One of the main reasons that people “rage quit” their jobs – meaning they leave in a dramatic fashion when they’re fed up – is usually due to poor management and abusive treatment.
In August of 2021, we saw the largest amount of people quitting their jobs at once in what is now known as the Great Resignation. Some left due to low wages and poor management, some left because of the pandemic, and some wanted to do work they actually loved doing.
While many of these people quit after working for quite some time, there’s a great deal of people out there who quit on day one of their new job.
Sometimes you start a new job and instantly you realize that it’s not going to be the right fit. Whether it’s red flags with management or the work isn’t something you want to be doing, there are so many reasons to leave.
We went to Ask Reddit to get the truth on why people left their job the moment they started.
Redditor redmambo_no6 asked:
“People who quit their jobs on the first day, what was your ‘I’m outta here’ moment?”
Here’s some of the best responses.
Had to pay for the microwave.
“When the microwave in the lunch room was coin activated.” – CaptainArsehole
“That’s real? What the ever loving f*ck?”
“That warrants loading that thing up with quarters, filling it with silverware and setting it to ten minutes on your way out.” – larry_flarry
“I work in building management and am personally responsible for many of the amenities tenants have in an office, and I can’t even imagine the conversation on that one.”
“I had a hard time putting in a cold brew and kombucha machine that was pay per use, I feel like if you are going to put something in an office it should be free, or just don’t offer it.” – BuffFlexson
Management has issues.
“Worked in a hotel for a day.”
“No one told me where anything was. Got chewed out for it.”
“Guests enjoying their meals told me to pay no mind/I was doing a good job and that my boss is a c*nt.”
“I told the manager that I was quitting and wouldn’t be doing the next shift.”
“I arrived the next day, returning a work uniform and my supervisor approached me and yelled at me for being late. I told her I already quit but if I was working, technically I was 5 hours early for my shift.”
“Absolute nutcases.” – O5CR
“The not getting told how to something then getting told off for doing it wrong thing happened to me. I was so mad.”
“Got told to put something on shelves by checkout. Asked if there’s way any specific way it needs to be done? Get told ‘No, idiot, it’s not hard you just put as much as you can fit on the shelf’. Stack stuff on shelf. ‘Why didn’t you follow protocol around displaying stuff here? You have to count exactly how many you use for stock control and display them a certain way.’”
“Thought that one was a one off but the next day I ask what I should be doing after a busy period? ‘There’s nothing to do for a bit. Make us all coffee to practice using the machine.’ Half way through making coffee ‘Why haven’t you done really important job? You don’t have time to be taking coffee breaks!’”
“This was my trainer vs the manager. Turns out the trainer didn’t want someone else working with her so she sabotaged me and set me up for the manager to catch me doing the (wrong) things she’d told me to do.”
“I told them they clearly have some issues to work out among themselves and quit.” – Few-Evidence-7534
They were watching.
“I got a job at a Build A Bear knockoff at the end of a mall that wasn’t very busy. My interview with the owners was interesting. They were an older couple who said that they had wanted to open a Chick Fil A, but you need about a million dollars to do that.”
“My first day, one other girl was working, and she didn’t really talk to me. I had basically no training and she disappeared into the back. I was standing at the register area, which was underneath a giant storybook mushroom. A mother and her young son walk in and start to look at the bear skin options. I greeted them and left them to look around. They ended up leaving after a couple minutes and my coworker reappeared from the back with the cordless phone and handed it to me.”
“It was my boss. He told me that when a customer walks in, he wants me to come out from under the mushroom to them (‘come OUT! from the mushroom!’). After he finished speaking to me, I hung up and went to my coworker and asked about the phone call. She said the place has cameras set up and the owners watch them from their house and call in a lot. I did not come back to work after that day.” – pocketradish
“Not mushroom for improvement there.” – FreudianAcordian
“Owner didn’t seem like a fungi.” – TrippyReality
They had been robbed.
“Fast food chain: I was 17.”
“I found out during training that the place had been robbed 3 times in the past month and 1 employee was seriously injured.”
“Not worth the $5/hr. (This was the US state of Georgia in 2004).” – ThunderFlash10
“I worked at a KFC when I was 16. I remember the training orientation video told us over and over not to be a hero if you get robbed. Do they really think we’re gonna take a bullet for them? Like we’re gonna scream ‘Not on my watch!’ and dive over the counter?” – casino_night
They didn’t take breaks.
“Took a summer job at a textile plant and the trainer said, ‘Forget about taking a break if you want to stay caught up.’” – p38-lightning
“Reply forget about being caught up.” – Big-Red-Husker
“Especially because ‘caught up’ is an arbitrary standard.”
“Breaks, however, are mandated by law and measurable.” – TootsNYC
They didn’t want to pay the $40.
“I applied for a job at my longtime favorite restaurant(celebrated my birthday there every year).”
“Owner asks me to come in for basically a try out, as I communicated I was looking at other job possibilities. I come in and they just stick me on dishwashing for an hour, no biggie. Then there dishwasher doesn’t show up, so the kitchen manager asks me to stay one for their lunch rush, says I’ll get paid for the hours. I do, kitchen staff was nice so I was happy to help out even though I figured I’d be taking a different job. I fill out a time card at the end of the shift and tell the manager I probably wouldn’t be back, he understands and thanks me for the help.”
“Fast forward a couple weeks and he tells me to email the owner after I ask him if I should pick up my measly paycheck. I do, she basically tells me to f*ck off over text. Tells me it was ‘staging’ and that she told me I wouldn’t be paid. I respond that I understand that but that I stayed an extra 3 hours which I WAS told I’d be paid for. She stops responding. I decide I want to be petty over the 40 bucks so I get the state labor department involved. Dude goes in there and makes her pay me for the hours including the first ‘staging’ hour. Couple weeks later I got my 40 bucks, never went back to that restaurant.”
“Firstly, ‘petty’ is not how I see it two years later. I’m VERY glad I did this and sharing the story with others in my city I learned this practice was very common with local restaurants. Hopefully others learned to stand up for their labor too from my small experience.”
“Secondly, this restaurant closed down a couple weeks after I got that paycheck. The owner made a long winded complaint on the FB page about how the food culture had ‘changed’ in the city and her restaurant didn’t fit in anymore (total bullsh*t, they were ALWAYS popular. Most people theorized the terrible mismanagement and employee abuse had caught up to her).” – sleepdyhollow
“You’re not petty, I wonder how many other people they fleeced for free labor.” – FaustsAccountant
“You would not believe what restaurants get away with. And they’re so blatant about it.”
“It’s such an insane work culture. I’m glad I experienced it but the thought of doing it everyday makes my job being a welder now a total cakewalk.” – providenthound
The employee had to pay for training.
“My very first job was at a little drive in restaurant close to my high school. I showed up to work the first day, they lady said I had to pay her $50 for training. She showed me around the place and said that my pay would be $4.50/hour as a carhop(this was in 2010), and all the tips I made went into a bucket with all the other girls’ tips. At the end of the night, she counted up tips, kept 20% for herself and split the rest up evenly among EVERY employee. Also, part of our job was one day a week we had to spend 4 hours cleaning her house. It seemed super shady.”
“I literally left after listening to her go over all these rules. My dad was pissed until I explained, and another girl confirmed and my dad agreed I did the right thing.” – tlr92
“Shady and highly illegal.”
“Tip pooling is legal but is supposed to be only with other tipped employees, her skimming 20% off the top is not legal.”
“Pretty sure you can’t charge someone to train them for a job you hired them for.” – -Work_Account-
Hired to do one job, told to do another.
“I was hired at a chain restaurant to be a hostess. I was so excited because my last job was washing dishes and because of my eczema, I had to quit. It was too painful to do that job. So, I arrived at my new job dressed up to be a hostess and those mfers took me back to the kitchen to do dishes because the dishwasher just quit. I noped out of there real fast!” – Ismygrayshowing
“13 years in restaurants, I can say if you have any skin condition stay out of restaurants not because of your skin but the chemicals some places use for their dishwashers. I’ve seen people welt up just from industrial detergent.” – scootiesanchez2038
Even the customers knew it was bad.
“Went into an Italian restaurant for my first day of work and I got 3 red flags on the very first day.”
“1- The manager said he had lots of hours for me and getting shifts would be no problem. Every single other employee told me that they were struggling for hours and that they had no idea why they hired me.”
“2- Everyone said the manager was an asshole. Even the customers.”
“3- It was my first day there, and I actually had to teach the woman training me how to do one or two things.” – Stevie-Avail
“Probably hired you to replace that woman.” – RonStopable08
They were pushing a sale that should never happen.
“‘Salesman’ for Kirby vacuums. First sale call was to a single elderly woman who was supporting her son in hospital (they got us in the door by offering a free carpet clean as a demonstration). The supervisor training me pushed and pushed to make the sale until this old woman was in tears. Just as she was about to sign the paperwork I asked if she actually wanted to vacuum and she said it was lovely but she couldn’t afford it. I took the paperwork away from her and said not to worry.”
“Outside I told the supervisor I quit to which he replied I would’ve been fired anyway. No love lost. I hung around for half an hour playing on my phone to make sure the supervisor left because he was a real piece of work.” – Pokestralian
“Oooh I have a Kirby story! I worked for them when I was 17 – not selling the vacuums but setting up appointments for the salespeople. They had the shadiest way of getting their salespeople into people’s houses. They went around town with raffle tickets where people could sign up with their name, address, and phone number for a chance to win some cash prize. The kicker? There was no contest. It was just a way to get these people’s info.”
“When I would get the filled out raffle tickets I was instructed to look at the zip codes and throw out any from the lower income part of town. Then with what was left I had to make calls. I had a script where I would tell them they were still in the running for the cash prize but in the meantime, they had won a free one room cleaning. I’d get the details on which room they wanted to have done and set up a day and time for it. Their free room cleaning was a Kirby salesman pitching to them the whole time.”
“The whole thing was so dishonest I quit after a couple weeks.” – SavaRox
Not only do some of these jobs sound terrible, a lot of what happened was illegal.
With all the abuse, misuse of power, and poor wages, it’s no one these people quit on day one. If they stayed any longer it was bound to be stressful.
(@HappyHare90) 
(@deepaksxo) 
