Sometimes, a job sounds great on paper, but once you actually start, it might not be what you thought. People on Reddit who quit their jobs on the first day shared the moment they knew they needed to quit — it happens sometimes. Here is what some shared:
1.“I worked in a hotel for a day. No one told me where anything was. I got chewed out for it. Guests enjoying their meals told me to pay no mind/that I was doing a good job, and that my boss was a jerk. I told the manager I was quitting and wouldn’t do the next shift. I arrived the next day, returning a work uniform, and my supervisor approached me and yelled at me for being late. I told her I already quit, but if I was working, technically, I was five hours early for my shift. Absolute nutcases.”
2.“I used to work at a craft store as a cashier but quit when I moved. I returned a couple of years later to make some extra cash, but this time in the framing department. During the interview, they swore up and down that I would only ever be a backup cashier because I said I refused to have full cashier shifts. The first shift after the interview is listed as framing, but I’m put on cash and told that most of my shifts would be cash since they’d found someone else for framing. I spent the next six hours giving everyone who came to my register 20% off of everything and never returned.”
3.“I applied for a job at my longtime favorite restaurant (I celebrated my birthday there every year). The owner asked me to come in for basically a tryout, and 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 one for their lunch rush, saying I’d get paid for the hours. The kitchen staff was nice, so I was happy to help, 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 tells me to email the owner after I ask him if I should pick up my measly paycheck. I do, she told me to fuck off over text. She told me it was ‘staging’ and that she told me I wouldn’t be paid. I responded that I understood 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 and never returned to that restaurant.”
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4.“I took a summer job at a textile plant, and the trainer said, ‘Forget about taking a break if you want to stay caught up.’
5.“My very first job was at a little drive-in restaurant close to my high school. I showed up to work the first day, the lady said I had to pay her $50 for training. She showed me around the place and said that my pay would be $4.50/hour as a carhop (this was in 2010), and all the tips I made went into a bucket with all the other girls’ tips. At the end of the night, she counted up tips, kept 20% for herself, and split the rest up evenly among EVERY employee. Also, part of our job was we had to spend four hours cleaning her house one day a week. It seemed super shady. I literally left after listening to her go over all these rules. My dad was pissed until I explained, and another girl confirmed, and my dad agreed I did the right thing.”
6.“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 anotheer 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.’ I figured 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 fucking 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 had been the day before and that if I wanted to keep working there, 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 fucking places, then never came back for a third shift.”
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7.“I interviewed for a ‘professional marketing assistant’ and got the job immediately. I was under the impression that I would be an assistant to the man I was interviewed by. When I showed up for my first day, the same waiting room I was in the previous day was FULL of people. I quickly learned that we were all hired and that I would be a door-to-door salesperson selling some pretty useless shit. I spent my entire day inside a Starbucks applying for other jobs, went home, and got paid, but I never returned.”
8.“‘Salesman’ for Kirby vacuums. The first sale call was to a single elderly woman supporting her son in the hospital (they got us in the door by offering a free carpet cleaning as a demonstration). The supervisor training me pushed me to make the sale until this old woman was in tears. Just as she was about to sign the paperwork I asked if she actually wanted to vacuum and she said it was lovely but she couldn’t afford it. I took the paperwork away from her and said not to worry. Outside I told the supervisor I quit to which he replied I would’ve been fired anyway. No love lost. I hung around for half an hour playing on my phone to ensure the supervisor left because he was a real piece of work.”
9.“I once went for a job interview as a security guard. A man and a woman asked me my name, asked me how strong I was, and then hired me and asked me to start immediately. That started alarm bells ringing. Two questions in an interview, and I am employed and working with no discussion about anything else.”
“They took me to their warehouse (the office interview was above it) and told me to move boxes from a shelf into a truck. I said hang on, the job is security, not manual labor, and then they started getting really shitty with me and articulating that if you want the job, then you need to do this as part of it. I was like yeah, nah, I am out and walked out, total scam, there was no job, and it really pissed me off because I could’ve gone to another interview at that time but chose to go there instead.”
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10.“I technically quit before my first day. I got hired at a well-known gift store. I was hired with the understanding that I would work Saturdays, Sundays, and a grand total of eight hours a week (so two 4-hour shifts). Also, at minimum wage. Not a problem with me, done that before, I would just pick up a part time job for rest of the week. Nope, apparently, that wasn’t allowed. The manager thought that was horrible and ‘disrespectful’ to her. I should only work for them, and only them, and I should have better control over my money if I can’t survive on $64 a week before taxes. I didn’t show up after that. She called, pissed off that I wouldn’t show up to such an opportunity.”
11.“I answered an ad for a babysitting job. I was already working casually, but it was sporadic, so I thought some after-hours babysitting would welcome extra cash. The couple were both in the military and proceeded to tell me that I would be staying in the spare room and looking after their 6-month-old child around the clock, as well as doing the housework. I would have one day off every two weeks. They said it was cash in hand, so I could sign onto the dole (unemployment benefit) to make up the rest of the money. I left on the spot. They wanted a live-in housemaid and nanny, not a babysitter, and they were not able to pay for one. Why they thought it was up to me to collect the dole to subsidize them illegally, I don’t know.”
12.“It was a waitress gig for a local restaurant. I finished my first day, then was told that training would continue for six weeks. While I was in training, all of the tips I got had to be given to my trainer. I was being paid less than $2 an hour. I called the next day and said it wasn’t gonna work out.”
13.“It was my first day at Five Guys. It was around 10:30 PM, and they told me it was time to clock out despite not having finished closing. I then worked until almost midnight. I did not return.”
14.“Young and naïve right out of college, I took a ‘marketing’ job. My interview was great, nothing shady seemed to be going on, and there were no immediate red flags. After four hours of training, my first day consisted of going door to door in a suburban town, trying to sell cable to older people. We were told to dress for business, so I’m hiking around for miles in my best skirt, suit jacket, and heels. Hours were from ‘9-5’ but we didn’t get back to the business until well after 10 p.m. Not to mention, the person I was shadowing could make a sale to an older gentleman who seemed to have memory issues. I noped the fuck right out of there.”
Did you ever quit a job as quickly as you started? If so, share it with me in the comments below!