The DMV. I didn't even make it through the interview. I was waiting for my turn to be interviewed when I took a quick look around the madness and I got up and ran. To the bar. As they called my name to be spoken with.
Grieve Fast
Roses Funeral GIF by Un si grand soleilGiphy“I’m sorry for your loss. So, what time does the funeral end? We could really use you today on registers. Maybe until closing (9p) if you could.” ~ stupid-corn
Negatives...
"Had a negative performance review after working for a company for a month with little to no training. Walked in the next morning to one of the managers saying I basically was a warm body to cover for this one girl who was pregnant and I likely wouldn't be there after her maternity leave was done."
"Looked him in the eye, nodded, grabbed my stuff and left. Was on a busy delivery day where contractors were lined up around the block to collect their materials for their construction jobs. Didn't look back, didn't regret the decision. Freaking a**holes." ~ jakebreakshow
People were pissed!!
"I worked at a pretty major electronics company as an engineer. I put in for 2 weeks of vacation for the birth of my child. My boss didn't approve my vacation saying 'I only give 1 week vacation for anyone ever.' I lost my cool a bit but had no choice because I had to have insurance and I was set to receive a bonus in 2 months. In that moment, I knew I was done with that place."
"Fast forward 2 months, and -3 manufacturing engineers that had already quit. No body received their bonus on the date which it was supposed to be issued. People were pissed!!!! It became a huge deal and everyone was aware that they were avoiding the mass exodus that was going to occur as soon as the bonus hit. 1.5 months later, the check clears.
"I was one of 7 engineers that quit the day the bonus hit the bank. We all went to lunch lol."
"Edit: thanks for all the upvotes. I will say there was a silver lining. My baby was born over the Christmas break. I took my week of vacation but got almost 2 weeks off. It was awesome to be there, and I enjoy seeing my baby every day." ~ cerberus3234
I'm not Cinderella...
"I was in high school and worked at a ghetto a** indoor amusement park thing and we were forced to clock out before we did our closing duties and then when we were finished hours after we had to wait for the owner to critique our closing duties and tell us if we needed to re-do something or we were allowed to leave."
"It was past midnight at this point and after going over my closing duties the owner told me to scrub the floors on my hands and knees with a brush. I said f**k you and left. Few weeks later both owners were arrested for embezzlement and the place was resold I guess." ~ poopfupa
Wheeler/Dealer
Car Sales Dance GIF by QuickpageGiphy"Dealership. Worked there for a few days as a service tech."
"Realized the culture was more about making money and no one actually cared about anything else. Quit and tried another Dealer. Same thing. Quit both in 2-3 days. Fixing heavy stuff now for more money but might say f**k it and go back to cars at a small shop to be happy. Never take your car to a dealer. Just all commission and ways to rip you off."
Preference-Economy
When you gotta go... you gotta. Just run and don't look back.
I'm not Free!!
Bye Bye Goodbye GIF by Mickey MouseGiphy"When the 3 volunteer weekends i worked turned into work EVERY weekend after being told it is strictly volunteer. I quit on the spot." ~ TehGuard
"3 days in sleep deprived stupor"
"I worked in a bakery for a while. They scheduled me for 3a.m. to 7 p.m. for 14 days in a row. 9th day in I fell asleep at the counter and got yelled at. Walked out, but I was so tired I couldn't walk home. Roommate picked me up, I fell asleep in the car on the way home and stayed asleep for 9 hours. Roommate checked on me, brought me a pillow and blanket."
"When I woke up and came inside after the 9 hours I realized I had lost 3 days in sleep deprived stupor. While I was asleep in the car my boss and store owner had decided that trying to break into my apartment and harass my roommate was the right thing to do." ~ Buhrdt
'you aren’t coming back, are you?'
"I worked weekends on a dementia unit at an assisted living in grad school. My job was doing activities on the floor. There were two people who did bathrooms, changing, lunch, etc. They were always on their phones. I’d get asked by visitors to take residents to the bathroom (which I was not trained for). One day one of the residents fell and it was chaos."
"I was so tired of being the only one actually doing anything that I finished my shift and left a voicemail quitting. When I said goodbye to the residents that evening, one looked and me and said 'you aren’t coming back, are you?' Gut wrenching. It was the most exhausting work I ever did because there was no off moment." ~ juliefryy
Chuck It!
"I was working in a cafe by the beach over the summer, since the cafe was on a pier it was only open at the weekend. They had a real issue with the shelf life of produce such as fresh milk, cream etc. So they would freeze everything on Sunday then de-freeze the next week. They never kept track of what had been frozen so they kept breaking the cold chain all the time."
"I didn’t like that and kept track all the time to not poison anyone but I knew the manager didn’t care. One day, a customer ordered a slice of carrot cake and when I went to look for it I found it all mouldy so of course I chucked it in the bin. The manager ordered me to get it back and scrape the mould and serve it anyway. I was out the door 5 minutes later." ~ Meanwhile-in-Paris
I'm Out
See Ya Adele GIF by E!Giphy"After my company merged I learned my counterpart made twice what I did with less experience, lower degree, and in a lower cost of living area. Nothing at all against him; but I asked to get my pay increased, didn't get it. So I left." ~ effigyoma
Project manager...
"I worked at a large construction firm as a Project manager and at one point I made some decisions that influenced our profits by a couple percent My then manager decided he thought it would be fun if he claimed he made those decisions, and started telling higher managers what 'he' had done."
"When I heard, I confronted him but he tried to evade the conversation. Later on, somebody quit his job so there was only me as Project manager in this certain branch, he asked if I could take over some extra projects and stuff I didn't refuse, but had to think about it."
"He then told our managers that I would be taking all projects I emailed him and all managers that I quit and gave a short explanation as of why. F**k you Dirk."
Longjumping_Sleep_12
The Breakdown
"I'd been super stressed in my old PR job and it ended in burnout. My boss was a nice guy, but way too relaxed for the job so in the end most of the work landed on my desk. Eventually I had a breakdown, started therapy and after a few months I returned to work. We talked a lot, wanted to chance things, even my coworkers came forward and said they had problems with the workload as well."
"I thought my boss finally got it. A few days later he randomly asked when I will be my old self again and said he didn't really understand why I (and my coworkers) had been so stressed in the first place. The next day I handed him my letter of resignation. It was the best feeling (and decision) ever."
batsbookstea
“get wins”
"Gave a director an award for a project I designed and deployed. She was privately gracious but then added it to her LinkedIn. Company blog, news release, etc. no mention of the developers or team that worked for 6 months on the project. My VP/boss brought it up and said essentially the best way for you to be promoted to director is to 'get wins' like her. Corporate politics would be funny if they didn’t screw people out of large amounts of money."
wordofmouthrevisited
I'm not Free
Exit Strategy Bai GIFGiphy"When the 3 volunteer weekends i worked turned into work EVERY weekend after being told it is strictly volunteer. I quit on the spot."
TehGuard
Vacation Please
"The job I was working at gave 2 paid days off per year, and 5 sick days. We were not allowed to take unpaid days off. (They had previously found that another employee took 30 unpaid days off and said no one else was allowed to do that anymore.) I was 2 years into this job when I won a free vacation to another country."
"I only needed 4 days off work, since the one day was a stat holiday, but they declined it. I tried everything but they didn’t budge. Other co-workers wrote letters and tried to help me out, still no. So I quit and had the best free vacation of my life."
Copper14
"Where's the candy jar?"
"Lawyers complaining to me that the jar of candy they requested be put out was too tempting and they couldn't control themselves, so now they wanted me to take it away. Cool. Next day 'Where's the candy jar?' I put it back. Next day my boss comes by saying 'the lawyers are complaining about the candy jar...' I gave notice that afternoon."
Oxygen95
Compliance
"Spent 30 minutes of my orientation for a new job at a pharmaceutical company being told the company policy is casual Friday but that doesn't apply to accounting. She (supervisor) demands complete compliance from anyone working in accounting. I got up and noped out of there and never looked back. Super unhealthy work environment and it only took me 30 minutes to discover."'
Famous_Essay623
Wednesday
Workin It GIF by 48 Hr Project — Vol 5.Giphy"Was making $15 hr and new hires are starting at $16 and somehow they wouldn’t pay me $16 even though I was with them for 3 years. I then asked if I could apply for a different position in a different department and potentially getting paid more. I was just told they would ask the other manager but I never heard back. I quit Wednesday."
Hardnipples0
Nothing Matters
"When I worked in the car industry and our bonuses were tied to the stores customer reviews. Doesn’t matter how hard you worked it only took one person with bad credit who couldn’t get approved to leave a bad survey/review and there goes your money."
Auditory_Whiplash
No thanks...
"Worked at a pharmacy for around 3 weeks where I was told that I wasn’t allowed to stand still at all, I had to be doing something EVEN if I were just pretending to do work. They had me working 6 days a week including weekends. Even with all that, what made me quit was when the manager (who sat at home and watched the cameras instead of helping) asked me why I went to the bathroom 3 times in my 8 hour shift, and accused me of smoking because of it. Quit on the spot."
Economy-Win-9571
Too many places are not worth the misery.
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I was hired at an upscale, famous sushi restaurant in NYC. On my first day of training I was pushed down the stairs. Then told... "Hey. you gotta keep up!"
"No you better run before I get up from this floor!"
Closed
Season 3 Episode 22 GIF by The SimpsonsGiphy"When I arrived on the first day, there was an eviction notice on the door and a cop looking for the business owners. Bullets dodged, that day!" ~ Upper-Job5130
The Pizza Shop
"True story. I got mugged on my first night as a pizza delivery guy. It was my second delivery of the night. I parked the car, and had to walk a little bit to get to the apartment building. During that walk, two guys came up, hit me in the head several times, shoved me down, and took the money bag and the pizza and ran."
"I went back to the pizza shop and quit on the spot. The pizza shop owners sent me to the emergency room to get checked out, they paid for the bill, they made sure I got home safe and sound. So they were great." ~ whomp1970
At the Buffet
"My first job was at a new buffet in a small town when I was 14. They mass hired everyone that showed up to the interview. I was supposed to be a dish washer but when I got there for training they handed me a ladder and told me to install the dry wall ceiling tiles in the kitchen."
"I, obviously, had no idea what I was doing and had a tile fall on my back, which caused me to slip off the ladder and fall on the ground. The owner was upset that a 14 year old kid couldn't do the non-dishwashing task correctly and chewed me out and sent me home and to never come back."
"I had to pester them for months to get my ~$6.50 for the hour I was there. Shockingly, they went under in just a few months." ~ DrGingeyy
Hangin' at the Queen...
"Dairy Queen queen I was 17. The layout was such that I had to repeatedly walk past the grill where the floor was so covered in grease that it was like trying to walk across oiled ice...super dangerous because if you slipped, you were likely to hit the grill. I got yelled at for mentioning that the floor needed to be cleaned (I even offered to do it but was told no)."
"I was scheduled for an 8 hour shift, so by law, I got a 20 minute unpaid lunch break, which I was made to take about 45 minutes into my shift. I got yelled at for asking if I could please take my break closer to the middle of my shift. I was left alone as the only cashier and ice cream preparer, even though I hadn't even been told what everything on the menu was yet, let alone how to make it."
"I kept getting yelled at for not knowing when I went to the back (past the slip-n-slide of death) to ask for help. About 3 hours in, I was absolutely certain this would be a horrible place to work, so I told the owner that it was dangerous there, I was being yelled at by the manager for not knowing how to make things I had never even heard of."
"And the job was a bad fit for me so I was quitting and leaving. He told me it was unacceptable that I wasn't giving two weeks notice and yelled at me about it until I cried. It's been over 20 years, and I've never set foot in a Dairy Queen again."
~ Leelluu
Whoops!
homer simpson button GIFGiphy"I work at a gas station and I accidentally hit the button that emergency stops all the gas pumps my first day lmao." ~ rieixee
How are you still hiring people when you can't pay your bills? Good Lord. And don't push buttons.
Charlie Ann's
broadway baking GIF by Waitress The MusicalGiphy"My MIL was buying a restaurant and asked me to go work there for a day and take a look see. She gives me the name, I look it up, then show up at 6 am."
"The ladies working seemed a bit confused but they let me in and put me to work. Two hours later, one of them comes to me and says "We think you're supposed to be at the OTHER Charlie Ann's" There were two unrelated restaurants five miles apart with the same name. Later she tried to hire me, lol." ~ damasu950
Lord of the Flies...
"I was a supervisor in a technical support department for "professional" support, but was one day unceremoniously moved to "personal" support. (The former was expensive and for IT and experienced clients. The latter for regular home users.) When I arrived in my new department, they were short 3 supervisors, so I was assigned all 3 teams, and the place was like Lord of the Flies."
"I was given a printout of schedules and names, with no way to find the people. I started tracking them down to find that nearly 1/3 of them had left the company, but previous supervisors didn't notify HR/payroll, there were no files on what people were trained on, nothing."
"End of the day my new boss asked how things were, and I told him people needed to be fired. He laughed, and said, "We're understaffed already." I replied, "No, I mean the other supervisors who aren't doing any job I can identify, and you for letting it get like this." Things with him were a bit touchy after that." ~ SurlyJason
Oh Kyle...
"I called a construction company about a job listing. The owner told me to show up Monday morning to his shop. When I showed up at the address, there was a sticky note that said something like "Kyle, I'm contacting the police, you have to pay your back rent NOW." I opted to leave but called the guy's number again out of curiosity. It was disconnected. Definitely felt like a bullet dodged lol." ~ apocalypticradish
Keep the broom...
"Not my first day but my second. I had just hired on at a steel fabrication plant. My boss gave me a broom and told me to keep the sidewalks clean, keep my head up, watch what everyone is doing and stay out of their freaking way. Its dangerous working with this heavy steel and we don't want you to get hurt your first week out here. It was about 7am."
"Around 8am a stack of steel fell over trapping another employee and I had to hear him scream bloody murder for about 3hrs while they worked to get the steel beams off of him. He lived. It crushed his pelvis, I worked there for 2 years, he never was able to come back to work." ~ housebird350
Switch Back
Breaking Despicable Me GIF by RegalGiphy"I recently switched careers and now work at a bank. Pressed the silent alarm accidentally almost immediately, didn't even realize it was there & no one thought to tell me. Whoops!" ~ keanusmommy
There are always other jobs out there. Make sure your mental health comes first. Remember... red flags. A first day will tell you everything.
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Former Employees Reveal Why They Quit Their Jobs On The First Day
GiphySometimes you land in the perfect job with the perfect people and perfect company and sometimes... you land in the 7th circle of Hell! More often than not it's the latter. Sometimes you know within five minutes it's time to run like you're on fire out of the building! You won't even need red flags, the situation is a Crimson scene.
Redditor J-Bradley1 asked for everyone's best stories about the first job nightmares that led to an instant "Peace Out!"
ALWAYS COUNT FINGERS FIRST!
It was a shop that refurbished train suspension hydraulics. 40% of the guys were missing at least part of a finger, maintainence guy was missing 4 on one hand and 1.5 on another. The guy training me stormed out half way through the second day.
I was like yeeaaah, I'm just going to dip out now...
NOT GONNA HAPPEN! NEXT!
Many years ago I worked at a popular sports bar as a line cook. First day they had me train with a guy who didn't speak English for 2 hours. Not a huge deal. Mostly you observe people in a kitchen and that's how you learn. Owner came back and said she was scheduling me to be alone the next day.... which was super bowl Sunday.
Noped out of there so fast. Left right then and there.
YOU CAN'T HAVE MY SOUL SATAN!
GiphyOne week. It was 1985, and a collections agency was looking for an IT guy. It was basically desktop support on some IBM PCs. It took me a week to realize what a soul-deadening place that was and I bolted. It was mutual, actually -- they saw how I was reacting to some of the techniques the collectors used. The targets were mostly old people who were encouraged to sell family heirlooms and the like to pay off debts.
DOOR TO DOOR? WHAT IS THIS 1950?
I left halfway through the orientation when I found out it was a job selling those expensive vacuum cleaners door to door.
WHO IS THIS? STOP CALLING ME?!
Three days after my two week training. I was supposed to be a seasonal temp worker for a national propane company. The job distribution and training consisted of taking calls off-hours for people who wanted refills and acting as a messenger service, referring their contact info their local "store" when they opened the next day. Easy-Peasey.
When I got out onto the floor, I found I was actually expected to be a dispatcher for drivers AND ALSO FIRST POINT OF CONTACT FOR ALL EMERGENCY SITUATIONS. Things I had never been so much as briefed on in training. My first shift I had to field a call from a local police officer who was on site to a horrific propane truck crash. I got to wake the guy's district manager in the dead of night, tell him his worker was dead, and the overturned truck was blocking a few lines of the freeway and the police were trying to get a hold of him.
That was just the start: A customer got the smell of garlic and eggs in the house? I got the call. (What do I do next, Miss Dispatcher? "Fuck if I know. Get out of the house ASAP?") CO detector is going off? I got the call. (Instead of 911 for some reason?!) I had ZERO interest in being a underpaid, not-trained emergency dispatcher. It's the only job I took off on without giving a 2 week notice. I was nice enough to finish out my shift on the third day, but that was it.
NEVER GET IN THE VAN!
GiphyI went in to an office for an interview. They said they had several positions available and I wanted to do some admin stuff... Welp, after the interview they told me to get in a van to do the next part of the process. Turns out we drove an hour away so I could shadow one of their door to door sales people. They would ask residents to go into their basement to check their hot water heaters to see if they were eligible to replace them with their companies own... I felt pretty uncomfortable about this and pretty mad my whole day was gone doing this. The worst part was the girl I was shadowing spent half the day sitting around in the truck reading magazines and waiting for people to come home from work... I was sort of asking questions about the job and she got defensive and said, well I decide if you get this job or not, to which I replied, yeah I don't know if I want to do this.. But she kept insisting that it was her who decided if I worked... Don't think she understood I meant that I didn't want to do this crap... Waste of a day.
NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENED AT BLOCKBUSTER.
Mine had to be when I was 18 and working at Blockbuster. I was helping the manager during the before open shift getting new items stocked on the shelves that came in that morning. My mom called me and told me that my dad was having a heart attack and she was panicking while waiting for the ambulance. Why did she call me at work to tell me this? The Blockbuster I worked at was in a strip mall type area behind my cul-de-sac, my house and the Blockbuster was separated by a small alley and a 3 min walk. I told my manager what was happening and asked if I could leave to help my mom while they waited for the ambulance. She said no. I just stood there looking at her thinking she couldn't be serious I would be gone for all of 10 mins and back helping her if needed. She stressed how important it was to get the things done that needed to be done and I could only leave if I called around to the other workers and found someone to come in and cover for me while I was gone. I took off my name tag slammed it on the counter and walked out. I never went back for any reason. For any who might wonder; my dad came out fine was in the hospital for a few days.
HOW ABOUT I JUST BE A MIND READER?
I worked for a newspaper for most of a week. I was expected to use my own laptop and software, no IT and I'd have to share logins and passwords with 3 other people and guess when they would need them.
I SEE YOU SHADY! DON'T TRY ME!
GiphyFound out that the educational assistance they touted in their advertisement applied only to full time employees and that they both defined full time as no fewer than 40 hours and kept anyone who would apply for that assistance from ever being qualified for it. None of this was advertised and the people I interviewed with assured me, a college student, that working 21 hours a week would get me the benefits. Too bad I read my contract before signing it and called them out. Don't lie to your employees, especially during an interview on something that can be easily and swiftly disproven. If you're willing to lie to me about this, what else are you willing to lie to me about?
(I did their training before being offered my contract, so I count it as having worked there, btw.)
IT'S JUST FOOD! NOBODY'S CURING CANCER WITH AN APPETIZER!
Many years ago I was managing a fast food restaurant for a local franchise. Shortly before lunch, one of my employees got a phone call that their grandmother had been taken to the hospital with a possible heart attack. They lived with their grandmother, from what I understood their parents were not in the picture.
I told him to go to the hospital and I would find coverage. About 15 minutes later my district manager showed up and asked why I was short handed. (Fast food restaurants run on razor thin margins, so one missing body is easily noticed). I told him what happened and that employee was on his way to the hospital. His response was "What is he going to do, save her? He's not a doctor, we have a business to run."
That was the last straw for me with that company. It was part of a larger pattern of that attitude, and I refused to treat employees like that. I gave my notice shortly after and moved to a better job.
ZERO PERCENT OF ZERO IS.... 0? NO THANKS.
I was interviewing for a contract position at a very small game development company, and they told me they were looking for someone to help finish up an existing project.
Literally, the game looked like it was made in MS Paint. As if they had just hired some random guy off the street and asked them to make some art for them. Granted it's a mobile game and sold for the standard 0.99, so maybe that's not the worst, but the game itself doesn't look engaging at all either. But I figure, worst comes to worst I could make some money on the side with some low-effort work.
Then they told me that my pay would be a percentage of the sales. Noped right out of that one.
MAYBE WE SHOULD ALL BE HEALTH INSPECTORS?!
GiphyWorked in a bakery, it was my first day so I get there in the morning to meet everyone. Then they have me grease up baking trays for the others to fill... I lift up the first tray and like 10-15 cockroaches just scatter everywhere from under the tray. I tell the guy showing me the work that there were cockroaches and he just shrugged... This was all in the backstore, customers were about 10 feet away.
So i tell the guy that I'm not feeling too well after about an hour of doing that and i head to the bathroom.
When I came out I told him I couldn't do that job and he told me to get a real job then, so I left and got myself a proper job.
WELL THAT IS SOME INTERESTING ATTIRE.
I had an interview at what I thought was a regular steakhouse in a new town I had just moved to. The interview went well, it was just before the restaurant opened so it was pretty empty. At the end, a waitress starting her shift walked by in chaps and a thong. Turns out that was their uniform. The manager called like 30 mins later saying I got the job. I had to politely decline that one ????
DON'T MESS WITH MY COIN!
Graphic design from home job. Nailed the interview - had absolute confidence I could provide this dude what he was asking for.
Got the job, and the first thing he said was to take a rather large check that would be mailed to me and buy my equipment. It was supposed to be from a special vendor that was to engrave the laptop and provide software. It was a scam. I looked up his business on Google, rather than through the link he sent me. I found the exact same shitty website with dozens of different CEOs.
Told him to not send me a check and that I was not longer interested. The check was going to be fake, and the money I would be sending to the vendor would end up being my own once the bank found out.
IT ONLY TAKES A MINUTE....
GiphyCold calling people about injury claims. "Have you been injured in the past 3 years?" That kind of thing.
The thing that really irked me was that all of the people I called in those 20 minutes were polite, said they're not interested, and they were just sitting down for dinner. I realized it was a horrible job and I was in no way cut out for it. I left after 20 minutes and just walked out the door without a word.
JUST RUN!
I was unemployed for a couple months, and started applying for pretty much any job I could do. This one was a basic small-biz IT support contractor. The employee the interviewer introduced to me mouthed "run" when he turned his back.
THANKS FOR THE HEADS UP!
This Quarter you guys have really achieved a lot for the company and surpassed our expectations...Just a reminder, we will be having to lay some more people off soon...
Peace out, I'll find something else before you make me leave
THESE BOOTS WERE MADE FOR WALKING!
GiphyI went to my orientation at a boot factory. They're government contracted and so pay minimum wage, so I figured I'd work there awhile and look for something better.
After we do the usual paperwork signing and such, we're taken as a group onto the factory floor for a tour. It's hot, it's crowded, it stinks, and everyone working looks annoyed by our presence... Okay, i guess not everyone loves their job right? No biggie, I'm sure this won't be so bad.
Then our guide informs us in no uncertain terms that our coworkers quite often give new people bad information to get them in trouble or make them mess up. They'd even be the ones to rat you out. Then we're told that our foreman is the type to yell for no reason, ask people if they're drunk in an accusatory way for no reason, and is generally a giant fool.
I took a few moments to think after these last revelations, said "Nah." And walked out of the building without a word to anyone. Forget that crap, Captain. I'm not putting up with all of that for 8 bucks and some change an hour.
UMMM... OH HELL NO FELICIA!
When I was 16 I had an interview at a local pizza place in a not so good part of town. I was hired and as I was walking out 2 guys came in and robbed the place. The manager gave them the money in the register and they ran out. I looked at him and he said "You get used to it". I never went back.
I did this in college too. I got fired for not backing down.
GiphyWorking at my uni's call centre to collect donations for the uni from the alumni.
Most. Degrading. Job. Ever.
We had to call alumni and manipulate them into donating to the university, and we weren't allowed to take no for an answer.
We were required to make AT LEAST three asks or we'd be scolded by the management.
People are just unpleasant on the phone, and it doesn't help that we'd ask for money and practically beg them for it. Jeez.
Seriously a sh*tty job.
As long as the pay is good...
I cleaned kitchen hoods/fans and grease pits at restaurants. The hours were awful, it was dirty, and we dealt with some nasty chemicals. The pay was pretty awesome though.
Hard pass.
GiphyCounty Health Dept. If an animal attacked someone (dog, possum, cat, raccoon) and it was suspect of having rabies and no longer alive - I had to take it to a university in the capitol for testing. Not so bad, but our county had lots of bites, so the uni said stop bringing the whole animal, we just need the head (brain). Lo and behold I became the counties dead animal headsman.
This is why regulation is a good thing.
Not me but my dad used to work for a company called Electro-Optical Systems (EOS). Their big claim to fame was building night vision goggles for the US Military, and that contract was basically the last thread the company had that was keeping it afloat. My dad entered the company as the new head of Environmental/Worker Safety protocols, so the OSHA guy in layman's terms.
First sign that he was getting more than he bargained for: Walks into his office and the lady sitting at his desk looks at him and goes "Who are you, what do you want?" he says "I'm the new head of E/WS..." turns out she was the current Environmental/Worker Safety head and they hadn't told her they'd fired her yet. A couple of minutes after screaming at the Site manager, she storms into the office, sweeps her stuff into a box and leaves him with just "Good F*cking Luck."
So the big boss comes in and basically explains that " due to budget and quarterly blah blah, we like to do safety a little different here..." Never a good thing to hear at a factory working with high volumes of super hazardous industrial chemicals.
Within the first 5 days of work, there's a chemical spill on one of the lines. As the alarm sounds, my old man shuts off the work valve and starts evacuating the contaminated floor, and the floor manager stops him, saying "we can't close down just for this, trust me, I've dealt with this 1000 times" etc...then starts ordering people to get big tubs of water and mop the mess up. For my chemists out there, this was almost 55 gallons of Lithium that spilled. For those less chemically inclined, that shit will EXPLODE when in contact with water.
My old man demands that the floor be cleared and if this manager (whos started swearing at him for shutting down the line) really wants to try, he can demonstrate his cleaning technique with a small bucket of Li. Guy drops a tiny amount of water into the bucket, whole thing bangs and jumps 5 feet in the air, the manager is on his back scrambling away. Keep in mind this guy's plan was to pour gallons of water all over the chemical soaked floor and have people just mop it up.
And after the incident, my dad STILL gets reprimanded from higher up for 'unnecessary halting of production'. Unfortunately he was poor and needed this job...so he stayed just a little bit longer.
Now, I'm no OSHA expert but I understand that for manufacturing, there are 2 types of hazardous waste, aptly named "Hazardous Waste", and...wait for it..."VERY Hazardous Waste." I know, creative. If I remember correctly, under regulation Hazardous Waste can wait (in proper containment) until the container is full before being disposed of, max. 90 days. VERY hazardous waste however MUST be disposed of every 30 days regardless of how full the container is. This became a problem after 30 days when my Golden Oldie was in his office, and a worker leans in and says "Hey [Dad], it's been about 30 days so...want me to do the label change?"
My dad looks up, "What do you mean the label change?"
Turns out they hadn't disposed of their VERY hazardous waste in almost 4 months because it cost too much to do very often and the container wasn't full...and as a result there were a few small leaks, which was why the containment room was now sealed up extra tight (this being cheaper than paying for cleaning). My dad walks into the containment chamber and can obviously see at least 4 stickers that have been just covered up each time the waste gets past due...and then notices a couple of sealed buckets and a cardboard box.
The buckets were holding all the waste they couldn't fit anywhere else,
The cardboard box opened up to show 50 feet of Thorium foil. Just sitting there. In a fucking CARDBOARD BOX. That was the ONLY CONTAINMENT it had.
When he told me this, he described it as "...I honestly believe I flew out of that room I moved so fast." He ordered an expensive lead-lined container immediately, and had that thing locked up, but he had been sitting not 50 feet away from it for almost 3 weeks by this point.
A few days later there was some sort of accident that got filed (which was also a very rare practice) and his boss came in fuming. He got chewed out for wasting money on a lead box, and then told if he wanted to keep his job, he had to hold off the OSHA inspector for as long as possible. He had no reason he could legitimately do this, and it didn't take a lawyer to tell him he would be on the chopping block if this was the state they found the factory in. So he did the only logical thing to do:
He jumped ship, whistle-blew, showed both the OSHA inspector and later an Army inspector everything he had, and got amnesty from the event.
He said he drove by a decade later to see if they were still there. The entire building was gone, and all that remained was parking lot.
TLDR: The company my dad was working for was comically corrupt with its disregard for safety, they almost blew up the building in his first week, and he ended up having to whistle blow.
Canvassing takes incredible patience.
GiphyDoor to door, non profit collecting names and donations for environmental causes. All cold calling. Just showing up! The rejection was constant. I lasted a few days.
There are worse things than easy pay.
I was the admin at a financial company, but there was literally no work for me to do. Ever.
I just sat and watched the hours go by everyday. I came in late, took long lunches, and left early and it was still torture.
Does the smell ever get washed off?
I worked in a Fish House at a cannery in Ketchikan AK. Nastiest. Job. Ever. Processing salmon as they came in off the boats. Hard work and disgusting.
Stay in school.
GiphyFresh out of high school, I took a full-time warehouse job that paid $8/hour. The warehouse was a re-packaging plant, and I was on the assembly line literally moving toilet paper from one box to another.
It was a soul-less job, utterly void of any human interaction or mental stimuli. It was quite the eye opener for my 18 year-old self. I met the mother of a girl I went to high school with there. She told me to stay in school, and that's exactly what I did two days later.
F*ck that place.
Factory farms are living nightmares.
I used to work in chicken houses. The smell would literally kill you if the fans weren't running 24/7.
I tried going in an empty house one time without the fans on and it was like being pepper sprayed with ammonia.
Edit: It appears this post. (and my reply) have begun to gain some traction with everyone in the US beginning to wake up. In response to a couple impolite PM's I received overnight I'll add this note.
I had the job when I was 16, and like most 16 year-olds I would have done just about anything for a good paycheck, and $10/hr was a lot of money back in the day when minimum wage was $5.85. I don't regret working there as I consider it a formative experience. It changed my views on meat and factory farming and has strongly affected my eating habits as well.
Please remember that the best way to curb factory farming practices is by reducing or eliminating your consumption. In the end we are all culpable and the best thing any individual can do is to speak with your wallet.