64 Workers Share The Moments That Made Them Think “Nope, I’m Done”

Quit a job as a bus boy at Bennigans after an hour. I was a broke college kid needing a little cash. Got hired, was told to wear all black, including shoes. I showed up wearing my black nikes with a white swoosh. The manager told me I needed to go to the shoe store next door and buy myself totally black shoes. I went and bought some cheap black off brand sneakers and immediately was slipping all over the greasy floors with no traction on the shoes. Later the manager called for all staff to come to the kitchen to give the start of shift pep talk. I joined in the circle with the other wait staff and once the manager noticed me standing there he announced, this is for wait staff only and asked me to leave the circle. I left the circle and walked out the door and never returned.

I worked a shift at a pizza hut and the manager had a weird relationship with her twin brother who also worked there.. they got into a fight because he kept flirting with me. I wasn't even into him and the whole thing gave me the ick so I didn't show up the next day.

14 hours but only because I didn't have access to my own vehicle. I showed up and it's hop in the truck, we're going to go repair a water main. No training. No explanation what we are doing. Then when we got on site everyone was [angry] at me for not knowing what to do.

I got a job cleaning silk screens in a toy factory. I didn't get started till after lunch the first day. The next day I left at lunch and never came back. Didn't ask for any pay, chalked it up to a lesson learned.

Was working in a tiny room, probably 100°F, with no ventilation. Scrubbing the screens in a big tank of some volatile solvent.

Calvin Klein sales associate. Manager just gave odd vibes during the group interview (first red flag), and was completely off putting during orientation. Made it sound way more important than it was, tried to stoke all this weird competition between us and we were all like wth, and then she gave me the wrong time for my first shift then lied about it.

I confirmed twice and wrote it down immediately, so I know it wasn’t my error. She was reading off the schedule and when I came in and looked at it, it was very evident that she read the wrong row. They said they’d give me another chance with an on-call shift on boxing day, I confirmed an hour before, and no showed. The best feeling ever [laugh out loud].

During college I got a job at H&M at the local mall for some extra bucks. My first shift, they gave me a rack full of clothes and were like "go put these back on the rack in the store" -- mind you, the store was a giant two floor behemoth. Every clothing item was different. No one had given me any tour/orientation/etc. I had no idea where anything was. After spending several hours trying to find everything, I went to lunch and never came back.

Chimney sweep. Quit after 1 day when I realized the boss just wanted me to tell people that their chimney was in terrible shape and needed all kinds of high dollar work.

As a kid I wanted to pick up some extra cash however I could. So I walked into an ice cream place and asked if they had any jobs. The owner said that he'd pay me to wear the inflatable ice cream costume and wave at people by the road for a few days. 

So I did. It was actually pretty decent in there. There was a fan pointing in that kept the suit inflated, and also moved enough air around my body to cool me off on a very hot day. Things were going pretty good for the first half of the day.

And then it happened. And I swear to you this is no lie. I [passed gas]. Not even a lot, just an absent-minded outdoor [gas]. But good God, that fan blowing air in immediately injected it directly into my face, and would not let it out of the suit. I almost hurled. After a few seconds of absolute h**l, I opened the suit up, took it off, walked back in, sat it down, and left. Didn't even come back for a check. That was enough of that.

I lasted six months in a job before I didn't see any way forward with it. I was miserable, alone, and unsupported by a boss that just oozed stress.

"Six months is a while though" you might say. I lasted longer than the previous three people combined, one of whom took a day to bolt.

About 2 weeks. Call center for customers who purchased new vehicles to do CSI surveys. Auto dialer with a script that had to be followed to a tee. Mind numbing boring.

I was front desk at a hotel. Hotel had no managers on duty and tons of complaints. Every person checking out wanted to talk to the manager because of things like:

Waking up with ants in their hair
No hot water, no one came to fix
Heater not working well enough
A sneaker wave got them (it was on the beach)
It was dark in the room

And I was not allowed to give a discount. I could only tell people a manager would call them to follow up.

I had almost every customer upset with me, one came around the counter to berate me in my face, etc. I kept telling her there wasn't a manager on duty so she went to the restaurant on site to look for a manager.

The owner of the company sent out a company wide email naming me, saying what I did was wrong and not to do that ever again. Like I had any control of the situation.

Then, they switched my weekends. I was off sunday/monday, and they switched me to thursday/friday. I worked 9 days in a row with 0 overtime because they started that at the end of my week. I'm baffled this is legal.

So, as soon as I got another job I called in to quit (which happened almost every day there). Night auditor said no, I had to call the manager and tell them myself. I hung up and never looked back.

The manager messaged me on indeed to ask why would I want to leave a place when they treated me so fairly. Psh.

1 day. I worked in a UPS distribution facility. In Tennessee they're not required to provide breaks. So, they didn't. We would go in, 2 hours later have a 30 minute lunch, then clock out 6 hours later. I did the first day, went in the second, did my lunch, 2 hours later I asked if I could take a break, they said no, so I went home. Been on break for about 16 years now. .

A month and a half. Maria was a horribly insecure negative j**k and i was not going to deal with highschool politics in a professional work environment .

Left a job of IT Team Lead after 4 months as soon as i heard the boss shout/rause voice at people and insult them.

I cannot handle it when people think they are above someone. Respect is very important.

A week.

I was hired as a host at Olive Garden, but no one told me how to do it…. Waitresses would get mad at me for seating people in their section and I had no idea why. It sucked.

I reffed a single U8 soccer game and that was it.

14 year old me could not handle 35 year old parents calling me a blind idiot lol.

Applied at a clothes store as a teen. They had me fill out one of those questionnaires, you know— “What would you do if you saw a coworker stealing” etc.

After I was done the hiring manager looked at my answers, started erasing and “fixing” them, then said I was hired. Then she told me I had to meet quotas of signing people up for credit cards, 25 APPROVED apps per week. Keep in mind, this was not a high volume store like Old Navy or Gap.

Anyway I never reported to my first shift lol.

I got hired to run a childcare program. I showed up for training and they treated me like I was going to be working under the current director. Later the owner called and told me that he hadn't told the current director she would be fired yet and that he wanted me to get in there to learn covertly while she was still running the system. I backed out immediately and later learned the whole place shut down a month later because he refused to renew their childcare licenses or insurance. Turns out it was his soon to be ex wife's business and he was tanking it deliberately.

About two hours into my first shift at a distribution warehouse.


The supervisor told me to climb 15 feet up the industrial shelving racks using the metal crossbeams like a ladder to grab a heavy box because the scissor lift was out of service and they were behind schedule. When I asked for a proper ladder or safety harness, he scoffed and said, 'OSHA doesn't sign your paycheck, just don't look down.'


I walked straight to the time clock, clocked out, handed my visitor badge to the security desk at the gate, and drove home.

The contract that was serve to me was full of loopholes and error. They mentioned that they will change it and I need to secure it first so that they will count me in already for an international training. I wait until the flight and ghost em since no changes made. Still counts as AWOL I guess.