Bad jobs are essential to growing as a person, right there next to your first heartbreak or having a teacher who won't listen to you. It happens to everyone so don't feel bad when you start working only to then realize this job is awful and you need to get the heck out. Everyone's limit may be different, but the reaction is the same:
I. Quit.
Reddit user, u/TheStrangestOfKings, wanted to know what caused you to quit Day One when they asked:
What job did you work at that was so bad, you quit on the same day you were hired?
Not Quite The Holy Ground
Giphy
When I was 14 I got a job at one of the few fast food places in town that hired kids under 16. I went to orientation, where they explained the positions different age groups could fill.
My job would be to take people's orders out to their cars. I wasn't allowed to touch money or work the fryer. I showed up on the first [day] and was told my whole shift would be on the fryer.
I told them I was 14 and not allowed to, plus I hadn't been trained on it. The guy basically said tough sh-t and tried to hand me a hair net. I just left.
Companies, Let's Up Our Production Costs! Come On, Now!
This was about 15 years ago. I got hired to be a host at IHOP, and went in for my first day of training. It sucked so bad, I was so bored watching all their cheesy videos.
On a break, Panera called me and asked me for an interview, so I left and went there immediately. Worked there for 5 years.
Coffee Is Kind Of Breakfast Staple
I got hired as the "breakfast girl" at a historic hotel in my town. Now I don't know if this was due to management, or laziness, or what, it that kitchen where I was to prepare breakfast was REPULSIVE. Everything was old, they saved batter for pastries for WEEKS, eggs were damn near spoiled, and they kind of just threw me into it with no warning at all as to what they wanted from me. Didn't really even show me where the coffee was. I quit at the end of the first shift.
No Pay Is Worth No Training
Zaxby's when I was 18. F-ck that place.
It was my first job. I hadn't had any before because of my anxiety problems.
The first red flag was when they asked me to come in the same day I was interviewed. I worked a 6 hour shift, but only about an hour and a half of it was me being trained. I was only taught how to bread & fry chicken and make grilled cheeses.
Then they threw me in the dish pit for 4 and a half hours. No one really came back there to check on me. The dishes kept piling up faster than I could clean them, and it made me really anxious. I called and quit the next day. They even offered to up my pay but I said no, it wasn't for me.
This Sounds...Truly Awful.
I was 17. It was for a small restaurant in a central area of my city where there were a lot of tourists. I had to stand on a busy street handing out flyers and trying to convince people to come eat at the restaurant even at hours where literally nobody would want to go to a restaurant. We got paid like an extra 50 cents for each person that we brought, and in the entire day I only managed to get one group of 4 to come for lunch.
I got there at 8am, and sometime in the afternoon I was told that I could either leave at 4pm and earn a ridiculous sum, or stay until 8pm and earn a ridiculous sum plus a few extra euros. We're talking something like 5€ for 8 hours of working on my feet, in the summer heat, being either ignored or insulted by the people that I had to stop. I was shy as hell and going up to strangers like that was awful. Oh, and at one point the owner passed by in a motorcycle and yelled at me because "I wasn't working" (I was taking a minute to recover from the heat).
I left shortly after because I couldn't take it anymore, I was bored as hell and people were more annoyed than interested by me. I went home and called them to quit. I also googled the restaurant and found reviews complaining about the food and prices, all basically saying that it was a tourist scam. I kinda felt bad for the nice Spanish family that I had convinced to go and eat there.
Oh, and they didn't even pay me. I was told that I'd only get paid after working there for a week, and I had no intention of ever going back so I was like f-ck it, they can keep their small change.
Falling Nails!
Retrieving used formwork. Ten guys throwing 20kg pieces of nail-infested timber down from five floors up. My job was to dodge the falling bits of timber and avoid stepping on nails while I did it for ten hours a day.
F-ck that.
No first aid guy on site, got a nail through each foot on my first day which I disinfected, bandaged and went back to work.
Deathly Peanuts
I was 18 and it was as a waitress for a fancy retirement home, where they made meals to order for the residents who all ate in a communal facility. Somehow we were responsible for knowing a person's dietary restrictions but there was no list of people with dietary restrictions as it's protected health info - we were just supposed to "figure it out." For example, if Grandma was allergic to peanuts, forgot and ordered a dish with peanuts, we were held responsible.
The men keep smacking my butt with their napkins and making inappropriate comments, which was fine with management because they were old/senile. My first shift was supposed to be covering breakfast/lunch (8 hrs) but because so many people quit mid-shift it became a mandated double. I lasted one day. Of the 15 people I trained with, only 1 made it 2 weeks.
Check The Eyes
Away at college, needed a job. Got hired on at a national pizza chain, with a table involved. Anyway, show up the first day and quickly notice every single person working there is tweaking. Everyone. No way I was going to deal with a bunch of tweakers, and quit after my first shift.
Manger asked why, and I told him because everyone here is tweaking. His response: How did you know?! Maybe it was the dialated eyes, the fact everyone here is sweating like it's 113 degrees out, yet I need a long sleeve shirt to stay warm?
Don't Want To Be Misled
As a teen, I applied for a standard teenage summer job picking berries on a farm. Thought id be with other people but turns out I was the only one hired and half of the first 12h day was also construction/helping the farm renovate their barn. Not worth it for minimum wage.
Nubs.
Giphy
Got a job at a sawmill right out of high school. It was probably opened in the 40's - dangerous as hell. First day One of the guys that worked there was bragging about how good the owner was to work for, held up his 2 fingered hand, touched the two nubs one at a time and said "I got $500 each when that happened!"
About an hour in I went to my car under the auspices of grabbing my thermos. Left and never went back.
Kids See Through Your Lies Pretty Quickly
Child playworker.
I mean, I don't like kids and I never plan on having any, but "how hard can be playing for 7 hours be?" I was a fool to think children were easy.
Yeah, no. I can't fake enthusiasm, or run around a table for 2 hours, or made a kid eat their lunch (which consists entirely of chocolate?), or stop a child from biting my ankle.
A Government Service That Was Ill-Maintained? You Don't Say...
I have two. The first was at a bpysenberry picking place where you got paid per container. $7 for 8I hours work.
Second was a place that tried to find employment for disabled people. If you were considered "unemployable " by their standards they would employ you in "sheltered employment" which was actually factory work. Some sold packaging to businesses, the area I was in refurbished headphones for a large airline for in flight entertainment.
This was all factory work and they had about 20-30 working on these headphones. They paid $50NZD (around 35USD) a week for 40 hours work. This worked out to be around $1.11/h. They also lied to the disabled people claiming that $40 a week was all they could have before it affected their benefit entitlement. This is a lie because you can earn up to $100 before tax. Then they take 30 cents to each dollar earned over that.
So yeah. Told then where to shove that. This service was also funded by the govt....
Seriously, Guys. Train Your New Employees! It's Not That Hard!
Cumberland Farms, a northeast convenience store/gas station chain. They trained me on everything but how to do anything having to do with lotto, and the manager kept leaving and said "you'll be fine." I was 17 and they left me alone in the store, only having started two hours before. I felt like I knew nothing, so of course you know what's next: every customer wants to buy lottery tickets. When I took my break, I got in my car and left.
Cotton Puff Joe
Being a weaver at an old textile mill, using old machines. My main function was to tie knots in the threads if they broke, and start the machine back up. I was too tall for the machine, and my back was killing me after one day. I wouldn't have stayed anyway. Too repetitive and mind-numbing. People were walking around with cotton puffs stuck in their hair.
...Nope. Got Nothing For This One.
A couple years ago I got hired at 1-800-GOT-JUNK, to be one of the truck loaders. The first training session I went to they explained for about 20 minutes, with an accompanying video, how to scrape dead rats off your boots after leaving the junkyard.
I quit at lunch time.
Maybe Not Day 1, But Not Long After.
I didn't but it was not uncommon at all to see new Amazon delivery drivers quit after 1-3 days. They picture it as driving and just sitting on their butt was my theory. Delivering 250 packages to 180 stops is hard work. Loading the van + walking some stupid a-- driveways/stairs with heavy packages + traffic can be overwhelming.
Don't Leave Until After The Shift Meal
it was a "brew house": code for independently owned applebee's with more beer options, usually local. the cooks smoked on the line, trash was thrown on the floor ankle-deep until the end of the night, the "confetti" in the ceiling light covers were bugs, the ceiling tiles were brown from having never been cleaned, the floor even with non-slip shoes felt like I was walking on ice from the oil and whatever else, the chimney of the fryer caught on fire and I was told that happened every 2-3 days.
I worked 4 hours, got my shift meal, told them I couldn't do it because I didn't want to be there the day they got a less lenient health inspector.
Do Your Own Research
I applied for a call center in my local area, interview went well, hired on the spot and introduced to coworkers (small rented space, less than 20 employees). Was left by manager to chat with future coworkers while I waited for my mom to pick me up (I was still 17 at the time, 3 months shy of 18) when one coworker let's slip some mumble about how he hopes "this young girl doesn't leave like the rest."
I couldn't get the guys words out of my head so when I got home I did some more research on this business and found out they've been hiring for months and constantly losing people, but primarily hiring females who then left the company pretty quickly after. Found a forum of such employees talking about being sexually harassed while working there, how they never got paid what they were promised, etc. Just really shady things, but immediately after learning about the sexual harrasment claims I called and said I would not be taking the position after all. They didn't even ask for a reason.
Yeah...No.
Worked at a recycling plant for medical supplies. My job was to get inside the compressing machines and clean them. The machines were filled with blood needles.
It was absolutely disgusting.
Plus the place was infested with rats.
...Yeah, You Need To Go.
Giphy
I was working at a restaurant.
- A co-worker told me the boss asked him if he would sell him his passport.
- Different co-worker said the boss asked him to be a guarantor in a totally blank passport application.
- Some customers came up to me to say they overheard some men on the patio talking about trafficking people. Like, in the way that they were discussing plans to do it. Unbeknownst to them, one of these men was the owner.
Owner was from Albania by the way. Not trying to generalize but they are known to be a one of the Human Trafficking hotspots.
I quit that day and called the RCMP. (Sort of like Canada's FBI)
Do you have something to confess to George? Text "Secrets" or "" to +1 (310) 299-9390 to talk him about it.
One thing that comes to mind is the vintage advertisements for weight loss pills targeted at women. Everyone wants something that will make them skinny by magic right? Wrong. These pills actually contained tapeworm. So these women were giving themselves a parasite with medical approval just to lose weight...pairs well with the cigarette ads of the time.
Curious of others experiences Redditor pinkyfirefly asked:
“What is something that used to be considered safe/okay but now we know is harmful?"
Oh yeah greeeeat idea!
“Lead and Asbestos- what great products!!! Let's put them in / on everything!!” 24KaratMinshew
It caused the Victoria Hall disaster...
“Single entry/exit points on large buildings. IIRC the creator of push bar doors was a survivor of a child stampede that killed over a hundred kids.” ThrowThisTeaAway
The use of Radium...
“Back during, like, the 40's and 50's (IIRC) 20's, the U.S. military and other institutions were producing watches with glow-in-the-dark dials painted on. The paint in question contained radium, which is radioactive enough that it can be harmful to humans.”
“Now, at this point in time, radiation and its adverse effects on humans wasn't very well or very publicly understood, so there were basically no safety regulations involved with handling the radium-based paint. There also wasn't really any sort of automation in the watch-painting field, so these watches - thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them - were being painted hand-painted by a majority-female workforce...”
“These women were being closely exposed to high volumes of radium for hours on end almost every day for months and years. Some of them - liking the glow-in-the-dark effect - even reportedly used the paint as lipstick or other forms of makeup so they could go home and show off to their husbands.”
“Unsurprisingly, the eventual results were nothing short of gruesome - cancer diagnoses being the least severe consequences in many cases - and the case of the radium girls is part of how the public at large learned about the dangers of radioactive materials.” PaniqueAttaque
It's become a sad epidemic...
“heroin. it was originally sold as a cough medicine by bayer.” WhenTardigradesfly
“Bayer called it "heroisch", meaning heroic in German, because it was believed to have the same properties as morphine without the addictive side effects” psycedelich
An accident waiting to happen...
“Solid metal dashbaords in vehicles without seatbelts. A friend of mine in the Army had a vintage car from the 1950s before seat belts were mandatory equipment. He was a reckless driver who liked to speed and weave in and out of traffic on the interstate. I only rode with him once.” wzl46
X-rays anyone?
“Radiation. There used to be devices to measure children's feet. Basically, the children would put their shoes on, stick their feet into this machine, and it would blast their feet with radiation so that nervous parents could see the children's feet inside the shoes to be sure they fit. Congrats, the shoes fit, but now your child has a ton of other health concerns!” TechyDad
Cigarettes...
“Cigarettes are full of feel good compound and grade A vitamins! 50 yrs later: ..uh, just kidding?” livesquared
superman smoking GIFGiphyBaby formula even?
“Melamine. Up until 2008, multiple Chinese baby powdered formula manufacturers secretly added melamine to their products. Melamine has high nitrogen content and mimicked the effect of high protein content in tests.”
“Babies who consumed the products were diagnosed with kidney stones. As it turns out, melamine damages one's urinary system in many ways. I could not stop wetting my bed until I was 10 years old.”
“The scandal caused a huge distrust in the Chinese food industry that persists today. It also caused the phenomenon where mainland Chinese tourists bulk purchase baby powder for friend and relatives when travelling abroad.“ GtYuhanZhang
Babies should be on their backs, with no blankets or soft toys in the crib for safety...
“So much stuff with babies. Not just the obvious car seats, but all sorts of sleeping stuff. Most of Reddit probably slept in a crib with a loose blanket, crib bumpers, and stuffed toys. You might even have been put on your stomach, or had a pillow. None of that is considered safe anymore.”
“Babies are supposed to be on a flat surface, swaddled only under a certain very young age, with basically nothing anywhere near them. The CPSC just banned a bunch of things in common use, in fact, including ‘baby boxes’ similar to the ones given out in Finland.” Grave_Girl
YeeHaw Paw-Paw...
“Standing up in the front seat of your grandfather's '58 thunderbird as a 6 year old and saying ‘Pawpaw, I bet you can't go 100.’ And him saying ‘Hang on buddy.’ Then going for a snow cone.” IC--XC--NI--KA
These responses show just how far we've come in understanding safety. It also gives us good reason to always question new things that come out that are “too good to be true" because they probably are.
Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
And the most satisfying joys in life are simpler than you might think.
After coming home from a long and stressful day, there's nothing quite like being greeted by a loved one, a spastic puppy that's been eagerly awaiting your return, or even a glass of wine. Or two.
Curious to hear about the little things that bring smiles, Redditor SlugsLoveBeer asked:
"What are some of the small things in life that make you happy?"
It's the little things we don't think of that can relieve us of life's many burdens.
Free Da Feet
"Taking off my work boots at the end of a shift."
"This. So much. I have about 2 hours left in my shift. Can not wait for that 530 am beer on the back porch with my boots off."
Simple Comforts
"Freshly washed sheets on the bed + just shaved legs + the windows open with a perfect cool summer breeze."
Pets are given when it comes to making us feel all the feels.
Loyal Protector Of The House
"When coming home and your dog sees you from a distance and gradually gets more and more excited as your approach, to finally greet with joyous love and show you what a good boy they've been protecting the house."
A Purrfect Companion
"When a cat sits on me."
"My cat will often sleep in bed next to me and usually gives me spiky back rubs at bedtime.Sometimes though when he's really happy, he'll reach out and hold my hand with his paw."
Cat Talk
"My cat has a specific special meow she only uses when I sneeze. It's super cute and makes me laugh a little every time."
Our positive reactions with people can truly influence our mood.
They Nourish Our Souls
"Having people genuinely care about you. Mutual love and respect is one of the best feelings in the world. I also love food. Food is comforting."
Showing Teeth
"A genuine smile in return of mine."
"Yes. Like, when someone sees you and you can just tell they're really happy to see you, they're not just smiling to be polite."
Love Embrace
"Falling asleep with someone laying in your arms next to you. That calm kinda peaceful feeling of just relaxing. Not the part when your arm falls asleep or when you have to get up to pee though lol"
– mre4you
My joy-inducing thing is a little bizarre, but I trust this is a no judgment space.
I love to sit down to read in my love seat situated in the corner of my living room. But the act of reading itself is not the thing that makes me happy.
It's the smell from the pages after opening a new book that brings me such joy. It lets me know I'm about to be transported and it evokes a childlike sense of wonder that grounds me.
And it is one of the most comforting feeling. A literary aroma.