I left my union job when a toxic manager started becoming … toxic. The new dot-com job was a really great fit.
So I quit, hopped a plane, flew about 6 hours, found a hotel overnight, stayed at a really shitty AirB&B for a day because the first apartment was rented out from underneath me, found ANOTHER apartment, and thankfully close to work because, yes, it was a foot commute in December at -40c/-40f until the wife sold our place, paid movers, gathered the two cats and flew out.
Started work day one. They’d changed the job description while I was on a fucking plane. Those fuckers. But there I was, 4,000 km from home, no job, and while this was before the house sold, the job market back home was absolute shite. No going back.
I got hired as a Linux Technical Analyst by a company that was re-writing all their old mainframe code for modern servers, three weeks later they told me they were moving me to Site Reliability Engineering.
I do not have the attention span for reliability engineering. They fired me six months ago for not being good at a job my ADHD makes it impossible for me to be good at.
What assholes.
i havnt because most of them just ghost you, i have heard that happen commonly on indeed forums.
When I got hired for the cruise ship I worked on, the person who actually gave me the job made it sound like I was going to be trained to operate the radio system. I get to Maryland, where the training facility was, and I’m just a fuckin’ janitor. I wasn’t even allowed in the bridge room.
probably for the best, cruise ships are cesspools for norovirus and coronaviruses anyways.
I’m not sure the janitor would encounter those less than the radio operator…
I got hired to do “research”. I maintain legacy crud web apps and file movers.
Not really bait and switched, but ghosted several times. You know, that thing HR people keep complaining about being done to them? Haha.
“unlimited PTO”
*looks inside
”4 weeks of PTO unless you have VP approval except you’ll never get it”
Four weeks is still way better than average if you’re in the US
4 weeks is what I get at a state job. My sick time is in a separate bucket and rolls over continuously if I don’t use it. I’ve got a month of sick time saved too. My job is a unicorn and if anyone else wants it they will have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
Hired for deli. Deli is a different union and pays better than say, cashier.
Which is what they moved us to immediately.
Asked if they were going to pay our hired wage or not. They did. I think they thought we knew it was a bait and switch. Didn’t until later, but they were careful to not lower the wage cause then yeah. Go to the board.
Stock options. I was working in a startup and got hit with the downsizing axe. Luckily, I thought, I had had been there just long enough to vest in the options. So I bought them on my way out the door, spent like $100 on 200,000 options: they were worthless at the time but if the company ever did go public that small investment would quickly turn into a fortune. Lucky.
Two weeks later I got the legal notice that they reissued options so all non-founder options were cancelled.
How did you not burn the place down? Were you able to get a refund?
Never got my money back - the lawyer fees would have been high and I went in assuming it was a gamble - most likely I’d lose it all with a small chance of a huge win
But that place was a real toxic workplace that I’m glad I left. The other fun thing was the reason I got laid off: not a team player. They asked me to be the first one in so I could do their management so I said ok. Then they asked me to stay last and I said “sure, which do you want. This was a typical startup where everyone works insane hours so there’s really no way anyone could be both first in and last out, but they thought that was not being a team player
Marketing. My responsibilities involve funneling online leads into sales through online campaigns.
The owner (not my boss) wanted me to walk around knocking on doors and giving fliers because “that’s how we always do it”.
I laughed and went back to my desk, doing what I’m good at.
Owner hated me in the first 6 months and then left me alone because I’m good at my job.
One job that told me I’d get a beginning hourly wage, and then a raise after passing a training and evaluation at the end of my second week. Didn’t get that raise after working there for 4 months.
Another job that hired me part-time as an educational assistant, and then fired the educator I was assisting and the website/server maintainer, then told me I’d fill both of their roles while also designing new courses and building demo robots. They strung me along for months, offering me a full-time position, all the while having me log my 60-hour timesheets internally, but signing off on falsified 20-hour timesheets. Finally, I was told to write the job description for a new full-time position that was tailored for me, so they could “quickly” fit me into that position. Then, they immediately hired someone else without even interviewing me. Through a number of monumental fuck-ups on their end, I was able to make a strong case to the Texas Workforce Commission stating that I was wrongfully terminated and in a hostile work environment, for which the employer had to pay me every single unpaid hour.
Can you name and shame the company/school? I’m not surprised this happened in Texas. I was unfortunate enough to live there for 3 years.
The University of Texas has a very impressive and rightfully renowned education system. If you were to talk to any administrative employee who interacts with other UT campuses and tell them that story, they’d say “that sounds like something that would happen at UTSA,” and they’d be correct. The specific school, department, or lab does not make a difference; those two campuses are fucking HR nightmares.
I actually tried taking my complaints up the chain of command, and eventually to HR. My HR rep told me that everything I was saying sounded normal, but stressed that I shouldn’t talk to anyone outside of UTSA because other entities would accuse me of fraud. TWC was my absolute last option.
I worked at UTSW in Dallas. That tracks.
My HR rep told me that everything I was saying sounded normal, but stressed that I shouldn’t talk to anyone outside of UTSA because other entities would accuse me of fraud.
Oh no, they would accuse UTSA of fraud.
I was initially advised of fraud. Then I got the reviewer to look at all the emails and recordings. Iirc, their exact words were, “oh shit… Uhh… Give me a couple of days to go through all of this…”
The resolution packet I received with all the back and forth between TWC and UTSA was far closer to TWC telling a state university to shut the fuck up than I ever expected to read.
Moved to a new town, applied to work at a kitchen inside of a bar. Was called and asked to work 1 shift to see how i liked it, and was payed for that day in cash on the way out as they told me when i could work next.
The following work day as i was leaving my apartment the bar manager called and said they filled the position i had applied for and told me to not come in.
So i went back home 🤔😅
you were the backup incase the original one dint fall through.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Oh boy. I had a crazy experience as a coop student (software engineering). Written on mobile, so may have some typos/styling quirks, sorry.
Term X: I worked for company Y, it went well, they wanted me back.
Term X+1: I get the automated message from the university job system saying I have an offer from company Y for the upcoming term, do I accept? I do. 3 months later, urgont email from university’s coop office. The offer was glitched in the system. Company Y got a rejection from me, hired someone else. I have about a week to land a job from the dregs that nobody else accepted.
There’s no CS related jobs left, but luckily I can speak french at about a B2ish level, so I look at a few french-english translator postings. Get a job doing translations for a mobile app. It’ll probably suck a bit, but at least its something.
Fast forward to first day on the job. They say “we saw on your resume that you can code, one project you made was an android app. Here’s our competitor’s suite of 7 android apps (SAP). We want you to ‘translate’ them and make us our own versions. Here’s a link to our API document.” So I guess I got a CS job anyways. I’m put in a cubicle with Mr Doe. My supervisor, Mr Smith says Mr Doe will show me the ropes.
Mr Doe tells me “its a pretty casual place, no real fixed hours, just try to get your work done, no big deal.” he then pulls out his lunch and starts eating at his desk saying “I’ll just be here if you need anything” I ask about the dev team. He says “we’re an HR consulting firm, we don’t have a dev team” So I guess I’m on my own. 7 apps in 4 months isn’t really feasible, but I’ll try to make at least a quality MVP for one or two of them that they can use as a starting point.
Fast forward again, 2.5 months into the 4 month term. Mr Smith barges into Mr Doe and my cubicle. He yells at Mr Doe saying we run a tight ship here, I told you before our hours are 8 to 4 and you keep coming in at 10. Plus our corporate policy is clear about taking your lunch at your desk. You are fired. Mr Doe protests a bit, but ultimately ends up being let go. Mr Smith says he noticed that I’ve been late and eating at my desk too and he’s going to send a letter to the university that I am violating company policy and am now on probation. I tell him this is the first I’ve heard of this, but he insists it was in the employee manual. I never got any manual. He insists that Mr Doe must have given me one, but relents and gives me a ‘new’ one.
Next he asks to see how the apps are coming along. I tell him one is almost ready to test as a minimum viable product and show him it, also show a second work in progress and demonstrate that it can make writes to the database (I started with the easiest app that only needed read access).
He is furious. Saying I should have at least 3 full apps done, not 1 partially complete app and 1 completely broken one. I told him that without a dev team or even a senior dev that was unreasonable. He says “they’re just mobile apps its not like we’re asking you to make full programs or anything, just copy the ones SAP made” I tell him that a mobile app is still a full program, and they really should hire a full dev team for it, but he’s not having it.
Anyways, I finish the term the best I can. When I get back I of course get called in to the coop office and the dean of my program is there. They got a letter of complaint saying I couldn’t speak french, I was always late, I was a slob, etc. The university has a reputation to maintain, I was representing them and made them look bad…
Luckily when I told them the whole story, plus showed proof (which I was documenting extensibly ever since Mr Doe was fired), they took my side, unlisted that company, and gave me a free pass on my next coop term (so a 4 month vacation).
That HR consulting firm took 3 years to send me my tax forms btw… Yeah, they’re out of business now. Good riddance.
Absolutely. I applied for months out of college and FINALLY got a response. It was a sales marketing yadda yadda, this, that, and the other thing. Whatever. I needed anything. On my first day it became apparent that it was indeed door to door sales to businesses. So not private homes, thankfully. The people who were good at the job were some of the scummiest people I’ve ever met. The job basically taught you to prey on the elderly and foreign people who did not know what we were doing. It was for fixed rate electricity. It’s not necessarily a scam, but the way we did the job was scammy. Bonus was the managers, two of them, were a young husband and wife. Imagine crypto-bro jerkoffs but RIGHT before that nonsense took off. The single sale I ever made was to a very nice elderly Korean man whose daughter immediately canceled the sale. I lasted two weeks and one day. It was fucking miserable. OH, and it was 100% commission and you used your own car to drive around. I lost money working for them. And then covid hit. There’s no way they survived that.
When I was still in college one of the many jobs I held was a door to door sales gig for an exterior home remodeling company. Initially it was promised that any appointment I set I received X amount of money, I think it was like 10 bucks. So on a daily basis if I set 3 the money doubled for all prior and future appointments that day. I was setting appointments for a “closer”. Seemed like an alright deal and I tried to only set appointments with legit customers. I set a ton of appointments and did pretty well. End of the week comes and I’m shocked at my tiny paycheck. They then explain “well you only get that money if the closer is able to make the sale”. I was planning on quiting anyway because door knocking is horrible but that really sealed it for me.
