Not every job is a perfect fit on the first day, but things have to be pretty bad to quit on the first day. These one-time employees reveal what made them take a job and shove it.
Battle Scars
“My first ever job.
I was thirteen and I would be delivering phone books from the back of a van through people’s letterboxes.
So I’d be in the back of the van with the phone books and there was an older guy driving slowly while I went back and forth to the van/houses with the books.
At one point the van was getting quite empty so there was more space to move around and we had finished the delivery in the street we were paid to deliver to and he drove to another.
While driving there he drove let’s say aggressively and I fell inside the back where the books were. I wasn’t sitting in a seat as the van had no seats in the back. As I put my hand out to steady myself I accidentally laid it across a portable radio that had its antenna extended but the antenna was also broken halfway and razor sharp.
It sliced the palm of my hand clean open about three inches. I can only describe what I saw as gruesome. I said to him to pull the van over and I needed help. He saw my hand and just threw me a plastic bag, the kind you’d get at a supermarket, and told me to wrap my hand in it.
Then .. he continued with the deliveries, at least he delivered the remaining books himself.
I should have been taken to a hospital or at-least home to my parents. I quit after that and never showed up again. As you can imagine my parents were quite angry at him.”
Now That Is BEYOND Creepy
“Had two interviews to work housekeeping at a hospital. Got a call the night of the second interview at around midnight from the guy saying ‘I was just so excited I wanted to call and tell you I’m gonna call you to offer you the job tomorrow’. Should have taken that as the first red flag but I needed the job.
I go in for my first day of training and he has printouts of my Facebook wall and my boyfriends. He started asking me how long we had been together and made it clear he knew everything so as not to lie to him. It was so uncomfortable.
I leave his office and do some training. We break for lunch and he sits with me in the cafeteria asking how it’s been going so far, etc. Then tells me he expects to see me at his church Sunday. I haven’t gone to church in like ten years at this point.
We all have a quick meeting in our main room and I stay back after everyone had left. I put my badge, keys and walkie on the desk and walk the heck out. I felt bad but it was no wonder why they can’t keep anyone.
He call me for MONTHS afterward asking what had happened, he was worried sick, he deserves answers, blah blah blah. I had called their HR the day after I had walked out to tell them I quit and why so they had to have told him. He had no reason to keep contacting me.
If you were guessing which religion he was then yes, he was Mormon. I had grown up around a lot of Mormons so I never thought this was a normal thing for them and I know it’s definitely not for all of them.
This happened over seven years ago. At the time, I was 20 and pretty naive. I was more concerned with finding a job to keep my apartment than I was thinking about escalating this.
I had another part-time job at the time, too. I told that boss about this and he pulled some strings and got me in full time. I still have this job and love it. It’s where I met my husband too, actually.”
This Guy Takes The Cake As The Biggest Moron
“I have worked in construction-type jobs my whole life. The amount of angry abusive pricks you encounter are endless. This one moron still has the title. This was in the 90’s so he has stood the test of time.
A friend quit this job and gave my number to the prick boss he had, without my knowledge. I never did thank him for that. This guy calls me out of the blue and asks if I need work. I said I did. He said he could pick me up the next morning. I said I have my own car I could meet him on site. He yells and says he will pick me up. I was floored that this idiot was yelling at me two minutes after talking to me. I gave him my address and he said he would be there at 6:30 the next morning.
At 5:30 the next morning this idiot is calling asking, ‘Where the heck is your house?’ No hello, no good morning, just full-on screaming. I said if he would stop yelling I would give him directions. He starts yelling again so I hang up. He calls right back and is losing it because I hung up on him. I tell him to get lost and not even bother to show up. The two other guys I lived with were now awake and not too happy with me. I explain what happened and they just go back to bed.
About 30 minutes later I am awakened by the sound of a horn blaring outside our house. We lived on a farm so luckily the next neighbor was half a mile away. My roommates once again wake up and they are livid. We all go outside and this idiot is yelling at us to get in the truck because we’re late. He’s there half an hour earlier than he said he would be. He also doesn’t know who is who because he just spoke to me on the phone. I’m about to tell him to eff off again but my buddy walks up to the truck and says he wants to get paid upfront. This guy lets loose a tirade on my buddy. My buddy just laughs in his face. He says if you’re going to be a prick he will have to pay him first. The guy just keeps yelling. My buddy says he will be out in a minute and he better have his money ready,
We all go back into the house and watch this guy wait in his truck. He’s there about 5 minutes and starts blowing the horn. We just laugh and poke our heads out the door and say we’ll be there in a minute. He keeps blowing the horn. We just ignore him. After another 10 minutes, he bangs on the door. I open the door and this fool is about 5’2′ and maybe 200 lbs. I am shocked by his appearance. He’s just about to say something and I say, ‘Didn’t I tell you to get lost and not bother coming here?’ He is truly confused. He asked where’s the other guy? I said he was just messing with you. I’m the guy you were talking to, now leave. He says, ‘So you’re going to mess me up and not come to work?’ I was amazed at what a prick this guy was. I said you got to pay me upfront first. He starts yelling and swearing again, I slam the door in his face. He starts banging on the door like a madman. I finally have enough and get a hockey stick and chase him back to his truck. It was pretty funny watching him run. He backs out of the driveway and threatens he’ll get me for this.
He still is the biggest prick I have ever met.”
A Nightmare Of A First Job
“I was supposed to be a hearse driver. That was it. That was all that was in the job advertisement, that was all that was discussed in the interview. I was just supposed to drive hearses to and from funerals.
The first red flag was I was told during the interview that I would be on-call 24/7, which I thought was weird because funerals are usually planned at least a couple of days before they happen. But, I didn’t pay any mind to that detail.
So my first day comes around, and I get a call from my new boss telling me to pick up the hearse from the funeral home and meet him at a house. In my head I’m like ‘??? at a house???’ but then I’m like ‘maybe the body is already taken care of and I will just load it up and take it to the funeral home.’ I didn’t wanna question too much on my first call so I pick up the hearse and head to the house.
Nope. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I arrive at the home, and my boss, the police, and the family of the deceased are standing outside. The front door is open, and from the inside of the hearse in the driveway, I can just smell death. Legitimate, real, death. It’s unmistakable and you never forget it.
I greet my boss, and the first thing he says is, ‘I’m so sorry man. If I knew it was gonna be like this, I wouldn’t have made this your first call. I’ve never seen one like this.’ No hello, no nothing. so I immediately start internally freaking out because I have no idea what’s about to happen.
He tells me that not only am I going to be driving the body to the funeral home. We’re going to be removing the deceased from the home. So I start freaking out even more. I didn’t sign up for that! But, I’m in front of the police, and the family so I just play it cool and do what I have to do until I can freak out alone.
We go into the house, and it is worse than the worst episode of Hoarders you’ve ever seen. Think of the most filthy house you can imagine… I promise you it was worse. The deceased had suffered a heart attack at the top of his staircase, fallen down the stairs, and died, landing in a crumpled mess at the bottom. And stayed there. For four days. Before his family came looking for him. This was not going to be an open casket funeral, to say the least.
So now we have to get him out of the house. The body was close to 350 pounds if I had to guess, and stiff as aboard. I’m not a big guy. 5’8′, maybe 155lbs. So, because of where the body was positioned in the home, and because of what a mess the house was, a gurney was out of the question. We were carrying this body out in a sheet. It was the most I’ve ever struggled within my life. After getting the sheet under the left side of the body, my glove ripped. I said to myself in my head ‘I should definitely replace this glove.’ A cop gives me a replacement glove. And boy am I glad I replaced that glove because when I put the sheet under the other side of the body, I pulled my hand out absolutely covered in diarrhea. I had to use all of my concentration to not puke on the body at this point. Nerves, heat from the summer, and all my senses except taste were assaulting my stomach at this point. It was tough.
This is getting so long, so I’m gonna wrap it up quickly.
We get the body in the hearse, I drive it to the funeral home, and I think, ‘Cool, I’m done now’. Wrong again. I then had to learn how to prepare a body for the mortician. I had to strip this decrepit, rotting body unclothed. More nausea ensues. When I was done, I drove home in silence. Got home, sat in silence staring at the wall for about an hour.
Worst experience of my entire life. I quit the next day. I get my check. $62. $62 lousy dollars for all that trauma at 18 years old. Forget that.
I got counseling for the whole experience and now I clean carpets and air ducts for a living. Things are a lot better now.”
Forever Annoyed At Forever 21
“Not technically first day but the second day.
When I was 20 or so I got hired to be a temporary floor member for Forever 21 during the holiday season.
My training started a week before Black Friday so the store was already kind of in chaos. On my first day of training, I walked in and the floor manager gave all the new hires a tour showing us the facility and layout of the store. After this, I was assigned to a veteran floor member to shadow and get an idea of what my job was and what my duties would be. As soon as I was assigned the manager dipped never to be seen again.
An hour and a half into my shift my shadow got an emergency family call and had to take off for a week. When this happened I found some other floor manager who explained the situation and asked them who else I should shadow. The manager’s response was ‘just do what you can by yourself you’ll be fine, everyone else is busy.’ Figured well okay I’ll try…
I don’t know if any of you have shopped in the women’s section of Forever 21 but during seasonal sales, they will have multiple articles of clothing that all look almost exactly the same but with slight differences (ex. A white cardigan with four buttons that looked literally the same as a white cardigan with five buttons). The best part was these different items were often placed in completely separate parts of the store and it was the job of the dressing room to return the unpurchased items to the correct section so the employees could put them back on the shelves. Well, these employees sucked and I didn’t know if they were a part of my section or not so I’d spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to find where they go before realizing ‘wait this isn’t even my section I’ve checked literally every rack’ so I’d put it back on the sorting rack and move to the next item. More than 50% of the stuff I was told to reshelf wasn’t my section. I just did as best as I could and got ready for my next miserable day.
The next day I come in and the store manager pulls me to her office and tells me how slow I was the day before and if I want to keep working here I need to be very fast. I explained my lack of training and unfamiliarity with the store and she told me if I didn’t know where the clothes were in sections I should come in my free time and memorize where stuff was at. I spent the rest of my shift putting clothes in random places then never came back for a third shift.
I absolutely hate that place and their management.”
The Couple That Quits Together Stays Together
“I worked at a place where the owners watched the cameras and called, I just took it but had two co-workers walk out because they were sick of it.
I worked at a sushi restaurant and there was a sushi chef there named Mac that had been there for a while. He was pretty cool and we got along great when we worked together. His girlfriend also worked there as a cashier and a lot of times they were scheduled together.
One Saturday that I was supposed to be off, I get a call from Carol (the prick boss) asking me if I could come in. Apparently, Max and his girlfriend had had enough of her and they both just straight up left and walked out of the restaurant. The place was pretty small so usually, it was just the cooks in the back, the sushi chef, and the cashier/delivery driver. So, when they left, they basically left the place empty aside from the cooks, who did not speak English that well.
I decided to make the shift for the extra money and when I got there Carol was already there behind the sushi prep area making orders. She usually didn’t come in at all on weekends, but would still watch the security cameras occasionally from her laptop at home and if she saw you standing around doing nothing, she would call and yell at you. It turns out that was exactly what she did to Max and his girlfriend and they had finally had enough. Carol showed me the security footage of Max yelling at her over the phone, hanging up, then taking off his apron and both him and his girlfriend flipping of the security camera and walking out.
She was showing me because she couldn’t believe how disrespectful they were and how they could just leave the restaurant like that when there were customers in it. Personally, I thought it was pretty awesome they walked out together, I know I wanted to quit hundreds of times when I was there, but I was a broke college student that needed the money.
The last I heard of them as they both got jobs at the sushi place that was competing with this restaurant.”
Don’t Work At Your Favorite Restaurant
“I applied for a job at my longtime favorite restaurant (celebrated my birthday there every year).
The owner asks me to come in for basically a try-out, as I communicated I was looking at other job possibilities. I come in and they just stick me on dishwashing for an hour, no biggie. Then their dishwasher doesn’t show up, so the kitchen manager asks me to stay one for their lunch rush, saying I’ll get paid for the hours. I do, the kitchen staff was nice so I was happy to help out even though I figured I’d be taking a different job. I fill out a time card at the end of the shift and tell the manager I probably wouldn’t be back, he understands and thanks me for the help.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and he tells me to email the owner after I ask him if I should pick up my measly paycheck. I do, she basically tells me to get lost over text. Tells me it was ‘staging’ and that she told me I wouldn’t be paid, I respond that I understand that but that I stayed an extra 3 hours which I WAS told I’d be paid for. She stops responding, I decide I want to be petty over the 40 bucks so I get the state labor department involved. The dude 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, never went back to that restaurant.”
Something Shady Was Going On Here
“I got hired at a very small knock-off dollar store in an old, failing mall. The owner was foreign with a very thick accent. He told me I’d get $6 an hour but neglected to mention it was under the table. I spent about an hour stocking the very overly cluttered shelves before I was told to get more chips out of the back storage area. I walk back there and there’s about a dozen men sitting on boxes all crammed into a small back room. I asked where the chips were and these guys all glared at me. They started speaking in another language and rapidly motion towards me. Then one guy got up and asked what I needed. I told him I was supposed to get a box of chips and he got a box out of the pile and handed it to me. The entire time these guys are all staring at me. Everything back there looked shady as all heck and it was very uncomfortable.
A while later I had to use the restroom which was also in the back. These guys all just wordlessly glared at me while I went into the woman’s restroom. While I was in the restroom, someone tried to open the door. I was the only woman there. The owner told me he wanted me to come back that night late in the evening well after the mall closed. I didn’t show up. I came in the next morning and lied about why I couldn’t work there. He still gave me the few bucks from what little time I did work. I don’t know what in the heck that guy had going on there and I didn’t want to find out.”
Kohls Kills
“Kohls. First off, they messed up the hiring pretty badly. A group of us spent an entire day trying to do the paperwork and whatnot. It was a hot mess and a huge red flag. But hey, I had been out of a job for seven months, I needed this.
First official day, I’m spending the first half of my shift doing training videos. The amount of dread I felt from the videos constantly emphasizing how you MUST push the store credit card or you’re fired made me uneasy. I mentally checked out when they went over how you’ll be fired if you don’t have so many sign-ups in a month. I wanted to run, but I really, really needed the money. I thought I’d transfer out of cashier asap and be fine.
After lunch, I did register training. It was a stupid slow day and I was expected to constantly be doing something, so I was bored out of my freaking mind. My trainer clocked out an hour into my training and I was pretty much left on my own with someone maybe walking by every now and again to check-in.
After my shift, I tried to talk to the manager about my possibilities. I had gotten another job offer and wanted to see if I could work a schedule out with both, but the manager wasn’t there. I later got an angry voicemail ranting about how I wasn’t allowed to work another job unless they worked around their 39.5-hour schedule, and I certainly couldn’t do nights for the other company (despite being scheduled all mornings that week), and how dare I be so bold to even bring up this subject. I dropped an immediate resignation notice on her desk the next day and left.
Kohls is the worst. They’re nothing but whip-cracking slave drivers.”
Losers At Lowes
“I was a cashier at Lowe’s during college for less than a full day. I made it through the multiple-day training but there was so much stupid stuff going on I almost thought I was on a hidden camera show.
All of the employees complained about how hard they had to work while simultaneously not getting enough hours. Nobody understood why they were hiring like four new people (I was one of those four).
Turns out it’s because they were progressing through a harassment complaint that required restructuring of the store and firing off some employees. This was known to HR and explained to new hires (against company policy), but wasn’t known to the employees, apparently, some of whom still worked there, including the person doing the training. She was really inappropriate and said not to worry about the harassment stuff, that everything would ‘go back to normal soon enough and we wouldn’t have to ‘be so uptight.’ They fired her the day before I started, along with one of the cashiers who trained me.
She also offered me terrible guidance for the application process. They were looking for part-time help and two of the three days they needed help on I had off from school. I told them I could work nights most nights, but if they needed daytime help it had to be on those days. She said if I was too restrictive they wouldn’t keep me on, lied to my boss about my availability to make me ‘even more attractive than I already was’ wink, and told me to schmooze them a bit and I’d make it further. She said in the end it wouldn’t impact anything, and I’d get those days.
In my first week’s schedule, I was working mornings every day that I was in school, and I wasn’t given any hours on my days off. Aside from the fact that I was given two times the hours the position called for (when other employees were shorted), my work schedule was literally impossible to consolidate with my school schedule.
I only went to work on my ‘first’ day to tell them I was quitting and that their application process was a mess. They couldn’t figure out how so much went wrong and then they asked who trained me and everything made sense. They thanked me for ‘at least showing up to quit’ unlike the other three they hired, who just stopped returning their calls and no-showed their first days.”