basically walk around for 8 hours with my friends, pull random plants out of the ground if they looked tall, and get sunburned. Somehow not the worst job I’ve ever had.

      1. Detassler*

        It was likely soy beans. I had to do that, too. I remember being probably 10 or younger. Since it was for our family farm we were not paid; it was just a requirement of being a farm kid.

        1. Detassler*

          Meant to add that you have to walk beans to pull any rogue weeds (or volunteer corn) because the combine head used to harvest beans is different from the one for corn; and weeds will plug up the bean head easier. So you want the bean rows to be as clean as possible.

      2. Dragonfly7*

        My mom and her sisters walked beans, too, at a young age. She once told me that her eldest sister thought that since Mom could only walk half as many rows at a time (vs her, who is roughly 10 years older), that Mom should only be paid half as much.

      1. Anon4This*

        Ugh, tobacco is the worst. My spouse grew up on a farm, and he holds a lot of resentment toward tomatoes, strawberries, and, most of all, tobacco. He has had tobacco poisoning twice, even with gloves and protective gear. It was a small family farm where the kids were the primary source of labor, so my husband has planted, harvested, graded, and hung tobacco leaves for drying most of his childhood. He is not a fan and chose an office-based career for a reason.

        1. Dust Bunny*

          Pulling off certain small leaves by hand so the plant doesn’t get too bushy. You’re basically selecting which leaves you want to let grow out.

    7. Steve for Work Purposes*

      Oh god, that gives me flashbacks. My dad had to do that as a teenager and whenever we as teenagers complained about our summer jobs and/or had a hard time finding a summer job, Dad would threaten to sign us up for detasseling. And when he did it, it wasn’t walking, it was done from the back of a tractor moving along the rows so the corn would really cut up your hands as you did it! None of us ever wound up having to do that but I knew plenty of folks that did and it really wrecks your hands. So idk re the legality per se but it was common enough in the mid-00s when I was a teenager. Working waitstaff/fast food/catering/etc was still hellish at times but ‘I’ll sign you up to detassel corn’ was an effective incentive for us to find ourselves summer jobs!

    8. Global Cat Herder*

      Can confirm detasseling is still done. In my state you have to be 14 unless it’s a family farm (no age limits if it’s your own family’s farm), but they’re trying to get the age lowered to 12.

    9. Expelliarmus*

      I live in western Illinois and when I was in HS 10ish years ago, we were offered detasseling opportunities as well.

    10. Autofill Contact*

      Lucky!! I desperately wanted to detassle (you could make SO. MUCH. MONEY. – at least, to my teenaged brain), but my mom wouldn’t let me. She had a bad experience doing it when she was a teenager in the 70s (fell onto the tractor engine, got severely burned, but had to wait on the bus until the workday was over to get medical attention).

      I think most of the detasseling crews around here now are non-US workers on H-2A work visas.

  34. DeskApple*

    Second week at a private school that (because I was in another country) I didn’t know had been privately marketed to parents as a “solution” to their kid’s “behavior problems”. It was a reform school, and I only figured this out when three ten year old boys started playing porn out loud on a hidden iPhone and then threw said iPhone out the window. “My dad will buy me a new one tomorrow anyway”.

    17 of the 31 kids in my class had special needs but the parents paid the school so they wouldn’t have to “have that on their kids’ records” (therefore no accomodations). Had two severely noise sensitive kids in a complete meltdown and was told to “grab them the ear protectors from the wood shop so they don’t have to listen”.

    When I asked for an accomodations list I was told the school didn’t need those but teachers were provided a monthly massage in the teacher’s lounge. When I left and cited the lack of resources despite the private tuition and government subsidy the principal told the other teachers “Oh she had a mental breakdown and wasn’t meant for teaching.” I’d really enjoyed my career till then. Immediately switched industries.

    1. Annie*

      Wow. If you managed to find out, was the reason for not having special needs on the kids’ records more due to vanity, parents’ own ideas about how such special needs should be handled, or realistic fears of their kids being relegated to classes below their actual ability level, bullying due to being different, etc?

    2. MigraineMonth*

      As part of “community service” at my high school, we were supposed to teach kids at the local middle school about environmental projects. I completely, 100% failed to connect with my assigned student. I think she said fifteen words to me that entire semester, and I couldn’t understand most of them because I hadn’t learned the local accent.

      At the end, I confessed to her teacher that I had failed my student. The teacher said flippantly, “Oh, we think that student is partially deaf and has a learning disability.”

  35. PleaseNo*

    I think i did. This was at the start of the dot-com boom. My summer job was to talk to local companies to get them to join our company network of businesses offering discounts to members. Like an early groupon.

    I hated pitching to companies and just talking to strangers. I did it for two days then told my lead I didn’t want to do it any more.

    He didn’t seem bothered by my quitting. I’m guessing it was pretty common. They paid me the pittance I was owed.

    no regrets!

  36. Harried HR*

    In my early 20’s and I was hired by a temp agency to be a Receptionist… EXCEPT it was a phone sex line 0-0 !! They placed me in the role because apparently an English accent is considered sexy. I sat in on 1 call and grabbed my keys and walked out

    2. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      Wait, what? I’m simultaneously annoyed at the lack of opportunity they gave you to provide informed consent, and also very curious about what such a role entails. Was your job to switch callers to their desired type of phone sex operator or something else?

      1. Harried HR*

        My phone was to perform the phone sex…which why after hearing 1 call I NOPED out of the door !!!

  37. Oh, the college years*

    I quit a college job at Kmart after one shift. I’d made it clear when I interviewed and throughout the process that I could not work certain days/times because of my classes. (This was during the summer so my course schedule was minimal.) They said that was fine, thanks for letting them know, and they could work around it. Then my first schedule was posted and half of the shifts were in the middle of a class. So I noped out. (Didn’t need the money that badly anyway.)

    1. Oh, the college years*

      And I’ll add I was so avoidant and conflict averse that I just no-showed to that shift and never came in to pick up my paycheck for that first shift I did work. I’m not sure how that was received because I just full on ghosted out of shame.

    2. Goldfeesh*

      My very first job was with the shoe department at Kmart- it was run by a different company. “Oh, sure, we’ll schedule you under 20 hours.” Schedule: 39.5 hours, the most they could give a part-timer. I remember having to push back against it- I was so conflict-avoidant then. I think I worked there for maybe a year? I don’t remember. I do remember that while all the appropriate taxes were taken out of our pay, we weren’t paid with checks or direct deposit. We’d get an envelope of cash with exact change every two weeks.

    3. WS*

      Same thing happened to my brother and three of his friends at the Kmart nearest their university! They were promised they could work around school schedules because they mostly needed people for evenings/weekends, then got their schedules which were all daytime and in conflict with classes. My brother called to try to change his schedule and they told him that if he didn’t show up he’d be fired, so he quit before even working a shift, and so did his friends, which was four of the five people at their training. Later they found out Kmart had done the same to the other new employee, so she’d also quit!

      1. Michelle Smith*

        There is so much of this experience in this thread and I’m just baffled as to why they think this bait and switch scheduling strategy is a good way to hire. Like…what?! Isn’t it way more work to keep hiring new people than to hire people who actually meet your staffing requirements?

        1. Annia*

          I wonder if it’s a similar rational to scammers? Scammers leave basic errors in scam messages to filter for people who aren’t paying enough attention since those are easier to scam. Testing brand new employees like this might be filtering for the ones desparate, naive, or conflict-avoidant enough to put up with terrible treatment.

  38. Haven't eaten at a Rally's Since*

    I needed a summer job when I was living with a relative in New Orleans. The first place to hire me was a Rally’s (burger joint). My first day, the manager proudly proclaimed that he’d removed all of the chairs from the staff area to prevent slacking, I was introduced to the rat that had eaten through the burger bun bags (they only removed the ones he’d visibly eaten, not the ones he’d been standing on), and when I couldn’t make burgers fast enough, I was put on the deep fryer with no training. Thank goodness most of the food was pre-cooked because I’m very sure that I served questionable chicken that day.
    After 8 hours, I went home, found a voicemail from another job, removed my uniform, and went back to the restaurant to return everything. I didn’t even get a paycheck for the 8 hours worked, but counted myself lucky that I didn’t have to do another shift there.

    1. Menace to Sobriety*

      …introduced…like were they keeping it around as a pet or a mascot or something? Like, “Haven’t, we’d like you to meet Willard, our spokesrat”?

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        Surely he must have been training for his future culinary career, Ratatouille-style?

      2. Arabella Flynn*

        Honestly, judging from my experience with pet rats, the easiest way to keep a rat from eating your fresh stock is to give him a comfy house and feed him the leftovers instead. Rodents are lazy boogers whenever they get the chance. They know a good deal with they see one.

  39. rebeccadelite*

    I quit day 3 as office manager of a small real estate company. There was nothing inherently bad about the job or the people. I just realized very quickly that making calls, scheduling appointments and stapling papers was not the job for me. The only thing that bothered me was having to let someone know when I’d need to use the bathroom (in which I would sit and cry at any chance out of boredom and regret). I lied and told my boss that my parent was ill and I needed to move home, out of state. They were very understanding – though looking back I wonder if they doubted me. I had previously been contracting at a mid-size pharma company and called them the next day. I was back to work there in another department within two weeks. I have been happily in the industry for nearly 20 years now with zero regrets. I was insecure in my youth and felt I didn’t fit in with such highly educated folks, making important decisions. I now make important decisions in a very niche area of the pharma/biotech industry and though I’m not proud of how I handled it, happy I left so quickly!

  40. NauticalByNature*

    I was in my last year of college and was looking for a pretty laid-back job while I finished up a big research project as part of my school work. Second day working at a small coffee shop in rural Massachusetts and the “manager” asks me to meet her in her office and she asked me why I hadn’t worn a lower-cut shirt. With no shame, front of God and man, she told me directly that “showing skin” was expected as a “team player” so we all got better tips. Same manager called me “unprofessional” the next day when I told her I was never coming back after she called me to demand I come in with no notice because for some reason the other new person no-showed.

  41. Agnes G*

    I quit a phone sex job in the first week! I had done the work before and was comfortable with it, but this company assigned me to a 1-900 number line rather than one where the customer paid by credit card. Because credit cards were considered legal age verification but technically an underage person could call a 900 number, we were told we couldn’t use any profanity or explicit language on 900 calls. I found the restriction impossible to deal with – completely counterintuitive plus callers were angry over the fact I could not actually talk about sex on a phone sex line – so I didn’t go back after the first day.

    1. Melissa*

      This is hysterical!! It was a phone-sex line but they said you couldn’t use any explicit language??

    2. bamcheeks*

      I feel like these are two completely non-transferable skillsets– like, there is an Art to doing non-explicit phone sex and explicit phone sex and you can be one or the other but no single person in the world can do both.

    3. Warrior Princess Xena*

      There’s a lot of self-sabotaging companies and managers in this thread, but this one takes the cake!

    5. ConstantlyComic*

      What did they expect you to do if you couldn’t talk about sex, talk about the weather?

      2. Panicked*

        As an armchair meteorologist, I am having *far* too much fun in my head with a 1-900 weather line.

      3. Agnes G*

        These comments are delightful and I’m disappointed I never got to deliver a weather report! For the truly curious, there’s a difference between highly suggestive and explicit – think raunchy humor on network TV versus adult movies, or bikinis versus nudity. It was a particularly difficult form of improv, like playing the board game Taboo for 8 hours.

      1. Goldfeesh*

        Now I’m picturing a Dick Van Dyke level of “English accent” on a 1-900 line, “Ooh, put it there, guv!”

    8. goddessoftransitory*

      Wait, what???

      I don’t think your employers understood the nature of the service they provided! Although I do love the idea of a prim and proper phone sex line –“And then, Reginald, we engaged in coital intimacy, to our mutual enjoyment. Then we both lit cigarettes and discussed your golf game, which I listened to with rapt attention.”

      1. bellz*

        “And then, Reginald, we engaged in coital intimacy, to our mutual enjoyment. Then we both lit cigarettes and discussed your golf game, which I listened to with rapt attention.”

        Thank you for the very much-needed belly laugh! You win the internet today! :)

  42. Nuke*

    I’d been unemployed and basically took the first offer I got. It was for a call center that, I was told, assisted with mental health-related insurance claims. On day one of training, they told us that it was going to be an extremely emotionally taxing and difficult job, and sometimes we’d be dealing with crisis calls. We were not qualified for that, nor was it mentioned beforehand, and were being paid $10 an hour. I got VERY lucky and another place called back with an offer 4 days into the other job, offering me more pay, with no phone calls required. I accepted immediately and quit the other place by email that day. They responded that it was “unfortunate” that I couldn’t “make it” to the end of my “agreed” 2 week training. I didn’t reply. Bye!

    I’m still at that “other place” today, 6+ years later :)

    1. Nuke*

      Oh and I should mention that our timesheets had to be filled out on printed out sheets of paper, by hand, and handed to our trainer at the end of the week. It might be petty, but that was not an insignificant reason for me wanting to get out of there ASAP.

      1. AngryOctopus*

        The only time I had to fill out a timesheet on a printed-out sheet of paper was for like a month where 1-we had to keep track of our project hours for collaborator $$ reasons, but 2-the online system had to be revamped and tested to make sure it was working for us, and something got messed up and they had to fix it. So it was only a stopgap! Crazy they had you filling it out like that!

          1. Michelle Smith*

            Even in 2005, I put the paper timesheet into the machine and it would stamp the time. I don’t think I ever had to fill one out by hand.

        2. High Efficiency Dreams*

          Department of Natural Resources in Michigan still fills out paper timesheets. They make the seasonal workers in the state park system do this anyway. I know because I worked at one of their parks last summer in 2023. They also make you write down your assigned duties of the day on the sheet. Most of which were already posted on a dry erase board and/or assigned by a park ranger anyway. It was mindboggling. Last job before that I was clocking in and processing payroll for the company on an app for several years. Before that I punched in on a wall machine all the others and I’m not young.

          They also paint their parking lot lines manually. I used to work for a company that did this work with actual machines. So incredibly fast. Less than 30 seconds to paint one line and get to the starting point on the next. Took about 2-4 minutes manually depending on the person doing the work. Sometimes, depending on the type of marking, the DNR would tie up 2 people on 1 marking to complete it. Massive parking lot, too. They wasted so much paint doing it by hand vs. evenly applied by a machine. Lasts longer as well.

          They also bought traffic marking and other paint by the gallon and in spray cans at Home Depot or shipped through and online supplier vs. in the more economical 5-gallon buckets on a commercial account with negotiated pricing (say, at Sherwin-Williams, like my last job did). I don’t think they ever tracked usage & man hours to assess production and plan/negotiate future purchases. This has been the SOP for decades upon decades. Rangers always seemed surprised when they needed to purchase more paint for *insert project here*.

          The rangers had the mindset of “this is the way we’ve always done it”. They’d also relay/complain about how they had to stay within their operating budget. Fair enough, but at the end I was like, WOW, so THIS is what it’s like to work for the state government and generate government waste. Eye opener.

          They posted an employee suggestion flyer at the end of the season and I submitted those 2 points as ways they can improve. Whether they do or not, I had to let someone know how DUMB it was to operate in these ways. Professionally, of course.

  43. MLM No More*

    I quit a job in my third week without anything else lined up (only time I have ever done that). I had moved to a new city and just need any job so while I had some doubts after the interview I figured what’s there to loose?

    It was advertised as an entry level marketing job. It was direct sales, and an MLM. The job was setting up a tent in a parking lot of grocery stores etc. and harassing people to try to demo and sell this multi purpose car wax and microfiber clothes. It was 10 hour days and I worked in horrible weather (snow, wind, tables blowing away). In the morning before getting to location, they made you wear business professional clothing (for like an hour while we did sales training) and then you had to change into something more practical for the actual job. We also had to go in a circle and do a weird culty “go team go!” chant every morning.

    I did not give notice, I thought about it over a weekend and quit after my Monday shift. They tried to get me to stay. I did not and like 3 days later got a job at a liquor store which was not ideal but much better. Now I’m settled in the same city and work in the field I actually studied for (legit marketing/advertising) and am very very grateful.

  44. Katherine*

    The year is 2013, I’m fresh out of college and have no experience in anything except babysitting. A friend of a friend gets me hired at a hellhole of a steakhouse on the Upper West Side. They paid $12 per hour in lieu of tips, but the guests didn’t know that, and they were still collecting tips from guests, which is fully illegal. Entrees could take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. If you checked on your guests food you got cursed out without getting an answer.
    I immediately got a some sort of massive illness and was hacking up a lung constantly throughout the dining room. Kept trying to call out but they wouldn’t let me (I shoulda been more assertive.)

    I held on until payday because they paid in cash and were known to withhold pay from people. One girl was owed like $2k because they kept shorting her. They tried not to pay me on payday, claiming they didn’t have enough cash, but I insisted that I needed to pay rent. I quit with no notice the next day, they still contacted me two days later asking if I’d come in for a shift.

    After my short stint at the steakhouse I began an illustrious 5 year career as a cater waiter and was much happier.

    1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      They paid $12 per hour in lieu of tips, but the guests didn’t know that, and they were still collecting tips from guests, which is fully illegal.

      How’s that illegal?

      1. Hlao-roo*

        I think the restaurant itself was keeping the tips (not distributing the tips to the waitstaff). Looks like that’s illegal is my state (in the US) based off of a quick google but I don’t know enough to say if it’s illegal in every state.

      2. WhoAmIWhyAmIHere*

        Because there’s a law against it.

        I mean, sorry for the snark, but how is that a question?

        1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

          Because I didn’t read it as the restaurant was keeping the tips, as Hlao-roo has clarified above without being snotty, and was not sure why a higher hourly wage plus tips would be illegal. Cheers!

        2. OMG It's 2024*

          If the person asking the question took it as “how is it illegal for guests to tip their servers” it’s not a dumb question at all. It wasn’t really made clear that the RESTAURANT OWNERS were keeping the tips and not tipping out the servers. It took me a minute like “why would that be a problem? So they’re making more money. Win Win” before I realized it too….So, the snark really wasn’t necessary, TBH.

  45. Horned Toad*

    In college, I worked for the student media office as a radio assistant for one week. The job was so different than advertised: the mandatory Friday 8AM meetings, training other students on Adobe products (??), and way more hours than expected. None of this was written in the job description. The teacher who was supposed to advise us was hated the field and never helped. Gossiping took up most of the endless workday. Worst of all, the pay was a paltry stipend and just not worth it. I applied for another job on campus and put in my resignation. The student in charge pulled me into her “office” for an exit interview with her friend (????) as a “witness”. She proceeded to berate me for 10 minutes, saying she “couldn’t give me a reference” or say I did good work. I happily told her this would never be on my resume.

  46. CC*

    I was recruited to work on a specific assignment for a company. I met with my supervisor on the first day, and he seemed very gruff. I tend to read as gruff and intimidating myself, so I wasn’t particularly bothered, although I did note it.

    I wasn’t given my keys to the office on my first day, so the second day when I was outside the office, I called him up and asked if he could buzz me in. When I got into the office, he immediately chewed me out for calling him, cursing and yelling that he wasn’t “YOUR DOORMAN” (he did use more than two words for that, and as an exercise to the reader you can guess what those extra words were). I immediately apologized and felt awful, but then as I went through the day I realized that I didn’t do anything wrong, that this guy was unreasonable, unprofessional, prone to temper tantrums, and I didn’t want to work in that environment.

    I called up my old company, who immediately took me back without any loss of benefits or seniority, and I resigned the next day. His boss tried very hard to get me to stay, but I was pretty confident I made the right choice.

    Weirdly, the guy who cursed me out took my resignation extremely well. He sat down with me, sincerely wished me well, and said that he understood the environment wasn’t a fit for everyone.

  47. Watry*

    I took a job working for CutCo (I know, I know, but I was 19, it was 2009 so I couldn’t even get hired at McDonald’s, and my dad had been pressuring me hard to find and take any job). Fortunately Dad and I both smelled weirdness so I ended up quitting when I showed up on my first day. They were unsurprised.

    1. notempagencies*

      Haha I had a brief stint selling Kirby vacuum cleaners. I lasted about a week. I sold one to my mom and grandma. Thats it.

    2. SamanthaParkington*

      I blindly went to a “group interview” after dialing a number on a flyer advertising “jobs for students.” It turned out to be Cutco. I sat through the pitch and walked out, but I still remember those scissors that cut a penny.

      1. Judge Judy and Executioner*

        I did this too while I was in high school. I left at the first break of the group interview.

    3. Elsewise*

      I also quit a CutCo clone! I think it was called Vector Marketing or something like that? I quit because they needed me to spend like $120 on knives to sell, which I didn’t have, so I asked my mom to loan me the money to get started. Fortunately, my mom was a lot smarter than sixteen year old me, smelled a scam right away, and made me quit. I left a voicemail but never heard back, but I suspect they weren’t surprised.

        1. Lumos*

          Vector Marketing isn’t controlled by the same people who do the production at all. Cutco split/sold-off their marketing arm. I’m actually from the city that has the factory and Vetor marketing hates anyone from there because we can just walk in and buy it with zero issues. lol

    4. Andie Begins*

      I applied with CutCo when they were Vector Marketing and I was fresh out of college! Red Flag 1 was getting a call to schedule an interview just an hour or two after I applied. Then I Googled the company to prepare for the interviewand saw how shady they were, called them back and canceled.

    6. Jonathan MacKay*

      Don’t point out the potential legal issue with ‘defacing currency’ – it just makes them try to butter you up even more!

  48. Mockingjay*

    Not my story but my Mom’s – second day quit.

    Some years ago, she took a job at a podiatrist’s office as a receptionist. First day was normal; learning the schedule and booking system, greeting patients, filing, etc. Unbeknownst to Mom, the office was short staffed without enough RNs/LPNs/health aides. Day 2, the doctor asks her to come to a patient room and had her “assist.” (Corn removal or ingrown toenail, something like that. She handed him gauze and recorded patient notes.) Mom went home and never went back. She didn’t even call to quit.

  49. Savoury Creampuff*

    I left a retail job after one day and didn’t even go back to pick up my paycheck.

    It was a souvenir shop more or less identical to eight others on the same drag in a European city. There was no bathroom available – we were expected to find one in a nearby restaurant. There was no fridge to store food, and we only got 30 minutes for a lunch break, so no time to get to anything affordable.

    And the work itself was to engage with customers – but not too much! Be friendly but move them to purchasing and leaving. Otherwise, we had to look busy by refolding shirts over and over again. The cherry on top was that it was a family-owned shop, and members of said family would gossip in a corner looking meaningfully at the staff.

    I found it so soul sucking I couldn’t go back. I waited tables instead – harder work, almost no tips (Europe), but I felt like I was accomplishing something, and lucked out with great coworkers.

  50. not my circus*

    when i was about 24 i was hired for a job within the same university system as i was already working. it was a significant pay bump and an increase in responsibility (going from acting assistant manager of a fabrication space with a lower title and pay but all of the responsibility, to manager of a different fabrication space), but in the interview process the space i was to take over had seemed organized and manageable…three days in i realized that i would have almost no support or oversight from ANYONE, which would mean that any mistakes or accidents would fall on my 24yo shoulders..and i could foresee a LOT of accidents and mistakes considering the space was lacking in a lot of safety precautions, had some pretty crazy methods of doing normally run of the mill fabrication techniques, and that i was only allowed to work 29 hours a week though the space would be open far more than that. the job description and interview had also neglected to mention that a significant part of the job would be driving a van to pick up materials. i didn’t have a driver’s license and they never even asked!

    on the third day i emailed my old boss and asked him if i could come back to his department (his response, almost verbatim: “oh thank god please yes come back”) and quickly requested a meeting with my supervisor (who was the director of the entire college?? see what i mean about no oversight?) and drafted a formal resignation letter. i was perhaps a little less tactful than i could have been when i said “it seems like you hired me not because you thought i could fulfill all the requirements and duties of the job, but because the semester is starting soon and you need a warm body to fill this role” or something to that effect: the director, who was at least twice my age and again, the director of an entire college, blew up at me. well, hit dogs will holler. i returned to my old job (where i successfully negotiated a raise and a title bump) and it took the other department nearly a year to fill that position during which time, from what i heard, they had several serious near-miss accidents, a small fire, and many subsequent tense visits from Risk Management. and the director of that college never looked me in the eye again.

  51. starwarsellie*

    Back in 2000, I was “looking for a change” and found a job for a phone company. I didn’t really understand what they were doing. Something about being an alternate provider for landline service. Got called for an interview for a much better sounding position in accounting, took time off for an “appointment”, got an offer and quit the phone company. I’ve been at the “other” place for 23 years and still love it.

  52. Janey*

    Telemarketing gig in college.
    We were given a script.
    On my very first call, I got an elderly lady, and I couldn’t bear the idea of trying to make her switch long distance service providers, so I apologized for bothering her and hung up.
    I looked at the supervisor and said “sorry, I can’t do this”. She laughed and said “nope”.
    So, I got my things together and left.

  53. picklejuice*

    I quit in the first week once in my life. I was temping as a rental agent for a local property management company, and was so overbooked that I would have had to break some laws of physics, not to mention a lot of traffic and parking laws, to attend all the appointments they assigned me. I refused to speed or park illegally, as I was using my own car and would have been personally financially responsible for any tickets or accidents!
    I quit by walking up to the admin and the owner in the office and letting them know, at the end of my fourth shift, that my tenure was ending immediately. I gave the reason that it was far too stressful for a (non-career related) summer job. **My immediate supervisor, the person responsible for all the pressure that made the internship so awful, called me that evening to argue that I was wrong about the stress level of the job, and that I should return to work.**

  54. Blonde Spiders*

    When I was a senior in HS, I worked for a fast food joint that designed to be a competitor for Arby’s. This was ’89 or so, so $3.85/hour. I spent my 4 hour shift refilling the salad bar; marking levels on the laminated diagram, filling up containers in the walk-in, putting them in the salad bar. And when I finished that round, do it again. Over and over for 4 hours.

    I didn’t call, I just never went back. They cared more about getting their uniform back and told me they’d withhold my paycheck until I returned it. (I now know this is illegal.) I decided I didn’t need the $10 that badly.

    1. OMG It's 2024*

      I mean, compared to the stories here, that sounds … I dunno, tedious, mindless, whatever, but certainly not abusive or heinous. Someone has to refill the salad bar! I’m curious what you THOUGHT you’d be doing?

      1. Goldfeesh*

        I know. It sounds like one of the jobs I did in college dining services. It was sort of enjoyable.

        1. Steve for Work Purposes*

          Yeah I had a job almost exactly like that at student dining in college. It was a chill job, the pay was good, and I got free food out of it. As far as part time jobs in college went it was one of the better ones. Other than making the giant things of ranch dressing which was kinda gross. But I much preferred working the salad bar to the make to order omelette bar. Salad bar duty and pancake duty were the chill spots to be assigned!

    2. Chitose*

      “They cared more about getting their uniform back” — this unlocked a memory from one of my own high school jobs! This was a concessions gig at a movie theater. When it came time for my first shift, the owner gave me the uniform, which was just a black t-shirt with the theater name on it. I was under the impression that this was, you know, MY uniform, so I wore it home after my shift… only to get several calls from the manager and his wife (!) yelling that if I didn’t bring the shirt back IMMEDIATELY, they would call the police and report me for theft.

      Apparently the t-shirts were, err, communal. You were meant to put one on for the duration of your shift, then take it off and bring it back to the manager’s office so the next person could wear it for the following shift. Needless to say, they were not washing the shirts between shifts, or even from day to day. I brought the shirt back and told them I wouldn’t be working there. The owner and his wife then proceeded to leave a bunch of shouty voicemails about how they wouldn’t give me my paycheck because I tried to “steal” the uniform shirt. It was… bizarre.

  55. Lilo*

    I walked out of a restaurant job about an hour into my first shift. Manager screamed at another server, the walk in was a mess, I realized the place was hell, and just walked out. I was 19, they probably owed me like $10 but I didn’t pursue it. I never heard from them again. I don’t think I was the first person to walk out.

  56. Clawfoot*

    I quit a telemarketing job in two shifts.

    I mean, “telemarketing” should tell you all you need to know. But this one was particularly egregious. This was for a company that sold meat in bulk, plus freezers to keep the meat in. We would cold-call people out of the telephone book (this should date me), asking if they’d received the “free sample meat package” we were distributing in their neighbourhood. (There were no free samples of meat being randomly distributed.) And when they said no they hadn’t, we asked if they’d like one? If they answered yes, we put them through a SERIOUSLY LENGTHY questionnaire asking about employment and income and 90% of the time, we had to tell them, at the end of this lengthy and invasive questionnaire, that they COULD NOT AFFORD OUR SERVICES, and thus were not eligible for the free meat package.

    It was THE WORST. I was a teenager trying to earn enough money to take a trip for March Break. It was soul-destroying.

    1. Stopped Using My Name*

      Did we work for the same place?

      I worked somewhere similar in the mid 1990s. They fired me because I could not get people to accept “appointments” to accept the meat (and listen to another sales pitch to increase their purchases). I worked in an open space with desks and phones. We did not use the phone book, but received a list at the start of every shift. A shift was 4 hours. The boss called me into the office after about a month of this. He said I wasn’t getting appointments so this was it. I felt bad because I had never been fired before. The company was sued for racial discrimination shortly after and I’m sure they are out of business.

  57. Coffee Please*

    Fifteen years ago, I was hired as a housekeeper at a fancy bed and breakfast in a very expensive, coastal city. I had years of innkeeping and housekeeping experience and I had just moved cross-country so I needed a job. It was only $10/hr but it was 15 years ago and I was crashing on a friend’s couch. I quit my first day after it was revealed that I’d be ironing and starching sheets for hours a day in a hot, tiny room.

  58. Hailrobonia*

    In college I was working at a deli/bakery/cafe as a sandwich maker/coffee dude/general stuff. I picked up a second gig at another deli at a sandwich shop to make some extra $ but there were a bunch of red flags (so red that even I, new to the workforce, noticed them). The manager was a jerk and made a big deal about docking out pay for XYZ, even tiny infractions.

    So after my first shift I said “I don’t think this will work out for me. How do I get my paycheck for today?” – he just paid me cash and I left.

  59. Kai*

    When I was 14, early ‘80’s, I worked at Taco Bell.
    One requirement was a “fry shift”. 4 hours of deep frying tacos, nachos, etc, for the next day.
    It was dangerous. My first job, age 14, standing over boiling oil trying to juggle wire baskets of nachos. The tacos had to be hand pressed into the forms, then fried. Gloves off pressing corn disks into forms that had just been removed from boiling oil.
    I burned myself countless times before I walked out.
    They were mad! But I don’t regret just walking out, they had no business having young teenagers doing such dangerous work.

    1. OMG It's 2024*

      Wait. Taco Bell doesn’t use premade taco shells???? This is a startling revelation to me! I figured they bought truckloads of like … Ortega shells or whatever!

        2. Elspeth McGillicuddy*

          When I worked there 10 or so years ago, they used pre made taco shells. The chalupa shells were freshly made though.

  60. Yaya*

    I worked in a American West-themed restaurant in the UK (I thought it would be fun since I’m from the American West) – I let them know at interview that I was only legally allowed to work 20 hours per week due to the visa restrictions I was under. They assured me it would be fine. I’ve worked in restaurants a lot before, so I really should have anticipated that this wasn’t going to work. Sometimes you just can’t leave when your scheduled shift ends, if you have a table still there or sidework hasn’t finished, etc. I had two shifts and realised that a third shift was going to put me over my allowed hours per week. When I brought it up to the manager, they just did not care. There is no repercussion for the employer if they give you too many hours, but it could affect my future visa applications so I ultimately just handed in my uniform and said goodbye.

  61. No creative name yet*

    About 20 years ago, took my first job after college as a canvasser fundraising for a political campaign. I was young and naive and didn’t realize that with my personality and skill set (shy, analytical, etc.) was the worst possible fit for that line of work. The interactions themselves weren’t as bad as I feared actually; most people I approached were respectful even though they quickly shooed me away. What I couldn’t take was the attitude of the trainers—they were constantly in my ear about not making my numbers, needing to be more aggressive, etc., and I felt a lot of pressure from the get-go. For example, I really didn’t want to push people who were clearly not interested, but you were supposed to make a certain amount of overtures before giving up, and a lot of the suggested language felt manipulative to me.

    I quit at the end of the first week; I don’t recall how exactly, but I don’t think it was uncommon in that line of work. I quickly got a policy research job for an advocacy organization that was a much better fit.

    I did learn a lot in that short time though about what I do and don’t want in a job that has helped me since!

    1. OldHat*

      I graduated from college in 2009 and almost every booth offering paid positions at job fairs were a canvasser-type position. There were even some volunteer canvasser positions!

      I think I was offered a chance to make it to round two of two interviews, which meant a test run of canvassing for hours. I was naive and thought I could try hard enough to minimize my weaknesses rather than leaning into my strengths. I noped out of both jobs before the test shift. So maybe I wasn’t fully naive.

      The first one involved a meh commute and who you were farmed out to canvass for changed every week. And it was for part time. There was a lot of questions on how pushy you can be for things you don’t believe in. I think I ghosted that one.

      The second one was for one cause with a shorter commute. But it was at night and the test shift was to be in near freezing temps. And the fact that you would canvass one cause in a small town every night didn’t help. I hate the cold and that was what tipped me to decline. Somehow declining to move on was unheard of, especially at the group interview? Gl

  62. Emmy*

    I worked there for almost two weeks before I left. It was my first role working in a quasi-HR capacity for a small, family-owned business. The Owner told me he had a PhD because of his years of experience in the industry (not an actual degree from an accredited school). He then tried to take wages from an employee’s paycheck after it was discovered she had taken several customers’ credit card info to order various lunch deliveries. The place was full of OSHA violations. But the thing that sent me packing was finding out that he had all his non-exempt employees sign an agreement to waive their OT rights to keep their jobs while the company was experiencing financial issues. Those that didn’t sign the waiver were terminated. Unfortunately, a large portion of his staff were non-native English speakers, so they didn’t understand what they were agreeing to.

    For your readers, yes, there was an eventual lawsuit for this that he lost to the tune of $300K in backpay and fees. A disgruntled terminated employee had called the DOL. The owner was *shocked* because he said they were all family and couldn’t believe someone would “betray” him like that.

  63. Spicy Tuna*

    I didn’t even take this job. I left in the middle of the interview. First, I am a massive introvert. Working silently by myself with no interaction with other humans is my dream job. I answered an ad for a “financial analyst” – perfect, right? It turned out to be some guy recruiting for his MLM that sold financial services. That kind of job (lots of cold calling, recruiting people, pep talking) is so fundamentally different than a) the job description; and b) my personality type that I literally got up and left while he was still trying to sell me on joining his “downstream”

    2. It doesn't matter*

      The interview I left was a legit job, but it was government customer service. Which I knew going in, but once they described it in person, I knew I couldn’t do it and left.

  64. Dante's Disco Inferno*

    Senior year in high school. Second day at a well-known ice cream-but not really ice cream-store, the assistant manager grabbed my breasts and honked them. I reflexively punched him in the nose and then walked out. No regrets; I hope I actually broke it.

    5. anywhere but here*

      Kudos to you. If only all gropers received the same swift and much deserved consequences.

  65. Poison I.V. drip*

    Got a job cleaning carpets. It was one of those shady companies that would print coupons that were basically meaningless. The owner was a religious nutbag. I had to use my own vehicle, which I didn’t care for. Because I was the new guy, they sent me to the undesirable jobs. The first job of the day, the customer was pissed that the coupons were a scam. The second job, the customer was ok and furnished my trainer and me with beer. The third job was a crime scene, with dried blood in the carpet. I finished up but told the trainer not to expect me back the next morning.

  66. spiriferida*

    I had a job that I actually ‘quit’ before my first day!

    This was in college, when I was a bit naive and struggling to search for a summer job. I was studying a few states away but going to live with my parents for the summer so I’d had trouble searching, and ultimately landed on a job posting I’d seen on campus that also had opportunities in my home state. The website was impressively vague about what it was, which was my first red flag.

    I got an interview anyway, and decided to go – I had to get my dad to drive me, and he promptly got a flat tire on the way there. I called to let them know, and on the call discovered that it was a group interview. Second red flag! But we’d left the house so I’d committed.

    I got there late, they actually still interviewed me, which honestly should have been a red flag too. At which point I discovered it was actually a sales position and a quasi-MLM deal – not buying the stock yourself, but still a ‘sell to your friends and family’ thing. They promptly offered me a job on the spot, for training the next week. I accepted, because hey, I needed the job, right?

    That lasted until around midnight, when my college student brain finally finished processing the red flags that they’d offer me the job with no questions after being late, and also finally finished telling me that no, actually, a sales job was a terrible idea. I sent them an email at midnight making up an excuse about actually having to go back to my school’s state halfway across the country, and I don’t think I ever heard back. I would almost certainly have quit before I ever had to try and sell a single item.

    Instead I became an emergency substitute camp counselor, had a first day so bad I broke down crying which involved accidentally putting a 5-year-old on the wrong bus, and yet somehow ended up working at that place for four summers in a row (the first day was thankfully not representative).

  67. stitchinthyme*

    I quit one after 2 weeks. My manager happened to go on vacation the week I started and there was no one to get me on their systems or assign me any work. When they still didn’t the second week, I decided to just bail and find someplace that would actually give me something to do.

    A few years later, I had a similar situation, but this time they didn’t even give me a computer for a month. (I’m a software developer so computers are kind of important to my job!) I lasted 4 months there and would just bring in something to read every day.

    Not sure if it counts, but I did do a no-show at a job once as a teenager. I had been working at a CVS, my first retail job, and they gave me a disciplinary warning for chatting too much with customers (no, I wasn’t doing anything like oversharing, just being friendly). I thought that was pretty bogus, so I decided to apply to the local supermarket instead. However, cooler heads at the CVS talked me into ignoring the idiot manager and staying, so I just never showed at the supermarket. That manager was transferred out soon after, so the rest of my time at CVS went smoothly and I never had any other problems there.

    1. king of the pond*

      I’m surprised the job that didn’t give you a PC for a month didn’t tell you to code on paper or something absolutely ridiculous like that.

    2. software developer*

      Also a software developer, and I’ve heard similar stories from multiple developers at my current company of having to wait like a month before their laptop arrived. When I started, I did get a laptop on day one but it took almost a month for the approvals to get processed to install Java on my computer (this was for a Java developer role). Despite that, I’ve found my company to be a pretty good employer in other respects— they just have a wildly overcomplicated and slow process for requesting technical equipment/software.

    3. Your Mate in Oz*

      My employer did that to someone. I was hired for a new project for the company, and in the first month or so I threw together a “dump database tables to web pages” horror in PHP just to make it easier to show management that the server I wrote was actually doing something.

      A week later I’ve just sat down on Monday morning and a woman I’ve never seen before walks over and says “are you Dave? I’m {name} and I’m the new WordPress developer”. I had to go and ask my boss WTF, where she’s going to sit, which computer and all the rest. While she stood next to me.

      We got her set up and I left her to install whatever software she needed/set up her computer while I went back to the boss’s office to ask what was going on. WordPress is not PHP, PHP is not the right tool for our website, and so on.

      Half an hour later she wasn’t at her desk and I never saw her again. I assume she saw all the red flags and noped out of there.

      My job improved a great deal from that unpromising start, but I came very close to following that new hire out the door. But the boss still suffers a bit from “the last idea he heard is the best idea” syndrome and is prone to going off half-cocked.

  68. Zombeyonce*

    I started a job when I was 18 after reading a very vague description and going through a cursory phone interview. It sounded like retail but I had never heard of the place, and I needed the money too much to be particular.

    When I got to the tiny, windowless room, they sat me down next to a nameless person who never acknowledged my presence. I was logged into a computer and given a phone, then told to start calling the numbers on it and read the script provided. After a childhood full of “always do as adults tell you,” I was very confused but too eager to please to ask for clarification and risk looking stupid; I just did as asked. I spent the next few hours becoming increasingly upset as people I was trying to sell some mysterious product hung up on me, cursed at me, and did everything but what the script said they were supposed to do.

    I left for lunch and never returned. To this day, I don’t know what exactly it was I was supposed to be selling or why I got zero training to be a telemarketer, or if what I was doing was even legal and not a scam to get identify information. I felt guilty for all of a day but now just feel sad about the thousands of other kids they probably convinced to work there after I disappeared.

    1. Zombeyonce*

      Oh, and I never saw a reaction or heard from them again (I’m guessing that exact scenario happened daily there) and I’m pretty sure I didn’t get paid for 3 of the most miserable hours of my life. No regrets.

  69. wwyd*

    Not me, but… The guys who worked in the warehouse were stereotypical rednecks. They thought it would be funny to haze a new hire on his first day. I worked in the office area, not the warehouse, so I don’t have the full details; but I do know there were Deliverance quotes and sound effects involved. New guy clocked out at lunch and never came back. [The manager thought it was hilarious.]

  70. Roy G. Biv*

    In college in the 80’s, for minimum wage, I served food in a glorified cafeteria with an Olde English theme. I had to wear a uniform that looked somewhat bar wench-ish, which zipped up the back and was made of polyester. It was hot and itchy. We also had to wear hair nets, which were then covered by frilled polyester mob caps that kind of matched the uniform. Those were also hot and itchy. I dished up mashed potatoes for the patrons for three or four shifts before I could not take it any longer.

  71. Spicy Tuna*

    I left a waitressing job after one or two days. I had never waitressed before and I got very little training. I was trying to make an espresso for a customer and IDK what happened but I ended up with burning hot grounds all over me. I just left. Years later, I was at the mall and I saw the restaurant owner. I couldn’t believe it but he actually remembered me and started to complain that I left in the middle of a shift!

  72. Johanna Cabal*

    Almost two decades ago I was desperately searching for a job after graduating college. I found a “marketing job” that turned out to be a MLM. So, a bunch of us found this ad on a now-defunct job board looking for “marketing managers.” A bunch of us showed up at this non-descript suite in a suburban office park and got a presentation about the company’s “growing opportunities.” We were all then interviewed separately by “team leads.” Then, we all sat around to see if we made the cut.

    I was accepted and told I’d be in training for the next two days. Unpaid, of course. So, myself and another naïve person got to tag along and try to convince store owners at various shop centers to switch to a new phone service. On my second day, the person training me totally bullied a poor nail salon owner who spoke little English into changing her store’s phone plan. At the end of the day I felt physically sick after witnessing that exchange.

    That morning, I walked in and gave my resignation to the person running the office. In hindsight, I should’ve just called. The person seemed a trifle disappointed but not surprised (I’m sure lots of folks quit on her in less than a week, in fact, one of my friends did the same thing except she called and cussed them out for wasting her time lol).

    I did learn to be careful of anything that smelled of something similar. I later worked with someone who had worked for them as a “marketing manager.” That person, because it turned out to be a commission-based role, ended up having some tax issues due to it.

  73. DixieChick*

    Got a part time hosting gig at a local italian restaurant (I had just gotten a new car and wanted extra cash for the payments). First day they had me work take out. No big deal, answer phones, put orders in, etc. Not rocket science. When they hired me, they said they would make me a server within a month, as I had been a server before. Fine, I’ll tough it out for a month. The Friday after my first shift, I get a panicked call at around 5pm asking where I am, and that takeout is packed. I had no idea what they were talking about, they never told me to work this night, I was due to work the lunch shift the next day. Whatever, miscommunication. The next day comes and there are already two people working takeout. I would be sitting doing absolutely nothing, there was no need for three takeout people during lunch on a Saturday. The final straw was when the servers on lunch had me roll their silverware. I got up and left out the kitchen door. Restaurant went out of business about a year ago LOL

    1. Name Required*

      So, you were doing nothing because they overstaffed, and you quit because they asked you to … roll silverware? As a server in a past life, I’ve rolled thousands of silverware packets during downtime. I’m honestly confused by this one.

      1. bishbah*

        I’m guessing it’s because they were hired as a host with the promise of becoming a server, but didn’t work in either capacity during their (rather short) time there. Perhaps the disorganization they saw in staffing hinted that a promotion to server was unlikely to actually happen. If that was important to them, better to make a quick exit.

      2. Michelle Smith*

        It sounds like they quit because it was wildly dysfunctional. And this person was not hired to be a server either.

  74. RTG123*

    My first day at a new school district most of the school board was arrested for taking kick-backs. I should have left right then, but I was young and rent was due.

    At the end of that school year, I had been waiting for months for payment for an extra class I took on. I met with someone in HR, he said they were “working on it.” I said something along the lines of “how are we running a school like this?” and he got up, walked around the desk, bent to get inches from my face and yelled at me. I quit right then. He seemed unsurprised.

    I did eventually get the money I was owed.

  75. axolotlquestions*

    Turned up for a temp job, and it turned out my job was to pick up the jars that had just been filled with boiling hot chutney off the conveyor belt, quickly dump them in a basin of cold water before they could burn my hands, make sure the lids were on tight, and then place them back on the conveyor belt. At the end of my 8 hour shift I was asked if I wished to do a shift the following day, I made my excuses and left, never to return.

      1. axolotlquestions*

        Well, it didn’t happen while I was there. Given the working conditions I doubt they’d care if it happened occasionally, despite the risk of injury.

    2. I Have RBF*

      Sounds like a really bad cannery. You should have had tongs – harder to grab, but less risk of contamination from burned workers.

  76. NerdyKris*

    I once applied for a job servicing the new lottery machines that were being rolled out across the state. It was billed as an IT technician job. My first day, they pretty much had the three of us in the warehouse, sorting screws. I had two teenagers teach me how to use dollies to move machines, which we also had to sort. Basically, with my IT degree and experience, I had ended up in a basic warehouse position.

    I didn’t actually quit until the next morning when they called looking for me. I just said “I’m not able to do this job” and hung up. A year later I got a letter from the state asking if I’d been paid all my wages for the job. Apparently they started bouncing paychecks a few months after.

    A few months after the warehouse job, I grabbed a seasonal job at Target. At which point I remembered I can’t climb ladders, so I had to sheepishly stock only the shelves I could reach and immediately leave at the end of my shift. It was very embarassing.

    Thankfully, I got my current job of the last six years a few months later.

  77. Sanibel Island*

    lol, I didn’t even make it to my first day.

    The manager called me on a Friday, and offered me the job. I told them to email me the offer letter so I can look it over and make a final decision. In what was already a bunch of red flags up to this point, the manager told me they wouldn’t email me the offer letter until I verbally agreed over the phone to take the job.

    Ummm…

    So I verbally accepted, and told the manager to send me the letter by end of day, they say absolutely, see you on Monday at 9:30am.

    Friday night rolls around, no letter. Saturday night, no letter. SUNDAY NIGHT, the night before I’m supposed to start, I still have no offer letter. I call both phone numbers the manager left me, one mailbox was full, so I left a message on the other. I then emailed the manager asking for my offer letter.

    I receive my offer letter Monday morning, exactly 5 minutes before my start time. The offer letter had the wrong start day and time; let’s say I verbally agreed to start Monday, January 22nd at 9:30am, and the offer letter said Tuesday, January 22nd at 9am.

    I emailed back, thanking them for their time, but the miscommunication and inattention to detail was very concerning as a new employee. I wished them the best but would not be moving forward with the job.

    Their reply: “We appreciate your response and wish you the best on your employment search in this trying economy. We believe everything happens for a reason.”

    I got a job with more way pay, health benefits and PTO about 2 months later.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      Good for you for not working without an offer letter (and then not working because the offer letter came with a heap of red flags). I laughed at their “We appreciate your response and wish you the best on your employment search in this trying economy. We believe everything happens for a reason.” reply.

  78. fiverx313*

    i quit the day before the first day once. the boss interviewed me in her home. she wanted me to work from her home. multiple references to ‘like a family’ and ‘betrayal’ referring to previous employees leaving. then before i even started she was messaging me asking me to design flyers for her church (the job had nothing to do with design — or church) and not taking no for an answer. i texted her sorry it’s not going to work.

    1. fiverx313*

      oh, how it was received! she replied back ‘are you serious’ and i said ‘yes, sorry for the inconvenience’.

  79. Rr*

    haha yes! I worked at McDonald’s for one day. it was my second year out of high school and I was desperate for a summer job, everyone who worked there were people who were mean to me in high school. they only let me do drinks because burgers were allegedly too complicated for the first day. it was super boring and lonely and I was going to quit anyway but thankfully as soon as I got home from my shift another restaurant I’d applied to called me and offered me an interview, so I popped over to McDonald’s the next day and dropped off my uniform. then they tried not to pay me because it was too much of a hassle to enter me into the HR system for one day, so it took a month of harassing them before they finally gave me a cheque for my 6 hours of work. it wasn’t a paycheque, just a general cheque the McDonalds manager made up when my dad finally went and talked to him personally.

  80. mrs whosit*

    I quit an in-home day care I worked for, on the 3rd day, I think. The owner was present when parents dropped off and picked up their kids but otherwise was in her bedroom all day (which the parents did not know). She told me I didn’t need to use soap to wash bottles, and she put one toddler in his crib (alone in a different room, but visible on a monitor) because he was fussing and annoying her. She was just terrible. Despite the fact that she spent most of my interview telling me she was related to all kinds of cops (relevant because she’d filed charges against a previous employee for abuse or neglect?), she took my quitting fine. I offered 2 weeks’ notice, but she’d already hired another assistant and said she didn’t need me that long. I might have finished out the week? This was mid-recession, and I was desperate for work, but when I was sobbing all morning on day 3, before my shift, I knew I couldn’t continue.

    1. Name Required*

      I really hope you reported her to the state’s licensing agency for in home daycare. Those kids (and their parents) deserved better!

  81. RohSeeOh*

    I got hired as a psych office front desk where both a therapist and a handful of psychiatrists worked. I was trained for two or three days and on the fourth or fifth day I was put up front by myself. A person walked in but I couldn’t find her in the system so I asked my manager for help. He told me to have her take a seat and he would look for her paperwork. 10-15 very quick minutes later, I notice she’s still waiting and it’s past her start time with the therapist. Concerned, I went to the manager who told me to ask if the therapist has the docs. Sigh. Walked over and he was furious because this whole time he thought this client was a no show and didn’t know she’d been waiting.

    He angrily walks with me back up front and asks the manager if he knew about this, and my manager has the AUDACITY to say, “I had no clue about this.” I was so awe struck and shocked that I walked out and started crying. He threw me under the bus and get this! He asked me, sorry, no, told me I should not to tell my coworkers why I quit! I still did and they confronted him, he then confronted me about that but said he would love to still be a reference because I was sweet and wanted me to find a job. Eye roll. He checked on me weeks later but I never responded.

  82. Sarahs*

    The summer after my first year of college (way back in the day) I went to the neighborhood grocery store and applied for a job as a checker. They hired me but it turned out I would have to “work my way up” and so they trained me in the deli. It. Was. So. Gross. I have a few vivid memories of my first shift, like having to package up the leftover (uncooked) jo-jo potatoes, and getting yelled at for putting my hands in my pockets.

    During my lunch break I ran into one of the box boys who I knew slightly from high school and he looked at me and said, “WTF are you doing here?”

    I did not go back to that job on the second day and no I didn’t get paid for that one day of work.

    That little grocery store is still there, it’s now an international market with a great deli where they bake pita fresh to order. But I will never ever eat a jo-jo potato, from there or anywhere.

  83. Xero Deficit*

    Yes
    1st one where I didn’t find out how much I was being paid until 4th day (I was 15 at the time).
    2nd when I was left to run an entire pub on my trial shift. Didn’t return for 2nd shift
    3rd after an evening of being shouted at by drunk patrons of a nightclub. Didn’t return for 2nd shift.

  84. Life_Cameo*

    I was hired to work at an early learning center (aka daycare) and quit on the second day. It was an absolute nightmare. It was so unorganized and chaotic and there was literally no way to control any of the children’s behavior other than threatening to call their parent or guardian. And if the kid didn’t care…well then. Another kid got hurt on the playground pretty early in the day due to how aggressive they were allowed to be and in return were basically told to be gentler while the injured kid was off crying. I had plans with friends after work and wasn’t allowed to leave on time. I was held for an additional 25 minutes while waiting for an adult to relieve me. This is how it was for all breaks, very unpredictable. It was so stressful and draining that I literally cried that night because I didn’t want to go back.

    I should have known coming back was a mistake when multiple people told me they were surprised to see me the next day. After another chaotic morning, I put in my notice at lunch and was asked to stay and help for the rest of the week (3 days). Initially I felt bad for just quitting on the spot, so I said yes. The rest of that day was still awful, but I actually got to leave on time. The next day, they basically reassigned me from classroom to classroom all day to be a warm body for ratio and relieve other adults, and after being forced to stay a half hour late again after making sure everyone else got their breaks on time … my give a damn busted. After I got home, I sent them an email explaining that I would not be returning.

    I would like to note that I’m also not a newbie working with kids. I worked as a camp counselor for many years before this and even spent a year post graduation working in a special needs classroom as a paraeducator. I was literally spit on, screamed at, slapped, scratched and more in that job, but I would take it back in a heartbeat over working at that glorified daycare because we were allowed to work with the students in a way that allowed them to correct their behaviors in a positive manner while building rapport and also holding on to our authority as the adult in the situation. I also got to leave on time EVERYDAY!

    The daycare basically let the kids be in charge, and they knew it.

  85. In the middle*

    I had moved for grad school to a city across my state. The large national book store chain I had toiled at for 7 years had a store I could transfer to. Huzzah! I could still earn some money! I moved two weeks before the semseter started and jumped in for the first couple weeks full time.

    I had given my new managers a list of my availability, working around my 5 grad classes. When the next schedule went up, I was scheduled for 40 hours. I went to the manager and explained, “hey, you forgot my availability! Here’s a copy of it. Thanks!” the response? “You’ll just have to work these hours. We need you to work full time.” I went into my car, cried and called my mom. Went back into the store and told them, no I wouldn’t have to work those hours because I quit. I didn’t move across the state to work at the crappy, boring version of my hometown bookstore.

  86. ragazza*

    Only when I was a teenager in high school. I got a job as a junior counselor at a summer camp. But instead of being assigned a group or a task, I was supposed to somehow…find stuff to do on my own? After a few days of wandering around, awkwardly asking people if they had anything for me to do, and being stuck handing out towels and the like, I quit and got a job answering phones at a pizza place.

  87. i like hound dogs*

    Yep, twice.

    First one: Got hired at a tiny start-up (digital agency) where I was supposed to write content. On my first day, the CEO showed me how to download approximately fifteen apps, including one to my personal phone to take phone calls (like, they didn’t … provide phones, or computers). All eight of us were stuffed into two tiny offices in a rented workshare; it was an elbow-to-elbow kind of situation. And there were no meetings; you just received assignments through the apps and completed them and turned them in through the apps. Except there were lots of apps and I was very confused by the whole thing; I am not a techy person and there was no IT. I came in for my second day and it was more of the same — wondering what the heck I was supposed to do and how to do it. I had no manager (I guess we all technically reported to the CEO?) As the kid of a military father, I couldn’t handle the lack of direction and quit over email after my second day. To his credit, the CEO responded and said he understood. It was just a bad fit. Now I work for a giant company with procedures for everything and I love it!

  88. Sabina*

    I quit an office manager job after two days. Turned out they really needed a financial manager/controller from the duties I was expected to perform (which weren’t disclosed in the job posting or interview). What sealed my decision to quit was going through one day’s incoming mail and seeing 60% of it was from creditors trying to collect overdue payments from the company. That, and the Sheriff’s deputy who stopped by to serve the owner a subpoena. I left the keys and a resignation note at the end of the 2nd day. I never heard from the company again and never got paid.

  89. juliebulie*

    How I quit: Technically, it was the second day, and I quit over the phone because I was in too much pain to get out of bed.

    Why it was so bad: It was a temp job at a bindery. This guy Manny who didn’t speak English (and I didn’t speak his language) had a machine that would drill holes in a very thick textbook. (I don’t understand why you drill a book that already has a binding, and no one could tell me.) I would turn towards him, and he would hand this heavy book to me, it was something like Business Law, heavy enough to break a toe if you dropped it. And I would turn the other way and put it on a pallet.

    It was extremely tedious, especially since we couldn’t converse. There were no formal breaks; occasionally Manny would light a cigarette and we’d get a four minute break, not long enough for me to do anything but pee. (We did have a 1/2 hour lunch.) I don’t remember the specifics, but I do remember that it was totally legal and I felt really bad for Manny and his coworkers.

    My hands were filthy from book-dust and when I blew my nose, it was full of dust.

    It wasn’t fun, but it was bearable, and one of my childhood friends was working there too. Not that we could spend any time together besides lunch! Alas, when I woke up the next morning I was so sore I could barely move. I hurt all over.

    How your hasty exit was received: Without surprise. There was a reason they were using so many temps. The people were nice enough, but the lack of formal breaks was a problem for a lot of people. And also the pain. Oh the pain, the pain.

    And any other interesting details: I took a peek inside one of the books and was glad I didn’t need to know anything about business law. It’s a lot! And it’s dry as hell!

  90. Erick*

    A placement agency put me in the phone room of a company that sold generators. We had one day of on-boarding, but before our training could start, a hurricane hit in Florida (I was in Central US). We were thrown on the phones with no training. I was speaking with frantic fire chiefs trying to get generators started, and I didn’t even know how to run the company’s generators! They knew more than I did, and they all knew it. I had no supervisory help because they were working the phones too.

    On top of that, we didn’t get breaks or lunches. They catered Taco Bell. We had productivity goals and had to eat our awesomely healthy tacos at our desks.

    Ten hour day on the phone, no breaks, you can’t believe the headache I had. I worked there one day and didn’t go back. I spoke with my placement agency with my complaints. When they were less than sympathetic – “it’ll be better tomorrow” – I said to take my name off their roster. I have left this job off every ensuing application; I never even knew the name of my direct supervisor! I don’t think we ever even met.

  91. RCS*

    Just graduated college and went to a temp agency to get my first ‘real job’. Background check/Drug Test/Microsoft Office Suite testing – all for a $12.50/hour job.

    Arrived on first day, they sat me down, gave me a headset and a list of people to start calling to collect medical debt. The job title was ‘accounting clerk’ when I accepted the position with the temp agency, but ended up being collections, on the phone all day every day.

    Thankfully, I had kept my waitressing job and put the headphones down and walked out. I don’t think I would do medical collections for $500/hour let alone $12.50.

  92. Sara P*

    As a teenager I was looking on a *government* website for a summer job. I found an interesting one in ‘sustainability’ with a nonprofit. I applied, got a callback and was asked to “volunteer” for a day to see if it was a fit. Since it was a nonprofit this felt not as sketchy as it might otherwise, and I agreed.

    Arrived at the given address and it was… someone’s house. There were about 8 other young women there. All but 1 were there for their trial “volunteer” day. The woman I spoke to in the interview was there and started casually assigning people to different tasks such as ‘working in the sustainable garden’ (her garden), ‘taking inventory in the bookshop’ (cleaning her basement), and ‘organizing the equipment’ (cleaning her garage). We all knew this was sus but we were young and caught very off guard and wanted paid work.

    On a break, the one girl admitted it was her third day so we started grilling her about what was going on. She saw nothing weird about the fact that the day before a task she had been assigned was to wash this woman’s car or get groceries. At that story, one girl burst out laughing and walked out on the spot. When we stopped for lunch I’d already decided this was not a thing, but stayed out of morbid curiosity. Several more people didn’t come back.

    Throughout the rest of the day the woman was only partially there but at one point she complained about her back hurting, decided to take a bath and shouted instructions from the bathroom. I fucked around with her ancient computer that supposedly held the data base for her sustainability book website (??).

    At the end of the day she gathered all of the remaining people and one by one took us into the living room for an evaluation. When she got to me she told me that because I went to a prestigious school she knew I was smart but could tell I was ‘holding back emotionally’. I nodded my way through conversation, she asked me to come back the next day and I left.

    When I got home I left her a voicemail saying thanks but no thanks. I then received SEVERAL phone calls from her, and eventually an abusive voicemail.

    The job listing remained on the government website for the rest of the summer.

  93. It's all elementary*

    Not me but my 18 year old daughter, with my blessing. She interviewed at a Taco Bell. Manager wanted her to start that day. DD can’t until Saturday. Ok, fine. DD shows up and the only two workers in the place during lunch rush had no idea she was coming. Manager wasn’t there and they had no idea when she’d be there. Workers called the manager and she said she’d be right there. DD waited for over an hour for her, texting me the whole time. I told her to go ahead and leave but she wanted to be responsible and follow through. After about an hour a former worker came in and told her “Girl, just leave. I quit here because of management”.

  94. Wine not Whine*

    I once quit on the first day.

    I’d recently moved and was working through a staffing agency. My current temp assignment had just ended, and they mentioned that they were in need of a receptionist at the agency office.

    What they _didn’t_ tell me was that I was expected to spend every minute that I wasn’t dealing with incoming calls or people, calling client companies (and leads) to see if they had any openings they wanted to fill. Essentially awkward cold-calling by someone unfamiliar with the clients. And by “expected,” I mean that if a manager walked through the front and I wasn’t actively typing, talking to a live person, or on the phone, I got a hairy eyeball from them or was asked why I wasn’t calling.

    1000% a job I would NEVER have accepted if that had been mentioned.

    At lunch, I went to my manager and said, “look, I’ll finish the day if you need me to, but this is _not_ going to work.” They told me not to bother, just go home. –They did pay me for the half day.

    Fortunately it didn’t seem to affect my standing in their eyes. I had two further long-term assignments through the agency, both resulting in hire offers. (I turned down the first one, but accepted the second and remained with that company for over 18 years.)

  95. Editor Emeritus*

    Twice.

    The first time was my very first summer job, when I was 16. It was a bit of a rite of passage in my city to work at the state-famous amusement park located there. It was gonna be cool, I thought.

    Too young to operate rides or games, my job was at one of the snack bars, where they seemed to have no problems violating child labor laws. I operated deep-fry vats to make fries from reconstituted potatoes, operated pizza ovens, and worked till 1am. I went home with a curly perm full of sweat and grease, and blisters from my wooden Dr Scholl sandals (hey, it was the 70s). I lasted two nights, and my mother — who grew up poor and worked some tough jobs from a young age — encouraged me to quit. I called the next day and said I wouldn’t be returning. I don’t remember the reaction, but doubt anyone was bothered; there were plenty of kids who wanted to work at the park.

    The second was a summer job during college at a factory where they made coffee-flavored syrup and other sweet stuff. The place did not have a good reputation for working conditions, but i needed a job. There I caught plastic packages full of freeze-pop syrup as they came off the machine. The plastic got really hot, and they didn’t give us gloves, or any other safety equipment for that matter. There was no air conditioning, and not much of a morning break. I don’t know about other breaks, because I left at lunchtime. The supervisor did not seem seem surprised, and she thanked me for letting her know I wouldn’t be coming back. (For the record, I ended up working at another factory after that and for two other summers. Night and day difference. )

  96. Kristi*

    When I was young, dumb and broke, I responded to an ad for people to work as telemarketers. We were supposedly selling books of coupons to raise money for a wheelchair sports association. I was stuck in a room of people on telephones and given a script to read that was high-pressure, badly written, and the scammiest-sounding thing I’d ever seen. On about my fourth call, I managed to get someone to actually listen for longer than 30 seconds, and he asked me “is this some sort of a time-share fraud?” While it wasn’t a timeshare, I was having doubts on the fraud part, so I responded, “um, yes, probably?” and hung up. I then quietly slunk out.

  97. Bookworm*

    I wish I had. The signs were there at the beginning of the interview process, when I was accidentally added to an internal meeting (which was right before my actual interview, so I tried to enter thinking I would be a few minutes early). I put it down to human error but during the negotiation process the owner tried to ask about my then-boss to get me to give notice sooner (like, owner knows boss so I should take a hint here because the owner is impatient).

    In retrospect, this should have been a sign of the poor management and how the owner is honestly not a nice person. I was eventually fired because owner refused to set core hours and expected us to answer the phone at any time for any reason (emergency or not).

    What was nice is how two of my co-workers reached out separately. I’m unsure what they were told but they thanked me, wished me well and said we should keep in touch, feel free to use as a reference, etc. so I suspect I am not entirely at fault.

  98. FoolMeTwice*

    I have had two jobs in which every instinct I possess screamed “RUN” to me on or before my first day. In both cases I should have listend.

    Job #1 I had a feeling during the interview that my manager was nuts, but I couldn’t articulate why so I brushed it off as nerves. At some point during my first week-maybe my first day?-I got a call from her professional coach, who after 10 minutes of talking to, I learned was part of her probabtion after she ASSAULTED A CLIENT for touching a public computer that was sort of near her office. (Note that it was not her computer. ) It seems she was a high performer so they didn’t want to fire her, despite the assault and a general history of aggressive behavior. So they cut a deal in which she agrees to undergo this coaching, and somehow she added the stipulation that she would also get to manage people? That wasn’t even contingent on her completing the program. Coworkers all said they would quit if put under her so they found a sucker -me-to hire as her managee. I didn’t even have a job other than “get yelled at all day by her” because nobody wanted to work with her and she wouldn’t let me take on any of her projects. So all day long I just sat in a chair and waited for her to yell at me over nothing. Once she waited for me at the coffee station in the morning to lecture me on how I was drinking coffee wrong. I lasted 10 months, but 7 of those months were spent job hunting.

    Years later I still hadn’ t learned my lesson. If only I knew about Ask A Manager then, because I would never have gone anywhere near the place. It was a family business (red flag #1) with a total of three full-time employees, two of whom were family (Yikes flag #2). There were also four part-time people. The job description was completely misleading as to both the job and the industry, which they announced in the first interview, explaining that nobody would respond to their ad otherwise. (What the hell is wrong with me flag #3). The son of this father-son team was clearly baked out of his mind. (Seriously, I need therapy flag #4) So obviously I took the job. Day 2 I am cc’d on an email sent to the entire (granded there were 8 of us) company eviscerating their customer support person for…politely answering a customer question? He called her dumb. Several times. He called the customer dumb. Multiple times. He accused her of wasting valuable company time answering dumb quetsions from dumb customers and maybe if she wasn’t so dumb she would know that. I knew right then and there I had made a mistake (Finaly I figure one out!) but decided to stay on for six months while I finished a professional training program. I lasted four months. They said they would give me a terrible reference and I would never get another job again. I laughed and explained I would never, ever list this place on a resume anyway. If anyone asks about the gap, well, I was completing a training program and wanted to focus on that. No one has ever asked about a six month gap in my resume. I finished my program and quickly found a job in my chosen field.

  99. CareerChanger*

    I had a full-time job answering phones at an office, which I liked just fine. In order to make a little extra cash, I got a job at Pizza Hut. On my first day after orientation…they wanted me to answer phones. I asked could I please do something else, anything at all, but they said no, everyone starts on phones. I said something like, “okay, then I have to go” and I walked out and never came back. They just sort of shrugged. You’d think this sort of thing would be dramatic or have consequences, but it didn’t. They never asked me what happened, never sent me a paycheck or W-2, and I was so relieved not to hear from them that I let the 3 hours’ pay go.

  100. anon for this*

    Should have. Hypercritical boss no one could appease.

    I had just graduated college and moved to NewCity for a job I thought would be acceptable. The organization had a good reputation and I’d enjoyed visiting NewCity years before. My start date was still a week away, the admin team had told me to come in on that day to start training, and I was moving into my apartment. That’s when my boss emailed me to demand that I spend some time “getting to know the office” before I actually began.

    The next day, it took me almost an hour on transit to get there and I wandered around. I found my boss’s office and he was gossiping, loudly, to three other entry level people. About me. I had not met any of them yet. He was urging them to agree with him that it was a mistake for me to have listened to the reception staff when they had told me to just come in on my first day for training.

    I walked in and coldly asked whether I was being talked about, and the boss said a bunch of confusing things, possibly in an attempt at denial. I wasn’t very impressed, but I put up with it. I kept thinking things were going to improve after that rocky start. They didn’t. At one point I made a very gentle suggestion and he said, “I don’t take suggestions from people on your level. I never had any good suggestions at entry level and nobody else ever does either.”

    Five months in, I realized that I was too demoralized to want to keep going to work. It finally registered that I had spent an entire month doing the bare minimum in the office and then going home to play Skyrim until the middle of the night. My boss and I had some kind of bizarre truce by that point, but none of it was worth it. The pay was middling, my apartment was depressing, and I found that I didn’t love NewCity after all. The one good part was Skyrim.

    I emailed a letter of resignation. My boss actually took it well…and then started saying nicer things about me than he’d ever said. I paid a little extra to break my lease, sold a lot of stuff, moved back to my hometown, and did data entry for a big office for a while until I figured out how to restart the career I wanted.

  101. Pillow Fort Forever*

    Went to a company where I knew two of the execs (I’d worked for them before and had a much better experience ) – as the head of hr. They promptly sat me at the reception desk, assigned(!) me a ton of admin duties and then got mad when I struggled to update a technical marketing presentation in the (untold) way they wanted it. I spoke up and was first told that I couldn’t quit, then told I was terrible at marketing (of course) and that they were disappointed that I couldn’t handle my job but that they’d keep me anyway. I waited til they left, put a resignation note on the ceos desk and never looked back. I received an expletive laden voicemail from the ceo afterwards but was mostly just grateful I’d gotten out as soon as possible.

    1. Pillow Fort Forever*

      Oh almost forgot one other!! College town on California coast. I was staying for the summer session and decided to work pt while doing so. A friend worked at a fancy hotel and recommended being a maid there. I love hotels and thought it sounded fun (to the laughter of my parents who threatened to tell them how messy my room could get. Anyway – fancy hotel has theme rooms – everything from a caveman room to fancy triple suites in all pink and such. Caveman room featured a leather bedspread – that weighed about a hundred pounds. The rock shower required special cleaning tools and took forever. The kicker to me was that people seemed to use the rooms for wild sex – beds with used condoms in them, sex toys laying around, lube containers, room service food used in bed, and more that I won’t detail here. It was horrifying and I never went back.
      I switched to an another hotel that was mostly families – and while we sometimes had to clean pizza out of microwaves or vacuum cereal, it was a fun job that was surprisingly enjoyable.

  102. thatoneoverthere*

    In my teens, and early 20s I had a handful of jobs that were horrendous. Some I stuck out for long some not so much.

    In college I got a job at an outdoor concert venue. I thought it would be a great addition to summer work. I would only work a few nights a week and get see/hear concerts for free. I was going to work concessions and thought for sure it would be a piece of cake. Only it wasn’t. For some reason they decided to not give any stands cash registers. Everyone had to do the math in their head to calculate orders and give people change. After about an hour of handing people pops, I got bored and volunteered to be the cash lady (before credit cards were mainstream at these places). I struggled to tally orders in my head and count the change. The lines started building and I was panicking. But my dumbarse wouldn’t change positions with someone. Finally the stand closed and I realized I was under charging everyone all night. Instead of charging $4 a pop, I charged $3. Terrified I would get in an insane amount of trouble, I ran to my car and never went back!

  103. Anniemal*

    When I was 18, I got suckered into doing one of those fundraising jobs (you know, the kind where you go door to door asking for money for a cause–our cause was climate change). The ad for this job was incredibly deceptive; it described the jobs duties as things like “participating in letter writing campaigns” and other office-y sounding work.

    I (and a friend) got hired after a phone interview. We showed up in our most professional looking outfits for “training”, which turned out to be four hours of “learning the script” which was “guaranteed” to get donations and four hours of us clomping around in heels while shadowing our trainer as they went door-to-door asking for money. The thought of quitting crossed our minds but we were on our first summer living away from our parents after our freshmen year of college and we both needed money.

    On day two, we showed up in jeans and sneakers for the rest of our “trial week.” The trainer told us they would be transporting us to a new territory and would just…drop us off. Alone. In a strange place with no public transit and no car (we were not allowed to bring our own cars). Future lawyer that I was, I had at least read the handbook and asked to work on the opposite side of the street from someone for safety, which company policy allowed us to request. The trainer was annoyed but agreed we could work the same streets. We then got into a car with our trainer and two other employees, to be dropped off in a completely unknown area with a paper map (pre-smartphone era). My friend asked on the drive what we were supposed to do if it thunderstormed. Our trainer suggested we ask one of the people were soliciting for shelter or wait it out on someone’s porch. We should have quit on the spot. We did not. Day 2 was spent with us awkwardly reading our fundraising script while people slammed doors in our face and told us global warming wasn’t real (this was the early 2000s). Somehow we collected enough in donations to not be fired on the spot.

    Day three was spent half fundraising, half cowering under a bridge while it rained heavily.

    At the end of day three our trainer told us that working in a team was reducing our efficiency and “suggested” we work separately the next day. We “suggested” that being left alone with no transportation in an unknown area was a great was to get murdered (probably an overstatement, but again, teenagers). Everyone agreed that this wasn’t working out. I’m not sure if I was call it quitting or a mutual parting of ways, but I certainly do not regret leaving that job.

    We both spent the rest of the summer working in food service and at Old Navy where at least no one expected us to knock on strangers doors looking for shelter when it thundered.

    1. redbecca*

      I got suckered by this too! The interview was about my interest in the charity and my ability to do office jobs like filing and bulk mailing and letter-writing, but on my first day about ten new hires were loaded into a van to go for ‘training’, which was actually tromping around (in office clothes) in groups of three following a trainer as they knocked on doors asking for donations. In the afternoon I was given the script and a target for donations made that I wouldn’t get paid if I didn’t meet, and sent off to do it by myself- I was fully done as soon as I realised door-knocing was involved, but I didn’t know where I was and this was before cell phones so I couldn’t call someone to get me, so I just sat under a nice tree until it was time to meet up. After they drove me back to the office I got in my car and left, and never contacted them again. Honestly, wouldn’t be surprised if getting one day of free work from every applicant is how they made it work, they didn’t even call to see if I was coming back.

  104. Dr. Rebecca*

    I worked one shift at a truckstop cafe with VERY horrible hygienic practices. I got minimal training, and walked after I found myself elbow-deep in ice-cold pickle juice (bare hand/no gloves or spoon, of course) and even at 18 and desperate for cash, I noped out of that. I didn’t come back, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t even get paid, which was fine. I’m not sure if anyone noticed I was gone, because I’m also not sure anyone noticed I was there in the first place.

  105. Julie*

    One summer during college break, I took a temporary job in “marketing” because I thought it would be good experience for my area of study. During the first week of training, I learned that we were going to be cold calling people for different companies and organizations asking for money/donations. When I found out one of the organizations was the NRA and I’d be cold calling current, past and potential donors, I immediately decided that the job was not for me! I simply didn’t show up the next day, and my check was mailed to me.

    1. Julie*

      Also, this happened back in 2002 and I’m so glad I stuck with my values over worried about being a poor college student. I found a new job fast!

  106. greydog*

    One summer before my senior year of high school, I somehow finagled a receptionist / assistant position at my friend’s mom’s office. I think Joyce was a realtor? Insurance? I honestly can’t remember, which is probably part of the reason I was So. Bad. At the job.

    All I can recall is one sweaty day, sitting in the front window, typing and retyping (on an old electric typewriter) some piece of business correspondence for her, messing up each time and having to start from scratch. Reader: I had never taken a typing (or business correspondence) class and had no idea what I was doing.

    About 3pm, after 6 hours of work and nary a letter to show for it, she looked at me with disappointment and gentle kindness. “Do you want to come back in tomorrow, dear?”

    “Uh, no, I don’t think so,” I replied meekly.

    That was the end of Joyce as my boss but the beginning of her as my friend. I was pals with her son but I adored her — she lent me all the juicy John Grisham books and we stayed in touch for years. We never spoke of my ill-fated day as her assistant ever again.

  107. Ivana Tinkle*

    Years ago when I had just left university, I started a job at an agency that supplied substitute teachers to schools. On my first day it was apparent that all the schools in the area hated the guy who ran the agency, and therefore felt it was fine to be as rude as they liked to me. On the second day, he asked me to review the files of all the teachers signed up to the agency. All of them were from overseas but there was nothing in the files to document their legal right to work in the UK, and no records of their teaching qualifications at all (both massively illegal in the UK). When I asked him about this he said it wasn’t my concern. I knew this is something I could be potentially be prosecuted for if it was ever checked, so early the next morning before he arrived at work, I posted my office keys through the letterbox & left him a voicemail to say I wasn’t coming back. Never heard from him again. I emailed the recruitment agency who had got me the role there, they seemed very unfussed that the place raised more red flags than a communist party parade & told me that they wouldn’t consider me for any more roles for being unprofessional by leaving without notice after 2 days.

  108. Lilac*

    When I was in college, I was hired at a local summer camp. It was a last-minute hire to fill an unexpected vacancy, so I only had a few days’ notice before I started. I quit for a few reasons:

    1) After I’d already agreed to the hours and pay, they told me that I’d have to work four hours of overtime each week—two hours in the morning one day, and then another two hours in the afternoon on a different day. That might have been okay, but they also said I wouldn’t get paid extra for the overtime. (They justified this by saying I was paid a flat rate for the week, not hourly. The pay was already at the very low end of what I’d accept for 40 hours of work, much less 44.) Oh, and the overtime in the morning was on my first day, and they didn’t tell me about it until the day before.

    2) They didn’t run a background check on me even though I would be working with kids. I get that they were pressed for time, but I question the judgement of any organization that would do that. (Of course I would have passed a background check if they’d done one, but *they* didn’t know that!)

    3) They told me the day before I was supposed to start that I was only allowed to wear khaki pants to work—no jeans, no slacks in a color other than khaki. I didn’t own any khaki pants so I asked if I could wear something different (but still work-appropriate) for the first few days until I had a chance to go shopping. They said no, so I had to go out shopping that night—and spend a lot more than I usually would on a pair of pants, since I didn’t have time to look for a good deal.

    4) I had a medical appointment scheduled for the week I was supposed to start, so I told them I’d have to leave about an hour early one day. They reluctantly said I could, but they made it clear that this was an extra special privilege they were only offering me because they really needed to fill the vacancy. They also said it was the only (paid or unpaid) time off I’d get for the whole summer.

    I’m very curious as to why they had a last-minute vacancy to fill. I’m willing to bet that someone else also saw too many red flags and quit right away. (For what it’s worth, I went on to work for a different summer camp that was an excellent employer in nearly every way. Entry-level jobs designed for teens and young adults can be tricky, but it doesn’t have to be this way!)

  109. i like hound dogs*

    Second one: I got my “dream job,” except it wasn’t. I’d worked for a literary magazine as a graduate assistant, and when the managing editor moved on a couple of years after I finished my PhD, I applied for and got the job. IT WAS TERRIBLE. In an effort to not step on my toes, my previous boss didn’t really onboard me; she just sort of … left. There were tons of old files that had never been digitized, plus an NEA grant that had gone to a contractor who never did any of the promised work on the website, which was old as hell, and lots of department politics I had been unwittingly inserted into. I had three graduate assistants to manage, and they all acted like the job was beneath them, since they were obviously going to become famous novelists. But I had no actual authority over them, really – I couldn’t fire them – and it became clear that the old managing editor had done 90% of the work herself, and it was a LOT of work. I had a baby at home at the time and a husband who traveled for work, and the sleeplessness plus chaotic nature of the job (which was supposed to be part time, HA HA, and paid as such) sent me into a spiral. I went into the department head’s office after about ten days and blubbered that I was quitting. He and multiple other people in the department tried to get me to stay, and I almost did (it had been my dream job for years, after all) which made things messier and worse. The whole thing was really embarrassing, but at least now I know I never want to manage anyone. I went back to my previous job as a copy editor at an ad agency and I’ve never worked in academia again.

  110. Captain Vegetable (Crunch Crunch Crunch)*

    I was hired as a filing/admin/general help for a small law firm. My interview was a panel interview with every other employee of the firm. It felt weird to have so many people there for a low level position. Then, after the interview, they asked me to wait outside the conference room while they conferred; after about 5 minutes they came out and said I was hired and could I start working right now? I was a little surprised by the whole process and lied and said I had a repair person coming that afternoon, but I could start the next day.

    As promised, I came in on the next day (a Friday) and while I can’t put my finger on anything particular, the owner creeped me out. Like he was a malevolent alien wearing a human skin. I worked the day, dreaded going back all weekend, and finally decided to nope out of there and quit on Monday. Like a dummy, I went in person. I told the owner I had a better offer for more money, he said that was unprofessional, I really had no answer, especially since it was a lie (with the wisdom of hindsight, all the lying I did was a sign of how uncomfortable that place made me) and I left. I was pretty hard on myself for wimping out, but all these years later… no regrets.

  111. VivKeill*

    While unemployed, I got a call from a former co-worker asking me if I’d like to pick up some shifts as a cashier at a Halloween store. She was a manager there now and they needed bodies for the days leading up to the holiday. I went in the first day which was October 30, was given a 15 minute training on how to ring people up and then told to grab a costume to wear and start working. I worked for 12 hours with one 15 minute lunch break and when I cashed out my till at the end of the night was told that I would need to report Halloween morning for another 12 hour shift and then November 1 I would be showing up at 4am to start breaking down the store to vacate the retail space – we could leave when we were done. I told my friend that working 40+ hours in 3 days was not something I planned on doing and thanks for the opportunity. She was understanding because she had only needed my cashiering, but her manager had wanted all hands on deck for the rest of the time. I filled out my tax forms and got my check a few days later. Never heard from any of them ever again.

  112. LB33*

    In high school I got a weekend job at Dunkin’ Donuts, making the donuts. Problem was you had to get there at 4am, and doing that on Sat and Sunday mornings as a teenager wasn’t a great idea for me at that time.

    So I quit after the first weekend – I just called and said sorry I’m not going to be able to continue, the hours aren’t good. The manager didn’t care, he just said ok and that was it.

  113. Ingemma*

    When I was 19 and in undergrad a friend and I had found this AWFUL job working in a crepe shop for the summer. We got paid 7$ an hour and tips at the end of every day in cash. At the time, tipped minimum wage was about 10$ and you were supposed to get paid the difference if your tips didn’t cover to get you up to real min wage. Often the tips were close to zero. Also, less problematically, me and my friend were given opposite shifts, which limited the time we could hang out. (This felt like a great injustice at the time.)

    After about a week, my friend called in to quit (while I was working.) This was slightly awkward for me who got grilled about it. I decided to stick it out until I could get a real job that actually paid me a non-illegal wage. I was out for a beer with her and her boyfriend that evening, and when I decided it was time to turn in for the night so I could be up for my early start, she convinced me to quit. For some reason, my main concern with quitting was literally telling the shop owner that I didn’t want to work there anymore. We came to an agreement that if I bought the next pitcher of beer, she would pretend to be me and would call the next morning to explain I would no longer be coming into work.

    I had just starting seeing her boyfriends roommate, and had ended up spending the night there after our night of drinking. I vaguely heard her call in and pretend to be me from the other room and then she burst into the bedroom I was in to announce the great service she had just done me. The guy I was seeing was pretty confused about the whole thing.

    I avoided the street corner the crepe shop was on for years, but the next week got a still-bad but actually minimum wage coffee shop job.

  114. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

    Summer before my junior year in college. Cutco. I didn’t realize it was MLM. Heck, it was the early ’80s. I didn’t even know what an MLM was. But I wasn’t a sales-type person. And some of the stuff they had us do on the first day was shady.

    Walked the next day.

    1. JustNoMLM*

      I had a close call with almost getting sucked into Mary Kay cosmetics in 2003. They chased me aggressively after an accidental meeting at a trade show. Only my surprised truthful statement that I don’t wear makeup at all and know absolutely nothing about it stopped them. Yikes!

  115. wanderingwatson*

    For one day in my college years, I worked for a promotional company that scouted for child actors. The goal was to invite any and every child to an event that weekend to do a meet and greet with an agent and a Disney channel star. Note: We only approached kids with parents nearby – this was very clear. If they showed up, I would earn $20 commission. They sent us out in pairs wandering through Targets, Walmarts, etc, pretending to be shoppers.

    Yeah, IKEA employees didn’t buy it for one second. All they saw was someone approaching children and kicked us out like we were scum of the earth. As the goody-two-shoes rule-follower I am, I was mortified and quit immediately. My partner for the day and manager both texted me apologizing and asking me to keep going, but there was no way I could handle getting kicked out of stores every day as my full-time job.

  116. Amber Rose*

    Hired on as a cashier at Walmart.
    I was so miserable after a week that I called in sick.
    And then I just stopped calling in and didn’t bother to go in either.
    They eventually noticed… about two months later while working at a new job, I got a call from them asking why I wasn’t showing up for my shift. They’d just kept scheduling me without realizing I wasn’t there.

    So how I quit was technically no call-no show, but also I had the chance to tell them I quit over the phone, two months after. When I revealed that I was already working at a different job and had assumed I was fired ages ago, she still tried to convince me to show up. I politely declined and that was the end of that.

    As for why it was so miserable, I can’t emphasize how much of a non-person I was. I didn’t matter. I wasn’t trained. Nobody knew who I was or what to do with me when I showed up. The customers were all miserable, unkind jerks. I felt so invisible and unwanted and exhausted I basically lost the will to get up, and they managed to do that to me in only a week. I have NO idea how people survive there.

  117. Keymaster the absent*

    * This was back in my 20s. I’d been offered a job at a small technology startup in my (then) local area working in IT. Entry level pay, but great opportunities to learn etc. First day I’m shown my desk.

    The reception desk. Was then told that it was my job to be a receptionist, make coffee for the management and visitors, keep the place clean and cold call sales prospects. Oh I could learn some of the IT stuff ‘as long as the boys in the department have free time’.

    * They handed me my contract (this is standard in the UK) to sign and I quit by basically saying “I am NOT signing that!”. They’d interviewed for an IT tech and that was even on the contract with a ‘additional duties required’ appended. But they wanted a receptionist! So my refusal to sign was basically me saying ‘I quit’

    * They didn’t react well to it, my youth was blamed (this was very early 2000s) and so on. When I went out to my car and drove off I think they realised I wasn’t coming back.

    * Should come as no surprise that I was the only woman in the office. Was my first experience with being pigeonholed because of my gender.

  118. Sophie*

    When I was 19 I got a server job at an upscale steak house to help with collage expenses. The job required a week of intensive, unpaid training – tasting all menu items including wines, learning how to recommend wine pairings, how to properly serve, etc. My first table the first night on the floor was a group of six. They stayed the entire evening and ran me around tirelessly. I remained professional and polite thinking, “Well, at least I’ll get a great tip.” They left me $2.00 and a stick of gum. I went to my manager, gave him the $2.00 and stick of gum, said “I quit” and left. He followed me out to the parking lot yelling you have to stay to clean after your shift. The next day I went back to the bar I’d previously been working at and made $400 that night.

  119. Liz*

    When I first moved to NYC I applied for a restaurant job I found on Craigslist – nothing fancy, just counter service sandwiches and live music at night. My first shift went fine, easy enough, nice coworkers, decent free sandwich.

    Then the next day I get an email from the owner informing me that because that first shift was a “training shift,” I would not be paid for it. I ghosted them and never looked back (these days I would have tried to report them, but at the time I just wanted to move on.) At least I got a steak sandwich out of the deal.

  120. Jaques*

    Over 10 years ago I quit a job after 2 weeks (but had only done 3-4 shifts during that period). The job was at a rock climbing gym where I had to check people in, give orientations to the facility, and perform some safety checks on the equipment. I had gotten bad vibes from some of the staff – negativity, weird comments, etc., but had been ignoring it. Then, right before I was supposed to go to a shift, all the employees received an email from the manager that was very intense. There were a lot of expletives involved, and I specifically remember one section saying “If you want to question these instructions, I dare you to speak to me about it to my face. I F***CKING DARE YOU.” (Not censored in real life). I sent the higher up person that I’d interviewed with an email saying I would not be coming in for my shift or continuing to work with the company, and that I thought the email was very inappropriate. They responded saying they understood and they’d be following up on the matter. I never heard anything else. About a month ago, I decided that nobody would recognize me after a decade, and I decided to go to the gym. They thankfully did not recognize me, but I did see that the manager was still working there.

  121. FanciestCat*

    In college I was working a part time job I’d come to hate and I desperately wanted a different one, but I went to school in a tourist town filled with 20 somethings so service and retail jobs were very competitive. I applied to dozens of places without a callback. Finally, I applied for this pizza place that had an attached ice cream shop. They wanted me to do a “trial shift” for the first day, paid in tips only. Even back then I knew that was illegal but I was pretty desperate. They put me in the ice cream shop with two other people. One had worked there a week. The other was doing a trial like me, so first day. There was no training, and since this was in the touristy part of town everything was horribly over-priced. A woman came in and ordered at $12 milkshake at one point and none of us knew how to work the machine so we winged it. About an hour in, I realized that there could indeed be jobs more soul crushing than my current one, so I walked over to the pizza side, found the manager and quit. He tried to guilt me into staying but he had zero leverage since he wasn’t even paying me. They gave me about $4 from the tip jar (people still tipped even with the horrible service, bless them), and I walked home. In the end though, since I was never able to find another job I kept looking and eventually got a job as a student researcher in a related field to what my degree was in (I’d taken two classes on it.) That job ended up being the foundation for my entire career.

  122. Chicken Little*

    I got a part time job at a country club in Waco, TX. It became very apparent that employees of color were rarely if ever promoted, even after working there for 10+ years. The whole place had very strong “Get Out” movie vibes. Halfway through my first day, I told my training manager that I would be quitting and handed back my uniform.

  123. notempagencies*

    Right as I was about to graduate college, I really wanted to go into HR, recruitment or marketing. I was excited when I got a call to interview at temp agency. I wasn’t super familiar with them and was just excited to get to interview for my first “Big girl job”. I really got along with the lady who interviewed me. I would be helping place people in jobs and perhaps getting some clients. I was hired, shortly after.

    The first day, the nice lady is no where to be seen. I show up to an incredibly run down office, and I am shown to desk with a barely working computer. No one other than me is there to show me how to do the job. Eventually a different cranky lady saunters in. She gives me about 10 mins of training and sets me loose. The next day I get yelled at for doing everything wrong, it was my 2nd day lady! The third day no one is in the office, except for the receptionist. The 4th day I get pulled into a private meeting and demanded to wear a suit everyday. Even though everyone else is wearing khakis, a sweater and polos (by this point others had started working in the office). The 5th day another new guy starts work. 6th day cranky boss screams at us for being terrible at our jobs. By day 7, I was done and checked out (this was a Wednesday I believe). I send an email to cranky boss asking to leave 10 min early a week from today for a doctor’s appointment. She immediately pulls me in a room and fires me for asking to leave early. I basically told her (in less harsh words) to fuck off and stomped away.

  124. Cyndi*

    I was a street canvasser for the ACLU and I lasted two days. I absolutely hated pressuring people for money–still do, still won’t do it–and brought in a whole lot less than they were paying me, but worse it was July and on day 2 I got sick from standing on the sidewalk in the sun for hours. My boss liked me and offered to give me a few more days to “get the hang of it” but I already knew it was a lost cause.

  125. Owlette*

    I was hired to be an admin assistant for a very small office (4 employees total, including myself). I was supposed to be supporting the owner. On my first day, she showed me her process for opening the mail, but told me not to take over opening the mail yet. Okay. The second day, I didn’t touch the mail when it was delivered, and she lectured me for not taking initiative and not opening the mail. Okay? The third day, the mail was delivered, and I opened it an organized it. When I handed her the opened mail, she started screaming at me (yes, screaming) that she didn’t trust me yet, that I was stealing important paperwork, and how dare I touch the mail. When I said she told me to take more initiative, she said, “You won’t last here long,” and asked me to WRITE LINES like I was Bart Simpson. I ended up going to lunch early and calling her from the parking lot saying I quit. She yelled at me some more over the phone, so I hung up on her. She emailed me a few days later accusing me of stealing books from the office, so I emailed back that I didn’t and just blocked her. It’s been a few years, so I figure I’m all clear.

  126. oops*

    Not my first day, but my first week. I’d been out of work a few months so I jumped at a secretarial job with a web development company (back in the mid 90’s). Their sole business was designing websites for companies. The owner had a scuzzy used car salesman/politician vibe but I was young and didn’t trust my instincts. The second day there, he was arguing with one of the developers in the middle of the open office space. He was insisting they continue to use pirated software to design the web pages they were selling. The developer insisted it was immoral and illegal. At the end of the week I said I didn’t think it was going to work out. He tried to pressure me a little to stay (nothing exciting, I just held firm). I drove by the office a couple of weeks later and it was deserted…no people, no furniture, no nothing.

  127. employee*

    During the recession, when things were really bad and I REALLY needed a job, I got hired to canvas for Greenpeace. It was AWFUL. I had to stand in front of a grocery store and try to get peoples attention to get them to sign up for memberships. People were super rude to me, overtly hostile at times, and the other canvassers weren’t much better because we were all competing for sign ups (most of them were desperate like me rather than really committed to the cause). I quit after one day. It wasn’t spectacular, I just emailed my boss and said I wouldn’t be coming in. He was fine with that – I’m guessing it happened a lot.

  128. RIP Pillowfort*

    Not me but my sister.

    This was during COVID and she had to quit her nursing home job. Not to get too long into the specifics but the management was abhorrent, the staff was really mean, and she just could not take the toll it was putting on her. It was something she could cope with pre-COVID but it magnified the problems x1000 during the pandemic. She had planned her exit enough money saved up that she could be picky about how she wanted to ease back into the workforce.

    She thought she would try doing facility cleaning work. She still wanted to work in healthcare. She just wanted something right then where she wouldn’t have to do as much personnel interaction with while she sorted out what she wanted to do. She interviewed locally at different places and got hired with the understanding she was going to work at the place she had interviewed at. She had specifically told them she left the facility she was working at before due to the working conditions and staff.

    She goes to work on her first day and they tell her you’re going to be working at the “sister facility.” It was her old workplace. She turned around and walked out the door. They didn’t call back and she certainly was never going to talk to them either.

  129. Ghostess*

    Decades ago, in my early twenties, I was back in my hometown for a year after imploding my life. I was trying to get myself sorted and back to the town I lived in before, but in the meantime I needed something to tide me over so I got a job at a bakery. I had worked in a bakery before, so this would be pretty much the same role. No biggie.

    When I got there, the owner noticed I was wearing closed-toe shoes but no socks (again, I was young and a big ol’ mess, so it was my own dang fault). She proceeded to take her socks OFF HER OWN FEET and watch me put them on. Wonderful. Now I am wearing the still-warm socks of a woman I just met.

    My hair at the time was pretty short, but apparently not short enough because she thought my bangs were too long and needed to be pinned back. Did I have a bobby pin? I did not. No problem! She had a side hobby making her own custom barrettes and gave me one to pin back my bangs. Which would have been okay, I guess, except it was a BIG PLASTIC FRIED EGG. I had to work the whole shift with the plastic egg on my head and someone else’s socks on my feet.

    I woke up in the middle of the night after my first shift and went HELL NO and left a voicemail saying it wasn’t going to work out. It may very well have been a delightful job for someone else, but not for me at that point in time. I never went to that bakery again, never bothered with my paycheque, and left town shortly thereafter.

    Bonus trivia: on my first day, the owner showed me where she stored the cash at the end of the night and it was IN THE OVEN. Years later the whole block burned down and I really hope she had moved the oven cash by that point.

    2. Juicebox Hero*

      There were times in my life when I’d totally have worn a giant fried egg barrette, but someone else’s socks? Barf city. I can’t even put my own worn socks back on if I have to take them off for some reason during the day – I have to put a fresh pair on.

      The oven money is just… I can’t even. What planet was she from that she thought keeping a bunch of paper in an environment typically full of paper-torching flames was a good idea? One forgetful moment and your profits are ashes.

  130. Lynn*

    The first one I quit after a couple of days was when I was in high school. I obtained the job as a receptionist & switchboard operator thru my typing teacher. The company probably went that route so they could pay minimum wage. I would take the bus to a sketchy neighborhood after school and walk a block to the company. The second night, I mistakenly cut off a call to the boss and he came out of his office screaming. Then, a manager tried to soothe it over by leering at my over my desk, looking me up & down in my school uniform. I told my mother and quit the next day.

    I quit another job after going thru two days of training and one day of working at a department store over the holidays. Took the job after my department was eliminated after 20+ years at another company and I was worried about money, despite getting severance. I was working the register and then trying to coerce people to get charge cards. Hated it and figured by not working, it may be the last chance to have off over the holidays before I found a position in my field. When I told HR I was quitting, they raised their eyebrows like I only took the job to get the employee discount, which I never even tried to use.

  131. User Dave*

    I worked at a call center for 1 and a half days before walking out.

    The first day was training, which basically consisted on coaching us on how to get around people saying ‘no’ (the call center mainly worked for public television asking for donations). Later in the day we got a pep talk about how we were expected to show up to work no matter what; the supervisor used the fact that he came in hungover basically every day as an example of what we how we could power through to make it in.

    On the second day, I spent a couple hours getting yelled at by people mad I called them at dinner, told my supervisor I wasn’t feeling good and had to go home and never came back. I had never experienced so much vitriol in such a short amount of time before and just couldn’t take any more.

    They did send me a check for the hours worked but I never cashed it because I felt guilty about quitting like that.

  132. Jamtoday*

    Not sure if this counts because it wasn’t a legit business but I walked out of a training for a new job that turned out to be a scam. It was my last year of college and I was desperate for a job. I responded to an ad that was for tutoring school aged children and received an email back saying to show up at X location with a laundry list of documentation. There was no phone screening and the email was intense. Lots of bold and underlines, and threats of not being hired unless you follow the instructions exactly. I show up on the day of the training and it was in a suuuuper sketchy deserted office park. The office suite itself had no furniture except for the empty “reception desk” which consisted of a folding table, folding chair, and a telephone. There were dozens of people standing in the lobby (because no chairs/furniture), waiting to be onboarded. Thankfully, I had a variety of jobs before this to know that this wasn’t right. The red flags were popping up and waving. We soon get ushered into a conference room which was also empty except for more folding chairs and a projector. 30 minutes into the “training” alarm bells were screaming at me. I decided to leave during a break (still so proud of my conflict avoidant people pleasing young self for following my gut) and asked for my paperwork back since it had all my personal information on it. They refused to give it back to me. We went around and around for sometime, and finally settled on them shredding the paperwork in front of me. Then, surprise to no one, they couldn’t find a shredder in the barren rented office space. At that point other trainees were starting to notice and ask questions so the trainer literally threw my paperwork at me and said to leave and he’ll mark me as a no show. Like that was some kind of punishment? I fled and years later I googled the name of the company and read dozens of posts from former tutors saying they were never paid and it was in fact, a scam.

  133. Kris*

    As a teenager I left a waitressing job on the first day. It was a diner-style place where you had to yell out the order in coded shorthand. I had waitressed before but without the yelling (you just wrote the order). I was a really timid kid and I couldn’t yell the order … I just wasn’t really capable of yelling. My attempts were met with derisive feedback from the cook and owner (the only people on the shift) and about two hours in I just quietly took off my apron and sneaked out.

  134. A*

    I was hired for an entry level position as a data analyst. They told me first I would have a temp contract for 3 months with lower pay and no benefits, if I passed the trial period I would be hired full time with benefits, etc. On my first day I learned this was a lie, all 30 workers were on temp contracts that were cancelled and renewed at the whim of the owner. That was red flag number one.

    Red flag number two, the owner was a screamer. She would tell abuse at people for mistakes, real or perceived. She would yell at me from the other end of the corridor, when she wanted me to go into her office and “fix her computer”. The first time she did that, I was nervous because I thought she expected me to perform IT functions as well, but she just wanted me to help her with excel. She Sat me down at her desk and had me turn some words bold or align some cells to the left or whatever. Of course it was framed as me “fixing the mistakes I had made” (again it was my first day and I had never seen that file before).

    On the second day, I declined to gossip with someone because I wanted to finish some data entry task. She pulled me into an empty conference room and told me “Nobody likes you. I’m just telling you this as a favor.” I later learned she was the owner’s favorite and had been upset by my slight.

    On the third day, the owner decided she wanted to go on a last minute holiday and tasked the receptionist with finding a cat sitter. The receptionist wasn’t able to find one on such short notice. She was fired. I asked when I would be doing some actual data analysis and I was told “we chose you from many applicants and if you don’t like it here you can go”.

    On the fourth day, the owner was on holiday. Nobody gave me anything to do all morning so I just watched videos on YouTube. In the afternoon I went to someone who I figured was fairly senior (I had no idea of the reporting chain) and said “Do you still have the other applicants on file? You will need to call them, I quit.” This lady was actually nice, she wasn’t surprised at all. We agreed I would finish the week (it was Thursday). No idea why I said that, it just felt bad to walk out, even though I had no work to do there.

    On my fifth and final day I saw my actual replacement. They got him to start within the day. I wanted to warn him off but wasn’t allowed to talk to him. I emailed my resignation to the owner, who never responded.

    The company tried not to pay me, but I threatened to file a complaint and got my money. It was a very low sum but it was a matter of principle at that point. I’ve never seen a company so dysfunctional in the 15 years since.

  135. used to be a tester*

    I should have known something was up when the person who hired me expressed surprise I had brought my Social Insurance Number. Apparently they had never done hiring paperwork for someone working ‘above the table’ before…
    I was a university student who needed a summer job. I saw that the industrial laundry near my place was hiring, so I brought my resume in and they hired me on the spot. Yay!
    I don’t know if all commercial laundries are like this one, but it was hot, loud, there were open containers of assorted (unlabeled) chemicals everywhere, and the safety features of the machines were bypassed in a variety of creative ways. My ‘training’ was watching someone for a few minutes until they felt I should have the hang of it, then was I plunked in front of what I suspect was a high speed laundry mangle to put sheets and blankets in to get pressed flat and dried.
    When I went to try and get a drink of water I was told ‘no breaks, no lunch’. When I tried to leave at the end of my 8 hour shift I discovered ALL THE DOORS WERE LOCKED. Nobody got to leave until everything that came in at the start of the shift was done. I’d love to say I raised a stink, but I was young and this was before cell phones, so I couldn’t call anyone. So I just ran like they were about to feed me into the mangle once the doors were opened.
    The next morning I woke up to some sort of horrific allergic reaction to one or more of the unlabeled chemicals I’d been splashing around in the previous day. My forearms were swollen and covered in hives; I couldn’t use my hands enough to even call and say I was never coming back. But then again, they didn’t call to see where I was either, so it couldn’t have been that big of a shock to them. My then-boyfriend went by at the end of the week to grab my cheque; the lady in the office apparently made a remark about this being why they normally only hired (insert slurs for undocumented workers). ‘Locals’ like me are all (insert a series of other slurs).

    2. My Cat is a Righteous Dude*

      OMG, just last weekend, I was re-reading Stephen King’s “Night Shift” book of short stories, and there’s a story called “The Mangler” about a commercial laundry machine that becomes malevolently sentient.

  136. Victoria*

    I walked off a job at a dude ranch when I was a teenager.

    I was hired as a trail leader. There were a dozen or more of us, and the idea was that we would all do all parts of the job: caring for the horses, selecting horses for tourists based on their size and skill level, leading trail rides, etc. The “training” was a scam: when a new person started, they spent several shifts doing just the back-end horse care…. unpaid. We were teenagers and didn’t know any better. The idea was that you’d eventually get cycled into leading rides and start getting paid. I didn’t stick around long enough to see how long that would take.

    After less than a week, I walked out in the middle of a shift. I literally never heard from them; they didn’t notice or didn’t care that I’d left. I guess they just kept bringing in new batches of free labor.

  137. Rosyglasses*

    When I was a young single mom and teaching at a private religious school (that paid so little I was still on food stamps) I tried to take a seasonal job at Target. I think I lasted about a week, and only because they kept scheduling me during the school day, calling me thinking I was no showing, and not understanding that I had another job until 3:30 or 4pm, even though I had been very clear about that during the interview. I ended up quitting and then still having that shift’s lead call me as a no-show/late arrival for a few weeks afterwards because they kept putting me on the schedule even though I had quit… The whole thing was interesting both from a retail standpoint (I’d worked retail before but for small stores like Gymboree) and from the one and only time I worked for a pretty large conglomerate and seeing the disconnect at so many levels.

  138. Merry and Bright*

    I got a job at one of the major movie theater chains, with the intention of it only being a summer job. It was incredibly monotonous and physically draining as I was standing still or walking around and bending over to clean. I got a much better job offer to work at a summer camp and quit within 4 days of starting. Management didn’t react, as they had a high turnover rate.

    All three of my younger siblings worked at this location for at least one summer after I had worked there, but they all moved onto better things, like retail. One of my teenage (at the time) siblings was seriously injured (requiring corrective surgery bad) there due to spilled water, and they tried to fire her, refuse workman’s comp or disability accommodations (sitting), but they quickly got in line when my parents threatened to lawyer up.

  139. KToo*

    I quit on my first day. Firstly, I had applied and interviewed to be, let’s say, an assistant teapot developer. First red flag – when I got there for the interview the Teapot Developer wasn’t expecting me but thought she had mixed up the day and time, so she started interviewing me. As I was in the middle of my interview another person joined and said no, he was the one who had called me in to interview for a new receptionist position (which was also something I had done so it was on my resume). I was desperate for a job so I didn’t ask the right questions – and he likely didn’t know all the answers I would have needed anyways – and I really liked the industry so when offered I accepted the receptionist position.

    First day comes, I had to send my kid to school sick and was feeling a bit off myself, and (second red flag) “reception” ended up being the security desk in the entrance of the building – a small concrete entryway just inside the main door where wind blew in and it was freezing cold. They were literally replacing having a security guard with a so-called receptionist. The desk was one of those tall-front ones where if I sat I couldn’t see over it, and my seating area was so tiny I only had space for a chair that I couldn’t even back up because it would hit the wall behind me. There were no offices or other people near me and most people used the back doors to come in or leave. The woman who was supposed to train me basically showed me a computer (no network or email so I never learned what it was for), said this is how you turn it on and off (which I already knew). She pointed at a phone and said ‘answer that and transfer to the extension shown’ on a paper list that was so old half the writing was worn off. Nothing else except paper and pens was on the desk. I was warned, “The owner is old and rarely here but he has his son come in in his place, but son doesn’t have an official job title here, he just uses his dad’s office.” I didn’t even know where the bathroom was or who to call to cover for me if I needed it, but she said she’d be back at 1pm for my lunch break. Then I was left with no training, nothing to do, and no idea why I was hired.

    I muddle through as best I can for a bit and eventually noon comes around and boss’s son makes an appearance to tell me that if a certain call comes he’s in another person’s office so transfer the call there. I wrote all the information down to be sure, confirmed the extension, but the call never comes.

    Just before 1pm son comes back down and starts screaming at me, like top of his voice ranting that I’m an idiot, it was an important call and I’ve just cost them a contract, etc…. I told him the call never came in and he yelled that I was “a stupid b*tch”. By this time other people had heard and were coming around to gawk, and I had had enough. I said, “I don’t need this job this badly”, went and got my coat and bag and told them I quit, saying ‘I don’t deserve to be treated this way’.

    I never did get an apology or any acknowledgement of what had happened. Eventually got a check in the mail for my single day worked. And it turns out I was coming down with the flu that first day so spent a few miserable days afterwards recovering. Ever since I’ve never bought a single item of their brand.

  140. Morris Alanisette*

    A long, long time ago, I accepted an offer at a nonprofit for a marketing role. I’d been unemployed for a while and was getting desperate, but this sounded like a really good job where I’d be able to use my marketing skills to do some good.

    My first day there, a Monday, they sat me at the reception desk and told me that my role is basically an admin for the ED (not at all what the job description said). The ED was an old-school socialite in her 60’s or so. My job was to look at her emails, print every one out and put it in her inbox, wait for her to write her response on the printout, then type it out as a response to the sender.

    They also gave me a key to the office and told me that one of my responsibilities was to stay until everyone left and lock the office. So I ended up just sitting in the office until 7pm because one manager stayed late.

    On Tuesday, after the ED mispronounced my name over and over. After I corrected her for the 100th time she laughed and said “Maybe I’ll just call you ‘hey you.'” Later that day she screamed at a volunteer for something.

    On Wednesday, I got a Facebook DM from the woman who’d had the role before me (still not sure how she found me or knew who I was). She said that she wished she could’ve warned me before taking the job but she recommended that I find something new ASAP because working for ED was a nightmare. I went home and cried for hours that night.

    On Thursday morning, I got an email offer from a job that I’d interviewed for about 6 weeks prior. I negotiated a few things via email and accepted the job by that afternoon.

    Friday morning, I sent the office key and a resignation letter to the nonprofit via messenger. I wanted to go scorched earth in my letter but decided to be polite but firm instead. I told them that I was resigning because my actual role didn’t have anything to do with marketing and recommended that they make sure their job descriptions are accurate in the future. To be petty, when I typed out my signature, I also typed out the correct phonetic pronunciation of my name. And I told them where to send my check.

    About an hour after the messenger left, my phone started blowing up with calls from the office. I didn’t feel like I owed them any explanation or anything else, so I just ended up blocking the numbers. And that was that.

  141. Liz Lemon*

    I, a fundamentally introverted person, convinced myself I could be an on the street fundraiser, approaching strangers all day and trying to convince them to give to a nonprofit. Most of the day is spent with people avoiding your eye contact. It was unfathomably terrible for me. I think even more outgoing people would find it pretty draining. After waking up every day feeling sick about it, I went in early and told my boss in person. He took it fine- they had huge turnover, and I’m sure he could tell I was a disaster at it!

    For months after, I felt a need to acknowledge and speak to every on the street fundraiser I passed, out of some sort of sympathy

  142. AnHRPersonActuallyOnYourSide*

    I quit my job as a cashier at a grocery store on the third day. I’d had two days of training and it was my first day on the floor with real customers. The produce chart with all the codes was overwhelming. I think I rang everything up as lettuce. At the end of my shift, my drawer was short. I was probably a size small back then (early 2000s) and the only smocks they had were large. I was swimming in it. I honestly don’t even remember if I gave notice. I just know I didn’t go back.

  143. ChipDust*

    I took a job as a weekend charge nurse (Saturday and Sunday nights only). I had 2 weeks of orientation. This was at a mental health facility. On the last day of orientation, I was handed a list of *additional* duties which included ALL staffing responsibilities for nursing staff for the coming week, primary responsibility for any child placement emergencies in the county, recording a complete summary of all care since Friday for the social workers. Ability to transport unconcious police drop offs, must be able to lift 75#.

    I calked in “not ever coming back” the next day. The staffing responsibility alone was a deal breaker working night shift.

    1. ChipDust*

      Result: no one ever got back to me….I got paid for the 2 weeks and got a credit towards my pension of 1 month.

  144. Cookies for Breakfast*

    This was my partner many years ago. Left a hospitality job with awful shifts to go to a “marketing” role that promised steady hours and didn’t require previous experience; it turned out to be one of those street selling jobs from DevilCorp organisations. Around two weeks in, he realised he was still working weird hours and not making any money, and stopped turning up. I think they also had cringeworthy motivational talks in the morning and at the end of the day, though he wouldn’t say much about those.

    The main consequence of his leaving was that it took him months to find another entry-level job. As for the DevilCorp, they didn’t bat an eyelid. Neither of us realised what this really was, until I fell into an internet rabbit hole about scams and pyramid schemes in recent years – and even then, it took me embarrassingly long to realise why it all sounded so familiar.

  145. Joyce to the World*

    Summer job during college bussing tables at a buffet type restaurant. So gross. The kitchen floor was so greasy that despite the traction mats they put down, I had to wear hiking boots. I still slipped and fell with a bucket of soapy water. That was the cleanest I saw that floor during my brief time there. Girl ran into me with a hot pan of grease from BBQ chicken and it went down my front. I quit after my first week, but they begged me to work for at least another 4 weeks because they were so short staffed. I would have nightmares about half eaten pieces of fried chicken. The entire chain of restaurants went out of business a short time later and I will never eat bread pudding ever again.

  146. ElizabethJane*

    When I was in high school I got a job working at a pet store. On my first day, about 25 minutes in to training on how to clean the cages for the various animals, they walked up to the tarantula tanks.

    I am deathly afraid of spiders, might even rise to the level of a true phobia. I looked at the kid training me, said “Nope” in a super panicked voice, walked out, and drove away.

    They never contacted me and I never contacted them.

  147. Carrotstick21*

    I got a job working at the reception desk of a university’s therapy center. The office was set up with a zillion partition panels creating a sort of maze-like labyrinth throughout the office with many dead end nooks. The purpose was ostensibly privacy – so that when professors showed up for therapy, which was considered very shameful and embarrassing, they could be hidden away in a nook of the maze and not get spotted until their appointment. I spent time greeting people and stashing them away in the nooks. On day 3, the therapist asked me to put a set of materials in hanging folders, and pointed me to an obviously very old and worn stack of boxes containing the hanging folders. It seemed weird, but whatever – I spent a couple of hours taking papers, and putting them in folders. Since some folders weren’t in great shape, I also taped them, or bent the hooks back into place. I stacked them in a corner of the closet, let the therapist know I was done via phone back in her office, and went to lunch.

    I came back from lunch to find the therapist on her hands and knees in the closet, throwing things everywhere. I asked her if I could help her with something, and she muttered angrily and kept throwing. I sat back down at the reception desk, and after a few minutes, the therapist stood up, brushed herself off, and announced, “Well. I guess you DID do it!”

    “The folders?” I asked. I put them right in front; I thought they’d be easy to pot.”
    The therapist then explained that she had thought that there was no way I could have completed the task so quickly, and so I must have stashed the extra folders that I did not want to deal with in the back of the closet. After rummaging through the closet and finding no contraband folders squirreled away, she was essentially congratulating me for not lying and doing what I said I would do.

    I was SO offended. I could not believe that I was being accused of something like that, and even more offended at being condescendingly congratulated for not being a lying jerk. I finished out the afternoon, went home, called the recruiter who had placed me in the role, and told her I was never, ever going back there. (I was in my early 20’s and didn’t know how to quit.) I had really needed the job and that money (I want to say $15 an hour in the late 1990’s? At the time I thought it was a decent wage), but I could not handle the insult or face that therapist again. I can’t tell you how the quitting was received because I did indeed never speak to her again or go back to the office. Hopefully all the therapists made it safely out of their nooks.

    1. They Don’t Make Sunday*

      I kind of love this story for the weird game of musical nooks and the cloud of suspicion. Therapist who hides people suspects receptionist of hiding things.

  148. nerak*

    It might not count because I was in high school when this happened, but I took a job at a preschool/daycare place where I thought I was going to be an “aide” for a few hours in the afternoon 2-3 days a week. I’d worked with kids plenty and thought it would be a fun, easy way to pick up some extra money.

    It turned out I was the ONLY “teacher/supervisor” for a group of maybe seven 3-4 year olds, and they wanted me there as soon as I could get there after my high school ended, until 6pm or whenever the parents would come get the kids, every single day. I think I told them on Wednesday that I couldn’t do it–it was too many hours, and they begged me to stay the rest of the week, which I begrudgingly did, but then refused to come back after that. I felt bad for the kids, but I was a kid myself!

    I realize now that what they were doing is completely illegal, hiring a 17-year old with not even a HS diploma to “teach” a class of pre-schoolers, the ratio of teacher to kids was not within the rules, and I can’t even believe that parents were okay with this situation.

  149. Sharkie*

    Not me but I should have. Some readers might remember my story about the boss that was a sore loser and flipped a Corn Hole board in a fit of anger. It was another employee of his. It happened before my time, but Corn Hole manager told my sales class this story on our first day with pride/ I got more details from a drunk HR rep and other person who witnessed this.

    Corn Hole manager was very blunt. He loved telling us that he didn’t associate with losers and he know within the first month if he is going to fire you or not. Doesn’t matter if you hit your goals and were a rockstar- if he thought you didn’t have the “it” factor you were not going to get promoted no matter what other managers thought. Now he won’t fire you right away (he wasn’t allowed to do that) but he made it clear that every time you displeased him your fire date was moving closer. He would also flip out if you took the easy way out by quitting and would walk you out after you told him you were moving out. “Only cowards quit” was his favorite phrase.

    Apparently after a half a day of training with this guy on his first day, one guy apparently was so sick of Corn Hole manager that he just never came back to work. He completely disappeared. Corn Hole didn’t notice for several hours which is impressive since you were locked in a conference room with him and the rest of the class for training. The class noticed but didn’t say anything. When Corn Hole did notice he flipped out. He called ghost employee many times – Threating him, screaming, the whole nine. A conference room chair was punted across the room. The cellphone was thrown. He then turned his anger toward the class once he realized he was blacked and yelled ” Why did you keep this from me!!!!! You don’t keep secrets from me ever! None of you are going to thrive here !!” .

    Not one person from that sales class lasted more than 7 months. Most were fired for not meeting expectations (he changed the expectations as soon as someone was about to hit it). A few took the cowards way out and quit. Honestly I am amazed that he thought that this was a story (even heavy edited) to tell us on our day!

  150. AlexandrinaVictoria*

    I was very young and in desperate need of funds so I applied for and got a job as a “picker” in a warehouse. I really liked the store I would be picking for, and thought it would be fun. I arrived my first day to find the warehouse was not air conditioned, it was 95 degrees F outside and even hotter inside. We had to ask for permission to leave the floor to use the restroom. One of the forklift drivers kept driving beside me and making smutty remarks. I told my supervisor and was instructed to “just ignore him.” I finished the day, dying of heat and sore feet, called in sick the next day, and never went back. They never contacted me to see why.

  151. tsumommy*

    When I graduated with my bachelor’s in technical writing in 19-aught-eleventy-twelve (any SpongeBob fans out there?), I applied for any and all jobs, in a panic to make some money. I was hired by a real-estate development firm to, basically, cold-call business locations and ask how many square feet their businesses were, for $4 an hour (minimum wage at the time was $3.80). After two days of calling people who had absolutely no idea why I was bothering them, I realized I had made a mistake taking the job. On the third day, one of my coworkers said, “I can’t find my pencil. tsumommy, time for strip search!” On the fourth day, I asked my mom to drive me to work early, and she waited in her car while I picked up my plant I had brought in, then we burned rubber out of there. I called my supervisor when I got home, said I quit, and all he said was, “OK”. I think I got a check in the mail for my three days of work? Lesson learned: don’t take a job just because they offer it to you.

  152. Nea*

    I tried to quit the first hour I started a new job and the contracting manager had to follow me into the parking lot and talk me out of it. I’d been so desperate to get away from a division I didn’t fit well into that I took a 10% paycut to go to this new job… only to be told that I had been specifically hired for my experience with the old division and would be working closely with them. Oh, and the other parts of the job they tempted me with in the job interview, such as training in new areas, weren’t part of the task order and wouldn’t be happening.

    This department had a notorious revolving door for a reason management could never grasp. This is the contract and company I gave 2 days notice to when I walked out, to a general shrug.

    Someone else lasted all of 2 hours: she came in, announced that she’d only taken this offer because she was desperate and she’d already accepted a different one, and walked right back out.

  153. ZugTheMegasaurus*

    Oh I’ve got a doozy of a story (I really hope nobody from that job reads AAM because I can’t imagine anyone but me has done this).

    So I had graduated law school and absolutely could not find a job, and ended up taking a door-to-door cold sales job selling office supplies. This is a terrible fit for me, but I was motivated and thought I could make it work at least until I saved up a bit. Then like 2 days into the job, I broke up with my partner of 10 years because he was having a mental health break and getting violent; he got arrested and I felt absolutely horrible. This is when I was supposed to go on a multiple-day selling trip to a town several hours away.

    I carpooled with someone going up, so had no transportation of my own. Well once I was by myself, in an unfamiliar place, doing an activity that made everyone I talked to want to get away from me, it was really rough. And the piece de resistance? They not only expected us to share rooms, but share BEDS. 4 people per 2-bed room. With people I *just* met. They acted like I was absolutely absurd for sleeping in 2 armchairs pushed together (which obviously didn’t give me a great night’s sleep, which just made everything even worse).

    I could not handle it and did not feel like I had a reasonable out. I definitely wasn’t comfortable sharing anything about my chaotic personal life. So I did what any rational person would do, and pretended I was having symptoms of a previously-treated brain tumor recurring. (To be clear, this tumor never existed.) I spent an entire day curled up in the passenger’s seat of somebody’s car with my eyes closed (which was honestly what I wanted to do anyway, just not for the stated reason).

    When we got back to the hotel, I called my parents and asked them to buy me a Greyhound ticket home, which they did. I did that call out of earshot in a random bathroom on another floor in the hotel, then went back up to the floor we were on and had a fake conversation down the hallway where I was asking for the ticket because I needed to go see my doctor immediately. Everybody was pretty concerned.

    I completely ghosted everyone the moment I left, and probably left at least a few people assuming something horrible had indeed happened. I guess I feel a tiny bit bad, but holy hell, a person can only handle so much at once. (And if anyone’s concerned, my partner did get the healthcare he needed and is doing much much better today.)

      1. Zweisatz*

        Yeah. Any time you get prevented from leaving, either because you’re shipped off to the middle of nowhere with no transportation of your own or the doors are locked during the shift, any way you get away is fair game.

  154. I Know How the Sausage Gets Made*

    I was a full-time college student looking to make money wherever I could. A lot of my classmates worked part-time for the local sausage factory and said the job was easy. They just had to stand around in a cooler pulling bad labels off of packages of brats while they chatted.

    I applied and was hired right away. They did scheduling through a bid system, so I put all of my availability, thinking I’d get half or maybe a third of what I asked for. NOPE. I got all of it. So my first week after orientation, I would’ve been in class/studying/working my on-campus office job from 8am to 5:30pm and then working at this factory from 8pm to 1am every weeknight.

    I went to the first shift and figured I’d talk to the supervisor about cutting back on some days, but I’d try one shift first to see how I liked the job. I had worked various part-time jobs before but never in a factory.

    WELL. My most memorable task during my five hour shift was rotating brats coming down the assembly line to make sure they were lying nicely in the package (picture five bratwurst ‘spooning’). Doesn’t sound too bad right? Except, we were in the smoked factory. So all of the meat had been smoked and smelled TERRIBLE. I remember standing over that assembly line thinking to myself “I am going to barf all over this line and they’re going to have to shut the whole plant down to clean up the biohazard.”

    At the end of my shift, we had to clean up before the third shift crew would come in to sanitize. We had to sweep the floor but collect any chunk of sausage larger than an inch to be tossed into a cart that would be sold to pet food companies. As I was bent over picking up pieces of sausage, I looked over to my shift supervisor, who locked eyes with me and mouthed the words, “I fucking hate it here.”

    I called them the next day, thanked them for the opportunity, and said it was not the job for me. They asked if I wanted to try working in another non-smoked plant, and I said absolutely not. I couldn’t eat bratwurst for two years after that five hour experience, and I really focused on my studies so I would never have to work in a factory ever again.

    1. Nea*

      Oh, I feel you! As a teenager I worked in a factory stuffing bags of local brand knockoff Cheetos into boxes. The bags kept breaking on the conveyer belts so we were wading through them and covered in cheese powder.

      I can’t eat Cheetos or anything like them to this day.

  155. Big Pig*

    Got a Christmas temp job at a now out of business clothes shop after I dropped out of uni. First day they told me that it was too much effort to train me on anything so for the entire Christmas period I would be standing in the direct draft line from the door stripping plastic wrapping off clothes deliveries. After a morning of freezing and being bored to tears I went our for my lunch break, phoned my mum and just didn’t go back. After Christmas I got office temping jobs and avoided retail for a while.

  156. JubJubtheIguana*

    Technically yes, but I’m a full time freelancer (author/playwright and former actor) so these were short term gigs, rather than permanent positions.

    My best story is that I was cast in and hired as writer on a play that was “adapted” from a foreign film, but the script literally read like someone had just c&p the screenplay into Babelfish. A lot of it made no sense and obviously had been machine translated. There was no ending, because the film was kind of abstract, which doesn’t really work in theatre.

    On the first day the director/theatre owner started ranting about how kids fake molestation allegations if they’re upset with their parents, including giving an impression – in a faux Italian accent for some reason – of a small child that, and this as near verbatim as I can get, went something like: “Papa spanka my botty bot and I fink he like it!!!”

    Second day he had a screaming fit. Screamed back. Quit and was fired simultaneously. Got outside. Noticed an ice cream truck. (It was August.) Bought and passively aggressively ate ice cream right outside the one window in the 1000F rehearsal room.

  157. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

    I got a job for a phone survey company, and my first day was a Sunday. It MIGHT even have been Super Bowl Sunday, I don’t remember for sure. But I got there, did my 20 minutes of training, and got plopped down at a computer with a dialer. About an hour later, I had been cussed at by literally everyone I talked to, and I just was not having it anymore. I took my little flip phone out of my pocket, made an alarmed face, grabbed my coat and purse, and told the supervisor I’d just gotten a text that my house was on fire and I had to leave. He said “Shit, yes, go, good luck!” and I left and just never went back.

    Two weeks later they sent me a “we’re terminating you for job abandonment” letter and a paycheck for the hour and change, and in fact they also sent me a proper W2 the following January.

  158. hastyretreat*

    I made it about a week at a factory job when I was about 20.

    I was (mildly) injured my first day. My co-worker who was supposed to be training me yelled at me for being stupid. My manager shrugged.

    My first day everyone announced their pay. Mine was the lowest by multiple dollars an hour, and everyone informed me that the temp agency I’d gone through was the worst, and took the biggest cut. (It was the temp agency located in the factory).

    I’ve since learned that some factories rotate people, so folks aren’t doing the same thing every hour of every day. This one didn’t, at least not in the 4 or 5 shifts I worked. I assembled the on switches for table saws for 10 hours in a row every night for a week. A couple of shifts in, my arm hurt, my thumbnail was broken and bruised, and there was no other way to assemble this little piece; you just had to press as hard as you could.

    My station was away from everyone else, so I was alone for 10 hours. The on switches I assembled went down a slide to the rest of the workers. **This was the worst part!**

    It was also the overnight shift, which I was wholly not accustomed to.

    At the end of the week they announced we all had to work overtime the next night.

    I called up the temp company who had placed me and told them I quit. I told my manager at the beginning of the overtime shift that tonight was my last shift. They both took the news as though they heard it once a week, which I assume they did.

  159. Stella70*

    I was hired at a diner/truck stop/truck wash establishment, on a busy highway. To add to the ambience, this one had a Dutch theme, complete with a rickety, full-size windmill in the parking lot. The menu even featured Dutch food prominently, if you consider bacon/eggs and cheeseburgers to have originated in the Netherlands.
    My role was day waitress (the title of “server” was still decades away), and given the turnover the restaurant experienced (and expected), not much effort was put into training. Or providing a uniform. Or even a name tag. The only indication I worked there was the little note pad I carried and the absence of any hope reflected on my face.
    I was assigned to the breakfast counter. I wasn’t told prior, but if an employee could make it through one day at that assignment, training and other job “perks” (nicer pens, for one) would kick in on day two.
    There was an actual blizzard that day; I barely made it to work. I was thinking this was to my benefit – the restaurant would be slow. Sorry, no. We were actually quite busy, mostly filled with assorted old farmers who had nothing else to do in February. My entire counter was full of them. I grew up around farmers; I greatly respect them. Not these farmers, however. They felt it was their duty to put me through the wringer, because if I couldn’t hack waiting on them, I shouldn’t be there.
    They started out obnoxious. No problem.
    Then came the rudeness, which I handled well.
    That was followed by open hostility. I hung in there, but was starting to feel unease.
    Our next stop was CruelVille and they were lifelong residents, evidently. They described me to each other, critiquing everything about me – my hair, face, body. It was a bit brutal.
    (And considering none of these men had worn anything but coveralls for the last 30 years, and each could fashion a toupée from their nose hairs, I was becoming indignant.)
    My personal breaking point, which I regret, was listening to them describe what they would do to me, if we were alone, and nude, and I was off the clock. If that happened today, I would slice and dice their psyches until they dissolved into a puddle of tears. But I was 19 then, terribly sheltered and naive, and my only recourse was to keep my back to them and endlessly reshuffle the Sweet-and-Low packets.
    A co-worker finally took pity on me. It was nearly noon at this point – the farmers had been there the entire morning – and we needed to prep the salad bar. Connie – definitely not her name – said she needed to use the restroom first, and asked me to wait outside the door. This was a thoughtful request because between the sounds and smells she made, it was obvious she hadn’t been to a restroom in a good long while. She apologized through the door, said she was having her period and it was “a mess”. At one point, I even heard her light up a cigarette. Finally, she was done. I heard the toilet flush, the stall door swing open, and then….she walked out of the bathroom.
    Without washing her hands.
    She cheerfully said our next task was to tear lettuce for the salads. I asked for gloves and she burst out laughing, saying, “This isn’t a hospital, idiot!”. I watched her rip apart lettuce heads with her undeniably unclean hands and decided that between the friendly farmers and my free biohazard lunch salad (another perk commencing on day two), this was not the path my career would take.
    I told Connie I needed to retrieve something in my car and I would be right back.
    My quick, cowardly getaway was thwarted by the blizzard that had raged all morning. Instead of hopping in my car and peeling out of the parking lot like an extra in the Fast and Furious movies, I had to spend 20 minutes clearing the snow off first (taking care not to notice the restaurant staff – including Typhoid Connie – watching me from the windows).
    Every once in a while, I drive past the restaurant (long since closed down) and all the responses I should have given the farmers simultaneously rise up in my brain and I am mad all over again.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      o.O

      Everything about this is horrible except your writing, which is excellent! “The only indication I worked there was the little note pad I carried and the absence of any hope reflected on my face” and “peeling out of the parking lot like an extra in the Fast and Furious movies” had me laughing.

      1. Gumby*

        I was fond of “could fashion a toupée from their nose hairs” and low-key wonder if saying that out loud to them would have garnered their respect. (Some people are like that. Sigh.)

  160. Swiss Army Them*

    In early 2020, I tried to get a 100% remote customer service job for a big internet company. I quit at the end of my first week because the remote training setup was awful, the instructors straight up did not show up for half of the classes, and the proprietary software they made us use crashed CONSTANTLY. There were somewhere between 150-200 people in my class, too, so the comment section was constant chaos. I think in the entire week of training – which lasted from 8 am till 6pm, by the way – I maybe got two hours of ACTUAL instruction. Everything else was just me scrolling through my phone while the app crashed, or watching fights start in the chat room, or trying to get a hold of literally ANYBODY through the software system. The second week, I spent two days TRYING TO QUIT by messaging my “bosses” through the portal they made us use, but nobody responded. Eventually, I had to quit in the chatroom at the very beginning of the first class that actually started on time.

  161. The Home and Garden Store scam*

    When I was in college, I got this job at a little home and garden store. It had fun little Knick knacks, was decorated beautifully and was around the corner from my house. Once I was trained, I got to work alone. There were not a ton of customers, but enough to feel kind of busy. Honestly it was a great job at first. I loved all the Knick Knacks at the store and in between customers would love exploring the nooks and crannies of the place.

    A week into the job, a lady called in said she had been overcharged by nearly $500.00 for purchase the previous day. I thought it was weird, but I looked up and say that the charge was ran around 11pm at night. I thought there must have been some sort of computer error or system issue. I refunded her and that was that. Then happened again and again. Every time the charge was run at 11pm or 12am at night. Always for hundreds over what the original price was. I brought it up to the owner and he shrugged it off.

    One night I was headed home from being out with friends and saw the owner’s car in front of the store and the lights on. From the street I could see he was in the store. The next day I worked and low and behold there was another couple of overcharges for customers AT THE SAME TIME THE OWNER WAS AT THE STORE. I put 2 and 2 together and realized he was purposefully doing this and hoping no one would notice. That day I put in my notice. The owner dropped off a paycheck and said he understood. My guess he was nice so I didn’t report him.

    That night one of my coworkers called and asked why I quit. I told her and she said she noticed the same thing and she quit the next day. The place didn’t last long and was shut down shortly after. Not sure what happened to the guy.

    1. Nicosloanica*

      Man, that’s crazy! Honestly, someone should have made an anonymous police report. It’s crazy he wasn’t charged with fraud.

  162. JLH*

    My first job post-grad was absolutely the wrong fit and I attempted to quit on my third day, got talked into staying, and then ended up being fired after four months. Basically, I had just graduated a month earlier and took a job I probably never should have been offered. I’d been very upfront about my skills in the job interview but both sides were desperate. I needed a job and they needed the help. Very quickly by day three I realized it was a skills mismatch and went to my manager, who was new to managing and also overwhelmed by the work, and told her I wanted to quit because of not having the right skills to do the job. She freaked out and promised me that we could make it work and that they’d try to only give me things they thought I was capable of. I should’ve trusted my gut, but being new to the workforce I did not.

    Cut to four months later, I had been talked down to and scolded by my manager several times for not doing a good job. I was also constantly down on myself because I knew I wasn’t doing a good job even though I was trying my best. Her company mentor ended up being the VP of HR and I got called into a random 3pm meeting with them on a Friday. They ended up telling me they were letting me go but wanted to phrase it as a “mutually parting of ways”. And they had the nerve to tell me that “they were sure I must have some skills, but whatever they were they weren’t good enough for this job”.

    As a new grad with a lot of anxiety it felt like such a slap to the face since I had tried to tell them that from the beginning and they basically begged me to stay. From that moment on, I’ve almost always exclusively followed my gut in a job when something doesn’t feel right.

    1. Zweisatz*

      It’s always a tough lesson to learn when to follow your gut, but at least you got it for later.

      They completely brought this situation on themselves.

  163. Adverb*

    I quit a job after 3 days.
    This was 1995. I was hired as a Network Administrator on a contract-to-hire arrangement through a staffing company for a Fortune 500 company. I was certified in the technology used by the company that hired me and had experience. I was hired at a not outrageous rate, but I wasn’t cheap.

    Day 1- Shown to the cubicle where I could leave my belongings, but not sit. I was asked to help out on a high-priority laptop deployment and spent the day installing software into laptops. I was not allowed to eat in the cubicle, nor was I informed where the lunchroom was.

    Day 2- See day 1, only I was no longer allowed to leave my stuff in the cubicle. I had to take it with me to the (very crowded- think 25 laptops and wires and diskettes) room where I was working on the laptops, but there weren’t even chairs in the room, just tables.

    Day 3- I spent the morning installing software onto laptops. Still no place for lunch. I spent the afternoon walking from computer to computer installing printer drivers. (Something that should have been done over the network by a network admin) TO do this I needed a password. I was not allowed to have the password, so someone followed me around and typed it. I asked about a desk, and actual network credentials and was told I could not have them.

    Day 3 evening- I called the recruiter at the staffing company and asked about the lack of desk, real work I should be doing instead of help-desk make-work. I was told by the recruiter that she knew this was what I would be doing, but she didn’t think I’d take the job if shje told be that . The client had use-it-or-lose-it budget money and didn’t want the budget cut for the following year so spent it this way. I quit right then.

    Bonus: Years later I was talking with a colleague who told me a story his recruiter friend had told him about a guy she got a super-easy job for and he quit after 3 days. It was me!

  164. Ilyasaurus*

    I’ve done it twice (Denver is an accursed city). The first time, I was supposedly hired to be a receptionist at an accounting firm. On my second day I was told I was responsible for filing taxes, as in compiling the info, choosing and filling out the correct forms, filing with the IRS, etc. I do not have any CPA experience. On my third day, the owner spent over four HOURS with me trapped in his office explaining why removing confederate statues is the REAL racism. Four. Hours. On day four, I left for my lunch break and never returned. He tried to fight me on paying me for the ~30 hours I had worked until I asked if he would prefer I report him for having non-licensed employees handling his accounts.

    The second time, I was supposed to reception at an HOA law firm. I hated the thought (eff HOAs), but it was the same year as the accounting firm and I was desperate. I found out on day two that it was a money laundering front and just left. No one reacted or reached out, so I guess it was pretty common. Helpful advice- keep every record of communication you have with your HOA, and keep a running tally of your fines and exactly what they were for. They may come in handy.

  165. Nicosloanica*

    One time I should have, and did not. On my first day, none of the people who had interviewed me were still there except my boss. They had all left in the one month between that interview and my start day. It was immediately obvious that there was one superheroic unicorn employee who was doing everything – guess who it turned out I was hired to replace (not how this job was pitched in the interview at all). There were a lot of archaic systems this person had invented and it was clear I was going to be expected to maintain them, although most things could have been handled in more efficient ways – but the org was resistant to chance. Also the actual boss-boss was crazy, like shooting nerf guns at employees crazy. Overall, it was immediately clear that all the systems made the role much more administrative than I had expected – there was no time to do the program work because everything was being done in spreadsheets that needed constant updating. Should have walked out the door the same day. It took me a miserable year to find something else. Not a single person I worked with was still there by the time I left, except Nerf Boss, who is indeed still the boss.

  166. Seahorse*

    In March 2020, my partner got laid off. We’d just moved to a new state and were not eligible for unemployment, so he looked for something temporary until his own job reopened.

    He went to a grocery store doing open interviews, and they just handed him the new hire paperwork. Didn’t even ask his name. He clarified that they were hiring for night stocking positions that wouldn’t involve working with the public as he’s high risk for respiratory illnesses. They said yes.

    He started that night. His “trainer” dramatically informed him that no past job experience could adequately prepare him, and he’d just have to figure things out or give up in disgrace. The trainer then went on a smoke break and never returned.

    The store opened in the morning when my partner was still on the clock, and a manager said he should be trained on the register. My partner pointed out the whole point of the stocking job was to limit exposure to a large number of people. The manager went on a rant about medical hoaxes, people not wanting to work, etc, etc, the highlights reel of Fox & Friends.

    My partner clocked out, came home, and never went back. No one ever called or followed up.

  167. Shelly*

    Twice! Both retail jobs. I worked many retail and customer service jobs between the ages of 16-26, but these two job were so horrific I only lasted a couple of days.
    1. I was given a shop floor position in a clothing store where my only task was to approach customers (in my tiny allocated section) and ask them if they needed help. As a socially awkward introvert, this was my idea of hell.
    2. I worked in the evenings in a department store stacking shelves in the purse section. There were not enough purses to fill the shift. I had nothing to do. This was before smartphones. I could not handle the tedium.
    Both times I called out sick for a couple of shifts then called the store and claimed to have a health problem that necessitated me moving back home to be cared for by my parents. Neither seemed surprised; I expect they were used to high staff turnover.

    1. Dinwar*

      #2 reminds me of my time as a cashier. I was hired for third shift, but ended up working whenever they put me on the schedule. They’d always give me at least 8 hours off, but my work times were totally random. And 3rd shift was extremely boring. It was before smartphones, there was only so much cleaning at the register I could do, I’d memorized the 4-digit codes for the various fruits and vegies we had (I forget them now, but knew them at the time), and the hours just drug on and on and on and on. I’d volunteer to clean up the parking lot just to have something to do.

      Left that job for a job collecting fish for research. Still working weird shifts, but that was because the work was based on daylight and tides. Physically not the most pleasant thing, but it was actually in my field, and demonstrated I could handle field work, which got me my current job!

  168. Silicon Valley Girl*

    Several in college, come to think of it! There was the political canvassing job where they dropped us off in a super conservative part of town to shill for an environmental cause & I got doors slammed in my face over & over again, making me cry (I was barely 18). Also we were doing it all day, in late summer, walking around this neighborhood with no water. I did one day & quit by phone the next morning. They didn’t seem surprised.

    There was a cashier job at a very cool record store. I was excited because this was THE place to be, esp. at night. Party vibe! After my shift, I took the cash upstairs to the boss & found out why there was such a party atmosphere — the guy was snorting coke & invited me to join him. I declined, left, & never looked back. Nobody cared, I after a week or so I came back to shop & nobody seemed to recognize me.

    There was also an office job after college where I bailed one week in. No big story only I thought it was going to be a step up from my first post-college job but it was even worse, so I begged to be taken back at the original job (and was, thankfully).

  169. RNL*

    Should have, but didn’t.

    Got into law school, needed a job for my last six months before I moved cities. Got a job as a personal assistant to a psychiatrist. He took me to laughter yoga on my first day (google it if you don’t know). It took me a few months of living in his banana-pants emotionally manipulative no-boundaried world of trying to start a Dr. Phil-esque mental health media empire and do three years of back-charting (SHOCKING) before I quit and felt the freeest I have ever felt.

  170. EggyParm*

    In the aftermath of the great recession, I had a Speech-Comm degree and no job prospects. I answered a Craigslist ad for a nonprofit role collecting signatures to support recycling legislation. The job was described as having me stand outside of REI or local bookshops behind a table and educating the population about new recycling bills they could support. It sounded awesome and pretty fun.

    On my first day I showed up and a group of the most ragtag folks you’ve ever seen piled into a 12-passenger van. I learned these were my coworkers and we’d all be taken to our stops and then picked up.

    We drove far up into the suburbs and one by one were released into a neighborhood. When my turn came I expressed to my new boss that I didn’t understand why I was being dropped off into a neighborhood and wasn’t comfortable with this at all. He explained that the job required me to go door-to-door and collect signatures (and cash donations!) and my goal for the day was $300. Twenty-two year old me was shocked but too young to realize the absurdity of this and just hopped off the van and into the unknown neighborhood. I walked around in the Texas heat for hours — too scared to actually ask for money — before a nice lady offered me some water — from her water hose. I finally found a park and just sat there until 5:30pm when I walked to the appointed stop sign for pick up.

    My new “boss” shared he was disappointed I collected no cash or signatures but he’d let me try again tomorrow. Sweaty, anxious, and wanting to get home I simply said, “I just don’t think I have the skills for this job.”

  171. H*

    In college I took a temp job as a receptionist at a plumbing company run by a husband and wife. The second day the husband went on an extended antisemitic tear and when he left the office I called the temp agency and told them I quit and explicitly why. I finished out the week but I don’t think the agency told the plumbing company the reason I quit because they seemed genuinely surprised and concerned that I was leaving.

  172. Ellie Chumsfanleigh*

    I was a server at Chili’s for about 4 hours when I was 19.

    I went in a few hours before the restaurant opened for training, and I shadowed someone until the lunch rush when the place got so crowded that I needed to take tables of my own.

    I took my first solo order at a table, walked it back to the kitchen to give to the cooks, and the two guys doing the cooking told me I needed to show them my t*ts if I expected my orders to come out right.

    I turned to the woman who had trained me and gave her a “WTH??” look. She just laughed and shrugged, as if to say, “That’s how it is, nothing you can do about it.”

    I turned around, walked out, and drove home. Still had my Chili’s waist-apron on. Never went back, never even got a call from the manager asking what happened to me.

  173. Miss V*

    Serving job. My second shift.

    The served imI was shadowing asked me if I could help him run a big order to a table. He took the first tray, I was waiting for one more dish that was being finished to take the second. So I got to the table right as he finished delivering his tray of food and heard one of the customers asked for a refill on their drink. He had the cup in his hand.

    He looked at me as I dropped off the food and said thank you. I meant to say , “It was my pleasure.”

    What I said was, “I pleasure myself.”

    He stared at me. The diners at the table who heard stared.

    In an attempt to diffuse the awkwardness I was going to offer to go get the refill the diner requested. Still flustered, I loudly announced, “I’ll go do that right now.”

    And then turned and walked away WITHOUT TAKING THE CUP.

    I walked into the back, grabbed my purse, dropped my apron at the hostess stand and walked right out the door.

    No one tried to stop me and no one ever tried to contact me either.

  174. Doctor Fun*

    Many many years ago, a staffing agency sent me out on a temp gig doing accounting work for a business just south of the downtown core of the city where I lived. The neighborhood was a mixed-use area, some light industrial stuff and some business stuff and the occasional pocket of residential streets — it was also an area where a lot of buses ran through, so while I’d borrowed a relative’s car to get there on my first day I was planning to take public transit afterward. I’d had previous jobs in this area so I wasn’t worried about the location, but when I got to the job on my first day their building was on a street with several run-down houses, overgrown empty lots full of trash and weeds, and the building next store had been partially burned down. The only place to park my borrowed car was on a side street, in a spot with a whole lot of broken safety glass on the ground (super comforting!). I parked, went in the building, and proceeded to have the weirdest work experience of my life.

    The woman I was to be working directly under did not have a desk ready for me and did not plan to have a desk ready for me — she expected me to sit in the visitor chair in her office and perch a laptop on the corner of her desk. I sat in her office with her while she showed me a spreadsheet I’d be working from, then she said “excuse me a minute” and spent the next two hours taking loud personal calls while I sat quietly with a polite smile on my face and looked around the room, which was so full of old binders of reports from a decade prior and stacks of paper and office equipment that was outdated before I was conceived that I started to wonder if I was being secretly recorded for a “Business Hoarders” TV pilot. At one point, while this lady spoke rudely to the receptionist at her dog’s vet office, I felt a draft and looked around for the source and saw several holes high up on the wall behind me large enough that I could see the sky outside. When the lady got off the phone she told me the holes were from an old HVAC unit mounted outside that had fallen off, and warned me that during the coldest months of winter I’d need to wear a coat inside. She also warned me that the neighborhood was “a little sketchy” due to the “crack house” down the block, and that it would be best to park my car several blocks away and not walk around after dark or ever try to take the bus because it wasn’t safe to wait. It was early December, the sun was setting before my workday was scheduled to end, and after that first day I wouldn’t have regular access to a car, so… not sure how she expected me to manage all that.

    Then she gave me a quick tour of the building and introduced me to the 4 or 5 other employees, all of whom sat amid more hoarder piles of business garbage with grim, haunted looks on their faces. Our workspaces were all upstairs in this two-story building, but the only semi-functional toilet was downstairs in an unheated area and I was warned not to “do a number 2” and shown where the plunger was in case I forgot and obeyed my body’s physical needs to expel waste. There was no real kitchen area, just an alcove where they kept a raggedy old coffee pot and a microwave I know was manufactured in the 1970’s because it was the exact same model my grandparents threw out in the early 90’s when it started to throw sparks. No refrigerator to store lunches, and I was told that everyone either ate at their desks or out in their cars if they wanted privacy.

    Then we went back to her office and I expected that she might start showing me some basics of the job before we broke for lunch. Instead, she closed her office door and started talking to me about the series of personality tests she liked to have all her employees take called the Oxford Capacity Analysis. As she started talking I assumed this was something like the Meyers-Briggs or other MBTI-flavored testing that some businesses like to do, but when she said she’d need my personal email address so I could take the test online at home and so that someone from “the center” could contact me with my results my red flag gland started to tingle. I gave her my email and then went off to lunch in a nearby McDonald’s and called a friend to have them look up this Oxford Capacity Analysis stuff (this was just before smartphones became a thing). I heard my friend typing and clicking, and then there was a long pause before she said, “It’s a Scientology thing. How bad do you need this job?”

    Reader, I did not need the job that badly. I was already contemplating bailing on the gig at the end of the day but trying to recruit me into an actual cult was the last straw. I never went back after lunch, and when I called the staffing agency to explain to them exactly why I’d bailed on an assignment halfway through the first day they were not nearly surprised enough for my taste. I never went back to that agency again, either.

  175. Joyce to the World*

    Here is another one. After 2 years off and on of Unemployment, I finally had to move out of my apartment and move into the travel trailer in my parent’s driveway. I signed up at a temp agency and got placed at a military facility working for a contractor. Had to have my car searched coming in and going out. Wear a gas mask strapped to my leg after undergoing some stress test wearing this non working gas mask. Had to undergo rattlesnake bite training, be escorted to and from the bathroom which was in a separate building. I was planning on moving cross country to be with my long distance boyfriend. I told the other temp. He told the lady overseeing us for the Contractor. Instead of talking to me and asking me about it, she reached out the Temp agency and got me replaced. So, I didn’t really quit, but it messed up my unemployment. I moved and unemployment agency in the state tried to set up a hearing when I couldn’t be available even though I asked. (I had started a new job in the new state by then) As far as I know, 22 years later I am still sanctioned in that state should I ever need to apply for unemployment there again.

  176. Olygirl*

    I noped out of a restaurant management job for an independent family-style restaurant in the early 2000’s when I found out on my first night that the serving staff cleaned the public restrooms. We had a person who came in for three hours after closing to clean each night but apparently they couldn’t be trusted to clean the restrooms correctly. This was just a hint of the clean-freak owner’s weird obsession with the restrooms. He inspected the toilets with a mirror on a stick each morning and did a white-glove wipe down to check for dirt and dust. He poured so much straight bleach into the toilets each morning that the restrooms had to be aired out before opening. Ugh. He had the serving staff clean because the cleaning crew (who cleaned the kitchen top to bottom and vacuumed/swept the front end) didn’t do a “good enough” job with the restrooms. I guess they did a “good enough” job with the kitchen but I didn’t want to think about that. I lasted three shifts (as a courtesy only), explained my reasons to him, and had to file a complaint with the state to get paid for my work. I left the keys in the safe and never had another interaction with him.

    1. Morgan Proctor*

      I’ve worked in a bunch of restaurants, and in every one, the waitstaff cleaned the public bathrooms. Never heard of a cleaning service doing this.

  177. Doctor Fun*

    Many many years ago, a staffing agency sent me out on a temp gig doing accounting work for a business just south of the downtown core of the city where I lived. The neighborhood was a mixed-use area, some light industrial stuff and some business stuff and the occasional pocket of residential streets — it was also an area where a lot of buses ran through, so while I’d borrowed a relative’s car to get there on my first day I was planning to take public transit afterward. I’d had previous jobs in this area so I wasn’t worried about the location, but when I got to the job on my first day their building was on a street with several run-down houses, overgrown empty lots full of trash and weeds, and the building next store had been partially burned down. The only place to park my borrowed car was on a side street, in a spot with a whole lot of broken safety glass on the ground (super comforting!). I parked, went in the building, and proceeded to have the weirdest work experience of my life.

    The woman I was to be working directly under did not have a desk ready for me and did not plan to have a desk ready for me — she expected me to sit in the visitor chair in her office and perch a laptop on the corner of her desk. I sat in her office with her while she showed me a spreadsheet I’d be working from, then she said “excuse me a minute” and spent the next two hours taking loud personal calls while I sat quietly with a polite smile on my face and looked around the room, which was so full of old binders of reports from a decade prior and stacks of paper and office equipment that was outdated before I was conceived that I started to wonder if I was being secretly recorded for a “Business Hoarders” TV pilot. At one point, while this lady spoke rudely to the receptionist at her dog’s vet office, I felt a draft and looked around for the source and saw several holes high up on the wall behind me large enough that I could see the sky outside. When the lady got off the phone she told me the holes were from an old HVAC unit mounted outside that had fallen off, and warned me that during the coldest months of winter I’d need to wear a coat inside. She also warned me that the neighborhood was “a little sketchy” due to the “crack house” down the block, and that it would be best to park my car several blocks away and not walk around after dark or ever try to take the bus because it wasn’t safe to wait. It was early December, the sun was setting before my workday was scheduled to end, and after that first day I wouldn’t have regular access to a car, so… not sure how she expected me to manage all that.

    Then she gave me a quick tour of the building and introduced me to the 4 or 5 other employees, all of whom sat amid more hoarder piles of business garbage with grim, haunted looks on their faces. Our workspaces were all upstairs in this two-story building, but the only semi-functional toilet was downstairs in an unheated area and I was warned not to “do a number 2” and shown where the plunger was in case I forgot and obeyed my body’s physical needs to expel waste. There was no real kitchen area, just an alcove where they kept a raggedy old coffee pot and a microwave I know was manufactured in the 1970’s because it was the exact same model my grandparents threw out in the early 90’s when it started to throw sparks. No refrigerator to store lunches, and I was told that everyone either ate at their desks or out in their cars if they wanted privacy.

    Then we went back to her office and I expected that she might start showing me some basics of the job before we broke for lunch. Instead, she closed her office door and started talking to me about the series of personality tests she liked to have all her employees take called the Oxford Capacity Analysis. As she started talking I assumed this was something like the Meyers-Briggs or other MBTI-flavored testing that some businesses like to do, but when she said she’d need my personal email address so I could take the test online at home and so that someone from “the center” could contact me with my results my red flag gland started to tingle. I gave her my email and then went off to lunch in a nearby McDonald’s and called a friend to have them look up this Oxford Capacity Analysis stuff (this was just before smartphones became a thing). I heard my friend typing and clicking, and then there was a long pause before she said, “It’s a Scientology thing. How badly do you need this job?”

    Reader, I did not need the job that badly. I was already contemplating bailing on the gig at the end of the day but trying to recruit me into an actual cult was the last straw. I never went back after lunch, and when I called the staffing agency to explain to them exactly why I’d bailed on an assignment halfway through the first day they were not nearly surprised enough for my taste. I never went back to that agency again, either.

  178. MelMc*

    I stuck it out for four months, but I knew within minutes on the first day that I was leaving a job as an admin to a bank president. Upon arrival the first day the president told me that my name was too long (three syllables) and my new name was (shortest possible abbreviation of my name). You see he was a very very very important man and his time was too valuable to spend pronouncing all those extra syllables. (He was a very very very unimportant man who had to prop up his ego by abusing his employees). He was incapable of basic addition and subtraction so he made a lot of errors on loan paperwork. When he was caught in a mistake he would grab whichever employee was nearest, drag them to the middle of the customer lobby, and verbally abuse them in front of the customers to try to create the impression that he was surrounded by idiots and the reason the bank was barely managing to stay afloat was his personal hard work. And just to add physical misery to the mental misery he kept the temperature in the bank at 60 degrees because he didn’t want to sweat in his three piece suits in his all glass east-facing office. After I left I watched the ad for that job show up every two months for the next few years.

  179. Yay! I’m a llama again!*

    My first job when I was 16. I worked one day of the ‘Next’ (clothes shop UK) Summer Sale. In those days, the Next Summer Sale was A Big Deal. People queued from 4am to get into the shop when it opened at 9am. It was utter chaos from the second the doors opened. I just realised that it was so bad I’ve actually blocked out most of the details. I do remember feeling more stressed that I knew it was possible to feel. People are awful! I not only left on day one and didn’t go back, but I also refused to walk past ANY branch of that shop for the next decade. I think I basically ghosted them; but I also feel like they employed loads of us at a similar age and inexperience with the knowledge that most wouldn’t be back on day 2 – by which time there was virtually nothing of the old stock left.

  180. Shanderson*

    Call center, Canada, circa Stephen Harper campaign. We were doing outbound calls asking folks who they are voting for, and for money if it was PC. I was called ignorant for enjoying Saturday morning CBC radio; yelled at for a call during dinner; and had a supremely awkward moment where a parent yelled at me because the registered voter the call routed to was an adult, but with developmental disabilities. I walked in one day, stopped in the foyer, turned around and left, walking to by BF’s house, whereupon I burst into noisy tears and said I couldn’t go back.

    I have worked with folks in Hospice, as a clerk in a law office, a night audit in a hotel for literal years, but call center? Broke me.

  181. KTinDC*

    I quit a restaurant job at the beginning of my first shift once. I had gone in for an (unpaid, I think?) orientation the day before, left, and had decided within about an hour after leaving that I had a bad feeling about the whole thing. I remember thinking during the orientation “I…don’t think I want this job anymore.”

    I think there were a bunch of red flags, but the one I remember is that they gave us a specific brand, type and color of jeans we had to buy as our uniform, and we had to have them before starting training the next day. I’m short, and I can rarely buy things that fit me off the shelf. I decided that I didn’t need to spend my evening running all over the place looking for a specific pair of pants, and I had a bad feeling about it anyway.

    I did go in for the start of the shift because they’d given us our aprons at orientation. I returned it, told the manager I didn’t want the job anymore, and he just kind of shrugged. I think that’s a lot more common in the restaurant industry than elsewhere.

  182. Timtams to go*

    I am not necessarily proud of this one, but…it was a best-case scenario.

    A few summers ago I was in the running for a job in my field, but the hiring process was horrifically slow. I had recently left a different job because the company imploded and the owner/president had an emotional breakdown in the office that made everyone feel genuinely unsafe. I had savings, but they were dwindling.

    So, to pad my income I accepted an online customer service job for a high-end retail company. Training paid minimum wage and was fully remote. However, they had massive onboarding classes — 100+ people — and “live” training via Zoom, no option to watch videos asynchronously or be disconnected from the group call. On day one, I logged into the call. There were 150 people, maybe half were muted. The organizers COULD NOT figure out how to force-mute people and were continuing on with the training anyway. Lots of interruptions. Lots of people accidentally pinning their own video for the whole group. And on top of all this, the sheer scale of the training meant that the instructors’ presentations kept lagging, cutting out, etc. Which was fine by me: the first four hours of the all-day training were dedicated to the operation of Gmail and Google drive. No. That is not a simplification. The first half-hour of the training was simply about how to compose an email in Gmail. The instructors toggled back and forth between a PowerPoint and a live demo, and every time, they’d be met with a chorus of “my screen is gone! Gmail disappeared!”

    As it happened, on the morning of this first day at this job, I received an email from the recruiter at Job In My Field. She wanted to know if I was available that day for a call with the person who lead the department. So…taking advantage of the very limited connectivity….I switched the training for Placeholder Job to Zoom on my phone and stuck it on mute. Then, on my laptop, I preceded to interview for the Job in My Field with the department lead, and an hour later, have a separate call with HR to go over my job offer and start date!!!

    At the afternoon break for Placeholder Job, I emailed my trainer/supervisor, let them know my circumstances had changed, and that I would not be staying aboard after all. I never even bothered to submit my time sheet for those six hours of minimum wage training. But the supervisor was very nice and she still sends me a kind, personalized email when they’re doing seasonal recruiting — she was genuinely happy that I got a job in my field but also said I’m welcome back if I ever want a part-time cx job with her firm.

    But I am scared to know what the rest of that WEEK-LONG training is like.

  183. Doctor Fun!*

    Many many years ago, a staffing agency sent me out on a temp gig doing accounting work for a business just south of the downtown core of the city where I lived. The neighborhood was a mixed-use area, some light industrial stuff and some business stuff and the occasional pocket of residential streets — it was also an area where a lot of buses ran through, so while I’d borrowed a relative’s car to get there on my first day I was planning to take public transit afterward. I’d had previous jobs in this area so I wasn’t worried about the location, but when I got to the job on my first day their building was on a street with several run-down houses, overgrown empty lots full of trash and weeds, and the building next store had been partially burned down. The only place to park my borrowed car was on a side street, in a spot with a whole lot of broken safety glass on the ground (super comforting!). I parked, went in the building, and proceeded to have the weirdest work experience of my life.

    The woman I was to be working directly under did not have a desk ready for me and did not plan to have a desk ready for me — she expected me to sit in the visitor chair in her office and perch a laptop on the corner of her desk. I sat in her office with her while she showed me a spreadsheet I’d be working from, then she said “excuse me a minute” and spent the next two hours taking loud personal calls while I sat quietly with a polite smile on my face and looked around the room, which was so full of old binders of reports from a decade prior and stacks of paper and office equipment that was outdated before I was conceived that I started to wonder if I was being secretly recorded for a “Business Hoarders” TV pilot. At one point, while this lady spoke rudely to the receptionist at her dog’s vet office, I felt a draft and looked around for the source and saw several holes high up on the wall behind me large enough that I could see the sky outside. When the lady got off the phone she told me the holes were from an old HVAC unit mounted outside that had fallen off, and warned me that during the coldest months of winter I’d need to wear a coat inside. She also warned me that the neighborhood was “a little sketchy” due to the “crack house” down the block, and that it would be best to park my car several blocks away and not walk around after dark or ever try to take the bus because it wasn’t safe to wait. It was early December, the sun was setting before my workday was scheduled to end, and after that first day I wouldn’t have regular access to a car, so… not sure how she expected me to manage all that.

    Then she gave me a quick tour of the building and introduced me to the 4 or 5 other employees, all of whom sat amid more hoarder piles of business garbage with grim, haunted looks on their faces. Our workspaces were all upstairs in this two-story building, but the only semi-functional toilet was downstairs in an unheated area and I was warned not to “do a number 2” and shown where the plunger was in case I forgot and obeyed my body’s physical needs to expel waste. There was no real kitchen area, just an alcove where they kept a raggedy old coffee pot and a microwave I know was manufactured in the 1970’s because it was the exact same model my grandparents threw out in the early 90’s when it started to throw sparks. No refrigerator to store lunches, and I was told that everyone either ate at their desks or out in their cars if they wanted privacy.

    Then we went back to her office and I expected that she might start showing me some basics of the job before we broke for lunch. Instead, she closed her office door and started talking to me about the series of personality tests she liked to have all her employees take called the Oxford Capacity Analysis. As she started talking I assumed this was something like the Meyers-Briggs or other MBTI-flavored testing that some businesses like to do, but when she said she’d need my personal email address so I could take the test online at home and so that someone from “the center” could contact me with my results my red flag gland started to tingle. I gave her my email and then went off to lunch in a nearby McDonald’s and called a friend to have them look up this Oxford Capacity Analysis stuff (this was just before smartphones became a thing). I heard my friend typing and clicking, and then there was a long pause before she said, “It’s a Scientology thing. How bad do you need this job?”

    Reader, I did not need the job that badly. I was already contemplating bailing on the gig at the end of the day but trying to recruit me into an actual cult was the last straw. I never went back after lunch, and when I called the staffing agency to explain to them exactly why I’d bailed on an assignment halfway through the first day they were not nearly surprised enough for my taste. I never went back to that agency again, either.

  184. whichwaydoirun*

    It was 3 months but it’s a little juicy so I’m going to tell it. I got a job with a Trustee’s office. When people file bankruptcy, this office was the go between. You sent them a check every month, they paid your creditors accordingly, kept the books, and reported all that information to the court. There were two large open office areas connected by a door. I sat in the back of one and processed incoming checks. One day I heard a crash in the other room and got up to find two of the female accountants fighting. One actually threw her chair at the other one, missed her, and hit a 3rd woman who had to have someone drive her to the hospital for stitches. The manager took them aside, told them to both go home, have a beer, and cool off. That’s it. That was the end of it. Also, the manager and her supervisor (who was appointed trustee by the office by the US Attorney General) were known to be sleeping together. I noped out of there but a friend really needed a job so I recommended her. (She knew the backstory but was newly pregnant and desperately needed health insurance). About 6 months later, the manager announced, in an office-wide meeting, that due to a high risk pregnancy my friend was going to be on bedrest for several weeks and have an early delivery induced. My friend was shocked because this was news to her. The manager had mixed her up with another pregnant employee–my friend is white, the other employee was black. (Oh, and the aforementioned fight was apparently over smoke breaks.)

  185. Maverick*

    When I was looking for my first office job I ended up accepting the first offer I got. It was an office role in niche industry I didn’t have any interest in, but, hey, it was something! I thought I could adapt and make it work, despite it having a very different work culture than I wanted.

    I knew after the first day it wasn’t the job for me. The company had some outdated views due to the eccentric company owner- Women had to wear hose and skirts (pants not allowed) even though we never met clients. We were a tech industry. All offices had taxidermy animals like an old hunting lodge, alongside paper flower bouquets coated in two decades of dust. Personalized workspaces weren’t a thing. The owner also didn’t believe in voicemail or remote meetings, and scarcely used email. They were an international company.

    On top of it all, the company didn’t know what they needed when it came to my job, and even I knew they needed someone with a decade or more experience in a director role.

    The final nail in the coffin was learning my ‘rare travel’ job actually entailed driving hours out of state for meetings that could have been done remotely. My gut was telling me to run for the high hills and never look back. After a week, I gave my 2 weeks notice. My boss was disappointed, but understood. I told them it wasn’t a good fit for me and that even little things (such as women NOT WEARING PANTS) made me want to go elsewhere. I was apologetic, cordial, and professional, and thankfully my boss was gracious in return. I moved on to other things!

  186. Former Retail Lifer*

    In a time of desperation for a job, I worked for a non-profit that solicited door-to-door for donations. For two whole days. Each day, we’d meet at the office and then a group of us would pack into a car and get dropped off in some residential neighborhood. We were in groups of two and had assigned streets. There was no way back, no way to take a break, nowhere to go if it rained. We were stuck there until it was time to meet back up at the car. The first day, I was paired up with a supervisor, who got a few donations and also found a school that was still open at 4PM, where we snuck in to use the bathroom. On day two, I was paired up with another new person. We knocked on door after door before someone agreed to donate. When we finally did, it had been HOURS of wandering the neighborhood and we both had to pee SO BAD. After he agreed to donate, we asked him if we could use his bathroom and luckily he said yes. I really don’t know what I would have done if he said no. I’m a woman, so peeing outside is way more difficult and far less subtle. Knocking on doors wasn’t pleasant, but the fact that I had no bathroom access for hours was what did it. I never went back and I never picked up my paycheck for those two days.

  187. Johnny Caravella*

    I once took a job working for the administration of the summer fair. It was to be full-time for two weeks. I showed up the opening day of the fair and was told I was to audit the sales of an independent vendor that was paying a percentage of their take to the fair. They took me to the baron of beef on a bun place (showcased beef roasting on a spit) in the food building. I was to stand there in front of one of the tills and count how many of each food/drink item the vendor sold.
    It sucked! Sweat trickling down my back, I explained to the cashier I was hawkishly watching what my employer had sent me to do. Then my supervisor came over after about 45 minutes and asked where was the other person who was supposed to be recording the sales at the second till. When she realized that someone had messed up and only provided me, she said it was not going to be an accurate audit and decided to discontinue that task and take me to another vendor’s booth.
    I trotted behind her as we left the food building and walked for 5 minutes to the midway, where she said I should now count how many games the whack a mole vendor was selling. I said “I’m sorry, I can’t do this.” She looked understanding and I left after less than 2 hours on the job. I still got paid for my time, though. And I kept the employee pass so I could get into the fair for free.

  188. Desk job plz*

    It was summer between college semesters and I needed to save up money for the school year, so I accepted an overnight shift factory job 40 minutes away. No chairs were allowed so that workers wouldn’t fall asleep in them. You had to stand the whole time (I did indeed see one woman nodding off anyway during the shift). There was no music playing and headphones were prohibited so you had nothing to listen to. None of the women spoke English, so I couldn’t even chat with them, and the men spoke English, but would only hit on me (I was 19. They were… not).

    The first night we spent 8 hours, standing silently, folding little cardboard boxes and putting tubes of aveeno lip balm in them for sale. The second night we spent 4 hours screwing caps onto bottles of pet shampoo, and the next 4 hours dumping them back out when they realized all the labels were crooked. 8 nighttime hours of mindnumbing tasks, with the only conversation being fending off weird dudes twice or more my age, and I didn’t even accomplish anything.

    I called the agency the next afternoon and said I wasn’t coming back. They weren’t terribly surprised. I was never so grateful or aware of the priveleges I had to be able to nope out of that.

  189. Bob*

    I took a managment job at a popular clothing store in the late 90s – I’ll call it the Crevasse. They had seperate, stand-alone locations in the same mall for Baby Crevasse and Crevasse Body. I was being trained by a VERY intense Scary Regional Manager, everyone was terrified of her. On my third day, she announced in the shift huddle I would be solo running the Baby Crevasse location. I tried several times to remind her that I still hadn’t been given a code for the register and couldn’t ring people up yet, but that didn’t deter her.

    Once I walked into the Baby Crevasse store, the other employee took off right away, despite my questions and protestations – how I was going to ring customers up? Customers came in and wanted to buy things, and i said “sorry, come back later? I guess?” and I kept calling the folks at the main store trying to alert them that i was losing sales and asking if i could at least use someone else’s register code and figure out how to ring things up on the fly. I finally got the regional manager on the phone after about two hours of trying, and instead of addressing the issue she berated me, shouting into the phone that “she only hires problem solvers, not whiners” and that she was disgusted with me for not “proactively developing solutions”. She was brutal and cruel and made me cry twice on the phone. At the end of her 15-minute tirade she said “so how are YOU going to solve this problem?” and I said “ooh, I have an idea actually” – and then I hung up the phone and walked out of the store, never to return.

    I found out later from a friend who worked in a store nearby that they never sent someone down to the Baby Crevasse for the rest of the evening shift – so the store was just open and unmanned for about 5 hours. I guess Scary Regional Manager thought I magically solved the problem?

  190. Green Goose*

    When I was in college I had a summer job that paid about $10 a hour IIRC and then a friend of my mom’s Angie* reached out to me about a gig that would pay $15-$20 an hour which was a lot back then. I had to go to “training/meetings” ahead of time, so I forfeited a couple of shifts at my main job for them.
    At these “trainings” the Angie explained that I would be helping a woman go through items in her house, organize and get rid of things. It seemed straight forward so the multiple meetings didn’t seem necessary but in each meeting Angie would add a little more info about the job, and looking back it seemed like the woman was a hoarder and there was some sort of mental illness (alluded to but not confirmed) and that she was very distrustful of people and I was warned to not offer to take any of the stuff myself. When I was finally able to start (and forfeited shifts) Angie called me twice to cancel because the woman had changed her mind at the last minute.
    I awkwardly had to withdraw and then I also asked to be paid for the times that she canceled last minute since I had lost out on wages based on those scheduled times. I think Angie was annoyed but understood and actually did pay me even though I never set foot in the house.

  191. PrairieCowboy*

    I was raised on a farm, so I’m used to all the less than ideal conditions that come with the farming industry.
    Many years ago I worked for a beef farmer for a week before quitting.
    The boss only spoke cursive (swearing) all the time. He would swear at the cattle, machinery and his workers. He was perpetually angry.
    To make matters worse his house where I had a room in the basement had limited water supply so instructions were no flushing toilets unless it was poop. It was nasty even by farm standards.
    I told him “this job isn’t for me”, packed my stuff and left.
    He was livid because he had told other applicants the job was filled. Now he had to start the process all over again. This was before computers were mainstream and online listings were not available. So he had to pay for advertising in a newspaper.

  192. Dr. Rebecca*

    Oh, I thought of another! I was hired to work at a garden center, and I honestly thought that I’d be watering plants or running the cash register. The first day they stuck me in a room with training videos, and they were all about how to do demo work on trees. Yup, they wanted 18 year old, 5’2″, 120lb me up in a tree with a chainsaw. I left before training was complete. Don’t think I got paid for that, either.

  193. Fleur*

    I worked as a hostess at a restaurant for 1.5 hours. (I had 8+ years of food service experience at the time, including hostess experience.) There was 0 training. The owner shouted at me (in front of employees and customers) for not knowing the table numbers and not knowing that I was supposed to bring appetizer plates to the customers. There was no chart of table numbers and I had not been informed that I was supposed to bring appetizer plates to the customers. I decided that I didn’t want to work in this environment. I told the owner that I was “taking a break from food service.” She looked annoyed, but she didn’t say anything. I left and never went back. The restaurant has terrible Yelp reviews for extremely slow service – the customers would get seated and then not get their food for hours.
    The owner’s husband was also technically an owner, but he had another job and he rarely spent time actually working at the restaurant. If he ever showed up at the restaurant, he would spent most of his time drinking at the bar with his friends. It was strange. I did meet him briefly. He told me and the other hostess “Don’t seat people too often. Each party must wait at least 5-10 minutes after the last party has been seated. The kitchen can only handle 1 order during a 10-minute period.”

  194. I.T. Phone Home*

    I worked at a mall chain clothing store for a single day. There was basically no training; we watched a couple hours of videos about the “brand identity,” and then all five or six of us new hires were let loose on the sales floor with essentially no direction besides to “straighten up.” With 6 new hires plus other employees in a relatively small store, it was hard to find anything to straighten. I did not particularly fit the all-important “brand identity” of this Clothing Store, and felt horribly out of place, and couldn’t even find any tasks to distract me. It was among the longest six hours of my life. I was living in a big city at the time, and the mall was out in the suburbs and required a long bus ride. I was dreading day two, but I dutifully walked to the bus stop. As I climbed through the door and pulled about a half pound of change out of my pocket, I realized I was a nickel short for the fare. I stepped back off the bus, called Clothing Store, and told them I’d never be back. I got a different retail job within walking distance of my apartment a few days later; they actually hired me to do a specific job and trained me to do it and assigned me tasks! About 4 months later, after I had entirely forgotten that I had ever worked for Clothing Store, I got a check for $36 in the mail.

  195. Bumblebee Mask*

    Unfortunately I didn’t have the luxury of quitting immediately since I had spent 8 months un/under employed but there was one benefits job I knew was a mistake the very first day. The Friday night at the end of that week was honestly the drunkest I’ve ever been in my entire life. I survived 9 months.
    1. It was my first day. I wore a long skirt. I was told by no fewer than 5 people that I was violating dress code by not wearing pantyhose, including by one person who said “Oh you need to wear pantyhose, I’ll tell [boss] to let you know.” It was a dress code I knew nothing about. (This was in the 2000s not the 1970s)
    2. It was new employee orientation day which started at 9:00 AM and ran until 5 but we worked through lunch. I was told to arrive at 8. When I asked about putting 9 or 8 hours on my time sheet I was told 8 because they gave us an hour for lunch (except they didn’t give us an hour for lunch). I kept saying I got here at 8 so I’ve actually worked 9 hours. I eventually gave up.
    3. The employee relations guy literally said to all of us new hires, “Look around you. All of you are replaceable. There’s a line out the door of people who want your job.”

  196. CHERYL MURGIA*

    My husband retired early and decided to apply as a ranger at a county park. During the interview process they assured him it was 18-20 hours a week, which was just enough to keep him occupied. The DAY BEFORE he was to start, they finally shared his monthly work schedule with him. He was scheduled for 50+ hours a week, and 12 hours on every single holiday. He sent a text to inquire about the discrepancy and they never responded. Did they really think he was just going to suck it up?

  197. Seal*

    Way back when I was an undergrad, I quit a job at the end of my first shift. I had worked as a student employee at a branch library at my university for several years and was a lead worker who was entrusted with more responsibilities than most of my fellow student workers. For reasons not shared with us students, the dean of the library decided to merge a number of branches into a single building on relatively short notice and chaos ensued. While all of the student employees were assured they would have jobs in the new setup per university policy, we would all be reporting to new supervisors. Prior to closing our branch, these new supervisors sent all of the student employees a survey that included questions they were not allowed to ask, like how far away do you live and how do you get to work. Our current supervisors rightfully pitched a fit and the survey was withdrawn. Young and naive as I was, I still recognized this as a red flag. Regardless, I still planned to work at the new library, both because I needed a job and because as a lead worker I had been promised I would continue to do the type of work I’d been doing.

    My first day at the new library, it was clear that my new supervisor had no intention of honoring the promises that had been made to me. Worse, the people who were “training” me made several semi-veiled references to how terrible the students at my former branch were and how hard it was to “train” them – all lies. Over the course of my shift I ran into a few former coworkers from the former branch who all had horror stories about how they had been treated in the new library. After 3 hours I had had enough, so I walked into my supervisor’s office and told him I quit because this wasn’t what I’d been told I’d be doing. That a-hole asked what I thought I’d be doing. When I told him, he said I must have misunderstood (I absolutely didn’t) and that I’d just be a regular student employee there, so I walked out. It was truly satisfying.

    I wound up getting another student job in that library in a different department, which lead to a full time job there once I graduated. The supervisor I walked out on turned out to be a bigger jerk as a colleague. It took an entire regime change to finally get rid of him.

  198. Sarah*

    I quit after one day once and it was because I accidentally got hired to be a drug dealer.

    I had come home from my freshman year at college and was going around to all the local businesses with a one page resume looking for a summer job. At the local dog kennels the lady at the counter glanced at it, then exclaimed “Oh you go to (school that has a reputation for pot use)! Can you start as a dog walker tomorrow?”

    In retrospect I should have thought it was weird that my college would be a factor in hiring me to walk dogs. But I had gone to the school because it had an amazing environmental program, I was about as detached from the partying aspect as humanly possible. I just thought she felt college students were reliable!

    I showed up the next day and was paired with another dog walker to show me the route. As we walked I kept a steady stream up of comments about how great dogs are, dog behavior questions, and generally animal focused stuff until he said “You know we’re selling pot, right?”

    No. I did not. Our dog walk included several brief meetings with other people during which I awkwardly looked the other way. I went home after my shift, called after hours to leave a message quitting, and they mailed me my minimum wage check for 2.5 hours. I was too embarrassed to cash it. No consequences, although I hope they were a little clearer when hiring their next dog walker.

    Also when I told people in my home town about this every single person said some version of “You didn’t know they grew and sold pot?” and laughed at me, INCLUDING MY MOTHER.

  199. phira*

    Ahhh, okay, so I quit a job at 3pm the day before I was supposed to start at 9am.

    I was working as an adjunct in academia, so I was always on the lookout for extra part-time work, especially in the summer. Through a family member, I learned about a local tutoring center looking for a tutor for an AP course in my specialty. When I interviewed, I was explicitly told that the normal tutor for this summer course was going to be away that month, but that she had already taught it numerous times and would provide me with the materials (I had it in writing that they would provide the materials). I was also told that they did not pay hourly for any prep work, but then they asked for my current salary (legal at the time) and then offered me that.

    Both of those things were red flags to me–I used to work for a HUGE test prep company and they always paid for prep work separately from the hourly pay for the course. But they had said they’d provide the materials, so prep work should be limited anyway (right?). And even though it was legal at the time to ask for salary history, it was about to become illegal and I knew it was a scummy, discriminatory practice.

    The red flags continued in the literal MONTHS leading up to the course. Every time I got in touch with them about getting the materials, I wouldn’t hear back for weeks, and then I’d get a brush off. Eventually, it became clear that if the materials did exist, I was never going to see them. Suddenly, with maybe a week before the course began, I had to develop all of my own teaching materials, including regular homework assignments. All of which I also had to share with the tutoring center so they could determine if the materials were appropriate for the course.

    This wasn’t an issue in terms of my experience and abilities. But I only had about a week to create the materials, I had no guidance for them, and I wasn’t getting paid. I was also *already working* that summer–the reason I had tried months earlier to get the materials was so I could prepare before I was started my regular summer adjunct work.

    I stressed and stressed and spent hours and hours creating my materials, and sent them to the tutoring center. I was then told to stop creating materials and instead to just go online, look up old AP test questions, and assign those as homework.

    At that point, the day before I was supposed to start, I had a massive panic attack, broke down in tears, and called my mother, who has been a public school teacher for decades and tutors on the side. She and my spouse together talked me down and helped me draft an email to the tutoring center letting them know I was quitting. I apologized profusely for the timing, but also explicitly named the ways in which their own actions had caused me to make the decision (specifically, the complete lack of contact and delay answering my urgent emails, and the broken promise to provide materials).

    I did have to show up at 8:45am the next morning to return the textbooks they’d lent me, since they needed them for the course. I think the head of the tutoring center ended up teaching in my place. This was years ago and I have no regrets burning that bridge, and if my kids ever need tutoring, I sure as heck won’t send them to that tutoring center.

  200. Stuff*

    I walked off the job at the grocery store after being ordered to clock out and continue working, and being told by my trainer that not working off the clock would be a deal breaker in this job. This was a unionized job, too, with a $300 initiation fee and $40 a month in dues for part time minimum wage employees in a two tier contract that bars them from getting benefits. With wage theft that open and blatant, clearly the union wasn’t doing anything at all to protect its members. The reception was essentially “Well, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out”, and I never did get paid for my time on the clock there.

  201. Imp*

    In college, I accepted an unpaid internship at a small nonprofit. On my first day, I:
    – Took dictation for the executive director (he had an intern type all of his emails for him)
    – Sold refurbished bicycles on the street (they dumpster dived for them and fixed them up to sell)
    – Met the random guy who lived in the office

    I went home and quit over email. Never heard from the ED again.

  202. anotherfan*

    Are ‘I was the manager who had someone quite the first day’ stories OK? I’ll leave out the specific details so Pat isn’t identifiable, but I had my first management role come after I was laid off as a longtime worker bee and was hired by another company on the recommendation of a former boss.

    It was a small office, so my manager and I were the only ones in charge. I did a lot of scut work — I mean a lot, since the office manager position had been eliminated and somebody had to pick up the slack — as well as working with staff. Three years into that position, my old boss — who worked in a different branch of the same company — had an opening and wanted to fill it with me. I reached out to some of the colleagues who had survived — or not — my layoff and someone who I knew fairly well and was kind of a work maverick but with a pretty good reputation in the industry said they’d be really interested. They made it through the interview process, their hiring was announced as a huge coup for our company and they showed up for work on their first day, where I was to train them.

    After explaining the job, listing everything I did, talked a little about working for the company, made sure their logons worked … they were looking pretty frazzled. I introduced them to staff, showed them around the office, talked about parking, lunch options … they looked even worse. But hey, everybody looks kind of gobsmacked after such a data dump.

    I walked in the next morning to find Pat walking like a zombie in the office. They said they didn’t sleep a wink that night, knew they’d made a terrible mistake, weren’t prepared for the responsibility, the pressure, the stress or anything that was out of their comfort range, apologized to me, handed over their key and ID and left.

    It took another eight months before we hired anybody to fill the spot.

  203. Legally Bored*

    I quit a law clerk position after 2 days due to a combination of factors, including that the partner clearly had some signs of cognitive decline but continued to micromanage (literally a 1 hour discussion on day 1 about which planners to order) and the fact that the firm assigned me to an eviction question and failed to tell me that it was in fact the firm’s eviction that was at issue. I talked to another attorney about why they didn’t tell me and he said ” you didn’t need to know.” Luckily I had previously worked as a paralegal and the paralegal present showed me where all the bodies were buried in time for me to get out before I got too far in. But I still had to deal with repeated phone calls explaining my decision and agonizing with myself because I had made a commitment. Almost 2 months later, I received an voicemail from the partner that was left as though I was still there and helping him (think a to do list for Monday). I definitely made the right decision to get out.

  204. derfilm*

    I was hired as a Senior Graphic Designer at a luxury real estate office. I was excited to take on the role since I was a hourly contractor working remotely and I was happy to take on an in-person, salaried role with benefits. My husband was not too sure about me accepting the role based on red flags he saw during the interview process and convinced me to keep my contract job but to take a week off and try the job out to see if I liked it. Oh boy, he was right. Monday, my first day on the job I was taken to my desk which was located in a “bullpen” with the other designers. I had brought in my favorite little desk terrarium to decorate my space and the first comments from team was how stupid I was to bring in a glass of dirt for my desk and now they have to look at it. They then proceeded to trash every. single. person. who came into the bullpen saying vile and disgusting comments about their appearance, weight, and work competence. A sales person would come in to ask a designer about the marketing project and as soon as they left they would all snicker and make jokes about the person. It truly was a den of vipers all on display on day one. I was taken out to lunch by the head designer/mean girl and she shared with me her detailed plan to take over the creative department by force (wait! what!?) and wrestle away control from the Marketing Director because she is a “nepo baby rich gal” (she was the owner’s daughter) who doesn’t deserve it so am I in or out??? It was unhinged. Not to mention the bullpen constantly played religious worship music on the loud setting to “set the vibes” and no one could change the station without getting a glare from the aspiring coup leader lead designer. Apparently, she felt worship music meant god was on her side and was helping her manifest her coup vision? I came back on day two and decided to make sure I was not dreaming (I know…!). I decided to leave my phone under a stack of papers to record their conversation and go to the bathroom for 10 minutes. I played back the recording and sure enough, they were saying disgusting vile comments about me as soon as I left the pen. It was the end of day two. I came back on day three very early before the team arrived and gathered all my personal items and packed them in my car. I waited in our boss’s office and once she arrived I explained I will not be coming back and her own team is plotting against the owners daughter and it’s her lack of leadership for letting this go on as far as it is. It felt good to say all things I hated about the place. She hung her head and said she knew about everything but was too scared to say anything because of fear retribution from the vipers. I shook my head, said good luck and then left. That was the end of day three. I went home signed back on to my remote job and continued on my projects like nothing happened. The experience taught me to not discount the red flags in an interview process and absolutely trust your gut, crazy is crazy and you do not need to hang around for it if you do not have to.

  205. A Case of the Mondays*

    I have a doozy. Desperate for a job, I applied to an exotic animal facility that claimed its mission was education and conservation but was really just to fund the owner’s exotic pet obsession. After a “working interview” taking unpredictable animals to a nursing home (!), I got the job. Within 10 minutes of being there, I heard the owner venting to the admin person about how he “didn’t know how he was going to pay everyone that month”. Massive red flag #1 (actually, red flag#1 was when I Googled the place before accepting the job and saw a newspaper article about a lawsuit brought against them when a free-roaming tarantula flicked hairs [as a defense mechanism] into the eyes of a 3-year-old boy). The first day’s task was to bring several animals to an Indiana Jones-themed corporate event. The extent of my training was “don’t let any of the animals bite anyone, but they will bite the hell out of you”. Great. Animals included a sugar glider that I was told was reasonably well-behaved only when it was eating a grape (I started sweating when people were petting it in my hands as it was finishing the grape), a Burmese python that was beautiful but as I had it draped around my arms a coworker showed me a massive 2-inch scar on his forearm from being bitten by the same snake, and a kangaroo for which we had to set up a huge enclosure. I was told that people could pet the kangaroo, but not on the head, face, ears, arms, legs, tail…I asked where people COULD pet him and was told pretty much just the back. One extremely inebriated corporate partygoer who asked me in all seriousness if the kangaroo was a LION starts stroking the side of the kangaroo’s face while the kangaroo recoils, ears back and mouth opening to show MASSIVE teeth. Faster than I’ve ever said anything in my life, I said “on second thought, maybe he doesn’t want to be pet right now, please (fortheloveofGod) stop!”. I am very much not a quitter, but the final straw was when we had brought all of the animals back to their (dirty, cramped, and certainly not accredited) facility, the manager asked if I was comfortable reaching into the tiniest box that contained their tarantula to pull out its water dish, which would have required my hand passing over the tarantula within 1-2 inches to grab the dish that was behind it. I asked if the tarantula was devenomised and was told no, so I said absolutely not. I called the admin person the next day to tell them I would not be coming back and was asked why. I told them that I was not comfortable with basically any aspect of the job and that was that. I’m sure I’m one of a long line of people to have quit quite soon into the position.

    1. Michelle Smith*

      Your work story gave me heart palpitations. I didn’t even know tarantulas could DO that!! I want to vomit.

  206. Burnzie*

    I’m not sure I was technically even hired tbh. As a teenager I went to an interview for a job in an icecream shop. Got the job and was asked to start a few days later. I asked about a contract but was told it was cash in hand with no contract. Unfortunately fairly common in seaside towns for seasonal, low paid jobs. On my first day I was working on the tills for about 2 hours when the manager approached and asked for £150 ‘to set me up on payroll’. After a brief conversation in which I said I refused to do that I walked out. I knew lots of other touristy places were hiring so figured I’d find something better. Never did get paid for those 2 hours.

  207. Kaitlyn*

    I sure did! I left a job within the first 30 minutes. I had interviewed at a local Italian restaurant, and during the interview, I had pulled out a bottle of water and put it on the table. My interviewer gave me such a weird look and said “do you always drink that much water?” and I said “I mean, I try to stay hydrated….?” Fast forward to my first day in the job: it’s totally dead in the place, so I fill up a glass of water and take a sip. My new boss immediately tells me to dump it out, and that we’re not allowed to drink on the job because “if you’re thinking about your thirst, you’re not thinking about our customers.” I let a beat go by, and then grabbed my purse and said, “You know, I just don’t think this is going to work out.” My boss watched me go with her mouth hanging open. Total time on the clock: about 32 minutes.

  208. BecauseHigherEd*

    Not me, but I once worked in a super toxic beauty school that caused many people to quit within the first week. It was actually a joke amongst us that the longer you stayed, the more broken you probably were. The owner would frequently do things like:
    -Make us come in on one of our days off so he could lock us in a room and yell at us
    -Routinely not pay vendors (he seemed to think he was brilliant because he found creative ways to elude paying marketers, repair people, plumbers, you name it). This often meant that students were working and studying in sub-par conditions,
    -Make racist, sexist, and/or homophobic comments–it was so often and pervasive that it didn’t even feel like “discrimination” anymore because it affected everyone
    -Call in sometime after 5 pm to see if anyone picked up the phone so he could see if anyone was still working. (Mind you, we weren’t paid for staying past 5.)
    -If you were unfortunate enough to be a special favorite of the boss, you might expect to be kidnapped, as we called it. It really was a form of false imprisonment–he would say, “I’m in my car, meet me outside” and when the employee got in his car, he would whisk them off to some rural location for hours or, sometimes, a day or so. I was fortunate enough to avoid this, but one time my colleague in Financial Aid spent the night with him at a rural AirBnB in a resort town four hours away.
    -Yes, there was (of course) rampant fraud and tax evasion–fortunately, most of us didn’t touch the money, so we could always claim ignorance. Several would-be bookkeepers walked off the job when they saw the books.

    This may come as a shock, but the school was eventually shut down by corporate.

  209. PABJ*

    I was working two part-time jobs over the summer during college. One was at a gas station and one was at a movie theatre. The first day at the movie theater was terrible. My trainer was not very communicative and got upset at me for reporting a customer seeing a mouse without using their code word. The gas station promised me more hours, so I quit the movie theater. Unfortunately, gas station never really delivered on that promise, but I still made enough to get by.

  210. Irish Teacher.*

    Given the brackets, I’m going to include my very first teaching job, which I ended up losing after 4 weeks and was told by other members of staff I’d done really well to last that long because the person who subbed there before me quit after something like two days. Can’t remember the exact length as the job was nearly 20 years ago, but it was definitely less than a week.

    Why it was so bad…I have never seen anything like the discipline problems there in any of the rest of my 20 years teaching. My first week, a student broke a desk and I was really upset, thinking how do I tell the principal they broke a desk and another teacher laughed at me for being worried about that, saying “the third years break a desk here at least once a week.” At a staff meeting, I asked the principal about the policies for dealing with low level disruption since the only discipline procedures I had been informed about were things like the policies for suspension, escalating to senior management and so on and he laughed and said, “it’s not the low-level disruption you have to worry about here.”

    One teacher told me, completely serious and not even realising that it sounds like sarcasm, “ah, we have nice students here too. It’s just you don’t notice them because all the attention is given to the ones that are causing trouble. Like there’s one student in 6th year who is really nice.” On starting many other subbing jobs, I have been informed of the students who were likely to cause trouble but that is the only job where a teacher drew my attention to a student who wasn’t a troublemaker.

    To be honest, had I had any more experience, the phone call in which I was offered the job (I was not interviewed; I just applied for the job, having seen it advertised and got a call offering me the job) would have tipped me off as the principal was like “have you any experience apart from your student teaching year?” “No,” “Oh, then it would be pretty hard for you…oh, well, you have to start somewhere.”

    I was let go essentially for not having enough experience to deal with the discipline issues in the school. I was obviously pretty worried about how this would effect my career, although the principal did agree to give me a reference, saying that he wouldn’t lie, he would have to say that I did have difficulty with the discipline but that he would also say that it was a difficult school to start one’s career in and that I had done the best I could in the situation I was in, basically.

    I was a bit less worried after I went for my next interview, which included the question, “tell us about a discipline problem you faced and how you dealt with it, and looking at the last school you worked in, I’m sure you have plenty of examples to choose from.”

    Had I quit, I have no doubt everybody would have understood. Remembering how the principal hesitated on realising my only previous experience was teaching 1st years (12 and 13 year olds) in a school in a town (where the schools take all students (often of a particular gender) in the town, so it’s unlikely you would have 90% of the teenagers in a town having behaviour problems whereas in cities, parents have more choice and some schools are therefore avoided by kids who don’t want to be surrounded by kids causing trouble), I’m pretty sure he knew there was a good chance that a young newly-qualified teacher in her early 20s might not work out for dealing with teenage boys with behavioural problems, some of whom had a) very sexist attitudes and b) suspicions of anybody from outside the city.

    The teachers basically joked that I was lucky to be let go because at least I was getting out of there any any other school would have to be easier.

    It took me a couple of days when I went into my next job to realise I could relax a little, that no, the kids were not going to throw coins at me if I turned to write on the board.

  211. old curmudgeon*

    Way back decades ago, when I was very young, very desperate and living in an area with sky-high unemployment rates, I accepted a job offer as a [Redacted] Vacuum salesperson.

    This job, for those fortunate enough not to have encountered it, involved going to people’s houses, using the [Redacted] machine to steam-clean their carpet, and then trying to sell them the damned thing. The price was around $700, and this was in the late 1970s when the federal minimum wage was $2.65/hour, so it was a hella expensive piece of machinery for the time. If the demonstrator couldn’t convince the homeowner to buy the thing, we had to call the person who shilled us into the job so they could try to seal the deal.

    It. Was. AWFUL.

    After multiple days of training, I showed up at my first demo and found that all the furniture was still in place in the room. The homeowners expected me to move it by myself (I am not a robust person), then move on to the actual carpet cleaning. When I managed to wrassle the sofa away from its position by one wall, I discovered that their cat had been using that spot as an alternative litterbox for some unknown amount of time. I was on my hands and knees trying to get those cat stains out of the carpet for a good 45 minutes, the smell of cat piss and poop mingled with carpet-cleaning chemicals flooding my face, and was struggling to keep from vomiting the entire time. The entire job took me close to four hours, and at the end, OF COURSE the homeowners refused to buy the stupid machine no matter what I or the head con artist said.

    I loaded up the machine, all eleventy-seven parts of it (which as part of the training, I had to memorize the names and functions of each one), lugged it out to my car, drove straight to the con artist’s office, dragged it in the door and up to his desk. I dumped it there, announced “I quit,” and walked out the door.

    The con artist yelled “but you did great, I’ve got three more appointments lined up for you, the first one is in 20 minutes, I need you to get over there right away!” I glanced over my shoulder and said “you can do it, I am out of here.”

    Between the training and the awful carpet cleaning visit, I had put in a total of two weeks of my time by that point. I never got paid a dime. Lesson learned – not only did I refuse to consider any similar job posting after that, I also vowed to never, ever buy one of those damned [Redacted] Vacuums as long as I live.

    1. Beth*

      Some years after an ugly relationship ended, I found out that my horrible ex had ended up selling those vacuums. It was a perfect moment of schadenfreude.

    2. My Cat is a Righteous Dude*

      While my late Mom was working overseas in the early 80s, my late Dad was embezzling from the savings account she was putting her wages into as the family’s nest egg.

      To show off to one of his bar buddies, he bought one of those things just before she came back. When she got back from Saudi Arabia after 7 months away, she threw a FIT and made Dad call the bar buddy to come and get the cleaner back.

      The sales guy was throwing a tantrum about how the cleaner was dirty (Dad made me use it… I was 13) while he was disassembling it… my Dad sat on the couch and essentially went temporarily deaf and blind.

      He also bought a new truck (!) from another bar buddy that Mom also made him return.

      Needless to say, my parents divorced soon afterwards.

  212. Ellie Chumsfanleigh*

    I just remembered two more jobs where I walked away after just a few hours:

    One, in my Senior year of high school, was just a boring job in a women’s clothing store in a mall. My first day, I showed up at 8:00 AM for training, then the store opened at 9:00 and I met three of my co-workers. Somehow we got on the topic of fake IDs and I showed them one I’d gotten in another state. One of the women (girls? we were all under 21) asked if she could borrow mine to use at lunch. I said sure, and handed it to her.

    I got to go to lunch “early” because I had gotten there an hour before everyone else and, as I was sitting in the Tex-Mex restaurant in the mall, I realized how much I hated retail work (this would have been my 4th or 5th retail job by then). I paid my bill and walked straight to my car in the parking lot and left. I didn’t even go ask for my fake ID back.

    The other job was as a newspaper subscription salesperson, calling people at their homes. This was in the days before auto-dialers and cell phones. So it was landlines and a thick listing of names and phone numbers. Might’ve even been the White Pages; I honestly don’t remember.

    Training lasted maybe all of 30 minutes and then we were plopped in chairs at long tables in a dim, windowless room that smelled like mildew. In front of us was the thick list of phone numbers, a big landline phone, a laminated sheet with the scripts we were supposed to follow, and a notepad for recording orders.

    I think I made it through 5 or 6 phone calls before asking where the restroom was and then, yup, walked past it, went out the front door, got into my car, and drove home.

  213. Rage Against the Coffee Machine*

    I once had a job working overnights at a coffee chain right after graduating university. The lady in charge of the overnights wasn’t much older that I was but was just a walking rage machine. She hated everything about that store, about me, about the customers, about the pay. The energy in that store overnight was palpable; a stench not even fresh-brewed coffee could cover.

    Rage Machine never stopped complaining. Mostly about how life was unfair, or about how the most recent job interview didn’t land her a job. She had a felony arrest and a long rap sheet that made her ineligible for most jobs she was going after. Day 1, I was nervous. Day 2 I was miserable and wondering where I had gone wrong in life. Day 4 I had a panic attack and spent the whole afternoon sobbing because I couldn’t handle the thought of going into work. My sister finally forced me to call in sick, but I didn’t know how a pager worked so they thought I no call-no showed. Which in fairness I did, but not because of lack of trying. When I went back to work on Day 5, they had already replaced me. Rage Machine was even more angry that day, because now we had to split tips with more people than normal.

    I don’t think that store ever figured out why they couldn’t keep people on the night shift.

  214. Anastasia Krupnik*

    I quit a job after one week. It was my first job after finishing my graduate program in a field with limited job opportunities, and even though the executive director gave off some serious bad vibes when I interviewed, I took the job because, well, I was desperate. On my first day, one of the employees gave me a tour, which included the line, “Here’s the lunch room, but nobody really takes a lunch break; we just eat at our desks.” When hired, I had been told the regular working hours were 8:30 am to 6:00 pm, but I was routinely the only one leaving at 6 (I had to catch a train to the suburbs, so I had no choice). I have no idea how late everyone else stayed. (Throughout the week, I noticed the person in the office next to me went from Coke to coffee to Red Bull as their drink of choice, so I think everyone was at least a little sleep deprived.)

    The executive director was a micro-managing control freak, who asked everyone to email them at the end of every day with a list of what you had done that day. Also, there was an all-staff meeting every Friday, which started at 8, before the previously mentioned start of business, so that no normal working hours were lost. I think the final straw was when I heard the executive
    director berating a staff member for not being able to stay late because they had tickets to a charity gala which they had informed the director about ahead of time. I knew within a week that this job was going to demand way more of my life than I was willing to give, so I quit without anything else lined up.

    They also never paid me for the week that I worked, which I now know is illegal. At the time (almost 20 years ago), I was young and naive and just wanted to be done with that job, so I never tried to get my money, but it did confirm that leaving was the right call.

    I don’t recall much about how my departure was received. I vaguely remember the director saying something about how “we never can keep anyone.” No kidding!

  215. I'm not allergic to bees*

    I was 15 and it was my first job ever. I was hired as a cashier at this new store in town that sold a overly priced gadgets and gift things. The owner was a 50-ish year-old man who liked to brag about his law degree and had a very bad temper. I was the only employee. In addition to working the cash register, which I had never done before, he had me working on designing a logo for his lawyer side-business, handling his mail, working on cleaning projects, and other very random stuff. Day 1, he yelled at me and called me stupid for asking a question about how to address an envelope (again, this was my first job, and my family did everything online, so I didn’t have much experience sending mail). He berated me for other things too, like not being outgoing enough with customers (I was nervous!). After he would get his shouting out, he never apologized, just went back to acting normal and sometimes complimenting me on my work. I felt like he was gaslighting me and, being new to the workforce, I really didn’t know if it was my fault or his at the time. I left work that first day emotionally wrung out, but he was paying me $10/hour which felt like a lot for a first job, so I went back for Day 2.

    The next day, he screamed at me for not knowing where the cleaning supplies were (he never showed me and when I pointed that out, he said I should be familiar with the store by now… on Day 2). I ended up having a panic attack after he left the room. Two customers came in a few minutes after and asked me what was wrong. My face was puffed up from crying and I was so embarrassed and flustered that I lied and said I was stung by a bee, it was just an allergic reaction, nothing to worry about. That of course made them even more worried and they were seriously considering calling 911 to get me help. I somehow calmed down enough for them to believe that I was okay, and as soon as they left, I called my mom to come get me. She told the owner that I quit while I hid in the back of her van (thanks Mom!). I never had to see him again and he sent my paycheck in the mail.

    The store stayed open for about half a year. Another friend of mine who was two years older ended up working there for a bit, she also had a terrible time. I felt a lot of guilt and angst about being a bad worker for a while, but when I heard that my friend also had a terrible time and after talking with my mom and others, I realized it wasn’t my fault. I’ve thankfully worked at much more normal places since then, but I’m grateful for that first horrendous job because now I have an entertaining story to tell and I learned two lessons to take with me to the end of my days: #1 a good boss does not scream at you and #2 don’t lie about being allergic to bees.

  216. Chicken Man*

    In college, I got a job as a convenience store cashier. I spent Day One glued to the fried chicken machine and stunk of grease and nasty chicken by the end. That night I got a job offer at a local bookstore – much more up my alley – and left an answering machine message quitting.

    1. BecauseHigherEd*

      ….so, when you say “glued to the fried chicken machine”…is that metaphorical or literal?

  217. CRM*

    Early on in my career, I accepted a position working as a low-level data coordinator. I chose the job solely for it’s geographical convenience close to my ailing mother, so I didn’t bother to do any due diligence about the company’s culture and the team I would be working with. That turned out to be a big mistake.

    On my first day, it was revealed that I was the third person to be hired into this role within the past 6 months. I immediately had a sinking feeling of dread. When I asked my boss about it, she made up some vague excuse about the previous employees not being the right fit for the role. That didn’t make sense, as this was a very straightforward job that barely required any technical knowledge or experience (70% of the job was basic data entry). It only took me a couple more days to discover the real reason: the entire team was an absolute train wreck. A year prior to my arrival, my boss was brought in as a replacement for a beloved manager that was fired due to poor performance. The team absolutely hated her. They straight up refused to do anything she asked them to do, said rude things about her in meetings WHILE SHE WAS THERE, and said even worse things about her behind her back. Most of the stuff they said about her was completely out of line, but it didn’t help that she actually was a terrible manager. She didn’t seem to understand the system we were working with at all (or have any interest in learning it), so she couldn’t set reasonable goals or objectives for the team. She also did nothing to address the unacceptable behavior of my colleagues. I still felt really bad for her.

    I immediately resumed my job search. I would have quit in the first week if going back to my previous job had been an option. Unfortunately, I needed the salary and the area that I was in wasn’t flush with jobs. I had to interview for three months before I was finally able to leave. In the meantime, I emotionally distanced myself from the job as much as I could. I never participated with the team’s bashing of my manager, did the bare minimum I needed to keep up, and took as much PTO as I could get away with.

    When I finally put in my notice, my boss was furious and demanded that I stay on for an additional for 6 weeks (that wasn’t the company’s policy and I wasn’t working on anything that warranted that level of notice). I said ok, then I walked out and never returned.

  218. Rob aka Mediancat*

    Not me, but my Dad, back in the 1970s. He had just left one tire company (where he was manager) and was hired by another as manager, for 5 days a week.

    — or so he was told. When he showed up at work his first day, it was revealed to him that no, he’d been hired as a salesman and had to work his way up to manager, and what’s this about five days a week? Everyone works six, here!

    He finished out the day, told the store manager (the job he thought he’d have) that he quit because they’d basically pulled a bait-and-switch on him, and walked out.

    The store manager was shocked, shocked, and tried to browbeat Dad into staying, but Dad wasn’t having any of it and came home. It took him a while to get the one day of pay they owed him, but he was able to find a good job not long afterwards, and the second tire company is long since out of business.

  219. CSRoadWarrior*

    About 2 years ago, I quit my job after three days. I was hired as an AP accountant for a construction company. But I immediately felt that something was off on my first day. The company was very disorganized and as I work in accounting, I had access to view the company’s bank account. It was very low. I was surprised they didn’t go out of business.

    Also, my boss was stereotypical, thinking someone of my ethnicity (I will not reveal my ethnicity here for privacy matters) should be able to catch things quickly. That kind of stung. I didn’t want to have my performance expectations based on my race. Nobody does.

    That was not all. The owner of the company and his wife started to dump things on me one after another without proper training. I started to doubt myself and my anxiety started to pour in, to the point I started hyperventilating. I was flying blind and didn’t know what to do. Also, I was told I had to regularly work weekends. Like every weekend. This was a 9-to-5 job. The key word is “every” here.

    On the third day, my boss and the owner of the company got into a shouting match – by that, I mean a very heated argument. The owner’s office was right across the hall from the room I was in so I heard it loud and clear. It lasted about 10 minutes. Right after that, my boss immediately pulled me into the conference room and took her displaced aggression out on me.

    That was the last straw. I was literally almost in tears at that point and I couldn’t stay any longer. When my boss wasn’t around, I quickly emailed her my resignation. Right after hitting send, I ran out the door and quickly drove off in a panic.

    I never heard from them afterwards. No email or phone call. I was just glad to be free.

    Luckily, I found my current job just weeks later with a much higher salary and a much friendlier environment.

  220. Soup Should be Free*

    Me, 22, just wanting a nice summer waitressing job.
    Them: Rain Forest Cafe, hostess position, early aughts.
    Fake Reason: Hostessing was hard. Kids wanted to be by the animatronics, no, not those ones, yes, the elephants, no, now I’m scared, put me under the star scape. Parents constantly changed tables. Servers got annoyed that their sections were over/under filled. Management told me they were not hiring servers, then at the end of the week, held a training session for their new crop of servers they had just hired.

    Real Reason: that ****ing music. Seriously, two hours of ‘jungle’ music on repeat. I couldn’t take it anymore. After seeing the training session, I went to the kitchen, got myself some of the soup that the servers got for free (but I was supposed to pay half price for), put it in a takeaway carton, told the manager I quit, and walked out. Blasted 80s pop the entire drive home.

    1. thatoneoverthere*

      Dude I feel ya on the music on repeat! In 2004/2005 I worked at the Hard Rock. They had a small list on repeat. One was the Time Warp from Rocky Horror. Everyone I know loves Rocky Horror. I do not. I must have listened to Time Warp 200 times.

      1. Soup Should be Free*

        oooh nooo, that is definitely just as bad. Worse, maybe, because people are probably singing along!

      2. Susie Occasionally(formerly No)-Fun*

        I love Rocky Horror, but I wouldn’t after hearing Time Warp 200 times.

  221. Amy G*

    I worked for a research firm for 3 days. We would do surveys over the phone- just questions, not selling anything. The survey they put me on had me calling 9-13 year old girls to ask them about jeans. The problem is, they had me calling up to 8:30pm and I got a lot of angry parents because it was bedtime. Also, it wasn’t just 5 or even 10 questions, the survey went on and on. I never made any completes because the few kids I was able to start asking would be cut off by parents saying it’s been 20 mins, that’s enough.
    After 3 days of this, I said “I’m not coming back tomorrow.” They said “You have to give 2 weeks notice.” I replied, “No, I don’t.” I felt bad bc my sister recruited me and if I worked there 6 months she would have received a bonus, I offered to give her the $100 out of my own pocket because it just wasn’t worth it.

  222. the cat ears*

    I stuck it out for 2 weeks but I think this counts anyway.

    I volunteered for 4 years at a nonprofit, processing food donations, cooking meals for people in need, and staffing a food bank (the latter involved talking in Spanish to people who did not speak English). I finally got hired there in a job that involved picking up donations and sorting them.

    The hiring process took 6 months and included a lot of questions about my relationship to food systems, opinions on systemic racism, etc. They also asked if I had ever driven a van and I said I’d driven one briefly when renting a uhaul for moving.

    It turned out the main skill they wanted was driving the van with no assistance or training. I caused 2 minor accidents in the first week, no people were injured but some parked cars were dented. A lot of the driving involved parallel parking downtown, so extra complicated, and the van had poor visibility and no rear-facing camera.

    I tried to get someone to assist me with parking, and to come with me to practice driving in an empty parking lot. Nobody had time. My direct supervisor said she was too busy. My manager ignored my emails about it.

    There was supposed to be a second person in my job who could have assisted me, but he was out on medical leave at the time I started.

    I quit after 2 weeks. It was really disappointing because I loved this organization. But there was such a blatant disregard for safety. Honestly, it would probably have been more reasonable of them to fire me, rather than what they did which was just sort of shrug at the possibility that I would cause serious injury or property damage.

    I talked to a friend who used to work there about all this. It sounds like they’re extremely understaffed and under-resourced, which is common for nonprofits. But it was so weird to me that they’d put so much effort into having multiple interviews focused on learning my ideological stances, but none on screening for or training driving skills.

    1. the cat ears*

      I quit by sending an email saying it was not good for my health to continue working there, which was true – it was causing extreme anxiety and I had obsessive thoughts about accidentally killing someone with the van. In that case the anxiety was warranted!

  223. Scout Finch*

    I took a part-time job at a tech call center – they did customer support for several PC brands (one was Gateway 2000, so that shows how long ago). The pay was pretty decent & I had an electronics repair background, so it looked like a good fit.

    First 4 hours, I shadow someone taking calls. They had a script that followed a flow chart. Makes sense, huh ? Except they did the entire flow chart, no matter the reported issue. Kept the customer on the line for longer than necessary in most cases.

    Fifth hour, I took my first call. Customer reports computer won’t power up. They already had the case pulled off. So instead of asking “is your computer plugged into the wall? is the monitor connected to a power source?”, I asked what lights were lit on the CPU. I had just replaced a power supply on my own computer and thought that could be the issue here.

    Trainer went nuts, took over my call & finished it 45 minutes later. Yep – they shipped the customer a power supply. I was scolded for going off script.

    I told the trainer that I could make more money waiting tables and would not be lying to my customers. His jaw dropped. I took my headset off, picked up my stuff & walked out past trainers and trainees. People were stunned. I never got paid, but I didn’t want their dirty money. Why put people through such shenanigans?

    I understand flow charts exist for a reason, but theirs was not constructed correctly.

    1. Michelle Smith*

      Honestly, bless you for that. There’s nothing worse than contacting customer support and getting someone who very clearly is following a scripted chart and is not actually listening to you.

  224. Ginger Cat Lady*

    I was young, about 20-21 years old. Got a job working in a daycare center. Was told the job paid a good hourly rate (I think about $12/ an hour, which was pretty good for someone with only a high school diploma in the early 90s).
    On my first day, a coworker asked me “What hourly rate did they promise you?” and “Did you know they don’t actually pay anyone the amount they put in the ad?”
    I was told in the interview I’d be working with a partner, that there were always two adults in each room to keep the ratio under the state licensing requirements. That my partner would be training me. This was not true. I was given 15 two year olds to care for all day, and my training was just “schedule is on the wall over there”
    No one told me I had to cook lunch for the toddlers, or even where any food was or where the kitchen was, so when lunchtime came around and there was no food the kids were angry and I didn’t know what to do. Not sure how I was supposed to cook food in another room when I was alone with 15 two year olds! Leave them alone? Take them to the kitchen with me?
    Then in the afternoon, it was naptime for the kiddos in my room. They knew the drill and laid out their own mats for the most part. Many of them fell asleep. Others did not. I told the ones who were not sleeping to stay on their mat and be quiet. Surprisingly, they actually did. But the owner came by and started telling at me that I needed to “make them sleep!” and started holding one boy down on his back to show me how it was done. He started screaming and crying and it was SO upsetting. I totally froze in that moment and had no idea what to do or say other than be horrified.
    After the kids went home, I asked the owner about the pay, and she denied ever saying she would pay the rate I’d been told, and said she “never pays a penny above minimum wage”. (I think minimum wage then was <$5 an hour)
    I told her I was done. That she'd lied to me about pay, about having a partner to work with, I wasn't sufficiently trained, and I would NOT be holding toddlers down to make them sleep. I never went back. She called me at around 8 am the next day and asked me "What am I supposed to do with these kids if you won't at least come in until I can hire someone else?" I said "Not my problem" and hung up.
    Never did get paid for that day of work. I still think about that poor little boy.

  225. SmallTownGal*

    Crazy story… I applied to this small town’s hote/resort type and got hired on the spot when I went for an interview. The position was for front desk, checking people in, etc.
    This place was family owned and they were very welcoming. About the second or third day, I started noticing that one of the owners was extra nice, she would compliment me and hug me every time she saw me, which I thought was a little bit much, but being an 18-year-old female with no experience, I didn’t say much.

    About 4 days in, they had a group of business men coming to town and staying at the hotel that were also “friends” of the family that owned the hotel, and the owners were proudly introducing me as their newest member, that’s where things felt odd, as the way that they introduced me felt like they were pimping me out, saying things like, “Isn’t she so pretty, blah blah”… It felt really off and very uncomfortable. Trusting my gut, I decided to quit.

    A week later, I received my paycheck in an envelope along with a letter from one of the “businessmen.” Mind you, all the businessmen that I saw were well over the age of 50. The letter suggested he wanted me to travel the world with him while also teaching him Spanish, given my bilingual skills. It was a bizarre and unsettling situation, and looking back, I can’t help but feel that staying there might have put me at risk of human trafficking. Absolutely surreal!

  226. Rocky Mountain (not) High*

    Right after graduating college, I took a temp job as an ‘administrative assistant’. The whole job was literally filing. Just filing. Huge, heavy drawers full of overstuffed files that were barely moveable. I hate filing. I lasted 4 hours (and about 10 papercuts per finger). Went to lunch, told them I had a flat tire and couldn’t come back, and never returned. I’m sure I was black balled from that agency forever.

    My actual job that I ended up in shortly thereafter was another admin role in an HR department. Filing was a small part of it, but I don’t like filing so I didn’t do filing. I would just save it all for the periodic temporary help that would come in. The irony!

  227. Jigglypuff*

    I was hired as a “classroom teacher” at a daycare center. On my first day, I was told that eventually I would need to use my lunch break to have a required medical exam that needed to be completed for work. Work would pay for the exam, but only if I stayed for an entire year – if I quit early, I’d have to pay them back. That was the first red flag.

    Then, the teacher whose leave I would be covering told me she brought all the sheets and laundry from her classroom home every week and washed it there in her own washer/dryer. I didn’t own a washer/dryer at the time and couldn’t imagine going to a laundromat and spending my own money to wash those items.

    Then I found out that my classroom had only one teacher – it would soon be just me – and no restroom in it. Because I was caring for infants, if I needed the restroom or wanted to take my break, I’d have to call the office and hope someone would come rescue me. I would have been more okay with that type of situation had I been in a larger classroom with at least one other adult, but I was going to be completely alone (well, alone with the infants) all day long.

    On my second day, I was assisting during snack time. The infants were all given yogurt and blueberries to eat, and since that was messy, we set them in chairs in just their diapers. They were smearing the yogurty blueberries all over themselves, each other, the chairs, the walls, etc. I could not imagine doing this type of thing day in and day out. It wasn’t worth the money I’d be making (which was not much – daycare staff do not get paid as well as they should!).

    The next morning I was sobbing at the thought of having to do this again, so I emailed the director of the facility and told them I would not be returning. I was not paid for my time there but decided it wasn’t worth the fight.

    Now whenever I’m having a rough day at work, I just remember that it’s better than a room full of yogurty blueberry covered infants.

  228. Lola*

    When I was in grad school, I decided to get a summer job as a server and was hired at a tiny restaurant by my house. The red flags were flying at the start of the interview, which lead me to ask direct questions like, “how many servers are on staff? how many servers are scheduled per shift?” and “what is the expected training period?”. I had about 10 years in the industry at that time, so I was honestly surprised that a training period more than one weekend was discussed. She lied to me and said that they had other servers and that double shifts were a once/week thing.

    It was so bad. Soooo so so bad. It turned out that I was the only server as the other one put in her notice and that the owner planned to keep me as a ‘trainee’ on double shifts all week for the foreseeable future. The owner would come give me feedback after every. single. interaction I had with guests. I talked too much to them, I needed to drag out conversations with them so that the kitchen could keep up, I didn’t explain the dishes correctly, I didn’t gather plates well, etc. She would deliver this feedback at the front of the restaurant, in plain view of the guests. She would grab every tab after guests left to see the tips and then either be overly nice or glare at them as they walked out. She had something judgmental and demeaning to say about all the guests after they left. Nothing was clear about the sidework and I’d get passive aggressive comments from the owner and chef when I didn’t do the expected (but uncommunicated) tasks. It was hell being there alone with her and I knew I would rather temp catering than be in that environment — as a ‘trainee’ no less!

    After my first weekend at the restaurant, I called her and made up an excuse that I got a paid internship that would conflict with the schedule at her restaurant. And then she started to beg. She said she would graduate me from trainee quickly, that she would increase my tipshare, that she would arrange the schedule so I could work both jobs. I said no and avoided the restaurant. A month later, she emailed me begging me to come back again, that she would make me a lead server and that she really needed my experience etc etc and “can I at least have my shirt back?”. I put the laundered, but stained, t-shirt in the mailbox and never heard from her again. I think the restaurant is still going. The food was wonderful but supremely overpriced for small portions.

  229. SamanthaParkington*

    Around the year 2002, I spent two nights as the door girl for a comedy club. It was run by some carnies who had some setup where they would mail people eight “free” tickets, but there was some kind of fine print about requiring reservations and a drink minimum. People would show up with 7 of their friends and then not be able to get in without the reservation and had to pay a cover charge and it was my job to explain it to them

    I was assigned to work a total of 13 hours a week, but it was spread over 6 nights and was told I’d never be able to take a night off because I was the only one who knew how to do the job. By the end of the second night, I’d heard the same three (unfunny) comedy sets 4 times and dealt with countless disgruntled customers. As I walked out the door the owner said, “Don’t go quitting on us!” I thought, he knows this job sucks. I never went back.

    I was a college student, when my mom’s accountant did my taxes that year, apparently everyone wanted to know who was the person with 5 W2s, including one where they’d clearly only lasted a day.

  230. Insert Clever Nickname Here*

    I was hired to work at a convenience store in a rather remote location. The first day I was told I would be working alone, no breaks, closing by myself. I had to lock down the store, turn out all the lights (including in the parking lot), then stuff the keys in the mail slot in the alley behind the building. I was a teenage girl and it did NOT sit right with me. My dad was kind enough to drive down at 11 pm and sit in his car, headlights on the building, so I’d feel safe. A couple days of that and I told the owner I was done. It was a long time ago so I don’t remember his reaction. I was just thrilled to be out of there.

  231. Anon-E-Mouse*

    Many years ago, I got a summer job bussing tables in a small French cafe. I showed up for my first day dressed as the staff supervisor instructed and how she was dressed: white buttoned shirt, black pants and black loafers. (She had said black skirt or pants, dressy black loafers or pumps.)

    About an hour into my shift the owner (who had hired me) took me aside and told me he expected me to wear a skirt and heels (as I had for the interview) because “I hired you for your legs and bum, since you have no experience.”

    Little did he know I was law school-bound and had already (in high school) taken one potential employer to our Province’s Human Rights Tribunal and won my complaint.

    I said, while removing my apron, “I think you mistook me for someone who has never read the Human Rights Code.”

  232. MeTwoToo*

    Twice, but under very different circumstances. First time, I in grad school and was on my second day as a cocktail waitress at an upscale gentlemens club. Brought a tray of drinks to a table under the watchful eye of my trainer. The man I was standing next to cupped his hand around my knee from the back and slid his hand all the way up the back of my bare thigh. I dumped the tray of drinks on him and the guy next to him. Told my trainer I quit and walked out. I never heard from them again.

    The second time, I was a manager/director level. Showed up on day one to find out the boss who hired me was walked out two days prior. Reviewed with the new boss all the promises that had been made to me and was assured everything was the same. On day one I found out I had no office or computer assigned and was left on a folding chair in someone elses office all day. On day two I found that my only current employee was being re-assigned and would not be replaced and the new boss let me know all the projects we had discussed the day before were on indefinite hold. On day three I still didn’t have a login or password for the system. I went to lunch and didn’t come back.

    I emailed HR to let them know I wouldn’t be returning and that the position/company was not what was promised. The new boss called me to say how disappointed he was that I wasn’t ‘giving them a change’ and how I had wasted their time. I told him I didn’t appreciate being mislead and my time was also valuable. I called an old boss that day, met with her that afternoon and had a new job three days later making way more money.

  233. Emma in the UK*

    when I first graduated uni (2012) I was struggling to find a job. In the summer holidays before my final year I worked a door to door sales job which was dreadful.

    But they’re oddly sneaky and weird about how they recruit and I didn’t realise what it was till I was employed. Then I stuck with it for the summer (and sucked at it) but then…

    After I graduated I applied for a job that was vague as heck about what it entailed. It said it was a “graduate job” though, and for people who liked “outdoors” and stuff. I applied and was offered an interview.

    I turned up and it appeared to be a group interview. It then appeared that I was to go off for a trial “in the field” … and yes it turned out it was another door to door sales position (internet sales).

    I immediately knew I wasn’t going to take it… but I was too shy and awkward to just walk out and leave, plus I think I only had my full realisation once we were on the train to the neighbourhood we’d be knocking in.

    I was dressed entirely inappropriately for a day of walking around knocking in doors in wet weather (I’d dressed for an office interview. luckily had flat shoes.) and hadn’t packed a lunch.

    at the end of the day the woman I’d shadowed said I was definitely going to get hired.

    I knew this from my last door to door job that they advertise it sneakily and vaguely and hope once you’ve been along they can convince you you can do it.

    I was still too young, shy and awkward to just reject it outright so I tried to fail the subsequent interview when we got back to base, with the manager guy who was there.

    he asked if I thought I could do the job and I told him no, I thought I’d be terrible. I said I’d done a similar job before and sucked at it.

    he assured me they’d train me. I said I still wouldn’t be able to do it. he tried to convince me to take it.

    I eventually just was forced into straight up declining and walking out. even as he tried to continue to convince me to give it a shot.

    I was a very shy, awkward, and eager to please 21 year old.

    1. i like hound dogs*

      I can see myself doing the same at that age. In fact I’d probably have accepted the job. So, good job declining!

  234. Our Business Is Rejoicing*

    This one is a little bit convoluted. I was in grad school (history doctoral student) and there was a posting at my university’s career centre looking for an assistant for very, very specific knowledge about a particular period of history, which was right in my specialty. I applied and didn’t get the job, but a much younger woman of my acquaintance who was a second year undergrad did. Now, I didn’t find out about this immediately. I found out about a year later. The acquaintance who had gotten the job and I were in a club together (think LARPing) and the employer, who turns out to be a scriptwriter, calls up the club contact (me) to complain that my acquaintance had “run off” with all of this research she’d been paid to do. I recognized the project from the original posting and was appalled that my acquaintance would do such a thing, so I agreed to meet this woman to see what I could do. Long story short, this woman was batsh*t bonkers. She claimed to be a screenwriter and a producer. It was fairly clear that there never really was a job; it was just her promising to pay my friend once she got the grant she was counting on getting once the script she was writing was finished. She had “a vision” of what she wanted to see based on a sketchy understanding of a particular historical period, and the research my acquaintance was supposed to do is to go confirm all of this in the library (this was very early internet days). It was pretty clear that she had no ability or intention to pay for proper research services, and had specifically chosen a fairly naive undergrad rather than a specialist doctoral student hoping that she could get research done “for exposure.” What was “stolen” turned out to be a very early rough draft of a couple of scenes of this movie script, which had been given so that the research could be done to confirm all of the details. It was complete garbage, and not just from a historical standpoint. When we chatted, I was polite, sharing a little bit of my own knowledge about a couple of things, but it was increasingly clear that this was no job and my acquaintance had figured it out, so at the end, when she asked if I’d be willing to take over, I told her that I was waaaay too busy with my graduate studies.
    Never heard from her again.

  235. Slouching Kitten*

    I got a job at a grocery store in the deli/bakery section. Day one, the person who was responsible for training me (the department manager) berated me for not knowing any of the codes for the items in the deli. She was also extremely upset I did not know how to use the electronic meat slicer (and refused to touch it without training). At lunch I got moved to making sandwiches which I was slow/unsure of since I did not know went into what esoteric sandwich name and there was nothing for me to reference. When I left, she told me I would be working a double shift the next day which I definitely could not do as I was a college student at the time. She blew up my phone all day and the following day (day 3) I quit in person to the store manager who wanted to know why the turnover in that department was so terrible. I think he was happy to have someone finally tell him the issue but at that point I refused to even take a position in a different department.

  236. LuckyClover*

    I did so twice during my first summer out of undergrad… For the record, I have since maintained a reasonable work history, and since they were so short I never even included them on my resume.

    Job 1 was an admin role at a landscaping company. I had been an assistant as a student so I felt the transition would be good for me, and I negotiated a rate a few dollars above minimum wage. Upon my arrival on the first day, the finance director approached me and told me not to mention my salary to ANYONE to avoid causing issues. Later that day, the same director called me into her office to tell me that the CEO (whom I had not yet met) was a good guy but could occasionally be grumpy and yell. She gave me a speech on doing a good job and listening so everything would be fine. I cried the entire drive home and could not sleep all night because these interactions bothered me so much. As soon as the office opened (6:30 am) and I was supposed to be there, I called and said I would not return. I could tell over the phone that the finance director was exasperated, but they mailed me my check for the day I worked and I never thought of them again.

    Later that summer I was in consideration for a job at a university with a lengthy hiring process, but had not heard back. I was living with a family friend and felt guilty about not being able to contribute anything, so I started looking for part-time work – I had an offer lined up for Target and Victoria’s Secret, but then also had a really good interview at a Trucking brokerage for an admin position (full time, albeit minimum wage). Because the university job was MIA and the opportunity seemed like something that could work long-term, I took it. After the first day, it became clear he did not need an assistant (he already had one). He just wanted me to cover the first two hours in the morning before his real assistant came, and then wanted me to do sales like him. ( and he was “owed” my first 12 commissions or something like that) – I did soldier through it for two weeks, and then while I was in the bathroom one day the University job did call me with an offer and I took it. I was a chicken and called in the morning like I did the last job, but I offered to continue working a notice period if they wanted (but I was still in training so it didn’t seem like a good use of their time). They made me come in person to pick up my last check, which was awkward as heck but I just got out of there as fast as I could.

    I kept the Uni job for 2 years and then moved to another university in town. I have had a few different roles here (one for 8 months, another for 3 years – I got a Master’s degree and moved up a little), but will be getting acknowledged for 5 years of service this July. I know that some may have seen me that summer and considered me a job hopper, but leaving those roles was for the best for me and my long-term career progression (and safety and sanity).

  237. GlitterSpuds*

    I quit an office job, because I interviewed for, and was offered a managerial role at a new 24-hour donut chain that was opening in town. I took a paycut, but I wanted to get some experience working in a bakery. (Also, one of the owners has previously been on the accounting team at the office job I left, and knew I could bake and had previously auditioned for the Great American Baking Show.)

    It was pretty chaotic. Everyone was new. There were no manuals for the coffee machines. None of us were trained baristas. The owners had no idea what they were doing. There were no recipes/directions for some of the stuff on the menu that people would order. After working a week of 3rd shift, learning everyone’s names and running breaks, and other various front/back of house duties, I was called by one of the owners (not the accountant one – his wife) who told me there was a mistake and my hourly pay had been misquoted to me. I was told my hourly pay would be docked by $2 retroactively.

    I went in an hour before the start of my overnight shift and handed the wife-owner my letter of resignation, effective immediately. (I live in a right-to-work state.) I reiterated that I left a better paying job because I wanted experience in a professional bakery setting – and had I been offer the “new” smaller hourly wage, I wouldn’t have even applied/accepted the position- and that I expected to see the full amount of $X in my bank account, minus taxes and withholding.

    The wife-owner accepted my resignation, and apologized for the misunderstanding. I went home, and fielded texts from former coworkers, who were texting bc they were running late, or they didn’t know where I was.

    The following week, my direct deposit hit and it was for the “retroactive” amount. (Even though I had expressly outlined what I was owed in my resignation letter, and the hourly amount that I had agreed to, and that had been written on my application – BY THE OWNERS.) I immediately drafted a letter outlining the amount missing, how this was in violation of State Law, and that I expected a physical check for the missing amount (minus taxes/withholding) mailed to me by X date, or I would be filing a suit with my State’s Labor Board for missing wages and taking them to court. I sent the letter and SASE via certified mail, ensuring that one of the owners would need to sign for it.

    I received a physical check within the timeline I provided them (which was more generous than was required by my State) and a few months later received the necessary tax forms. I have not been back to this donut place since, and make sure to frequent their competitors instead.

    The job I left to go work at this bakery? It was a position at a local attorney’s office, as a legal assistant.

  238. Kate Moseley*

    I moved from working in higher ed to a higher-ed adjacent job that I was told was helping colleges market their online programs. I was lured by the better hours and commute. Then I started: I didn’t have a computer the first three days, and they said they didn’t have anything for me to do. Fourth day, I got a computer, and was given an Excel spreadsheet and a stack of forms and asked to forge various documents for 35 different people. “Make them all look different so no one catches on,” said the boss.

    I was dumbfounded and didn’t come back the next day. I sent an email to the boss and the recruiter and resigned, citing the assignment. The boss responded and said they understood. The wild part: The recruiter called me and asked if I was being abused by my husband and that was why I didn’t want to work there anymore. I have no clue where that came from, because they hadn’t even met my husband and I don’t recall ever mentioning him! (Plus, no, I was not being abused.) I told them no, I just didn’t want to forge signatures for a living and ended the conversation. The recruiter proceeded to call back five times, leaving voice mails making wild accusations about why I must have quit each time until she finally gave up.

    Only great part about the experience: they had a Nespresso machine in the breakroom and I loved it so much that I eventually bought my own.

  239. Regina Phalange*

    Please be advised that this story is super gross, read at your own risk.

    I once got a job at a large chain gas station/convenience store. My first day of work, I was sent into the men’s restroom to clean. The door had no lock, and there was no way to prop it open, since one of the urinals was actually partially behind it, so they gave me a sign to put outside the door, and instructed me to “be sure to wipe around the outside of the urinals.” I noticed immediately that this would require kneeling to reach part of it, and double-checked that this is what I was expected to do. (The bathroom was disgusting.) The manager said yes, it’s gross but it has to be done.

    So there I was, kneeling on the floor of this awful bathroom, wiping off the underside of the urinal, when the door gets shoved open directly into my back and knocks me face-first right into the, uh…business area of the urinal itself.

    In addition to being unspeakably disgusting (I threw up), I actually also hit my head pretty hard, and left a visible mark on my face. The manager sent me home early for the night, and as I left, I told her that I would like to submit my two-weeks’ notice. (I don’t know why I said this, I choose to blame the probable concussion.)

    She said, “Oh, sweetie. It’s fine. Don’t worry about coming back in.”

    I said “Thank you,” and burst into tears. Not only did I never try to work at another gas station, it was actually a very long time before I ever stepped inside one again.

  240. Anne Elliot*

    My first internship in law school (after first year) was with a small-ish private law firm in my home town. As I was being walked down the hall to my work space, the senior attorney, whom I would have been working with at least part of the time, was literally screaming at the top of his lungs at someone in his office, using profanity, with the door open. I was so startled I stopped I my tracks and then heard something, that must have been thrown, loudly shatter against the wall inside his office. I turned around and walked out, the admin who was escorting me twittering and wringing her hands. I went back to my hourly wage service job for the summer and didn’t have an internship until my second year.

  241. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

    I gave my two-weeks’ notice on my first day.

    Why was the job so bad? I wouldn’t find out until the following year when I returned that it was gruntwork for a cult that operates under the guise of a major retailer. But I had been working as a porter at two car auctions when the job offer came through; it paid twice what I had been making (by the hour) and offered “full time” (i.e. 37½ hours/week so no benefits). For a summer job between college semesters, how bad could it be?

    Why did I quit? The night before I would have started, I got a call from a previous employer asking me to come back for the rest of the summer, offering me twice what the cult did. And it was doing real work that I was studying for, not gruntwork. I may have been craZy, but not too craZy to recognize the better offer.

    How was my notice received? All I can figure is that the cult was so strapped for personnel that 2 weeks was better than nothing, so they scheduled my 2 weeks around the 8-5 of the better job. I remember some nonsense about owning up to the situation showing character and integrity. I worked myself raw in those ~155 hours, but ultimately made it work and left the cult eligible for rehire (my mistake).

    Other details: I did return the next summer (during a recession when any job was a blessing) and put my training to use; it was a miserable experience and ended with a mutual parting of ways with ineligibility for rehire (in retrospect, deservedly so). I refuse to shop at the cult to this day, and those who know me know their gift cards still cut.

    Had I never returned for the second summer, I would probably hold them in good regard.

  242. H.Regalis*

    I quit Panera after working there one day. I was in high school and I didn’t have my driver’s license yet. The Panera was on the other side of town. We had to clock out for our breaks and didn’t get free food on shift: it was 50% off. The kicker was that they told me my shift was 4-8pm, so I had a ride coming at 8pm to pick me up. Then at 8pm they told me that I had to stay until 10pm to do closing stuff, which is fine, but then don’t tell me my shift ends two hours earlier than it actually does. I had to call my ride and reschedule so they didn’t drive all the way out to pick me up for nothing.

    I called the next day and quit The manager was not much older than I am and didn’t really care. I ended up getting a different job a little while later that paid almost double what I made at Panera.

  243. PricklyPearOverThere*

    I was recently out of college, and had been working in retail for about a year, looking for my first full time job. I had also started a long distance relationship with the person who would eventually become my spouse. We were trying to close the distance, and were both applying for jobs in both of our cities, which were across the country from each other. I got an interview with a role I was very excited about in marketing, and was thrilled when I heard all of the things the job would entail. Nothing too crazy, good pay, experience with graphic design and creating marketing materials at a place that fabricated very cool products for high end retail. I accepted the role at the same amount I was making as a retail manager, along with benefits and vacation (or so I thought…)

    I moved across the country and into an apartment with my SO. We bought furniture and got settled in, and I started my new job a week later. The first day, they had me do hiring paperwork and the usual first day stuff, but benefits never came up. I asked and they said “oh, we’re not required to offer health insurance, so we don’t”. Not thrilled, but I was still under 26 and could be on my parents’ plan, so I decided to let it go. In the afternoon, I shadowed one of the project managers while they were taking product photos, and they had me give it a try. It was August in Southern California, and we were in a giant warehouse with no A/C, so it was about 100 degrees inside, and I was absolutely sweating through my business casual outfit.

    As I got to know the other employees, it became apparent that they had enormous turnover in my role and the project management roles. By the end of the first day I had been assigned the duties of their open project manager role, and was suddenly managing clients and sourcing materials for orders, which was far more than I had bargained for. I came back in for day two, and found myself pulled into an actual fabrication project, again in business casual, which involved dyeing fabrics. I personally love making crafty things, but this was definitely not what I had signed up for in a professional capacity. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I stayed late to help them finish projects while also trying to complete my tasks and keep up with the additional project manager role. By the end of the week, it had become clear that I would be doing all of these jobs long term with no additional compensation.

    Friday was payday, and they gave me a physical check because it was my first pay period. My pay was $3/hour less than I had accepted during the hiring process, and didn’t include any of the time I had stayed late during the week. I asked the office manager if there had been a mistake and was told that “that was the amount she authorized me to be paid” and that “she didn’t see any overtime happening this week”. When I pushed back, she said “it’s just $3/an hour, why are you so upset?”

    I took the check and left. I never came back. One of the project managers texted me Monday to see if I was running late, and I never replied, ghosting the job completely. Not the most professional move on my part, but honestly, it was only a week. I took a few months to settle into my new city and did some reflecting on what I wanted my new life to look like. I ended up realizing that marketing was not where I wanted to be and switched careers entirely, landing a job that I stayed in for four years until I went back to school for my master’s.

  244. Ellie Chumsfanleigh*

    Here’s one I should have left on the first day.

    I had been a professional sales person in the B2B software world. So, traveling to customer sites, assessing their current financial / operations software, and then deciding if my company’s software would be an improvement for them.

    The Dot-Dom Crash happened and I was out of a job. Needed money, so I took a job as a sales rep for a mom-and-pop property restoration company.

    Showed up on my first day in business wear: skirt suit with blazer, blouse, heels. The “mom” wanted me to know what a day on the job for the techs was like, so she made me get into a full hazmat suit, complete with re-breather and face shield. Then she took a picture of me and laughed and laughed and laughed at how stupid I looked. (“You look so dumb! We should put this on our website!”)

    I was shown to my desk and given a stack of policies and manuals and new hire paperwork. While I was working my way through the material, I heard “mom” shouting and slamming things. I got up to see what was going on and she was having a full meltdown because one of the techs hadn’t put a $700 moisture meter back in its case and it could have been damaged. It wasn’t damaged, but it *could have been*. She was slamming van doors, doors between rooms, kicking boxes of stuff, and kicking chairs out of her way.

    A week or so later, when she learned that my then-boyfriend was ex-Navy, she went on a rant about how women shouldn’t be allowed into the military because they’re just looking for “baby daddies” and then would abandon their children when they were deployed overseas. Somehow this transitioned into how unfair it was for black- and brown-skinned people to complain about how they are treated in the U.S. because “nobody invited them here”.

    I couldn’t afford to quit, but I pushed back on both of those ideas. I asked how come she didn’t think fathers who got deployed overseas were abandoning their children; and I pointed out that, yes, Black people’s ancestors weren’t *invited* here, they were chained and dragged here against their will.

    The “pop” was as bad as she was, despite being a retired pastor, but she had more time on her hands and spent it spouting bigotry at captive audiences (me and the technicians).

  245. Katherine*

    I was temping through all of 2020 and after Thanksgiving 2020 I started a temp job working in the office at my local utility company with the understanding that in 1-2 weeks (after completing some online training & on-boarding), I would be transitioned to remote work.

    By the end of the first week, I still hadn’t gotten a firm date when I would be able to transition to working from home and I’d been getting mixed messages about it. First, the temp agency said that I could begin working from home in 1-2 weeks, then the temp agency told me the utility company actually said 3-4 weeks, then the utility company told me that contractors (me, the temp!) don’t get to work from home, and then the temp agency said I’d be able to work from home after 45 days.

    So I reached out to another temp agency that I’d worked with before, found a position that was 100% remote and on the following Monday, I emailed the agency for the utility company that I could not continue working for the utility company because remote work was a requirement for me. The temp agency emailed me back, said they understood and apologized that it hadn’t worked out. And that was pretty much it!

    I’m still with the company that I went to after leaving the utility company, I’m still working 100% remote, I’ve gotten frequent raises, positive performance review, and last April I got promoted! I’m now making more than double what I was making when I started temping for them in early December 2020!

    It turned out to be a good thing that I was working remotely in December 2020 because in January 2021 I got Covid and between myself and other members of my household getting Covid right after me, I had to quarantine for the entire month of January. If I had still been at the utility company, I wouldn’t have been able to work, maybe even lost my job, so I wouldn’t have been able to pay rent, and then I would have gotten evicted. Instead, I was only out sick for a few days and then was able to resume work even while being quarantined.

  246. LMNOPea*

    I quit my first post-university job after 1 day. I was brought on in an administrator role, which included some HR-adjacent tasks. During my orientation I was given an overview into the company’s processes for resume screenings, which included discarding anyone who referred to having young children (won’t be able to commit to the job), anyone with a “foreign” sounding name (will alienate the customers), etc. Now, I didn’t actually have any formal HR training, but I was fairly certain that in addition to being wildly unethical and bad business practice, it was also illegal. I went home that first night and agonized, drove back on the second day and quit on the spot, with an explanation of why. The person training me got very flustered and attempted to reassure me that that’s not at all what they’d asked me to and I was completely misunderstanding them. I didn’t take the bait and not 2 hours later got a call back from a company I had interviewed with weeks earlier and had really hoped to work with instead offering me a job.

  247. Jen*

    I quit working my college food service job after one shift.

    I’d been working the kitchen at a nursing home, where many patients needed a pureed diet (imagine putting tuna sandwiches in the blender!), so I thought I could handle anything. But I went from a “Medicaid clean” kitchen, where water spots on the spoons could cost you points, to a “barely passing health inspection” kitchen. I saw a person go elbow deep into a barrel of ranch dressing to retrieve a scoop, without handwashing or gloves. The way I was taught to replace condiments meant every condiment tub had a bottom layer that was of completely indeterminate age, topped with a rotating replacement top layer. I saw sinks full of peelings and scrapings not move all shift, with clouds of hovering fruit flies. That’s just a sampling…I was so grossed out, I fled after working my four hours.

    I’m not proud, but I didn’t call. I just stopped showing up. My nineteen year old self couldn’t figure out what I would say that wouldn’t “make someone mad”, which was a terrifying outcome at the time. They called to chase me down to come in and pick up my paycheck (so they were conscientious about labor laws, at least). I couldn’t even bring myself to do that.

  248. Just Here for the Free Lunch*

    When I was in high school I took a job at a dog boarding business. My close friend worked there and liked it, and yay dogs! so I thought I’d give it a try. It was awful – smelly and dog waste everywhere – and all I did was clean the kennels. I last two Saturdays and then said that I wouldn’t be back. The owner didn’t react very much at all, IIRC.

  249. Ardis Paramount*

    It was one of a series of public school music teaching jobs I held many years ago.
    I taught music to each grade and classroom twice a week, about three hundred students.
    On day 1 of the fall back-to-work teachers meeting with administrators in an auditorium, the district superintendent stepped up to the lectern and spoke. His first words were “Shame On You”…and for the next few minutes castigated everyone in the room for the children’s low test scores in math and reading.
    I wish I’d walked out right then.

    The superintendent prided himself on having a “One-On-One” meeting with every employee that year. His meeting with me had no agenda but yammering about himself and his career, and ended by asking me if I had any questions.
    That would have been yet another great time to walk out.

    During the winter, when nearby school districts were closed due to unsafe driving conditions, this superintendent scoffed at the idea of “black ice,” having never driven on it. When I arrived at work, having white-knuckled my way there, only a fifth of the student body had shown up, most of the parents unwilling to chance it.

    During the school year, the district was expected to announce cuts. Families and staff attended school board meetings to rally support for programs and positions that mattered to them. A school board member said, among other things “I didn’t have any music lessons when I attended school and I turned out fine.”
    (I’ve fantasized for years about responding to what he said, usually with “No, sir…you didn’t turn out fine.”)

    I was looking hard for other teaching options when the superintendent called me in June and informed me that 1. my elementary music job was being reduced from full-time to half-time and 2. if I would like to be full-time, they’d offer me the opportunity to ALSO teach middle school and high school band (including football/basketball pep band performances). I said that I’d love some time to consider this offer and he replied that he’d need an answer by the end of the week. And I just…never called back. I ghosted them. I signed no intent-to-come-back, no contract for the fall. I’m sure they had to hustle that August, finding folks to fill two low-paying part-time positions for the upcoming school year. But I wanted nothing to do with them any longer, and didn’t value any reference from him.

    Since then, all my music instruction work has been part-time, but on my own terms (leaving more time for professional gigs, as a bonus.)

  250. Heffalump*

    The summer after my freshman year of college, I landed a summer job with a local company through the college placement office. I sent in an application and heard back from a guy at the company named Henry. I went to the place of business, and he told me more about the job. He said I’d be meeting Ron, the office manager, who was a good businessman (I assume in the sense of turning a profit) but had something of a temper. There were about half a dozen people in the office.

    I had met my share of yellers and screamers, but Ron was different. He never raised his voice but would make these absolutely brutal remarks in cold blood. It was really creepy. An hour or two into my first day, he was displeased about something and said, “If X is true, then maybe we have the wrong people here,” in earshot of the entire office. Translation: maybe everyone should be fired. I thought, but didn’t say, “Maybe we have the wrong guy as office manager.” As the week went by, he made a number of remarks that were just plain mean, to other employees and to me, on minor provocation.

    At one point I was absorbed in some task, and he asked me a question and got surly when I didn’t respond. He didn’t try to get my attention by saying my name or tapping me on the shoulder, but started talking to me cold. I replied, calmly and reasonably, “I wasn’t aware that you were talking to me.” Ron snapped, “Well, I need to know!” This was just one example.

    At the end of my fifth day I walked out, didn’t bother to give notice, and never went back. I’m sure I was fired in absentia. I toyed with the idea of writing the head office and telling them about Ron’s meanness, but young and idealistic as I was, I knew I’d be wasting my time (and a stamp). I told the nice lady at the college placement office what had happened. She said, “Some offices are like that, and they have a lot of turnover.”

  251. Hokius*

    I quit a job within a week of accepting the role.

    It was so bad because it was a two-hour commute from my home and they had promised to bend their rules about working from home so I could start doing it sooner because I had much more seniority than the people they had created those rules to apply to. But once I got in there they informed me that I was going to have to wait the standard two years before that would become an option. I got in contact with my previous employer and convinced them to take me back.

    They received it pretty well, just asking for me to return my keycard and asking me why I’d quit so abruptly.

    I probably should have cited the runaround on the WFH stuff, but I was afraid it would be perceived as, “I just don’t want to commute this much!” Instead, I told them I was uncomfortable with the position because they regularly bad-mouthed the clients we were working for in a way that went beyond what I was used to and also had poor procedures in place for getting someone started- I had spent that entire first week just trying to install the software necessary for me to do my job because they felt it was important for everyone to do that themselves for some reason and their instructions were both lacking in some areas and incorrect in others. At the end of the fifth day they just told me to start over again.

  252. Beth*

    1986, fresh out of grad school, broke and desperate. Took a job at what I thought was a call center. It turned out to be a miserable strip-mall room where we cold-called people at home to try to sell them magazines. Crap product, crap pay, but that’s not why I left after three days.

    The “manager” kept the radio blaring at top volume ALL DAY. Why? So we would “make sure we talked loudly enough to be heard” on the phones! I couldn’t hear myself think. Blinding headaches. That wasn’t why I left, though.

    He spent all the time, every shift, prowling around behind us and yelling at us, which I think was supposed to magically make us succeed in selling the shit. That wasn’t why I left.

    I left because of the homophobic “jokes” he told as part of his nonstop bellowing.

    I lasted three days because I’d never quit a job before. The fag comments happened on day 3, and that ended it.

    1. Beth*

      I don’t remember exactly how I quit; I think I just said, at the end of my shift, that I wouldn’t be able to come back.

      And I don’t remember the reaction. I don’t think there was a reaction; people must have quit all the time.

  253. Lauren*

    I bailed during 2 interviews – for selling knives and selling art.

    The art interview – they collected us in vans and wouldn’t let us drive ourselves (why did I say yes?). About 5 of us were sent with our interviewer to an office building that they set up 50 pieces of wall art for doctors offices and lawyers in the entryway. They lugged all this art and just sold to receptionists and office managers. 8 hours and we were not paid. I told them within 20 min that I was not a salesperson and knew I could not sell. I thought it was a marketing sales job! Because I was on the side of a highway and no car, I had to wait the whole 8 hours before leaving as there was no way for me to walk or even get a taxi back to my car then. I had no idea where I was either without a cell phone at the time. They took it well and I just stayed off to the side at each stop and they didn’t bother pitching me the job anymore.

    The knives – It was in a warehouse and I was late and we were in a circle of 12 interviewees as this 20 year old in an oversized suit talked a mile a minute. 45 minutes in, and the suit took a breath. I raised by hand and said ‘this isn’t for me’. Everyone stared as I got up and walked out. To this day, I regret not asking if anyone else wanted to leave with me. We were all kids and no one tells you that can stop an interview, but I somehow did.

  254. Weyrwoman*

    I got a summer job working for one of those greenpeace/CARE type places, where they hire mostly young college kids and have them accost people on the street asking for donations to a charitable cause. Metrics included amount of money accumulated that day, and how many people you could say you’d accosted. Donations could only be made via a credit card reader. Since this was back in like, 2010/2011, things like Square were brand new and many people (rightfully) didn’t trust some rando kid on the street with a card swiper.
    The way that our performance was measured sat poorly with me, and there was to be honest a lot about how we were expected to work that sketched me out, including receiving paychecks only via a company-provided debit card that had a monthly fee if your balance was below a certain amount. You would only get the card after working for a month, when you would also get the first paycheck.
    I quit the first Friday, partly because of sketchy and partly because I realized that I was absolutely terrible at anything that resembled cold-call sales.

    1. Weyrwoman*

      I guess they were used to the turnover because there was literally no reaction to my quitting.
      And I never did get paid for that week.

  255. coldsassy*

    Twice – the first was my first attempt at a full time job out of college about a year after I graduated. I was 22, hired by a lawyer as his office manager/receptionist but quickly discovered he would be a disaster to work for. On my first morning, one of the paralegals showed me how to make his coffee the way he liked it and poured it into a mug. When the lawyer came in she handed him the full mug and he looked at it and asked “Is the Google (branded) mug dirty?” She said yes, and he asked “What about the Penn State mug?” That one was clean so he asked for it and then poured the coffee into it and told the paralegal “the mug order goes Google and then Penn State” and THEN if both those were dirty, he would accept the mug the paralegal had originally given him.

    To his credit, he recognized that it wasn’t working out for me within a few days and told me it was okay for me to quit. So it wasn’t a surprise for either of us. 8+ years later I constantly see him advertising for that same position on Indeed. Not a surprise that he can’t keep anyone. The salary was also only $10/hour when I was there, and his office was also a DISASTER with paperwork and files literally everywhere.

    The other job was a front desk receptionist/appointment scheduler for a large orthopedic surgeon’s office which, to use a phrase, had absolutely rancid vibes. The other receptionists were extremely catty, and on my first day they saw who I was supposed to be shadowing and told me “She hates new people.” So I think I gave my notice on day 3 and never looked back.

    Thankfully I’ve been working at my current job in a bank for seven years this month and I’m actually building a career here.

  256. Barb*

    I was 9 years old and in the 4th grade.

    I had to sell candy door to door for the youth organization I was in. I hated it. Hated having to ask strangers to buy something they didn’t want.

    I decided then and there that whatever I did when I grew up it wasn’t going to be sales.

    I stayed in that youth organization through 8th grade and never did the door to door sales again, instead getting my family members to buy/pay the minimum required every year. Did the same for school fundraisers. Did the same for my kids.

    So years later when my friend did the hard push to get me to join Amway I just told her over and over again that I had decided at age 9 that I was never going to work in sales.

  257. pay your employees!*

    This isn’t my story but this girl is my hero – over the summer I was getting my nails done at a new-to-me salon that was PACKED. There was a teenager working that they were all relentlessly bossing around. When I went to pay, she was at the desk so I handed her my slip, but she said “Oh it’s my first day and I don’t know how to check someone out, you’ll need to wait for her,” pointing to her manager who was checking someone else out. As I’m waiting, the teenager turns to her manager and says, “Since I’m working and not just training today, am I getting paid?” and her manager tells her no. Manager checks me out, I step outside and wait for manager to walk away so I can say something to the girl working. But she was no damsel in distress – a minute later she walks right out. I tell her that it’s illegal for them to not pay her – and she goes “Yeah, I just quit. I’m not even 18 and they were going to make me work twelve hours. I’ll find another job.” HELL YEAH YOU WILL!

  258. StressedButOkay*

    Not just the first week but the first DAY. In my twenties, I had two in-person interviews for what sounded like straight forward admin work and got the job. Pay wasn’t great but there were benefits and in the area of town I wanted to work in. I showed up on my first day in business wear, including pumps (important), and found out – that no, it wasn’t an admin job per se but, instead, a sort of door to door sales/information gathering for this utility company.

    I was gritting my teeth and trying to get through it until a very nice elderly man let us in and promptly started to talk to us about the ghosts and the demon he was possessed with. And let me tell you what, he sure as heck LOOKED possessed!

    We got out and I quit on the spot but it didn’t get better. The guy I was shadowing simply left me at a random DC street corner and by the time I found the metro (broke!me didn’t have money for a cab!) and walked to where my friends were working, my feet were a bloody mess.

    Ironically, I would go to work for the company that my friend worked at where I showed up hot, crying, and feet all bloody, like three months later.

  259. TallTeapot*

    Oh yes–just once in all of my years of crummy customer service jobs while going through HS/college: A chain seafood restaurant (let’s call it “Blue Tuna”) where I was hired as a hostess. The place was filthy. There was a “tiki bar” area where the servers would hang out, slumped over with defeat, and smoke in between waiting on tables (yes, this was years ago, when you could smoke in a restaurant) right by the host stand, where all they did was moan about how crappy their jobs were, how nobody tipped much, and how the hosts should be seating them with more tables (never mind that the place was DEAD in midday). This was in full view of people entering the restaurant and even people eating. We host staff made all of 3.75/hour (plus what the servers ‘tipped out’ to hosts and bussing staff), so even less than their paltry wages.
    While I wish I could say that I spelled out “I Quit” in tuna, I just…never showed up again after my first shift. They called and I didn’t answer the phone. I didn’t even pick up my check for the 9 dollars or so I made at that first shift.
    Upside was that it really helped harden my resolve to finish college, so I would never be stuck working at a place like that as an actual long-term job.

  260. Candle Lady*

    I was hired to work as a holiday worker at a Bath and Body Works over Thanksgiving and my first day was Black Friday. Was assigned a 10 hour shift with one break. I was standing so long that my feet started bleeding so I just walked out and drove home. Never heard back from them!

      1. Annie*

        Shoes that are more pretty than comfortable is one possibility. Another is just not being used to standing almost continuously for 10 whole hours!

  261. Ellen*

    When I was 18, I took a job with my state’s Public Interest Research Group going door to door soliciting donations and sign-ups for environmental causes… Training was one day of learning the script, next day shadowing in the morning and on our own by midday. I called for a pickup IN TEARS after half an hour after being berated by a person who worked in the industry we were opposing. Cold calling is not for me!!!

    1. saskia*

      haha, I’ve done a very similar job. I lasted several months and eventually was let go due to not meeting quota for 2 weeks in a row. Quota was $170 of donations per day. You definitely do meet people who oppose you. I was lucky enough that those who didn’t agree with my group’s environmental concerns were polite. I remember one guy answering the door and listening to my entire spiel before going, “Well, I work for [big oil company], so I don’t think this is the house for you.” I said, “Ooooooh, nope! Bye!,” spun around on the porch and left immediately.

  262. nora*

    I quit a long-term temp job on the second day. It was front office for a light industrial manufacturer (think car parts). During the grand tour of the building on the first day I saw numerous dead roaches on the shop floor that no one even bothered to sweep up. Seeing as I wasn’t going to spend time on the floor I decided not to let that affect me. On the second day the owner turned out to be openly antisemitic. I called the temp agency and noped right out of there. The agency told me they’d blacklist the company but I also quit the temp agency for having such a terrible client so I never found out if they did or not.

  263. Buttercat*

    A few years back, I used to work at this small printing shop, and we needed more staff. One of the candidates, Mary, really stood out in the interviews and got hired. During the interview, we showed her around the workplace and explained her duties.

    On Mary’s first day, she was paired up with a coworker who had the same job. He walked her through what was expected, the daily routine, who to reach out to if she had questions, and even gave her a tour of the printing shop.

    When they got back, I asked Mary if she had any questions. She points at this big glass office and asks what it’s for. I tell her it’s the owner’s office; he only comes in a few times a month or if there’s an issue.

    Mary stares at the glass door for like a solid minute, then looks at me and says, “I figured out this gig ain’t for me. My true calling is running my own thing and having employees do my work.” She then heads to the entrance, doesn’t say another word, grabs her bag, and walks out. We never heard from Mary again.

  264. Dana Lynne*

    I was either still in high school or very early college for this job. It was cold-calling to sell ads in what was known then as a weekly shopper — a print newspaper with just a few articles and mostly ads and classifieds.

    They had a script for us to read. The open office was very chaotic and loud. I found it excruciating and made one sale to a friend of my dad’s. I learned very quickly I was not cut out for cold calling and quit after a few days. I think I called in to quit and gave no notice. I don’t remember the reaction; it was probably swamped in my memory by the huge burst of relief I felt to be out of there. I can’t remember why I wanted the job in the first place but it was just awful.

  265. Cynthia*

    When I was 21 (1996), I was hired by a local donut shop and scheduled for a 4:00AM shift to be trained. I didn’t have a drivers license back then or a car, and I wasn’t sure if I’d have a place to put my bicycle, so I walked. I arrived on time. They did not seem prepared for a new hire. No paperwork was done, I never signed anything. They didn’t ask to see my ID. They paired me up with a person to train me, who seemed annoyed at my presence. Nearly everything she showed me how to do, she showed me really quickly and told me she usually did the thing anyway so I wouldn’t need to worry about it. It was mostly cleaning, as I recall, but I have very little recollection of anything she showed me, just that it left me confused as to what I was supposed to be doing. I think I was maybe there for 4 hours?

    When I got home, I was dreading going back, so when my alarm went off the next morning, I just slept through it. I never called them. They never called me. I was never paid. As far as I’m aware, they never documented me as having worked for them. This did not stop me from stopping by their late night walk-up window for fresh donuts, because their donuts were the absolute best!

  266. Alan*

    I quit my first job after 4 days. I envisioned working with friends and making some spending cash. I ended up being on my feet for 6 hours at a time bending over a taco bar with a manager standing there saying “Hurry up! Hurry up!”, who then demanded I work off the clock at closing because I was “too slow”. It was miserable. He seemed annoyed that I told him I was quitting but paid me out of the drawer and I was out of there.

  267. Quaint Irene*

    This was a temp job, but was supposed to last for a couple of months so I guess it counts? The job duties were unbelievably tedious–eight hours of running thousands of piled-up invoices for a lumber company in triplicate through a “form burster” and then filing them in jam-packed file cabinets. This was back in the 1980s and nothing was computerized. I could have stuck it out but the other people in the office were all chainsmokers and spent the day yelling and cussing on their phones at suppliers and my creepy supervisor spent HIS day wandering in and out of the file room to either hit on me (I was married, which he knew because he asked me about six different times) or repeatedly warn me that all those invoices were “as good as cash” and if I mishandled them I could get sent to jail for theft and he’d have no choice but to side against me and I’d be “up shi*t creek.” I lasted abut three days.

    For some reason, the temp agency not only didn’t say much when I said I wouldn’t return but actually assigned me to a job that turned out to be one of my favorite jobs ever with really nice people and got me started in what has been my lifelong career. And they sent flowers on Secretary’s Day (as it was still called in 1988).

    I will admit that the form burster was kind of fun. For about twenty minutes.

  268. Jessica*

    I was a college student, and the local Top 40 had done a live event at a call center. A friend and I went, decided to apply to work there, and were hired on that day. We were supposed to work on a specific account that required two weeks of training before we were set loose on incoming calls. We specifically did not want to do outbound calls.

    On the first day, we were transitioned to an outbound call account selling predatory life insurance. We were calling elderly folks, and the first item on the agenda was how to deal with calls where the caller said the person we wanted was deceased. We stayed through the half-day training and then looked at each other, grabbed our purses, and just walked out.

    No one even reacted. My only mic drop moment.

  269. Scooter34*

    Thanks for allowing me the chance to air my secret shame.

    I took a job preparing food/washing dishes in a nursing home. I made it two and a half days. I no called/no showed the last day because I really needed the job, but I was paralyzed by the thought of going back in and listening to staff laugh about dementia patients who removed clothing and prowled the halls, people who cried from loneliness, and other stereotypical actions associated with elderly people with no resources for anything but bare bones end of life care. My landlord came down and beat on my apartment door for 10 minutes, screaming “I know you’re in there! You have to go to work!” which made it all just perfect.

    It made me better because it still haunts me to this day, and I will not ever again stand by and let others treat people with no dignity or respect. This was the early 1990’s – I hope we are all better about understanding humans than we were back then.

  270. X3*

    When I was 20, I got a job doing sales in a call centre. I’m very soft-spoken (I can be standing right next to someone and talking in their ear and they lean in to hear me) and very gentle and passive of nature. This job required me to YELL AGGRESSIVELY about how the person NEEDED to buy our product or they were going to DIE. The company did not allow breaks, or for me to have some water to soothe my not-used-to-this throat, or anything – just SELL SELL SELL. I lasted three hours and didn’t even quit—just walked out. I’m not sure they even noticed.

    A few years later I got a job doing inbound customer service stuff. I thought, okay, inbound, I won’t have to yell or sell. False! I was expected to upsell everything, and very, very, very loudly. I made it two and a half days.

    Decades passed. I became a senior leader in my field, which is government administration – I’m basically a very quiet Chris Traeger. I racked up professional achievements and educational accomplishments and all kinds of stuff, but then COVID happened and my department downsized and I lost my job. A friend told me, hey, this well-regarded government-adjacent organization is looking for a management consultant—think you could do that? So, okay—I was unemployed and desperate—let’s give it a shot!

    I get there and it’s…a call centre! Where I am to “consult” with stakeholders, VERY LOUDLY, about how if they switch over from this one NGO to us, THEY CAN SAVE $49.99 AND I’LL THROW IN A SET OF STEAK KNIVES! Some ridiculous quota—I was supposed to make hundreds and hundreds of sales calls a day and get dozens of people a day to switch their services to us – and don’t forget to be LOUD AND FORCEFUL. Work was 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. with two ten-minute breaks. No lozenges on offer. I tried to stick this one out, but on the fourth day, I injured my throat from yelling and was hospitalized and ended up quitting.

    I now have a job back in my original field, and I literally do not have a phone, and I couldn’t be happier.

  271. Say No to Pervs*

    I was a teenager, working at Jack in the Box.

    I quit after two days.

    the first day, the manager, who reminded me of a serial killer, kept staring at me and following me around. being 17 years old, I dismissed my gut feelings and shuttered my urge to run.

    The second day, he felt it acceptable to keep bumping into me and in that process, he would grace my breaststroke.

    I feigned illness and caught a ride home. I then contacted Corporate and explained the creepiness and advised I would not return.

    I never got paid for those 10 hours and I was too young to understand that I could’ve fought for that pay.

  272. Bast*

    At the time this takes place, I was only 18, already working part time retail, going to school, and looking to add another job that could fit in between those two activities. It was quite difficult with that limited availability, until lo and behold I find a local restaurant willing to take me on as a hostess for the breakfast shift a few days a week. The owners were an older couple (70s) and nothing rang any bells during the interview — they seemed a little rushed, but said my schedule would work well with what they needed and to come in the next day to start training.

    When I say I have never met such a miserable group of people, I am comparing it to multiple toxic jobs and another restaurant job as well where no one was happy. My goodness. The woman training me was incredibly annoyed at training me in the first place. It was my first job in an actual restaurant, I had never hostessed before, and my trainer became visibly annoyed every time I asked a question. About an hour or two into my shift, she decided to have me answer the phone for a takeout order. As I was attempting to input the information, she became so angry and frustrated that she literally yanked the phone away from me, nudged/pushed me out of the way, and continued to take the order. She then complained about how slow and sloppy I was, and that a simple order shouldn’t take me that long. Everything I did and said was wrong, and I really felt out of place and awkward. The servers were not rude, but they were clearly tired and beat down as well. The whole atmosphere felt off, and there were a lot of unspoken rules that I was supposed to just know — and people were quite upset when I didn’t know them. (Don’t seat Ed more than two tables at a time, he can’t handle it. Don’t assign Mary and Jane sections next to each other because Jane accused Mary of stealing her tips a few weeks ago). Every wrong move was met with sighs, stomps, silverware slamming, and general impatience to the likes that I have never experienced on Day One, or even Week One, at any other job. Another petty thing that I want to mention — the trainer took particular offense at my numbers and said my writing style was “ugly.” FWIW, that is the first, and only time anyone has ever said that, so it was hardly that my numbers weren’t legible — she just didn’t like them.

    The final straw that cemented in my mind that this wasn’t a nice place? This restaurant shared a parking lot with an apartment on the other side– each had half. At one point during the later part of my shift, a man had apparently thrown his girlfriend and all of her stuff out into the parking lot. The owners immediately came down, and began to scream at this poor, crying woman in the parking lot about getting her stuff back inside before they called the police (even though technically it was not on their side of the lot). They spent a good deal of time stomping in and out of the restaurant, complaining to us at the host station about it, yelling at the woman, and bringing up the police.

    I called the next day and told them I wouldn’t be back. The response was a huffy, “We figured” before they hung up on me. Since they still owed me a day’s pay and I was a poor college student who NEEDED that day’s pay, I called back and asked about picking up my paycheck. They stated that they did not think one day of training merited pay, especially as I had left them in a lurch and did so poor a job. I had no idea what to do (and this was before Glassdoor and the like were a thing). Well, after telling my mother about the call and how my day had gone, she was absolutely furious. While I realize now that having a parent walk into a job site is never ideal, at this time I was so young and inexperienced that I had no idea how to react. My mother marched down to the restaurant with me, demanded to speak to the owners, and threatened to call everyone from the BBB to the Attorney General. She made such a scene that the owners gave me the day’s wage in cash.

    I have not stepped foot in that restaurant since.

    1. Zweisatz*

      I think it’s completely fair when a parent steps in at that age when their child is not being paid and doesn’t feel able to handle it on their own.

  273. Alianne*

    My first day at a chocolate shop, the manager confessed that this was his first managerial role, so he was “still figuring out” things like how to do payroll, how to order restock, how to use the scheduling software. I should have taken that as an omen.

    Over the course of two months, he never figured out any of it. Every single paycheck was days late and had to be picked up in person, he refused even the thought of direct deposit. We routinely ran out of product and had to apologize to customers. Our schedule was a sheet of notebook paper on the bulletin board with names and times scribbled on it, erased and revised over and over by him.

    I stuck it out for those two months because I really needed the job, but after all three of the above issues collided on the same day (paycheck a week late, shelves half-empty, new schedule had me working 13 days in a row and clopening more than once), I just quit. Had to go back to the store once for that final paycheck, and the shelves were nearly empty.

  274. James*

    I got headhunted two years into a job where I had gotten bored. Same niche industry, lots more money, lots more responsibility, and “a fast-paced environment” were all promised. Sounded great, looked great from the interview, which I aced, and the tour of the busy building was spot on.

    On the Monday I arrived to find I wasn’t in the busy open office I’d seen, I was down the corridor sharing “the important office” with two others (my manager and his assistant). Odd switch, but, whatever.

    My computer was set up, I had access to their system (which was the same as my previous job), email, internet before that was really a thing, the works, all sorted before I arrived, so nothing to learn, no waiting on IT, no training needed.

    Which was good, because none was provided. No work either.

    The three of us sat round talking about my old company, the new company, parking problems, politics, home life, pets… and no work was offered or required.

    On Tuesday, there was also no work. The two others in the office spent their day building a website for a hobby on Geocities.

    On Wednesday, I reached the point of begging – literally begging – for something, anything to do. There was a fax that had to be sent, so I volunteered to take it to the post room and fax it. When I came back, the other two guys had made me coffee and got me a snack from the. vending machine, as an apology for how rushed I’d been. “It’s not normally this busy!” they assured me.

    On Thursday, I got in to find myself alone in the office – the other two guys came in early on Thursdays, clocked in and left. They came back at 5pm to clock out, where they explained that nobody had ever noticed – the grand-boss was in a different office on Thursdays, but I should wait a couple of weeks before doing the same “to show willing”.

    On Friday, so sick of being bored out of my tiny skull for 8 hours a day, I didn’t go in. I never went in again. I didn’t even call them to quit. I literally ghosted this (salaried) job. Nobody ever called me to find out where I’d gone or why. I got a direct deposit of a month’s pay at the end of the month, and then nothing more (I wish I could pretend they’d continued paying me for the past 25 years, but sadly not).

  275. Over Analyst*

    I haven’t, but my first job out of college was an awful commute. It was an hour to an hour and a half each way, and only that short because I worked a very early shift (yay flexible hours). I had planned on moving closer before I got hired, but the pay was less than I’d expected and I couldn’t afford to move out of my parents’ house. I adjusted my hours and just dealt with it.
    Shortly after I started, my boss was talking to me one day about the new hire, who lived near me. When I heard the town I was surprised: she actually lived about two towns over from me but due to the location of highways, the job, and our towns, her commute would actually be about half an hour to the highway exit I joined at BEFORE starting the same commute as me. So 1.5-2 hours if she worked the crazy early shift. Her third day she called in to quit. I guess she tried driving one day, tried taking the (non-existent in the suburbs where we were) public transportation the second day, and gave up on day three. Public transportation would’ve been two hour-long train rides then about forty minutes on the bus. And maybe a third train to connect trains one and two.
    It was a bit of a pity because she seemed to be working well with the job itself, liked the company and work, and a decent fit in general. But too much commute.

  276. Giggly-Puff*

    I got a job as a waitress for a comedy club. There was the 2 drink minimum that we had to enforce on everyone, including pregnant women (you can get another diet coke?). Obviously as a waitress, our base was miniscule and the majority of our take-home is tips.

    However, in order to get scheduled for the shows where we got tipped, we had to get people in the door. This involved showing up to the club for up to 4 (unpaid–not even server pay) hours a day, cold-calling people who filled out those cards telling them they “won” free tickets to a show and to try to get them scheduled that weekend. If we got 12 groups in, we could serve at the shows. Most people did not answer, did not want to go, were being called every week, and hated hearing from us. People would even agree to show up and then ghost us.

    Oh, and did they have a bank of phones to use? Nah, we could just use our own personal cell phones to call these people!

    So we could spend 20+ unpaid hours cold-calling people, and not even get scheduled to make money that weekend.

    So, I trained one weekend, made a teensy bit of cash. Then they told me to come in to the cold-calling sessions. I did my first day, horrified. After showing up a second day and getting angry answers and being fussed at, I decided to just write names down and leave.

    They called me, talmbout “Whaaaa? Whyyyy?” You don’t pay people to do the worstest worst part of the job, and you never said anything about this until after I was hired and trained. And we can’t do the job we were hired for unless we do this part we didn’t agree to/you didn’t tell us about. And we got angry people that now have our phone numbers? Byeee.

  277. Unladen European Swallow*

    Not my story but that of a friend. We work in higher education and he had just gotten a new role at the Director level at a university. On his first day, he had a welcome/meet-n-greet session with the team in the morning. Immediately afterwards, one of the staff in the department came into his office, shut the door, and went on a several minutes rant about why they would not be working with so-and-so in that same office. Turns out that there was a long standing feud between a number of team members and no one had been fired or disciplined previously, presumably because they were members of a union and no one wanted to deal with that process. My friend had prior management experience, but nothing approaching this level of issues/problems. He called me after his second day asking my opinion of whether he should leave. During the interview process, none of his meetings included members of the team so he didn’t have a chance to meet or speak with anyone that would report to him prior to his first day.

    He did decide to leave that role immediately and went back to his old institution on a consulting/contract basis. I don’t blame him. I certainly would not have knowingly accepted a role that included that level of toxicity on the team that I’d was expected to manage. Plus with all of the weirdness/absurdities that already exist in higher ed!

  278. Milli*

    I once quit a job the first week. The day I interviewed, one of the employees caught me in the hall and warned me not to take the job but my grant funded limited term role was ending soon and I wanted to have something else lined up, so I took it. The person who was managing me turned out to be the big boss’s wife, who had never managed before. My first task had nothing to do with my stated skills, was very unclearly communicated, and I was castigated for asking questions since “she had hired someone more senior to avoid having to micromanage.” After being yelled at the second time, I made a first thing appointment with her husband the next morning, told him this wasn’t working out, to which he seemed entirely unsurprised, and returned my laptop and walked out onto the street heaving a sigh of relief.

  279. CommentKoi*

    Does it count if I was technically hired for a few months but never actually worked, and quit the first time they finally asked me to?

    It was a tutoring job. I was going to be doing SAT and ACT prep for high schoolers. I had teaching but no tutoring experience, and the process there was VERY rigid & formulaic. The training was intensely frustrating – they spent my training days showing me things like where to find “the binders” and how to organize them, with no context on what the binders were, what were for, or how I’d use them; or showing me where to track milestones the students hit on the website without any context as to what the milestones were or how to get them there. I got all the tiny details around the office and none of the big picture of like, how to tutor. I was literally never given a real run down of how a tutoring session was supposed to go and how to do it, and it was such a rigid system that it’s not like I could make something up out of my teaching experience. I finally got more of that through osmosis when they let me shadow some people. (Mind you these other tutors weren’t actually training me, I was just watching them.) I was so frustrated, but figured I could learn more on the fly once I started actually tutoring.

    I finished “training” for ACT prep only. Never got to shadow or learn anything about SAT prep. But they told me they’d now be able to bring me on for ACT students, and that more training would come for SAT.

    Then I didn’t hear from them for 4 months. I know people’s needs for test prep comes and goes in seasons so there just wasn’t much need for me (so why was I hired?), but it was still wild. Then out of the blue, I got a request to start with an SAT prep student!! No, absolutely not, I was literally never trained to do it, and the training I did get was lackluster at best so I will not be taking this student. Or any future ones. I had another full-time job and I only took this one to be a supplement and to get my foot back in the education door, so even though I never worked a single real shift it was absolutely not worth it to stay employed there after all the nonsense.

    I replied to the email, refusing to take on the student with my reasoning (in much politer wording), along with my resignation. They never even responded.

  280. Joan Crawford's Jello Mold*

    A few years into my career I got a job on a Big Budget Project with Big Names attached to it. It should’ve been a successful slam dunk, but it was horribly managed.

    The scripts were awful, and the big bosses kept changing their minds about what they wanted from the turds the crews had to keep polishing. The supervisor completely threw out anything resembling a work/life balance (we were not getting overtime pay on a supposedly union gig); he was there all the time, so everyone else was there all the time. Since I wasn’t getting paid overtime, I wouldn’t keep those crazy hours to keep redoing the same awful scripts with dumb changes that would then be thrown out for new dumb changes. I put in my eight hours every day, no unpaid overtime.

    I was able to snare another job somewhere else and put my notice in after the first week. I stayed another week while still not working overtime for no gain. After I left that job, I’d run across other people who were also on that job, and I was remembered as that person who “left early”.

    Of course that production went down in flames. I couldn’t believe people who knew better would let themselves get burned out on such crap.

  281. Kel*

    I not only quit in my first week, but I took all my coworkers with me, who’d all been there longer. It was at a small, independently owned coffee shop that made sandwiches as well. I was between office jobs and took this one hoping it was a good stepping stone, despite it being minimum wage.

    My employer (the owner) would sit in the back of the store and watch us on the video cameras while we made sandwiches or cleaned. If we did something he didn’t allow (taking too long, not cleaning enough, standing still for more than approximately two minutes), he would come out and yell at us. We weren’t allowed to go to the washroom unless it was our scheduled break time (even if there were no customers, and nothing to do) and he consistently blamed the staff for low sales (even though it was a low traffic area, with bad food and worse coffee.)

    After three days of being treated like an over-supervised five year old, I took off my apron and told him he could make the sandwiches himself, and the other staff took my lead and followed suit.

    I hope he scrambled.

  282. Girasol*

    First teen job. My parents really wanted me to get some work experience, so I ended up selling subscriptions to the local newspaper by phone. By my second evening it was clear that I lacked the knack so the boss connected my phone so that I could listen to some coworkers who were doing much better. They were teen girls flirting on the phone, describing their bodies, and begging strangers for rides home and “oh, by the way, I really need to sell one more subscription.” I wasn’t sure if their main business was selling newspapers or selling themselves. My parents didn’t object when I quit.

  283. Can never think of a name*

    Long time reader, first time commenter. When I was putting myself through university many many years ago, I answered an ad for a full-time job which inferred it was flexible around university schedules. Went in. Was trained. Trainer enthusiastic about my ‘skills’. And was set loose at a cube with a phone. Call centre. After all this time I don’t recall what we were to sell. Stayed the day, feeling my soul shrivel with every call. And did not go back. Did not seek out payment for the day of work as felt tremendous guilt at quitting without notice. They may have tried to call me but was out looking for more work (successfully, thank goodness). And at this time, message machines were a novelty I did not have so who knows what steps they took. Sorry call centre folks, but maybe you were used to this?

  284. Angie*

    I had just moved countries and I got a job within 2 months of arriving in my new home.
    I was a Senior Project Manager, used to rolling out networks with thousands of sites and the first thing they had me working on was building a wall for a VC unit. I thought ok, they are unsure of my skills, let’s see how this goes.
    By the end of the first day, I had realised that in a company of 30, there were four levels of management. Red flag number 1.
    They never asked for my bank or personal HR details at any point in that first week. Red flag number 2.
    Red flag number 3 was the company wide email sent to everyone (all 30 of us) saying they were sorry salaries hadn’t been paid the previous month, they were working on it and would pay us as soon as possible.
    I decided, on my 2 hour commute to the office that morning that I was out. I handed in my notice to my manager and the MD. I got interrogated about why I was leaving (I just stumbled through something to the effect that it wasn’t the right job right for me and I was very homesick). I told them I wasn’t giving any notice, I was leaving immediately and that they didn’t need to pay me for that week. They said fine, but please could I just collect my stuff and go without saying goodbye to anyone as, (bizarrely enough) they’d had 3 resignations after the salary email, and they didn’t want me to unsettle anyone.
    I just about ran out!

  285. An Australian In London*

    The job:
    Putting junk mail into peoples’ letterboxes. (I was a university student.)

    Why it was so bad:
    They told us all that we had to open a bank account with a specific bank chain to be paid. This was and still is illegal under Australian employment law.

    How you quit:
    I insisted on being given this direction in writing. They knew it was illegal. They threatened to fire me. I said they were welcome to add wage theft to their existing crime. Finally they paid me out of petty cash (one of the three legal ways to pay.) I then quit.

    How your hasty exit was received:
    They told me never to come back.

    And any other interesting details:
    I then reported them to the Job Watch government line. I don’t know if anything ever came of it.

  286. Victor D*

    In November of 2019, I was fired from a beloved position at a Managed Services Provider (IT) that I had been with for 5 years. I was upset, but immediately began looking for my next role. I went to many dead-end interviews, before finally landing a phone interview with another MSP located in NYC in February of 2020. They were offering an entry-level position (well below my skillset) and pay was 25% less than I’d made previously, but I was anxious to get back to work ASAP and figured I could always start working there while continuing to search. I had found this position through a recruiter, who promised that the company had relayed to him that I was going to be fast-tracked for promotions and raises.

    As I got further into the interview process, I became concerned at the lack of details forthcoming about the role. The company was hiding behind “we cannot reveal too many details without revealing sensitive information about our clientele” which I knew was a line of BS. Still, I soldiered on.

    When I arrived for my in-person interview, the office was empty and they declined to show me around or introduce me to any staff members other than the manager conducting the interview. This is not entirely uncommon in IT companies (many have policies against non-employees being on the office floor) so I brushed it off, although the red flags were starting to mount for me.
    Ultimately, they agreed to raise their salary offer by $5k, which still put me considerably below my expected compensation level, but I was anxious to get back to work and figured it was the best I could do being that I could not use my previous company as a reference. I ended up accepting the offer, albeit hesitantly.

    I showed up 15 minutes early to my first day only to have the manager say “why on earth are you here before 9am?” and then lead me into his office. He sat me down and shared with me the details of the role – including that was to be the dedicated tech for their largest client; a non-profit org that was coming apart at the seams and looking to fire the IT company. They wanted me to take over as captain of the sinking ship. The manager was terrible, too – he used the phrase “here are a list of things that you might do that would cause you to lose your raise” within minutes of me sitting down in his office for my first day. Not a good sign.

    It was my first day, and a Monday in the IT world is always a scramble. I had just come from another IT company that used the same software stack, so I was able to breeze through the training while keeping an eye and ear on the team to see how they actually operated. It became very, very clear that the company was woefully understaffed, and the staff they did have were woefully underqualified for their roles. These guys were so far underwater by lunch time that there was no realistic hope of getting to a 100% kill rate by the end of the day, which is a massive red flag in IT.

    Being that I had just come from another company using the same tool stack, I figured I could maybe pitch in a little and help the guys sort out some basic tickets to get their performance metrics up a bit, and impress management in the process. I jumped into their Teams chat and began assisting 2 lower level techs with some basic troubleshooting. They had sent the company intern onsite to a client site to troubleshoot a PC that wouldn’t power on, but hadn’t given him any tools or training as to what to do. This is super basic, so I walked him through how to troubleshoot the situation via Teams. He was able to confirm the PC had a dead power supply. No sooner had we come up with the solution than the manager called me into his office and slammed the door behind me as I walked in. He immediately began heatedly telling me that I had “overstepped my bounds” by providing assistance to the more-junior staff and by walking the intern through troubleshooting the PC. He said “interns are not authorized to do that kind of work and it was enormously disrespectful to sidestep my leadership by helping without permission.” I was dumfounded. Never, in a 10+ year career in IT, have I heard, before or since, of a tech being criticized for helping a fellow tech. IT has been a collaborative field for decades!

    I went home that night absolutely defeated. I was already leery of this company and this job, and this incident absolutely cemented that I did not want to work there. I have never in my life quit a job, but I called the recruiter that night to let him know that I would not be returning to the company in the morning. The recruiter screamed and cursed at me, questioned my professional integrity, and insisted that I speak with the president of the recruiting company. I did, relayed my concerns, and explained that the position was not for me and the company was not a good fit for any experienced tech. They told me they would call me back.

    An hour later, the recruiter and the president of the recruiting company called me back and explained that they had talked to the owner of the IT company, and that they were willing to raise my salary another $5k. That was a hard no from me – you’re not going to mistreat me, question my professional skills, question my integrity, and then pay me off with a few bucks. I explained that my decision was final. They insisted that I return to the office in the morning, turn in my temporary employee badge, and explain the situation in person. I did not think that was necessary, but in good faith decided to acquiesce.

    I woke up early the following morning, took the train into NYC to their office, and was subsequently called directly by the owner of the IT company before I entered the building. He got my cell number from the recruiter. He explained that he was sad that I would not be joining their company, but that he stood by his employees and that he was confident the manager had handled the situation correctly. I left my badge with the lobby security staff and caught the next train home.

    Obviously a month later the world came to a screeching halt with COVID. During COVID, that IT company folded and went out of business. Meanwhile, I joined my current company in September of 2020 and have thus far had the best job of my career.

    The entire experience was bizarre, and I should’ve listened to my gut right from the beginning, but it worked out in the end and I truly believe the harder it is to learn, the more valuable the lesson – never again will I ignore so many red flags!

  287. Mark This Confidential And Leave It Laying Around*

    Why it was bad? Commission-only phone sales, selling a common office supply at a slightly higher rate than it needed to be, but with a free gold chain! (I was young; I was desperate.) How I quit? My kegs were way ahead of my brain on how hopeless and stupid this dial-a-sucker gig was. 4 hours in, I stood up (we worked in rows of desks like a classroom) and grabbed my bag. Three people waved to me “oh, are you getting coffee? Could you get me one?” I answered, “No, I’m quitting. Bye!” I didn’t know I was going to do that until I did it! My suddenly former coworkers waved and smiled: “Bye!”

    1. Mark This Confidential And Leave It Laying Around*

      Legs, not kegs. They never would have let me leave if I’d been so kind as to bring a keg!

  288. Nathan*

    Oh wow, one I can actually contribute to.

    When I was in high school, I was looking for a summer job. I liked computer stuff, so I figured I’d work for a local computer repair shop. I lasted a week.

    That job was totally sleazy. Every customer’s computer that was brought in for repair was scanned for personal photos, especially those of a sexual nature. The appearance of any female customers (and anyone else in any photos which were found) was discussed and evaluated at length. Favorite photos were copied onto personal USB drives. It was a total violation of privacy, decorum, and basic human decency and it makes me feel gross just typing it.

    For a week I thought I could just keep my head down and not participate in the bad behavior and learn from the techs about how to work on computers, but it just got to be too much. I’m not going to claim that teenage me was a paragon of righteousness, but it didn’t take much of a moral code at all to be disgusted by the behavior I was seeing. I resigned after a week and went to go work for Subway, which has its own stories but none that make my skin crawl the way that place did.

    As for how my hasty exit was received — I’m ashamed to say I didn’t confront anyone about what I saw there. I just said I discovered the work wasn’t for me and parted on amicable terms. They were my first job ever and it never occurred to me I could just…not tell any future employers about them, and somehow I thought that any bad reference would wind up on some kind of permanent record.

    For those who are worried — the place went out of business over a decade ago.

  289. Katey*

    My friend and I signed up to a temp job selling beer at a horse racing track. What we didn’t realise was that we would be selling the beer from large kegs… carried on our backs in a rucksack. We had to sign disclaimers in case of injury. The job was so painful and awful. We both left halfway through the second day claiming our roommate had been in a car accident. The team leader didn’t believe us at all, but the company kept calling me to cover shifts for at least a year afterward. I declined every time, obviously!

  290. PDB*

    I quit a job-2, actually, in the first hour: car salesman. In the first job it was clear that cheating the customer was what the job was about and I couldn’t do that so I quit. A few years later I tried again at an Acura dealer in Beverley Hills which, because it was, to put it mildly, upscale, I thought would be different. It wasn’t.

  291. NCA*

    I should have, but stuck it out for five months before giving up and finding a new job. I’m in end user support IT, and was hired as a temp-to-perm contractor with a globally recognized company as a level 2 internal tech (the ones who get your call when the basic restart and script doesn’t fix it). This company had a policy of verifying who a caller was using a particular tool, which only ‘trusted’ technicians got access to. If you /didn’t/ have access, you had to wait until a tech with the required access was available to confirm your caller’s ID, and there were /very/ strict call time requirements. In theory, all level 2 techs were supposed to have access, and I had a similar type of access at a previous job, which was discussed during my interviews with the 3 direct supervisors I co-reported to.

    Day 1, first half of the shift, I’m greeted by Manager 3, set up in my cube for the day (hotdesking), and given my logins, INCLUDING access to this special tool. I sit with a trainer for a few hours, which included training on this special tool. I took a couple of calls and used this tool. Manager 2 walked by, saw me as a day-1 newbie using the special tool, and spent the next 2 hours reaming out both me and my trainer for ‘breach of security’ on the floor while our coworkers awkwardly tried to continue taking their own calls. At first she thought my trainer had given me their creds to the tool, and then when she realized I had my own, the yelling switched to me not reporting that I had been erroneously given access. (Which….. it was my first day, a manager gave me the access, it had been discussed in the interviews she was in, and it’s standard for the role) Manager 3 had swanned off somewhere and didn’t come back until later. When I tried to discuss the incident with higher ups/HR, I was met with a shrug and a ‘yeah she’s like that.’ I never got an apology and had my access to the tool revoked until right before I left. My trainer and I both also got dinged for low metrics that day.

    The entire tenure there was like that. And they were /so/ surprised when I chose to move to a new job instead of taking the permanent role they offered me the day before I offered my resignation! (They also made me work OT off the clock, but that’s another story. I was younger and less aware of my rights)

  292. Wounded, erratic stink bugs*

    Some years ago, I was working front of house at a history museum. It was part time and I was looking for something better, but I also wanted a stop-gap second part-time job and I found one doing first-person interpretation, giving outdoor history tours. First-person interpretation is when you’re portraying a character from history — in costume, etc. The role also included standing in a busy urban area trying to get people to buy tours, in regular clothes and a branded polo shirt, and newbies start out there because their costume might not be finished yet. There were a bunch of minor red flags in the application and interview process that I’d pay more attention to now than I did early-career, but nothing story-worthy. I enjoyed picking a local historical figure to portray, talking with the costumer, etc.

    My first day, I put the polo shirt on over several layers because it was about 40* out. I’m a pretty conscientious employee in general, but I didn’t really do the job as instructed: I was supposed to try to sell tickets to anyone walking past, and I preferred to only try to sell to tourists. I was already in the industry, I could spot tourists easily, and there were plenty of them. There was nothing that stood out as terrible about the job compared with other entry-level jobs in my field, although I was very much not a fan of the fact that the place I could store my lunch was a 10-minute walk from my post and I only had 30 minutes for lunch. It’s just that one day was enough to convince me I wasn’t that desperate.

    I quit that night via email, they said they were disappointed, that was about it.

    Years later, I was talking with a guy at a local sci-fi convention and learned that he worked for the same company. I mentioned that I had also worked there for all of a day, and he said, “The girl who quit after one day was you?! You’re a legend there! They had already made your costume!”

    I never saw the costume.

  293. Leia Oregano*

    So it was longer than a week (I think I worked there for maybe a month and a half?) but I briefly worked at a dog day care one summer in college and it was worse than the college dining hall I’d previously worked in. The owner was terrible — she refused to hire enough workers, so it would be max 2-3 college kids watching 40-50 dogs over maybe 1-2 acres of various fenced in yards on the property, and she actively disliked and judged most dog breeds except the breed she showed in competitions, which could never do any wrong whatsoever (not just her dog specifically, but the whole breed). While all the dogs had to be neutered/spayed and up to date on their vaccinations, she accepted all but the most severe behavioral issues and made us deal with them. Her dog was one of the WORST behaved dogs I have ever encountered — sure, she could follow show commands, but trying to keep her from humping literally everyone, thing, and dog in a show of dominance was impossible. And trying to discipline the owner’s dog was a nightmare because she’d defend her demon until she was blue in the face, then turn around and scream at some poor husky that was smarter than all of us and bored out of his mind. She would essentially profile dogs and treat them accordingly, including banishing the biggest, gentlest giant to the back yard all by himself 95% of the time — while he was separated to keep him from accidentally hurting the smaller dogs, the tiny-to-small dogs all had their own yard anyway. Poor big guy never hurt anyone for the month-ish I was there, and was lonely and bored all by himself everyday, other than once in a blue moon when another large breed would be dropped off and promptly ushered to the banishment yard.

    The final straw came after she’d started cutting my hours more and more with no notice — I went from a promised probably 15-20 hrs/week iirc, and at the end I’d been scheduled for one 4-hour shift that week. When I went to get what ended up being my last paycheck, it wasn’t with all the other employees’, but instead locked away in her desk and the business partner had to get it for me. She’d wrapped my paycheck in a passive aggressive letter detailing how I was terrible at my job and how dogs would be injured on my watch. Was I a bad fit? Yes, absolutely. But any dogs injured would be due to her lackadaisical approach to staffing, her inability to control 40-50 dogs at any one time, and her inability to appropriately discipline misbehaving dogs, many of whom probably shouldn’t have been at a communal doggy day care for 40 hours a week anyway, and one of whom (the instigator, oftentimes) belonged to her anyway. I remember being shocked during my first shift at the absolute chaos of 40ish dogs being watched by 3 college students. My training consisted of being handed a poop scooper and a water gun (to spray misbehaving dogs).

    So I emailed her to say thanks for the feedback, that I also thought the job perhaps wasn’t for me, that I would not be covering the shift I’d volunteered to take to cover her scheduling mess-up for another employee, and that, effective immediately, I quit. She never emailed me back.

    1. Leia Oregano*

      I also had to quit that dining hall job about five times. I’d emailed one of the managers at the beginning of the summer to say I would not be returning in the new school year, and they never passed the message on so I was put on the fall schedule for the first month of the semester. I had to keep emailing stating I’d quit months earlier and would not be working those shifts I’d been scheduled for, since I no longer worked there…

  294. KimW*

    In the mid 90s I was hired to fill a very specialize, hard to fill IT manager position for mainframe software. It wasn’t quite the first week but I spent the first couple weeks in expensive off-site training and then almost immediately quit.

    What was so bad: The person I was hired to replace (“Susan”) decided not to leave after all so she became my de facto manager. I might have gone along with that since my pay and title were unchanged and I had a newborn at home but Susan micromanaged me to the point that she went into my programs just to make inconsequential changes such as how I abbreviated common words like Number (No. vs Nbr).

    How I quit: I lined up another job and gave notice. The person who hired me (“Mary”) offered to fire Susan so I would stay but that just seemed cruel considering I had another job lined up. Since I was so new, I just left that day rather than working two more weeks.

    How my exit was received: Mary was pretty understanding but HR was really mad. They “lost” a bunch of important paperwork for transferring my 401K and it took months to straighten out in the days of paper checks.

    Looking back I think Susan had only made vague plans to leave some day and Mary jumped on the chance to replace a difficult employee in a hard to fill position. It explains why they hired me when I was 8 months pregnant and they were willing to wait 4 months for me to start.

    Interesting details:
    Susan was going to quit to become a full time hypnotist. I absolutely hated working with/for her but I liked her personally. She was both really odd and really interesting. She did a lot of past life regression hypnotism and the stories were fascinating. I had her hypnotize my husband and he told a detailed story about his past life crossing the ocean to America in colonial times. No idea what to make of it but I still have a tape recording of it somewhere.

  295. back in the day*

    When I was in college, I was looking for a summer job. I had a boyfriend whose father worked for the City of Chicago Park District. He’d worked for the city for decades. He suggested that I apply at some department (dealing with records) in City Hall. I was hired. The job was to pick up a request for records, then go to the giant room of files and pull the record an return it. That office was staffed by a bunch of old(er) men, patronage guys (I realized this after I thought about it…and I probably got that job because BF’s dad put in a word somewhere) who didn’t do much and who smoked CONSTANTLY. Smoke bothers me, but the worst part was the men kept telling me that I was working too hard and too fast and should Slow Down. I slowed down as much as I could and I was still told to Slow Down. I realized the job would drive me absolutely bonkers if I had to spend all summer basically standing. I went home after the first day, called my boyfriend, said I was so sorry but my contact lenses could not handle the level of smoke in the room, and let him tell his dad and his dad handled it. I don’t think I even knew who to contact at that job! A few weeks later I did get a paycheck for my one day.

  296. Stevesie*

    I was ghosted by Bath and Body Works. I was hired while they were working out of a temporary location during a remodel. My first shift was literally watching a DVD training and a coworker talking me through sales techniques which included giving samples by massaging lotion onto customers hands (!). I was there a maximum of 3 hours before they decided to send me home for the day because the person who was supposed to train me called out. Despite me not being entirely enthusiastic about the sample giving, I’m pretty sure I didn’t give an awful first impression. My second shift was supposed to be helping them pack and move to the remodeled space. Except, no one showed me how to get to the stores if the front was closed (in a mall). I called their phone number and it endlessly rang. I had no managers phone number, no email, nothing to get a hold of them. I went crying to the shoe store nextdoor and some poor sales person helped me into the back entry area. I knocked for quite some time and no one a answered. Eventually I went home and decided they must really hate me because no one ever called to check in. Six months later I got a check for ~$20 for the training I did. I still wonder what they think happened.

  297. Elizabeth West*

    Yes, I have quit three!

    1. Working in a laundromat in CA, at night, manning the counter and doing fluff-and-fold
    Why it was so bad:
    I had a full-time food service job and took this for extra money. I discovered I cannot work two back-to-back jobs. I just can’t. The laundry was also creepy at night, and there was a creepy customer. And, they kept track of the money on index cards. I cannot math and this was not workable for me.
    How you quit:
    After two days, I told the owner it wasn’t a good fit for me.
    How your hasty exit was received:
    He was disappointed but didn’t make a fuss.
    Any other interesting details:
    The owner was the brother of a sitcom actress.

    2. A beloved diner in OldCity that closed forever not long after
    Why it was so bad:
    The diner had been there for DECADES but was bought out by new owners who had no idea what the hell they were doing. They hired way too many people, so there was nothing to do.
    How you quit:
    I lasted two days. I went to tell the owner I was leaving (he wasn’t the one who hired me–the kitchen manager did) and he didn’t even know who I was.
    How your hasty exit was received:
    Nobody cared. I did get a check in the mail for the time I worked.
    Any other interesting details:
    Sadly, the diner is now a parking lot. :(

    3. Receptionist in an accounting office owned by a married couple
    Why it was so bad:
    Hoo boy.
    They gave me a personality test during the interview; that should have been a big clue right there. It said I wasn’t suited to accounting, but I had tons of front desk experience, so I was hired. After I started, Wife told me I’d have to do someone’s payroll. *record screech*
    Hubs and Wife were evangelicals. They wanted me to do busywork for their church (while I was on the clock, but still — I actually didn’t mind this part too much).
    Day Three–I made a mistake, and Wife screamed at me. Yes, screamed. At the top of her lungs.
    How you quit:
    I took Hubs aside later that day and said I wasn’t able to do someone’s payroll, and I wasn’t going to be treated that way, and this would be my last day.
    How your hasty exit was received:
    He practically begged me to stay, but both these things were dealbreakers, especially the screaming.
    Any other interesting details:
    They mailed me a check, on which Wife had written, “Come see us sometime!” I think not.

  298. SM*

    Years ago, I took a job as a photographer’s assistant while home from college for the summer. The photographer had a large, unruly dog who had the run of the studio, and I quickly found out that most of my “assistant” job was to run interference on the dog and let it charge/tackle/attack me instead of the clients during photo shoots. I lasted one day.

  299. Urban Fervor*

    I got what at first felt like my dream retail job at a designer clothing store. We had to wear the store’s clothes, which were beautiful and were offered to us at 70% off. The only problem was that this included shoes, and all the shoes, no matter how comfy looking, were horribly uncomfortable for me. I don’t think I have extra sensitive feet or anything, but for some reason this didn’t seem to be an issue for anyone else. By the end of my first week I’d been through all the reasonable looking shoes. My feet were bloody and I could barely walk. Did I mention that we had to be on our feet all day? As I limped home that day, I called the manager and said, “I’m sorry, I just can’t do it. I’m going back to waitressing for the comfortable shoes.” The manager was surprised but nice. She said, “Do you want to finish out your second week so we can make sure you get the commissions you’ve earned so far?” (I forget exactly how it worked but there was some system where you had to work two weeks before you got paid out your commissions). Even though I think I had like $1K coming my way, I was just like “Nope, I literally cannot wear the shoes for even ten more seconds.”

  300. PrimitiveRadioGod*

    It was ten days, so not technically my first week, but I decided I was going to leave as soon as possible on my third day of work. It was about 8:15am, and someone in a fairly junior position came in, sat down at her computer, got up and walked around the corner. Next thing, I hear just screaming, crying, cursing coming from around the corner – at which point I realize that the person she’s doing this at is literally our boss. Who quietly said “it was just a reminder, Beth.” And then EVERYONE ACTED LIKE IT WAS NORMAL AND FUNNY. It was not normal or funny to me, I had just spent a year unemployed to recover from a workplace with a high degree of screaming. Friday of that week I listened to the entire senior staff giggling and making fun of trans people and transness for an hour over their lunch and had a panic attack. I had been feeling guilty about wanting to get out of there, so that was actually quite helpful. They all suspected I would quit, and when I got my current job a week later and went to give my boss notice he immediately said “please tell me you’re not leaving.” I got the nervous giggles and was like “haha – I’m leaving!” He could barely look at me for the next two weeks, and some of the senior staff were pissed at me, but the junior staff offered me congratulations. And one of them was promoted to my job! So, in my opinion, everybody got what they needed lol.

  301. Orangie*

    Ugh, yes. It was an insurance broker, but I realized on my first day that the only kind of insurance they sold was at predatorily-high rates to people who couldn’t get insurance elsewhere because they had had previously lost their drivers licenses due to multiple DUIs or reckless driving tickets – like $1,000-$2,000+ per month for liability-only coverage. There’s not a lot of overlap of people with that kind of driving record and also high wealth, so the clients were very desperate. We were required to work 45 minutes, then walk around the office for 15 minutes in some sort of custom Pomodoro Technique. But we weren’t allowed to chat about anything other than work, ever. He even monitored how many words we used to greet each other in the morning and “counseled” us if we spoke more than a sentence each. So we walked silently in circles around the 20’ x 30’ office for 15 minutes every hour and talked to crying and/or yelling people on the phone for the other 45. The only other employee and I started at the same time and were, unsurprisingly, both young women at our first post-college jobs. I went outside to my car at lunch the first day and returned a call to schedule an interview for another place where I’d applied (I’d planned to tell that I’d taken another position, but even at that age and experience level my spidey senses were telling that this wasn’t normal). I think it actually took about six or seven working days before I had a final offer from the other place, and I was way too broke to quit without another job, but I quit as soon as I could. I told him first thing in the morning, and I said I’d work the rest of the week while he called the other applicants from the last hiring round. He told me to leave immediately because he was “deeply disappointed” in me because he’d “selected me to follow in his footsteps” and “he’d thought I had a real future” in the business. Thanks, no. And he never paid me for the days I worked.

  302. There IS crying in baseball*

    Last year I started working as a concessions employee at a Major League baseball stadium. The job was advertised as $17 an hour, part time, flexible hours, free food, and you get to watch the games for free. Technically I quit after two weeks, but close enough.

    Why it was so bad: it was actually $10.79 an hour, IF you worked a tipped position you could make UP TO $17 an hour with tips. It was not flexible and the only reason it was part time is because we didn’t work on the away game weeks. But that meant some “weeks” we would be scheduled 11 days straight, all 9-11 hour days, no breaks allowed and no sitting allowed the entire shift. The free food was one microwaved burger, or two microwaved hot dogs, or one microwaved piece of frozen pizza and a can of soda. No outside food allowed in. We had to pay full price for any other food. We also had to pay for water, or we were stuck getting warm water from the bathroom taps. We ALSO had to pay for ice. The uniforms were also awful, black pants no shorts allowed, heavy black or dark blue polo shirts made of a sticky and rough heat holding material, and black or dark blue heavy and hot hats. Also we weren’t allowed to watch the actual games, we were only allowed to watch on the TV’s by your booth. I worked in a pretzel room with a 500 degree oven. No air conditioning, the temperature in the room was consistently 110+ degrees. I came home after every shift exhausted, drenched in sweat, starving and dehydrated, and in a lot of pain from standing all day. My last day there, my boss threw a hot pretzel (right out of the oven) at me, hitting me in the upper chest, spraying hot salt over my uncovered face and neck, and she screamed at me I was a “f*cking idiot” because the pretzel wasn’t fully cooked. (They were delivered to us frozen, I was going to run them through the oven a second time but she didn’t give me time) I still have tiny burn scars from the salt. The icing on the cake was the manager REMOVED my hours from the time clock for most of the time I worked, and when I contacted HR because I didn’t get my first paycheck, they told me they would fix it but then ignored me for a week where I also missed my SECOND paycheck because of this. After TWO WEEKS with no pay and me calling over and over, HR tells me that there is absolutely no way possible for them to issue me my pay until the next pay cycle (8 days away because the team was away for a week) and that their bank doesn’t allow deposits to be issued any other days except pay days. They wouldn’t budge, told me I was unreasonable, and hung up on me.

    How you quit: I didn’t go back. I never called, didn’t answer their calls or texts, or emails. I just ghosted them.

    How your hasty exit was received: They didn’t realize I quit for a full week, and when they did realize I was told I would NEVER get a good reference from them and was DEFINITELY unreliable. OKAY AND???? I DONT WANT TO WORK FOR YOU EVERRR lol.

  303. sjmn*

    It was a job where a guy in a van picked up me and a bunch of other teenage boys to go door to door selling newspaper subscriptions. He didn’t pay me any money, but he took us to McDonald’s after a few hours. He also had me shadow one of his star salesmen, who lied about the city the newspaper was from, encouraged people who couldn’t read English to buy an English-language newspaper, and falsely claimed that we were part of a program to rehabilitate gang members. When I told him I quit, he and the other guys made remarks about people of my racial background not being motivated to work.

  304. really really anon for this*

    OK, it wasn’t in the first week of employment, it was the first week after training. Hope that still counts!

    It was the early ’90s, so $8 an hour was a princely sum for a temp job. I got a friend in on the gig too.

    The training was awesome! Our trainer was from corporate. She did the whole “not all call centers are bad” and it was genuinely for a Really Big Important Company, and we thoroughly enjoyed the two-week training. We learned all sorts of things about how to handle irate callers, did roleplays of taking calls, etc.

    Then the third week came around, our awesome trainer was gone, and they put us on the floor.

    And calmly informed us, after being trained for two weeks on how to TAKE calls… that we would actually be MAKING calls.

    Cold calls.

    I was sobbing to one of my co-workers during lunch on the first day. She calmly explained that she had a great way to cope with “all this” and offered me some blow. (!!!) (Of course I declined.)

    On day three, the heavens opened and a great miracle occurred: I got a callback offering me a job that I’d applied for so long ago I’d forgotten about it. Not through the temp agency, and at $10 an hour – almost unheard of at that time.

    So I went to the supervisor and basically said, I’m sorry, I’m leaving at the end of this week, I can’t give notice, it’s for a full time job paying me way more $. She was very graceful about it (it’s really hard to argue with more money).

    (My friend also noped out, and lied about having fallen out of bed or something and hurt herself, so she couldn’t come back the next day. I think they were used to losing a lot of the training class in the first week, now that I think about it.)

    Blow lady then threw me a farewell party, with cake, held during our lunch hour that Friday. She was really sweet, and I suppose I should have tried to keep in touch, but… some things you just don’t want to be around, tbh.

    Lord, I got so lucky to get out of there like that. I couldn’t have afforded to quit with nothing to fall back on, and it was so soul-sucking. Sometimes I wonder how long I would have been able to resist blow lady’s “great solution.”

  305. BubbleTea*

    It wasn’t quite the first week, but I only worked a few hours on two days a week so it was an equivalent number of hours.

    I’d taken a job as a maths tutor, self employed, helping students at a sports academy to prepare for their exams. The job turned out to be teaching them everything on the maths syllabus, from scratch, in a matter of months, with no textbooks or equipment.

    I stuck it out for six weeks for the sake of the poor boys who just needed a UK qualification in maths and whose parents (or in some cases governments) were paying extortionate fees to the academy.

    At the end of term I told them I couldn’t continue (not least because I’d got a full time job). I had to send a pre-court demand to get paid (at minimum wage rates) for only the hours spent “tutoring” and not the many more hours preparing, organising exam locations, buying textbooks and calculators etc… which I wasn’t reimbursed for.

  306. Meghan*

    In college I got a job at a popular used clothing store. It turns out though, if you have a severe dust mite allergy like I do, you’ll wake up on your third day of work unable to breath. I had to emergency quit over the phone with my throat half closed up and send my roommate to the store for extra strength Benadryl.

  307. Alpaca Clinician*

    I lasted one shift as a groom at our local Thoroughbred racetrack, one summer while I was an undergraduate student. The horses were well taken care of and most of the people were nice, but I’m pretty sure one of the other grooms showing me around was a gang member, one of the stable supervisors spent a lot of time making racist comments about the foreign workers employed by a different stable, and a different groom cashed his paycheck at one of the gambling wickets and ordered a triple shot rum and coke at 10 am while we were waiting for a race to finish to take the horses back to the stable. At 18 years old this definitely wasn’t my vibe but I finished out the day, then called in the evening and lied about getting a job offer at one of those student house painting gigs so I couldn’t go back to the track. Ended up getting a pretty pleasant job at a garden centre later that summer that has given me an eternal hatred of the petunia (pulling endless dead, sticky flowers off so many hanging pots).

  308. Dry Erase Aficionado*

    No, but I regret not quitting one in the first week. I was hired by an interim C-level person, who as it turns out was not there that often. He was on loan from another organization, and would fly in. Sometimes. He did not even attempt to keep me informed about when he would be there.

    The role I was hired for was two director level positions squished into one because, “my sense was that Prior Employee wasn’t doing that much anyway.” There was no institutional knowledge in my area because everyone had left and no one had ever written anything down.

    I decided to stick it out a year (because I hadn’t read enough AAM to know that you can bail if necessary), but then we had a pandemic in the middle of that one year.

    All in all I was there for just under two miserable years. I still hate that place and it was a huge blow to my confidence and mental health.

  309. Bjoyousjoy*

    In high school, I got a job selling knives by demo-ing them to friends and family and then asking them to provide personal connections of theirs that could be given the same pitch. The last day of training, one of the sales reps gave a slide show presentation of the fun parties he and the other sales reps had (fishing trips, bowling, etc) and I got the impression that his only social life was with other knife sales folks (because anyone else in his life was just a potential customer). When they called to check up on my progress, I said I hadn’t done a single demo. The guy sounded kind of hurt, but assured me that it wasn’t too late and gave me a little pep talk to get out there and sell (I didn’t). Sadly, I lost the penny-cutting scissors that were part of the demo kit

  310. GrumpyPenguin*

    About twenty years ago, while still in school, I started a summer job as a secretary for a small advertisement freesheet. The job description was simply answering calls and dealing with with customers at the counter. On my first day, the manager quickly shooed my to my seat, told me the software was “really easy to handle and self-explanatory” and then handed me the receiver of a ringing telephone. And there were already lots of impatient customers in the lobby waiting to be served. My coworkers barely noticed my arrival because they were so busy. The noise level was overwhelming and didn’t go down the whole day.
    During the next three days I learned the following: Due to the work load, breaks were impossible. The salary was significantly lower and no paid sick days, contrary to what the contract said. The owner also had a coffee shop next door where we were supposed to work as waiters. We also were supposed to deliver the freesheets late in the evening.
    I was so baffled and over-occupied by all of this that I didn’t say anything. On the fifth day, I had to go to the emergency room and called in sick. The manager gave me the “Get your priorities straight!” talk and threatened to fire me. I gladly accepted his offer.

  311. Typing All The Time*

    I needed to find a job right out of college and I accepted a position at a firm that was about an hour commute (note the interview was in the afternoon) and my boss seemed nice and I aced the inteview and test. Once I got started, the morning commute ended up being two hours each way and the workload was not fitting a first-job worker. I lasted three days and left in the afternoon on my third one.

  312. ChickensRock*

    Many years ago before college I took a job as a house cleaner. Okay, it was really a couple (few) decades ago. On my first day I was paired with someone so she could train me. I was expecting her to tell me what rooms needed to be cleaned, what to clean, that sort of thing. I was young and generally knew how to clean, but I also knew I didn’t have to time to clean everything in a hour or two before going to the next house. Should I dust and vacuum, scrub walls and cupboards, or what? In what rooms? What cleaner does each customer prefer I use? What if the customer is home, what should I do then? Do I talk to them or pretend they aren’t there? How much time to spend in each house? I had so many questions.

    In the first house, at one point when I was trying to be helpful (or maybe I was just bored watching my trainer clean the sink in an otherwise immaculate kitchen), I opened the patio door off the dining area and the dog ran outside. I panicked, but after some frantic scrambling and yelling we were able to get the dog back in the house safely. After that my trainer decided to give me things to do and the day was mostly me just following her around and cleaning what I was told.

    The second work day I was supposed to be on my own, but I still didn’t know what should be cleaned in each house (for some reason that was a big deal to me), and when I asked I was told to just clean. So I decided I had enough and the next morning I called my boss and told her I that I quit. She told me that was good, that she heard I let a dog escape and I didn’t clean a thing, and she wouldn’t be paying me. While today I know that was wrong, at that point in time I think we both thought, “good riddance” and were just happy to be done with it.

  313. Frodo*

    As a junior in college, I got a job at a popular mall store for the summer. There were four of us on the shift at the same time: The assistant manager, 2 mean girls, and wimpy me. The mean girls were ruthless. I’m short, and while I’m not timid, these girls scared the living crap outta me. They followed me to my car after my shift and talked in whispers. When I turned around, one of them said “what are you looking at, bitch?” They would have conversations from the other side of the store and look at me while laughing, then get daggers in their eyes. After I folded a table of sweaters with the clipboard (raise your hand if you know what I mean), they flat out threw half the sweaters on the floor and laughed “Oops!”

    On my 3rd day, my boyfriend met me at the food court for lunch. I was terrified to go back as these girls made my life miserable. My boyfriend said, “there are like a hundred stores in this place. Quit your job and come back tomorrow and apply for something better.” So I did. With my boyfriend waiting outside the store, I told the assistant manager that I quit because the other 2 employees were horrible. She agreed and told me I wasn’t the first to tell her that. My boyfriend and I went back to his apartment, had great sex, and I got a job at Macy’s the next day. Win-win!

  314. Christmas cookie*

    My very first job was at an ice cream parlor. Owner was a sketchy dude who told me my first two weeks would be a trial period where he’d pay me in cash.

    I worked a few shifts. His son was employed there and he and the other employees made me feel so uncomfortable. I was a dorky 15 year old and they were 17/18. They would go down to the basement to make out/get high/idk what. All I wanted to do was scoop ice cream!

    The owner never made the schedule; I had to call every day or two to see if I had to work. This went on for a few days and finally I called and he told me I had to work that afternoon. I was like sorry, I can’t, I have plans, why didn’t you tell me when I saw you *last night.* he game me some kind of hard time and I quit over the phone. I went in to pick up my “paycheck” a few days later and he was shocked to see me. He owed me like $250 and tried to worm out of it because I quit with no notice. The customers walked in and he was nice and handed me a roll of singles.

  315. An Inside Joke*

    I don’t know if this counts as quitting per-se, but I think it fits with your question.

    Years ago, I was job searching, but I was in a position where I could afford to be a bit picky. I applied for a position that was advertised as an administrative support role. When I showed up for the interview, the hiring manager began by announcing the position was nothing whatsoever like the job description she’d posted. There was no administrative aspect at all. Instead, she had a huge list of hundreds of leads/potential clients — and she wanted the new “administrative assistant” to call every person on the list and try to convince them to do business with her.

    Then, after describing the real job duties, she went on a long, unprovoked rant about how impossible it had been for her to fill this role because (according to her) all Millennials are lazy and entitled, and they should be grateful for the chance to do any job. She ended her spiel by handing me a phone and the list of leads and telling me to get started.

    Note: as if the above red flags weren’t enough, she hadn’t mentioned a word about the salary, hours, benefits — apparently, I was just supposed to be so thrilled at the opportunity to cold-call clients, I’d be happy with any compensation she deigned to offer.

    I was flabbergasted. I sputtered that I was here for an interview, and wasn’t prepared to start working at that exact second. She asked me when I could start, and I told her I didn’t want this job.

    Her face turned BRIGHT RED and she glared at me like she wanted me to die on the spot. Then, without a word, she stormed out of the room.

    Context: I was sitting in a completely empty conference room. No other employees in sight. I didn’t know when/if the hiring manager was coming back, or what she’d do when she did.

    So I got up and walked to the exit, praying I wouldn’t bump into her on the way.

    Luckily, she didn’t, and I made my escape without incident. I don’t know how she reacted when she realized I’d walked off, because there was no way in Hell I was going to stick around to see it. She never attempted to contact me afterward, and I’m sure that in her mind, I was just one more lazy, entitled Millennial because I “quit” my job before I could even start it.

  316. Latetotheparty*

    Some years ago, I accepted a part time retail position in a local drug store to supplement my full time position. My first shift came with no training and I was assigned duties that did not align with what I was hired for. Never went back and never heard from them again. I cannot recall if I got paid or not. My first, but not last, imposter syndrome job.

  317. Ace in the Hole*

    First week? I once quit a job on my first day!

    When I was in my early 20’s I needed a second job to make ends meet. A local tulip farm was hiring people for night shift on their bouquet assembly line in the run-up to valentines day… perfect! It was only minimum wage, but I could start immediately and the hours fit around my day job.

    I came into it prepared for grueling conditions, and it was. Assembly lines are never a cushy job. To preserve the flowers the warehouse was unheated (in february!) and everything was wet. My hands were numb within an hour. It was loud, it was uncomfortable, plus I was working two shifts back-to-back, so I was already exhausted. I was prepared for all that. I’ve worked in worse environments.

    What I was not prepared for was being stationed right next to my awful ex-landlord “Nasty Dan.” This guy was a creep. He was so bad I literally ran from his house because I thought he might kill me. I could tolerate the cold, the fatigue, the noise… but not Nasty Dan. He didn’t seem to recognize me so I spent the next three hours trying not to catch his attention.

    How did I quit? I left for lunch and never came back. Perhaps I should’ve spoken to a supervisor, but the job was not good enough to be worth the hassle.

    How was my hasty exit received? No idea! I literally never went back. Didn’t even bother picking up my paycheck. They never called, and I was just as happy to wash my hands of the whole thing.

  318. Poppins*

    Fresh out of University in the UK I got a job as an unqualified teacher. On the first day I was shocked to discover there was no training, I was going straight in to a class. I was handed a Math text book and told to cover for a sick teacher. I had thirty 14 year olds blinking at me in stunned silence as I tried to figure out Pythagoras Theorum in order to explain it. I have a History degree. On the second day whilst covering for another sick teacher, one of the teenagers snuck up to the white board behind me and wrote I HATE YOU. I tried to scrub it off but they had written it in marker pen rather than wipeable. It is probably still there but I wouldn’t know because I just walked out of the building after that class and never returned.

  319. SuperSis*

    Not first week, but first few weeks. Once, after a layoff, I took an hourly job at an online games retailer (porn, they sold porn dvds). It was a quick commute and thought it would be a low stress way to have some money while job searching to have an hourly job where I just did some order fulfillment and data entry…

    The office was located on a dark alley off one of the more notorious streets in the city with a lot of housing for people fresh out of lockup, or with very serious substance issues and those with mental illness who had fallen through the cracks. I worked day shift, so wasn’t too worried… except it turned out they didn’t trust employees enough to give them keys to the front door so I had to use a callbox and wait in the alley for someone taking customer service orders to answer my call (in the order it was received) and buzz me in.

    During my first week, there was an actual full out fistfight in the shipping department, and the HR manager who onboarded me quit, never to be seen again and no one mentioned it. She hadn’t shown me how use the time cards, so I wasn’t punching in/out correctly (resulting in me being slightly overpaid for a few days which they didn’t hassle me over). The day and night shifts shared desks and my desk partner was over 6 feet tall (I am petite) so it we were in a constant chair and desk adjustment battle. I also got in trouble for knowing too much about computers and using applications I shouldn’t know how to use (there was no guidance on what was allowed, since they did not expect me to know enough to use any of the aps that weren’t allowed).

    When I started, I had arranged for a week off to go a pre-planned conference. When I got to there I emailed my supervisor that I had discovered some new job opportunities at the conference (not necessarily a lie, surely someone might tell me about a job opportunity) and wasn’t going to come back. She never replied.

  320. Hunger Games Team Member*

    I was hired to be a cashier at my college’s bookstore. When I showed up for my first day of work, there were 30 other new hires there. We had all been told that we would be cashiers. We quickly learned it was one or two cashier positions – not 30.

    It got real Hunger Games really fast. They put us to work doing heavy physical labor, which was never mentioned in the job description. The manager kept saying, “Whoever unloads the fastest will be favored for the cashier job!”

    After several hours, we stopped for lunch. I (along with a few others) left and never came back. I used the afternoon to go job hunting and landed another job by that evening. The manager never followed up with me regarding why I left or if I was coming back.

    Oh, and I never got paid for my time that I did work.

  321. GrumpyPenguin*

    I only lasted five days at a summer job about twenty years ago. Receptionist for a free advertisment paper, a bit like ebay on print.
    On my first day, the owner shooed me to my seat, told me the software was really self-explanatory and handed me the receiver of a ringing phone. The lobby was filled with impantient customers trying to get my and my coworkers’ attention who were also busy on their phones.
    During that week I learned several other things: No breaks and no paid sick leave (illegal where I live).
    The owner had a coffee shop next door where we were expected to serve customers.
    We were also expected to deliver the papers ourselves late in the evening.
    I was so buffled I couldn’t say anything until on the fifth day I had to go to the emergency room and called in sick. I received a voice mail from the owner about “getting my priorities straight”. I simply didn’t call back and ghosted them.

  322. jessilein*

    In about the year 2000, I got a job working for a company whose name I can’t remember. The job was scanning books and other printed material into their database, which was so! cutting! edge! at the time. I worked there three days, all of which was training and becoming acquainted with their customs, such as mandatory group stretch breaks twice a day. There was nothing necessarily wrong with the job (although I’m sure it would have been soul-crushingly boring after a few weeks) but I’d been applying for other jobs at the same time and got offered a job in the law library of the local university. I had no contact information for them, so I went to work on the 4th day to tell them I’d found something else (so responsible of me). The smarmy trainer looked at me and said, “Oh, not what you expected, huh?” and I was able to respond, “No, I got something else making more money.” So satisfying! Incidentally, I still work at that university and recently got promoted to a director-level position in my office, so I think I made the right choice!

  323. Hunger Games Team Member*

    Another one from my college days –

    I was hired for a communications job that was on campus. I interviewed in-person for the role and was thrilled when I was hired.

    On my first day, the hiring manager proceeded to tell me that I was overweight and “did not look the part.” What the hiring manager did not was that I was struggling with an eating disorder and was very sensitive about my appearance. After I left for the day, I cried all the way home.

    I sent an email to the hiring manager that night and let them know that upon reflection, this role and environment was not a good fit for me. The hiring manager was shocked and wanted to know what the issue was. I shared that I didnt appreciate the comments about my appearance, and as a reminder, she had interviewed me in person and knew what i looked like before she offered me the position. I honestly think she got me mixed up with another candidate. Still, it doesnt excuse her comments.

  324. Customer Service*

    I quit an independent contractor customer service job the first day. My very first call was from a panicked and angry customer, a business owner who wanted me to do something I either didn’t have the power to do or hadn’t been trained to do (I can’t remember which) because it would cause her legal problems if her issue was not resolved. Nobody could reach a Tier 2 agent for help with a call. I ended up working on a related client, but with a different, better company.

  325. Bookish Candles*

    This actually happened early last year and I technically quit on week two. I was wrapping up my last year of graduate school and was interested in taking on a short-term contract role for some money. My background is in recruiting and HR (though I went to grad school to make a career change).

    I got a contract with a small manufacturing company that needed some recruiting assistance. I show up on my first day, and there is nowhere for me to sit. Not even a desk I could share with another employee. Eventually they put me in the conference room, but anytime there is a meeting, I have to leave and work while standing in the lobby. I had no phone to use but my own. That alone was slightly annoying but I grabbed a Google Voice number for the occasion.

    The role was supposed to be mostly remote, with only coming onsite to conduct face-to-face interviews, but on my first day, the owner told me that she wanted me on site 100% of the time for the first two months. She also had two dogs (which I adore dogs!) but it was expected that the staff feed them, give them water, and play with them.

    Even then, I was willing to try and manage. But THEN… One day an employee on limited duty walked by the owner and plant manager. After the employee was on the floor they went on a political tirade about how nobody wants to work, Trump is the only hope we have, and how they can’t believe anyone would vote otherwise. I was completely caught off guard and sat there slack-jawed.

    I packed up my things that evening and called the agency, letting them know that I wasn’t comfortable returning considering the lack of workspace, tools to perform my job, changing the role from remote to onsite, and having to listen to the owner’s political beliefs. The agency was very upset on my behalf. They apologized, and I don’t think they were willing to backfill me for them.

    I’ve now graduated and working in a completely new industry where I can be a complete booknerd with amazing people! It worked out for the best!

  326. sunshine*

    Shortly after I graduated from college (with a fine arts degree, into a recession), I applied for a job as a taxi cab dispatcher. During the interview process, they asked if we preferred part-time or full-time shifts, and I said part-time.

    The interviewer loved me and asked me to come into the office on a Friday afternoon to sign new hire paperwork. Once I was there, she said, “I don’t know if I mentioned that the part-time role is a night shift.”

    She had not. I told her I was sorry, but night shifts wouldn’t work for me. She offered me a full-time day shift role instead, under another manager, and I accepted.

    I started on Monday, and my new manager informed me that he thought it was a “red flag” that I had changed my work shift availability so soon. I tried to explain that I had not known that the part-time shift was a night shift when I had expressed interest in it, but he did not want to hear it.

    He then informed me that since it was my first week, I would only handle cab requests that were faxed in. He wanted me to stand next to the fax machine for 8 hours and wait for fax requests to come in. I did. It turned out that they came in at the rate of about 1 request every 2 hours. My boss refused to give me any other tasks.

    When it came time for my lunch break, I asked where the break room was. They didn’t have a break room. I asked if I could eat at a desk in the work room. No, this wasn’t allowed either. In desperation, I asked where other people ate lunch. In their cars or at a restaurant, I was told.

    There were no restaurants within biking distance of the office, and I didn’t have a car. I ate my lunch standing up in the alley behind the building, while some coworkers smoked near me.

    That night, I decided to quit. Then I realized I had never been given any contact information for my boss or anyone else at the company. I had the main cab dispatch number, but that did not route directly to my boss, and I worried that it would be unprofessional to use it. So I decided to quit in person.

    My second bus never showed up. After waiting 30+ minutes past the time it was supposed to arrive, I decided there was nothing for it but to bike the 8 miles to the office.

    I biked like a speed demon and managed to make it to the office only 10 minutes late.

    “Oh,” said my manager. “Look who decided to show up after all.”

    “Yeah,” I said. “Can I talk to you for a moment? I quit. I would offer you 2 weeks notice, but since I’m still in training…”

    He agreed that I could leave immediately, and I fled. The company eventually mailed me a check for $34.

  327. Scarlet Ribbons in Her Hair*

    I quit my very first job on my second day. I had been told that my hours would be from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM, Monday through Friday. However, on my first day, I was told that my hours would be from 9:00 AM to midnight, Monday through Friday, plus from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Saturday, plus Sunday mornings. I was told that this was because the company (a travel agency) was so busy busy busy. I was told that I would not get paid overtime. Instead, the owner would keep track of my hours, and I would get time off when the company was able to do without me. I should have walked out of there right then, but instead, I managed to leave at 9:00 PM, and I told them the following day that I was quitting. I said that I would stay there and work Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM until my replacement was hired. The owner was very upset. I guess he thought there was a rule that you’re supposed to stay at your first job for at least one year, so he counted on my staying there no matter what. But I had never heard of such a rule. Two days later, I was told not to come back. During my four days there, I found out that I could not go to lunch unless at least there were two employees in the office, but for some reason, all of them felt free to go to lunch and leave me alone in the office. I did not put this company on my resume, and I had to look for another “first” job.

    1. Algernon*

      He thought there ‘was a rule’ that employees had to work a year! Lol. Lincoln freed the slaves, buddy.

  328. rotation programs are scams for free labor*

    as a fresh college grad, i signed on-board with a financial tech services company for a rotational professional development program. the problem was the first “rotation” was in a call center answering mean baby boomers’ tech questions regarding how to use a poorly made software solution that had about 4 different ways of doing each function. you couldn’t even use the bathroom without clocking in and out and your 30 minute lunch did not count toward your 8 hour day.

    also the other “rotations” weren’t assigned. after 8 months you were eligible to apply to other rotations, up against the other 3 years worth of multiple cohort groups (hundreds of employees). most folks were actually stuck in the customer service program for a minimum of 15 months while having to apply to dozens of open rotations for months at a time.

    right before my first phone call with a customer, i pulled my manager into a room and through tears said how this job wasn’t the right fit for me. they were supportive enough and paid me for two weeks of work even after only working one. but suffice it to say I’ve felt a lot of shame and anxiety even since then about making the wrong choice, especially in a job search.

  329. Cookingcutie11*

    After I graduated college, I didn’t have a “real“ job lined up so I reached out to a temp agency that one of my friends had luck with at the time. They had an assignment for me answering phones for a home health aide company, which seemed like a good deal at the time for $14 an hour, circa 2005. I had previously been working in a drugstore making around $10 or $11 an hour so I thought it was a good increase. Unfortunately 22-year-old me did not realize how much I would be spending on gas and tolls that first week. The phone did NOT stop ringing the entire day. It was a five line phone, and I would have nurses calling in, sick patients calling in wanting to talk to their nurses, and I never knew which nurses were actually in the office at any given time because it was my first week after all, and I had NO idea who anyone was. It was also the main office for a few other branches of the company. I put people on hold that I forgot about, people hung up, people got annoyed, it was a huge mess, and I realized very quickly by second day that I would not stay. The actual people in the office were very nice and decorated my desk for Halloween and told me multiple times how glad they were to have me. I don’t recall how long the original assignment was supposed to be but after 5 PM that Friday, I called the temp agency and left a message that I would not be returning to the job and they could mail my paycheck. I never heard from them again, understandably. I also never took a job that required me to man phone lines for a large busy company.

    And no, that was not the last time I left a job during the first week. Many years later I accepted a position offered by someone that I had worked with at another job. The job was supposed to be X duties, which I was excited about. The owner of the company was annoyed that I was hired without him interviewing me, so during the first week, he also mentioned that I would be doing Y & Z duties, which were definitely NOT part of the original job, description, or anything that I had agreed to or frankly would have agreed to if they had been part of the original job description. all week, he told me he had to find time to sit down with me. Again, by Friday I was already pretty frustrated, but the real icing on the cake was the owner calling me into his office at 5 PM on FRIDAY when I was supposed to leave and proceeding to have me take notes for the next HOUR on all sorts of random things. I emailed the person who had originally hired me at some point that Sunday, outlined why I would not be back, and mailed the office key on Monday. My former colleague was completely understanding and I don’t know what was eventually discussed with the owner, but hopefully on their next tire, they were both involved in the job job, description, and hiring process. I took pictures of the 10 pages of notes and I wish to this day that I still had that picture. He may have flexed his authority by making me stay late on his terms, but he essentially paid me a week for nothing. I gathered that he was not too pleased with my quitting, but I never heard from him directly.

  330. Jo*

    This is from the other side, the employer – and it was a temp situation.

    Years ago we went through a series of temp receptionists. (If you know the old “Murphy Brown” show, it was like that but real life.) Some lovely qualified people, some just banana pants or otherwise memorable. (Ex: a 19 year old male with THICK flowing hair to his waist – just like Fabio from a romance book cover – who spoke incessantly about his lovely wife, bringing her into every conversation.)

    One day, “Ann” showed up, but our boss was out and no one told us a new temp was coming. We settled her in a chair, explained, offered her some coffee and then began to call the main office/reach our boss. About 10 minutes in, she stood up, exclaimed loudly,” This isn’t going to work!” and left.

    Yes, there had been a minor mix-up in communication, but it was only a few minutes. She was comfortably ensconced in our reception area, and could see us working towards a solution. Seemed like an extreme reaction for a temp who would simply be sitting at the front desk and answering a not-terribly-busy phone.

  331. Burger Serf*

    I should have quit my first ever fast food job as a 15-year-old in the 90s. I found out when I got my first paycheck that they weren’t even paying me what I thought was minimum wage, because apparently the law was there was an even lower minimum wage you could folks under 16. Between that and the limits on hours for people that young, it wasn’t even worth the gas money. Even then I intuitively knew that “legal” didn’t mean “not-exploitative” and no one’s time should be valued so little. It was also actively unpleasant. Several times I thought of walking out, only before cell phones and a driver’s license it would have just meant sitting on the curb for 2 hours till my mom picked me up, and that was literally the only reason I finished a few more shifts. :/

  332. Troubadour*

    When I a lot younger I walked past a shop with a ‘help wanted’ notice so I rocked on in and got hired on a verbal agreement to basically mind the shop and sell its wares, which were an eclectic mix of crafts produced by a collective group. I was told I’d be paid a commission of what I sold. I’m a total introvert so this was all pretty terrifying but I bravely nodded and said when do I start.

    Day 1 no customers came into the shop. I spent most of my time dusting things, familiarising myself with the stuff on sale, and, when I ran out of make-work, reading a book I’d found in a display about someone’s experience in a cult. Day 2 I think some people came in, browsed, and left again. (I did attempt to engage but they just weren’t that interested.)

    This suited my introvert self perfectly but my financial self spotted a potential problem. At the end of the day I asked, “So it’s kind of quiet huh, if no-one ever comes into the shop how do we make sure I still earn legal minimum wage?” And they said “No minimum wage, just commission.” And I said “…Yeah that doesn’t sound very legal to me, so I guess I’m not coming back tomorrow.”

    Then I went home and phoned my uncle who happened to work in the employment tribunal. I gather the shop tried to argue that I wasn’t an employee, just a member of their collective, but since they’d never informed me of that before (let alone documented it), after several months they were forced to produce a cheque for my hours worked at minimum wage.

    Still a bit sad I never got to finish the book about the cult member, but at least *I* got out.

  333. NYWeasel*

    Not me, but (pre-internet) my brother-in-law needed extra cash, so he took a part-time job under the table helping out at the one adult book store in town. He lasted only until the owner asked him to go wipe down the video screening rooms, at which point he simply NOPE’d out, never to return.

    1. NYWeasel*

      Adding that I don’t have any more details about the experience, as I was a kid at the time, but I’m pretty sure most people have enough imagination to fill in the blanks in all sort of squicky ways.

  334. Gone Barista*

    I had a job at a Starbucks in Germany. I’d previously worked at a Starbucks, and everyone at the new job was aware of it. My trainer immediately decided she didn’t like me and refused to train me while also being incredibly rude. When I raised issues with our shared supervisor, I was told that “she’s from New York City, that’s just how they are there.” My best friend is from New York City. My Aunt is from New York City. Several of my old coworkers are from New York City. That is not how they are in my experience.

    When she made a very rude remark about my ability to learn on the third day of training, I went to the shift manager and quit on the spot. I was on a contract, so had to finish out two days of work, but I was gone by the sixth day of that job.

  335. Mrs. Hawiggins*

    I quit a temp job AND the temp company on the first day of what I had hoped would be a really exciting job. I was hired on as an admin assistant for what sounded like a great opportunity. The lady who was supposed to train me “kept running late” and I was alone for 5 hours. Why it was so bad – got sent to an office in the most desolate part of the building, which was actually really scary. Strange individuals knocked on the door to “come look at our personnel files.” I didn’t have a key to the file cabinet, they called me a liar and left. I tried to make the best of it but had no clue where I was or what I was supposed to do. The training lady never showed up and I kept calling the on site office manager wondering what to do. “I’ll be there in a minute!” No. No you won’t.

    I kept getting calls from other departments, “You better have our pizza party money ready,” “You need to get my petty cash money I’ve been waiting a whole week, or else!” Ok sure I’ve only been here 3 hours and know nothing but sure, my life is worth your damn pizza money.

    Finally when I dug around to see if there was ANYTHING I could possibly do, I found Penthouse, Playboy, and Hustler magazines (this was a while ago). I called the temp company, told them about the file snoopers, the petty cash threat and the massive amount of porn, and they told me to leave at once. I at least called the onsite office manager who was in another much safer building, told her I was leaving and she sent a young woman to take the front door key back from me. She hissed and said, “Are you the temp,” and rolled her eyes at me like I was just another one of her problems. So I put the key on top of the stack of porns and handed it all
    over to her.

    She knew they weren’t mine because the person they belonged to wrote phone numbers and messages all over them with in-house employee names and their extensions. Her eyes were the size of flying saucers as she started to say, “Where di–”
    “Bye.”

    The temp agency called me a week later and asked me to reconsider being in their candidate pool. They told me they vetted their clients much more closely and would I be interested in an opportunity they found for me. Which led me down the road to Great Job which I’ve had for years. With no porns.

    1. Mrs. Hawiggins*

      I should add I was a very young Mrs. Hawiggins at the time, this was not of my world, and when I think about the place this was only to find this massive stash, please know that I look back on it and laugh hysterically now.

  336. support farm workers unions*

    Seasonal berry picking, which paid per pint or gallon picked rather than per hour. It was unbearably hot, but you had to wear long sleeves and gloves to keep from being pricked by the brambles. I stuck it out for two hours before realizing that, if I managed to keep from passing out before the end of the day, I would make well under minimum wage at the rate I was able to pick. I don’t remember what I said when quitting, but the manager barely nodded, clearly used to people not being able to hack it. I didn’t even bother to ask for the pittance I had earned and he didn’t offer.

    I have since learned that farm workers are often exempted from laws that protect other workers. Support United Farm Workers, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and others struggling to change that. Farm workers perform essential (and often hazardous) tasks that benefit us all!

    1. Sister George Michael*

      Farmworkers work so hard and they are so exploited. The Immokalee folks do great work.

  337. EngineeringFun*

    Yes 2 times. Female engineer with 25 years of experience.

    #1 10 years of experience in aerospace. Second day boss stood over my yelling about results of a test I ran “don’t you cry. Just give me your data I don’t pay you to think”. Told me he was going to fire everyone. Then a tech who was supposed to train me on something said “nah let’s wait I’m pretty sure you’re gonna get fired.” I quit after 9 days
    #2 20 years exp. During pandemic. A boss ran on the tread mill in her sports bra from 8-12 every morning. Then around 4 pm the meds kick in. Tried teaching a group of people how to use software telling me what to click and she jogging. Was mad that I didn’t work over the weekend because we all need to work 60+ hours a week. That’s why I was getting paid so much. I have a doctorate in the specific area they needed. She suggested that I read email on the chair lift while I coach skiing on the weekends. I’d never get a job for 40 hours a week. Quit after 7 days. I got a job with more pay and fewer hours.

  338. Jo*

    Does quitting before you start count?

    Young, single, and new to town, I landed an admin/office manager job with a company in the construction field. While there were several employees/crews – and in fact this was part of an international company – the majority of the time it would be only myself and the manager “Dave” in the field office.

    The problem – MY problem – was that I was instantly and SERIOUSLY attracted to “Dave”. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’m super responsible, the one everyone can count on, always follow the rules, get things done despite any personal feelings. This was totally, unlike me.

    The job was offered. I accepted, but then I kept worrying about what it would be like with the two of us alone in the office day after day. A few days later, I cowardly left a voicemail on Dave’s phone that I’d gotten a better offer and wouldn’t be working there after all.

    Eventually – not then – I did get another job.

  339. Coffee Protein Drink*

    2nd week. I was the office manager for Llama Grooming Company B. It turned out the owner recently owned Llama Grooming Company A, which had declared bankruptcy owing a lot of people a lot of money. After the first terrifying angry person storming in demanding to see the owner because he wanted the money he was owed, I noped right out of there.

  340. Taly*

    The summer before my first year of college I worked at a restaurant (long ago!) It closed without warning in the middle of June. I needed a summer job to help pay for college but all the usual suspects were already staffed with other teenagers. So I got a job as a maid (for houses) since they were hiring immediately. I was supposed to train for 3 days and then I’d be official. I did the first day of training, during which I was getting paid minimum wage. I learned during my training day from the other maids that the way the pay worked after training depended on how many houses you cleaned and how many maids were assigned (you then had to split the fee for the house) and wasn’t by the hour. In essence, unless I cleaned an unrealistic number of houses by myself very quickly, I’d be lucky to make more than minimum wage. And that’s besides the fact of how hard and gross the work was! On day two I showed up and turned my shirt in and quit. They tried to charge me for the shirt even though I’d worn it one day and washed it that night before coming back in.

  341. Mieki*

    It was a summer job when I was 13 years old, picking strawberries. They’d pick you at at 6:30 am load you in the back of a pickup truck and drive a bunch of us out to the fields. First day, I managed to pick a few flats, but ate almost as many as I put in flats! Never occurred to me that there might be pesticides involved. 2nd day they picked us up, but it was really foggy. Got to the fields and were told that we would have to wait until the fog burned off before we could pick, so the berries would dry and not get moldy. A friend and I sat there, the fog was going nowhere, so we decided to heck with it, we’re going home. We snuck off, cut across a cow pasture where were chased by a bull. Made it out of there alive and walked the 5 miles home. Didn’t go back the next day. About a week later, I received a check for $2.86 for my one day of work.

  342. LifeBeforeCorona*

    I applied for a job at a major hospital (important). I got a phone call from Marge Simpson to set up an interview. The day arrived and I went for it. Because of security someone had to escort me into the inner bowels of the hospital. When we arrived at the worksite that person told me that Marge Simpson no longer worked there and they would be interviewing me instead. They pulled out onboarding forms and said that I was hired on the spot. Ok. I asked a few questions about the job that they couldn’t answer. Meanwhile two men were standing against a back wall staring at us and whispering to themselves. The interviewer said they would be my co-workers. I felt uncomfortable but continued with the “interview.” I asked to see the actual workspace and was told that wasn’t possible. So after I got home I decided not to take the job. I called the hospital but got lost in the telephone maze because Marge Simpson no longer existed and there was no one else to contact. The person who interviewed me had quickly given me their first name and I couldn’t remember it properly and of course phone mazes don’t work on just first names. I went back to the hospital to quit in person but because it was a restricted area and I didn’t know the full name of my interviewer they couldn’t help me or let me wander the lower levels of the hospital to find someone that I vaguely recalled. No one ever contacted me to ask why I didn’t show up.

  343. Taly*

    And in a job that I should have quit day one — that same summer I got a job at a call center. They were supposedly pre-screen calls where we’d just “close the deal.” It was selling security cameras to businesses. People I called (who definitely had not agreed to buy a system) were often racist or violent (one person responded “I don’t need no cameras, I got a dog and a gun for thieves”). At the start of my second week, an older woman who worked there invited me outside for a smoke. When I said I don’t smoke, she said come anyways. Outside she told me to be careful inside as the camera systems we were selling were secretly set up in the call room and they spied on us. I think I lasted another week while I frantically looked for another job because I was so much in need of money. They did not seem surprised when I quit.

  344. Ess Dot*

    Ok so years ago there was a well known “amsterdam-style coffee shop” in my town where you could smoke cannabis inside WAY before it was legal anywhere in north america. They didn’t sell the stuff, just permitted smoking and sold cheeseburgers and bongs. I got a job there and showed up sober at 8am for opening. That sobriety? Shattered within minutes of arriving. The coworkers training me immediately rolled cannons. Every six minutes. For hours.

    They put me to work in the kitchen which I had zero experience or skill doing, much less while stoned out of my absolute mind on my first day. Eventually they swapped me to the till which was a relief but still, multiple times an hour I would be spelled to go out for another “safety meeting” out back.

    During one of these “meetings” I was explicetly told that were I to encounter any danger or risk or discomfort either at this job or anywhere else in life, the members of a (famous) biker gang who hung out upstairs would have my back no matter what. Forever.

    The cash out was chaos. Nothing made sense. I could barely see, and nothing balanced, but it apparently didn’t even matter because we just crammed everything in those envelopes, shrugged and left.

    That night I got home and slept for 16 hours, woke up to a bunch of missed calls from the manager. I called her back and told her I would not be returning and that I was sorry but I just could not hack it.

    I have no idea if I got paid anything for this experience and I absolutely did not care.

    1. Spurs*

      I forgot all about “safety meetings”-that was our code word back when I worked in food service. I think this story is my favorite!

  345. Century Kestrel*

    Here’s the story of the time I quit after two days… and was somehow offered another job for twice the salary.

    When I started grad school I moved to a new city and was desperate for a part-time job that would work with my heavy class/internship schedule. I applied for a call center posting flaunting flexible hours.

    I was hired immediately after my interview. The next day, I was told the call center job would totally begin soon, but first, I just had to help the company finish a project, which required to go downtown and get tourists to fill out surveys.

    I was young and naive so I didn’t see the bait-and-switch for the ginormous red flag it was. I was told I’d have one day of paid training, after which I would only need to spend a weekend (just two days!) on the streets, paired up with another new hire (a potential friend!) and even though the weather was looking iffy, they’d bring us inside the second it started raining. And we’d be doing them such a favor!

    In reality, there was no training, no pairing, and it was two “weekends”… of 4 days each… per month. So basically, not at all the job for which I was hired. My first day was exhausting but not too bad. On the second day though, a rainstorm started and they texted us to stay outside or we wouldn’t get paid. Soaked, freezing and incredibly pissed off, I thought I wasn’t that desperate for cash and ducked inside a nearby mall. Turns out all the other new hires were already there, and we all copiously complained while drinking coffee for the rest of the afternoon.

    The next day, none of us came to work and we all emailed our resignations. Our supervisor was incensed and called every individual ex-employee to say this was unacceptable to do without so much as a phone call to give notice. Even though inwardly I felt I’d been deceived and therefore they could shove it, I was easily intimidated back then so I panicked and pretended I hadn’t called because I didn’t have the supervisor’s number… while we’d been communicating through my cellphone. Definitely not my shining hour.

    The twist is that for obvious reasons, this company had issues with turnover, and a few months later one of their departments was severely strapped for proofreaders. They still had my resume on file, and I had proofreading experience. They offered me a job for way more money where I could make my own schedule and work from home without so much mentioning that time I quit their company in a huff.

    That job actually turned out great and helped pay my rent and textbooks until I graduated.

  346. whyblue*

    While in college, I did a voluntary summer internship that paid next to nothing but promised me tasks that would allow me to learn stuff.

    On day one, my supervisor gave me a project (think cataloging items) and announced he would be on vacation for the next three weeks. About three days in, I discovered a major logic flaw in the assignment I’d been given, rendering the results pretty much useless. I went to my supervisor’s boss, who told me he didn’t want to contradict his employee and to just keep going because “you’re not costing us any money, so it doesn’t matter if the results are useless”. I should have quit right then.

    Instead I finished my project, threw the results in the trash, and did it again with the changes I suggested to Boss. I also had the audacity to automate a high repetitive task (Excel macro) and be done after 2 hours instead of the 1.5 days all previous interns had needed. To fill up the now-free time, I got to write material numbers on material slips, so the person entering them into the computer wouldn’t have to look them up in a list. We are talking hundreds of material slips per day. Why? “Because you don’t cost us any money”.

    Well, I did learn something from this, even if it was not what I expected…

  347. ZinniaOhZinnia*

    Technically this counts as me “quitting,” but it was before I even started:

    I was exiting a longterm place of employment that is very much seasonal-based work (farming), and looking for a part time job to support me while completing graduate school. I found an admin role with a nonprofit in a similar field (hunger relief).

    I was very clear that I would not be available to begin this role until after the previous one had ended (again, based on the season, not on an arbitrary or changeable reason!). I cannot stress how clear I was to the team what my non-negotiable start date would have to be in order for me to take this job.

    They agreed, hired me, and then began spamming my phone with demands for me to start working while I was still farming (please note that farming is so labor intensive that most farm work is outside of OSHA and other standards; ie– I was working 12+hr days 6 days a week and was, as I had stated in the interview, in no way available to work until after the busy season). They insisted that I was, indeed, scheduled to work during the time I was not available. They insisted I leave my farming job mid-season to work part time for them.

    This is not the result of a miscommunication, it was an org with 3 employees and all 3 were told by me during my interview about my availability and did agree to wait, so I am not sure where they were coming from at all, but the calls escalated and kept on coming.

    They called me again and… I guess they asked me to quit? I hadn’t even started yet, but the sheer audacity to demand my time before my previous job was complete was enough for me to walk away from this one, and I said that it looked like our needs are not aligned so this isn’t a great match for either of us. They took this extremely personally, as if I were rejecting them specifically, even though I did use the above passive voice.

    I took on another job (that had its own problems that I ended up writing into AAM about, so not a perfect solution, but I am now 3 jobs past those complex ones and am very happy where I am).

  348. Jamoche*

    Remember malls, and the people with clipboards who’d try to lure you in to do a marketing survey? I got lured in to the survey and then they offered me a job giving the surveys. Lots of sitting around, but I did do one ad response survey:

    The survey was about an ad for shampoo that said it would make you “beautiful”.
    The survey-taker was a high school dropout and had a minimum wage job.
    The shampoo cost nearly three times that.
    She really did believe the ad would make her beautiful, and would consider buying the product.

    Yeah, I couldn’t be a part of that. Called in after I left and quit. They didn’t care, there was a lot of churn in that job.
    I do remember that I made about $50, because I bought an expensive computer manual with that paycheck.

  349. Pumpkin215*

    More than 10 years ago, I was unemployed and a temp company offered me a job. They told me X company loved my resume so much that they didn’t even need to interview me (red flag). All I had to do was show up! The salary was in line with what I was looking for so I said “yes”. I also had nothing to lose.

    I show up and was escorted to a dark and empty cube. When I say empty, I mean it had NOTHING. They said my computer was on the way and I could do some training with Jimmy.

    Jimmy was a terrible trainer. He spent maybe 15 minutes with me showing me some reports. After that he said he didn’t know what else to show me. So I spent the rest of the day introducing myself to people, drinking coffee and walking around. My new boss was in meetings all day so I got maybe 5 minutes with her. There was no onboarding, paperwork, etc. It was all very strange.

    Day #2, I show up and still no computer or phone. Boss and Jimmy were no where to be found. I sat in the empty cube, reading a book, after I learned everyone was in meetings again. Why I wasn’t invited to the meetings, I don’t recall. At lunchtime, I got up and walked out. I drove home and told the temp company that I quit. I went back on unemployment. The temp company never called me back and I never got paid for my day and a half of “work”.

    The coffee was good though.

  350. flossntoss*

    I had just graduated with my MSW and got a job making $20k at an agency that did in-home assessments. My first day, they had me meet with a client who only used ASL with no translation services and then another client who only spoke Spanish with no translation services. My supervisor gave me an hour lecture about how she was “intuitive” and was just born knowing how to assess others. The second day I was called for an interview by the company I really wanted to work for. I stupidly took the call WHILE IN THE OFFICE (I was 23) and then the supervisor confronted me and said I needed to make a decision right then because she was “going to invest” in me. I handed over my keys. She was pissed and I have never put this job on a resume but use the story for students so they know just because you take the job doesn’t mean you have to stay there.

  351. Lassiter*

    I had 2nd round interviews with 2 different companies. Both were ideal positions so I would have been happy with either one. A few days later, I was made an offer and started with company A. On the first day, the job description was completely different than what was described during the interviews, there was a lot more responsibility designed for a more senior person and the salary I accepted was based on what was discussed in the interview. While on my lunch break I got a call from company B offering me their position. My new boss at company A wasn’t available the rest of the afternoon, so I finished out the day and came in first thing in the morning to meet and submit my resignation. I felt awful when it happened because I had never quit a job so quickly, but now almost 5 years later – no regrets!

  352. kp*

    I worked in the corporate office of a drive through daiquiri bar/convenience store with 12 locations all over Texas so most of our employees were young, 18-22. I was the staff accountant and managed all the financial managers at our stores. One of my FMs called me in a panic that her new hire was missing and she couldn’t find him anywhere. This was at like 5:30 in the morning on a Saturday and I was trying to help her calm down. She eventually found him in the walk in freezer, he thought it would be funny to hotbox in there. When I told him that he couldn’t smoke weed in our store, he said I was a fascist and a corporate schill and the vibes here wouldn’t work for him. LOL It was simultaneously the strangest and funniest experience I had working there. I spent more time onboarding him than he actually worked for us.

    1. Spurs*

      This reminds me of when I worked at a local sandwich shop and the manager would constantly yell at the staff for smoking in the walk-in because it made all the bread smell like weed, lol

  353. Leslie Santiago*

    I worked in a public facing work area for a government agency that required all staff to hold high level security clearances. These took about 6 months to be granted, so it was usually an 8-9 month wait from when you applied until when you started on your first day. Our division had been trying to recruit for a service delivery manager for a while and were pleased when we finally locked in a candidate. Six or so months later, the person joins us. They came in on Monday and Tuesday and then didn’t come back. Apparently they decided they couldn’t cope with the restricted nature of the environment (can’t bring cellphones in, can’t talk about work, that sort of thing). They were advised of the restrictions during the interview and raised no concerns, and it would have been reiterated multiple times during the recruitment and clearance processes. Everyone was surprised to hear they’d left, as people tend to pull out during the clearance process, not once they’ve actually started the job. The position was vacant for probably another year but they finally got someone in who stuck it out.

  354. Posilutely*

    When I was twenty, I got a job working in a chain pub in my not-the-best home town during the university holidays. The interview was held at a picnic table in the beer garden and the manager appeared not entirely sober. I sat down on the bench, he stared directly at my breasts and said ‘Yep, that’ll do. What size polo shirt do you need?’. When I replied, he said ‘Let’s go one smaller – the regulars like ’em tight’.

    I would love to say I channeled my inner She-Hulk, flipped the picnic table over and stomped off in the other direction, but sadly my student overdraft outweighed my principles so I took the job. HOWEVER…

    Nearly a month later, I was due to be paid for the first time when I turned up at work to find the police there. The manager had been arrested – it turned out he had a gambling problem and whenever he went to the ‘bank’ with the takings, he was actually going to the betting shop and losing it all – tens of thousands of pounds. It also turned out that I didn’t officially work there – he had never filed the joining forms for any of the new summer staff so we didn’t exist on paper.

    Arguably I should definitely have left at this point, but the chain that owned the pub speedily sorted out the paperwork, paid us all and installed the deputy as manager. She ran nightly lock-ins and allowed bootleg DVD and counterfeit perfume sellers to wander around peddling their wares. Really classed the place up.

    I left politely at the end of the summer holidays, the same week the manager’s court appearance headlined the local newspaper. I decided to take my holiday jobs in my university city in future.

  355. Michele*

    Not me but my mom. It was a call center role and she was part of a cohort of new hires who would go through training together. On their first day they were touring the building and my mom noticed that everyone on the call floor was in business professional attire. She asked if that was the company dress code and argued it was dumb considering customers wouldn’t actually see them. That was indeed the official dress code and they said something like it puts you in a professional state of mind – dress for success or whatever. Mind you she was a single mom and this job didn’t pay well enough for her to go out and buy appropriate clothing. She quit right then and there, I don’t really know how it was received because she literally walked away mid tour. She took my sister and I out of school and we all got ice cream! Pretty sure she kept the company swag they were given that morning, too. And while I’ve only quit a job on the spot one time (within first 90 days), I’m still pretty quick to find a new job and move on when I’m dissatisfied with a workplace. I absolutely get it from my mom lol

  356. CubeFarmer*

    Not me, but I had a colleague who quit her first week. Apparently her old employer missed her so much that they decided to meet the request that she made to them (which they initially declined and which led her to quit) for remote work. We all understood and wished her well.

  357. Snarky McSnarkson*

    I have one! This will probably date me, but I was hired for the “typing pool” at a very well known manufacturer of tires. The first day of training went well. I thought it was a little odd that everyone stayed in their seats at the end of the day. THEN, at exactly 5:00 PM, the head of the typing pool gave some signal and everyone got up and left at the same time. Something like 15 people. I went back the next day and readers, they would not give me ANY real work. They wanted me to practice my typing. I had typed at least 80 words per minute and didn’t really need any more practice. They gave me a style guide – just give me a tape so I can work! (I know, the tape is another thing that ages me.)

    Well, again at the end of the day, everyone had their shoes on, bags on their shoulders, just sitting there waiting for the signal. If I recall correctly, I went in the third day and they still would not give me any real work. So… I typed up a resignation letter and left. I did not look back.

  358. Penguin*

    I quit a temp job after 3 days. It was some middleman company that rental property owners hired to outsource getting maintenance done. My job was to call the handymen and contractors and follow up to ensure work was being done or find out when it was scheduled then follow up again. I completed the list I was given early and asked what else I should do and I was told to start at the top of the list and call them a second time in the same day, which was like… well they told me it’ll be done on Monday of next week, they’re not going to change the schedule? I called the temp staffing company and said I didn’t need this assignment. Also there was no sort of workplace vibes and I remember they were aggressive about a no phones policy where if you wanted to use your device to listen to music you had to have it in an opaque envelope and string the headphones through an opening but you couldn’t touch it. It was soul sucking and I vividly remember it even 10 years later even though it was only 3 days.

  359. I quit a PIRG on day 2*

    I went to college in Massachusetts and I was looking through the classifieds for a summer job. I’d done retail and wanted something with more stable hours. I answered an ad for MassPIRG. To this day, I’m not sure what PIRGs do, but I went to a warehouse, where they loaded us in a van and dropped us off in various suburban/exurban neighborhoods to go door to door to fundraise.

    I shadowed someone the first day, and the next, they dropped me off solo. I was uncomfortable soliciting money for a nebulous cause, having to go into stranger’s homes, and having nowhere to eat or use the bathroom.

    I’m not even sure if I quit in person or just did a no-show. The next week I got a job working in a movie theater—still one of my favorite summer job memories.

  360. Judge Judy and Executioner*

    Not me, but my spouse. He quit after Day 1.

    About 15 years ago, my husband was unemployed and went to a job interview for selling Kirby vacuums. He was told there would be no door-to-door sales, it was an 8 hour work day, and they provided a brief training on how to use the vacuum. His first day of work he was loaded up into the supervisor’s van with other new “employees” at 9am, and they were driven to neighborhood about an hour away. Upon arrival, he and the other new people were told to start knocking on doors and trying to get in the house to demonstrate the vacuum. In addition to being lied to about the job, everyone was stuck an hour away with no way of returning home. The group finally returned after 8pm; my husband quit the next day.

    1. Bringerofbrownies*

      Wow, that’s gotta be so illegal. I always feel so sorry for folks that’ve been clearly hoodwinked into those types of roles. I hope they’re fewer and more far between now.

  361. That 70s girl*

    * why it was so bad
    * how you quit
    * how your hasty exit was received
    * and any other interesting details
    While in high school I (F) was looking for a 2nd part-time job to supplement the one I had during the summer. A friend had just left a job in the NYC diamond district and I went in to meet her boss. I was hired on the spot to be the “secretary.”

    First day the boss showed me the desk, told me not to answer the phone and then left for several hours. Not having any instructions, I started cleaning out the cluttered desk. I found masses of receipts/stubs from temporary agencies for women/girls who had worked there very briefly-some a few hours, some a few days.

    He returned later and thanked me for watching the office and sent me on my way for that day.
    The next time I returned I was continuing to clean up the desk when he hung up the phone and told me to leave because his wife was coming to the office. Hmmmm…I guess the new girl won’t get to meet the missus today.

    The last day I worked there, I was done cleaning out the desk when he called me into his office. He then started physically approaching me and before I knew it I was literally being chased around his desk. It was like a bad movie scene. I managed to finish a circle, grab my purse and ran out of there.

    I called him the next day and asked for my pay. He insisted that I come back to the office, however I agreed to meet him outside on 47th Street. We then went to his bank on the same block and he withdrew 3 days pay (1970’s, minimum wage) in cash and gave it to me. He told me I was always welcome back to work for him anytime.
    That’s a NFW.

  362. Mads*

    Yes. When I was in my early 20’s in the late 80’s. I went to work as a bookkeeper for a small company. I was interviewed by the controller and hired by the controller. First day, he set my desk up in front of his office and gave me nothing to do while he and the owner stared at me. I didn’t return the next day.

  363. Overit*

    My daughter quit in the first minutes!

    DD interviewed for a PT job in her field when she had some experience. Boss offered dd the job at $X with pre-set schedule of Thursday and Friday. Boss acknolwedged the DD could only work Th-F due to other job. Boss said DD would get contract within 2 days.
    1. Contract did not arrive until much later…after 5pm on the Friday before job was to start the following Monday at 8am. Due to #2, Dd tried to call, no answer. Emailed, no answer.
    2. Contract bore no resemblance to verbal job offer. Pay was minimum wage (less than half of agreed wage). Days were all wrong.
    3. Dd went in on Monday, hopong it was just a mistake. Nope. Boss told her that “on reflection”, Dd was not worth the pay and as for the days? Oh well. Oh and they would not validate parking either.
    4. Dd took a breath and thanked her for her time and said, this is not going to work out. Best wishes, warmest regards. Boss starts screaming at her and yells, “You will never work in this town again!”
    5. Dd got another job on her field the next week.

  364. Emmy*

    I was a golf caddy. I did it exactly once. The man had no idea how old his kids were and what school they went to and I walked in front of someone putting. Plus it was hot and those clubs were heavy. Literally never went back again.

  365. Bringerofbrownies*

    I sort of feel bad about this one, but I had just returned from teaching English overseas (I had taken a few gap years after college to do so) and the only job I could find was with a translation agency. I was living with my parents while job searching and the new role required me to move to a city nearby, but still a 2 hour drive away. Because I didn’t have an apartment yet, they paid for a room at an Extended Stay hotel my first week there.

    From day one I realized the job was just a receptionist role (they had billed it as a Project Coordinator). And it only paid $22,000 (this was 2008). I spent the first few nights thinking maybe it would get better as I onboarded. But I was already discouraged both by the work (or lack thereof) and by trying to find an apartment that would fit this ridiculous budget.

    By day 3 I was so stressed out with not knowing how I was even going to show up for work the next week because I didn’t have a place to live that I called my mom crying. The only thing I had to do every day was walk across the building to pick up the mail, otherwise I just sat at a desk bored all day. I HATED it so, so much.

    And my mom said, “Well, you don’t have to stay.” And that magically gave me the permission I needed to consider just quitting and not coming back. I’d keep job searching and find something better. So I spent Day 4 thinking of how I was going to do this, and on Day 5 I checked out of the hotel, went into my last day of work, and later that afternoon I walked into my boss’s office and quit.

    She was upset (annoyed?). And seemed more concerned about how they were going to have to re-advertise the role. I suggested that it’d only been a week or two since I was hired – surely there were still candidates available from the earlier search? And at this point, we still hadn’t done any of my hiring paperwork (which had been only one of the many red flags that week), so I just said I’d call the hotel stay even for the hours I had worked that week. Honestly I think they probably got the better end of the deal on that.

    That was my one and only mulligan I’ve taken in my professional life.

    1. DeskApple*

      had a VERY similar experience working for an overseas translation agency in Europe, not even realizing they were planning to pay me less than 20k a year (promises, promises) but I did meet my husband out of it so it was a win.

  366. LessNosy*

    My first job out of college – I majored in marketing and was desperate for a real marketing job. Didn’t want to move to NYC or LA and work at an agency making poverty wages, so I wanted to stay in my college’s general area.

    I got suckered into what was advertised as a Marketing Assistant position. In reality, I was put in the middle of a Best Buy and told to try and get people to sign up for DirecTV. Approach everyone, bug the crap out of them. It was horrible. It had high turnover anyway, so I noped outta there real fast. I was told “but you could have your own market if you stay here!” No thank you.

    Got a semi-real marketing job (Account Executive, but for a newspaper, so I was told I would be creating campaigns for clients but in reality I just had to try and sell ad space in a dying medium! *thumbs up*) a couple weeks later, did that for 5 months, then got my first ACTUALLY REAL marketing job, and now I’m fairly successful 10 years later. But it was rough out there!

    1. CupcakeCounter*

      I worked at the bank version of that! Also should have quit very early on (not the first day though as they had a 2 week paid training and onboarding at their corporate HQ to learn the computer systems and legal/privacy law stuff and I was #1 in my class). Boss was upset I outscored her on everything.

  367. Sister George Michael*

    This is a “should have quit first day.”

    On the morning of my first day, starting at about 8:40am, my boss started emailing me and leaving me voicemails, asking where I was and why I wasn’t at work. The tone of the calls went downhill quickly. I didn’t respond immediately because I was at…the required all day orientation by the company. She would later call me when I was in meetings, after 10pm, at doctor’s appointments and the emergency room, and at a wake and funeral.

    Actually, after I accepted the job but before I moved to that city, she wanted to get a work phone to me, but didn’t want to trust it to the mail. So she gave the phone to a friend who was going to a meeting in my city, and then told me to wait for him outside the building he was having the meeting at. I did not have a way to contact him directly. Friends, I waited for 3 (three!) hours. When he walked over to give me the phone, I realized he had walked past me to enter the building hours earlier.

  368. Sunshine*

    A group of us took the young intern out to lunch his first day. It was a Thai restaurant and because our gentle Midwestern palates weren’t used to spice (it was the 1990s) you would order your curry and specify spice level: 1 (not spicy) to 6 (sear your tongue). I’d been building up my tolerance for awhile and confidently ordered mine at spice-level 4.

    “Oooh!” Remarked my coworkers, impressed.

    “I’ll take mine at 6,” announced the new intern, looking right into my eyes with a cocky stare.

    “You sure, man?” my colleague asked, worried. “That is HOT.”

    “No problem,” he smirked. He ate every last bite, sweat pouring down his face and gulping water like he was in Death Valley.

    When we got back to the office, Intern disappeared. After an hour, we sent someone to check the toilet to see if he was Ok. No sign of him anywhere. We worried he might have gotten ill from all spicy food and had to leave unexpectedly for the day.

    He never returned, and we never heard from him again.

    1. Heffalump*

      First time I ever had Thai food, I’d gotten it fairly hot, and I was swilling down water. The waiter said, “Water won’t help you. Rice will help you.” He was right.

  369. Scott*

    When I was 16 I got a job at the local £1 store. On my first day I turned up 15 mins early, ready for the manager to open the store and get me set up for my first day. Nobody arrived until two minutes before the store was to open. I sat on a bench across the shop until I saw someone arrive, then I got told by the manager who clearly hadn’t seen me sitting there that I would need to be careful with timekeeping if I thought it was OK to arrive that early.

    I was made to clean the staff toilets on the first day. I’m not precious or above cleaning toilets but even at 16 I knew it was a bit out-of-order to ask someone to do this on their first day. I asked for a pair of rubber gloves, and they told me I could buy a pair for £1.

    I didn’t go back after that solitary shift.

  370. Goldfeesh*

    McDonalds. It was during the 2008 downturn. I had been working for a well-known financial institution who did some merges and got rid of a lot of us peons. Living in a rural area there weren’t a lot of job opportunities. I’d worked for various Walmarts before and didn’t figure McDonalds could be worse. I was so wrong. Walmart treated you like a living breathing person, McDonalds did not. My shift manager was overworked and had no problem taking it out on a new person. I was yelled at for washing my hands. God knows you don’t want the person touching your food to have clean hands. McGriddles got dropped on the oh-so-clean floor and got served to customers in the drive thru- Yum! I lasted about a week until I was screamed at about something I can’t even remember and quit. I had never cried at a workplace before or since. Eff them. I soon got hired at dysfunctional Pamida that got a new manager to put it to rights before it was closed.

  371. lizjennings87*

    I knew on Day One I should’ve quit this job. I lasted six months.

    I arrive at 9am as instructed and no one is there. A colleague finally arrives, lets me in, makes awkward conversation for a while. Bosses (married, naturally) show up at 12pm. Male boss greets me with a hug, wants to take me to lunch. He leers suggestively and mentions a “romantic French restaurant” (his exact) I might like. I counter with Nando’s. The rest of the day was just off, with more hugs, snarky remarks from the female boss, pitying looks from coworkers. I got home and told my husband I had a really bad feeling. He encouraged me to stick it out (note: he really regrets doing that and even tells our kid this when this story comes up).

    The work itself is hell. Bosses curse each other out and will curse out employees when they feel like it. Female boss drops work on me at COB and expects me to stay well into the night to finish. Anytime I go home at 5pm, 6pm, I’m reprimanded by HR. The expectation (not communication at interviews or in the job offer) is that my day doesn’t start until the bosses show up and that can be anywhere from 12pm to 3pm. I once stay until 3am to finish a project they sorely procrastinated on. They’re thrilled, thinking they’ve turned the corner with me. HR hints I’ll lose my job with “wanting a work-life balance will be deal-breaker in the long run.” When I take time off for a parent’s surgery, my female boss gets angry and snaps, “Why was that even necessary?”

    I got a new job six months in and gave my two-weeks notice. Because of course I’m still trying to do things the right way. Female boss loses it and tells me I never wanted the job. Male boss is disappointed I won’t negotiate a longer exit. She kicks me out of the meeting and bars me from all other meetings. But I still serve out my two weeks! She never speaks to me again, he walks me out on the last day, and then suggests my husband should work there. My husband laughed when he heard that, then teamed up with me to write a scathing Glassdoor review.

  372. Childcare Anon*

    I’ve shared this before but just in case it’s interesting for others:

    I once quit a job the first day. I was hired to run the lottery funded pre-k in a daycare center. I had been working at HeadStart with a lottery pre-k satellite class in a different daycare for 2 years previous to this so I was familiar with the role. The interview went well and it seemed to be a good role but it was not.

    I came in and was not introduced to any other employees and shown the office for pre-k. I started looking through the files and they pre-k files and files for regular daycare was mixed. There were financial files mixed in and it quickly became apparent that the owner was using the pre-k money to keep the center afloat. There would be a yearly report due in a few months and there was no way I would be able to fix or sort the issues in that time.

    Just after lunch I was asked to man the front desk and answer the phones. I had been told that I would not have to do that often during the interview. Well, the owner needed to run to town “real quick” and as soon as she left the parking lot, the sh*t storm hit. The phone started ringing off the hook, I was having trouble because I wasn’t familiar with the system, parents showed up to pick up their kids and they didn’t have their key cards so I had to find the button to open the door. Then a parent wanted to pay for the next week and I didn’t know how to take the payment because no one had explained the procedure to me and she had to have a receipt, etc. Parents upset because they asked questions I had no answers for. Just everything was wrong. Owner had been gone close to 2 hours. I guess one of the teachers texted or call the owner because she came flying into the lot, slinging dirt & gravel. As she got everything settled I retreated to my office. She eventually calls me to her office and starts berating me so I stopped her and said ” I have seen enough to know that this is not the place for me. Your pre-k files are horrendous, you are mixing money when it’s supposed to be separate and you left for a ‘quick’ errand and didn’t bother to come back or show me anything so I think I’m just going to resign and let you find someone else”. She said some nasty things and told me she was going to the red logo shirt back. I took it off and put it on her desk and walked to my car in my bra. I passed a few parents that I’m sure was shocked but I was over it.

    That was about 20 years ago. I’m not happily employed and enjoy my work (mostly!).

  373. Scott*

    I was made redundant just after lockdown in the UK ended and I took what was intended to be a short-term job in a call centre. I didn’t intend for “short-term” to mean a solitary day. I nearly didn’t return after lunch but it was such a disaster that I had to go back, in the same way that people watch Formula 1 racing in the hopes of seeing a car accident.

    The dress code was “smart casual” and there were people dressed in velour sportswear trousers.
    There were 40 of us onboarding the same day. I think 10 people managed to get logged in successfully. Nobody else had an account prepared for them starting.
    We did a conference call to check our headsets were working correctly. Someone unmuted their mic to shout a swearword down the phone. Everyone including the supervisors thought this was hilarious.
    I got sat beside two lads who didn’t know each other but moved in similar circles. One of them had been in a horrendeous accident six months earlier and had a slideshow on his phone of his various horrific injuries, including a minor impalement he wanted us all to see.
    The two lads had also beat up the same bouncer in a local nightclub as part of two different gangs. They both liked hard drugs, and had strong opinions about “transes” and “mental health not being real.”
    The three supervisors were sat barely a metre from us during these conversations and obviously didn’t think of this was problematic enough to say anything.

    I went home, depressed to an unreal level, and decided that night that I would rather be poor than go back to this. I tried to call at 8am as per the sickness/absence guidelines but nobody answered. I sent an email to the Recruitment team responsible for setting me up, and they phoned to ask why I wouldn’t return. I told them that the open transphobia, blatant lack of preparation and notably disgusting staff toilets were all red flags and I knew it wouldn’t be an environment for me. They thanked me for the feedback and told me if I changed my mind to get in touch, which made me laugh so hard I dropped my phone. I got a phone call two hours later, from a supervisor who clearly hadn’t been passed on the message from the Recruitment team, asking (direct quote) “so what happened, how come you just didn’t turn up again?” I explained that I had been in touch with Recruitment, but also that my “absence” on my second day probably told the story well enough of how this was working out for me.

    They didn’t remove me from their Payroll. I got a full month’s wage from them, which obviously I could not keep. I had to spend 45 mins on hold to their HR line and then was given bank details to transfer the money into. I was still entitled to Jobseeker’s Allowance (a UK benefit for people who are out-of-work) for a few weeks after quitting this job, but their mistake of not removing me from Payroll meant it looked like I was committing benefit fraud, and I had to spend several hours dealing with this by having to find proof and send it to HMRC to prove I had never touched the month’s wage I was paid.

    It was the most satisfying Glassdoor review I ever wrote.

  374. Nope Nope Nope*

    Worked for a debt settlement company (clients in massive debt would hand over all of their debt, we would consolidate it, client would pay us and we would negotiate the debt with the collection agency for a lower settlement cost) for a day and a half of training in the call center (first contact for any clients calling in). These clients would scream, cry and berate the call center because they’re scared of the credit collections companies contacting them. I was not allowed to apologize in any way to the clients because it would be considered as the company taking responsibility for the debt or their treatment from the collection companies. Their processes were extremely confusing and I was told I would be on my own on day 3. I had a breakdown before my lunch break and sobbed to my manager while quitting. They offered to let me move to data entry, but I was so overwhelmed that I declined. It was not worth the whole $1 above minimum wage at the time.

  375. ADD*

    Many, many years ago, a credit card company opened an office locally. It was an extremely popular place to work among everyone I knew who was, like me, young, single, and looking for quick cash. “It’s a great place to work! You sit on the phone and get all kinds of bonuses all the time!” So, on the recommendation of a friend I applied and got the job.

    I turned out to be a call-center job, and we had a week of training before hitting the floor. During the training it was stressed how we were there to help the customers, how this credit card was designed to help folks with bad or no credit, to help folks build up a credit history, and how we were there to answer questions for customers who might call in. Maybe their card wasn’t working. Maybe they needed to know their balance, or make a payment. (Oh, and occasionally we’d be asked to make some calls to folks behind on payments) BUT MOSTLY WE WOULD BE THERE TO HELP PEOPLE AND ANSWER QUESTIONS.

    When we finally hit the floor, the truth became much more clear. This job was collections. It was pretty much nothing but calling people who were behind on their payments. Worse, this was a particularly predatory credit card company, that targeted folks who already had poor credit and bad payment histories, and charged outrageous fees even for just owning the card and never using it. We were expected to make call after call, to people who were obviously struggling and desperate, and terrified of us. We were judged on how many payments (or “promises to pay”) we could squeeze out of people who were often simply financially illiterate and who’d gotten themselves in over their heads with debt. And yes, there were great bonuses for those who hit their benchmarks. You could make great money at this job, but it meant convincing grandma that paying her credit card bill was more important than eating or paying the rent that month.

    After that week of training, I lasted only one day once we’d hit the floor. On my second day while driving in, as I approached the exit on the highway, I started getting a splitting headache. I thought it was a usual caffeine headache or something, and so I decided I’d call out sick. I took the exit, made a U-turn, and got back on the highway. Immediately, my headache went away. I realized at that moment that my body was telling me something. Whatever the monetary benefits this job might bring, doing this job was going to destroy me. I never went back. I never even bothered to quit. job. I just ghosted them. I’ve never no-call no-show quit a job before or since that one, but I have no regrets about leaving that job behind.

  376. Scott*

    The job I quit after two months that I should have quit on the first day – when I went into the office and saw a collection of gollywog dolls lined up beside the computer with a note saying they were not to be touched or moved. I should have Nope’d immediately.

    The staff member who collected these racist toys was absent on medical grounds and I was to carry out their job in their absence. I put the dolls in a drawer because I didn’t want to look at them, and I didn’t want anyone who visited to see them and associate them with me. Apparently the staff member came in on my day off and was furious to find they weren’t there. When I quit, I left a note saying I had put the dolls in a drawer because they were uncomfortable to look at and I couldn’t imagine anyone else being pleased to see them. I’ve since heard that they’re back on display.

    1. lyonite*

      I’d never heard of this, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Holy racist caricatures, Batman! And they were still being used as advertising mascots until 2001?!

  377. SuperNova*

    Years ago I worked for a stuffed llama making shop. We had a new employee who started on a Monday. They were taught to stitch the fur around the mouth by hand, which tends to be the first thing a new employee learns. It’s very precise work, but hand stitching is the most basic expectation of this work (it only gets more and more technical and picky), and they were told they would spend the entire morning, possibly all day, doing this task. They were also told they would almost certainly do many parts of it over again, and that that it is normal and how we all learned. They argued every time they had to go back and redo part of the mouth, but it was necessary, and the feedback was not presented in a negative way. They left for lunch and never came back. We never heard from them again and never found out for sure why they just ghosted. I suspect it became clear their skills weren’t up to the task or llama making was simply not for them or that it would be 40 hours a week of drudgery and nothing else. But they never indicated they that they were unhappy enough to just bail out or asked for help, and they and never asked how long it would be before they would start working on porcupines and pterodactyls.

  378. hodie-hi*

    Me: Female, 18 years old. A long time ago, so some of the details are fuzzy.

    The Job: Summer job, second-shift clerk at a 24-hour fuel station/convenience store in the center of my small town. Typically meant to be working alone, which I didn’t mind.

    The Story
    I was trained by the store manager my first day and a co-worker was in the store at least a few hours the next two days. I understood what was expected of me, and I knew how shift change worked. Toward the end of the week, I was alone in the store for most of my shift. I was confident and felt comfortable. I was told that if anything came up I should phone the store manager who lived less than 10 minutes away.

    At the end of the week, toward the end of my shift, the guy on the next shift didn’t show up on time. As it got later, I called the store manager. No answer. Not even a machine. I call several more times; still no answer. I’m concerned since I’d already worked eight hours and did NOT want to be alone in the store overnight. In fact the store policy was that female employees were not to be scheduled alone overnight.

    I have no key to lock the door, and my sense of responsibilty kept me at my post. I called my boyfriend around 11 pm and he came to the store to keep me company. By this time, I’m scouring the office for phone numbers. For anyone. For other employees–no answer or they couldn’t come in. I called managers of other locations. Again, no answer or they couldn’t help me. I worked my way up the heirarchy of phone numbers, eventually reaching someone like the owner of the small regional chain, by now close to midnight. Despite my tale of woe and explaining the effort I’d made to find someone to come in, I was still on my own.

    Now I’m steaming mad. I should have left the store unlocked overnight to be looted, but I decided I would take the high road on my way out. So I spent the entire night in the store with my boyfriend, the two of us playing Trivial Persuit or something like that between the rare customer visits.

    I also composed a letter to the store manager, who was expected some time during the next day. It detailed all the events, all the phone calls, including to the owner. I also wrote that I was quitting.

    The sun came up and customers started getting more regular. The first shift person arrived and I shared the story of my unplanned double shift. We look at the schedule together and that’s how I learned that the third-shift guy was in the hospital. The day previous to my double shift, he’d somehow ridden his motorcycle into or through the back of his garage. The store manager had known this, yet failed to find someone to replace him in the schedule. She also wasn’t home overnight.

    To the letter, I added my opinion of her as a manager and human being, and of the entire dysfunctional organization, then walked out of the store never to set foot in it again.

    On payday, I sat in the car while my boyfriend went in to collect my check. And that’s the story of my shortest job ever.

  379. Sabrena*

    In the 90s I got a job at Wal-Mart during Christmas for extra money. I was hired in the craft section which was great since there’s not a lot of traffic there. However, I was not trained on how to cut fabric so I was letting customers cut their own. Supervisor did not like that and loaned me out to toy department after a couple days….during Christmas. I lasted another day after spending all my time straightening out aisles the whole shift since parents let their kids go crazy. As soon as I got an aisle done it would be trashed within minutes. This was not my worst job.

    1. Sabrena*

      Not sure how to edit original post. I told my supervisor a couple days later I decided I was going back to school and she seemed very relieved.

  380. friendly computer guy*

    Not me, but my wife…
    She was laid off last year after a 20+ year career in the medical field (she was not a nurse, but in a more specialized after-care field.) After a few months, she found a position at a hospital about an hour drive from where we lived. She visited, interviewed and was offered the job. Within two days, they informed her that she was going to be working at a different location – an additional 45 minute drive from our home, at a hospital she had visited and where they didn’t even her her program up and running yet. When she visited as part of her interview, the facility and equipment wasn’t even appropriate for the patients (mostly age 60+, often with limited mobility). She was employed with that hospital system for 8 days before giving notice. We were not happy with the bait-and-switch when she was told she would be working at the first location during the interview.

  381. Cassie H.*

    in college, I was hired for an organization where you had to collect donations for various causes which changed by the week. My very first shift, they assigned my coworker and I to a busy corner right in front of a biker bar. We were both fairly small women and spent the next four hours getting harassed. The next shift, we learned after we left, was to be the two of us, in front of the biker bar, from six to ten pm. I’m not sure what my coworker did (I hope she quit) but I didn’t show up for my shift and ignored all their subsequent calls and emails. three years later, when I was working abroad, a check came in the mail with $25 for my first and only shift

  382. Car Vacuumer*

    After graduating high school I was looking for a summer job. After applying for various retail jobs a friend of mine mentioned that her father was hiring at the company he worked at, a national rental car chain. I interviewed with him and I got hired to clean the cars after they were returned. My very first day I met with two guys in their 30’s who did the same job. They were friendly guys and showed me around. They asked me where I went to high school and when I responded they said they both graduated from the same high school. Like me, they had both started this job when they graduated high school. My life flashed before my eyes. I could see myself vacuuming cars for the next twenty years being miserable. I started the job and it was just as monotonous and boring as you would expect. Cars come in, you vacuum them out, clean the windows, throw away trash, then run them through the car wash. Over and over and over. The line of cars never stopped. On day three I could actually see the end of the line. There were only three or four cars left. I was sure that if I worked quickly I could finish them all and I could sit around doing nothing and still get paid. I ramped up my effort flying through the cars. As I finished one car another arrived, then another. Finally after rushing through five cars I realized the line was never going to go away. At the end of the third day I went in and quit. I lied and said I had been offered a job as a server at a restaurant for more money. Truly it was the shock of meeting two men in their thirties who went to the same high school as me and were still doing the same job. This weighed on me so heavily that it intensified my hate for the job. I felt like I would be cursed if I stayed there. My friends father was friendly about it, said that more money is always better. He smiled and wished me good luck. Several years later I told my friend what happened and he laughed and sympathized with me. He said his dad had started in the same position and had risen up to become a branch manager. So the two guys who were still at the same level most likely didn’t have ambition to do anything more. This was an early lesson for me that I am not cu our for monotonous work.

  383. Spiders Everywhere*

    It wasn’t me, but back in my first video game QA job one guy volunteered for a 24 hour shift on his very first day, testing a badly designed game that was incredibly frustrating to play. In the middle of the night he went out for a walk and just…no one ever saw him again. He didn’t even take his stuff with him. The whole rest of the time I worked there people attributed weird events at night to his restless spirit roaming the halls.

  384. Art3mis*

    Should have. My last job. It was a remote job, 90% of the company was remote, so it wasn’t like I was a one-off. I didn’t get any equipment until noon on my first day, and didn’t know when it was supposed to arrive. I wasn’t sure if I still even had a job. I hadn’t been given any information about logging in from my home PC so I basically had no idea what was going on. I finally log in expecting to be missing orientation or at the very least a welcome email from my manager. There was nothing except the usual “Fill this stuff out” emails from Workday. So I did that. I did all the HIPAA and compliance training that had been auto assigned to me. No one talked to me. No one greeted me. Towards the end of my second day I had finished all of the paperwork and auto assigned training stuff and I emailed my manager and said “Hi, I’m here, what should I be doing?” She just set up a meeting for the end of the day. I found out that there had been a re-org and she was not my manager, she wasn’t even the person I interviewed with, she was just who was listed on my offer letter. Now my manager was this third person I’d never heard of but she was on PTO until the following week and no one (in management anyway) knew I was starting this week and they didn’t know what to do with me. Once I finally did meet my manager she didn’t apologize or anything and she did end up being that chaotic and disorganized. Things did not get better. But I had left my previous job rather quickly, so I stuck it out almost a year until I couldn’t take it any more.

  385. Smaller Potatoes*

    I technically stuck it out for 3 whole weeks only because they had paid for me to relocate to my home country. I’m a female engineer in a male dominated industry just 2 years out of school. I had been hired by the owner who had recently taken over from his father. At the interview (which they had flown me in for) he was very excited to have me on the team, but on my first day the owner was no where around and my new manager claimed to have no idea that I had been hired and from across his overflowing ashtray made it pretty clear that he wasn’t happy at all about my presence. The manager provided zero help, stuck me in a room with the rest of the engineering department who had no idea what I was supposed to be doing, and I proceeded to spend the longest work day of my life doing computer entry.
    The entire office smelled like stale cigarettes, the work was so miserable, and I felt so unwelcome that I immediately found a temp agency and started looking for another job. When I finally found something to pay the bills (I jumped at the first job I found) I put in my notice. Within an hour, after 3 miserable weeks the owner (who had been MIA the entire time) was suddenly available and trying to get me to stay. Needless to say I did not. I suspect the owner may have realized how much he’d screwed up because no one ever asked for the relocation money back.
    25 years later I’m still in a male dominated industry and have built a career I’m quite proud of. No thanks to them!

  386. Emm*

    I stayed at this job for 5 weeks, but I should have left much sooner.

    It was an assisted living facility, and I started during peak chaos COVID, early June 2020. Tests had been approved by the FDA, but they were almost nearly impossible to get. Symptoms got you an automatic 14-day quarantine. No vaccine in sight.

    I could tell right away that there was some disfunction: PPE was locked in a closet that was only accessible to the care team when a manager was there to open the door (regular business hours,) entry to the building was incredibly lax with spotty temperature checks and unverified self-attestation of symptoms, constant staffing issues due to low morale and poor hiring choices.

    Inevitably, a caregiver who was inarguably infected came to work because “no one else could cover.” Within a week, 10 of the 36 care team members were on quarantine, and several of the residents were sick. The rest of us worked between 10-16 hour shifts to make sure we were still adequately staffed.

    We had COVID tests that had been on order and they finally arrived the Thursday afternoon before the long 4th of July weekend. The executive director, who was a nurse, and the nursing director, chose to take the long holiday off anyway. There were staff nurses working, but the leadership also neglected to delegate the task of administering the tests, leaving the rest of us confused, mired in the virus, with many of the care team still under quarantine, and the residents getting increasingly sick. The guidance at the time was that you shouldn’t send people to the hospital unless they were SICK-sick, so we did our best with supportive care and keeping the residents’ physicians in the loop about their symptoms and statuses.

    They tested everyone on Monday. That night, towards the end of another 16-hour shift, I was helping a resident with dementia take his medication. He was one that we suspected (we were pretty sure) had COVID, but we wouldn’t receive the results for another week. His motor skills were deteriorating, so after I helped him sit up, I had to keep one hand on his side to keep him steady. As I handed him his little cup of pills, he started a coughing fit. He made an attempt to cover his mouth, but they were nowhere close. All I had on was a surgical mask, as N-95s weren’t quite as wide-spread at the time, and I couldn’t let go of him, or he’d fall over on his side. I did my best to close my eyes and turn away, but I was just imagining all of the little virus bits swirling around so close to me.

    I cried when I got home that night around midnight. The next morning, I emailed the executive director to resign.

  387. No Regrets*

    I did quit on the first day once in my career.

    I had two offers at the same time- one from a NGO and one from a consulting firm. I was young and idealistic and chose the NGO. When I arrived on day 1, I learned that my portfolio included managing, in person, one project in the extreme southern end of our state and one project in the extreme northern end, and also teaching myself GIS and building out a fairly complicated GIS atlas. They didn’t have a working computer for me and had me sit awkwardly for at least an hour while the other staff (who were not tech-savvy people) attempted a fix. It was immediately apparent that they would have impossible expectations, no resources to help me meet those expectations, and I’d be on the road constantly. I cried all the way home on the bus.

    That night I quit by email. To her credit, the manager for the position asked if I would keep the job if they took at least one of the projects off my hands, but I had just lost faith. I mailed back the office key and the bus pass and started at the consulting firm the next week.

    In retrospect, quitting on day one was the best decision! I never regretted it. The CEO of the NGO started a political campaign soon after, and I imagine the pressure and public scrutiny on the NGO staff would have been huge. I eventually did meet the person the NGO hired for that role- and indeed she confirmed that they had taken “be in person at opposite ends of the state” out of the job description.

    If you ever start a job and it feels bad on Day 1– you can go!

  388. m*

    No but there were two where I wish I had! One was an internship that had been advertised as IT/coding/bug testing but turned out to be me finding a person’s new e-mail address whenever messages bounced back to the marketing department. The other was a job where the only other woman in the department told me she got stuck with all the “bitch-work” on the first day and I should have run!

  389. Penny Pasta*

    I quit on my first day. The job involved proofing translations (I have no foreign language skills) and required working holidays (I needed a job and they offered first so I accepted). At noon, I was going to a welcome lunch with my team when another company called and offered me a job in my industry for significantly more money. I finished out the day, left all the training materials and key card on my desk, then when I got home I emailed HR to thank them for the opportunity but I had accepted another offer. I got a terse reply but they did pay me for the day I trained.

  390. Jolene*

    I moved to another country on a W0rking Holiday/Youth Mobility Visa. The idea on these visas is that you do casual work to fund your travels rather than a “career” job and it can be hard to find your first position regardless of what experience you have, so I just went for the first place that accepted me, which was a sales organisation – no salary but promises of great commission and earning potential etc etc. I did one day – 12 hours from start to finish, starting with the morning office meeting which was “optional” but “if you wanted to success” you attended, then a day standing in a shopping centre trying to get people to stop and buy some crappy perfume. I didn’t make any sales so I didn’t earn a cent that day, and I quit at the end of the day, telling them that I wasn’t big on consumerism so I didn’t think sales was for me. They didn’t seem that surprised, so I am assuming it happened not infrequently!

  391. MissMoss*

    When I was in college I took a job at a lab that I really didn’t want – my boyfriend knew someone who knew someone – because I was broke and needed a work study. Two days after starting, I fainted and hit my head on the lab bench in front of EVERYONE (I had an undiagnosed medical condition and am totally fine now). As a 19 year old, I was HUMILIATED. That same day, a library job much more aligned with my interests offered me a student position, and I quit the lab that very afternoon. Via email, saying a better opportunity had come along (ugh). The lab director clearly knew I was embarrassed, sent me back a lovely response, and I’m sure I’m now known as the person who fainted and immediately quit. I ended up working at the library for the next four years, and am now employed in that field! So it uh, worked out I guess.

  392. LivesinaShoe*

    It was the very early ’80s, and for the summer I was working with a temp agency. In fact, one of the assignments, filing for a pipe manufacturing company, was the job that convinced me I had to finish college, because if I ended up having to work in a place like that I would never be happy – looking back it was a typical small office, but I HATED it. But I didn’t quit that one. The one I quit was another assignment, working for, I think, a design firm doing high-end glasses maybe? I remember many trade magazines about eye fashion. In fact, I may have had to cut out or in some way deal with the articles. I don’t remember.

    I was both not interested in fashion and an extremely budding intellectual snob. I just. could. not. bring myself to take a minute of their work seriously, but I don’t remember why I left, except that Fashion World made me low-key nutty. So I told the agency no more – may have called them at lunch – and never went back. I don’t think the temp agency was bothered, because I think the pipe job was next.

  393. Literary Dragons*

    I quit a day care after less than a week. They initially hired me to work in the infant room. Owner A asked if I would mind being cross-trained in the toddler room so I could help out in there while they were looking for a toddler room teacher. I said that was fine by me. When I showed up for my first day, everyone there had been told that I was the new toddler room teacher. (Owner A was on vacation.) None of them had any idea that I had been hired for infants. So that was the first red flag. Over the next three days there were many more. Ultimately, it boiled down to a toxic atmosphere that prioritized money and what was easiest in the moment, and not what was best for the children in our care. There were several situations that made me feel like I was compromising the safety and wellbeing of children. And that’s not something I’m willing to do. When I brought up some of these concerns with Owner B, she responded by dismissing my concerns and asking me if I was just unable to handle toddlers. I called out sick for my fourth day (caught a virus that had been going around). Being off that day gave me some clarity about the situation and I quit that night. I called after I knew they were closed and left a voicemail telling them I wouldn’t be returning. Not the best way to handle it, but I was young and didn’t want to risk them talking me into staying. The following week, Owner A emailed me and said that she wished I had stayed so they could have found a room that was a “better fit”, which completely ignored all of my complaints about the overall atmosphere and procedures of the center. I didn’t respond.

    1. r*

      You might consider reporting that day care to whatever agency licenses them in your state. I find that teachers know first if something shady is up!

  394. 15 Minutes Gone*

    Not my story, but my sister’s that I am obsessed over. During high school she worked at the golden arches and hated it but it was a decent place to work while in high school. She quit after she graduated, worked around various jobs, but the economy got tough, the job market got lean, and in her mid-twenties she ended up returning to the golden arches to work.

    She walks in on her first day and works for about an hour and just had this sudden sense of clarity that she loathed being there. Fast food has some of the most entitled and awful customers in the service industry, the pay isn’t worth it, the way society treats “burger flippers” as less than isn’t worth it, and she just decided she didn’t want to be there. So she told her manager she was going to take her rest break and then grabbed her bag. Her manager gave her a funny look and reminded her she only got fifteen minutes for her break… my sister just mysteriously commented, “Oh, I know.”

    And then just left to never return.

    (Years later I also applied for a job at the golden arches and my town is small enough that they took one look at my resume, saw my last name, and passed.)

  395. Young and dumb*

    In high school I got a job as a janitor at a nursing home. I made it to my first break before quitting. They said 9 out of 10 people they hire don’t make it a single full day because it is as awful as you imagine.

    Just out of college I got a maintenance job at a food processing plant. I was on 50% “training wage” and not eligible for medical, I got one week of “training” and then my trainer left on vacation and both my knees swelled up to the size of watermelons so I could hardly walk. I technically quit at one week and one day because when I came in Monday morning and found myself responsible for the entire plant with no help and no experience (I was only 20!), I went to the plant manager and quit on the spot. He begged me to stay until the other guy got back from vacation and, for reasons I can’t explain other than I was young and a people pleaser, I did. I ended up with injuries that took months to heal and I didn’t even know I could file worker’s comp for them.

  396. WorkingRachel*

    This says a lot more about my ex than the job but I’ll post it anyway.

    A long-ago ex-boyfriend got a job selling concessions at a major baseball park. I believe it was commission based somehow rather than straight hourly. He went into it bright eyed and bushy tailed, and came home that first day upset that a) they’d stuck him with salty snacks on a hot day when everyone wanted sodas and beers and b) there was required membership in a union.
    We had just moved to a Rust Belt state with a strong union tradition, and I had no idea until then that my boyfriend was, apparently, extremely anti-union. He came home after the second day ranting about the evils of unions and quit before day 3. I can’t remember if he actually got a paycheck at the end of the day or if the whole thing got eaten up by the polo shirt uniform he had to purchase and then never returned.

  397. Parakeet*

    I lasted a week and a half in college at a door-to-door canvassing job with a PIRG, and I should have quit in my first week. I had no idea what I was actually going to be doing, I really needed a job, and I got the impression from their website that I could be doing actual policy advocacy within a month or two.

    Technically we were on from 2pm-10pm but they nearly always made us stay an extra 1-1.5 hours and didn’t pay us for it. The really sketchy part was that while they did tell us that if we didn’t make quota ($500 fundraised over the course of a 5-day workweek) we would be paid minimum wage instead of the normal wage for the week, they didn’t tell us that we would also be fired. They also had us canvassing alone and not within line of sight of each other (or even necessarily within walking distance of each other) so that we could cover more turf.

    A week and a half in, I got fired for being $20 short of the $500 quota for the week. During that day, I got detained on the porch for 15 minutes by a guy after I knocked on his door, during which he questioned me about my views on then-president George W Bush while simultaneously threatening to beat me if I said anything negative about George W Bush. His wife finally told him to let me go but I was very shaken and I’m sure this didn’t help my fundraising. Also, someone tried to hit me with a golf ball. I told the manager both of those stories when we were back at the headquarters and suggested that he take the Bush fan off the address list so that nobody else would have that experience. He refused to do that and also told me that I was fired for not making quota. Since I had never been told that I would be fired for this, and was still very stressed, and needed the money, and had never had a non-babysitting job and thought that being fired from any job would ruin my post-college prospects, I had a screaming, sobbing meltdown during which I repeated the sentences “Why didn’t you tell me that I would be fired for this? Nobody told me!” while the managers watched me impassively, until a coworker who lived in my dorm walked me out to the subway while trying to reassure me that being fired didn’t mean that I was never going to get a job again.

    Should’ve quit after day 1. I have absolutely warned PIRG canvassers what they’re in for (since I assume most of them are new because turnover was enormous), and also scrawled warning notes on PIRG canvasser recruitment fliers.

    1. Seven If You Count Bad John*

      I canvassed for Greenpeace Action. Solidarity. I lasted three weeks and the only reason I didn’t get fired for not making quota was that I had to quit due to a family emery. That and my story below made me cynical AF regarding working for Good Causes. I won’t necessarily not do it, but I’m reading the fine print.

      1. Parakeet*

        Heh, I currently work for a Good Cause, but in an experienced-professional job at a reputable org where I knew what my job and benefits would be going in. And where there is no canvassing. I’ve done volunteer canvassing for causes since then, mostly in neighborhoods that I know well, but I will not do canvassing for money, and if I’m in a strange or remote area* I won’t do it alone.

        Also, wowwww, your story below…I’ve had good experiences as both an employee and volunteer at nonprofits without PIRG in the name or canvass-fundraising operations, but I can definitely see why you’re cynical about them!

        *During the 2020 NH Democratic primary, a friend and I were canvassing together and he got attacked, literally bitten, by a set of about a dozen angry toy-sized dogs that all ran out of a dog door. He tried to fend them off with campaign lit, to not much effect, while the dogs’ owner just stood silently in the doorway and watched impassively. The dogs did not even attempt to bother me (I also could not usefully restrain them though). I am white. My friend is visibly not. We were in a super white area. I thought some speculative cynical thoughts about the dogs and their impassive owner.

  398. Anax*

    Maybe I should have.

    My current job is great. Love the work, love my manager and team, good benefits, good pay. It’s a lateral move which was a bit of a stretch for me, but it’s turned out to suit me fantastically.

    Except… a week after I accepted the job, while I was working my notice period at my old position, a mass return-to-office policy was announced. Everyone has to work in-office two days per week, no exceptions.

    My manager gave me total absolution to turn the job down if that was a dealbreaker, and helped me file for reasonable accommodation before I even started work.

    I said well, I have a really solid medical case for full-time telework – I’m housebound, I don’t even take the trash down to the road unless it’s unseasonably chilly, nevermind driving or working outside the home. It seems likely that they’ll grant reasonable accommodation, right? After all, this is the public sector, they’re supposed to care about workplace equity.

    Everyone agreed, absolutely, that sounds likely.

    Well, we’re a month into return-to-office, three months since I filed for RA, and HR is dragging their feet. I have to work in-office until and unless they cave. I’ve spoken to an attorney, who has basically told me that as long as HR is theoretically ‘following the interactive process’ – even if it’s in bad faith – I don’t have much legal recourse. And as expected, it’s making me quite ill, which makes it hard to work, apply for other jobs, keep fighting with HR, or anything else.

    I’m pestering absolutely everyone I can think of – congresspersons, my union, attorneys, executives at work – to try to pressure my workplace to let me work from home. No luck yet. The prevailing opinion is that it’s going to take several serious injuries and worker’s comp claims to turn this bus around, because the governor cares more about real estate magnates’ donations than our lives.

    I’m so exhausted and disheartened. I keep hoping that it’s going to turn around, that someone will see reason, and… no one in power seems to care.

    Maybe I should have just kept job hunting.

    1. Observer*

      Find another lawyer – I suspect that at some point the bad faith becomes obvious enough that they can’t get away with it any more.

  399. Seven If You Count Bad John*

    I have a couple.

    1. Locking up “jailbirds” for a popular fundraising event a Worthy Cause you’ve definitely heard of puts on. The idea is that volunteers get “arrested” and put in “jail” and they have to solicit donations to be “bailed out”, which is money that goes to the charity. They actually act this out with fake police officers coming to get the person from their job or whatever and they get put in a fake cell for photo tops. It was terrible because it paid minimum wage, and despite a lot of language about how we’re just recruiting volunteers, there was a quota we had to meet—not just contacts, but conversions. People who didn’t recruit enough volunteers for the drive got fired. (I also feel the whole concept is problematic as hell—some of the people we contacted legitimately freaked out, thinking they were genuinely being arrested.) Supposedly you’re working off lists of people who have volunteered in the past, and that is true for the first week or so—but as the date of the event draws closer, you start running out of those people and start having to cold call. The quota does not change. So what we had to do was lie. The script is that someone they know has given them up. This is ideally true, we did ask people to suggest friends who would be willing to play, but you could do it anonymously too. So by the second week, we were cold calling numbers *xeroxed from the phone book* (which if it’s not illegal is sketchy AF) and straight up lying when we got a live person. Once you had gotten through your page of the phone book, you traded pages with someone else, and pretended you didn’t know the new numbers had already been contacted. You only had to be careful not to call any of the people who were on the Cease And Desist board. This place had a bulletin board with the Cease and Desist letters they’d gotten! A whole bulletin board! It was totally dehumanizing and I only made it through the second week out of economic desperation. In fact I didn’t make it—IIRC I quit on the Thursday, ripping my phone out of its jack, throwing it against the wall, and storming out in hysterics. This was a temp placement, and when I reported in to the agency for my paycheck I saw another worker there who was in complete agreement—she’d survived only a few days longer than I had. The agency placed both of us in new jobs within a few days and nothing was ever said. I think the agency knew the place was sketchy and only sent people there to keep the contract. Understandable. That experience and a couple others gave me a solid approach-with-caution attitude toward working for any kind of charitable organization. I don’t care how good your cause is if your employees are cannon fodder.

  400. Lizzie*

    Not quite, but almost. I got a job in a nursing home/short-term care facility when I was a teenager, and I quit after two weeks because it was just such a horrible environment. They were chronically understaffed, so they expected me to perform tasks that were way above my skill level and not part of my job description (including medical tasks that would have been *illegal* for me, an untrained high schooler, to do). They also failed to provide their staff with appropriate training or PPE—in hindsight, they were definitely violating all kinds of OSHA standards and labor laws. Also, some of the patients sexually harassed the female staff constantly, and management did nothing! I was told to expect it because I was young and female. (These were lucid patients who were fully in control of their actions, too.) It was such a horrible experience, I went home one day crying, and then quit the very next day. They never even paid me for half the time I worked! I wish now that I had reported them to someone, but I was really inexperienced at the time and I didn’t know what to do.

  401. Badger*

    Yes, just out of college I got a job at a very tiny family owned newspaper. I quit within the week. They wouldn’t give me a log in to the system, an email, or any explanations about anything. I was having to write articles on my BlackBerry. I was coming home and sobbing every day from the stress. At the end of the week I politely went to my manager and told her that while I appreciated the opportunity, I didn’t think I was a good fit for the position. She was very nice about it. I later found out from another local media person that that lady had a reputation for being pretty dysfunctional.

  402. Garblesnark*

    I had just left a job in a hurry when the CEO went to jail for serving cocaine to minors on a silver platter, and in the fallout management started throwing tables in the office. None of that is figurative. I needed something fast, so I called a staffing service.

    I should have been concerned when one of the screening questions for the new position was whether I could be “around swearing.” I thought, of course I can! Swearing is nothing compared to where I just was! It turns out that being “around swearing” actually meant that this company contracted laborers, largely PoC (everyone in the office was white), and referred to them by slurs I had never heard before, all day, constantly.

    They told me they found my resume interesting partly because I had some Spanish proficiency, then became extremely frustrated when I couldn’t quickly translate emails written in any language they didn’t speak, including French.

    I quit by calling the staffing agency and letting them know about the slurs on my way home; I think it was my third day. The agency asked me to finish out the week. I went in for one more day, then had a stomach bug. I never heard from any of them again.

    The agency gave me another placement, though, so there’s that?

  403. AnonymousInCali*

    In 2018, I worked a temp-t0-hire job for a non-profit that worked for the city I was in. But something did not feel right that day. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. At least the lady training me was very nice and understanding. However, it was also her last day so I took as much notes as possible so I can refer back to them in case I forget something.

    The second day? An hour in, it just didn’t feel right. I couldn’t see myself staying there and I felt too uncomfortable. The higher ups were not around, so I wrote in my resignation letter and then left it on the computer keyboard so nobody could miss it. My email account was not set up yet so I had no choice. Then I called an Uber and then ran out the door.

    Half an hour later, my recruiter called and let me know they said I resigned, so I knew they got the letter. Luckily, the recruiter was understanding about it but I still apologized.

    Ironically, less than a year later, this organization was on the news about how their accounting was messed up and the accounting practice meant the money being reported was wildly accurate. To call it an intuition would be an understatement.

  404. nonprofit llama groomer*

    I have a should’ve quit immediately story from a career job that I stuck out for about 8 months because I was too fresh out of grad school, was in too much in student debt, and had first-gen college grad parents who didn’t agree with me going to grad school in the first place so I couldn’t ask for their advice. That was over 25 years ago and I’m still too traumatized by the experience to write a full explanation even though I’ve shared it with best friends a few times.

    I was hired to start at the end of October and moved to the rural community away from everyone I know in early October, signing a year lease. I went in to touch base with my narcissistic boss a couple of weeks before my start date. He told me he had talked my predecessor into staying through the end of the year so he’d be paying me on a per diem basis, which meant I’d barely be able to afford my rent, much less begin repaying my student loans. I wasn’t trained at all for my new job because the guy who was supposed to be training me already had his foot out the door. I got hazed by my colleagues when I called to ask for help while I was stuck in situations in a remote room within the same building. They’d say they were on their way to help but never showed up. The boss knew this. The boss would reprimand employees who made mistakes due to lack of training in front of the whole staff. When he found out I was looking for new positions (I’d actually already accepted one, but it the start date wasn’t for 2 months), he fired me immediately. Luckily I’d already found my lifelong best friend in that community who let me live with her until my job started and my landlord let me break my lease 4 months early.

    I left after 8-9 months, but it took me YEARS to get over the experience and begin trusting myself again.

  405. More Coffee Please*

    I quit a job after my first 2-hour shift. I was 18, just graduated from high school, and had decided to get a job for the summer before college. It was at a small snack shack type of place along a golf course, and the job mostly involved taking orders at a little window and throwing frozen food into a fryer. The job paid minimum wage, and the two other people working there were in their 50s – the atmosphere was grim and the 2 hours dragged on. Then, I was told that instead of minimum wage, my wages would be reduced by $2 every 2 hours I worked because they assumed I would eat some of the food. I was offended by both 1/ The suggestion that I would steal, 2/ The suggestion I wanted to steal the food there in particular, which seemed pretty gross. I called the manager after my 2-hour shift to say I wouldn’t be coming back – I’m pretty sure I wanted to ghost, but my parents made me call. I was too embarrassed to pick up my $12.50 paycheck (minimum wage for hours minus the deduction).

  406. Chris*

    My former coworker once worked at a well-known restaurant I am sure you heard of. However, on her first day, she didn’t really like it. So she told her boss that it wasn’t going to work out and that she will be quitting.

    She did offer to finish up all the shifts she was scheduled for already, but the boss said it wouldn’t be necessary. So she just left that day.

  407. What Was I Made For (Not Cold Calling)*

    I worked in cold call fundraising for less than a week (quit during the training period). It was a super stressful call center environment where you had a script, no time in between calls, high pressure sales vibes, and the fundraiser I was calling for was polarizing. Add in my already existing phone anxiety and I was at a near constant state of breakdown. Between the verbal abuse that I was copping and the fact that the people I was convincing to donate were the people who were least likely to be able to go without the $20 they were donating, I just couldn’t handle it.
    I got my doctor to sign a certificate saying that my health wouldn’t let me do the job and called in to apologize for wasting their time. My supervisor was super understanding (I’m sure they were used to no shows, so me calling in was probably a nice change) but also asked if I could try and stick it out, because I was good at it. I felt horrible saying no, but thankfully had enough self-preservation to know there was no chance I would survive any more time there. The call ended with them telling me there was always a place for me there because my sales metrics were really good considering I was in training
    (and while it took years for me to recover from the damage it did to my phone anxiety, I still appreciate how nice they were about the whole thing)

  408. JP*

    It was the late ‘80s and the fall after high school. I was living at home while taking college classes, and took a part-time job at a Hardees burger place close to home. The owner was also the manager and he was a bully with a temper.

    During my interview/job offer, the owner warned me that if I was seen eating at one of the other fast food restaurants on either side of the store, before, during or after my shift, I’d be fired “like a boy I fired last week.”

    The kitchen wasn’t like a McDonalds, with organized stations, but more like a kitchen with one cook, a middle-aged Black man. My first day was a whole day shift. The crazy owner was also hands-on in the kitchen, yelling orders and screaming abuse at the cook during my whole shift. At one point he threw a pile of stainless steel sheet pans at the cook. The cook patiently just did his job, like someone ignoring a pesky dog yapping.

    I wanted to get my check before quitting (I was afraid Crazy Owner would throw things at me) and payday was Friday, so I stopped by the counter and asked for my check. Assistant manager lady said, “It says on the envelope you have to turn in your clean uniform before you can have this.” I’d been fired before I could quit! After one shift. Never went back for the money, threw the uniform away. I don’t know what happened to the owner but I like to think the cook eventually threw kitchen pans at his head and quit.

  409. Ran*

    I did a trial shift at a cafe in a tourist attraction once, many years ago. The manager spent the entire day (7.30-5) alternately telling me how much she LOVED working hospo, makes the day go so quickly! and screaming at me about coffees going cold waiting to be taken to tables. I was the only waitress there, and no coffee or sandwich sat on the bench more than 90 seconds but she would. Not. Stop.
    She screamed at me every time I stopped for a breather and it was 3.30 before I was able to drink a glass of water, at no point did I get the (mandatory here) break or meal. Upside was several tables of old ladies were extremely sympathetic to me and tried to talk me into leaving, but I have that blasted Presbyterian work ethic so I stuck it out for the day. Got screamed at again for not mopping the way she preferred, left and came back the following day for the envelope of cash. Manager GLOWED at me about how fantastic I was (I WAS, in fairness, an amazing waitress) and launched into “can I roster you tomorrow? Or do you want X day?” And I couldn’t help it, I burst out howling with laughter in her face. When I recovered I told her to lose my number and walked out

  410. Numbat*

    I had a strange combination interview/ trial shift session at a takeaway food place where I had responded to an ad for a food delivery driver. They showed me around, “here’s where we deep fry all the food, here’s where we assemble the orders, bla bla bla”. Then they showed me the cash register, and what was under it. I paraphrase: “Here’s where we keep the nitrous oxide canisters (also called nangs). They’re for whipped cream and soda streams, but we have heaps in stock because kids buy them to get high.” I was shocked, and a few minutes later told them I wasn’t interested in selling drugs to children, thanks, especially since there had been high profile deaths of teenagers from those things in the previous year where I lived. About 45 minutes from start to quit.

  411. Dragonfly7*

    Yes, twice.
    why it was so bad
    * how you quit
    * how your hasty exit was received
    * and any other interesting details
    1. I walked into Target and applied for a photo associate position on the in-store kiosk. This included providing my hours of availability. I was interviewed on the spot, informed that the photo associate posting was out-of-date, provided my availability out loud two more times, and eventually hired as a seasonal sales associate. When they telephoned to provide my start date a few days later, my scheduled orientation was right in the middle of a time I had explicitly stated I wasn’t available: the final exam for one of my college classes. In spite of explaining this to the office person who called, I wasn’t allowed to attend a different orientation or even defer it to the following week, it had to be that exact day. The office person didn’t seem surprised that I quit on the spot.
    2. Starbucks barista, where I didn’t even make it through day 3. I was so overwhelmed by the amount of equipment, number of recipes I needed to learn, and the hectic pace of the morning shift that I was visibly in tears. I told the manager, “I don’t think I’m going to be back tomorrow.” She looked understanding and simply asked if I wanted to go home, I nodded yes and took off my apron, and just left. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, depression, and anxiety about 3 months later, which probably contributed to the overwhelm, but I still haven’t done anything with that hectic of a pace before or since. Props to those of you who keep/kept up.

    1. ferrina*

      I’ve worked as a barista for a certain national chain, and it is tough. It’s one of those jobs that you can love or hate (especially if you are at a busy location), just depending on how your brain works. I’m ADHD with a high preference to multi-tasking, so it was an awesome job for me. I’ve known several people with very different brains from mine who quit in the first week.

  412. Bananaphone*

    I quit a job in my first shift. it was for adults with disabilities and they did not tell me I would need to transfer people who could not weight bear out of their wheelchair by myself. I couldn’t do it, and I was a very young not very strong person with absolutely no training. I also couldn’t reach my supervisor for help. this is over 30 years in my past so I barely remember what happened.

  413. Correlation is not causation*

    Early in my career I started a job working for a famous-in-his-own-mind singer who ran a Christian Music Company. He was a motivational speaker about overcoming an accident he’d had early in his life and espoused strict Christian values.
    On my second day of work, he walked past my desk and saw a dictionary on the bookshelf. He told me to move the dictionary onto my desktop. I thought he needed the dictionary, so I handed it to him and he said I should put it on the upper right corner of my desk. I asked why and he launched into a long tirade about how I was a woman and should not ask questions of a powerful man, and should do what I was told, when I was told to do it.
    Later that week a co-worker was having a difficult day and started screaming at me about a percieved mistake that I made. He was calling me horrible names and ultimately threw a stapler at my head, cracking the window behind my desk. I reported him to our manager, and was told that as a woman, I needed to expect that the men in the company had more stress than me, and I needed to be accomodating to them.
    That was all during my first and last week with that company.

  414. When gossip got me to quit*

    During the Great Recession, I was in a bad job in the non profit sector and so overworked and run down, that I was willing to take anything to get out of the non profit. I had only lived in this town for a few years at this point after I had finished grad school.

    I was hired at a jewelry store to learn to work as one of the staff who resizes and designs pieces. I was very excited about this, as it was a complete change from the non-profit and I knew it would be interesting work I would enjoy. (I am an artist who had no jewelry experience but was working in an arts non profit in an effort to have a more stable career).

    I gave my notice at the non profit and was suppose to start at the jewelry store on a Monday after a long weekend. I spoke to a couple people who told me to “be careful” about the jewelry store. No one would elaborate. I finally found someone willing to tell me what the deal was and I heard the man who owned the store and trained jewelry staff had a history of being accused of sexual assault. Then I heard a story of his wife driving her car into the yard of employees she thought were trying to steal her husband.

    After several people corroborated both stories, I called and quit before I even started. The manager (the wife in the above story) asked me to discuss with her why I decided to quit before starting and I lied and said a job in education (my main field) opened up unexpectedly and I couldn’t pass it up. In reality-I just ended up unemployed for two months. But I think that was a better deal.

  415. Beebop*

    Ok I TECHNICALLY stayed in this job about six weeks, but – I was hired by the comms department of a large company to do communications specially for llama. I show up on my first day, and my new grandboss said, “actually, we’re going to have you be the communications point person for teapots instead.” I knew nothing about teapots. I had no interest in teapots. Teapots were run by a different department of people I had never met. It was a TOTALLY DIFFERENT JOB.

    Obviously I hated it and I was so pissed about the bait-and-switch, but I figured I’d try to stick it out for while, at least. Lucky, a colleague from another company in our field called me about three weeks in asking if I was interested in a job with them (she wasn’t aware that I just had started a new job.) I JUMPED at the chance, gave a week’s notice, and skeedaddled.

    My immediate boss was really irritated with me and I felt terrible, but he was much more understanding after I explained the bait and switch situation. He then told me that they usually had a terrible time finding people who wanted to work in the teapot department and that he now suspected the hiring committee was literally trying to trick people into working there. Yikes.

  416. Nicola*

    I’ve left two jobs after or during the first shift, both about 30 years ago. I was a poor university student at the time, doing all sorts of random jobs during my degree.

    The first was a casual weekly private-home cleaning position I got through my university’s Job Board. I went to the home and spent about 3-4 hours cleaning, but the place was riddled with spiders. Under every rug, up near the ceiling, behind furniture, etc. I was alone in the huge house. I have arachnophobia, plus I live in a city with dangerous spiders (antivenom prevents death though, if you’re bitten). I stayed because I desperately needed the cash and had already gone to the trouble and expense of travelling there, but after completing the job and leaving, I later rang to say I couldn’t return next week because of all the spiders. She was shocked and dismissive that spiders could be such an issue. The lady never paid me for those hours of cleaning, which I’m still salty about, because she lived in an extremely wealthy suburb and could clearly afford to, and the whole time I was there I was scared but I had still done the work. (I’m bolshie now and would follow up on payment, but as a teenager was shy and avoided confrontation.)

    The second was a dodgy job that had falsely advertised the role, when I arrived I found it was a cold-calling for donations situation. I left after making about three calls, each was a wretched experience. I just walked out, explaining to the supervisor I couldn’t stay. I recall the shock from the supervisor and the people still seated making calls, that I’d leave so quickly. It would’ve been an additional job at the time, i.e. I would’ve had a few others to tide me over, I often juggled multiple simultaneous jobs through uni, so that meant I was able to leave.

  417. Chocoglow*

    The only one that was the first day was a family I babysat for in college. They were recommended from my main family (grandchildren of an aunt’s best friend, loved those kids) and from the moment I walked in, I thought it was as wonderful as the other family.

    I was nineteen, chubby and awkward, but at the time was blessed with a clear complexion and some curves, so the dad decided to COME BACK TO THE HOUSE AND WATCH ME ON CAMS. He’d snuck back in when I had the kids outside playing; I caught him in the master bedroom when I went in to grab clean clothes for the toddler (laundry would have been one of my duties and he HAD to have his dino shorts). I secured the kids, called the mom after leaving, furious, and quit less than four hours into the sit.

    They divorced less than a month later when he assaulted the next sitter. I dodged a hell of a bullet and still ponder if that could have been me.

  418. Can you say misogyny? I knew you could!*

    Back in the mid-90s I got a job running the office of a small local business that sold RVs and various related items like snowmobiles and ATVs.

    My first day, I was showed around the building by the older woman I would be replacing (who was retiring at the end of the week.) I had never worked in a business like this before – my last job had been with a small printing company – and I was horrified at the amount of near-pornographic and flat-out pornographic pictures the sales guys and the mechanics had in their areas. (And yes, it was all men. It turned out that I, and the owner, were the only women who would be working there.)

    My predecessor, probably sensing my acute discomfort, saw fit to lecture me about having the right attitude toward all the porn. That was, she explained, just the way it was. It was a man’s world, and I needed to make sure I fit in and wasn’t one of _those_ women that complained. The implication was that _those_ women were weak and worthless. Real women were tough and could handle whatever misogyny was thrown at them.

    We finally got to where I’d be working. I would have been prepared to ignore the porn in other areas, but it turned out there were dirty jokes and a filthy calendar plastered all over the walls in the office. Evidently, the owner, saw things the same way my predecessor did.

    I went home that night, thought carefully about it, and call them the next morning to quit. They were Not Happy. I was surprised when I got a check from them for the hours I had worked, a couple of weeks later.

  419. Frequent Lurker, New Commenter*

    One of my first ever real jobs, when I was like a sophomore in high school, was at a local TCBY yogurt shop. I was so excited about the job and really enthusiastic to learn and be a good employee. On the first day, the manager/owner/boss had me reading manuals about how much frozen yogurt went into each order. He wanted me to memorize all of it quickly. So, I would read the information and then look up to run through in my mind all of the information I had read at that point, hoping yo memorize it all. A little bit into this, he told me he “wasn’t going to mention it,” but that I clearly wasn’t engaged and was daydreaming when I was supposed to be reading and memorizing. I tried to explain, but he shut me down.

    He criticized everything I did. At first, okay, it was literally my first day. I had no idea what I was doing – fair enough. He told me, though, to make sure I was helpful and friendly to customers and assisted them as needed. Of course! No problem!

    Until a fellow teenager walked in with his friends, and they were asking for samples. That was a thing they did, and he was there with me getting samples of flavors for them. One of the teens asked for a sample of vanilla yogurt, and when I started to get that, I was yelled at (like, actual yelling) and told how dumb I was. Okay! My bad!

    He told me that the employees all had to weigh each yogurt order. You’d probably think this was to ensure the orders were consistent? Not so much. He explained to me that he checks the weighed in amounts with the yogurt purchased multiple times a day to ensure his employees don’t eat any yogurt. Okay.

    I went home after this, my first day, and told my parents about what had happened. They told me to stick it out. So back to work I went for the next shift.

    The second day was, somehow, worst than the first. The owner yelled at me repeatedly, both in front of customers and when it was just he and I in the store. As a newly sixteen year old girl, I was sort of terrified to be alone with this guy. I got through the second shift and went home and cried.

    After that second shift, my parents let me quit. I was so relieved, but also so scared to call and tell him I was done. I wound up calling him (well, the store) when I knew the store would be closed so I could just leave a voicemail. I left the voicemail letting him know that it wasn’t a good fit for me and that I wouldn’t be returning. I told him he could keep my pay as community service. (If I recall correctly, though, he had told me he’d be paying me less than minimum wage during training since it’d be such a burden on him.)

    I went on to have several high school jobs. Luckily, I was able to realize before college and entering the “real world” that this was not okay and that I didn’t want to work at a place that embarrassed their employees like that and just treated them like actual garbage.

    And that’s the story of how I worked two days at a TCBY. I wasn’t disappointed when I saw that the location closed a few years later.

    1. Seven If You Count Bad John*

      This reminds me of the time I spent two weeks working in a restaurant. Started as a dishwasher, got taught a bit of prep, got sent out to waitress despite not wanting to. It was a small, chef-owned place. All the tropes applied! When I watched Lenny Henry’s Chef! a few years later I was like yup. I’ve worked for that guy, only mine was worse and not funny.

      Anyway, Chef was keen on roundly abusing the staff. I don’t remember what had happened, but what I do remember is the customer who I had screwed up, flat out told him that after seeing how abusive he was to his staff he wasn’t coming back. He didn’t care about the error nearly as much as he cared about not supporting this kind of bullshit. Bless you, kind stranger!

      I quit soon after, and when I went to pick up my last meager paycheck, found the place locked up with a notice on the door that they’d been shut down by the relevant local governmental offices for, I believe, nonpayment of taxes.

  420. pīwakawaka*

    At university, before I got into sex work (which is decriminalized here), I spent a lot of time in various dysfunctional outbound survey call centres or contracted to ghostwrite copy for real estate agents (the listings, ads in papers, even their letters to clients). So when a job popped up doing cold calling for real estate agents from home, I thought it couldn’t be any worse!

    Turns out the entire strategy was that the owner of the operation was gathering data from local hospitals, care homes, emergency calls and deaths reports to figure out which elderly owners of local properties were ill, not in possession of their full faculties, likely to pass soon, or recently dead.

    Training was two days long, and delivered in-person at a house which must have cost at least five million dollars and had *three* pools. It was about exactly how to pressure the grieving relative or unwell person into a meeting with a real estate agent who could “sort it all out for you”, and from there the agent would figure out if they could convince them to sell (or, in some cases, to buy). We had to use our actual phones/phone plans/numbers, and this huge data mined spreadsheet we were working off was shared with us through a very insecure public link.

    My first day of calls included a woman who was placidly agreeing with absolutely everything I said, even the scripts which felt most egregious. She nearly gave me her bank details on the phone and asked me to manage them for her. I quit after that call by email. My boss called me, irate, and when I hung up on her incomprehensible yelling about my betrayal she filled my entire voicemail inbox with diatribes which, as I discovered weeks later when I finally dealt with it, took a turn for the incredibly racist. Apparently she hoped I’d be extra cutthroat because “Asians are naturally cold-blooded and manipulative”, but “should have expected cowardice as well”.

    Sex work was a HUGE improvement.

  421. Seven If You Count Bad John*

    A few years ago I interviewed for a job at a denture maker’s. I like working with my hands and I was in a jewelry program at the time. I think a classmate recommended me. I had to go through FIVE interviews. IIRC, I had an initial interview with the HR person, a get-to-know-you, here’s the job you interested? chat. Then there was a job shadow, where I sat with a sculptor at the bench to observe the job (and let me not get started with the OSHA shit I witnessed—one of my jewelry classes involved dental investment, which we were required to wear respirators while handling, because that shit can kill you, I’ve got a great-grandparent who died of white lung, and not only was there not a mask in sight, but bags of the stuff were being dropped on the floor and clouds raised amidst much hilarity). Then I got to do a bench test. Then I got to talk to the owner. Then I got to talk to the owner’s wife. Who hired me. These were all separate appointments, you understand—I had to go in on five separate days to do all this.

    I show up for my first shift, and the receptionist has no idea why I’m there. The HR person I’ve been talking to is on vacation that week. The owners aren’t around. Someone eventually comes along and takes me to the workshop, where I’m introduced as “here for a shadow”. No, I explain. I’ve been hired, this is my first shift, I’m here to work. “Oh, we don’t know anything about that. Let me go find the foreman” I waited around for about 40 minutes and when nobody showed up, I walked out. Told the receptionist “I’m leaving. You are not serious people.”

  422. Behavior Observer*

    In college, I was hired for a small retail shop with very, very low traffic. It was me and several 50+ year women. One of the women had a colostomy bag, which I only knew about because the other women gossiped about her constantly. The first time I was to work only with this woman, who was so sweet and hygienic, I was asked by the team lead to walk behind her and spray perfume where she is because customers might notice the smell! Please note, there was NO smell. They wanted me to bully this woman! I did not do this, and quit the next day. Almost 20 years later and I still think of the terrible bullying that was occurring at that store.

  423. Mmm.*

    I worked at a pizza place for one week in college. I was no flake: I stayed at a job in a busy mall for four years prior to this!

    I was a “phone girl.” Yes, that was my job title. I was barely trained, got screamed at by drunk people, was cornered by drunk guys outside when I had to do trash runs…

    My shifts? 4 pm to 4 am with a NINETY MINUTE break in the middle. Who was covering the phone? No idea, but this tells me they could have had me come in at 6 instead.

    I literally went to take a nap at a friend’s and sobbed every shift. Everyone was just so angry…except for the one guy who had a reputation for being angry. He was just loud. Super kind and helpful.

    I ended up quitting because I was scheduled outside my availability. I went in to tell them I couldn’t work it because I had an 8 am class.

    “That’s 4 hours after your shift ends. I don’t see the problem.”

    I was a ball of anxiety, so I emailed them to tell them I quit and to ask them to mail my paycheck.

    I never did see that check.

    And, insult to injury? The pizza sucked.

  424. Alter_ego*

    Oh boy! I did actually quit a job after two days! It was at a retail store selling lingerie, as a fitting specialist. I mentioned in my interview that this particular store didn’t sell my size, in case that would be an issue, but I was told it was no problem, and of a group of about 8-10 women interviewing, me and one other woman were hired.

    Day one: we had an all-staff training occurring in the morning, before me and the other new hire split off to do our new hire training once the store opened. During the all staff meeting, two employees got into a full on screaming match with each other, while the manager just quietly said “guys, calm down” to absolutely no effect. The training itself was on how to overcome people’s objections to signing up for the store credit card, including how to convince them if they said they didn’t want too because they already had too much debt.

    Day two: upon arrival, we were told to get ourselves fitted so that we could receive our free bras. I told the manager that, as I stated in the interview, their bras didn’t fit, but I was still confident in my ability to sell them. I was told she didn’t know why they would hire me then. I was also told that they didn’t want “people who look like me” to shop in the store (I’m fat), and that my presence there might make them think it’s “for them”. I was so shocked I couldn’t really respond in the moment, so I finished out my shift

    The next day I went in a said that I was uncomfortable with the way I was spoken to, and that I didn’t think I’d be able to continue my employment. The manager was totally shocked, and just kept talking about how all her employees loved her, and they threw her a baby shower, that’s how much they loved her, and what was I trying to say, all of her employees thought she was amazing. Classic case of the lady doth protesting too much. I have zero regrets

  425. Matt*

    Was hired more than 15 years ago to be the merchandising manager for a well-known national pet store.

    The first day, literally every employee made sure to seek me out and tell me what an awful place to work it was, and that management was terrible to deal with (even though I was now one of their managers). Those who didn’t work my first day, found me on day two. Warned me that the GM was unstable and it was only a matter of time before she lost her shit with me, and that most of them only stayed on because they cared about the live pets that were for sale.

    On my 3rd day I was told I needed to learn how to drive a forklift, and had to take a test. They put me in a room, made a big deal about how no one had ever failed the written test, and that the answer key just happened to be on the desk, but I wasn’t supposed to look at it.

    I called the general manager the morning of my 5th day, and told her that due to the toxic atmosphere, lack of training, and safety issues I wouldn’t be coming in that day and I wasn’t giving notice. I also told her that I’d be filing for unemployment, and if they disputed it, I’d be reaching out to OSHA about the violations I saw in my first 4 days.

    She hung up on me without saying a word, but also they didn’t dispute my unemployment claim.

    I’m now on my 16th year at the company that hired me after that mess.

  426. Not Jane*

    It wasn’t quite the same day or week, I think I managed 3 weeks. I worked weekends for a restaurant waiting tables. On my first day I got relegated to washing dishes because I could only carry (only wanted to safely carry) 4 plates at a time. Spent the entire time washing dishes. The customers were more friendly than my co-workers. After a few shifts of this I decided I had way too much personality to be working there. Instead of quitting, I just never asked for more shifts, and never called. After about 2 months I thought I better actually tell them I’m not coming back so I went in and spoke to the manager. He said ‘Oh that’s a shame, we’re really going to miss you around here. Just excuse me a moment..’ Turns to someone else and says ‘what’s her name again?’

  427. no tips*

    I had a job as a server at a sit down pizza place for 2 days once. I went in for a short training day where I made a couple dollars in tips. Whatever, it was a weird time and I wasn’t there long. I went back the next day and worked a normal shift and split tips with the server I was working with, we each got $3! I asked everyone working there if that was normal for a night. They said it was and everyone was weirdly okay with it, and just told me to also work at Walmart with them. (nothing against anyone working at Walmart but that wasn’t what I was looking for.)
    I just never went back. No one called me either, so I think they knew why I left.

  428. Ann*

    Yes indeed, my first paying job. I was with a temp agency right out of high school and my first placement was a convenience store home office. I was on a surprisingly large team that the only. job. all. day. every. day. was disassembling the daily paperwork packets sent in from each store and restapling each packet in the correct sequence. Surely they could have created a job aid for the stores to submit right the first time. I quit after the first day but agreed to stay on until day 3.

    1. Ann*

      P.S. I called my temp agency at the end of the first day to quit, but was told it was too soon. I threatened to quit the agency altogether if they didn’t release me, so they proposed finishing out the week (2 more mind-numbing days) until a replacement could start. After 20 years, I still can’t look at a staple remover without thinking about it haha, but at least I always win the “who’s had the worst job ever?” icebreaker.

  429. RowanUK*

    I’d resigned from my first job after two years because the toxicity was making me ill. Took December off to consider my options, then started job searching from Jan. Well, a recruitment consultant convinced me to go back as a temp in a different department (I got on with that team, so thought…what’s the harm?)

    Apart from the awkwardness of returning to my old workplace, the temp role was not what I thought it would be. They gave me a brief chat, then sat me down on the phones. It was a compliance role, and I thought it would involve paperwork, but it was really secret shopping – you had to ring advertisers and pretend to be a customer, asking them a list of questions, being very convincing and then saying you’d get back to them.

    I had a visceral reaction to it. I hated calling people anyway, but I used to work with these people in a client service capacity and knew many were independent workers trying to survive. I felt like I was wasting their time.

    So, I spoke to the department head the next day and told him why I couldn’t do it. He was genuinely upset because they liked me, but he understood.

    I was a very people-pleasing, self-conscious 24-year-old who didn’t know how to say no to a recruitment agent, even though my instincts were telling me to. It was a great lesson, and I got a full time job a few weeks later at the place I’m still at (15 years later!).

  430. The Sleepy Scientist*

    I was hired by a family for a babysitting/nanny job during my university summer break. I wanted to quit after the first hour but agreed to finish out the week because they wouldn’t be able to make alternative arrangements on such short notice.

    Why did I want to quit within the first hour? The children were monsters and I don’t say this lightly. They had never heard the word “no” before, so this was met with a lot of resistance. The 6 year old would just scream and go behind your back and ignore the no, while the 4 year old would pinch and bite. Bite HARD, almost drawing blood, and then giggle. I simply did not get paid enough to risk tetanus.

    I told the mom at the end of the first day that I wouldn’t be able to continue and she asked why. I said that my previous babysitting family had asked me to work for them again (true) and that I wouldn’t be able to combine that with working for them (lie). Not my finest moment, but keep in mind that this woman had not warned me at all about her demon children (or rather: her and her husband’s lack of parenting, leading to children with severe behavioural issues). She was very disappointed and even a bit angry, but I’m glad I was steadfast.

    Any remorse I felt was gone the next day when she announced that I was to take the children to the hairdresser’s. Oh by the way, the 4 year old was afraid of getting her hair cut. That went about as well as expected.

    Funny (or sad) detail: she found out I was studying psychology and hoped I could give her some insight into how to get her children to be less difficult. I said something about how children need consistency and structure (I was not studying developmental psychology).

  431. T.*

    Yes. It was a bait & switch.
    HRM in retail but it was really a floor manager that specifically oversaw the HR admin and handled HR investigations. They lied about the hours and responsibilities. There was a heavy lifting requirement, not in the job description, that I couldn’t not handle due to an injury.
    Fortunately, another job where I was interviewing came through that week (I interviewed there 1st and thought I didn’t get it so when bad job came through, I took it).
    I apologized to the manager and said I’d work out the last 2 days of the week but I got a higher offer with no heavy lifting where I interview first. They understood and said just finish the shift.

  432. archangelsgirl*

    why it was so bad
    how you quit
    how your hasty exit was received
    and any other interesting details

    This was A Long Time Ago. When I was in university, I got a job for a third party envelope stuffing company. I got the job through the University Job Board. This was a physical office in a physical building where they posted recipe sized cards with jobs. This was before there was such a thing as the Internet for regular folk, 1987 to be precise (Google tells me the internet was invented in 1983, but I think it was restricted to higher ed and scientific businesses).

    The business I was hired for sent out letters on behalf of third parties. The day I started, they were working on sending out fundraising letters to alumni of the institution I attended. I don’t know what other kind of business they had. Part of the job was to run the signature machine, where you manually put the letter under the machine for signature. This was so the signature was in color. Color photocopiers had been invented, but I had never seen one in common use.

    After the letter had a signature, you had to fold it (in an “S” fold!) manually and neatly and put it in an envelope. The folds had to be pressed down several times, so they were “sharp and crisp”.

    I worked there half a day. More than half of my attempts were rejected (the signature is 0.5 mm too high. The S fold is not precise.) I am Not A Detail Person. I was also 19 years old. So I just… went for lunch and never came back. Two weeks later a cheque for my four hours came in the ail (at $6.43 an hour, which was minimum wage at that time). I always wondered if they found sufficient university students to train to make precise S-folds… but I just couldn’t.

    That was nearly 40 years ago. This history lesson has been brought to you by the letters U of T.

    1. Loredena*

      Being your age I’ve also had many chances to make S folds and stuff envelopes. Fortunately I was not required to make perfect ones as I was equally incapable!

  433. DoubleTrouble3WeekBurstBubble*

    It only took 5 days for the dream of being a first time manager at a large corporation to come crashing down. Looking back I should have paid more attention to the sign that was posted plain as day “Please do not take it out on our workers it is not their fault we are understaffed”. I truly believed that my presence would be a solution that would eliminate the need for that sign. However, on my fifth day I was (unintentionally) left alone in to handle the entire operation with 1 day of introductions and 3 days of training. The red flags swooped in and I knew I had to run.

    The red flags were everywhere. Higher level managers laughing and flirting with each other while line-level were literally crying and asking for help, then being berated for it told to go back. Those same managers feeling comfortable enough to tell me that because the line level were hired from an agency so they are undocumented and not company employees so they could be fired today with no repercussions if she felt like it. Systems in place to help communication between departments having over 10,000 opened and unresolved cases which prevented workers from making “duplicate” calls. 100 missed calls on the main telephone line within 1 hour due to upset clients from sketchy billing practices. Employees afraid to do their job because they would be terminated if it was not done 100% correctly on the first try. I could go on and on. The building and its staff were falling apart at the seams.

    My third week working there I still had not completed the entire training due to being interrupted by having to jump in and work despite not being completely trained and informing my superiors that I did not feel ready. I went to HR on Friday and let them know that I would not continue working. The first question they asked is if I would stay to the end of the day which was so extremely telling of their turnover situation. Then they asked me to fight for the job and I broke down in tears letting them know that I would not.

    I left that place and never looked back. Took a management position at a company I had previously worked for and even though it was not sunshine and rainbows, it certainly had team spirit and community which I highly appreciated after that experience.

  434. Rory*

    Took a summer job in college for some cash, working for a well known charity in my country. Role was selling scratch cards on the street of various towns in the wider region.

    It was crappy work really – typically early start to gather centrally then a bus would drive us and drop off at various towns insider area where you would be left all day (outside at mercy of weather) to try and sell the cards. The CEO of said charity had also resigned in disgrace the previous year for embezzlement which led to a level of abuse from some members of public

    Anyway, one saving grace was it was a flat daily rate so guaranteed some money. Until a week in when we returned to “base” and told that we had to sign a new contract for the next day that was commission based. I flat refused to sign as this would likely mean miniscule pay on some days…not worth the cost of the transport I used to get to base! Their response was to say “either sign this or you can quit but we’ll withhold what you’ve earned this week” (which was of course illegal)….so I quit on the spot ( losing out on approx $150 worth local currency – quite a lot to a broke student in late 90s!). That was the end of it I thought, annoyed though I was to lose the cash

    Cue a few days later when, clearly struggling for workers, they phoned the house asking if I would be available the next day (!!). Unfortunately for them my Dad, a man for whom diplomacy was never a strong point, answered the house phone and gave them both barrels. Cursed them out of it and said he would be taking legal action via my lawyer brother to recover my missing wages. Two hours later someone showed up at the door with my money :)

    A week later I got a job working on a building site, earning approx 3 times more per day with set hours. Physical work but much more gratifying and lucrative :)

  435. LondonLady*

    Not me but someone we hired when I was a team leader. For context, it was a public affairs consultancy that did advocacy / lobbying type work for client projects in the UK. We hired people with good experience and connections in the political world. I managed one of the teams, each with a portfolio of current projects.

    This new joiner, let’s call him ‘Bob’, had been interviewed (by big boss), offered, accepted and started the job, which was when I first met him. ‘Bob’ had worked for an MP and served as a local councillor so clued up on political stuff.

    On day one he sat in my team’s regular morning meeting where we updated on current projects and threw in a bit of extra background on each for Bob’s benefit. Fairly standard stuff like “we had feedback from Ali’s contact at Anytown council that they talk about green stuff but really youth facilities are their priority so we’re going to advise the shopping centre client to replace the planned rose garden with a kickabout pitch – and invite the Mayor to open it. Clem is the best person to contact the Mayor because they both breed poodles.”

    At the end of the meeting he and I went to the office kitchen for a coffee and next stage of induction chat. Bob practically burst into tears, said the job was “all spin and manipulation” and “immoral” and “I can’t do this”. I was stunned but tried to be sympathetic, said first days can be overwhelming etc, did he want to take a short break? He went into our boss’s office (it was a small company all except the boss in one open plan office) and quit on the spot. We couldn’t hear the words but the tone and Bob storming out were unmissable. Boss sent round a “Bob won’t be starting with us today after all” email.

    We did reach out to Bob and ask him if he wanted us to accept his resignation or if he wanted to take a day and then come back in. Or if he wanted another conversation at least. But he just blanked us.

    We also discussed whether our induction (onboarding in UK English) programme could be improved. But apparently he just completely rejected what we did. And I’m still baffled as to why he applied for, was offered, and accepted the job!

  436. Cenatio Iovis*

    During a period of unemployment and mild destitution I got a temp job doing silver service at fancy dinner events through a friend who basically lived off the tips he got working the bar for the same agency. Despite having no experience in any kind of food service at all. They gave me 45 mins of “training” in an office, using a clipboard as a prop silver tray, then sent me out to a VERY fancy affair promising that an experienced person would buddy me.
    I arrived and found that 1. I was to be serving three 20 person tables alone and 2. My “buddy” was much more interested in snogging his gf in a supply cupboard. After an hour of staring at other people setting the tables, trying to find my MIA buddy (never did see him) and becoming progessively more panicked at the idea of dropping gravy on a VIP/being shouted at (my greatest fear), I told someone I was going to the toilet, grabbed my bag and RAN out of there. I turned my phone off for 3 days so I don’t know how they reacted to my fleeing but they never mentioned it to my friend so I suspect it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.
    I ended up working behind the bar in a sticky metal club, which was much more my speed.

  437. redwitsch*

    I am from Czechia, so we are paid monthly. I quit after month, because I started on first December and wanted to get company Christmas package, but I started thinking about it on first day and decided, that I dont want to work there on fifth day. First day I was watching mainly learning videos, because IT did not had prepared access for me and person mentoring me said, that another person, which started two months before me is liar, bad person etc and if they did not fire him, she will quit. During my month I did not find him being liar or bad person, he was kinda lazy a not good in taking feedback, but he had some illness, which make him have some tics and sometimes they were verbal – grunting and he did not tell team about it, so they were suprised first time and probably got wrong impression for him (speculation) and therefore there was effect of bitch eating crackers. But I would overlooked it, if second day she did not start screaming on him, because he was not taking her feedback – I had him on my left, her on my right and she was screaming over me – that was really unpleasant. For the rest of week she still spoke about, how he is bad and she really gave her resignation (in my country we have to work two month after giving resignation). In the beginning, it looked, that nothing will hapend, but because she worked there many years, they of course choose to keep her and fired him near the end of his probation period – I dont have problem with firing – he was in his 3 months probation period like me, so they could fire him for everything, but the style they done it. Normally boss had meeting with you in private and told you, that it is not working. But they just sent person from HR in to full room of coworkers to tell him, that there are firing him, and they he can leave as soon he is packed. It left bad taste in my mounth. When I add to it, that during interview I was promised, that core hours are 9-15 and I can arrive around 8, because I am not morning person, but then I got information, that my team is starting mainly between 7-7:15 and I should be there because of training with them, so I asked how long I will need to go earlier and they said that because my team is working like this, it basically will be permanent. So that was my last nail in coffin and I just coasted until Christmas, last day I packed everything, what was mine and did not say anything to anyone and during Christmas week I just send email to HR, that I will not return in January.

  438. Papercutsandharassment*

    I quit a job three days in one time which is completely out of character for me. I was looking for some work to fill a summer before graduate school, and contacted a temp agency in my town. They set me up with a job sorting magazines for distribution. Basically, there was a long conveyor belt in the center of the room and pallets of stacks of different magazines behind us. We lined the conveyor belt, read orders, and then had to run behind us and count out the correct number of each type of magazine to put in a box which would then be distributed to local convenience stores, supermarkets, etc.

    That’s all fine and good, but THE PAPERCUTS. Oh my Lord the papercuts. Having to thumb through and count out repeatedly for hours stacks of paper meant my hands were absolutely shredded within the first day. To boot, the room was incredibly filthy. I don’t know whether it was paper dust in the air or what, but it got all over EVERYTHING so in addition to the papercuts my arms and hands were almost black. When I went home and showered, I had so many cuts that my skin burned under the water.

    The second day, I told a coworker who asked how I found the first day something offhand like, “Oh I couldn’t wait to get home to take a shower.” He actually smirked and said, “Ohhhh I would’ve liked to see that.” Eeeeugh. I wish I could say that was the only creepy thing that was said to me in the three days, but unfortunately it was not.

    I made it to day three and thought, “You know what? I don’t need the money this bad.” I told the floor manager at the end of my shift that I was done and he laughed and said, ‘Really? Okay fine, whatever.'” He was so unbothered by it that it made me wonder if it wasn’t that unusual for someone to bail on that place. I still rank it as the worst job I’ve ever held. It took my hands about a week to recover.

  439. Liese*

    It is important to note that i applied for this job at the start of the year but they themselves postponed my start date to the start of summer. I knew the previous person who held that job title had a lot of experience so it lined up with what would be her exit period. There were two people working on the job and i was informed from the start the other person would be training me so i saw no red flags there.

    When i got there however the person i would be replacing, (let’s call her Jane) was still there and had agreed to work on week contracts until the annual reporting was done. This to me already struck as odd as there is a legal reason this report had to be filed before my start date. However it had been a rough year due to some IT happenings so i was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

    After i got done with the obligatory tour of the company and introductions to other departments i was told that there was no training in place. I asked for a manual, a standard type manual that every company i’ve worked for has had, they didn’t have it. I asked questions to the person that was supposed to be training me (Let’s call him John) . But he just ignored me. In an open plan office i was asking him basic questions (Ie. What archiving format do you use, in what timeframe are we to respond to emails, etc) and he just did not respond. The first thing John said to me was that it was a shame i was not a “nice conservative girl” of the same religious background as him.

    This pattern continued the following day. No training, stonewalling on any and all questions and weird comments about my religious background, gender and age. On day 3 John just wasn’t in the office he had decided to work from home and had not informed me. The only person there was Jane. Who quite understandably was annoyed at being left alone with me. She informed me that rather then only working for this one company she was an industry veteran, highly respected with experience in a few companies, and had brought up the various ways in which the company was in non compliance with various reporting and tax laws (see also the annual reports which weren’t done at the time). She had apparently pushed on a plan forward to fix these mistakes and had subsequently been fired and was now being replaced by me who had 5 years of professional experience vs her 30 years of professional experience.

    Needless to say it painted a very different picture of the company. In the late afternoon my boss stopped by and i chatted with him about needing training and also about the strange comments about my age/gender/religion that had already been brought up. He essentially waved them away stating that John just wasn’t like that. And that he was probably just under a lot of stress.

    Day four remained the same as days one and two. This time with the absolute low point that John “didn’t understand how i didn’t have kids. Every woman wants kids it’s the one thing women are made for”. Needless to say i was shocked, appalled and done giving chances to this company. Especially was the boss was present for this comment and just … didn’t say anything about it.

    I quit on friday. My boss said he saw it coming because i clearly had a distaste of John, and he implied it was a bias i held against him rather then the comments John had made about me. He then proceeded to say that it was my fault for being worried on things like the annual report and other legal reporting requirements because i had pushed for the summer start date. (Not acknowledging that they should have been done before that). I had a single week of notice to perform, legal requirement over here, and i did it being ignored. Though Jane was greatly amused by the way things went.

    A few months later, when i was in a new job that was a quasi perfect fit for me, i got a linkedin message from someone of the controlling department of that company. After i left some other people got their notices out of the blue. The company was put under a stricter observance and has been ever since. The person from the controlling department said that more and more legal issues kept popping up, he deemed it a sinking ship.

  440. Annie E. Mouse*

    Early in my career, I had a job that I should have quit on day 1. Actually, I never should have accepted the role, but I was too inexperienced to know that. The offer was an email with base salary, but there was nothing about benefits or billable hours (legal). Red flag #1. Being young and naïve, I just assumed that everything would be fine. On day 1, boss brings me in and wants me to draft my own employment contract. (I was not and have never been an employment lawyer.) Red flag #2.

    I basically stole something from the internet and inserted benefits that seemed reasonable (insurance, 401k, 2 weeks vacation, pay bar dues and CLE, etc). Boss went ape shit and told me that I was trying to nickel and dime him to squeeze extra money out of the salary. No benefits were offered, no vacation at all first year, 1 week beginning second year, etc. He also inserted outrageous billable hour requirements that essentially meant I would have to work 60 hours/week. Red flag #3. This was a law firm with <10 employees. Young lawyers do work a lot of hours in big law, but the tradeoff for smaller firms is usually a smaller paycheck in exchange for fewer hours. This was a tiny paycheck that did not warrant those kind of hours.

    Then I was shown my desk – a shared desk with a territorial and angry paralegal. Not a shared office; a shared desk. An hour or so later, she went to talk to the boss about a case. Everyone in the office could hear him screaming at her through the closed door for at least 10 minutes. Not raised voice, it was the type of screaming where you'd call the police if you heard it from your neighbor. She came out in tears. Red flag #4.

    I took lunch to give her some space and immediately restarted my job search. I was too broke to just quit, so I ended up working there for almost a year. It only got worse. When I did finally quit, boss was utterly shocked and told me I was throwing away my career. I did eventually learn that the paralegal quit and filed an employment claim related to missing overtime pay and managed to tack on something related to the hostile work environment. (The screaming abuse was not an isolated event.) I learned to ask a lot more questions in interviews and to get a whole offer before I accept.

  441. Juicebox Hero*

    I didn’t exactly quit; I was hired then forgotten.

    I was in college and applied for a part-time job at an office supply store. I had some retail experience and everything went very well. I went through the interview, took the “honesty test” thing (the one where they ask questions like “if the cashier forgot to ring up one item in your grocery order, would you go back to pay for it or just be all like SCORE!”) and the paperwork was all filled out. I just had to wait for the manager to finalize things, just wait here, she’ll be right out.

    I waited there for 45 minutes because I timed it. I stood there staring at the same few items as customers came and went, and employees came and went, and no one even acknowledged me.

    I couldn’t ask anyone, because I’d been raised to believe that asking people stuff would make them hate you because they’d think you didn’t trust them. I also couldn’t leave, because I’d been raised to believe that quitting was a worse sin than asking questions.

    I finally got fed up and left, going home to where my mother read me the riot act for not asking someone what the holdup was.

  442. RaginMiner*

    Oh, man. I worked as a contractor/intern for a solar GC. We handled mineral rights accommodations for large solar companies. From day 1, they treated me WAY more like an employee than a contractor. red flag number one! My boss was a crotchety old woman who thought I was scrolling through twitter when I actually just had my spreadsheet on dark mode, and thoroughly berated me for it. She also told me once she wanted to strangle me over a mistake I made. Oh, and the owner of the company told me to my face that “I didn’t know sh*t” and also that “I should know who he is” because he thought he was a big name in oil and gas. The last straw was really another employee, who was supposed to train me in GIS, purposely training me wrong because he “wouldn’t train his competition.” I called around to some old mining friends, got a new job, and never came back and ghosted all their calls. I should have quit right after the first red flag!

  443. Old Admin*

    When I was in college, the city ran something called “student services” where people in need of help called in and registered students worked for hourly pay. I’ve done moving, cleaning, and all sorts of short term office jobs that lasted days to months.

    I once was called for an office job (filing etc.), and was sat down at a bare desk with a phone and the local phone book to basically do cold calling. Lots of pressure was applied.
    I struggled through the day feeling absolutely terrible and needing the money.
    In the afternoon, I wasn’t paid until I promised to come back the next day.
    Needless to say, I never went back and told the student services office the job was badly misrepresented.

  444. TheseTinyKeyholes*

    One summer during undergrad I was staying with relatives a few states away from my parents and my college. I needed a job and wanted to do good in the world so I signed on with an environmental nonprofit doing door-to-door fundraising.

    My first day was a training day where I went out with one of the more experienced team leads to learn the job and practice the script. Our assigned region that day was pretty rural and run down, and almost all the people we spoke to were uninterested in being solicited or were sympathetic but couldn’t afford to donate. One kind woman gave us a plastic ziploc baggie of spare change which amounted to maybe $3?

    I was already finding the entire process stressful and didn’t think the door-to-door solicitation aspect was something I could handle (plus we’d been out in the sun all day and I wasn’t feeling well), but then we got caught in a sudden downpour and had to run back to the trainer’s car. We sat inside the car, soaking wet and steaming, counting up our sad plastic baggie of spare change.

    I can’t remember if we tried to visit another neighborhood after that or if we went straight back to the office, but I do vividly remember that while we were driving back at the end of the day, the stress and heat and sudden rain and the motion of the car caught up to me all at once, at which point I vigorously threw up all over the front passenger side of her car.

    Once we got back to the office and I’d meekly tried to help her clean up the mess, I let her know I didn’t think the job was for me and that I wouldn’t be back. I later had to pester the company several times to pay me the $40 I’d been promised for my one training day. It’s been twenty years but I live in that same region now and still think of that day on the rare times I drive through that particular rural area.

  445. Sadge*

    Technically it was only an interview, but I basically worked an entire shift, so here goes:

    I had just moved to Brooklyn from California, and I was very young, naive, and broke. I set up (what I thought was) an interview at a pizza restaurant to be a counterperson. The owner tells me to come in at 8pm, so I do. When I arrive, he says he’s busy (looked like he was chatting with his friends? Vendors?), so I end up waiting 2 hours. Then he says his cook is going to train me on the cash register. So I’m manning the cash register, and I learn the POS system pretty quickly, cool! The cook is hanging out, telling me all about how many times people have OD’d in the bathroom, not cool!

    The restaurant closes at 2am, and the owner is long gone. The cook shows me how to close up. He takes me in the back to show me the kitchen, and he pulls out a cigarette and starts smoking! Indoors!! In a food establishment!!! I finally get home after 6am. My boyfriend is mad because he stayed up waiting for me, and why didn’t I tell him I was going to be so long?

    The owner calls me a day or so later and tells me the cook was impressed with me, and when can I start? I lie and say I already accepted another job offer. I still wonder why I didn’t just leave sooner.

  446. Cowlypso*

    Teenager looking for a job. The job was for home health aide or something like that. The entirety of the training was watching a half hour video on bloodborne pathogens. They sent me to a home for an 8 hour shift on a Saturday. I showed up, the night person said nothing to me as she went out the door. I had no idea what I was supposed to do or how to do it. I feel terrible for that old couple because I’m sure I was supposed to be assisting them with bathroom stuff, lunch, etc. But I was in way over my head and had received zero training or instruction. I went home at the end of the day, cried, and never showed up again, and nobody from the company ever called to find out why.

  447. JLT*

    In my early 20s, I decided to pick up a second job around the holidays for extra money. On my first day at this department store (rhymes with Pacy’s), I had to sit and watch a few hours of videos as part of my training. One of the first videos was a propaganda-filled tirade about the dangers of unions and how we should basically always be on the lookout for coworkers who may be lurking in the shadows trying to unionize and be sure to report them immediately. For the good of all of us of course. Realizing I couldn’t stomach this corporate nonsense, I grabbed my coat, found the supervisor, and said I’d just realized I don’t have the time for this gig. She looked surprised and asked if I needed my hours adjusted. I just said “nope”, and walked out.

  448. Carrots*

    A part-time library job in my early to mid 20s. The other staff members wouldn’t even introduce themselves to me- one flat out refused to shake my hand when I met him, then begrudgingly did so when the manager made him. There was one woman training me and another one kept coming by to “see if she was okay” for some reason.

    I came in twice and then resigned via email. I wasn’t the first person to do so- they had extremely high turnover and listed staff on a dry erase board so that they could just erase names when people left.

  449. A little less noise there*

    I got a summer job taking tickets at at a busy tourist attraction in my city. I didn’t mind the work, but right across from the registers was a giant screen that played fast moving videos and loud music every. single. second. of an eight hour shift. I asked my supervisor to only schedule me for three days in a row so that my sensory system could reset, and she agreed. When I checked the schedule, she had scheduled me for seven days in a row “so you can have four days off in a row like you asked.” I realized it just wasn’t worth the sensory overload and quit on the spot.

  450. Contracts Killer*

    You asked for reasons people quit within a week. Here’s mine and it’s a doozy.  I quite literally dodged a bullet. I’ve emailed this story to Alison with the details and new clips.

    I was hired at a now-defunct matchmaking company. The guy I was casually dating said they were hiring and paid well, so I accepted a job in sales.  We were supposed to follow up on leads where people had filled out interest cards (it was the late 90s).  My job was to call people who filled out the cards and convince them to sign up for the service.  The service guaranteed you a certain number of matches.  But it didn’t guarantee those matches would date you or be the best fit – important later.

    Their ads made it look like it was a service for beautiful and successful people.  In reality, the majority of people were not considered “conventionally” attractive.  Most men were very short and most women were very tall, making for awkward pairings. Men had to be 21+, but women only had to be 18. Men had to have a valid driver’s license and a car, but women didn’t. We were to offer discounts or even free memberships to people who were conventionally attractive. 
    From this alone, I was already tempted to quit.  Then they explained the phone calls.  We were to call people who had filled out an interest card and speak with them.  If we had to leave a voice mail or speak with someone else, we couldn’t say why were were calling, just provide our first name and phone number.  Some of the cards were months old and people were now in relationships. I had many angry girlfriends demand to know why I was calling their boyfriend, but I couldn’t tell them, just leave my name and number.  Disgusted with everything, I quit within a week. 

    The following week, all the employees (it was a small office) went to court. The office was being sued by a 45 year old man who had paid $1200 but only ended up matched with a 47 year old when he wanted a woman of child bearing age. No in-person dates ever panned out.  He lost the suit, followed the employees back to the office, and held them at gunpoint for several hours before finally surrendering to police.  The man I was dating was there the entire time. I believe he may have been the one to climb out the window to call for help.

  451. Rory*

    I quit one job after one day. I was maybe 20 or 21 years old, and I was desperate for work, so I accepted an interview with some kind of call center. The whole thing was odd – the place was hard to find, the interviewer was a little off (more than a little I would find out later), and they weren’t really clear on what the work was. Well, I was hired. When I showed up on the first day, I was told I would be cold-calling people on a list to do a “survey,” which would then determine if they were a good candidate to be pursued by the sales team (honestly I can’t remember what they were selling.) I had a script and a list of people to start calling, and I just started sweating and feeling awful.

    * why it was so bad ~ I was shy and hated talking on the phone at all, let alone making unwanted cold calls to strangers. I eventually got the nerve to start making calls and it was just as awful as I thought. People didn’t want to talk to me and I felt so cringe-worthy going through this stupid script that they tried to convince me was not sales. There was no way I could do this for several hours every day.
    * how you quit ~ I made it through day 1 (which I think was a merciful 2 hour shift) and the next day I called my supervisor (the same person who had interviewed me) and just said I couldn’t do it.
    * how your hasty exit was received ~ My supervisor was actually very kind and understanding, as she knew that kind of work was hard to do.
    * and any other interesting details ~ Unfortunately it didn’t quite end there. My supervisor apparently thought I was good friend material, so she somehow got herself invited over to my house. She seemed nice and I was actually excited to potentially have a new friend (she was close to my age, maybe a few years older).
    But I soon came to realize she was… very off. She started telling me about demons and monsters that she believed were very real, but only she could see them. It seemed like she was on some kind of drug(s), maybe meth or something similar. She spoke about them so normally that all I could do was just sort of nod and make agreeable sounds. I tried to distance myself from her, but she was very persistent as a “friend” and would call me constantly. It took a few weeks to shake her off.
    I made a vow afterward that I would never apply for a call center or other work that I knew I would hate ever again, no matter how desperate. Luckily I have never been desperate enough to have to break that vow since.

  452. LovelyLibrarian*

    I worked at a local frozen yogurt place for about 4ish days
    (not one of the popular national chains that exist across the US)
    * why it was so bad
    Red flag # 1- Boss Lady Bananapants (BLBP) wanted to pay me minimum wage in cash until I was trained to her satisfaction, then she would cut a real paycheck for $8/hr. “clocking in” was a spiral notebook. Not a huge deal, but it matters later.
    Red flag #2- I never met BLBP in person, I was hired over the phone. The girl who trained me had worked there for 3 years and had only seen BLBP twice in person.
    Red Flag #3- On my first day, my coworker met me in the parking lot to tell me where the blindspots for the security cameras were.
    Red flag #4- on a day I was not scheduled, I received something like 7 phone calls from BLBP asking why I wasn’t at work training (I was enjoying a planetarium which is why I didn’t answer the first time she called). When I said I wasn’t on the schedule, BL said “well, you should’ve taken initiative to know you should show up”
    * how you quit
    Texted BLBP (wanted a paper trail) that the schedule wasn’t working out with my other babysitting job, and they had my priority. I ended the text by asking how I should pick up my pay for the week (something like $75ish dollars)
    * how your hasty exit was received
    BLBP responded to my texts saying she was so disappointed in me and that she couldn’t believe she wasted “so much time” hiring and training me (note, I never met this woman in person.
    E V E R). BLBP also said she didn’t have any record of me working for her so I wasn’t entitled to any payment. BLBP texted me like 2 weeks later asking me to return my uniform so she wouldn’t have to repurchase it for the next person. I told her, “sorry, who is this? I don’t have any record of you”.
    * and any other interesting details
    Apparently Boss Lady Bananapants and her husband owned two shops. They never visited them, they just watched through the cameras. They would also dock your pay if your uniform wasn’t complete, or if you were on your phone at all for any reason, even if there wasn’t anyone in the shop, or if you did your tasks in the wrong order. Keep in mind, you still had to work, they just wouldn’t pay you for the hours worked for the above infractions (which is 100% illegal).

  453. George Clooney*

    Not me; also, gross, but…

    Towards the end of my time in university, I lived near a dying mall with a dying K-Mart which I would sometimes browse when procrastinating. One time, I found myself talking to one of the staff about some of the worst behaviour of some of the customers. Someone, she told me, had come in and managed to smear their own feces on several of the shelves. It stayed that way because everyone they told to clean it up quit on the spot. This included several new hires whose first task was to clean up… that.

    I suspect that at that age, I wouldn’t have had the sense to do that were I in their place. So good for ’em.

  454. MillenialHR*

    I accepted the job on the promise that I would be able to complete social media marketing as well as manage a front office a small, but busy, physical therapy practice. They did indicate they had longer hours and I would be expected to work until 9pm one night a week and one Saturday morning per month, so that was no problem. I came from a large health system with over 40 physical therapy offices I provided IT support and social media marketing for, but the environment was too toxic and I wasn’t leaving work most days until after 8pm (that was also my first job out of college and I didn’t know how to set boundaries yet!).

    I went in for my first day at new, small office. A woman introduces herself as the new practice manager, recently promoted (after I accepted the position to be the…practice manager). I was surprised, but thought there may have been some confusion, so I kept quiet and was going to speak to the manager of the office at another time when the new “practice manager” wasn’t around. They then told me the scope of the role and that I would be a front desk receptionist – which is not what I wanted to do.

    The first day, another receptionist came in (this office was not busy enough for two receptionists…) and bad-mouthed the practice, the owner, the owner’s wife, and the office manager. She told me it was a terrible place to work and they had turnover constantly. My red flags went up after the first day. I left and cried the entire way home and wished I hadn’t left my previous job.

    The next day, one of the therapists (who was AT LEAST double my age) started hitting on me. I said I had a boyfriend (a lie) to get him to leave me alone, but he was adamant. I also found out that part of the job of a receptionist is doing all of the therapist’s laundry for the practice as well as cleaning the massage oil out of sheets.

    The fourth day, the owner’s wife joined me for my late shift that was supposed to end at 9pm. She said she was “training me” on nights, but she had no clue what she was doing or how their EMR system worked (it was super basic and a system I had used, so I was pretty comfortable). I left at 9:45pm and was expected to be back in the office at 7am the next morning.

    I reached out to my former coworkers and my former boss and begged them for my old job back. My former boss was a very egotistical woman who did not respond to my email asking for my job back, but I heard from coworkers that she was proud my new job had not panned out.

    By Saturday (the first weekend day I had to work in my first week, by myself at the front desk) I was done. The job wasn’t what I had agreed to, the benefits were not great, the work environment was toxic and harassing, so I sent an email to the owner and said I wasn’t going to be back and that it wasn’t a good fit.

    He called me and asked me for an EXIT INTERVIEW. After ONE WEEK. I politely declined multiple times, but I lived in an apartment above a community coffeeshop, so he would just so happen to drop in every time I picked up hours there (because I needed money!) and while I was job searching and using the free wifi in the coffeeshop. I finally told him it wasn’t what I expected and I felt it wasn’t a good fit, but his cousin, who was a regular at the coffeeshop, asked me every time he came in why I had only lasted a week. I got another job offer two weeks later, so I stopped picking up shifts at the coffeeshop and finally breathed a sigh of relief. I stayed at that new job for almost 3 years, so it worked out in the end, but it was a wild few weeks. I was too young to know what questions to ask and too shy to call out the owner, but I’ve learned a lot since then.

  455. kat*

    I was in college working on a Computer Science degree and looking for an internship around 2004 or 05. I had all my classes scheduled on Tuesdays and Thursdays that semester, and I had been looking for potential part-time internships for MWF but not finding much. I saw a local tech startup had advertised for “hiring developers at all levels: junior, mid and senior”. I figured since they were hiring so many developers, maybe they’d have room for an intern, and I submitted my resume and wrote a cover letter pitching myself.

    They hired me as a 3 day a week intern at $10/hr. Not a lot for that kind of work but I’d never had a tech job before so I considered it a great opportunity. When I showed up for my first day I’d imagined I would be meeting all the other developers that they’d hired, but no: I was the only new hire. They decided all they needed to hire was a 3 day a week intern with no previous experience. There were 3 or 4 other developers on laptops in a very crowded area with no room for anyone else, so I was shown my seat. The system administrator was important enough to have his own cubicle. They’d told him that I would be in his cubicle and he was quite clear with me how unhappy he was about that. He’d set up a very large PC on a folding table about 3 feet in front of his desk, so he was directly over my shoulder behind me all day and after letting me know how unhappy he was he also refused to speak to me all day.

    I got no tour of any kind of the office, I was just shown my computer on the folding table. I remember I had my lunch in my bag and I was so nervous that I didn’t even ask where a refrigerator was to put it in. Since I’d never worked an office job before, I didn’t even know when I was “allowed” to take lunch, so I didn’t take one that day. At one point the senior developer came over to ask the system administrator if he wanted to go out to lunch but they seemed to be pretty pointedly ignoring me and it didn’t seem like anyone else took lunch so I was afraid to.

    I asked how to get set up with the code base on my computer and the CTO told me he used a free code editor, “but you can ask the developers what they do”. I asked the senior developer and was told that the company was too cheap to buy developers licenses for the industry standard code editor for their language, so one of them had figured out “what port on the computer it uses to call home and check to see if it is licensed”, and they found a free port-blocking tool to download and block that port so the editor could be used without a license. Since none of the developers were given any time to train me, the CTO spent an hour or so setting up the free tool on my computer and downloading the code repository–but only after I asked. No one else spoke to me all day. I nervously and aimlessly clicked around “reading” the code all day, afraid to turn around and look at the glowering system administrator. At one point late in the day the CEO printed something and found that someone had printed recipes but not retrieved them from the printer yet and he went around the office loudly and angrily demanding to know who was using work equipment for personal use.

    It became clear over the course of the day that no one beyond the CEO and CTO knew I was a part-time intern, even the senior developer hadn’t been told. There was an office IM system and one of the other developers sent me an IM, “we’re so glad you’re here, we really need the help”, but none of them spoke words out loud to me all day. When I’d been there about 8 hours, I went to ask the senior developer what my hours should be. He very irritatedly told me that “we don’t *punch the clock* around here” and that he would be taking his laptop home and working a few hours after dinner too. Since no one had really spoken to me or assigned me any work all day, that reaction seemed like A LOT for a $10/hr intern without a laptop. I hadn’t eaten all day and I just wanted to go home.

    That night I was pretty upset but it just didn’t seem sustainable to be expected to work all the time. I expected to have my evenings free for homework and studying. I left a voicemail for the CTO letting him know that it wasn’t going to work out for me. I believe I mentioned the senior developers’ “We don’t punch the clock” comment. He left a voicemail in return trying to get me to come back, “we can work something out”. I did not reply.

  456. Tina Belcher's Less Cool Sister*

    I was briefly unemployed last year and temporarily took a job working retail. On my first day I watched all the training videos, then was assigned to stand and watch someone at the register. That person was apparently unaware she was supposed to be my trainer and after about 5 minutes left for her break, leaving me in charge of the register. On my first day. With a line stretching down the aisle. I didn’t even have an employee ID number or have any idea how to do more than scan items and tap “accept payment”! I fumbled through a few customers well enough but when someone brought alcohol to purchase I had no idea what to do, or even the ability to get the system to accept the purchase (cashiers need to enter their ID number to acknowledge they verified the customer age, which I didn’t have).

    I sent an email to the HR manager of the store after I left, explaining that I wasn’t comfortable being thrown on the line like that with no training. She apologized and offered to have me back with better training. Spoiler – I did end up going back about a month later, the training was only marginally better, and I only lasted two weeks. The most interesting thing that happened while I worked there was that someone returned an adult “personal care” item…that one went straight in the trash.

  457. Tip Your Servers*

    I worked exactly one shift as a server at a BBQ restaurant while in college. The food safety violations were so severe, I felt physically ill standing by while they happened around me. Just a few things I saw in my 8 hours: raw chicken in the freezer dripping onto fresh vegetables, basting raw chicken from the same vat of sauce they filled used to fill the condiments bar, flies in the beer line, maggots in the walk-in fridge.

    The final straw was the all-you-can-eat, serve-yourself, bar of side dishes. We would lay out these trays of food, which sat at room temp the entire dinner shift, then put the leftovers in the fridge. The start of the next shift, they had fresh stuff on TOP of the old. They do not take the dishes out of rotation, or clean the pans ever. The result is a thin layer at the bottom of shriveled, visibly moldy, potato salad.

    I respectfully emailed that I would not be returning. Boss replied with this gem, in its entirety, “k.”

  458. Kayem*

    I quit a job within the first hour. I had been hired to be the morning manager at a university contract post office. It was a huge step up and I was excited! At 9pm the night before my first day, the hiring manager called and informed me that my predecessor had decided not to retire after all. She offered me a (significantly) lower position as an early morning mail clerk, which started at the same time (4am). I had been out of work for a few months and desperate, so I took it.

    The next morning I get to work on time and put on as cheerful a face as I can muster. The manager I would have been replacing stomps in, glowers at me, and orders me to start sorting the department mail that had been delivered the night before. No introduction, no orientation, not even a “lunch is at X time.” I’d worked USPS stations before so I was familiar with the procedures and as usual, the bins aren’t alphabetized. You just have to memorize where each bin is; by the end of the week, I should be blazing fast. But for right now, I was going slowly as this was my first time in this station and I was trying to learn.

    The entire time, the manager is stopping her work to periodically snap at me and hurl insults. She yelled at me for being slow, which I at first assumed she meant my speed, so I tried to go faster. Then she escalated, calling me stupid, dumb, an idiot, the r-word, among others. After about half an hour of this, I was flustered and started making mistakes, though I instantly corrected them. She turned around and screamed at me “Can you even read!? Are you illiterate AND stupid!?”

    I stopped what I was doing, said “I’m not going to take this sh*t anymore,” grabbed my coat, and marched out. When I got home, I called the hiring manager and told her what happened. I said I was willing to try again but I would not work with a manager behaving so inappropriately. I never heard from the hiring manager again.

    1. Kayem*

      The only other I quit a job within the first week wasn’t as dramatic. I had been hired to work as an office clerk for a landscaper. On my first day, my boss ordered me to weed the flower beds around the building, so that’s what I did all day. And he told me to do it again the next day. It’s not like I didn’t know how to weed, I grew up on a subsistence farm. I weeded the flower beds all week. At the end of the week, I asked about my paycheck (we were paid weekly). He said he wasn’t going to pay me because I didn’t weed to his satisfaction. The other workers (all landscapers, all men, I was the only woman there) howled with laughter. So I left and never went back.

      I never got my pay for that week. I was in my very early 20s and knew nothing of my rights beyond in that state, I had the right to be fired at any time for any reason.

    2. Kayem*

      Oh, I totally forgot, I think I told this one in another thread. It was a long story, so this is the short version: I started at a high-end temp agency that specialized in office workers. I had told the agency the only thing I wouldn’t do is cold calls or working in a call center. I had some traumatic experiences in call center jobs and couldn’t yet handle it. They assured me they wouldn’t place me in one of those because they don’t work with call centers.

      So I was hired for a temp job scheduling appointments. The job turned out to be in a call center cold-calling and spam emailing people for what felt like a scam. A few hours into training, I had a panic attack and broke down crying as I realized what I was hired to do. The manager discharged me and, as per agency requirements, I contacted the temp agency to inform them what happened. I also informed them that the job info packet I was given was misleading at best because it was a call center that cold-called people to spam.

      The temp agency ghosted me and after that, I was unable to find any temp agency in the city to onboard me.

    3. Heffalump*

      I assume the R-word was “retard”?

      You would relate to the novel Post Office by the noir author Charles Bukowski. Trigger warning: he was the polar opposite of a sensitive new age guy, and he uses a ton of bad language.

  459. Julia Jacob*

    It was my first college summer back at home, and I was living at my parent’s house in the burbs about 40 minutes by train outside of the NYC.

    I had responded to a flyer (literally taped onto a pole) that was looking for young people that cared about the environment and paid maybe $10 an hour. Figuring I could use some summer money I responded and they hired me right away and gave me the address of where to go. It was in a prominent building literally above Penn Station. All it took was getting off the train, going up a few steps, and boom you’re at the office.

    Except the position was actually just to be one of those people who tries to wave you down to get you to donate money to their cause. How I didn’t know that before hand is beyond me but I was young and who doesn’t care about saving the environment? Except as an introvert this absolutely mortified me, and I had no idea what the organization was or if they were legit. They spent about 10 minutes giving us a general script to use to get people to hand over donations, then sent us on our way to Central Park where for 6 hours I tried waving and smiling and generally badgering every person who walked by that I made eye contact with. No one bit. By the end of my shift, I had suckered one person into giving me $5 just so I could keep my job.

    At the end of the day they asked all of us to go over our scripts so they could judge us on them. When it came to be my turn, I froze, handed them their $5 and said I couldn’t do this anymore. I then walked right down the stairs, straight onto the train home, and pretended it never happened.

    To this day, I have no idea what the cause even was exactly or if it even meaningfully helped anything or anyone beyond itself. And now, I still work in the city but from home! I tell myself I can care about the environment by having a very small footprint and only using public transportation :)

  460. Capt. Dunkirk*

    Not a calendar week, but about a week’s worth of shift days:
    About 10 years ago I was working full time operating digital print presses (think giant Xerox machines).
    I needed some extra money so I started applying for part-time retail jobs.
    I ended up applying for one of the big box office supply stores to work in their printing department. Because of my experience, I was hired directly after a 15 minute interview.

    I’d spent over a decade in retail early in my career so I knew there would be unavoidable negatives to working a job like this, but I didn’t know there would be so many at one place!

    First red flag was that the job was posted with an $11/hr wage, but the first thing the manager said when she called to schedule the interview was that the wage was actually only $9/hr. (I was desperate for money, so I let it slide). However, I quickly found out that the store was very disorganized and dirty (especially the bathroom yuck!) but management never cared because they were only concerned about selling membership cards and product warrenties.

    Then there were all the pitfalls of a management team who assumed every employee under them is desperate for the job so they can be abused and manipulated to a great extent. I saw more of that kind of behavior in just a few shifts than I would over the course of a year or more in my previous retail jobs.

    I think the final straw was one of the assistant managers, who was at least 10 years my junior, would talk to me in an incredibley condescending way every time he was showing me how to do a task. He would sometimes apologize for “sounding so cocky” but that he was about to graduate [local private university] with a [XYZ] degree and it made him feel confident so, “sorry if that bothers you, but that’s just me.”

    I repeatedly told him that I also graduated from [local private university] with [XYZ] degree, but it never seemed to faze him. (not that a degree measuring contest should be important, I just found his stance pretty illogical and was trying to point it out to get him to reframe his interactions with me and others).

    After a handful of shifts over the course of a couple weeks, I decided I couldn’t deal with all this for $9/hr and decided to go in on one of my days off to tell the store manager I could no longer work there. I made a fiction about how my main job had found out and told me it was a conflict of interest so I had to quit the part time job immediately. The store manager was upset at first, but accepted it and said “okay”. I then tried to add some polite words of “sorry to put you in a bind” ect… but she completely gave me the cold shoulder and pretended I wasn’t there as she typed some inventory numbers into the computer.

    I just shrugged and walked out of the store after that. I haven’t set foot in the place ever since.

  461. Ladycrim*

    I had someone quit TO me in their first week.

    To be clear, I’m in Administrative Support, not HR. At the time, I was classified as a Secretary. I was not any sort of manager or supervisor. I think I was simply the first warm body this person saw.

    I work for a labor union. Being a labor organizer is a stressful job for a lot of reasons. It’s not for everybody, and that’s okay. (I know I wouldn’t be able to do it; that’s why I stick to Admin.) I don’t know what her last straw was, but it was definitive.

    I was walking down the hall when she came rushing up. She’d been with us four days; I’m not even sure she’d spoken to me before this.

    HER: “I can’t do this. I’m leaving. My key is on my desk.”
    ME: “What …? I can’t … you need to talk to (Staff Director) …”
    HER: “Nope! I’m leaving.”

    She turned and left, leaving me spluttering. I went quickly to the Staff Director’s office.

    ME: “[New Hire] just told me she quit!”
    SD: (deadpan) “What did you DO??”

  462. I Have RBF*

    Bounce #1:
    So way back in the early 80s I was seriously broke, as were all of my roomies. While I didn’t have to pay rent (the house was my dad’s), I had to cover the utility bills. So we all went to a temp agency, and got jobs as supposed security people to watch the exits at a well known hardware store for the holiday rush.

    It was not security, it was greeting work. We had to greet the customer, hand them a flyer whether they wanted it or not, and put up with all the shit, standing on our feet for the entire shift.

    I lasted less than a week. I am an introvert, and back then, in my early 20s, had no tolerance for dealing with people. By the second day I was trying to do mime type performance, just to put some distance between me and people. After something like 4 days I called the agency and quit. They were surprised, but I pointed out what I had been told vs what the job was. I did get paid for my hours.

    Bounce #2:
    In the late 80s, doing temp clerical work after my previous job had blown up in my face. Got assigned as an admin at a certain company. Showed up, got shown the desk and computer, no problem, routine office stuff. I got a phone call about 11, from the agency. They told me to leave for lunch and not go back. I was surprised, because I’d seen no red flags. So I did what I was told, and they paid me for the full day.

    Shoulda Bounced:
    I was newly disabled, in the late 90s, and had lost my job because I could no longer do wet chemistry or field work. I got one of those “supported” jobs for the disabled, six hours a day, $9/hr. I had previously been making over $20/hr. I cried because I had to take it – red flag #1. It was an outbound call center, doing surveys – red flag #2. We didn’t even have full cubes, just a little cubby with a keyboard, monitor, and phone. We were nearly cheek to jowl, with rows of people making calls – red flag #3. People made so little, and since we were contractors, we didn’t get sick pay, so people came to work sick all the time – red flag #4. I kept getting sick, and staying home. So I kept getting written up for being absent. I think I lasted a month and a half, before they called me at home when I was sick, bitching at me for staying home. I quit, saying that I could probably make the same money signing on street corners and it would probably be more healthy for me than going into that germ factory. They didn’t argue.

    I had a full time, still contract, job the next week, making half again what I made in that hellhole. It was a temporary inbound call center for an insurance company handling claims due to flooding and homes falling off of cliffs. One guy asked me how I could be some calm with all the people calling in. I quipped “Prozac!” That lasted until I got a real job in my new field.

    I still won’t work outbound phones, or anything involving walkup customers/clients. I know my limits.

  463. ThatEditorGirl*

    I quit a job after four days.
    In 2009, I had been laid off from an editing job at a daily newspaper. I was really upset about the layoff, and I applied for all kinds of editing and writing jobs in the large metro area I live in.
    After less than two months of looking, I took what I thought was a writing/correspondence job at a mortgage company. On my first day, I had to wait in the lobby for nearly 2 hours for the supervisor to come bring me back to the work area (it was a secured area, and I had no other way to get back to where I needed to be.) She had apparently been too busy to acknowledge me that morning.
    Then, the job wasn’t really writing — it was scanning documents. The second and third days, I spent standing at a printer all day scanning documents. The position had nothing to do with writing!
    After three days…I received another job offer from another company for a writing job. I took it immediately.
    At the time, I had a big fear of confrontation…so after hours, I left my boss a voicemail and said I wouldn’t be coming back, sorry. That was it! I still cringe when I think about it!
    But, in the then end, I’m still at the company I left for, and I’m now in an executive role. Life has a way of working out.

  464. Ava*

    I recently quit a high paying and well sought after jobs at a week and a half.

    1. The hiring person on the first day (previously had several conversations about the role) admitted I don’t know what the problem is with X but we need you to fix it. This was not my boss

    2. Second conversation was with the director (who I didn’t report to) trashed her staff and customers. I was supposed to be supporting this director

    3. Third conversation was with my boss, told me it was a totally different role to the one I had interviewed for, presented for and spent two months preparing for

    4. Next day was about moving the director I was supposed to be helping ‘sideways’ by my bosses boss. Also my boss managed to throw me under the bus

    Add in other directors saying my boss wasn’t trustworthy, identifying a process’s that should be fixed but no one wanted to. And just a level of incompetence I’ve never seen (including a staff member ringing me on a Sunday)- I was exhausted. I also had someone ‘confront’ me about my boss promising the job to her. It finally culminated in a lower ranking staff member having a “go” at me – me crying to someone I knew who then told the executive sponsor.

    Finally the executive sponsor pulled me out- and that’s how I quit a job in a week and a half.the meeting was 10 minutes- they haven’t replaced me. It definitely dinged my career and set me back over a year and a half in progression

    1. Ava*

      P.s the meeting was my executive sponsor saying I had failed and wanted to quit. I don’t think I had failed- but definitely wanted to quit. It was extremely humiliating- I then went and worked for the exec sponsor for a few months.

        1. Ava*

          The person who funded the project. Yes typical in my type of work at higher levels. The very high ranking boss asks for money from (similar to) the ‘parent company’, if the executive funds the project, that person is an executive sponsor. The project’s success is the responsibility of both executives.

  465. JodyDee*

    I quit BEFORE I started… My husband had been transferred halfway across the country. I was a healthcare worker and there were cutbacks in the field at that time so no one was hiring. In desperation I applied to work at a grocery store. It was close to home, our kids were little and it was convenient. It was also depressing, but got even worse. I went to pick up my uniform. Besides the dumb hat that was part of the uniform, the pants and shirt were so large that both my husband and I could fit into them at the same time. I was told that was all they had. I went home to cry, years of experience and education and THIS was what I was going to do? I went back, returned the uniform and told them I would not be working there. A couple of weeks later I got hired as a lab assistant rather than as a technologist, but at least I was in the lab. (And it led to a technologist position in time.) Crisis averted.

  466. Rae*

    I was hired to be a cashier at Walmart. We had 3 days of training during the day that were basically just watching videos and listening to lectures from a store “manager.” For the fourth day, I was assigned to come in from 8pm-midnight for training. I show up. No one knows who I am, there is no trainer, no instructions. I work on doing the online training we had done the previous 3 days. The technology keeps crashing. Again, no one is around and those who are basically ignore me. The manager never gave their contact info. I clocked out at the end of the shift, left my badge and uniform, and then just didn’t show up for my next shift. No one contacted me.

  467. MagicEyes*

    I too have a call center story. It was fundraising for a medical condition that my then-boyfriend volunteered me for without asking. Nice. I hated it, and I lasted two days before I quit. It was weird that we were supposed to try to get them to sign up for one thing, and if they said yes, we had to ask them for even more money. I hated it and I will starve before I do that kind of work again.

    My other quitting story happened at KFC. I needed a job one summer in college, and the only thing I could find was fast food. The management was a mess, the floors were slippery, and the training was minimal. They made me watch some videos but never got around to telling me how the store actually worked. One of the managers gave me a locker so I could put my engagement ring with a tiny diamond somewhere safe. The next time I came in, the other manager had cut the lock off of my locker. That was where I noped out. The only good thing about that job was that we got a free meal, and this was when KFC actually had good food. Now they have instant potatoes and weird gravy, so the free food is not even worth it. I’m just glad I survived for a few days without wiping out on the greasy floors.

  468. MarieCleveland*

    One summer during college I got a job as the “chef’s assistant” at a fancy adult summer camp. I had worked in a bunch of kitchens and the pay/hours were great. They warned me when I interviewed that they had trouble keeping the role staffed because the chef was “difficult”. I thought it wouldn’t be a problem because I was also in the army reserves and figured after basic this would be a breeze. It… was not. The chef was clearly in the middle of some sort of mental break down, was terribly erratic and angry. She would say things like “ I need you to..(vague pointing) and put it over…(wild gesticulation)” and when I would ask for clarification she would sign loudly and say, “Fine I’ll just do it myself” I worked three days and woke up on the fourth day and though “nope not worth it” to this day it’s the only job I ever quit without at least 2 weeks notice. When I called the office to tell them I quit the lady on the other line sighed and say “Thanks for calling, most people don’t call”

  469. Sissy*

    I was 19 and took a job on a TV auction site. You were assigned a dedicated line with bidder. In between retailers everyone would break. I had not been trained at all and was told to sit and yell out bids. It was hectic.
    I also lived a very sheltered life and my co-workers were a quite the crew of various backgrounds and they did not like the girl that came in with a long skirt and white sneakers( if you know you know).
    They made it there mission to make me as uncomfortable as possible.
    I made it through the shift because I had to. My husband worked nights as well and we shared a car. I cried all the way home. I tried to be nice and win them over, but it in the end I was from the background that they could not accept.
    I didn’t go back.
    The next week I got a job at a hospital. Met people who encouraged me to go to college. Healthcare has been my career now for over 20 years. Funny thing is I work with all kinds of people and love all of them. Even the mean ones.

    1. Vio*

      regarding: “they did not like the girl that came in with a long skirt and white sneakers( if you know you know).”

      I don’t know. Obviously their reasoning was irrational but I’m not clear on what it actually was.

      1. Amy the Rev*

        assuming it’s a reference to being homeschooled or from a more sheltered background, or at least one that emphasizes ‘modesty’ for women in terms of dress

  470. Simone Beaudelaire Author*

    School districts will do anything to prevent their teacher from TEACHING STUDENTS MATERIALS. I’m not here for this. One semester and check the quit box. I don’t care if they’re mad. They had a pro with 3 advanced degrees and 15 years experience and treated mike a newbie. If they’re mad they can die mad. I don’t care.

    the exit interview was… colorful. Canned lessons recorded for comappliance are not cool.

  471. Art of the Spiel*

    It was third shift; at Dunkin Donuts. But *that’s* not what made it so bad! When I applied and interviewed, it was with a likeable old gent with a strong Indian accent – he was the owner. The hours would work with my college courses, so all was good!

    Aaaand then I had my first shift. The owner’s nephew was our supervisor and my trainer. This man just about glued himself to me for the entire 10 hours, “correcting” my every move – no exaggeration. If I put the pastry cone into the donut, my elbow was too high by 10 degrees for his liking; or maybe I took the donuts in rows across instead of down. Honestly, it was all just an excuse to look down my shirt. (This was the 80’s; it was a brown and orange polyester uniform – sooo sexy, amirite?)

    I made it through two shifts, a Friday and Saturday night. On Sunday afternoon, I took the lovely uniform shirt in and handed it to the nice old man.

    Stunned, he said, “You no want job?”
    “I no want job!” I emphasized every word separately.
    “Why? Why you no want job?”
    “Ask your nephew!” and I motioned like I was trying to look down his shirt.

    He looked a little defeated as I walked out, but he didn’t try to talk me out of it. As for me, I couldn’t even stomach the smell of powdered sugar for many years.

  472. Elizabeth*

    On the Friday of my first week at a well known medical school library in NYC, my boss yelled at me for being 10 mins late due to a train delay. She had also been “cleaning up” my desk every day that week after I left work. Friday morning she ordered me to take a printer (circa 1987) across town to be repaired. I had to carry this huge thing outside to the curb in my heels and skirt, hail a cab, sit in traffic in Central Park for an hour, wait half a day for it to be repaired, then bring it back to the college at the end of the day. I was sobbing the whole time. I quit Monday morning, I was never reimbursed for the cab fare.

  473. Lemonwhirl*

    When I was 16, I got a job at a buffet restaurant. I originally applied for a job as a dishwasher, which I had experience in from a previous job, but I was told that the dishwasher position was too difficult, physically demanding, and high stress and that they’d start me bussing tables. I wasn’t thrilled because I preferred being in the kitchen to out in the restaurant, but I needed a job.

    I lasted three days and I quit because the entire job was throwing away plates of food that people had taken from the buffet and not eaten. I felt so guilty throwing away all that food. In three days, it felt like I’d thrown away enough food to feed a small city.

    I don’t remember the reaction exactly, but it must have been not entirely pleasant because I do remember asking my dad to go in and pick up my last — and only — check.

  474. Vio*

    When I was about 18 I started a voluntary (unpaid) role at a city centre charity shop to try to improve my confidence, get some work experience and a reference for my CV. I told the manager that I wanted to work on the shop floor to build my confidence and she agreed that would be the priority. I was handed over to a couple of old ladies (who I’d later learn were nicknamed Ornery Angry Pigs by some of the staff and customers. I think that was unfair to the pigs, who in my experience are quite friendly) who she assured me would train me and then she left the shop. I was sent downstairs and told to iron all the clothes that had been donated.
    I tried to explain that I was there to build confidence, dealing with people, but of course I didn’t have the confidence to argue and was quickly shut down. So I grumble to myself a bit but get started ironing. Not a job I do often, most of my clothes don’t really need it, but something I know how to do. After a few minutes one of the ladies comes down and is absolutely horrified by how little work I’ve done. Never mind that when they sent me downstairs the iron wasn’t plugged in and so needed time to heat (I’d spent the time setting up the ironing board and making a coffee, which I’d been told to help myself to). Never mind that I was there as an unpaid volunteer. She read me the riot act, calling me all kinds of useless and complaining that kids these days didn’t have any kind of work ethic. To my embarrassment and annoyance I started to cry. She called me a baby and told me to “grow some balls and man up” or I wouldn’t get anywhere in life.
    I grabbed my stuff and left. I phoned the manager later who told me that I just had to get used to working with people like that and it should help my confidence (?!). I politely said I wouldn’t be volunteering there and she hung up on me.

    Several years later I was on a course with someone who mentioned having worked at that particular shop. I started telling a brief version of my story and he immediately knew exactly who I was talking about. Apparently those two women practically ran the place and the manager would bow to their every whim. They had a particular dislike to the young, and resented that so few of their own generation weren’t working or volunteering anymore and decided that rather than it being because they were getting too old, it was because “youngsters” were stealing all the jobs. The unpaid volunteer jobs.

    1. Heffalump*

      I’m guessing from your use of “CV” that you’re in the UK. Is “Ornery Angry Pigs” a riff on “old-age pensioners”?

  475. Madison*

    When I was 13, I spent several months saving up for a trip to NYC. One of the jobs I took was delivering flyers in my area. I was told it would take about 3 hours once a week after school.

    I came home on the day of my first shift to find several stacks of flyers on my front porch that were taller than me. Before I could even deliver them, I had to stuff them all with inserts, which was never mentioned. This alone took hours. Then I had to deliver them. All I had to cart around hundreds and hundreds of flyers was a small wagon. I was given a list of addresses to deliver to, but at least a third of them had “no junk mail” stickers and I was never given any direction on what to do in that case. With my mom’s help, we finally finished about 8 hours later – exhausted, with at least a hundred flyers leftover, and so covered in ink we looked like chimney sweeps. My mom called the company the next day and quit on my behalf. To top it all off, I never got paid.

  476. Kim Smith*

    I once took a job with a small start up non-profit that was raising funds for research on childhood diseases. The founder was a charming Ivy League grad, and I was to be the third staffer- an office manager/fundraiser position. I was mostly interested because I would be able to work from home several days a week (this was 2006). They were interested in me because I had eBay experience, and they had a fundraising component that was heavily eBay focused. On my first day, I learned they were getting “donations” of boats and timeshares from people who couldn’t unload the any other way, and then selling them sight unseen on eBay. And the second staffer was actually his very pregnant wife. On the second day, the founder had to leave for an interview with a local news reporter who investigated scams, because someone who had purchased a car from this organization found out it had been totaled and had a salvage title after the fact. I left my office key on the top of a filing cabinet, and sent my resignation email that night explaining that I wasn’t comfortable with the nature of the work, and telling them not to worry about the two days of pay. I got a long reply about how I was spoiled by working at big org with lots of resources, and that I didn’t understand entrepreneurship, and that there was nothing unethical about their work. A month later, he reached out to one of my references to asking for pro-bono consulting help.

  477. Kate*

    It felt like forever, but I think it was about a week. I had just moved back to the USA after six years teaching English in Japan. I was desperate and clueless. I got sucked into one of those commission-only life insurance sales gigs. I was either spending eight hours a day cold-calling people and, on the rare occasions they answered, trying to pretend I was calling about Medicare Advantage, or accompanying agents on visits to random homes.

    I finally listened to my gut: going to people’s homes didn’t feel safe and I didn’t want to be the kind of person lying to people just to get a sale. I left a message with the manager that I wasn’t coming back. The message apparently wasn’t passed on because the next day, the agent I was supposed to meet called asking where I was. I said I wasn’t coming back, and she didn’t seem surprised.

    I never received a penny for the work or the driving. I should have walked out of the “interview.”

    A few years later I got a card in the mail about a class-action settlement against this insurance company for the way they treated their employees.

  478. Anna*

    I took a job leading a small nonprofit and reported directly to a designated board member.

    She was ATROCIOUS. One of the worst people I’ve ever met, and on top of that she was dumb as a brick but *knew* she was a genius. During meetings she would only disagree, even when policy or law was black and white. She needed to be right and the only way to that was to make the other person wrong. She sent me an email telling me she had ten rules and metrics that my performance review would be tied to. One was only taking notes on a specific type of notepad, because she knew this notepad was the only way to remember anything. I knew immediately we wouldn’t vibe. The second day she called me at 7PM in the middle of my son’s game and screamed at me for not being available when she needed me. The reason she was calling was not at all urgent and after hours had never been discussed as necessary. I ended up staying about 10 days because I wanted to collect a full paycheck but decided on Day 3 I was done, and would never make it there. I carefully packed whatever I had brought to my office and took it home over the course of a week with no one noticing things were gone. On my last day I taped my keys to my door, scheduled an email to send at 8AM, blocked her phone number and left.

    I have no idea how it was received, but I am sure she painted me a villain and I decided I didn’t care because it was worth it to never be spoken to like that again. I hope one day to run into someone in that field who confirms for me what a failure she turned into.

  479. Lolllee*

    I quit a job after 4 days. The job posting at been for an office level 2 salary job and U had interviewed and accepted an offer at $$$ salary. When I arrived for my first day, I was informed I was required to work entry level receiving job for less than 1/2 my pay for a minimum of 6 months before I would be one of 3 people CONSIDRRED for the higher paying office job. ??? This was defended as a way to show I was dedicated, motivated and could learn the company products. My station was a bench in front of open bay doors in middle of July in over 100 degree weather with no fans or other air-conditioning. After 4 days at this job, I was offered a position at a different company for similar job to what I thought I’d been hired for at this company. I asked to be elevated to the position I’d accepted the offer for with back pay but they refused. So I gave my 2 week notice and they walked me out immediately.

  480. Anon MRX*

    Not my story but a client of mine. My client is notorious in our industry for being very difficult, to put it lightly. Client hired 3 new team members that we worked to onboard to our software ASAP, so we had several meetings in their first few weeks at client company. One of the team members unexpectedly quit on day 10. Client has 1:1 with my teammate and unloads all of the team member’s feedback. Some gems include “You’re the worst manager I’ve ever had.” “You don’t care about your team or any of us as human beings.” “You act like we’re just your work horses you can order around at any time.” Not at all inaccurate feedback, but client has zero self awareness so of course their perspective is “I can’t believe someone would say those things about me! How crazy, right?!” Crazy indeed… that was over a year ago and we still laugh about it!

  481. Gal Friday*

    I quit a gas station job on day 3 because I was offered a receptionist job that paid $2 more an hour. I wanted to do both, but they weren’t flexible on the one shift a week that was not overnight (the rest of them were overnight and not a conflict) so I turned in my vest and they seemed to understand.

    That was in 1999.

    Life is weird… and I ended up working for the company again about 7 years later. In fact this March will be my 17th anniversary since I came back.

    Spent 3 days as a cashier back then… I now manage the online presence for all locations.

  482. Amy the Rev*

    Not me but a colleague- we were 16, working as summer lifeguards in a coastal town, and this girl essentially was forced into that job by her parents, who worked in the town administration or something like that. The thing is, she was afraid of blood, and as we had pretty quiet waters, the majority of our job was dealing with cuts from people climbing on the jetties, etc. We all felt pretty bad for her, honestly. I don’t know if she discovered this about herself after she started the job, or didn’t realize how much blood she’d see working oceanfront, but the fact remains, she was having a hard time, and her parents wouldn’t let her quit.

    She was a SUPER straight-laced kid, had never drank or experimented with drugs, but wanted out of the job badly enough that she purposefully failed the drug test, making her ineligible for rehire and her parents unable to pull a favor to get her back into the job. I’d be lying if I said the rest of us (including our boss) weren’t a little impressed/proud of her.

  483. Olivia*

    I quit a job 3 days in. I had a job working as one of those paid street canvassers. There have been some articles written about how exploitative these types of places are. The ad for the job was highly misleading so I didn’t even know this was the type of job until I showed up. It was winter and I would stand in the freezing cold and ask people for donations. There was a quota and if you didn’t meet it you lost your job. I had just lost my dad and was 18 and cited some family stuff as the reason rather than that it was a horrible horrible job. It was taken ok but I never received pay from my first three days.

  484. Antiqueight*

    I had thought I never have but actually – I spent a summer in California as a student and one job I got was for an organisation raising money door to door for something like (but in about 92) Ralph Nader’s Prop 103 initiative. I had no understanding of any of it being from an entirely different country.
    We spent an hour or so training on how to get people to give us money and then were sent out to go door to door with a mentor. On day 2 we were sent out alone with a promise that our credentials proving we were who we claimed to be were coming. I realised the timing of the work day meant I was almost only meeting retirees on pensions and I barely understood what we were raising the money. That for meant that I felt sleazy for trying to part these people from their cash.

    When I failed to bring home the minimum we were expected to collect on my first day I was put through remedial training – which was role playing and thus easy to ‘pass’. But I could never have used those tactics on the people I’d met. I decided I was never going to earn the commission (we got to keep something like a third what we collected in addition to a small basic wage) I handed over my clipboard and said I wouldn’t be back.
    Honestly – the guy wasn’t remotely surprised. I never did get paid for my 1 actual day of work…
    It was years before I wondered about the sanity of a group of young women being driven to various neighbourhoods and dropped off one per area, to be collected many hours later in a world pre mobile phones..

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