What was your worst first day at a job ever?

[Anonymous]

My very first retail job, I was put on freight which basically meant I was sent to a dark hot stock room to unbox, unbag, security tag, and hang every item for the racks on the floor. About 3 hours into this, I'm drenched in sweat and super bored because it was just me, no music, nothing but box after giant box, and the manager is like, hey, we know it's your first day and all but what is taking so long?

I show her everything I had done. I was so proud of myself, and she goes, no wonder you are taking so long, we don't put security tags on t-shirts, those are low price items. You'll need to take all those off (did anyone tell me that info, nope). So then I spent another hour just undoing the 100 shirts I'd done in the freight with the other stuff because I had to run every shirt through the tag remover and then fold it because they also neglected to tell me they don't hang the shirts, just fold them for the counters. Then the manager walks back and she tells all the other staffers of my blunder (unforced I might add),and they all start laughing.

[MrOracle]

I started working for a large, fast-growing bank in the IR department, where I will be responsible for managing system outages to resolution (largely, the systems that allow the various credit card departments to function, but also the systems that allow customer credit card purchases to be authorized. Needless to say, these systems are all custom, very complex, and there are a number of special procedures that must be followed.

The person that I officially report to is not in the office for a week, so I am temporarily assigned to report to a woman who has been at the company for a decade. She knows a ton, obviously, but the problem is that she's still using terminology for things that were officially changed long ago, and none of those names and terms match up with any of my documentation.

For example, I'm in the San Francisco office (one of three, actually), and she tells me to "call the East Bay" to report an issue. There are 4 offices in the East Bay Area - I have phone numbers listed by city - but after multiple conversations with her where all she can do is repeat "THE EAST BAY!", I'm able to get someone else to explain that she means an office that's technically in the South Bay, but 9 years before it was referred to as the East Bay when it was the second office to be opened, and was the only other office in the entire Bay Area. That terminology was changed when they opened the third Bay Area office, 7 years before I started, but she kept referring to that office as "the East Bay" because it was a sign that she'd been with the company longer than most people. The fact that it was completely unhelpful - and factually incorrect, plus long obsolete - made no difference to her.

I went through similar failures to properly define terms with her about 20 times, with her looking at me like I was stupid because I couldn't decode terms that maybe 20 or 30 people in a company of 18,000 people were around to understand, and she refused to use the current terms that I might actually understand. She referred to a database server by its operating system - one that had been replaced with a different brand of operating system 5 years before. So I was supposed to understand that "the Sybase server" meant a specific Oracle server - 1 of 40 or so - that had been running Oracle for years. The list of company servers I had been provided listed zero Sybase servers.

When you are brand new, and don't know anyone, and your only resource is completely unhelpful, it's hard to not look bad. Fortunately, I made friends quickly, and found other resources to help me out, and managed to survive that first couple of weeks. I was one of the last employees to be laid off when the company was bought out, years later.

[exitseven]

I worked at a high tech company as lab engineer. I really did not know very much about the equipment and it was my job to make sure everything worked for the engineers and the sales guys if they needed to use it. I felt really lost and when I went in the lunch room I could hear some guys talking about how the equipment in the lab was not working. I was offered a job elsewhere but I thought that this job was a better opportunity. I started to think that maybe I should have taken the other job. I talked to my boss and told him that maybe I made a mistake taking the job because i really had no clue what I was doing. He told me that nobody knows everything the first day. He told me to hang in there and give it a week. He was right because I started to feel better after a couple of days

[exitseven]

Thanks for the MHO

[WhitneySnow]

That really sucks. I haven’t had a job yet but I’m sure my first job will probably be retail (unless I wait till college and get an internship first) and will suck just as bad.

[ArrowheadSW]

Wow sorry to hear that you were treated like that. That manager should have been way more polite and understanding than that.

[Asker]

It's a long story I don't have space for, but she eventually got hers.

[ArrowheadSW]

During the times in my career when I trained people, I was careful not to embarrass trainees. Also if she never told you not to tag those t-shirts, she should have owned up to it and not used it against you. She is a kook.

[Anonymous]

I took a day job through a temp in Jacksonville, Florida shortly after arriving there from the San Francisco Bay Area. It was digging trenches. The 7th hour in the boss yells at me to "stop talking to them kind." I was stunned... but I'm not white or black, and NOT a Southerner. I replied, "What kind is that?" He tells me , "You know what kind. If you don't like it, you can leave." I simply smiled and told him to dig his own fucking trench, jump in it and cover himself, throwing the shovel at him and proceeding to walk 4 miles back to the temp. They refused to pay me a penny. I was back on the West Coast in less than 6 mos.🤝

[jimmy2]

My worst job was a turkey farm. It had just rain and we were loading up one side of the 18 wheeler the truck turned around and pulled up. We started to load the other side the truck laid over on the ground. Most of the turkeys smothered

[Asker]

Oh man!!! Murder on job!

[jahaims]

Had swine flu for a 16 hour warehouse job.