rSlash - r/Askreddit What Made You Quit Your Job on Your First Day?

Episode Date: June 5, 2021

r/Askreddit We've all worked terrible jobs before, but these jobs are the worst of the worst. These Reddit users have stories from toxic bosses, unbearable customers, and horrible working conditions. ...For example, one Reddit user went to a job where he was expected to take advantage of senior citizens to sell them junk they didn't need and couldn't afford. Another Reddit user had a boss who expected OP to live on a $3,500/year salary. Yeah, you read that right... $3,500 PER YEAR. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to R-Slash, a podcast where I read the best posts from across Reddit. Today's subreddit is R-Slash Ascreddit where we answer the question, people who quit their jobs on their first day, what was your, I'm out of here, moment. Our next reply is from Oscar. I worked at a hotel for one day. No one told me where anything was and I got shoot out for it. Some of the guests who were enjoying their meals told me to pay at no mind because I was
Starting point is 00:00:25 doing a good job and that my boss was a grunt. I told the manager that I was quitting and that I wouldn't be doing the next shift. I arrived the next day to return my working uniform and my supervisor approached me and yelled at me for being late. I told her that I already quit, but that if I was working, technically I was 5 hours early for my shift. Absolute nut cases. And then beneath that, we have a similar story from few evidence.
Starting point is 00:00:51 That whole thing about not getting told how to do something, then getting told off for doing it wrong happened to me. I was so mad. I was told to put something on the shelves over by checkout. I asked if there was any specific way that it needs to be done and I was told, no idiots, it's not hard, you just put as much as you can fit on the shelf. So I go and stack stuff on the shelf. Then another manager comes by and says, why didn't you follow protocol around displaying stuff here? You have to count exactly how many you use for stock control and display
Starting point is 00:01:23 them in a certain way. I thought that was a one-off occurrence, but the next day I asked what I should be doing after a busy period. There's just nothing to do for a bit. Go make us all coffee to practice using the machine. Halfway through making coffee, another manager says, Why haven't you done that really important job that's pending? You don't have time to be taking coffee breaks. These two people were my trainer and my manager.
Starting point is 00:01:47 Turns out, the trainer didn't want someone else working with them, so he sabotaged me and set me up for the manager to catch me doing all the wrong things that he told me to do. I told them that clearly they have some issues to work out among themselves and I quit. There's that saying that people don't quit bad jobs, they quit bad managers, and yeah yeah that sounds about right here. Our next reply is from Pocket
Starting point is 00:02:10 Radish. I got a job at a builder bird knockoff at the end of a mall that wasn't very busy. My interview with the owners was interesting. They were an older couple who said they wanted to open a Chick-fil-A but you need about a million dollars to do that. My first day, one other girl was working, and she didn't really talk to me. I had basically no training, and she disappeared into the back. I was standing at the register area, which was built in a way to look like a giant mushroom. A mother and her young son walk in and start to look at the bear options. I greeted them, and then left them to look around.
Starting point is 00:02:43 They ended up leaving after a couple minutes, and my coworker reappeared from the back with a cordless phone and handed it to me. It was my boss. He told me that when a customer walks in, he wants me to greet them by coming out of the giant mushroom structure. He said, come out from the mushroom. After he finished speaking to me, I hung up and went to my coworker and asked her about the phone call. She said the place had cameras set up and that the owners watched them from their house and call in a lot. I did not come back to work after that day. Our next read had posted from Thunderflash. I worked at a fast food chain when I was 17. I found out during training that the place had been robbed three times in the past month and one employee was seriously injured. That job was not worth the 5 bucks an hour.
Starting point is 00:03:28 Beneath that, we had this contribution from Casino Knight. I worked at a KFC when I was 16. I remember the training orientation video told us over and over not to be a hero if you get robbed. Do they really think that we're going to take a bullet for KFC? Like we're going to scream, not on my watch and dive over the counter? And then beneath that, we have this story from Ginger Birdie. I worked at a college textbook store and there was this really old man who came in like old,
Starting point is 00:03:57 90 or so. He walked in a really slow shuffle. He went around just putting all sorts of little things in his basket. Pins, Erasers, notebooks. Then he just shuffled right out the door. The first time it happened, we were all like, the F. Did that old guy just rob us? The second time he came in, he did the exact same thing and one of the cashiers tried to stop him. He said to her in his raspy old man voice, look at you, standing there with your teeth in your head. Forget about it. And then just shuffled out. Sadly, he never came back. Clearly, this old guy has nothing left to lose, especially not his teeth. Our next reply is from Sleepy Hollow. I applied for a job at my long time favorite restaurant.
Starting point is 00:04:47 I celebrated my birthday there every year. The owner asked me to come in for basically a tryout. I come in and they just stick me on dish washing for an hour, no biggie. Then their dishwasher doesn't show up, so the kitchen manager asked me to stay on for their lunch rush. He says that I'll get paid for the hours. I stay on because the kitchen staff was nice, so I was happy to help out, even though I figured by this point that I'd probably be taking a different job.
Starting point is 00:05:13 I fill out a time card at the end of my shift, and I tell the manager that I probably won't be back. He understands and thanks me for the help. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and I email the owner to ask him about my measly paycheck. I do, and she basically tells me to f-off over text. She told me that it was staging and that she told me that I wouldn't be paid. I respond that I understand that, but that I stayed an extra three hours which I was told that I would be paid for. She stops responding, so I decide that I want to be petty over forty bucks, so I get the
Starting point is 00:05:45 state labor department involved. The labor department employee goes in there and makes her pay me for the hours, including the first staging hour. A couple of weeks later, I got my 40 bucks and I never went back to that restaurant. The restaurant closed down a couple of weeks after I got that paycheck. The owner made this long-winded complaint on the company Facebook page about how the food culture had changed in the city, and that her restaurant didn't fit in anymore, which was total BS.
Starting point is 00:06:14 They were always popular. Most people theorized that her terrible management and employee abuse had caught up to her. OP, I'm glad you stuck up for yourself. If an employer steps an employee 40 bucks, it's no big deal. But if an employee pulls 40 bucks out of the till, then suddenly the cops get called. Our next reply from TLR 92. My very first job was at a little drive in restaurant close to my high school. I showed up for work the first day, and my manager said that I had to pay her 50 bucks
Starting point is 00:06:44 for training. She showed me around the place, and she said that she would pay me $4.50 an hour as a car hop. This was back in 2010, and that all the tips that I made went to a bucket with all the other girls' tips. At the end of the night, she counted up the tips, kept almost 20% for herself, and split the rest evenly among every employee. Also, part of our job was that one day a week we had to spend four hours cleaning her house. It seemed super shady. I literally
Starting point is 00:07:15 just left after it listened to her go over all these rules. My dad was pissed until I explained and another girl confirmed and my dad agreed that I did the right thing. Our next reply was from Stevie Avail. I went to an Italian restaurant for my first day of work and I got three red flags on the very first day. First, the manager said that he had lots of hours for me and getting ships would be no problem. Every single other employee told me that they were struggling to get hours and that they had no idea why they hired me. Everyone said the manager was a butthole, even the customers.
Starting point is 00:07:48 Third, it was my first day there, and I had to actually teach the woman training me how to do one or two different things. Our next reply is from Poca-Australian. I was hired to be a salesman for Kirby vacuums. My first sales call was to a single elderly woman who was supporting her son in the hospital. I had to offer her a free carpet clean as a demonstration as a trick to get in the door. The supervisor training me pushed and pushed to make the sale until this old woman was in tears.
Starting point is 00:08:18 Just as she was about to sign the paperwork, I asked if she actually wanted the vacuum, and she said that it was lovely, but she couldn't afford it. I took the paperwork away from her and said not to worry. Outside, I told my supervisor that I quit, to which he replied that I would have been fired anyway. No love lost. I hung around for half an hour playing on my phone to make sure the supervisor left,
Starting point is 00:08:40 because he was our real piece of work. I also had something kind of similar happen to me when I was young and desperate for a job. I got this interview for this retail position and I went to this facility that wasn't a store. It was like a building and just this like room with tables and chairs, so like whatever. So anyways, the boss comes out and there's like eight or 10 other prospective employees
Starting point is 00:09:02 there and he starts giving us a demonstration about these knives that we're supposed to sell. He went through this whole spiel about how great it was to work there and how the employees work hard and play hard, etc. Then after putting us through a couple of tests to see how well we could sell stuff, he took like 3 of the 10 people there and basically let them go. Then he came back to us 7 people who were still there and were like, congratulations, you're hired. Now to get you started, all you have to do is buy your first set of knives. Don't worry though, once you sell them you'll immediately get reimbursed and you can buy
Starting point is 00:09:34 your second set of knives for a profit. It wasn't that moment that I realized this dude wasn't an employer trying to get us to sell knives to other customers. This dude was a scam we're trying to sell knives to us. Obviously, he wouldn't care if I sold the knives to someone else because by the time I bought them off of him, he had already made his money. Anyways, I quickly pieced out after that one. Looking back, I think that it might have been Cutco because I know that Cutco is an MLM scheme, but it's been so long that I don't really remember. Our next reply is from Hall. I technically quit before my first day. I got hired at a well-known gift store.
Starting point is 00:10:12 I was hired with the understanding that I would only work Saturdays and Sundays with a grand total of 8 hours a week, so 2-4 hours shifts. Also this job paid minimum wage. That wasn't a problem with me. I done similar stuff before. I would just pick up another part-time job for the rest of the week. Apparently, that wasn't allowed. The manager thought that me working a second job would be disrespectful to her. She thought that I should work for them and only them, and I should have better control over my money if I can't survive on 64 bucks a week before
Starting point is 00:10:46 taxes. Yeah, I didn't show up because F that noise. She called me up all pissed off because I wouldn't show up to such a great opportunity. Alright, so I had to do the math on this one and 64 dollars a week comes out to $3,328 a year. Lady, that's what you should be paying this employee in a month. Let alone a year. I can pretty much guarantee that this manager is one of those boomers who complains about young people eating avocado toast.
Starting point is 00:11:18 Our next reply is from Cut Corners Not Rists. I was a cashier at this cafeteria for a large company in my town. The people who worked at the company would put their tips in a bucket, and the people of this company made a lot of money, so there were like 10s and 20s in there. The manager of the cafe wouldn't let me have any of the tips, because she said that cashiers couldn't be trusted. So she would ship the tip money to a church in El Paso. I immediately knew that this was a load of BS and I just never
Starting point is 00:11:45 went back. It's also illegal, I think, to collect money for one thing but do something else without disclosing who or what it's for. Yes OP, you're correct. That is, in fact, illegal and you're boss who get in big trouble for it. Our next reply is from once an optimist. I started this new job unloading shipping containers and I was told they had to be empty by noon. That this was imperative because a new one was going to arrive in the early afternoon. This was a two-man job if we both worked our butts off to get it done. My boss said, oh, also your co-worker is off today, so you'll need to get this cleared. I just walked out. Even if it was a trial by fire, I'm
Starting point is 00:12:25 not interested in working for those grunts. F, that. Then beneath that, we have a similar story from Cybernetic Phenic. I'm not sure if this was an intentional trial by fire, but I had a similar thing happen when I worked in a movie theater. Cleaning out theaters was a two or three person job. There just wasn't a ton of time between the film ending and the people seating for the next session. On my first night at that job, I was assigned with two other crew members who were both under 18 years old.
Starting point is 00:12:52 7 p.m. rolled around, and state law prohibited minors from working after 7 p.m. so they both left. I quickly started running behind trying to tackle these theaters on my own without much experience. I talked to my manager who just told me to deal with it. Thanks. As I'm walking down to our biggest room, which was an IMAX, which is massive compared to the other rooms.
Starting point is 00:13:14 People were already walking past me to be seated. I walked in and realized the place was absolutely trash from the previous screening and the customers were already complaining and giving me dirty looks. Dealing with that garbage wasn't worth minimum wage, so I just turned around, dropped off my name tag at the employee lounge and left. You know, I've always thought that a great solution in these scenarios is that if one person doesn't show up to their job and another employee has to cover them, then that employee should get the wage of the person who didn't show up.
Starting point is 00:13:44 Right? It's not like the company loses extra money because they were going to pay that other employee anyways. Plus, it's a really great incentive for the employee who has to work extra. Our next reply is from Yellow Chit. I was hired to be a waitress, which had a super low hourly wage due to tips. The entire shift they had me washed dishes in the sink, but paid me waitress wages. A few months later, the restaurant was investigated for a number of fraud activities. Our next reply is from Battle Angel Red. I answered an ad for a babysitting job. I was already working on a casual basis, but it was sporadic so I thought that some after hours babysitting would be welcome extra cash. The couple were both in the military and they told me that I would be staying in the spare room and looking after their six-month-old
Starting point is 00:14:28 child around the clock, as well as doing the housework. They would give me one day off every two weeks. They said that it was cash in hand so I could sign up for unemployment benefits to make up the rest of the money. I left on the spot. They wanted a live-in housemate and nanny, not a babysitter, and they were not able to pay for one. I will never figure out why they thought that it was up to me to illegally collect unemployment to subsidize them. Down in the comments beneath this post, I see quite a few people saying that more than likely OP would have been proposition for a threesome eventually. And I've never worked as a maid or a babysitter, so I don't know, but is that a common strategy? That people post ads for babysitters trying to find a live-in nanny slash maid slash sister
Starting point is 00:15:16 wife? Our next reply is from Pocket Mouse. I had this awful motel gig in Rally North Carolina when I was young and desperate for a job. Any job? I came in to relieve the overnight lady who told me about the baseball bat that she kept beneath the counter, as well as which rooms had the prostitutes and which rooms were for the genuinely lost tourists. Also how I should not give towels to certain people because they had 10 plus people in
Starting point is 00:15:43 a room and they were trying to get them to leave. While she was talking to me, one of the prostitutes came up and paid her with sweaty boob money. Also, they expected me to do laundry in the back room in between babysitting the front desk and to watch out for stray needles or drug paraphernalia in the sheets. I overheard a guy in the lobby on the phone talking about how he had a friend who was in jail, and he was going to hire him to kill his cousin who was in that same jail. The guy was saying this all in between bites of bargain bin fruit loops from the continental
Starting point is 00:16:16 breakfast. I left. They never sent me my check for working that day, and I never called to get it. Well OP, if the motel job doesn't work out, at least the guy on the phone is hiring. Our next reply is from facetiously serious. I was young in naive right out of college so I took a quote marketing job. My interview went great, nothing shady seemed to be going on and there were no immediate red flags. After 4 hours of training, my first day consisted of going door to door in a suburban town trying to sell cable to older people.
Starting point is 00:16:50 We were told to dress for business, so I'm hiking around for miles in my best skirt, suit jacket, and heels. The hours were listed as nine to five, but we didn't get back to the business until well after 10 p.m. Not to mention, the person I was shadowing was able to make a sale to an older gentleman who seemed to have memory issues. I notepdata
Starting point is 00:17:11 they are fast. Alright, I know that a lot of my viewers are younger, so I'm gonna give you this advice. If you ever go to a job interview, and as part of that interview, they want you to get into a car to go to another location, immediately walk out. Because in my experience, what's actually going to happen to you is what happened to OP here. They'll drive you way out to some distant location, and then basically you'll be held hostage until they decide to bring you back. Granted, it's not as big of a deal nowadays because everyone has Uber on their phone, but
Starting point is 00:17:42 still, you should know this is a common scam tactic. Also, if you find a job listing online that says that it's in marketing, then nine times out of 10, it's either cold calling or door-to-door sales. Our next reply is from Donny Hink. I worked at a jail one time, and on my first day, some sort of prison investigator busted my sergeant and five other officers for bringing in drugs and banging male inmates. I didn't even wait until the end of my shift. Opie, I don't blame you on that one. I'd be like, give me the hell out of here.
Starting point is 00:18:15 Our next replies from an bomb me, daddy. I had two interviews to do housekeeping at a hospital. I got a call the night of the second interview at around midnight from the interviewer saying, I was just so excited, I wanted to call and tell you that I'm gonna offer you the job tomorrow. I should have taken that as the first red flag, but I needed the job. I go in for my first day of training and my boss has printouts of my Facebook wall and my boyfriends. He started asking me how long my boyfriend and I had been together, and he made it clear that he knew the truth, so don't lie to him. I was uncomfortable. I left his office to do some training. We break for lunch, and he sits with me in the cafeteria, asking
Starting point is 00:18:55 how it's been going so far, etc. Then what the hell what? Then he tells me that he expects to see me at his church on Sunday. I haven't gone to church in like 10 years at this point. Everyone has a quick meeting in our main room, and I stay back after everyone had left. I put my badge, keys, and walkie-talkie on the desk and walk the F out. I felt bad, but it was no wonder why they can't keep anyone. My boss would call me for months afterwards, asking what had happened. He said that he was worried sick, that he deserves answers, blah, blah, blah.
Starting point is 00:19:32 I'd call their HR the day after I walked out to tell him that I quit and why, so they had to have told him. He had no reason to keep contacting me. Oh, Pee. What? I can't believe he stayed even after the Facebook printouts. This dude is actually like he's a type of guy who has human heads in his freezer. And to make matters worse, this guy works in healthcare.
Starting point is 00:19:55 So if he was doing these weird things to his employees, what was he doing to the patients? Huh, maybe that's where he gets all his heads from. That was our slash ass credit, and if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.