42 Stories From Employees Who Decided To Become Ex-Employees On The Spot And Reasons Why

Quit a cafe gig after three shifts once I realized tips were pooled and mostly went to the owner.

I worked 5 days at a hotel, training to be front desk. The second day I worked, the manager said I was much to smart to just be a “front desk girl” and he had been thinking about adding a new position that would ensure the quality and temp of the breakfast bar, among a few other things, because currently nothing was being done. The hot lamps weren’t keeping food hot enough, the butter laid in room temp water, which was supposed to stay ice cubes.

I mostly worked in food service up to that point so I was horrified. But it also felt weird he was wanting this for me after day 2. But my god the butter, guys. So I went back.

Day 3 comes to a fairly uneventful close, nothing too bad.

Day 4 he takes me and another new hire out to lunch because we were out visiting local businesses and sights for brochures for the hotel. At lunch he insists on buying me a beer. I was 19 and also felt it was unprofessional, so I said no thanks. He orders a Yuengling draft and when it comes to the table he says “we aren’t leaving until you drink this.” Like scowling. Then he smiles and says “I’m just playing, it’s for me!”

I told my husband about everything and he said maybe it’s a cultural difference, maybe you can work the opposite shift as him, was I misunderstanding things. So I go back. Day 5/the last day, I go in to work and he asks me if I would like to get a pedicure. I said no because I was really confused at first and thought he misspoke. He said he would pay for it if he could watch me get my toes done. So I decided there I was done but I wanted to at least finish out the day (poor college student and newlywed).

I’m about to leave and I’m checking every thing I need to be able to do so. I had to go into the laundry room, I don’t even remember why. I walk in and the door closed and my back was to the door and I heard it open again. I turn around and it’s the manager and he grabbed me in a bear hug and said “See how nice this is?” It wasn’t fam. I squirmed and he finally let go and started speaking but I ran out of the room, ran behind the front desk and got my purse, and left.

I reported it to the “corporate office contact” but that ended up being the owner of the hotel… who was friends with the manager. So a whole lot of nothing happened. But anyway that’s the tale of my shortest job.

Sorry so long, I’m really bored 🫠.

I applied for a party store I showed up for the interview and they told me to unload a truck for free. Called it a "working interview". I walked out.


Also Kirby vacuums. I was like 18 and walked out of the stupid little demo when I realized what was going on.

15 minutes.

Phone soliciting for donations.

After the 4th call, I left.

30 minutes. Some pyramid scheme. Guy gave me his only copy of the scam, I took it and never gave it back.

Right after college I got hired as a bartender. Showed up and they had me packing meat in bags and cleaning urinals. Never went back.

I did sales in a niche market and was really good at it, i had a client who worked in a similar field and kept trying to get me to come work for him part time. I eventually told him i would give it a try. There was an expo coming up that he a booth in and asked if i wanted to work that with him. I ended up selling 3 units at the festival the first daywhich was about 20k in sales. I should have got a big commision of these. Because i wasnt as familiar with the specific products, i had asked the boss a few questions on specs. At the end of the day i was asking questions about the commisions he told me i didnt earn any, they were his sales because he answered the questions. I told him to go get lost, dont ever come in my store again and i sought out the people i made the sales to so i could let then know to not to trust the guy.

I got hired as a dish washer at a local busy pizza place. I was 16 and just wanted a job. I started the same day that I applied. I was in the kitchen for 30 minutes before I was getting yelled at by one of the managers for not doing some work, but I was never told to do or knew what it was. I walked out like an hour into that shift. It was 5.15 an hour and hostile.

I quit a summer job as a teenager because it was a bunch of angry fat guys yelling at us all day while we moved furniture. No lunch, no breaks, only yelling.

Me and my friend joined up together, we left on the same day, the first day. I doubt any of them even noticed, the whole summer would've been like that in a warehouse with dudes yelling the entire time.

Does during the interview or reading the offer letter count. If so I have walked during both of those.

After the job started my record is lunch time first day. Reason for that one was my manager was a jerk. The company monitored the hell out of the computer and if your mouse or keyboard stopped for even a minute they were wandering by. This was a dev job and they only provided 1 monitor. I was working on some code and I needed to look something up but did not want to switch windows so I looked it up on my phone. Manager comes by and starts yelling at me. 5 minutes later it was lunch and I just went home. Honestly this job payed the best but I had 5 other offers on the table.

Was just not worth it so I took another offer.

Applied for a job with the city. It was a small pay decrease.  Then when I got to the interview, they said for the first 6 months itd be $5/hr less than what they stated.  Ok, that's weird but not a deal breaker with the other benefits. I signed the letter saying I'd start in 2 weeks.


 Then they said that it'd be another $3/hr less until I got my certifications renewed (even though mine were good for another 2 years). 


At this point the pay for the job was like $12/hr less than stated.  I told them that's shady and told them to go with someone else.

4 hours. Lied in their ad for hiring, asked them about it and said the ad said X amount, I pulled it up and they said oh must be a misprint. Was a significant amount to be misprinted too.

Three hours. The home health company I was working for closed due to the loss of the owner. Another home health agency reached out and offered to take on our employees (and their patients...) They guaranteed they would have the same pay, benefits and would keep their tenure. First day I started I found out within three hours that had all been a lie. I left at lunch and never went back.

Got hired to do IT, told it was breaking down and setting up IT systems for various companies. Fantastic, I know how to do that, the pay is good, I get to pick which contracts I take or don't.


First job was a 2 day one for a uni library that was like 2.5 hours away by train, had to be there early but they were putting me up in a hotel for a night and I got a travel bonus. Get there and for 2 days I was literally organising books on those rolling shelves libraries have by the dewey decimal system. Turned out it was the end of the move and we were just tidying up. Whatever, I got like $800 for that and it was pretty chill.


Next one I take is another uni, actually my first uni, setting up their new chemical engineering building. Get there and we're literally just moving lab equipment from the old building to the new, not even setting it up. Pretty stuff and I'm starting to ask questions, but I got paid for the full day even though we had finished by lunch.


Third and final was working at the Reserve Bank of Australia. Very secure building, have to be signed in, federal police there, I have to check my bag, can't take it up. Our boss that day was like an hour late so I'm already miffed. We all go upstairs and we first get a security briefing from a cop explaining no phones, we're not allowed to go anywhere without a police escort, makes sense. Then our boss steps up and explains what we're doing. Basically one team was moving their office up 2 floors and needed all of these crates of documents to come with them. We were to load them onto those flat movers trolleys with no handles, get in the lift with our cop, and unload upstairs. Repeat as necessary for *three days*. So we're about to start and I pull him aside.


Explain in no uncertain terms I was quitting on the spot, I was misled about the job and am severely overqualified for this, I have multiple high level IT certifications and that's what I signed up for. He tries to get me to stay, explains he's got those too, he just had to do the grunt work for a bit before getting to do the actual IT stuff. I just come back with even if I believed you, I don't want to work for a company that will so brazenly lie to and mislead people so they can scrounge up employees. I'm quitting.


Here's where it got awkward because we only had one cop. So boss man has to go off and find a second cop to escort me out. I'm standing there awkwardly for 10 minutes, he comes back and I get taken back downstairs, sign out, grab my bag and go.


The company was so incompetent they still paid me for the full three days.

A month. I was working at a paid internship for a personal injury law firm while I was in law school. I was doing boring stuff like deposition summaries, medical record summaries, and the like. I was in my 3rd year and really wanted to get my hands dirty. I offered to one of the partners to write motions, "we don't do that here." Ok how about I call clients who haven't been contacted in over a year and just touch base, let them know we're working for them.
"We don't call clients. Forget those people."

"Those people" are the reason he drove a Bentley and lived in a 10,000 sq ft house and his kids were all in prestigious private schools.

I quit in the spot and discovered something about my own principles.

Im not gonna lie, gave it benefit of the doubt.

Did Elliott Management Group which is B2B sales for credit card processors.
Had to cold call over 100X people/businesses a day and then go door to door trying to schedule appointments for a demo with my “boss” since I was “in training”

The training was actually with a guy that was incredibly awesome. I probably did 8 days of this and then just left to do scheduled B2B that day went home and never once looked back.

I got about $110 of “training pay”
I was so dang broke then and that $110 was worth it at the time lmao.

F that place tho. It was awful.

Last year when I was desperate for a job I was applying to pretty much anything and everything. Ended up getting an interview with a wood shop, it paid about $4 less than what I really needed but I figured a job was a job.

They told me in the interview that the whole entire shop was getting an upgrade, all new machines and everything and my job would eventually move from doing actual woodwork to just maintaining the machines that were supposed to do most of the work. All this was planned for the summer. Sounded like a good gig and (eventual) easy money, they liked me in the interview and pretty much made me an offer on the spot.

About 3 months in it was announced that instead of getting a whole new workshop we were getting... a fancy vending machine... for the break room.

Put in my two weeks soon after.

13 days.

After the COVID vaccine had become widely available, I was hired into a middle management role for a large, well-known entity that had developed some solutions for COVID testing as part of its business. The position was in-office. My boss was remote in another state.

My first week at the company was spent on some mandatory HR stuff and sitting in remote meetings with various team members and consultants.

My second week was spent out of state at a big company-wide event. I met my boss for the first time for about 20 minutes on the first day of this event. I saw them again for about five minutes at the end of the trip.

Monday of the following week, I show up to work and am kind of looking for things to do as I had not received any follow up from my boss, nor did I have any real direction on training. I spent a lot of time making calls, visiting desks, and sending emails asking for direction while reviewing product information.

At 3pm, I learned from a colleague that there was apparently a COVID outbreak amongst attendees of the event I had attended, including my boss (who never said anything to me about being out sick) and a bunch of other people with whom I’d had much longer interactions.

We had COVID tests available on-site, but they weren’t available to people with suspected infection, so I opted to leave to do an at-home test and work from home to isolate after exposure.

I finally got a call at 2pm the following day from my boss who seemed angry that I wasn’t in the office.

My COVID test was negative, so I came in on Wednesday and was greeted by HR, who was going to write me up. I put my badge on the table at that moment and walked out. I’m now blacklisted from working for the company or its subsidiaries.

It was a fireworks packaging and palletizing job, would've been for 8 hours or so starting at 5 AM. I accepted this temporary job to pay bills of course but I knew it was going to be rough.

In maybe 10 minutes of a meeting when I showed up with a dozen other stupid people, plus maybe 2 minutes explanation of how they wanted things done my job was to close, tape up, lift a 40 lb box at a time to stack on a pallet into a latticework of boxes up to 8 feet high and then run around the box tower with plastic wrap.

Important to note, I showed up to this job at 440 lbs. Being a fat kid and fat guy, I'd been told "you need to do more" where my family would criticize me often. I took the job because I needed money but a small part of me was trying to see if I could even do something like this. The answer was no.

Those dozen other people got placed in relatively easy positions on this line of work, they put the most out of shape guy in the most physically demanding position. That running around the pallet I mentioned? Yeah there was a forklift guy watching and waiting for me every second. A job that requires speed, some physical accuracy/nimble on the feet, and cooperation where nobody gave it.

So I walked out on the first break, maybe 7 or 8 AM. Walked out of the warehouse, into my car, and went home where I was so sore for the next couple of days that I shuffled around the house enough for my grandmother to tell me I belonged in a nursing home.

She was not very kind with her words, it didn't feel great to try to align with expectations set through criticism only to be criticized more.

Well, somewhere between 3 and 5 days. I decided after 3 days that I was going to quit, but it took me a couple days to talk my old employer into letting me return to my previous job. I worked for one division of a larger corporation. I left my division to work at headquarters. It didn't take long (only 3 days) to figure out that what they wanted me to do at headquarters was WAY out of my comfort zone ... waaaaay out. Anyway, I got my old job back and headquarters hired another guy from my department. He worked there for a couple years until he was fired for harassment of his administrative assistant (we all knew he was that kind of guy ... and eventually headquarters figured it out too). I went back and enjoyed a long and happy career until I retired from my original job.