I was hired after a long multi-interview process (3 or 4 interviews, each several hours long) for what seemed like a great position with a dream company. I met all of the suits, had lunches with the bosses, reps, and coworkers. I was told ‘welcome to the team/family’ and all that.
Then on the first day on the job, I discovered that I was blatantly bait-and-switched about what the job was really going to be, and transfered straight into a different job role and department. All of the supervisors and interviewers had totally misrepresented the position and duties, suspiciously dropping me into the “real” position that they had been totally unable to fill because of the hideous working conditions.
After that first day, I simply never went back, never answered a phone call, never opened a letter. I figured I didn’t owe those asses a single additional second of my life.
I was one of these (sort of). Back in September I went down to Malibu to help a co-worker run a workshop. Let my boss know where I’d be, when I’d be back, etc. Then drove down and spent two days working out of cell phone reception in one of the canyons. Got there about half an hour late.
On my way back, I checked my voicemail and found the box full. Boss had decided that I vanished (she didn’t even call the co-worker hosting the workshop!), and called my father to tell him no one had seen me in 48 hours. My family panics, calls the police to ask them to check my apartment, calls about 40 friends and acquaintances, and it just got way out of hand.
That was a major factor in my quitting the job a month later.
I was a disappearer too. I work in multimedia, and tried my hand at freelancing. I did a terrible job freelancing and was trying to get back into a company for some consistant work and paychecks.
I had a few interviews with a company… smaller sized, maybe 12 employees. I was hired and introduced to everyone and briefed on what my job would be, and I’d be reporting to work the next Monday for my first day. When I got there and was filling out paperwork, I noticed my hourly pay would be significantly less than I was promised it would be. Still, it was more money than I was making on my own and I could swallow my pride for a bit. I filled out all the paper work and they stuck me in my “office”, which was basically a storage room. My task for the day was editing a wedding video.
At the end of the day everyone had gone home except me and the boss. I sat down with him and told him that he wasn’t paying me enough, editing wedding videos wasn’t my deal, and my office was terrible. I’d rather stay freelance and look for something more “me”. The dude wasn’t happy, but knew I wasn’t going to stay long either way and at least he had back-up employees he’d just been interviewing at the same time as me. I walked and never looked back.
It took another year or so, but I finally found a great job I love.
Yep. I reported for duty for what was to be an “electronics desing technician”, and my manager (who I had previous lengthy interviews/lunches/etc with) gave me a rushed shifty-eyed “Hihowyoudoinggreattoseeyouhereistheguythatyouwillbetrainingwith.”
The whole day was spent field training out of the office. In reality, instead of the electronics/computer/CAD office position that I had been interviewed for, I had been switched to perform field maintenance on X-ray developer machines at hospitals around the city. This involved a full day strapping on a breather hood while draining eye-wateringly noxious developer chemicals from machines, loading them in a service van, and rebottling up the chemicals for recycling/reuse. The guy training me was an obvious short-timer rushing through the day to get the hell out, now that his “replacement” had shown up, and he was able to be transfered to a cushier gig in the company. He didn’t care or know about my interview process, and showed obvious personal dislike for his supervisor.
By the time we’d made it back to the office, the manager and staff had left for the day already, and I never had a chance to ask “WTF?” personally.
That happened a little at the job I mentioned above. In my case, it was a non-profit, and they significantly forgot to tell me that my program lost its contract funding with the feds 2 months before I was hired. I wound up spending about 50% of my time on fundraising simply because no one else was doing it, and it needed to be done. It wasn’t so much that my duties were different from the job description as it was that without the fundraising, none of my other duties could be performed.
I know someone like that currently. In the evenings I work for an online gaming company and one of the other staff has been missing for about 3 weeks. (was supposed to be back from vacation first week of Jan). Needless to say, we’re rather, make that very, worried and have been doing everything we can think of to contact her or find out what might be going on.
Well, my high school science teacher up and disappeared.
We all showed up to class about 3 weeks into semester. The class was empty. We waited - and waited - and waited. This was grade 9, so it didn’t really occur to us to actually leave the class. Some kids joked about it, and we all kinda giggled, but really, where would we go? So we sat there til the bell went and then all went off to our next classes. For some reason, no one thought to say anything to any teachers or other staff. I think we thought it was some kind of joke, or something. That night I guess one girl’s mom asked her how school was and she kinda mentioned that the teacher didn’t show up. The next morning this girl’s mom called the school to ask what was going on, and they had no idea. When we showed up to class that day, the principal was there. He just said “I’ll be teaching class today” and we did some review. The next day, we had a new teacher, who told us he’d be our sub for the next two weeks, as our teacher had taken “a hunting trip”. Which was so bizarre - he just up and left to go hunting without setting up a sub or anything? WTF? - that we really couldn’t question it. Anyway, several weeks go by, and we ask this new teacher when exactly our old teacher is coming back. He tells us he has no idea. We didn’t really bring it up again after that, and the old teacher never returned to the school.
I’m assuming that if he had died, they would have told us. Maybe nervous breakdown, but it’s kinda weird he’d never ever come back to the school. And if he had gone nuts and killed his family or something, we would have heard about that. And giving us a story about a mysterious “hunting trip” just added to the weirdness.
I used to work for a newspaper. One week the governor was visiting our little burg. Our political reporter covered the visit, but didn’t come into the office, ever again. A few days later, our boss announced that she had decided to “pursue other options.” It turned out that she had been having an affair with a local political party chairman and after the affair became public (the chairman’s wife threw a fit in a public parking lot), she was invited not to come back.
This has happened in my wife’s department twice in the last two months. One girl went to Aruba to care for her ailing father. Her attendance had been poor so the HR department said that if she needed to take more time off than immediately planned, she needed to call in. She never did, and she didn’t return to work. So they fired her. A few weeks thereafter she showed up again and tried to get her old job back, but they didn’t let her.
Then about two weeks ago, another (older) woman did the same thing. She left to care for her ailing father and never returned.
Oh, goodness no ! I’ve had all of my innoculations, but thanks for asking. ( Are you? )
I’ve taught some workshops at Calamigos Ranch. A truly interesting place, up Latigo Canyon Road IIRC. There was a killer brilliant efficient woman who ran the place named… Mon Li ? Amazing. Had the thing spinning like a gyroscope. Can’t wait to go back to teach there again…
I used to work as a game tester. In the testing room, they told legends of one guy who just got up to go to the bathroom, paused the game, set his controller down on his desk, and never came back. As far as I know he didn’t die.
I both hire and train people for an oilfield service company where the work mostly involves living on drilling sites for 2-4 weeks at a time. Things can be harsh at times and some people just can’t deal with the lifestyle.
Way back in the '80s I was on a rig site outside of Evanston, Wyoming and got a call from one of the units operating nearby. The day shift guy had gone to sleep and when he woke up, the night shift guy had vanished, with the company truck, no less. Someone eventually found it abandoned in town, at the railroad station. The guy apparently drove in, got on a train and left, never to be heard from again.
More recently, we had one employee who had just started a job in South Texas, and worked about two weeks on the well site, commuting from a nearby hotel. One morning he didn’t show up for his shift. We checked with the motel and the clerk said his door was open and all his stuff was laying around inside, so we called the cops and the local hospitals. No one turned up anything, his wife called us frantically asking where he was, everyone was mystified. Three or four days later, he rang us from Mexico, where he’d landed in jail after a bit too wild of a night out.
Another guy had started out great, but within six months had to have an emergency operation for a brain aneurysm. Either the condition itself or effects of the operation caused a major personality change; he became surly and erratic, and eventually just disappeared. He never quit, just stopped taking calls.
Most recently, I hired a guy who seemed like he was going to work out. Bright, enthusiastic, seemed highly interested in the job and had quit another job to start with us. He showed up for the first two days of training, never indicating there was a problem, then just didn’t show up for the third day. We left messages several times but never got an answer back. Eventually his wife answered one of the calls and said he was OK, but wouldn’t discuss anything else and we left it at that.
If I had to guess, I’ll bet the “hunting trip” was a euphemism for “job hunting.”
We had a college intern that was supposed to show up for her college credits. She disappeared for six weeks, then one day, I find her back in master control, chatting up the operator. I asked her what she was doing there and she brightly said, “I’m doing my internship!” I informed her that ship had sailed, we had already submitted the paperwork to the school, and she needed to leave the premises since she was not supposed to be there.
She ended up dying in a car crash (months later, it’s not like she fled in tears and rammed her car into a telephone pole) but I am always amazed at people’s cluelessness.
No stories of missing co-workers, but Cartooniverse and wevets, this has been Old Home Week for me. I attended both Camp Hess Kramer and Gindling Hilltop Camp (my family belonged to Wilshire Blvd. Temple and I had my bat mitzvah there), and went to Outdoor Education and some company picnics at Calamigos Ranch.
Similar situation in my old job. We started the mentor program. The first person under the program was mentored by the office nice lady. Wayyyy too nice and cheery and perky. She tended to treat everyone like a 5 year old. She’d speak very slowly and clearly. And everything you said was “Wonderful! Just wonderful!I"m so happy for you!” Yes, she spoke in exclamation points.
She was sincere about it, and genuinely nice, just took it too far. Anywho, she brought the new hire around to introduce her to people early in the morning. Since some people weren’t at their desk, she brought her around later in the morning. Apparently she missed some people, because the two came around in the early afternoon. At this point, the new hire had a “what is going on?” look on her face. The two came around later in the afternoon for a fourth introduction. After she’d pass by, we’d talk about how bad we felt about this person being trapped with “Jane” and her relentless niceness.
She didn’t come back the next day. Rumor was that she had left a letter saying she couldn’t work with someone like Jane. Needless to say, Jane was upset to the point of tears. We felt bad for her too, but had to laugh.
