I have quit numerous jobs after one day. So many places I’m on the Do not hire list.
I flew for a charter company once that turned out to be a really bad place. It took just one flight with the chief pilot (Ed) to realize it - and on that occasion it took every ounce of professionalism I had to not just walk away from the airplane in the middle of the day. I gave my notice shortly after. No regrets.
But the punchline is that some years later I was talking to a former colleague from another company and I mentioned this incident. He knew the place and asked, “Did you fly with that idiot, Ed? He’s a piece of work, huh?”
I knew someone who was fairly senior at a big tech company, got poached to another company with a bigger pay packet, realized a week in that the cost of that pay rise was the end of his work life balance, like completely ending the “life” part. He went back to old company on bended knee (it was a Japanese company he actually used the Japanese term “with head bowed”) they let him back.
Reading people’s experiences on here I can relate. Seems like the two things that will quickly kill a job for most people - and me as well - is extremely hard physical labor and/or terrible co-workers/boss. Physically I’m not afraid to get dirty, or to lift heavy things sometimes, but I’ve had jobs where I realized I was risking a permanent injury - which I won’t do. And of course the aforementioned toxic coworkers. Especially in a corporate job where I think some of the people are chronically unhappy and throw you under the bus whenever possible to make themselves feel better about things. Either of those situations to me are intolerable, no matter what the pay. Because lets face it, a terrible job can really wreck your outlook on life even when you’re not there.
They can also be psychotically happy.
I worked at one company in my 20s that I later found out had a reputation for being very cult-like. Like everyone really wanted you to love working there 100 hours a week and if you made a mistake everyone was really really supportive in helping you not disappoint the team again.
Anyone one of the guys in my training group basically said “fuck this” after about a month, left for lunch and never came back. Didn’t even tell anyone. His manager had to go track him down to make sure he wasn’t hit by a car or something.
Quit my bus boy job at a diner after I got to work for my shift, only to be told that they didn’t need me (but didn’t bother to call me). It was a miserable place to work; that was just the last straw. I think I lasted three weeks.
I was actually really proud of myself. I’m not a terribly assertive person (and was so much less so in my teens), but I had just had enough.
My wife got an accounting job at a small cosmetics factory. She quit a couple days later, after one of the bosses said he wanted her to go with him on a “work” trip, just him and her in a hotel. No way, Jose.
If it were really a cult, the manager would have had to go “track him down” and come back and report to the “employees” that he’d been “hit by a car… or something…”
I do think you can usually tell within the first few days if a place is a good fit. A lot of people say to give it time or that you’ll adjust, but I tend to trust my gut feelings. When I notice red flags in leadership or culture early on (in my case it was literally the second day), it’s hard for me to stick around and hope it changes.
Summer job - College Pro Painters - quit after four days. First day was, “Go to work”. Now painting isn’t exactly rocket surgery but teens aren’t your most worldly wise folks. Not even 5 seconds on technique, of how to scrape off old paint or how to not gouge the wood or how to (safely) put up a ladder. despite a pre-hire promise of on-the-job training. Then they changed the hours, starting a ½ hour earlier & instead of being done at 4:00 or 5:00, it was stop painting then (& the 20-30 mins of cleanup was mandatory but unpaid)
Thursday is cloudy with moderate chance of rain. I didn’t hear otherwise so I biked over (of course this was the day a car was going in for service so I had to bike instead of drive). Stood around for 20-30 mins & no one else had shown up so I started to ride home…& the Heavens opened up. I got home, wetter than a drowned rat, dried off & called the crew lead (pre cell phone days); his response was, “It was raining where I am so I just figured you’d get the idea” except it was not raining where I lived, 20 mins away from him & closer to the house that we were painting the exterior on.. That was the final straw; I told him to stuff it.
Real job - Contracting - started mid-Sept but didn’t really do anything at first as they were waiting for the new fiscal year (Oct 1st) & then the project’s charter to be signed. We were given some busy work but were basically twiddling our thumbs waiting for the signing. Boss had us come in one day a week (when WFH wasn’t yet really a thing & Zoom was still only something your dog {or a Mazda} did) but kept waffling as to whether to have us all come in on the same day, when some of us would have to sit in the cafeteria to work as there weren’t enough desks but he could at least do a team meeting with the whole team or have us come in on separate days so that we all had a place to sit but he’d have to give the same speech multiple times. We were a couple of weeks into the new year & the charter still wasn’t signed when a headhunter contacted me about a different position. Unsure of the reason for the delays, knowing they hadn’t allocated enough space for us & knowing if that charter wasn’t signed, I was unemployed I talked to him & took the other position. When I called my boss to tell him, he was quite understanding & sympathetic, offering a reference & stated he would welcome me back again & that he was sorry it didn’t work out. IOW, he couldn’t have been nicer about it.
At the end of my two-week paid vacation I went in to return my laptop & badge; he wasn’t there (lunch?) so I turned it in to my grandboss, who apparently took personal offense & turned into a Frosty B, glaring at me when I knocked on her cube entrance as if me looking out for my wellbeing was a grave offense & traitorous to her to the point when I walked out of her cube but stopped to talk to someone else & say goodbye on my way out the door (literally zero steps out of the way) she heard me talking, got up, came out of her cube & stated that I no longer worked there & needed to vacate the premises immediately & then followed me from a distance to watch me walk out the door.
One job I had a couple years out of school - I considered not coming back from lunch on my first day. Let’s just say I lived to regret that decision.
You regret coming back, right?
That job I quit in Month 4 that I should have quit on Day 1: I later found out other incumbents had wisely walked out at lunch on their first day and never came back. But noooooo, not me. I kept trying to convince myself to rise above the foulness for a bit longer. A mistake with lasting damage!
Specifically, it was at an Osco pharmacy. The only reason I didn’t was because I had already spent 2 weeks in training, the first one at their Chicago-area headquarters, and I felt that they, like, owed me something or whatever.
The computer system had so many bells and whistles, you couldn’t do the basics, and the chief pharmacist was, and by all accounts still is, impossible to get along with. I really should have turned him in to the state board, because not only was he visibly mean to the Public Aid patients, other employees said they saw him taking bottles of things like cough syrup or amoxicillin into the bathroom. I would rather not think about what he probably did to them.
Reasons I Quit Various Jobs Soon After Starting
- Accused me of lying. Won’t work for someone who doesn’t trust me.
- Manager was super sexist, demeaning, and critical
- Micro manager from hell. Her long-time employee needed therapy to cope with her. She was lying to and misleading vulnerable clients, and I felt complicit in her deception
- Agreed to work there at half salary on the condition I would be trained in fundraising. Training was not forthcoming. Wildly fiscally irresponsible, ran into multiple legal issues due to zoning disputes, which they willfully disregarded and hit up donors for money to pay their legal fees while continually breaking the law. Treated donors like ATM machines.
- CEO was unbearable. Expectations were very high but not at all clear, and I was continuously demeaned and insulted.
All those jobs, I probably made it less than two months at each of them. In all cases I quit without notice, in the middle of a mental health crisis.
I’ve had just as many jobs that I absolutely nailed. Current job I’ve been an employee in good standing for over ten years. I’ve felt, at times, that the jobs that didn’t work out were personal failures, but looking back at this list I think I just have a low tolerance for bullshit.
I once took a temp job that was advertised as a secretary/receptionist position, and while I temped, that was what it was. They decided they wanted me to take the position permanently, so I was hired.
Then it became clear that the position was not a secretarial one at all. They started telling me to take on complex construction accounting. I’m no bookkeeper or accountant, as I’m a dunce with numbers, and I specifically avoid that type of job. So on my first day as a permanent hire, I went to lunch and didn’t return.
I think they were looking for someone, anyone, who would just show up and demonstrate that they could reliably do office work before they tried to push them into the harder job (and only pay a receptionist’s wages). Oh, well, I went from that to a full-time legal secretarial position which I held for the next seven years.
I ahd worked in a professional field for 30 years and was considering retiring and then working P.T. ina small optical practice. .My first day the Mgr took me to the head eye dr’s office and introduced me as the new P.T. optician.
The Dr looked up at me and then back down at his desk and said :..”We don’t need another optician’“
. The Mgr gave me a funny look and said “ don’t mind him” .
I worked 5 weeks and then left. The entire place was toxic from the top down and I knew why!