Some jobs just aren't worth the hassle, something these workers know all too well!
Workers on Reddit share the time when they quit during their shift. Content has been edited for clarity.
Who Would Come Back On Their Free Time?
“When I was 20 or so, I got hired to be a temporary floor member for Forever21 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 shadowee got an emergency family call and had to take off for a week. When this happened I found some other floor manager and 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 we’ll ok I’ll try it.
During seasonal sales, they had multiple articles of clothing that all look almost exactly the same but with slight differences (ex. A white cardigan with 4 buttons that looked literally the same as a white cardigan with 5 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 reshelve wasn’t my section. I just did as best as I could and got ready for my next miserable day.
The next day, I came in and the store manager pulled me to her office and told me how slow I was the day before, and if I wanted to keep working here I needed 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. I spent the rest of my shift putting clothes in random places then never came back for a third shift.”
Everything Finally Clicked
“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 nonsense 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 of 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.
My first week’s schedule, I was working mornings every day while I was in school, and I wasn’t given any hours on my days off. Aside from the fact 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.”
Where Will They Celebrate Their Birthday Now?
“I applied for a job at my longtime favorite restaurant (celebrated my birthday there every year).
The owner asked me to come in for basically a try-out, as I communicated I was looking at other job possibilities. I came in and they just stuck me on dishwashing for an hour, no biggie. Then their dishwasher didn’t show up, so the kitchen manager asked me to stay for their lunch rush, saying I’ll get paid for the hours. I did, and the kitchen staff was nice so I was happy to help out even though I figured I’d be taking a different job. I filled out a time card at the end of the shift and told the manager I probably wouldn’t be back. He understood and thanked me for the help.
Fast forward a couple of weeks, and he told me to email the owner after I asked him if I should pick up my measly paycheck. I did, and she basically told me to get lost over text. She told me it was ‘staging’ and I wouldn’t be paid. I respond I understood, but I stayed an extra three hours which I was told I’d be paid for. She stopped responding, so I decided I wanted to be petty over the 40 bucks I was owed.
So, I got 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, and never went back to that restaurant.”
Not A Shock He Didn’t Want To Work
“I have worked in construction-type jobs my whole life. The amount of angry, abusive bullies you encounter is endless. This one guy 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 his boss, without my knowledge. I never did thank him for that. This guy called me out of the blue and asked if I needed work. I said I did. He said he could pick me up the next morning. I said I had my own car, so I could meet him on site. He yelled and says he would pick me up. I was floored this idiot was yelling at me two minutes after talking to me for the first time. 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 guy was 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 started yelling again so I hung up. He called right back and was losing it because I hung up on him. I told 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 explained what happened and they just went back to bed.
About 30 minutes later, I was 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 woke up and they were livid. We all went outside and this guy was yelling at us to get in the truck because we’re late. He’s there a half an hour earlier than he said he would be. He also didn’t know who was who because he just spoke to me on the phone. I’m about to tell him to get lost again, but my buddy walked up to the truck and said he wanted to get paid upfront. This guy lets loose a tirade on my buddy. My buddy just laughed in his face. He says if you’re going to be a bully, he will have to pay him first. The guy just kept yelling. My buddy said he would be out in a minute, and he better have his money ready,
We all went back into the house and watched this guy wait in his truck. He was there for about five minutes and started blowing the horn. We just laughed and poked our heads out the door and said we’ll be there in a minute. He kept blowing the horn. We just ignored him. After another 10 minutes, he banged on the door. I opened the door and this fool is about 5’2″ and maybe 200 lbs. I was shocked by his appearance.
He’s just about to say something and I said, ‘Didn’t I tell you to get lost and not bother coming here?’
He was truly confused. He asked me where’s the other guy was, and I told him he was messing with him. I revealed I was the guy he was talking to, and he needed to leave.
He said, ‘So you’re going to mess me up and not come to work?’
I was amazed at what an idiot this guy was. I told him he had to pay me upfront first. He started yelling and swearing again, so I slammed the door in his face. He started banging on the door like a madman. I finally had enough and got a hockey stick and chased him back to his truck. It was pretty funny watching him run.”
A Heck Of A First Day
“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 thinking ‘At the 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 a board. 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 with in 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.
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. 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 for all that trauma at 18 years old. Forget that.”
That’s A Little Confusing
“I went in one afternoon to this upscale restaurant with an open patio (it looked like a walk-up bar kinda); looking for weekend part-time bar work, like a bar back or kitchen help, something fairly easy.
I spoke to the bar manager, telling him what I’m looking for, about how I had experience, and was clear I’m only looking for Friday/Saturday night only, as I had a full-time job at the time.
He said to come back that night around eight, with dress shoes and a black tie, white shirt, black pants. I said no problem and headed home. I got there at eight, and he showed me the bar, showed me where the glasses are, where the drinks are, then said, ‘Any questions, I’ll be near the kitchen.’
OK, I started taking inventory of what we had, what we needed, etc. when a waitress come up and punched in an order and then stood there. I smile and go back to my counting and she says ‘Hey, are you going to get those?’ and I tell her I’m only the bar back and don’t know where the bartender is.
I don’t even have my smart serve, a license required to serve drinks in Canada/Ontario, so I couldn’t even grab the drinks if I knew how to make it. The waitress walks off and a few moments later, the boss that was showing me around earlier comes over and says ‘hey, can you tell me what happened?’
I was dumbfounded, but told him what I was doing (inventory) and the waitress wanted me to get her drinks. He asked why I didn’t, and I told him I don’t know how to make the drinks she wanted. He then showed me how to make it and said next time tell him that so she (the waitress) can come get me sooner. I ask what it is they think they hired me for, and the manager and the waitress both said, almost comically and at the same time, ‘bartender and front end manager.’
I didn’t even give them a resume, and they wanted me to manage their front end and be the only bartender. They didn’t even know my last name.”
Red Flags Galore
“I put in to do transcription work for a company that sounded really good on paper, and they were enthusiastic to hire me. They told me they just had to do a test run first to see how I’d do, and they would pay me for my work. Okay, no problem. I had a few years as a transcriber and document preparer working for an attorney, so the work they wanted or described to me was very similar, nothing new at all.
What they sent me was a really terrible audio file with a guy who had a thick accent and microphone feedback so I could barely hear anything said. The file was over half an hour and hour-long too, not 15 minutes like they’d said they would send. I transcribed 15 minutes then sent it back stating I hadn’t transcribed the whole thing since per the original instructions it was only 15 minutes they wanted.
I waited and half an hour later I got my transcript back marked up with all kinds of errors – not mine, theirs. Punctuation was wrong, the content I know and could hear was not what the person on the tape said etc. I also got a ‘contrac'” attached to that stating I agreed to be dinged (25 cents deducted from my invoice) for every error found followed along with a promise I would never badmouth the company.’
I blocked them immediately and ignored their repeated attempts to contact me over the next few days, blocking each contact until they gave up trying to reach me.
I know a con job when I see one.”
Everything Worked Out In The End
“I was hired as a pastry chef at a bakery, but my interview was at the corporate office so I hadn’t met my direct boss yet.
My name is unisex, so when I walked into the kitchen the head chef scoffed and went, ‘Oh, you’re a girl?’ and went on to tell me women aren’t meant to be pastry chefs.
At one point, he asked me to stay an extra five hours. I told him I needed to make a phone call to make sure everything at home would be okay. He went on a 40-minute rant about how lucky I was to work for him because he was an award-winning baker who used to own his own bakery and if the job wasn’t a priority for me, then it wasn’t going to work out.
As I was leaving to take my lunch break, he told me he had called the corporate office to tell my interviewer how awful I was and the $17/hour had been reduced to $12/hour for a six-week period while he ‘retrained me to his standards,’ and after that, we could discuss a raise up to $14/hour.
I left.
The guy who interviewed me was really nice so I felt awful calling him to let him know I wouldn’t be back. He apologized and confessed the real reason they wanted me was to replace that awful chef. I was the only employee because the rest of the staff had walked out on him a few weeks prior. I told him there was just no way that I could work under that man for 6sixweeks while I learned the ropes.
I drove by about six months later and the bakery was closed. Worked out though, I’m now the lead baker at a successful bakery with all women, so take that Edwin and your “baked goods made by women are awful” attitude.
But The Boss Sent A Slideshow, So It’s Okay
“I was a laboratory scientist. I was on my second day, getting trained on assisting with bone marrow processing after bone marrow aspiration. I’ve done it before, but still had to be shown, of course. Basically, I just take the bone marrow collected by the doctor, usually the pathologist, sometimes the surgeon, and prepare slides bedside and take them back to the lab for processing.
If you’ve never had or watched a bone marrow aspiration before, it’s pretty violent. First, you lay on your side, then the doctor locates the landmark on your hip (posterior iliac crest), then lidocaine is injected from the outside into the surface of the bone, then a large-bore needle is inserted forcefully into your bone to access the marrow because the bone is incredibly dense and strong. Usually, the doctor is trained and it is a routine procedure.
At this hospital, however, the person performing was a radiologist. I was thinking, weird, but there’s no reason radiologists shouldn’t be able to do it. It was actually done in the imaging room, too. Before starting, the pathologist, my boss, popped his head in and said ‘Did you look at the PowerPoint slides I sent you? You’ll be fine.’
Warning bells started going off in my head, especially when after needle insertion, everybody was told to exit the imaging room so a CT can be taken to see how close the needle was to the bone. The sterile field was broken, of course. After a few tries, and a few CTs later, the needle was finally on the surface of the bone. My trainer was feeling uncomfortable because this was highly irregular. The patient was sedated the whole time, which is not usually the case. The procedure was completed, the trainer and I came back and complained to the lead pathologist. We were basically told to keep our mouths shut and our heads down, and it wasn’t our job to tell other doctors how to do their job.
I called and quit the next morning. I wasn’t gonna get thrown under the bus for something else in the future if this is how they do things in their old boy’s club. That hospital closed down a few years later.”
Only Lasted One Day, And For A Good Reaosn
“I worked in a Hanes factory for one day. When I got there, the woman at the desk had me fill out paperwork then wait for my new manager to come to get me. I waited for about three hours and within that time, at least five people had walked out quitting in a rage.
About 10 more people ended up sitting with me who were just starting as well. When the manager came to get us, they took us to a giant empty room and fill out more paperwork and safety guides then they started separating us depending on the department we applied for.
I had applied for a position that was described as moving freight to and from storage and loading the shipping trucks with pallet jacks and forklifts and whatnot. However, the ‘manager’ decided to change my whole job on me at the last second without my input. I was sent into a sweatshop in the middle of the factory to price champion brand clothing and fold them for shelving at stores. It was a 12-hour shift, seven days a week and you could only ask for about three days off a year.
We got one break and had to stand in line to check in to the break room. If you were in the back of the line, you didn’t have time to eat lunch or do anything by the time you made it to the check-in.
No food or drinks were allowed on the work floor, and I hadn’t gotten a chance to get any during our one break. They threatened to write us up if we asked to get anything from our vehicles once we were on the premises, which I had left my lunch in my truck as I was used to eating in my vehicle at my last job.
Nobody knew anyone and would get in trouble for leaving their station to get help, I was thrown into everything without any training and didn’t understand any of the guidelines for the computer’s codes and stuff.
I tried to tell one of the people who I assumed was of higher-order I didn’t know what I was doing or where I was as it was not the job I applied for. They ignored me. I tried to tell them i wouldn’t be coming back, they cut me off and said have a nice day as they walked away.
I didn’t come back. I’m only 20 and working on college stuff and still want a little free time in between. I work in a kitchen at a little local gas station making burgers and fries every other day. I love my coworkers and customers and wouldn’t have gotten the job I’m in now if I hadn’t left that warehouse that day.”