People who turn up for a new job and then never come back

[Icehaven]

When I had a few crappy call centre jobs (in the early 2000s) through agencies there'd usually be a group of 10-20 all starting on the same day, and you had a training period which was anything from a few days to two weeks. I remember someone telling me that for the jobs where the training was a few weeks it was apparently fairly common for people to leave immediately after having been paid to sit in a classroom for 2 weeks and move onto the next one, just jumping from training to training. Wished I thought of that tbh.

Even without that the staff turnover in call centres was crazy. I worked in two for no more than a few months in each and I was still one of the last people left who'd started at the same time as me.

[Fr.Bigley]

Once did bar back for a club in town, the type of place that's dead all week then Friday night, a barrage of pissed up suits from the financial quarter would rock up en masse and fill each of the karaoke booths by 7pm and by 9pm, the sound of Livin' on a prayer and sweet Caroline was ringing in my ears, I hated every single one of the cunts..The bar team was fronted by the biggest fucking twat this side of A mumford and sons gig. My mistake, it seems, is that I wasn't one of the lads, didn't have  coke problem and wanted to get done and cleaned down to fuck off to civilised company. The manager had other ideas. He basically ensured, the regular punters were getting comp drinks in return for little lines of stuff in the back so I was quickly promoted to Joey, knocking out drinks to cunts as well as hauling 20 kgs of ice two flights of stairs every half hour, a glass collecting operation the likes the world has never seen and basically doing the lot of cleaning and pull throughs on the beer lines 3 days in a row.

The final straw was realising said cunt manager was actually subsidising his income with ALL the teams tips and after addressing it with one of the girls behind the bar, I got a "He' always done it, plus his girlfriend is pregnant"-So fucking what...3 days there and i realised how much of a cokehead, cheater, thieving little shit he was...Shagged half the new girls by all accounts and was giving it large he wanted our rightful money for his own self.

The highlight to this story, He had been fucking someones missus on the side and got himself stabbed for his trouble about 6 months later.

3 days..felt like 3 years. Never touched a bar again after that (previously ran a spot of 2 years too).

[The Ombudsman]

I think I've always lasted at least 6 months somewhere, but I do remember a few people joining whatever team I was on then leaving sharpish.

One sticks in my mind, chap joined the small development team very keen an eager. Second day was struggling a bit, I think they could do the job but something was off. Third day they came in just to say they were leaving as the place/job wasn't what they were expecting. I remember this as someone on the team remarked "Did they think it was going to be like Attachments?". Attachments being a BBC show at the time about some 'web startup' company. I guess you had to be there but it was such a spot on observation/remark it made me laugh.

They had a few sales people join and last over a year with no sales whatsoever. They also had a chap that seemingly just worked on a twice a month internal magazine (it was a pamphlet for about 50 staff). Bonkers stuff. Then there was the time I worked for gangsters...

[amputeeporn]

That's a sad story. A sexy one too.

Was the threesome MMF, or FFM? Asking for a wank.

Ha - MFF - she'd seen on Facebook that I had a girlfriend, but I think she was really just trying to push my buttons for my well-meaning liberal concern when she got in touch. For those on tenterhooks, I fucked her senseless looked her up recently and saw that she's sober and seems to be doing okay.

[amputeeporn]

She shows you into a room and says "Right, this is Colin... and this is Steve. Colin, Steve, this is Amputeeporn. You three have fun now! Ta-ra!" And leaves.

Good laugh, thanks x

[amputeeporn]

Not quite the same as never coming back after one shift, but there was a new guy who joined my team via an agency a few years ago who was seemingly doing everything in his power in the first few weeks to avoid passing his probation, including:

- Lying on his CV about his skills (including specific coding languages)

- Doing fuck all work, but somehow managing to find the time to set his desktop background AND Windows icon to a photo of himself (two different photos, in fact)

- Complaining that he had to sit next to a gay colleague because "He might talk about fancying a guy and I won't know what to say"

- In his first team meeting, when invited to tell us a bit about himself/talk about his weekend (or whatever the perfunctory informal introduction premise was), regaling us with a bizarre anecdote which culminated in his friend drunkenly eating a dead mouse

- Being creepily flirtatious with our manager, despite being engaged (and telling us all, unprompted, how much he spent on the proposal, which included a private helicopter, apparently)

I mean the guy had a death wish (in terms of his employment), surely.

Cum Town voice: 'This guy rules!'

[Dead Soon]

This happened with incredible frequency when I worked in a seaside hotel/restaurant/bar. Not many quit on the literal first day, but plenty of abrupt no-shows not long into their tenure:-

- Probably the only one-dayer was this lad who didn't show up for Day No.2, which contained a Sunday lunch function. We struggled like fuck. He turned up the following day to receive his pay for the shift he didn't do and explained ''it was my mum's birthday, sorry''.

- A barman who worked two shifts before calling in sick for ''breaking my hand punching the motorbike in anger'' after being stopped for no insurance.

- a self professed nonce (yes, actually) on the pots who, in fairness, hadn't been told what to do in any way shape or form. Fucked off on a weekend we had 70 guests in (more or less max capacity) which took about 10 years off the life of the kitchen gaffer.

- a lad in the restaurant who thought the res. manager was a ''bitch'' and called in with a broken leg after two days.

- some psychotic pathological liar who would miss shifts because of a ''flooded house'', ''breaking my ribs after tripping on my dog'' and just generally thinking she was booked off and sending a copy of her rota as proof... a rota that was evidently weeks old.

Now most of these could be justified, and in the wider field too. The bosses were a bit shit, the pay was minimum wage but *defiantly so* (''be lucky for the job you have'' type shit), there was fuck all training and if you asked for help you were made to feel stupid for not being ''in the know''. And sometimes it's easier just to ''go'', especially in the service industry, rather than awkwardly hand in a notice and work a week when you'd really rather not be there. There's 100's of other places to work in my town and there's not much interconnection, so it's hard to blot your copybook.

I myself am an advocate for ''ghosting''. I worked in some greasy spoon that was owned by a chap who also ran another cafe further up the high street. After a few months I was, without being asked, transferred to that other cafe and it BROKE my fucking soul. Just fucking untouched and unloved since 1956. Cliquey to indecent levels. A health and safety minefield.

With an upcoming bank holiday (which in my town sees 100,000s of tourists) I let them know that I wanted to leave, but would commit to that weekend as to not short change them. I was told to fuck off publicly and with barely restrained anger. From that moment on, my attitude changed from ''never let them down, always give courteous notice'' to ''just fucking leave, it'll be healthier for you''. So many examples in this thread, I give my respect for their decisions.

[dex]

I worked in some greasy spoon that was owned by a chap who also ran another cafe further up the high street. After a few months I was, without being asked, transferred to that other cafe and it BROKE my fucking soul. Just fucking untouched and unloved since 1956. Cliquey to indecent levels. A health and safety minefield.

From what you said in your post I don't blame you for getting the hell out of Dodge. But for whatever reason, this paragraph above really intrigued me. If its too painful/annoying/whatever to elaborate on then fair enough but are there any good stories from working in this cafe worth sharing?

[Yussef Dent]

When I worked for Pizza Express, 40 were recruited for a new store and after our introductory meeting, fifteen were never seen again. Ten disappeared after their first shift. I should have been one of them, an awful company to work for yet somehow I managed four months there.

The best story I have heard of this happening involves an old friend of mine who worked at a marketing agency with her then husband. He ran their work experience programme which was held in high regard and very much oversubscribed. He'd always seem to end up obtaining very attractive young ladies for it though despite a lot of men applying. Anyway, one particular lass came in for a week and from then on the agency became the focus of her final year University project and she was in two days a week. The fella would then try the best he could to say she should have a full-time job at the agency, however everything was scuppered when a colleague came in to pick something up they'd left behind for the weekend to find them both f***ing on the meeting room table.

My friend was told about this and obviously their marriage ended, but bizarrely the company did not dismiss either of them. She actually ended up leaving as a matter of principle, but being cheated on took a massive dent in her confidence. She effectively left the industry and fell into a real low patch, a case of the victim very much coming out the worst. However, she got herself back on her feet, back into media work and started applying for jobs at the old level of account manager. She had her sights set on one particular agency, miles away from where she lived but was keen to uproot and start a new life. When they were recruiting for an account manager, she jumped at the chance to apply and was successful.

When she was offered the job, she was told she had to really get up to speed on her clients as a new account executive was being hired who she would be the manager of. This account exec would start in a month's time. The account executive? The lass who was f***ing her ex-husband. Both had moved miles away and yet ended up in the same workplace.

Their first meeting and induction which she had to run was obviously incredibly awkward (She said she was looking at a water glass and thinking "I'd love to ram that in her face."), but the company directors were also present. Later that afternoon, the new recruit emailed her to call a truce, saying she was deeply apologetic for all that happened, that she no longer was in touch with her ex-husband and hoped they could have a positive professional relationship, and maybe even become friends?

My friend emailed her back right away, telling her to meet at a city-centre bar for a drink and that they could talk this out and come to a diplomatic conclusion.

They met up and actually got on well, finding things in common from where the place they both came from and their career paths and why they chose a particular agency and so on. However, my friend was buttering her up, making her feel like she had got away with it all and that everything was to be sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. She went and got them another bottle of Rose to share then sat down, looked her in the eye and said, from what I remember her telling me, this.

"If there's one piece of advice I must give you in this role, it's the following."

The new starter leant in eagerly, expecting it to be an important piece of professional knowledge.

"When you get home, email the managing director with your resignation. Tell them you are not working a notice period and this is with immediate effect. If you do not, I am going to make your life an absolute, complete abject misery. I'll set traps that you'll never be able to get out of as you'll always cop the flak for it. You're finished."

My friend continued to drink in front of her as this young lass sat silently shell-shocked, after a while my friend got up to leave. The following morning she turned up to work to hear the management in a bit of a flux as to why their new recruit had packed their job up after the first day and was relocating from the area.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

^ How was the career of the ex- husband, the feller who, in all likelihood had instigated the shagging, going at this point?

[Dex Sawash]

Penthouse Forum letter needs rewrite

[Fr.Bigley]

Love a good episode of things that never happened.

[pcsjwgm]

I signed up for what was (or rather would have been) my first job, at a cafe, which first involved four days of unpaid training, and each day would start at 5am, which was bad enough. First day was actually okay, quite confusing, but I naively believed I would learn and get better suited to the role. Fucking hated the second day, mostly because the person responsible for "training" me that day was such a grumpy old bastard who expected me, with no experience, to easily juggle cooking, working the till, and serving customers, and she provided almost no help. The boss came in that day and booked me in for two paid shifts after the next two unpaid training days. The thought of having to work with the "trainer" again filled me with dread. When I got home, I messaged the boss and told him the role wasn't for me.

[Butchers Blind]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56822571

15 years on the sick.

[bgmnts]

Start a factory job on friday, shift pattern Monday to Thursday after that, 12 hours a day. I have no experience but I imagine they burn through staff.

If I last more than a few days I'll be impressed.

[Polymorphia]

Good luck my man!

[Ferris]

I'm intending to do this in the next week or two - apply for an overpaid role at a specific type of finance firm, cash the cheques, do a piss-poor job, then piss off in September when uni starts again.

Can't wait to mug these cunts off for all they're worth. Will pay for the new furnace in the gaff as well. Magic.

[zomgmouse]

Might have been mentioned - can't find the tweet now but saw something where someone got a job at a software company, fixed a bug that was irritating them as a user of the software, and immediately handed in their resignation.

[bgmnts]

Lasted 3 hours. Less anxious about answering phones now after that kind of work.

Scumbag recruitment agency making me pay for shoes as well, and didn't even go through an induction process with me, to which even the supervisor was alarmed.

Fuck that shit.

[Sebastian Cobb]

What recruiters are trying to upsell shoes?

I had that when I went to an agency to be a van driver as I'd need protective boots to deliver to building sites. As it happened they didn't get me a job (I think part of the problem was I was under 21 so insurance was an issue) and I got something else instead.

[seepage]

Might have been mentioned - can't find the tweet now but saw something where someone got a job at a software company, fixed a bug that was irritating them as a user of the software, and immediately handed in their resignation.

The company must have had a very agile methodology to be able to do that and not have to stay there at least two months.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Don't need to get it through the agile ceremony if you're only interested in taking a working binary home.