People Who Quit Crappy Jobs In Record Time Are Sharing The Horrible Conditions That Pushed Them Over The Edge

We recently covered this Reddit thread where folks shared the wild reasons they stormed out of their brand-new jobs. BuzzFeed Community members also chimed in with their own “rage-quitting” stories, and let’s just say I don’t blame a single one of them for walking out. Here’s what they shared:

1.“This happened to me last month. Oh my god. I’ve been looking for a new job and did a ‘paid trial run’ at a potential place of work. In five hours, I realized the following things: 1. They worked through their breaks to earn more of a bonus. 2. You were also encouraged to work through your breaks, or you’d be seen as ‘lazy.’ 3. Two women had been there for years and felt entitled to whatever tool they needed without asking. 4. It was supposed to be an eight-hour shift, but it ended up being 12 hours, and even then, they were disappointed with me leaving at the 12-hour mark. 5. The bathroom didn’t work, and you had to walk down the street to use a restaurant’s toilet. The job seemed perfectly normal in the ad. I’ve never seen so many red flags at a job in such a short amount of time.”

—funkmistress

2.“I was 15 years old when a friend and I got a job picking mushrooms at a mushroom farm. We were picked up at 6:00 a.m. from a local plaza and driven to the farm two hours away. Somehow, we were separated and put in different grow rooms (which felt more like horse stalls). There were no windows nor electricity for light. There were eight ‘pickers’ per room; only two wore headlamps. It was so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. We were told we could take our first break in two hours, and then the door was shut tightly. I did my job quietly, feeling around the manure for mushrooms in complete darkness amongst six strange men. It felt like eight hours had passed when the door finally opened two hours later.”

“I quickly found my friend, and we booked it out of there only to realize we had no idea where we were! All we could see was a long gravel road and fields. We stuck our thumbs out and finally got picked up by some guy who looked like he was living out of his car. We coulda have been murdered!”

—daisy71

3.“I was working as an assistant manager for a well-known retail chain (well-known in the southern states). My husband was murdered, and I was injured in a home invasion robbery. We had been married for 25 years. We were supposed to be together for years to come. Eight days after the murder, we held a service for him. Just as the service was about to begin, my phone rang. The district manager wanted to know when I would be back to work. I explained we were at the service and that I would call him back later. He became very angry and told me he saw no reason I could not return to work after the service. He was very rude and abrasive. So I simply said that I would be there.”

“Later, I returned to work to throw his store keys at him and quit. What a jerk he was. By the way, the keys hit him, and he threatened assault charges. When the cops arrived and heard the story, they were disgusted. The DM left, and two employees told the police (they fibbed) that I ‘tossed the keys on the desk, and they slid into him.’ No charges were filed, and I never stepped foot in any of their stores again.”

—Anonymous

4.“I started a waitressing gig part-time. The supervisor waitress told me it was impossible to find good people and that she really wanted to cut back her hours if she could find good help. OK. She shadowed me the first night and kept correcting me (like how to ask for what kind of potato guests wanted with their steak). I was allowed to work one table and help her deliver food to a table of 12, for which she took the order. When I asked who ordered the spaghetti or whatever, she screamed at me not to ‘auction off the food.’ She told me to memorize who gets what. End of the night, I took my $5 tip from my sole table and told her I wouldn’t be back. Any wonder why she couldn’t find good help? Freaking micromanaging witch.”

—Anonymous

5.“I was 20 when my boss told all of us that if we called in sick, we’d need a note from our mother. Mostly, high school kids worked at that A&W. I raised my hand. I said, ‘I don’t live with my parents or even in the same town as them.’ She said that was too bad and that I would still need a note from my mother. I said thank you and goodbye.”

—Anonymous

6.“I was hired as a front desk manager at a hotel next to the Indianapolis airport. The hotel was very large and had not been updated for several years. I was given the dime tour and told not to speak to any other employees I encountered after that. I talked to every person who was working that day and did not hear one good thing about the owners or the hotel. I was on the fence about walking out when I was shown a second hidden computer system for checking in guests secretly so the franchise fees and taxes could be avoided. I was no longer on the fence after that. I walked out after three hours total.”

—Anonymous

7.“I took a job at a chain steakhouse restaurant. I was hired on the spot as I had plenty of food service experience. I was told I could start right away. The uniform they gave me was balled up and sitting on a shelf. I was not even allowed to wash that uniform and start the next day. I didn’t bother trying that uniform on and just walked out!”

—Anonymous

8.“I was a 19-year-old college student in the ’90s who was a communications major. I took a job at a radio station, thinking I would learn how to speak on the radio, write news headlines, and do promotional work. I was tasked with going through one of those thick telephone books, page by page, to call people alphabetically during dinner time and ask them what radio station they listened to. I got yelled at and hung up on, and some people just didn’t answer the phone. As a shy introvert, I cried after calling just five people. I sat there staring at the wall and started thinking, ‘How the hell do I get out of this?’ I looked around, and there were two other thick books to tackle. I had to call businesses also. In addition, I had to pay for public transportation to travel to and from this unpaid internship.”

“When I returned the second day while sitting in this dark cubicle with nobody around except the security guard at the front, downstairs in the lobby, I left a note saying I had to quit because I got a job to pay for my tuition since my financial aid didn’t come through. I left early, made no calls, returned to campus, and never looked back. The boss left messages on my answering machine to see if she could ‘work with my schedule.’ HELL NO!”

—Anonymous

9.“I needed a part-time job to help pay my tuition while attending a technical school. A fellow student said he was working at a local commercial bakery and that they were hiring. I got hired right away and began doing ‘grunt work.’ Day one was unloading rolls from a room-sized oven. We removed trays of finished rolls as they slowly finished their journey through the oven. The pace was manageable. However, it was summertime, and the place wasn’t air-conditioned. After a half hour or so I thought I was going to pass out. I had no break or anyone to help me. I finally completed the task and was told to take the 300 trays one at a time from the cooling racks and dump the rolls into a bin.”

“With two hours left in my shift, I was sent to the basement to scrub racks used to bake sticky buns. The caramelized sugar was impossible to remove, even with hot water. The second day was the breaking point. As there wasn’t enough work for the two of us that day, we were set to wash the 20-foot walls in the oven room. Hot and dirty was an understatement. I never went back.”

—Anonymous

10.“It only took five months. I worked for a new Hooters in a major Canadian city in 1999. Yeah, that should be the end of the story. I was very young and excited to wear the cute uniform and be a bubbly Hooters girl! The novelty quickly wore off. We ALWAYS had to be fully done up. Things were okay, but there were rumors that the management was stealing tips and making us think we owed them. The owner had an apartment across the street so he could spy. And, the cherry on top: In the summer, there was a rooftop patio with no shade. We had to carry a few dozen cases of beer up a flight of stairs every day to load the beer fridges in full makeup and that goddamn uniform which included tights in 30-degree (Celsius) heat.”

“We had to stay in the sun and smile and greet everyone as they arrived with makeup melting off your face. I tried for five long months, then after one hot day in the summer, I said two words: ‘I QUIT!’ The manager gave me the ‘not surprised’ look. I cashed out and never looked back.”

—Anonymous

11.“While in my 20s, I took a job in a well-known used clothing store in downtown NYC. It was the ’70s, and used jeans were very popular. On my first day, a trailer truck pulled up at the loading dock, and we were handed pitchforks. The trailer was full of blue jeans from Wyoming, Montana, and both Dakotas. They were unwashed jeans from real cowboys. The smell of cow dung was overwhelming. We pitchforked the jeans down a chute to the store’s basement and loaded them into industrial washing machines. No gloves, no masks, just the smell and denim. Needless to say, I was gone by lunch.”

—Anonymous

12.“In high school, I applied to work in a local tanning salon. When I went in for the interview, the owner showed me around and quickly ran through the computer appointment system for clients. Then, after about 20 minutes, she left and didn’t return until closing, over eight hours later. With little training, I managed to stumble my way through the day and felt pretty good about it, even though I was exhausted and starving. When she finally returned, she brought her middle school-age child with her, gave me a quick glance, and went to her office in the back. I finished cleaning the tanning bed and left. Her kid sat at the front desk and never said a word. After I left, I got an angry call from the owner accusing me of stealing cash from the register — over $300! None of the clients paid in cash that day, so I didn’t even open it.”

“I was beyond shocked and disgusted that this lady was screaming at me over the phone. I was 16 years old and completely mortified by the accusations. I never went back, and I never got paid. I figured her kid probably took the money while I was gone and saw a good opportunity to blame a new hire. The salon didn’t last too long. It ended up closing a few months later. I was glad to see it go.”

—Anonymous

13.“I worked as a bartender at an Elmer’s restaurant (this site had a separate bar). My shift started at 5:00 p.m., and two patrons had been drinking since earlier in the day. They were absolutely ‘falling down drunk,’ and I refused to serve them alcohol. Fast forward to the next evening when I came in for my shift. The manager yelled at me for cutting them off because, in their anger and drunken state, the cut-off patrons ripped the stall door off the men’s bathroom, and the cost of repairs would be coming out of my paycheck. I walked out and never went back.”

—Anonymous

14.“I started working as a dishwasher at a popular restaurant/nightclub in my area. Every dish brought back to me had to be cleaned by hand and then rinsed with scalding hot water before being placed in a dishwashing machine. They provided no gloves or PPI of any kind. I lasted two hours before going to the kitchen manager and telling him I was done. He told me I would not get paid for the two hours and that I just kept walking.”

—Anonymous

15.“I did one day at a Taco Bell that was infamous for having the worst drive-thru in the area. After having six hours of my life wasted by a rude manager whose idea of training the new hires was to immediately dump them in either the kitchen, lobby, or drive-thru and let them deal with irate customers who couldn’t understand how their orders were getting messed up. I wasn’t allowed to take 15 minutes for lunch when it was slow, but everyone else who smoked got to spend 10 to 15 minutes every hour smoking. By the end of the day, I just said, ‘Fuck this,’ handed in the uniform, and left. Then, I had to fight with the management for a month to get my paycheck for that one day. And then I had to fight with them again when tax season rolled around and I needed my W-2. The only good thing that came out of it was that it got me to see that my time was worth more than minimum wage!”

—Anonymous

16.“I called out sick due to having a 24-hour virus with the works: fever, chills, vomiting, etc. On my return the next day, the manager called me into his office and asked if I enjoyed the concert the night before I called off. They would not believe I was not out at a concert the night before. When the manager said they’d been thinking of letting me go, I said, ‘That’s a great idea!’ and walked out to get my personal things. They begged me to reconsider and said I couldn’t be serious. Sadly for them, I was!”

—emoelf137

17.“I was an exchange student at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. I took a job at Wendy’s, a few miles from campus. The area manager rounded up the new hires and drove us to the restaurant where we would be training. It happened to be by the US Army Base. We arrived around lunchtime. I was tasked with putting the condiments on the rolls. It was a bit hectic, and I was being spoken to about being too slow. So I picked up the pace and put the ketchup spreader into the mayo bin and vice versa a couple of times. The trainer actually yelled at me in front of the customers, who were mostly soldiers. I said, ‘Fuck you,’ and went to the backroom. The soldiers all clapped for me. The worst part was I had to ask for a ride back to my car with the area manager, who was a nice guy.”

—Anonymous

18.“I worked at a well-known software company as an administrative assistant. On my first day, the man I would be working for started screaming about how inconvenient it was to have to train another person after the last ‘stupid person’ and the ‘stupid person’ before that one, etc. When I typed up a memo, he refused to believe that I knew how to spell and insisted I look up every single word in a dictionary. When he loudly dropped a heavy dictionary on my desk, I got up and walked out while he was still yelling at me for leaving my desk without permission.”

—uniquecat52

19.And: “I lasted five days at a temp job. The supervisor insisted I take procedures home to read and was shocked when I told her they’d have to pay me for that. She freaked out over my left-handedness. A meeting was held by senior staff to stop the backstabbing and bullying by some employees toward an older employee. The last straw was when the supervisor wanted to know what medication I took for a slight tremor I had in my hands. To this day, I wonder why I worked there a full week.”

—ladysingstheblues

Have you ever quit a new job because of toxic conditions, a bad boss, unruly customers, or another major red flag that was too big to ignore? Tell us in the comments or share anonymously using this form.

Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.