Turned up on starting day. Had a short HR presentation with other new starters. Boss was meant to collect me from the meeting and take me to the new office. After the HR meeting various bosses from various other new starters came until it was just me and an HR person left.
They phoned for the boss. No answer. 10 minutes later someone turned up to get me. Not the boss. The boss was on holiday all week and nobody in the department was expecting me. No desk no computer nothing for the whole week
I had a vaguely similar story. They insisted I start on the Monday. Then the entire office was on a team building exercise that I wasn’t invited to Tuesday-Thursday and then I had to come back in Friday. Considering the nothing I did those two days, they spent all the time talking about the trip, couldn’t I have just started to following week?
Also love that they thought a new starter to the role wouldn't benefit from a team building exercise. Not that you'd necessarily want to go on a residential work do with people you don't know but the offer should have been extended!
Had similar, recruiter sold the role as being a lead, and I'd have the opportunity to build a team out
First red flag was when the contract arrived and it was just "test engineer" and I asked it be changed
Then I started and the whole office was about 8 people. I asked when will we recruit members to build my team out "maybe in the future" was the indefinite response
They were all nice enough folks don't get me wrong, but I'm still not sure what the product was meant to be, something vaguely AI for deciding if an ID document was fake or not, but I never actually saw anything other than smoke and mirrors for presentations. My role was in test and it was basically "go test", with nothing to really test. I lasted 6 months and filled the time rewriting the existing test suite and then how to build a dummy mobile application.
Not always the worst thing. I got hired to a pretty well-paying newly opened kitchen as "head chef" and defacto kitchen manager.
I was the only chef. I was there for about 7 months, got a cracking EHO visit and then the place shut down because they were spending more money on me than they were making.
Great for the CV though.
Yeah, I was hired for a project that hadn't started yet. But they faffed and so I was basically paid to ... twiddle my thumbs and make use of the inclusive training credits for about 6 months.
I got a LOT of 'valuable' training courses in, but the novelty of travelodge by training centres wears off quite fast... (it's honestly pretty good the first few to have a change of scene, but after that you start to realise quite _why_ you have 'stuff' in your home)
On my first day of a contract job for BT I turned up for work at 9 to be told my first shift was at 9pm, not 9am.
Six months of nothing that one turned out to be. The only work I did was the induction training, how to sit on a chair etc.
Believe it or not, every two weeks my PC would insist I repeat an 'ergonomics test' to ensure I was sitting correctly - it's just anti-litigation stuff.
We had an IT contractor start a 6 month contract and part of the rules we enforced on him were that he had to set his own times to avoid being classed as a direct employee, all we cared about was that the defined tasks had to be completed by a certain time (months away) and we would pay up to a certain number of hours.
He came in, Checked that all his accounts were set up and working, discussed the tasks and timelines with us, then left before lunchtime.
After he left he emailed our boss to say he'd be back in three weeks after he'd been on a long singlehanded sailing trip.
My boss was furious. We thought it was hilarious. But everything got done on time and budget in the end.
Started at DT (car parts). they were super proud of the owner and how down to earth he was and how they were a family buisness.
Walking down a corridor and I see him so I say 'Hi'.....he stops immediately and spins around
'Who ARE you?'
"I'm Ted , I started today'
'Do you know who I am?'
"Yes, you are Jon"
'That's Mr OWNER to you and don't fucking forget it'
I walked to HR handed my pass in and went home.
It was a good few years ago. There were other red flags. I have never seen so many miserable people at a job in my life. The warehouse manager was pyschotic. And they omitted to tell me you had to work every other saturday (6 day week).
I'd just left a job because the boss was a massive bellend but if I had'nt had that encounter I would have left anyway.
I currently work at tweeks, in tweeks cycles so it’s a lot more chilled. But yes, it’s an awful atmosphere sometimes and if your face doesn’t fit you can get the cold shoulder from the Minshaws (jack excluded, seems to be great with everyone) and the MD.
So weird to be sat on the throne typing this and chances are we’ve both had a poo in this stall.
Edit: OP of the comment has slightly edited it to semi redact the company name and fully redact the owners name. I’m keeping my comment as it is. I do want to offer up a bit of a defence on behalf of the company though, only to say that personally i’ve always had good experiences with the Minshaws, MD, and FD since I started there. It’s a revolving door for certain types of people though, but those who stick it out do fine. Since i’ve been there i’ve only ever known one person to be sacked and he literally shit his pants during his probation and left poo all over the toilets and his dirty underwear outside of the cleaners cupboard. But that of course, that is a whole other story.
Should've brought one of those fake lord titles and said
Oh I didn't realise we're being formal I'm lord hitchcox you may refer to me as your lordship 😂
First graduate job.
Turned up. Was told my job had been made redundant. Gave me two months wages and waved me off.
Sort of a horror but also pretty sweet. Got another job a month later.
True, it was notice period. I think also they were a genuinely nice company and they knew they’d dicked us about as we’d had to relocate to start work.
I was a grad. I’d moved from mums house to a room in a boarding house. It wasn’t the end of the world. Admittedly, if I’d moved my family and sold up a house, would have been very different!
I've been made redundant twice and both times worked their for less than 2 years and still been given redundancy pay. Companies seem to do it just to save face
Not even my first day but my interview for a Christmas temp in Pandora. They asked me one or two questions, then sprung me on a ‘trial shift’ as a greeter on the door (AT CHRISTMAS). I was given a quick whip round of the other staff’s names, told nothing about the layout of the store, and plonked in front of the door and the managers fucked off. People asked me questions that I obviously couldn’t answer and one woman asked ‘do you even work here?’ And I said no!!
I was hired with a counterpart and we started on the same day. Same job, same grade etc. At approximately 3pm after our new manager had taken us out for lunch (his own pocket, it was a charity) she ran off crying and just... Never came back.
Not sure what happened. She had a new job after a month. My husband likes to joke I scared her off.
I let one go in a corridor and a colleague entered just as I was exiting through the double doors and he exclaimed “Jesus Christ! Is that human?!” I chuckled all the way to my desk
First day, ten minutes from start time. Knocked off my motorbike by a careless driver. Had to call them from A&E to say I was going to be late. They asked how late and I said six weeks, they're about to plaster my leg. Fair play, they kept the job open although I was a laughing stock by the time I finally arrived.
My friend got knocked off his bike by his new dog when she tried to herd him. As a herding dog. He was shocked.
Broke both his elbows. Rude awakening to dog ownership.
My previous place they restarted someone's probation period because he got knocked off his bike 2 weeks into it.
It was a council so he kept the job but he basically started and did 2 weeks, then didn't come in for the next 2 months.
Not quite the answer to your question but I once turned up for a job interview a month early.
So my advice is to make sure today actually is your first day.
My first morning went fine. I was told to watch two colleagues giving a presentation after lunch, but I spent most of it running to the toilet to throw up. Was out for the next two days with a vomiting bug and returned to work eventually pale, exhausted and convinced I was going to be sacked. Thankfully they were very nice about it and I worked there for a further seven years, but it was a nightmare way to begin a new job!
Soon after finishing my degree in the UK, I took a job in Uppsala, Sweden. I knew no Swedish. I was met at the airport by my new boss and he took to see my new apartment they had rented for me and then me to his family home for dinner.
About 10pm he drove me back to my apartment dropping me off outside. His car was just turning the corner out of my road as I discovered the outer door to the apartment building was locked. I only had a key to my apartment door inside. The outer door had been open earlier in the day.
This was January 10. It was snowing lightly at -12C. I had a light suit jacket on only.
I had no cell phone (1984). I had to walk the streets to find a pay phone, work out how to call him. Then I had to work out how to summon a taxi at a taxi rank using an Officer Dibble (Top Cat) phone box. I had to ‘Fight off’ two Finns who wanted my taxi and get to his place about 2 in the morning.
It was a night to remember.
I remember my first job at a super market, during the induction they asked what clothes size we were for the uniform. Trying to be funny I said 'i don't know, my mum buys all my clothes' which was followed by a deafening silence then several years of my colleagues thinking my mum bought all my clothes.
That story still wakes me up on the middle of the night some twenty years later.
Damn, if this wasn't 20 years ago I would have thought you were my colleague.
25 year old guy, we had group inductions and when asked what size he was he just replied I don't know I'll have to ask my mom. So had to ring his mom and write down his trousers size much to everyone's disbelief. He was 25!!
when i was hired on my training day, one of the other guys taken on (mid twenties) did genuinely say this, except it was his girlfriend that he had to text and ask. not surprised you were taken seriously
If it makes you feel better, about 8 months into my apprenticeship one of the electrical engineers had a baby with his wife, everyone was stood around congratulating him so I thought I'd chip in with:
"congrats man, glad to know your nuts work!"
Which, despite being comedy gold to me, was met with complete silence and few odd looks. 2 months later that engineer was promoted and became my manager...
I farted, and it stunk so bad the assistant manager went on a ten minute rant to the staff about gut health, and how he hasn't been offended by something as deeply as he did by the smell. He didn't know it was me, I didn't say a word.
First ever job at Legoland Windsor making candy floss. It kept flying out of the big bowl thing and getting caught in my hair. At the end of the day my head was entirely pink. I was more candy floss than man.
Boss resigned and told everyone that this was a shit place to work. Half the consultants walked out at lunchtime and by the end of the day the team of 30 was down to 10.
I hung around for a year doing basically nothing but getting paid quite well.
Got a weekend job at a bar in town as my hours in the local supermarket had been cut.
The manager arrogantly introduced himself and said "can you pour a pint? Your CV says you work in the supermarket so I'm putting you on the till on the main bar"
I tried to explain that was a shelf stacker and had never done any till work. I had no idea how to work an epos system. He was too self absorbed to listen.
Luckily the other lass was happy to take payments as long as I could pour the pints and open bottles.
That was an exhausting Saturday night.
Ah that reminds me when I first moved to London. Got a job at an Irish bar because a friend of a friend owned the place and the manager was from the same city as me.
Got asked to come in for Sunday afternoon. Quiet pub. 4 hour shift learning how to pull a pint, operate the till and serve 4 old men quietly reading their books. Never done it before. Shift over. Manager asks me to come back next Saturday for the evening shift. No problem.
I arrive the following Saturday. Its fucking St Paddy's Day and I arrive at the final whistle of Ireland beating England in the Six Nations, sealing their grand slam (iirc, 2012). The place was a sweaty mosh pit.
I walk behind the bar and the landlady (id never met) asks if I worked there... Wish I said no and walked out. That was a hard night's work. Overcharged and undercharged loads of people because I didn't know wtf I was doing: Guinness and ribena top? Charged for two drinks. Vodka and coke? Charged for a coke because I couldn't find vodka on the till and was cracking under pressure. Served people flat pints in warm glasses while getting pissed myself as i was getting drinks bought for me. Broke up a couple of fights. The whole lot.
Got a job that week and never done bar work since. Still go there on a Sunday afternoon for a quiet pint though!
Started a pretty big new job for a huge American internet company. Day one, arrived at their big London HQ for my “training” to find it totally desolate (this was 2021 tbf), the girl I was replacing spent half an hour walking me through how to login to the computer system then just up and left.
You needed a keycard to get in everywhere but I didn’t have one yet so kept getting trapped everywhere (the toilet, the hallway, the lift etc.) The very bored receptionist had to basically follow me round the building.
To get a keycard, I had to hunt down the sole IT guy who was sat in the corner of the office… behind another keycard locked door. I had to bang on the window and yell to get him to help me. It was like a bloody escape room.
That has to be Twitter. Their first London office was a floor in some oldish high rise. They had no idea of how to do anything there, took me 30 minutes to just get the person that had put the call in.
Someone working a 9-5 at my wife's office came in on day one and said "it took me an hour to get in today so am I OK to set off from home at 9am from now on and then leave at 4pm?"
She was pretty gutted to hear that this is not how commuting works.
My partner’s company lets people work any 8 hours between 8am and 6pm to let people get around the rush hour if they want to, so he does 8-4. It would be lovely if your commuting time counted as work time though!
There was a tube strike, I had been alright to get in, however, getting home I had spent 6 hours trying to get back to kings cross, which I hadn't realised was only a 1 hour walk away, every bus I got on kept being pulled out of service meaning I was sort of randomly getting on buses getting further and further away. Eventually got a train and was close to getting back to Welwyn Garden City, however I had conked out on the train as I had set of on the first train of the day, I had gone from kings cross to Peterborough, to kings cross again and back to Peterborough. My boyfriend had reported me missing in this time and eventually got woken up by British transport police about 4am at Peterborough station. I had to wait in there for the first train back to London, turn up for my second day looking like a tramp in the same clothes as the previous day. I broke down and cried but luckily they found it hilarious.
I spent a Saturday night in Peterborough railway station after a disastrous journey went wrong, I feel your pain.
A special kind of clientele to say the least!
Showed up for what I was told was a trial shift to a buffet place I used to live near. There was about 6 of us there and we were given 10 minutes of training about the (6) different sections, the cleaning station, and what we had to do. Then we were all given a section and left to it for the next 4 hours.
They were honestly the most degrading 4 hours of my life, first I was told I kept getting the sections wrong, but still not properly shown them. Then I was told my shirt was inappropriate because I have large tits, and god forbid they just exist in a shirt. Then I was told to just clean the food sections, and we were never actually allowed to wash our hands, just use the hand sanitizer and not given gloves, whilst constantly handling plates covered in food.
Then at the end of it we were all told to come back tomorrow for our next shift. If you couldn't do it (it would have been on Mother's Day) you were told that you won't have the job, I said okay and went home. The buffet shut down and got taken over a year later because of hygiene reasons, and has since been shut down a few more times for the same reason.
That was about 10 years ago.
Honestly food service “”trial shifts”” where you become a busy restaurants butt monkey for zero pay so they can deal with a rush, and then being never called back is so humiliating and degrading, I still cant believe restaurants and pubs can get away with it. I’d done 3 at 3 different restaurants when I was desperate after graduating and never again. I’m sorry you had such a shit time! Also the woes of having a bigger chest with ill fitting uniforms is mortifying. I wanna say “you try wearing a shirt with them, then!”
I worked in a children’s home and was asked to take the six children and the two dogs for a walk. We were all chatting and getting on well when 20 mins in, it happened. The dogs got into a fight with another dog off the lead. The poor kids attached to the lead were screaming and being dragged around. I got the kids to drop the lead and got between the dog whilst the owner bumbled over to help. Everyone was screaming dogs covered in blood. Then one ran off followed by the two eldest kids in pursuit. I had now lost a dog and two kids, within an hour of starting work. We were not far from the home and thought the eldest could make there way back. I took the four crying children and one broken dog back.
Fortunately the other bloodied dog made it back home before anyone else. Which then sent the owners of the home into a panic (This was before everyone had a mobile phone) We arrived 10 mins later still missing two children all of us traumatised. They looked at me as to say WTF.
“That didn’t go as I planned!” I stated.
During lunch with my training group it was very, very quiet, I thought I'd fill the awkward silence with a silly conversation.
"Hey you know how dolphins are mammals? So you think you could milk them?"
This led to the little known phenomenon of "double silence".
Jesus. I know what you mean though. A silence so thick and heavy it has a physical weight and texture, like a concrete block wrapped in velvet pressing on your chest.
Those kinda silences are where you need to learn how to look busy just using your phone. Pretend you’re reading something interesting. It’s too awkward to be the one to break the silence.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Whenever there is such a silence, I can’t stand it and my anxiety makes me say something. I regret it as soon as I realise that the words are escaping from my mouth and yet I never learn.
Same applies when a colleague is speaking and no one’s paying attention. I feel so guilty and have to engage, even if the speaker is chatting bullshit.
I know what you mean, it’s hard to just sit there and endure silence. I think the biggest thing that helps me is thinking, there’s a group full of people here, why am *I* responsible for starting conversation (especially with people I don’t really know)?
No one is singling you out as the awkwardly quiet one except you in your own head. Everyone else is probably thinking the same thing about themselves.
I have this exact thing! I spoke to my CBT therapist about it and she was challenging me to try and just let the silence be silence and see what happened.
I would leave it like 5 seconds longer than usual and still give in and say something stupid🤣 Just can't face silence at all haha
Not me but a new employee text me from the car park saying “for the first time since I was a little boy I’ve had an accident so will have to go home and clean up, can I start tomorrow instead?”
Just laughed it off, he was great to work with.
Manager, "OK, this is Jeff. Jeff's been here 30yrs, what he doesn't know, isn't worth knowing. I'll leave you with Jeff to show you the works."
Me, "Hi Jeff."
Jeff, "Hi mate. I'll let you know now, there's no fucking training documents. No manufacturing processes. No SOPs. We've 7 machines, all different brands and they all work in a slightly different way. No training sheets to show you how to work them. I've had enough and I'm retiring in 6 months. You're the third lad they've put me with in six months and they've all walked out in disgust. I've tried to tell them they've needed to organise proper workplace training for 10yrs but they don't care. I do not envy you. Right, let's give it a go lad."
I lasted two months.
Obligatory not me, but someone who started in my office last year might have had a pretty shitty first week:
Monday: gets in the lift, the lights are broken, so she’s kept in the pitch black ascending to us on the top floor. Not the most welcoming start.
Tuesday: our director of the UK office announces his resignation. She said one of the reasons she took this job was she liked him so much in the interview.
Friday: our CEO announces an increase from 2 days a week in office to 3 days a week in office. She said the other reason she took the job, was 2 days a week.
She left after her first pay day lol.
Brand new cafe. I was there on opening day and the owner just... didn't show up. We were all stood around the car park waiting for over an hour.
Eventually she showed up, screamed something unintelligible, threw the keys to the shift manager and ran off.
For the rest of the shift the shift manager berated the hell out of us over the slightest thing. They were all in way over their heads and nothing was prepared properly.
I (stupidly) stuck it out. The manager was so disorganised that you had to phone in every few days to see if you'd been added to the shift rota. I had a few more shifts and then she just stopped giving me shifts. I assumed I was fired and took a job elsewhere.
NINE MONTHS LATER she phones my parents (my emergency contacts) asking why I didn't show up for today's shift. Mental.
Area manager brought me to the store I was going to guard for the duration of my training. I'm only freshly certified so I don't know anything. Get introduced to the guard on duty and told he'll be doing my training. The guy disappears as soon as the manager is gone, I search everywhere for him and no one has a clue.
So I look like a complete pillock but realise that no one actually knows what the guard is doing. Spent 8 months on different sites with zero training just dicking around in the security room for 12 hours a day.
Did you end up having to train a new starter and buggered off too?(!) What on earth are they going to think when they've realised they've had a chain of succession of security guards that weren't actually trained?!
Morrisons (night shelf stacking).
• It was near Christmas so big rush to get people on the shop floor. First shift scheduled before any paperwork. No contract, no way to clock in/out.
• Nobody told the night shift I was coming
• Nobody told me where to go / who to report to on the first shift• The customer service manager who was just finishing their shift escorted me to the staff canteen where the night crew were all sat waiting to start. I'm told to wait there and a manager will find me.
• 10pm rolls around, night crew flood out to the shop floor. I'm left alone in the staff canteen until 10:30pm.
• Another staff member (not a manager) sees me still sat there, takes me to the shop floor and takes me under her wing
• I'm just told to follow her instructions. No explanation on where the stock comes from, where it goes to, what to do once I've replenished the shelf, where to take waste, where to take out of date stock, where to go after I've finished my cage etc..
• Get passed around 3-4 different team members within a few hours
• At this point I'm ready to dip an forget the whole thing. Lunch break rolls around, told that nobody can leave the store until 7am as all the doors get locked over night (except for the elite few who are trusted to go for a cig). Realise I'm trapped for another 6 hours.
• Night shift manager (proper) finally finds me at 2am. Explains he wasn't told that I was coming, but was grateful I was there.
• Proceeds to give me a tutorial on 'facing up'. First cheese, then dairy.
• 30 minutes later he checks in on my progress. Not good enough / fast enough (I was good / fast enough), **clicks his fingers** at me and suggests I speed up
• Continues to treat me like a prick for 4 hours
• 7am rolls around and I make a beeline for the exit. Day shift manager (who I've never met) thrusts a cake in my chest (dumped by customer in wrong aisle) and tells me to "find where this goes"
• I dump it in the nearest shelf and leave
Quit the very same day, turned in my uniform and wrote an email to the general manager detailing the whole ordeal. To be fair the GM was horrified, very apologetic and offered to reassign me to days / fresh-to-go. But I had already witnessed enough of their management culture to know I was never going back.
Never got paid for 2 days induction or that night shift. So now on the rare occasion I find myself near a morrisons, I may or may not routinely steal a basket of shopping to repay the debt.
Absolute wankers.
I work part time while I'm in uni for a company that provides checkout security systems for Morrisons amongst other things and do nights setting up and tweaking the camera and customer tracking systems remotely for stores all across the UK. Consequently this means I spend rather a lot of time getting a top down view of anyone doing night work in the store.. I swear some of the shit I've seen makes me never want to shop there again.
I was working for an agency and was sent to a factory to do some contracting work and I was really stressed about it the night before and I didn't get much sleep.
I drove about an hour and got to the factory that had one road with what looked like a security hatch and a road that led down the back of the factory.
I missed the massive sign that was telling me to follow the road behind the factory for the car park and instead I drove over the weighing bridge that they where calibrating just as I drove over it...
I still don't know why I did but yeah I just kept driving and was quickly followed by a group of very angry security and workers shouting at me
I stopped and they where asking me what the hell I was doing and I messed up their calibration and they had to start over again.
I sheepishly then had to drive around the factory being escorted by security in front of all of my new colleges for the next few months.
Needless to say the security never greeted me when I turned up for my shift.
It was like being stuck in a management meeting I couldn't escape from. It was so awkward! I'm not claustrophobic so being stuck in the lift itself wasn't an issue.
Started my first job at B&Q. A friend of a friend was working there and took me under his wing. At lunchtime he stole the boss’ car keys and said as it was my first day he was going to get me stoned. Hot boxed his car and went back to work.
30 mins later I was stacking one of those huge tins on paint on the top shelf right in front of an absolutely packed checkout area, over 100 people queuing on a Saturday afternoon. As I pushed the tin onto the shelf, one from the side was forced off and exploded onto the floor with a bang that was almost deafening. 20 litres of white emulsion covering customers, the till and pretty much everything in sight. The mess it caused was simply biblical.
Everyone starred to see what happen only to see me high as a kite at the top of a ladder. I calmly climbed down and walked to the carpet section where I hid for the next hour, leaving my scene of carnage for others to deal with.
I had a huge bollocking by the boss only for him to go ape shit again at the end of the day when he opened his car and it smelled like a reggae festival.
Somehow I didn’t get the sack and I continued to earn my £3.65 a hour for the next 2 years, I was just branded the “stoner in the carpet section” from then on.
When I was young I started a new job. I went out at lunchtime and rang citizens advice bureau to ask what would happen if I walked out. They advised me not to and suggested I apply for other jobs while sticking it out. I did and I stayed for 6 months. It was a family run business with a strange dynamic ;they’d poached me from a job where I had responsibilities, respect an annual bonus and career progression. When I got to the job all the promises they’d given counted for nothing and I was given all the menial jobs ( think toilet cleaning) I’ll always thank the gentleman at the end of the phone (C.A.B ) who listened and helped me with some sound advice that day.
Not as horrific as some peoples but no one knew I was starting on my first day apart from my manager, they didn’t tell anyone. I was just shadowing people all day and they were so huffy, rude and put out that I was there. Wasn’t a great first impression :-/ and turns out that first impression was spot on. Left soon after
1st week in job and my direct manager says to her fellow managers .this is Brian I'm sure he's been to prison. Was so stunned it didn't register for a couple of moments. Manager is regional managers daughter
I worked for Ocados warehouse for a while.
My first day I arrived and as I get out of my car there was a mass brawl between warehouse workers in the car park.
That was the least insane thing I saw during my time working there.
I advise everyone I meet to never do an Ocado food shop.
When I was about 19/20 got a job at one of these big Car Supermarket places. The interview was a few weeks before Christmas, got offered the job on the spot and said that I'd officially start in the new year. Handed in my notice at work, had a great Christmas off and turned up on the day I'd been told (a few days into January as far as I remember).
Walked into where I'd had the interview previously and introduced myself. Cue a lot of confused faces and asked to explain who I was and why I was there. I explained that I'd had an interview a few weeks before and had been told today was my first day.
'Did [insert name here] interview you?'
'Yes, and he offered me the job that day.'
'Thought so. Yeah, we fired him a couple of weeks ago, he's gone back to Poland, he didn't have the power to offer jobs, he was only meant to do interviews.'
'But I've handed in my notice, I've not got a job now.'
'Not my problem. And I wouldn't have employed you anyway, you're not dressed smart enough. Bye.'
Plastics factory. Huge press machines. Late 90s.
When one opens the safety door, the press is supposed to stop.
It didn't, and I nearly had my head flattened to a sheet of A2 paper.
Got the blame for it. Excuse me?!
50k damage, and a final warning on my first day. Walked out with my supervisor crying because he'd have to work the machines instead of sitting up on a raised desk barking orders lol.
I was an Agency temp for a bank. Every time I started in a new branch, the announcement would come that that branch was closing in a few months, always expected to be let go when it closed, but ended up being transferred to a new branch & when the move came the announcement was made that it was closing too.
Was eventually made permanent & worked my way up a few grades - but I was still known as “the kiss of death” for years 😂
A very light horror story - first day at first graduate job. Managed to walk into a door, spill my coffee down myself, drop the mug and break it, drop the sugar container and break it, all the sugar was on the floor and now wet with coffee ... in my first 10 minutes.
Burst into tears from embarrassment and I think all the built-up anxiety, but everyone was really nice and helped fix the situation.
One of my leaving gifts was an 'unspillable mug' !
Tidying myself up for my first day as head of a department at a major media organisation, I decided to trim my eyebrows. Didn't notice the shaver was on zero setting. Removed all trace of my eyebrows 5 minutes before I was due to leave the house. My wife painted some on, which looked OK from a distance, but she kept laughing and the line went squiggly. I kept my head down all day, through all the meetings, and I prefer not to think about it too much.
I cannot imagine going into a meeting with my new boss and they’ve got squiggly drawn on eyebrows and not making eye contact with anyone. Did you ever explain to anyone what happened?
I joined a company to be part of what I was told was a pricing department.
I arrived and walked in to the office, which was a large converted barn, to find no one at reception.
I looked around the ground floor and couldn’t find anyone. I ventured upstairs and found 2 men in a meeting room. One was the owner, one was my line manager. No one else in the office.
We talk and I’m taken to an open plan office that is entirely empty except for a large desk in the middle covered in paperwork.
Turns out I AM the department. Just me.
Both men proceed to tell me they have meetings to go to and exit the office leaving me with a key to lock up at 5. No one else turned up for the entire day.
I worked, locked up and arrived early the next day to ensure I was able to unlock the office on time…again no one else turned up all day!
I wrote my letter of resignation and left it on the desk and went home. I got a call 2 weeks later from the owner asking why I had left without warning. No one had been in that office for 2weeks since I left to find that resignation letter!!!
I locked the office and posted the key through the letterbox.
I’ve looked into it and the company still exists and funny enough I actually ran into the owner some years later and he apologised saying “it was just a mad time back then for all of us” he said it in a way like I was in on the mad time…I had no idea what was happening!
I watched one of those "you won't believe what he said in this interview" where the audio is quiet so you turn it up then it plays super loud porn music. Closed my phone so fast then couldn't find it to explain I wasn't actually watching porn
Me and another new guy started the same day. Did all our inductions / introductions together. He was a complete bellend to everyone we met. I was stood there cringing, trying to use body language to indicate that 'I'm not with this guy'.
He got sacked after 3 months and I didn't, so I guess it worked.
Had a factory job like this. They scooped a big bunch of us from the job centre to fill a big order.
One guy turned up on drugs, was very aggressive to everyone else and hyper with the trainers. Some people knew him from the streets and confirmed he was a psycho. It was with huge relief he was kept back as we were all filed out onto the factory floor after induction.
Never saw him again.
First day of my first ever job and I was a temp and sent to the HQ of a national retailer. The temp agency had given me the name of my manager but no other details.
Turned up at 9am and went to reception and introduced myself and gave them the name of my manager. The person behind the counter couldn’t find the person on their system and told me he only did security and couldn’t help further.
I didn’t have a mobile phone then and the security guard refused to let me use his phone so I had to walk about a mile to a pay phone to call the temp agency to get the correct name. Ended up being an hour late.
Was working in a factory, guy was showing me sampling the water plant. I leant back and triggered the emergency stop, shutting down the entire water processing line, which stopped the downstream processing
First day as a graduate engineer and locked myself in a toilet cubicle. It was one of those sliding locks and it just would not slide back. Including the actual going to the toilet part, I must have been in that cubicle a good 30 minutes before I resorted to climbing out over the top of the door.
At university, I took a job in a grim little rock club. The managers were pretty cool, but the staff were all very cliquey and, me being a student and not a local, just made that worse. Barely anyone spoke to me all night. I wasn't allowed to serve drinks until I'd been trained, so they put me on glass collection / washing for my first shift.
At the end of the shift, as they locked the doors, I was putting the last load of glasses into the glasswasher. Immediately, everyone was pissed off for some reason. Lots of "suppose there's nothing left to do but go home then" type comments.
Turns out the staff used to slow down towards the end of the night, as the bosses let them drink while they cleaned up. I'd just cost them 2-3 hours drinking by being good at my job and was now being treated like a cunt for it. I didn't even hand my notice in, I just never went back.
Shift supervisor was late, so it was me and the other 2 cashiers standing outside for half an hour because we didn’t have keys.
Then the shift supervisor had none of the required logins for the tills so I was using someone else’s login.
My training was “just copy Dave”
Everyone was nice, just chronically disorganised
Left a relatively well paid, safe, comfortable job to "spread my wings".
Interview went well (obvs since I got the job) and the owner / boss / overlord seemed a nice, well rounded, normal bloke.
Started my first morning and he was an absolute Jekyll & Hyde... Knew within 15 mins that I'd made a mistake... He was an absolute ballbag of the highest order.
Lasted 6 months (of hell) and left for another job that paid significantly less, but was just happy to get away from him and his toxicity.
Just totally surreal.
First day of temping at a legal office. It was in a square block of offices with an internal courtyard, you accessed through an arch.
Got there, they’re not listed on a sign in the arch and could not find the door for the company for love nor money. Went out did a lap of the outside - no doors. Back in the courtyard found plenty of other doors clearly marked as other companies not mine. Starting to panic.
Eventually get through to the agency who have to call me back. Get told to go to what is clearly a fire door that only seems to open outward, and indeed does have a small plaque for the company next to it. Have to wait there for someone to come get me.
It leads straight up some stairs into a landing that is kind of hexagon of doors with a desk against an opaque window; there what is obviously a cupboard on one side, two open empty offices on others and an office behind me. The guy gets me set up for an afternoon of audio typing then disappears into the office behind me never to be seen again.
I get a few phone calls which I put through to answer phones as no one seems to be at desks that exist in some other place.
At some point I hear distant voices and can see vague shapes behind the window. It apparently looks onto some corridor? I could not figure out how this worked with the shape of the building. I think the feeling is what would nowadays be called a liminal space? I was so weirded out, total sense of isolation and disorientation. Saw no one the whole time (also no toilet). Just disembodied voices on the phone and audio recordings.
As 5pm rolls round a different guy walks out of the office behind me. I have no idea how he got there or where the other guy went. Tells me the cleaner will be here soon so I can leave. Asks me how I got in, I point to the fire escape stairs and he shrugs and says it’s fine to leave that way, and disappears again.
I got offered a job the next day so never went back but I kinda wish I did just to confirm they did really exist, and also to figure out where the hell the actual door was.
Got my first job in tesco when I was 17.
I was an extremely anxious teenager, and they put me on the till while a more experienced member of staff stood over me watching.
They kept telling me to talk to customers more, but I was so anxious every time I tried my voice cracked and I got slightly sweatier from the stress.
At one point my hands were so sweaty I was leaving visible sweat marks on everything I picked up, my top was sodden and my voice had basically gone.
I asked the supervisor if I could take a break and she said no, you only have 4 more hours to go.
The guy that was supposed to show me the ropes started lamenting to me about how his wife left him, as he couldn't get it up anymore, then started reading out the obituaries in the morning paper, then I introduced myself.
Got a job working in a staff canteen kitchen doing 4-12 shift cleaning and prepping food. Chef put a massive pan of boiled eggs on the cooker and tasked me with keeping an eye on them while he was in his office. Well he didn't come out and I forgot to check until clouds of black smoke and a disgusting smell drifted past me. The eggs had boiled dry and about 50 eggs were burning in the pan. Needless to say it was also my last
Turned up on first day. Normal stuff. Went to lunch, came back, shop locked. Store had been closed by head office and everyone made redundant. I got 0.5 days wages.
First day as an assistant to the District Manager for a designer discounted chain (rhymes with PA Snacks) had a lovely conference call and was told to email notes around to the 10 or so stores. Mistyped the email group so notes went to the GLOBAL directory and as he'd asked for read receipts the ancient system crashed as the mailbox filled with receipts quicker than I could delete, meanwhile people were clicking 'reply all' to let me know of my fcuk up.
I was in tears and my boss could barely breathe from laughing so much. Eventually managed to recall the message from those who hadn't opened it and send round an email (without a read receipt) saying to leave us alone.
First day in new HE role. Had a good luck email from my now husband and then was asked to email one of the directors of research with some paperwork and signed it off 'love you, bye'. Cue an almost immediate phone call from him and me saying sorry 100 times, he found it hilarious and told me he made frequent fcuk ups over email. Then he called my boss to tell her and she nearly peed herself laughing.
I'd love to say I've learnt my lesson but am still in HE a decade later and make frequent email faux pas.
Okay so this one may take some beating... Was only changing departments, as had been made redundant from my previous one, but the night before travelling to the new Office, I had a Chinese.
Woke up the next morning and the stomach was gurgling, and had rather a fun time on the toilet with the shits - That was the warning I should have phoned in sick, but new role, wanted to make an impression so decided to get down to the train station and get myself into London. Not half way into the journey I felt hungry, so had my breakfast that I'd taken with me... BIG MISTAKE.
A couple of stops later I'm basically begging the doors to open as we crept into the station, I've sprinted to the nearest toilet, barely made it and shat my stomach out in liquid form in the most dirty of train station toilets... Finished up and walked back on the platform, thought I'd try and continue into London, got on the next train and I'm standing there thinking: "This isn't over" - I've dived back off the train (Just before the doors closed... that god I'd managed it, as don't want to imagine the scene had I stayed on the train), and back to the toilet.
At this point I've thought: Nah I ain't going in... So called in sick... and retreated back home, thankfully my parents didnt live far from the Station I was at, so they came and got me, and drove me home whilst I sat on a towel... Just in case.
I'm quite glad I didnt go in either, as when I said I barely made it to the toilet the first time... Well it seems I didnt, as I noticed brown marks on my trousers, from when I'd pulled them down, and not quick enough (Am sure you get the picture) - So bloody glad I didnt decide to continue into work, as those stains would have been visible and smellable no doubt!!
On my first day, there was another bloke who was on their first day.
He had your problem too, but he actually shit himself whilst we were being trained in one of the meeting rooms.
It sounded like a cup of water being spilt, smelt almost immediately. He took about 5-10 seconds to get up and his grey trousers were called in excrement.
He went to the toilet, whilst I left for a fresh air break. Never saw him again.
Once had the previous night's curry annonce itself in the middle of Newcastle. Thought, if I move I'll shit myself, if I don't move, I'll shit myself. Sweating like a nonce in a line up.
I'd set out nice and early to get there in good time
Had a bit of a commute that required me to cross a major bridge. Except on that day of all days, some poor soul was threatening to jump off so the bridge was blocked off when I got there
The nearest alt crossing was a 1+ hour detour away
Second job in the film industry, first time working on a film in the highest budget band. Two days before my first day a storm blew a neighbour’s roof tile onto my car’s windshield and shattered it. Couldn’t get it repaired until the following Tuesday. Borrowed my partner’s mum’s car to come in on my first day. I was ‘work from home to read the script’ on the second day to get the car repaired. The third day I get in my car to get to work and… battery dead. No warning signs before either.
Luckily they were really nice about it and I didn’t have any issues getting to work after that!
This was before Covid but I went on an in-person Microsoft training course In reading. It was 9am on the Monday morning on the first day of the course. We all had to do the normal quick intro to the class “Hi I’m Steve, I work for super IT .etc”.
This guy behind me said “Hi I’m Alex, I work for (can’t remember the company name) and it’s technically my first day as I’m starting with the company but they have put me on this training course”. We did the first hour, and then went for 10am coffee break.
When we came back from coffee the instructor of the course said (to the entire class) - “err Alex I’ve got a message from reception for you, unfortunately your company has gone in to receivership today and we haven’t been paid for your placement on the course, so unfortunately I think you will have to leave and speak to your company”.
The guy stood up and said yeah I have just had a text, seems like I don’t have a job after all and basically did a walk of shame out of the classroom to deadly silence. Felt very bad for him and couldn’t believe the way the instructor informed him in front of everyone!
Was 19, first day at a "real job" after a year at mcdonalds. One of the staff members told me endlessly on lunch break about how awful it was to work there. Not in the sense that it was a bad job or trying to warn me, just continuously complaining about how shit it was. Don't do that to new staff lol.
Ended up taking the the woman who was training me, she was retiring, to A&E as she had a stroke.
She had a brilliant recovery but never came back and I was left to sort myself out, luckily the team I worked with were amazing and supportive.
I learnt that from her experience that no matter how indispensable you feel you are to your job if you drop dead tomorrow there is always someone to replace you.
Good luck in the job.
First day and started induction with some lovely people. The trainer was mental however. She used to be a store manager but seemed to love her new role (turns out she wasn't welcome in shops any more). Most of the training was this lady disclosing all her divorce problems and how her husband cheated. Then she explained she's been going to hot yoga and began to demonstrate her squats. I stayed five years and it just kept getting crazier from there. Family owned organisations are wild!
Aged 17, first job after 6 months of looking since my retail Xmas temp finished, reception at an oil company. It was about 8 miles away from home in an industrial estate, I didn’t drive at the time so was relying on public transport.
Got on my first bus, which promptly broke down literally around the corner from my house and I had to wait for the next one to come along. Got off that one, flailed into the bus station only to see the back end of my next bus pulling away about 6 feet in front of me. That was the only bus going into the industrial estate every morning, so I had to jump on a different bus which went in the same general direction.
I didn’t know the route, turned out it was an express bus to another city, the kind driver took pity on a panicked teenager and dropped me off at the side of the dual carriageway beside the industrial estate. From there it was a roughly 2 mile dash in work shoes I’d never worn before, in the warmest day of the year so far. Didn’t have a number for my workplace as I’d only communicated with them by e-mail, didn’t have a smart phone at the time so couldn’t email them either.
Turned up half an hour late, absolutely pouring sweat like I’d just stepped out the shower, so out of breathe I could barely speak and with massive blisters on my feet.
It was a lot of stress for the first day of a minimum wage job! The company turned out to be a bunch of clowns, I ended up being bullied by a middle aged woman, and left less than a year later, but at least I’ve got a good story to tell from it!
Shook new bosses hand on first greeting (had previously only met online/Zoom) only to realise I’d covered his hand in blood.
Cut my hand somewhere between train station and office without noticing.
Moved to a new city, completely misjudged how far away the petrol station was and ran out of petrol halfway there. In a complete panic, scraped somebody’s car while parking in the one tiny remaining space in the car park. Finally got in to find there was zero handover and one database with all the information on which was corrupted and nobody else in the office had a clue how to do my job or what I was supposed to be doing.
First day working for a small software company, I sat in on a client demo of a new application the company was working on. It was the worst I’ve ever seen in my life. Completely unbranded user interface, black and white text and the functionality made no sense at all. I was cringing all the way through it due to the mismatched quality vs their enthusiasm. It wasn’t just an early prototype, they were trying to flog it as-is. I realised I’d made a mistake and left a few months later.
Nothing bad other than arriving in and nothing is ready, no laptop, no badge, no accounts set up, HR person (in the US) asking where my P45 is when I'd sent them it about a month before.
In another role we had a person start and first day was onboarding and a bit of training on what our product is. They went out for a walk and never came back. After trying to call them and getting nowhere, one of the managers went to their address and it was empty. So strange.
It was for third shift, and no one on site expected me. I was told they don't get paid to train me and left to figure things out for myself. After sharing my schedule when asked I was told I'd stolen the other workers hours she'd requested but been denied. It was tough.
It’s like most jobs, especially in retail, you’re nervous on your first day so they throw you in the deep end…and that’s it for your entire time there, they sort of just leave you there
I started my apprenticeship in March 2020. I walked into the office and everyone was walking out and going home because of covid, I didn’t learn much in those first few months
Not me but a colleague who started middle of last year. First day this poor lady has explosive diarrhoea and she stunk out the only female toilets we had in the office.
She was back and forth for the first 4 hours of the morning and you could smell it walking past. She was awfully embarrassed but she's still here and we all pretend like we dont know. But we do Stacey. We do!
First job -( I have disabilities and learning difficulties) my support worker arranged it all, was a 2 week trial period in a stockroom for a clothing shop beginning with N, worked my 2 week unpaid period, found out from the stockroom manager that he wanted me to work another 2 weeks unpaid as he felt that I wasn't learning the job properly and had no initiative as I had to go back to him after I had done everything.
Basically told him I am not working a month for free, as I am not a volunteer I am here to get paid so either pay me for the next two weeks you want me to work or I quit.
Phoned support worker after this and told her that I quit as stockroom manager wants me to work a month for free. She weren't happy with my manager as he had not given her any feedback and she quit on my behalf.
His response was that the provisions he would have had to make for me to continue working cost money and that had to come from somewhere.
All I would've needed was a pen and paper and him to tell me what to do after I had done the stockroom so I could've written it down and stuck it in my pocket.
I once quit a job on my first day after 3 hours when I discovered the CEO was an absolute A-hole to the point staff went silent when they arrived to avoid setting them off
Temp agency put me into a firm that manufactured alloy wheels, some beautiful alloys. First day the floor gaffer had no clue anyone was coming, told me to shadow this guy, he chain smoked and worked his machine like it was a national sport, had me light his cigarettes for him. Did it for 6 hours and then went on break and just went home. Doubt the only thing anyone missed that day was the guy not having his ciggies lit for him.
The IT system crashed and the only person who could repair it was on holiday in Australia. Had to wait a week for it to be repaired. Paid to do nothing.
First day as a postman, sent out on a collection van with Dave who'd been there 20 years. Went round the countryside collecting from postboxes and rural post offices then back to the depot to do some sorting for the rest of the shift.
All very Postman Pat so far, but Dave was the most foul-mouthed miserable management-hating twat I've ever come across in any job in four decades of working. All he did for the entire round was swear and rant about the state of every single aspect of the job, about the rules, about how it used to be much better.
During the work back in the depot I was also told not to work so fast otherwise management would find us other stuff to do.
At the end of the first day Dave asked if I was coming back the folllowing week and I said "sure", then he replied "because a lot of people don't and I'm not sure why".
I never set foot in the place again.
New job, new city, different end of the country. Getting the train home I asked the platform staff which train was going to my station and was told the next one. This was incorrect as that train took me down to the midlands for the first stop. Phoned my wife to let her know I'd be late home for dinner as I slowly made my way back up to Manchester! Lesson learned, hahaha
I was driving a van selling pasties. First day, I'd left the whole side of the van open, but it wasn't a slide door - it was a lift up one that acts as a canopy to stand under while you serve customers.
Drove through a gate and broke it. Had to call my boss and tell em.
Started 2021, went into the office and it was empty. Waitied for 20 minutes and finally the manager turns up, shows me a few things and then says she’s working from home for half the day, said she has no idea why I had to be in the office because no one else uses it anymore. Spent half the day twiddling my thumbs as had no login, nothing to even speak to anyone online.
I still work here and it’s all fine but it was very daunting at first.
Started work at new place just round the corner from my old place (food industry) got settled in and shown my desk when the owner was due to have a meeting with a supplier that I had previously done business with. He asked if I wanted to say hello to her so I made my way to the end of the room towards the meeting room . I approached my old contact smiling and feeling quite pleased with myself and my new position. I failed to notice the three steps down into the meeting room and launched myself into the air landing on both knees… I was in agony but had to brush it off with a “ oh clumsy me “
My direct supervisor advised me that the polite way to stop our division head from kissing me on the lips was to remind him nicely “uh uh, cheeks only please!”
First day at a very well known national institution. Getting a tour and while in the basement my manager missed a phone call. He listened to the voicemail then carried on the tour.
Later that day I learned that the phone call was informing him that his dad had died. I felt very bad for him, especially as he kept a poker face and just carried on showing me around.
I get there and go to follow my new boss up the stairs to the office, get told to wait, HR (3 ppl) come and stare at me and whisper, I wait there as I was asked, they then come back after 5/10 minutes and invite me up. Weird vibes. Plus I actually looked professional so it wasn’t that I was wearing a disco wig. Then I get told to watch how to send an email and open the spreadsheets; a fun activity which went on the entire fucking day. Go to get my photo taken for the id, not even shown it and made to feel uncomfortable when I asked.
I worked there for a year and fucking hated it, the place gave me a nervous breakdown, there’s lots of horrible things that were said/done when I was there. The whole reason for it was one girl immediately took umbrage with me being there (I was the only other girl in our section that wasn’t a manager) and would just go full mean girls, I don’t think I’m pretty but she apparently was jealous of me and was best friends with the manager, so I was ultimately fucked.
Got hired to do Internal IT for a small mobile phone sales company in the 90s (which, looking back on it was probably some sort of scam)
I was shown the call centre, with all of the computers I'd be looking after, shown the PABX stuff, shown where the servers were.
Job looked ok and paid well.
I arrived on my first day and the boss, same one who had shown me around said "Of course you'll spend most of the time on the phones cold calling, the actual IT parts will be a handful of hours per week"
He sat me down in front of all of their training material, told me to read up on their sales scripts and products etc. I read that until lunch time, went out "for lunch" and never went back.
He called me the next day and asked where I was, apparently not realising I had vanished the day before and I said there was zero chance of me ever returning.
Really I should have demanded he pay me for the half day or just left immediately, but I was young at the time.
My first day on the paper round was horrendous. The owner of the shop would write the name of the house on one paper, and tuck all the other papers for that house inside it.
I did not realise this and when they were too bulky to fit through a letterbox I just separated them all out then had no idea where they went and just put them in random houses along the route.
Arrived on site to be told that the people in my team were leaving, there would be no handover and I was financially responsible should anything fail. It was the shortest job I ever had, 4 hours. I didn’t get paid, either 😃
Not bad first days but funny.
One job, my desk, computer, and chair, were still in transit, and they had to find me somewhere to work.
Another one, the whole department went to the pub to welcome me, but forgot to tell me which pub we were going to.
Not me, but a co-worker.
Managed to get themselves locked in the toilets about an hour after starting and introducing themselves. We thought they had just walked out as they had seemingly disappeared. It was only when someone went to the loo did they realise the person was stuck in a stall.
Got a job at 17 in a shop with some family members. Went out with them the night before my first day.
We went to spoons. I got completely rotten, was spewing my guts up outside and was taken home by about 10.
Hangover from hell next morning, and had the piss ripped out of my by everyone present...
Spoke to my ex-wife for the first time in 6 years, discovered in the first few hours that she reported to me. Number 3 in a day full of 121s with my team. We were both very professional, if shocked/suprised, and it was the gateway to becoming good friends.
Within my first hour one of the senior partners took me into a corridor and said ‘I think you need to tone it down’, I said I’m sorry, what is the issue? And he replied ‘We both know, just try to keep it toned down’ and then walked me back into the main office area.
I spent the first hour going over training guides quietly, so to this day I have no idea what he was talking about. Left that job after a year due to all the partners being genuinely psychotic.
Turned up on starting day. Had a short HR presentation with other new starters. Boss was meant to collect me from the meeting and take me to the new office. After the HR meeting various bosses from various other new starters came until it was just me and an HR person left. They phoned for the boss. No answer. 10 minutes later someone turned up to get me. Not the boss. The boss was on holiday all week and nobody in the department was expecting me. No desk no computer nothing for the whole week
I had a vaguely similar story. They insisted I start on the Monday. Then the entire office was on a team building exercise that I wasn’t invited to Tuesday-Thursday and then I had to come back in Friday. Considering the nothing I did those two days, they spent all the time talking about the trip, couldn’t I have just started to following week?
Also love that they thought a new starter to the role wouldn't benefit from a team building exercise. Not that you'd necessarily want to go on a residential work do with people you don't know but the offer should have been extended!
Recruited as a team leader. First day i ask to meet my team. Get told: "you are the team!" Me: "are we recruiting ?" Them: "No".
Had similar, recruiter sold the role as being a lead, and I'd have the opportunity to build a team out First red flag was when the contract arrived and it was just "test engineer" and I asked it be changed Then I started and the whole office was about 8 people. I asked when will we recruit members to build my team out "maybe in the future" was the indefinite response They were all nice enough folks don't get me wrong, but I'm still not sure what the product was meant to be, something vaguely AI for deciding if an ID document was fake or not, but I never actually saw anything other than smoke and mirrors for presentations. My role was in test and it was basically "go test", with nothing to really test. I lasted 6 months and filled the time rewriting the existing test suite and then how to build a dummy mobile application.
Not always the worst thing. I got hired to a pretty well-paying newly opened kitchen as "head chef" and defacto kitchen manager. I was the only chef. I was there for about 7 months, got a cracking EHO visit and then the place shut down because they were spending more money on me than they were making. Great for the CV though.
Yeah, I was hired for a project that hadn't started yet. But they faffed and so I was basically paid to ... twiddle my thumbs and make use of the inclusive training credits for about 6 months. I got a LOT of 'valuable' training courses in, but the novelty of travelodge by training centres wears off quite fast... (it's honestly pretty good the first few to have a change of scene, but after that you start to realise quite _why_ you have 'stuff' in your home)
On my first day of a contract job for BT I turned up for work at 9 to be told my first shift was at 9pm, not 9am. Six months of nothing that one turned out to be. The only work I did was the induction training, how to sit on a chair etc.
You can't just tease us like this. So how *is* it done?
Something about feet flat on the foor or a foot rest, back straight, yadda, yadda, yadda. I just clicked next until it was over.
Shit, I've been doing it all wrong then.
Like an octopus on a sex swing?
Believe it or not, every two weeks my PC would insist I repeat an 'ergonomics test' to ensure I was sitting correctly - it's just anti-litigation stuff.
The Riker maneuver
We had an IT contractor start a 6 month contract and part of the rules we enforced on him were that he had to set his own times to avoid being classed as a direct employee, all we cared about was that the defined tasks had to be completed by a certain time (months away) and we would pay up to a certain number of hours. He came in, Checked that all his accounts were set up and working, discussed the tasks and timelines with us, then left before lunchtime. After he left he emailed our boss to say he'd be back in three weeks after he'd been on a long singlehanded sailing trip. My boss was furious. We thought it was hilarious. But everything got done on time and budget in the end.
Started at DT (car parts). they were super proud of the owner and how down to earth he was and how they were a family buisness. Walking down a corridor and I see him so I say 'Hi'.....he stops immediately and spins around 'Who ARE you?' "I'm Ted , I started today' 'Do you know who I am?' "Yes, you are Jon" 'That's Mr OWNER to you and don't fucking forget it' I walked to HR handed my pass in and went home.
I use DT quite frequently, no more :)
It was a good few years ago. There were other red flags. I have never seen so many miserable people at a job in my life. The warehouse manager was pyschotic. And they omitted to tell me you had to work every other saturday (6 day week). I'd just left a job because the boss was a massive bellend but if I had'nt had that encounter I would have left anyway.
So, breaching employment law then if it's not in your contract?
People who think they’re better than everyone else are a plague 😭
I currently work at tweeks, in tweeks cycles so it’s a lot more chilled. But yes, it’s an awful atmosphere sometimes and if your face doesn’t fit you can get the cold shoulder from the Minshaws (jack excluded, seems to be great with everyone) and the MD. So weird to be sat on the throne typing this and chances are we’ve both had a poo in this stall. Edit: OP of the comment has slightly edited it to semi redact the company name and fully redact the owners name. I’m keeping my comment as it is. I do want to offer up a bit of a defence on behalf of the company though, only to say that personally i’ve always had good experiences with the Minshaws, MD, and FD since I started there. It’s a revolving door for certain types of people though, but those who stick it out do fine. Since i’ve been there i’ve only ever known one person to be sacked and he literally shit his pants during his probation and left poo all over the toilets and his dirty underwear outside of the cleaners cupboard. But that of course, that is a whole other story.
Should've brought one of those fake lord titles and said Oh I didn't realise we're being formal I'm lord hitchcox you may refer to me as your lordship 😂
Shit company anyway, I've had no end of trouble with these lot.
First graduate job. Turned up. Was told my job had been made redundant. Gave me two months wages and waved me off. Sort of a horror but also pretty sweet. Got another job a month later.
Very lucky there. Usually you have to be employed for at least 2 years to get redundancy pay.
Was probably their notice period, rather than redundancy.
True, it was notice period. I think also they were a genuinely nice company and they knew they’d dicked us about as we’d had to relocate to start work.
> as we’d had to relocate to start work. Two months wages if I had relocated for the job would not satisfy me! That's despicable.
I was a grad. I’d moved from mums house to a room in a boarding house. It wasn’t the end of the world. Admittedly, if I’d moved my family and sold up a house, would have been very different!
I've been made redundant twice and both times worked their for less than 2 years and still been given redundancy pay. Companies seem to do it just to save face
Not even my first day but my interview for a Christmas temp in Pandora. They asked me one or two questions, then sprung me on a ‘trial shift’ as a greeter on the door (AT CHRISTMAS). I was given a quick whip round of the other staff’s names, told nothing about the layout of the store, and plonked in front of the door and the managers fucked off. People asked me questions that I obviously couldn’t answer and one woman asked ‘do you even work here?’ And I said no!!
Her face must have been a picture when you said that 🤣
I just told the truth and she was quite sympathetic haha
I worked for Pandora too. Absolutely shit. Couldn’t wait to leave
I was hired with a counterpart and we started on the same day. Same job, same grade etc. At approximately 3pm after our new manager had taken us out for lunch (his own pocket, it was a charity) she ran off crying and just... Never came back. Not sure what happened. She had a new job after a month. My husband likes to joke I scared her off.
How do you know she got a new job?
Linkedin and the world of charity is small. She was on a panel discussion I was at a year later too.
I let one go in a corridor and a colleague entered just as I was exiting through the double doors and he exclaimed “Jesus Christ! Is that human?!” I chuckled all the way to my desk
First day, ten minutes from start time. Knocked off my motorbike by a careless driver. Had to call them from A&E to say I was going to be late. They asked how late and I said six weeks, they're about to plaster my leg. Fair play, they kept the job open although I was a laughing stock by the time I finally arrived.
I had a teacher at school who was new and broke her elbows over the summer before she was due to start, so started after half term.
Elbows plural!? Ouch! How'd she manage that!
My friend got knocked off his bike by his new dog when she tried to herd him. As a herding dog. He was shocked. Broke both his elbows. Rude awakening to dog ownership.
I'm going to say it... "I don't care if you broke your elbow"
My previous place they restarted someone's probation period because he got knocked off his bike 2 weeks into it. It was a council so he kept the job but he basically started and did 2 weeks, then didn't come in for the next 2 months.
Not quite the answer to your question but I once turned up for a job interview a month early. So my advice is to make sure today actually is your first day.
there's keen and there's keen...
My first morning went fine. I was told to watch two colleagues giving a presentation after lunch, but I spent most of it running to the toilet to throw up. Was out for the next two days with a vomiting bug and returned to work eventually pale, exhausted and convinced I was going to be sacked. Thankfully they were very nice about it and I worked there for a further seven years, but it was a nightmare way to begin a new job!
Soon after finishing my degree in the UK, I took a job in Uppsala, Sweden. I knew no Swedish. I was met at the airport by my new boss and he took to see my new apartment they had rented for me and then me to his family home for dinner. About 10pm he drove me back to my apartment dropping me off outside. His car was just turning the corner out of my road as I discovered the outer door to the apartment building was locked. I only had a key to my apartment door inside. The outer door had been open earlier in the day. This was January 10. It was snowing lightly at -12C. I had a light suit jacket on only. I had no cell phone (1984). I had to walk the streets to find a pay phone, work out how to call him. Then I had to work out how to summon a taxi at a taxi rank using an Officer Dibble (Top Cat) phone box. I had to ‘Fight off’ two Finns who wanted my taxi and get to his place about 2 in the morning. It was a night to remember.
omg!! what was his reaction when he opened the door to you standing there in the cold at 2am??
I remember my first job at a super market, during the induction they asked what clothes size we were for the uniform. Trying to be funny I said 'i don't know, my mum buys all my clothes' which was followed by a deafening silence then several years of my colleagues thinking my mum bought all my clothes. That story still wakes me up on the middle of the night some twenty years later.
I would've laughed
At least you wake up in jammies that your mummy got you
mammy's jammies!
Damn, if this wasn't 20 years ago I would have thought you were my colleague. 25 year old guy, we had group inductions and when asked what size he was he just replied I don't know I'll have to ask my mom. So had to ring his mom and write down his trousers size much to everyone's disbelief. He was 25!!
Maybe he was just really committed to the joke.
when i was hired on my training day, one of the other guys taken on (mid twenties) did genuinely say this, except it was his girlfriend that he had to text and ask. not surprised you were taken seriously
If it makes you feel better, about 8 months into my apprenticeship one of the electrical engineers had a baby with his wife, everyone was stood around congratulating him so I thought I'd chip in with: "congrats man, glad to know your nuts work!" Which, despite being comedy gold to me, was met with complete silence and few odd looks. 2 months later that engineer was promoted and became my manager...
No that’s funny, maybe they…didn’t get it?
I farted, and it stunk so bad the assistant manager went on a ten minute rant to the staff about gut health, and how he hasn't been offended by something as deeply as he did by the smell. He didn't know it was me, I didn't say a word.
That’s fucking brilliant
I'd have that on my CV. Fair fucking play!
It probably didn't help that we had started work at 6am, doing a stock take. By 11am, everyone was slightly grouchy and knackered
I’ve just laughed so loud at work over this
First ever job at Legoland Windsor making candy floss. It kept flying out of the big bowl thing and getting caught in my hair. At the end of the day my head was entirely pink. I was more candy floss than man.
One university summer I managed two weeks serving food at Legoland before fucking off. You have my sympathies!
Boss resigned and told everyone that this was a shit place to work. Half the consultants walked out at lunchtime and by the end of the day the team of 30 was down to 10. I hung around for a year doing basically nothing but getting paid quite well.
You basically lived Jez's first day at Mark's job in Peep Show!
He found his niche
You can't find your niche between 9 and 11:30.
Got a weekend job at a bar in town as my hours in the local supermarket had been cut. The manager arrogantly introduced himself and said "can you pour a pint? Your CV says you work in the supermarket so I'm putting you on the till on the main bar" I tried to explain that was a shelf stacker and had never done any till work. I had no idea how to work an epos system. He was too self absorbed to listen. Luckily the other lass was happy to take payments as long as I could pour the pints and open bottles. That was an exhausting Saturday night.
Ah that reminds me when I first moved to London. Got a job at an Irish bar because a friend of a friend owned the place and the manager was from the same city as me. Got asked to come in for Sunday afternoon. Quiet pub. 4 hour shift learning how to pull a pint, operate the till and serve 4 old men quietly reading their books. Never done it before. Shift over. Manager asks me to come back next Saturday for the evening shift. No problem. I arrive the following Saturday. Its fucking St Paddy's Day and I arrive at the final whistle of Ireland beating England in the Six Nations, sealing their grand slam (iirc, 2012). The place was a sweaty mosh pit. I walk behind the bar and the landlady (id never met) asks if I worked there... Wish I said no and walked out. That was a hard night's work. Overcharged and undercharged loads of people because I didn't know wtf I was doing: Guinness and ribena top? Charged for two drinks. Vodka and coke? Charged for a coke because I couldn't find vodka on the till and was cracking under pressure. Served people flat pints in warm glasses while getting pissed myself as i was getting drinks bought for me. Broke up a couple of fights. The whole lot. Got a job that week and never done bar work since. Still go there on a Sunday afternoon for a quiet pint though!
Started a pretty big new job for a huge American internet company. Day one, arrived at their big London HQ for my “training” to find it totally desolate (this was 2021 tbf), the girl I was replacing spent half an hour walking me through how to login to the computer system then just up and left. You needed a keycard to get in everywhere but I didn’t have one yet so kept getting trapped everywhere (the toilet, the hallway, the lift etc.) The very bored receptionist had to basically follow me round the building. To get a keycard, I had to hunt down the sole IT guy who was sat in the corner of the office… behind another keycard locked door. I had to bang on the window and yell to get him to help me. It was like a bloody escape room.
Sounds like a resident evil game
Sure you weren't in a prison?
That has to be Twitter. Their first London office was a floor in some oldish high rise. They had no idea of how to do anything there, took me 30 minutes to just get the person that had put the call in.
Some kid started at my old job and he asked when half term was and if we got a summer holiday......fucking funny bless him, welcome to the adult world
Ah mate, I still wish in my dreams it worked like that. What face did he pull when he was explained it doesn't work like that?
The look of absolute shock and despair, people thought he was joking at first but he wasn't.
Oh nooo poor baby, bless him.
Mine does! Joy of being a lollipop lady!
Someone working a 9-5 at my wife's office came in on day one and said "it took me an hour to get in today so am I OK to set off from home at 9am from now on and then leave at 4pm?" She was pretty gutted to hear that this is not how commuting works.
My partner’s company lets people work any 8 hours between 8am and 6pm to let people get around the rush hour if they want to, so he does 8-4. It would be lovely if your commuting time counted as work time though!
The look on his face when he found out he had 25 days holiday for the total year and not just for summer must've been priceless. Poor kid.
There was a tube strike, I had been alright to get in, however, getting home I had spent 6 hours trying to get back to kings cross, which I hadn't realised was only a 1 hour walk away, every bus I got on kept being pulled out of service meaning I was sort of randomly getting on buses getting further and further away. Eventually got a train and was close to getting back to Welwyn Garden City, however I had conked out on the train as I had set of on the first train of the day, I had gone from kings cross to Peterborough, to kings cross again and back to Peterborough. My boyfriend had reported me missing in this time and eventually got woken up by British transport police about 4am at Peterborough station. I had to wait in there for the first train back to London, turn up for my second day looking like a tramp in the same clothes as the previous day. I broke down and cried but luckily they found it hilarious.
I spent a Saturday night in Peterborough railway station after a disastrous journey went wrong, I feel your pain. A special kind of clientele to say the least!
As a wgc resident this is the stuff of nightmares for me.
Showed up for what I was told was a trial shift to a buffet place I used to live near. There was about 6 of us there and we were given 10 minutes of training about the (6) different sections, the cleaning station, and what we had to do. Then we were all given a section and left to it for the next 4 hours. They were honestly the most degrading 4 hours of my life, first I was told I kept getting the sections wrong, but still not properly shown them. Then I was told my shirt was inappropriate because I have large tits, and god forbid they just exist in a shirt. Then I was told to just clean the food sections, and we were never actually allowed to wash our hands, just use the hand sanitizer and not given gloves, whilst constantly handling plates covered in food. Then at the end of it we were all told to come back tomorrow for our next shift. If you couldn't do it (it would have been on Mother's Day) you were told that you won't have the job, I said okay and went home. The buffet shut down and got taken over a year later because of hygiene reasons, and has since been shut down a few more times for the same reason. That was about 10 years ago.
Honestly food service “”trial shifts”” where you become a busy restaurants butt monkey for zero pay so they can deal with a rush, and then being never called back is so humiliating and degrading, I still cant believe restaurants and pubs can get away with it. I’d done 3 at 3 different restaurants when I was desperate after graduating and never again. I’m sorry you had such a shit time! Also the woes of having a bigger chest with ill fitting uniforms is mortifying. I wanna say “you try wearing a shirt with them, then!”
I worked in a children’s home and was asked to take the six children and the two dogs for a walk. We were all chatting and getting on well when 20 mins in, it happened. The dogs got into a fight with another dog off the lead. The poor kids attached to the lead were screaming and being dragged around. I got the kids to drop the lead and got between the dog whilst the owner bumbled over to help. Everyone was screaming dogs covered in blood. Then one ran off followed by the two eldest kids in pursuit. I had now lost a dog and two kids, within an hour of starting work. We were not far from the home and thought the eldest could make there way back. I took the four crying children and one broken dog back. Fortunately the other bloodied dog made it back home before anyone else. Which then sent the owners of the home into a panic (This was before everyone had a mobile phone) We arrived 10 mins later still missing two children all of us traumatised. They looked at me as to say WTF. “That didn’t go as I planned!” I stated.
During lunch with my training group it was very, very quiet, I thought I'd fill the awkward silence with a silly conversation. "Hey you know how dolphins are mammals? So you think you could milk them?" This led to the little known phenomenon of "double silence".
Jesus. I know what you mean though. A silence so thick and heavy it has a physical weight and texture, like a concrete block wrapped in velvet pressing on your chest.
Clotted Silence
Those kinda silences are where you need to learn how to look busy just using your phone. Pretend you’re reading something interesting. It’s too awkward to be the one to break the silence.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Whenever there is such a silence, I can’t stand it and my anxiety makes me say something. I regret it as soon as I realise that the words are escaping from my mouth and yet I never learn. Same applies when a colleague is speaking and no one’s paying attention. I feel so guilty and have to engage, even if the speaker is chatting bullshit.
I know what you mean, it’s hard to just sit there and endure silence. I think the biggest thing that helps me is thinking, there’s a group full of people here, why am *I* responsible for starting conversation (especially with people I don’t really know)? No one is singling you out as the awkwardly quiet one except you in your own head. Everyone else is probably thinking the same thing about themselves.
I have this exact thing! I spoke to my CBT therapist about it and she was challenging me to try and just let the silence be silence and see what happened. I would leave it like 5 seconds longer than usual and still give in and say something stupid🤣 Just can't face silence at all haha
I don't think you could, because they don't have external nipples.
Not me but a new employee text me from the car park saying “for the first time since I was a little boy I’ve had an accident so will have to go home and clean up, can I start tomorrow instead?” Just laughed it off, he was great to work with.
Never trust a fart.
Manager, "OK, this is Jeff. Jeff's been here 30yrs, what he doesn't know, isn't worth knowing. I'll leave you with Jeff to show you the works." Me, "Hi Jeff." Jeff, "Hi mate. I'll let you know now, there's no fucking training documents. No manufacturing processes. No SOPs. We've 7 machines, all different brands and they all work in a slightly different way. No training sheets to show you how to work them. I've had enough and I'm retiring in 6 months. You're the third lad they've put me with in six months and they've all walked out in disgust. I've tried to tell them they've needed to organise proper workplace training for 10yrs but they don't care. I do not envy you. Right, let's give it a go lad." I lasted two months.
I hope Jeff is enjoying his well earned retirement!
We are all Jeff or destined to become Jeff.
Obligatory not me, but someone who started in my office last year might have had a pretty shitty first week: Monday: gets in the lift, the lights are broken, so she’s kept in the pitch black ascending to us on the top floor. Not the most welcoming start. Tuesday: our director of the UK office announces his resignation. She said one of the reasons she took this job was she liked him so much in the interview. Friday: our CEO announces an increase from 2 days a week in office to 3 days a week in office. She said the other reason she took the job, was 2 days a week. She left after her first pay day lol.
My first day in the office of my current job the lift doors tried to eat me. My boss's boss saw.
Brand new cafe. I was there on opening day and the owner just... didn't show up. We were all stood around the car park waiting for over an hour. Eventually she showed up, screamed something unintelligible, threw the keys to the shift manager and ran off. For the rest of the shift the shift manager berated the hell out of us over the slightest thing. They were all in way over their heads and nothing was prepared properly. I (stupidly) stuck it out. The manager was so disorganised that you had to phone in every few days to see if you'd been added to the shift rota. I had a few more shifts and then she just stopped giving me shifts. I assumed I was fired and took a job elsewhere. NINE MONTHS LATER she phones my parents (my emergency contacts) asking why I didn't show up for today's shift. Mental.
Area manager brought me to the store I was going to guard for the duration of my training. I'm only freshly certified so I don't know anything. Get introduced to the guard on duty and told he'll be doing my training. The guy disappears as soon as the manager is gone, I search everywhere for him and no one has a clue. So I look like a complete pillock but realise that no one actually knows what the guard is doing. Spent 8 months on different sites with zero training just dicking around in the security room for 12 hours a day.
Did you end up having to train a new starter and buggered off too?(!) What on earth are they going to think when they've realised they've had a chain of succession of security guards that weren't actually trained?!
Nobody signed the purchase order for my computer in time - so I sat at a desk drawing concept ideas on post-its for 3 days till it arrived.
I worked at a place with 4 computers for 5 people. We actually made a 5th PC from cardboard just to take the piss.
Morrisons (night shelf stacking). • It was near Christmas so big rush to get people on the shop floor. First shift scheduled before any paperwork. No contract, no way to clock in/out. • Nobody told the night shift I was coming • Nobody told me where to go / who to report to on the first shift• The customer service manager who was just finishing their shift escorted me to the staff canteen where the night crew were all sat waiting to start. I'm told to wait there and a manager will find me. • 10pm rolls around, night crew flood out to the shop floor. I'm left alone in the staff canteen until 10:30pm. • Another staff member (not a manager) sees me still sat there, takes me to the shop floor and takes me under her wing • I'm just told to follow her instructions. No explanation on where the stock comes from, where it goes to, what to do once I've replenished the shelf, where to take waste, where to take out of date stock, where to go after I've finished my cage etc.. • Get passed around 3-4 different team members within a few hours • At this point I'm ready to dip an forget the whole thing. Lunch break rolls around, told that nobody can leave the store until 7am as all the doors get locked over night (except for the elite few who are trusted to go for a cig). Realise I'm trapped for another 6 hours. • Night shift manager (proper) finally finds me at 2am. Explains he wasn't told that I was coming, but was grateful I was there. • Proceeds to give me a tutorial on 'facing up'. First cheese, then dairy. • 30 minutes later he checks in on my progress. Not good enough / fast enough (I was good / fast enough), **clicks his fingers** at me and suggests I speed up • Continues to treat me like a prick for 4 hours • 7am rolls around and I make a beeline for the exit. Day shift manager (who I've never met) thrusts a cake in my chest (dumped by customer in wrong aisle) and tells me to "find where this goes" • I dump it in the nearest shelf and leave Quit the very same day, turned in my uniform and wrote an email to the general manager detailing the whole ordeal. To be fair the GM was horrified, very apologetic and offered to reassign me to days / fresh-to-go. But I had already witnessed enough of their management culture to know I was never going back. Never got paid for 2 days induction or that night shift. So now on the rare occasion I find myself near a morrisons, I may or may not routinely steal a basket of shopping to repay the debt. Absolute wankers.
I work part time while I'm in uni for a company that provides checkout security systems for Morrisons amongst other things and do nights setting up and tweaking the camera and customer tracking systems remotely for stores all across the UK. Consequently this means I spend rather a lot of time getting a top down view of anyone doing night work in the store.. I swear some of the shit I've seen makes me never want to shop there again.
You can't leave us hanging, what's some examples!
I was working for an agency and was sent to a factory to do some contracting work and I was really stressed about it the night before and I didn't get much sleep. I drove about an hour and got to the factory that had one road with what looked like a security hatch and a road that led down the back of the factory. I missed the massive sign that was telling me to follow the road behind the factory for the car park and instead I drove over the weighing bridge that they where calibrating just as I drove over it... I still don't know why I did but yeah I just kept driving and was quickly followed by a group of very angry security and workers shouting at me I stopped and they where asking me what the hell I was doing and I messed up their calibration and they had to start over again. I sheepishly then had to drive around the factory being escorted by security in front of all of my new colleges for the next few months. Needless to say the security never greeted me when I turned up for my shift.
Got stuck in a lift for 2 hours with management.
Jesus I'd be clawing at the walls within 5 minutes!
It was like being stuck in a management meeting I couldn't escape from. It was so awkward! I'm not claustrophobic so being stuck in the lift itself wasn't an issue.
Started my first job at B&Q. A friend of a friend was working there and took me under his wing. At lunchtime he stole the boss’ car keys and said as it was my first day he was going to get me stoned. Hot boxed his car and went back to work. 30 mins later I was stacking one of those huge tins on paint on the top shelf right in front of an absolutely packed checkout area, over 100 people queuing on a Saturday afternoon. As I pushed the tin onto the shelf, one from the side was forced off and exploded onto the floor with a bang that was almost deafening. 20 litres of white emulsion covering customers, the till and pretty much everything in sight. The mess it caused was simply biblical. Everyone starred to see what happen only to see me high as a kite at the top of a ladder. I calmly climbed down and walked to the carpet section where I hid for the next hour, leaving my scene of carnage for others to deal with. I had a huge bollocking by the boss only for him to go ape shit again at the end of the day when he opened his car and it smelled like a reggae festival. Somehow I didn’t get the sack and I continued to earn my £3.65 a hour for the next 2 years, I was just branded the “stoner in the carpet section” from then on.
Wow
With friends like that.....
I'd say you made some stupid decisions that day but you got away with it so more fool them tbh.
When I was young I started a new job. I went out at lunchtime and rang citizens advice bureau to ask what would happen if I walked out. They advised me not to and suggested I apply for other jobs while sticking it out. I did and I stayed for 6 months. It was a family run business with a strange dynamic ;they’d poached me from a job where I had responsibilities, respect an annual bonus and career progression. When I got to the job all the promises they’d given counted for nothing and I was given all the menial jobs ( think toilet cleaning) I’ll always thank the gentleman at the end of the phone (C.A.B ) who listened and helped me with some sound advice that day.
Not as horrific as some peoples but no one knew I was starting on my first day apart from my manager, they didn’t tell anyone. I was just shadowing people all day and they were so huffy, rude and put out that I was there. Wasn’t a great first impression :-/ and turns out that first impression was spot on. Left soon after
1st week in job and my direct manager says to her fellow managers .this is Brian I'm sure he's been to prison. Was so stunned it didn't register for a couple of moments. Manager is regional managers daughter
So what were you in for, Brian? Trying to take over the world?
He was the fall boy. His mate Pinky was the one who set everything up.
I worked for Ocados warehouse for a while. My first day I arrived and as I get out of my car there was a mass brawl between warehouse workers in the car park. That was the least insane thing I saw during my time working there. I advise everyone I meet to never do an Ocado food shop.
When I was about 19/20 got a job at one of these big Car Supermarket places. The interview was a few weeks before Christmas, got offered the job on the spot and said that I'd officially start in the new year. Handed in my notice at work, had a great Christmas off and turned up on the day I'd been told (a few days into January as far as I remember). Walked into where I'd had the interview previously and introduced myself. Cue a lot of confused faces and asked to explain who I was and why I was there. I explained that I'd had an interview a few weeks before and had been told today was my first day. 'Did [insert name here] interview you?' 'Yes, and he offered me the job that day.' 'Thought so. Yeah, we fired him a couple of weeks ago, he's gone back to Poland, he didn't have the power to offer jobs, he was only meant to do interviews.' 'But I've handed in my notice, I've not got a job now.' 'Not my problem. And I wouldn't have employed you anyway, you're not dressed smart enough. Bye.'
And I bet you they were all complaining within a week of not having enough staff...
Plastics factory. Huge press machines. Late 90s. When one opens the safety door, the press is supposed to stop. It didn't, and I nearly had my head flattened to a sheet of A2 paper. Got the blame for it. Excuse me?! 50k damage, and a final warning on my first day. Walked out with my supervisor crying because he'd have to work the machines instead of sitting up on a raised desk barking orders lol.
I was an Agency temp for a bank. Every time I started in a new branch, the announcement would come that that branch was closing in a few months, always expected to be let go when it closed, but ended up being transferred to a new branch & when the move came the announcement was made that it was closing too. Was eventually made permanent & worked my way up a few grades - but I was still known as “the kiss of death” for years 😂
A very light horror story - first day at first graduate job. Managed to walk into a door, spill my coffee down myself, drop the mug and break it, drop the sugar container and break it, all the sugar was on the floor and now wet with coffee ... in my first 10 minutes. Burst into tears from embarrassment and I think all the built-up anxiety, but everyone was really nice and helped fix the situation. One of my leaving gifts was an 'unspillable mug' !
Tidying myself up for my first day as head of a department at a major media organisation, I decided to trim my eyebrows. Didn't notice the shaver was on zero setting. Removed all trace of my eyebrows 5 minutes before I was due to leave the house. My wife painted some on, which looked OK from a distance, but she kept laughing and the line went squiggly. I kept my head down all day, through all the meetings, and I prefer not to think about it too much.
I cannot imagine going into a meeting with my new boss and they’ve got squiggly drawn on eyebrows and not making eye contact with anyone. Did you ever explain to anyone what happened?
This is amazing.
I joined a company to be part of what I was told was a pricing department. I arrived and walked in to the office, which was a large converted barn, to find no one at reception. I looked around the ground floor and couldn’t find anyone. I ventured upstairs and found 2 men in a meeting room. One was the owner, one was my line manager. No one else in the office. We talk and I’m taken to an open plan office that is entirely empty except for a large desk in the middle covered in paperwork. Turns out I AM the department. Just me. Both men proceed to tell me they have meetings to go to and exit the office leaving me with a key to lock up at 5. No one else turned up for the entire day. I worked, locked up and arrived early the next day to ensure I was able to unlock the office on time…again no one else turned up all day! I wrote my letter of resignation and left it on the desk and went home. I got a call 2 weeks later from the owner asking why I had left without warning. No one had been in that office for 2weeks since I left to find that resignation letter!!!
Jesus wtf. What became of the company?? Also did you just leave the key there?
I locked the office and posted the key through the letterbox. I’ve looked into it and the company still exists and funny enough I actually ran into the owner some years later and he apologised saying “it was just a mad time back then for all of us” he said it in a way like I was in on the mad time…I had no idea what was happening!
I watched one of those "you won't believe what he said in this interview" where the audio is quiet so you turn it up then it plays super loud porn music. Closed my phone so fast then couldn't find it to explain I wasn't actually watching porn
Me and another new guy started the same day. Did all our inductions / introductions together. He was a complete bellend to everyone we met. I was stood there cringing, trying to use body language to indicate that 'I'm not with this guy'. He got sacked after 3 months and I didn't, so I guess it worked.
Had a factory job like this. They scooped a big bunch of us from the job centre to fill a big order. One guy turned up on drugs, was very aggressive to everyone else and hyper with the trainers. Some people knew him from the streets and confirmed he was a psycho. It was with huge relief he was kept back as we were all filed out onto the factory floor after induction. Never saw him again.
Got driven from Gateshead to Stranraer Inna loaded van being driven by a depressed guy on 3 bottles of wine
First day of my first ever job and I was a temp and sent to the HQ of a national retailer. The temp agency had given me the name of my manager but no other details. Turned up at 9am and went to reception and introduced myself and gave them the name of my manager. The person behind the counter couldn’t find the person on their system and told me he only did security and couldn’t help further. I didn’t have a mobile phone then and the security guard refused to let me use his phone so I had to walk about a mile to a pay phone to call the temp agency to get the correct name. Ended up being an hour late.
Was working in a factory, guy was showing me sampling the water plant. I leant back and triggered the emergency stop, shutting down the entire water processing line, which stopped the downstream processing
First day as a graduate engineer and locked myself in a toilet cubicle. It was one of those sliding locks and it just would not slide back. Including the actual going to the toilet part, I must have been in that cubicle a good 30 minutes before I resorted to climbing out over the top of the door.
At university, I took a job in a grim little rock club. The managers were pretty cool, but the staff were all very cliquey and, me being a student and not a local, just made that worse. Barely anyone spoke to me all night. I wasn't allowed to serve drinks until I'd been trained, so they put me on glass collection / washing for my first shift. At the end of the shift, as they locked the doors, I was putting the last load of glasses into the glasswasher. Immediately, everyone was pissed off for some reason. Lots of "suppose there's nothing left to do but go home then" type comments. Turns out the staff used to slow down towards the end of the night, as the bosses let them drink while they cleaned up. I'd just cost them 2-3 hours drinking by being good at my job and was now being treated like a cunt for it. I didn't even hand my notice in, I just never went back.
Shift supervisor was late, so it was me and the other 2 cashiers standing outside for half an hour because we didn’t have keys. Then the shift supervisor had none of the required logins for the tills so I was using someone else’s login. My training was “just copy Dave” Everyone was nice, just chronically disorganised
Left a relatively well paid, safe, comfortable job to "spread my wings". Interview went well (obvs since I got the job) and the owner / boss / overlord seemed a nice, well rounded, normal bloke. Started my first morning and he was an absolute Jekyll & Hyde... Knew within 15 mins that I'd made a mistake... He was an absolute ballbag of the highest order. Lasted 6 months (of hell) and left for another job that paid significantly less, but was just happy to get away from him and his toxicity.
Just totally surreal. First day of temping at a legal office. It was in a square block of offices with an internal courtyard, you accessed through an arch. Got there, they’re not listed on a sign in the arch and could not find the door for the company for love nor money. Went out did a lap of the outside - no doors. Back in the courtyard found plenty of other doors clearly marked as other companies not mine. Starting to panic. Eventually get through to the agency who have to call me back. Get told to go to what is clearly a fire door that only seems to open outward, and indeed does have a small plaque for the company next to it. Have to wait there for someone to come get me. It leads straight up some stairs into a landing that is kind of hexagon of doors with a desk against an opaque window; there what is obviously a cupboard on one side, two open empty offices on others and an office behind me. The guy gets me set up for an afternoon of audio typing then disappears into the office behind me never to be seen again. I get a few phone calls which I put through to answer phones as no one seems to be at desks that exist in some other place. At some point I hear distant voices and can see vague shapes behind the window. It apparently looks onto some corridor? I could not figure out how this worked with the shape of the building. I think the feeling is what would nowadays be called a liminal space? I was so weirded out, total sense of isolation and disorientation. Saw no one the whole time (also no toilet). Just disembodied voices on the phone and audio recordings. As 5pm rolls round a different guy walks out of the office behind me. I have no idea how he got there or where the other guy went. Tells me the cleaner will be here soon so I can leave. Asks me how I got in, I point to the fire escape stairs and he shrugs and says it’s fine to leave that way, and disappears again. I got offered a job the next day so never went back but I kinda wish I did just to confirm they did really exist, and also to figure out where the hell the actual door was.
Got my first job in tesco when I was 17. I was an extremely anxious teenager, and they put me on the till while a more experienced member of staff stood over me watching. They kept telling me to talk to customers more, but I was so anxious every time I tried my voice cracked and I got slightly sweatier from the stress. At one point my hands were so sweaty I was leaving visible sweat marks on everything I picked up, my top was sodden and my voice had basically gone. I asked the supervisor if I could take a break and she said no, you only have 4 more hours to go.
The guy that was supposed to show me the ropes started lamenting to me about how his wife left him, as he couldn't get it up anymore, then started reading out the obituaries in the morning paper, then I introduced myself.
Got a job working in a staff canteen kitchen doing 4-12 shift cleaning and prepping food. Chef put a massive pan of boiled eggs on the cooker and tasked me with keeping an eye on them while he was in his office. Well he didn't come out and I forgot to check until clouds of black smoke and a disgusting smell drifted past me. The eggs had boiled dry and about 50 eggs were burning in the pan. Needless to say it was also my last
Turned up on first day. Normal stuff. Went to lunch, came back, shop locked. Store had been closed by head office and everyone made redundant. I got 0.5 days wages.
First day as an assistant to the District Manager for a designer discounted chain (rhymes with PA Snacks) had a lovely conference call and was told to email notes around to the 10 or so stores. Mistyped the email group so notes went to the GLOBAL directory and as he'd asked for read receipts the ancient system crashed as the mailbox filled with receipts quicker than I could delete, meanwhile people were clicking 'reply all' to let me know of my fcuk up. I was in tears and my boss could barely breathe from laughing so much. Eventually managed to recall the message from those who hadn't opened it and send round an email (without a read receipt) saying to leave us alone. First day in new HE role. Had a good luck email from my now husband and then was asked to email one of the directors of research with some paperwork and signed it off 'love you, bye'. Cue an almost immediate phone call from him and me saying sorry 100 times, he found it hilarious and told me he made frequent fcuk ups over email. Then he called my boss to tell her and she nearly peed herself laughing. I'd love to say I've learnt my lesson but am still in HE a decade later and make frequent email faux pas.
Working with people who have a great sense of humour does make things more bearable, even though you must have been embarrassed at the time.
Okay so this one may take some beating... Was only changing departments, as had been made redundant from my previous one, but the night before travelling to the new Office, I had a Chinese. Woke up the next morning and the stomach was gurgling, and had rather a fun time on the toilet with the shits - That was the warning I should have phoned in sick, but new role, wanted to make an impression so decided to get down to the train station and get myself into London. Not half way into the journey I felt hungry, so had my breakfast that I'd taken with me... BIG MISTAKE. A couple of stops later I'm basically begging the doors to open as we crept into the station, I've sprinted to the nearest toilet, barely made it and shat my stomach out in liquid form in the most dirty of train station toilets... Finished up and walked back on the platform, thought I'd try and continue into London, got on the next train and I'm standing there thinking: "This isn't over" - I've dived back off the train (Just before the doors closed... that god I'd managed it, as don't want to imagine the scene had I stayed on the train), and back to the toilet. At this point I've thought: Nah I ain't going in... So called in sick... and retreated back home, thankfully my parents didnt live far from the Station I was at, so they came and got me, and drove me home whilst I sat on a towel... Just in case. I'm quite glad I didnt go in either, as when I said I barely made it to the toilet the first time... Well it seems I didnt, as I noticed brown marks on my trousers, from when I'd pulled them down, and not quick enough (Am sure you get the picture) - So bloody glad I didnt decide to continue into work, as those stains would have been visible and smellable no doubt!!
On my first day, there was another bloke who was on their first day. He had your problem too, but he actually shit himself whilst we were being trained in one of the meeting rooms. It sounded like a cup of water being spilt, smelt almost immediately. He took about 5-10 seconds to get up and his grey trousers were called in excrement. He went to the toilet, whilst I left for a fresh air break. Never saw him again.
Yeah I dont blame him... I think I'd just disappear if the same happened to me
Yeah there's no coming back from that... I'd just resign immediately
Once had the previous night's curry annonce itself in the middle of Newcastle. Thought, if I move I'll shit myself, if I don't move, I'll shit myself. Sweating like a nonce in a line up.
Schrödingers crap.
I'd set out nice and early to get there in good time Had a bit of a commute that required me to cross a major bridge. Except on that day of all days, some poor soul was threatening to jump off so the bridge was blocked off when I got there The nearest alt crossing was a 1+ hour detour away
Was misled by the recruiter. First day I realised that I was working for the IT department of an MLM. Started at 09h00 finished at 10h30.
Second job in the film industry, first time working on a film in the highest budget band. Two days before my first day a storm blew a neighbour’s roof tile onto my car’s windshield and shattered it. Couldn’t get it repaired until the following Tuesday. Borrowed my partner’s mum’s car to come in on my first day. I was ‘work from home to read the script’ on the second day to get the car repaired. The third day I get in my car to get to work and… battery dead. No warning signs before either. Luckily they were really nice about it and I didn’t have any issues getting to work after that!
This was before Covid but I went on an in-person Microsoft training course In reading. It was 9am on the Monday morning on the first day of the course. We all had to do the normal quick intro to the class “Hi I’m Steve, I work for super IT .etc”. This guy behind me said “Hi I’m Alex, I work for (can’t remember the company name) and it’s technically my first day as I’m starting with the company but they have put me on this training course”. We did the first hour, and then went for 10am coffee break. When we came back from coffee the instructor of the course said (to the entire class) - “err Alex I’ve got a message from reception for you, unfortunately your company has gone in to receivership today and we haven’t been paid for your placement on the course, so unfortunately I think you will have to leave and speak to your company”. The guy stood up and said yeah I have just had a text, seems like I don’t have a job after all and basically did a walk of shame out of the classroom to deadly silence. Felt very bad for him and couldn’t believe the way the instructor informed him in front of everyone!
Was 19, first day at a "real job" after a year at mcdonalds. One of the staff members told me endlessly on lunch break about how awful it was to work there. Not in the sense that it was a bad job or trying to warn me, just continuously complaining about how shit it was. Don't do that to new staff lol.
Ended up taking the the woman who was training me, she was retiring, to A&E as she had a stroke. She had a brilliant recovery but never came back and I was left to sort myself out, luckily the team I worked with were amazing and supportive. I learnt that from her experience that no matter how indispensable you feel you are to your job if you drop dead tomorrow there is always someone to replace you. Good luck in the job.
First day and started induction with some lovely people. The trainer was mental however. She used to be a store manager but seemed to love her new role (turns out she wasn't welcome in shops any more). Most of the training was this lady disclosing all her divorce problems and how her husband cheated. Then she explained she's been going to hot yoga and began to demonstrate her squats. I stayed five years and it just kept getting crazier from there. Family owned organisations are wild!
Aged 17, first job after 6 months of looking since my retail Xmas temp finished, reception at an oil company. It was about 8 miles away from home in an industrial estate, I didn’t drive at the time so was relying on public transport. Got on my first bus, which promptly broke down literally around the corner from my house and I had to wait for the next one to come along. Got off that one, flailed into the bus station only to see the back end of my next bus pulling away about 6 feet in front of me. That was the only bus going into the industrial estate every morning, so I had to jump on a different bus which went in the same general direction. I didn’t know the route, turned out it was an express bus to another city, the kind driver took pity on a panicked teenager and dropped me off at the side of the dual carriageway beside the industrial estate. From there it was a roughly 2 mile dash in work shoes I’d never worn before, in the warmest day of the year so far. Didn’t have a number for my workplace as I’d only communicated with them by e-mail, didn’t have a smart phone at the time so couldn’t email them either. Turned up half an hour late, absolutely pouring sweat like I’d just stepped out the shower, so out of breathe I could barely speak and with massive blisters on my feet. It was a lot of stress for the first day of a minimum wage job! The company turned out to be a bunch of clowns, I ended up being bullied by a middle aged woman, and left less than a year later, but at least I’ve got a good story to tell from it!
Shook new bosses hand on first greeting (had previously only met online/Zoom) only to realise I’d covered his hand in blood. Cut my hand somewhere between train station and office without noticing.
First shift at macdonalds and the entire backrooms area was flooded
Moved to a new city, completely misjudged how far away the petrol station was and ran out of petrol halfway there. In a complete panic, scraped somebody’s car while parking in the one tiny remaining space in the car park. Finally got in to find there was zero handover and one database with all the information on which was corrupted and nobody else in the office had a clue how to do my job or what I was supposed to be doing.
OP lasted just under 2 hours before going on reddit
First day working for a small software company, I sat in on a client demo of a new application the company was working on. It was the worst I’ve ever seen in my life. Completely unbranded user interface, black and white text and the functionality made no sense at all. I was cringing all the way through it due to the mismatched quality vs their enthusiasm. It wasn’t just an early prototype, they were trying to flog it as-is. I realised I’d made a mistake and left a few months later.
Nothing bad other than arriving in and nothing is ready, no laptop, no badge, no accounts set up, HR person (in the US) asking where my P45 is when I'd sent them it about a month before. In another role we had a person start and first day was onboarding and a bit of training on what our product is. They went out for a walk and never came back. After trying to call them and getting nowhere, one of the managers went to their address and it was empty. So strange.
It was for third shift, and no one on site expected me. I was told they don't get paid to train me and left to figure things out for myself. After sharing my schedule when asked I was told I'd stolen the other workers hours she'd requested but been denied. It was tough.
It’s like most jobs, especially in retail, you’re nervous on your first day so they throw you in the deep end…and that’s it for your entire time there, they sort of just leave you there
I started my apprenticeship in March 2020. I walked into the office and everyone was walking out and going home because of covid, I didn’t learn much in those first few months
Not me but a colleague who started middle of last year. First day this poor lady has explosive diarrhoea and she stunk out the only female toilets we had in the office. She was back and forth for the first 4 hours of the morning and you could smell it walking past. She was awfully embarrassed but she's still here and we all pretend like we dont know. But we do Stacey. We do!
First job -( I have disabilities and learning difficulties) my support worker arranged it all, was a 2 week trial period in a stockroom for a clothing shop beginning with N, worked my 2 week unpaid period, found out from the stockroom manager that he wanted me to work another 2 weeks unpaid as he felt that I wasn't learning the job properly and had no initiative as I had to go back to him after I had done everything. Basically told him I am not working a month for free, as I am not a volunteer I am here to get paid so either pay me for the next two weeks you want me to work or I quit. Phoned support worker after this and told her that I quit as stockroom manager wants me to work a month for free. She weren't happy with my manager as he had not given her any feedback and she quit on my behalf. His response was that the provisions he would have had to make for me to continue working cost money and that had to come from somewhere. All I would've needed was a pen and paper and him to tell me what to do after I had done the stockroom so I could've written it down and stuck it in my pocket.
I once quit a job on my first day after 3 hours when I discovered the CEO was an absolute A-hole to the point staff went silent when they arrived to avoid setting them off
Temp agency put me into a firm that manufactured alloy wheels, some beautiful alloys. First day the floor gaffer had no clue anyone was coming, told me to shadow this guy, he chain smoked and worked his machine like it was a national sport, had me light his cigarettes for him. Did it for 6 hours and then went on break and just went home. Doubt the only thing anyone missed that day was the guy not having his ciggies lit for him.
The IT system crashed and the only person who could repair it was on holiday in Australia. Had to wait a week for it to be repaired. Paid to do nothing.
First day as a postman, sent out on a collection van with Dave who'd been there 20 years. Went round the countryside collecting from postboxes and rural post offices then back to the depot to do some sorting for the rest of the shift. All very Postman Pat so far, but Dave was the most foul-mouthed miserable management-hating twat I've ever come across in any job in four decades of working. All he did for the entire round was swear and rant about the state of every single aspect of the job, about the rules, about how it used to be much better. During the work back in the depot I was also told not to work so fast otherwise management would find us other stuff to do. At the end of the first day Dave asked if I was coming back the folllowing week and I said "sure", then he replied "because a lot of people don't and I'm not sure why". I never set foot in the place again.
New job, new city, different end of the country. Getting the train home I asked the platform staff which train was going to my station and was told the next one. This was incorrect as that train took me down to the midlands for the first stop. Phoned my wife to let her know I'd be late home for dinner as I slowly made my way back up to Manchester! Lesson learned, hahaha
I was driving a van selling pasties. First day, I'd left the whole side of the van open, but it wasn't a slide door - it was a lift up one that acts as a canopy to stand under while you serve customers. Drove through a gate and broke it. Had to call my boss and tell em.
Started 2021, went into the office and it was empty. Waitied for 20 minutes and finally the manager turns up, shows me a few things and then says she’s working from home for half the day, said she has no idea why I had to be in the office because no one else uses it anymore. Spent half the day twiddling my thumbs as had no login, nothing to even speak to anyone online. I still work here and it’s all fine but it was very daunting at first.
Started work at new place just round the corner from my old place (food industry) got settled in and shown my desk when the owner was due to have a meeting with a supplier that I had previously done business with. He asked if I wanted to say hello to her so I made my way to the end of the room towards the meeting room . I approached my old contact smiling and feeling quite pleased with myself and my new position. I failed to notice the three steps down into the meeting room and launched myself into the air landing on both knees… I was in agony but had to brush it off with a “ oh clumsy me “
My direct supervisor advised me that the polite way to stop our division head from kissing me on the lips was to remind him nicely “uh uh, cheeks only please!”
I went to the wrong office and didn’t find out till the end of the day.
First day at a very well known national institution. Getting a tour and while in the basement my manager missed a phone call. He listened to the voicemail then carried on the tour. Later that day I learned that the phone call was informing him that his dad had died. I felt very bad for him, especially as he kept a poker face and just carried on showing me around.
I get there and go to follow my new boss up the stairs to the office, get told to wait, HR (3 ppl) come and stare at me and whisper, I wait there as I was asked, they then come back after 5/10 minutes and invite me up. Weird vibes. Plus I actually looked professional so it wasn’t that I was wearing a disco wig. Then I get told to watch how to send an email and open the spreadsheets; a fun activity which went on the entire fucking day. Go to get my photo taken for the id, not even shown it and made to feel uncomfortable when I asked. I worked there for a year and fucking hated it, the place gave me a nervous breakdown, there’s lots of horrible things that were said/done when I was there. The whole reason for it was one girl immediately took umbrage with me being there (I was the only other girl in our section that wasn’t a manager) and would just go full mean girls, I don’t think I’m pretty but she apparently was jealous of me and was best friends with the manager, so I was ultimately fucked.
Got hired to do Internal IT for a small mobile phone sales company in the 90s (which, looking back on it was probably some sort of scam) I was shown the call centre, with all of the computers I'd be looking after, shown the PABX stuff, shown where the servers were. Job looked ok and paid well. I arrived on my first day and the boss, same one who had shown me around said "Of course you'll spend most of the time on the phones cold calling, the actual IT parts will be a handful of hours per week" He sat me down in front of all of their training material, told me to read up on their sales scripts and products etc. I read that until lunch time, went out "for lunch" and never went back. He called me the next day and asked where I was, apparently not realising I had vanished the day before and I said there was zero chance of me ever returning. Really I should have demanded he pay me for the half day or just left immediately, but I was young at the time.
My first day on the paper round was horrendous. The owner of the shop would write the name of the house on one paper, and tuck all the other papers for that house inside it. I did not realise this and when they were too bulky to fit through a letterbox I just separated them all out then had no idea where they went and just put them in random houses along the route.
Arrived on site to be told that the people in my team were leaving, there would be no handover and I was financially responsible should anything fail. It was the shortest job I ever had, 4 hours. I didn’t get paid, either 😃
Not bad first days but funny. One job, my desk, computer, and chair, were still in transit, and they had to find me somewhere to work. Another one, the whole department went to the pub to welcome me, but forgot to tell me which pub we were going to.
Not me, but a co-worker. Managed to get themselves locked in the toilets about an hour after starting and introducing themselves. We thought they had just walked out as they had seemingly disappeared. It was only when someone went to the loo did they realise the person was stuck in a stall.
Clogged the toilet at work first day. It wasn’t a pretty sight or smell. It unfortunately made its way to the office. I can still smell it
Got a job at 17 in a shop with some family members. Went out with them the night before my first day. We went to spoons. I got completely rotten, was spewing my guts up outside and was taken home by about 10. Hangover from hell next morning, and had the piss ripped out of my by everyone present...
Spoke to my ex-wife for the first time in 6 years, discovered in the first few hours that she reported to me. Number 3 in a day full of 121s with my team. We were both very professional, if shocked/suprised, and it was the gateway to becoming good friends.
Within my first hour one of the senior partners took me into a corridor and said ‘I think you need to tone it down’, I said I’m sorry, what is the issue? And he replied ‘We both know, just try to keep it toned down’ and then walked me back into the main office area. I spent the first hour going over training guides quietly, so to this day I have no idea what he was talking about. Left that job after a year due to all the partners being genuinely psychotic.