When we get a new job, we often ignore the red flags, in hopes that ‘maybe the job will get better.’ However, for some, that’s their cue to get the heck out of there. These new employees share why they quit their jobs shortly after being hired. And, their reasons are pretty valid. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
They Kept Ignoring His Requests
“This was in 1999, I got a job at CompUSA paying seven dollars per hour or something like that. They made schedules every week at that store, maybe at that time, that’s how they did it everywhere.
I was 19, a college student, and did not enjoy working in the morning. There were two shifts available, I think one started at 7:30 am and another one started around three pm. I had asked to be put on the three pm shift but the manager had other ideas.
When I reported for orientation or whatever it was, I found out I was put on the 7:30 am shift. I went and found the guy who I had talked to about schedules and he acted as if we never had this conversation about the three pm shift. After much discussion he agreed the next week I would be on the three pm shift and that was that.
I worked for three to four days hating each day. It was summer break and I did not want to get up at six in the morning to get to work at 7:30 am. I wanted to sleep in and hang out with friends at night or do other things teenagers do, like drive around aimlessly with other teenagers.
When the schedule for next week came, I was on the opening shift again. I found the manager again. Again this time he made me feel like the whole discussion about the schedule was in my head and we had never talked about it. Then he said he was short and he needed me to do the 7:30 am shift. I told him I could not and that was that.
Next week came around, I did not go to work at 7:30 am. I got a call at eight am asking where I was. I said I was not coming in until three pm since that was the agreed-upon schedule. They were not happy and said that would not be possible and I had to report to work now.
I quit over the phone and went back to sleep. After discussing it three times, I did not think they took me seriously. I was not going to keep doing this the whole summer so I quit and found something else to do.”
Delusional Boss
“I applied for a position as a recruiter for an elderly caregiver company. The owner seemed enthusiastic about what he had to offer and he liked my background in administration and recruiting. He paid me well to travel about 40 minutes from the job I was leaving. I noticed during my first week there really wasn’t much to do. I offered to help him with marketing and sales but he wanted to do it ALL himself. He thought if he filled a room with doctors and nurses, bought them lunch, and gave them a lame spiel about his services, then they would flock to him. They did not. He had me post job openings and interview potential staff.
Within that two weeks, I realized he only had four clients since openings six months ago! Also, he did not accept Medicare, it was all self-pay. I had interviewed several people who thought there were job openings, but the reality was there were no openings or clients.
He would not give me the key to the office in case I showed up earlier than expected either. I would have to wait for him. His wife would come in and make comments asking if he was behaving himself. I thought that was weird. He would act more and more in a disturbing manner; very hyper, and clearly delusional about his ability as an owner of this type of company. He was not prepared in any way only delusional of his own ability. I finally confronted him about the fact that he had no clients and how dare he had me interview people and make them think they were going to get a job. I laid into him and he pretty much cussed me out like I was some kind of moron. I think the guy was a narcissistic sociopath, to be honest. I doubt he is still in business. He said he also owned a coin laundry business. I hope he stuck with that!”
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Not His Ideal Career
“Eight years ago, I started and quit a new job as a Plant Manager for a manufacturing startup. The job came with lots of responsibility and prestige. The earning potential was great and there was a lot of room for career advancement. The company also had an amazing product that I saw as very innovative.
Something that’s really important to me is making an impact through my work. After seeing the operation I knew immediately that my presence could be felt there on day one. And it was. My first day was spent meeting with each member of my team and learning the various processes. After a few hours, I was able to bring forth ideas to exponentially reduce costs and provide opportunities for learning.
The team was responding well to me. I even started taking action towards developing one knowledgeable employee into an effective Production Supervisor. There was only one problem, though. The hours.
My working hours would be from 5 am — 5 pm. I knew from my interviews the job would consist of a lot of working hours from time to time and that part of my job would be to stabilize the operation to where such hours would not be needed. However, it was never expressed to me that I would be expected to work 12 hours most days with the occasional 13–14 hours.
I expressed my concerns at the end of day one and informed the company of my desire to terminate employment. After my second day of work, it became clear to me that I would need to move on. This was after working a 12-plus hour day. I was miserable. I spent most of the day standing on my feet and dealing with more machine downtime than I could care to count. I don’t want to sound ungrateful for turning down a well-paying job with a huge upside, but it just wasn’t a good fit for me. I’ve worked a number of long days in my career and I’m sure I have many in my future.
The problem is that I wasn’t being completely honest with myself about what I wanted. At this point in my career, I want to do work that makes me feel alive, work that stretches and challenges me. For a long time, I’ve done work that’s familiar and work that I already knew I was good at. That’s the real reason why I accepted the position. As mentioned already, I really liked the product and thought that it could be a game-changer in its industry. I was essentially looking at dollar signs and the following ambition.
When choosing a career opportunity and accepting a job, it’s important to make sure that it aligns with what you want for your life.”
“She Is JUST An Intern”
“I had recently resigned from my company. I was looking for a job, the same role in Human Resources, but different industry. I wanted to move from an agency to a more corporate company.
I interviewed with a fitness company. They told me, that because my experience was very different from what they were looking for, they could only offer me an intern role. I was fine with that, as long as it was a paid internship in the field I was interested in.
I went for my first day. It was a Thursday. They were having group interviews or in other words, candidate groups. I was assisting my direct manager, the Human Resource Manager. When she stepped out, she requested me to continue, which I did.
After the second round of interviews was over, I was discussing the two candidates who I interviewed while she was out.
In the middle of our discussion, the CEO came in and said, ‘Why are you asking for her opinion? Her opinion does not matter. She is JUST an intern.’
I left, never turned back.
I was not desperate for a job. Despite my three years experience, I was open to an internship, because I wanted to learn. But, I will not disregard or undervalue my experience. And even if I did not have experience, how was I supposed to learn, if I was not going to get to be a part of the discussions?
It took three hours for me to quit my new job, because I met my indirect manager after that time.”
Two days later, I got a call from another company, and am still very much in that company and happy.”
Did Meet His Boss’s Expectations?
“I quit a job after day one. It was a potato packing factory. At face value, it wasn’t so bad. Hours were seven am to five pm, and I didn’t mind working a little longer if it means a little sunlight. I had previously worked at a sawmill from 3 pm to midnight, very heavy wet lumber, very high pace, but I made my way to the crew leader on the green chain. So no big deal right? It was just potatoes, it couldn’t be half as bad. They did 50-pound bags max and the 12 foot 2×6 boards were like 80 pounds sometimes, and they came fast.
I arrived on day one and got myself to work. I found the supervisor, I tried my best to examine the flow of things, wondering where I’d end up for my shift, and tried to figure out how I’d make use of myself for the day. On the typical first day, I did the ‘see one/do one’ style training. I folded giant boxes for 15 minutes, then my boss pulled me to another machine, where he was working. It was just a potato boxing machine, and this was easy for me, the boxes stacked just right, and the forklift operators were on point, so there was great efficiency happening, just as good as my supervisor, which impressed me. I got moved to a different machine now, just one hour into working. Now the pace got picked up a bit.
I was handling small bags and loading a large box off of a bagging machine with a rotating lazy Susan-style conveyor. Now, this I excelled at. This was similar to what I had been doing, with wood, and again, couldn’t be worse right? Well, I was working with three other guys at first, then two, then one, and eventually, I was alone running this machine. Crazy hard now.
The potatoes have dust that builds up on your skin and in your nose. There’s no way not to breathe it. And the dust is VERY bitter and dries your mouth out too. This was where things got terrible. The first day usually is always slow, but at this point in the day, which was nearing five pm, and to my understanding, was the end of my shift, I was so exhausted, thirsty due to the small water bottle I had, and hungry as could be because I packed a lunch for an eight hour day.
But just then, my boss said, ‘Let’s take five guys, huh? Might be a long one, we’re just over halfway done!’
I was thinking I may be released soon, but no, we worked and worked and worked until nearly nine pm. I was getting muscle cramps, getting dizzy, and worst of all, I didn’t even have a chance to tell my girlfriend that I was working past five, because I didn’t even know until I was doing it. Nonetheless, I put my best foot forward and worked to the end of the night, CRUSHING it the whole time!
At the end of the long, unexpected shift, my supervisor approached me and said, ‘I really want to see more out of you tomorrow, it’s not fair to the other guys.’
I was LIVID. Not only did I do the job all day, nearly four hours longer than I expected, but I did a darn good job too. That pretty much did it. A mix of working conditions and a supervisor who was either blind or dumb led me to the decision to leave after that day.
It is worth mentioning I had an office job lined up in a month anyhow and got my preferred temp job two days later. It worked out, in hindsight, not the smartest decision, but it wasn’t one I regret.”
Violations
“I was hired as a contractor for this large global company by this woman who was a real nut job. Come to find out later, she had numerous run-ins with employees that HR never did anything about. She seemed to have no real work for me, although there was plenty of work to be done. So the morning was spent in a whirlwind of wasting time getting coffee, stopping employees in the hall to chat, and setting up a computer where she gave me my password on a sticky note. This was a financial company where security seemed to be really relaxed.
She then spent probably about an hour talking about how she hated the girl her son was dating. I couldn’t believe the hatred coming out of this hateful woman.
Then we went to lunch, which I ended up paying for. But most of our lunchtime was spent shipping boxes for her side business. And by the way, she used the company’s boxes and shipping labels for her side business.
After lunch, I emailed the manager who was her boss what had gone on and how I intended to quit because I didn’t condone her behavior. He then asked me to work on the internal websites and to give it some time. I did, and as I started to work, I soon found myself locked out of the website I was working on. The manager had emailed her, telling her what I had outlined and she retaliated by shutting off my access!
Later, I found this weasel of a manager who had no spine hired me with the main purpose to build a case against her since no one seemed to have the balls to fire this witch.”
Unpaid and Unappreciated
“So, while doing my Master in Computer Science, I tried to find an internship for the summer break. I wasn’t able to land many interviews and there were no offers. I was contacted by a start-up that claimed to have funding from Richard Branson (which they did) and interviewed with them.
At the end of the interview, I was told I was hired but the internship would be unpaid. Since I didn’t have anything else to do during summer, I agreed, assuming I would end up learning new things for a couple of months.
On my first day of the internship, we were called in the meeting room (like a new hire orientation) and the guy who was the co-founder started barking orders on a couple of new interns about getting him breakfast and a coffee. After the meeting ended, I noticed there wasn’t technical work to be done at the company, but some kind of data entry job. That was enough for me to take my bag, leave the office without saying anything, and head back home.
I had left a job in around 45 minutes of just being there.
I ended up studying a couple of courses at the university for free (yeah our university professor rocks, as they will let you get knowledge without forcing you to pay for it ), and got an on-campus web development job which was way more satisfying than the internship and I actually got paid 15 bucks per hour.
Aside from the horrible internship, that summer was awesome!”
He Was Testing Her Patience
“I previously worked for an MNC (Multinational Company), handling a big construction project. However, due to some internal conflicts, I was not getting the recognition I deserved with my performance. So I decided to move on.
Then I joined this new organization. Out of 26 who attended the interview, I got selected.
The next day, I had to work on-site, but initially, there was an introduction interview with the boss. From the start itself, he started to degrade me and treated me like his servant. He asked me to give him some water, and then he started making fun of me, particularly, the size of my belly with his actual assistant.
I soon realized he was not aware of my people management skills. Initially, I thought he was testing my patience or something, but after nearly an hour, I slowly understood by the way he treated all of his employees, he actually meant what he was doing. This was the real him.
So I simply said to him, ‘I am leaving.’ I continued to tell him, ‘Employees aren’t your play toys.’
Then I left the place.
Later on, I joined another organization and everything went well. I heard from a friend, who joined later with that particular company, that the construction company was closed due to mismanagement of funds, slow progress, and everything else that would shut a company down.”
Unnecessary Work
“I walked out of a job after less than a day. It was quite some time ago, but I will never forget my co-worker. She was a woman of indeterminate age and had I met her on the street, I would have said indeterminate human being. In the office, she wore a military-like long jacket that should have been worn as outerwear, green camo pants, and a white T-shirt. Odd? Oh, yes. No doubt about that one.
Her first words were to tell me she was a veteran and expected to be treated with respect. I was being hired to work with her, not for her. In fact, my job was to assist her boss. After sitting with her boss for about two hours, getting the details of the job, I came back out to my desk and found it stacked with papers in piles. And when I say piles, I mean they were lined up in military precision.
When I looked to her for an explanation, she said she’d taken all of those out of my file cabinets so that I could learn to file them correctly while reading them, since I needed to know everything that they contained.
I returned to my boss’s office, told him what she’d just done and that I found this type of behavior confusing and a time-waster.
He agreed and said, ‘But we tolerate her behavior here, she’s a veteran you know.’
I silently nodded my head, walked to my desk, put my coat on, grabbed my purse, and walked out the door, never to return.”
“Fire Everyone”
“I was transferred as a store manager to a location about half an hour from where I lived. It was a problem store with a pretty obvious theft issue. It was about two weeks before Christmas, maybe a little more, and I had been there for three days. The district manager called and said to fire everyone. He was sending in a crew from multiple stores to get us through until I could hire and train new people.
My employees consisted of a retiree, two single moms, a college kid, a veteran, and a disabled man.
I said no, but they said it was happening either way.
I sat down and wrote a letter detailing exactly what happened. Called every employee to come in and get a copy. I sent home the two who were on shift, called the district manager, and handed over my keys the minute he arrived. I testified at every one of those employee’s unemployment hearings. They all won for wrongful termination.
The amazing part of the whole thing was that it came out later that it was the district manager who was actually stealing.
I have zero regrets about quitting.”
Injury
“I was a security guard at a summer-long festival. On day one, I twisted my ankle while going down a hill. Unfortunately, there were no witnesses. In other words, no employees or cameras could verify whether the injury happened on the job.
My boss tried switching me to bag checks so I could at least sit. His boss said no, despite their bag checks being understaffed. My boss tried getting me more breaks and putting me in spots that limited movement. When his boss found out, he put a stop to it.
After dragging an injured foot for days in blazing heat and making the injury worse, I was done. Minimum wage was not worth that nonsense.”
“We Were Way Over Our Heads”
“The summer after my junior year in high school, my best friend and I were looking to start a business to help improve our college applications. We thought about setting up a tutoring company among other ideas but eventually settled on a marketing company. We setup up everything up for the business, and started posting Craigslist articles, advertising our services.
Somehow, we got our first client, a woman who owned her own women’s fashion line wanting to generate more traffic to her website. She would pay based on how much new traffic we drove to her website.
Just picture two teenage boys with no knowledge of fashion trying to market women’s clothing. It wasn’t very successful, and after two days of posting her link online in random forums and YouTube videos, we decided we were way over our heads and gave up the marketing business.”