what's the best opportunity/thing you've ever turned down?

[PunnyBeaker]

Can be a job/relationship/trip/offer, anything at all

My bosses boss asked me to apply for a promotion. I was pregnant with twins at the time so I declined. The person that got it was not great and after maternity leave I left. In the long run it took my career down a different and good path but many times I did regret it and had to take a cut in hours for a time.
I'd always advice not to let pregnancy stop you applying. I put the clients wellbeing and business disruption as the number one priority (it shouldn't have been).

Turned down a job I really wanted in order to do a PhD I didn't really want to do. Should have known my own mind rather than asking other people for advice, because it turns out that when you ask people "should I take [boring-sounding but fascinating to me] job or do [interesting-sounding fully funded] PhD, they tell you to do the PhD because they assume that's following your dream, whereas for me the job was the dream.

A job in Brighton. I don't live far away but it would have meant driving and finding somewhere to park every day while my existing job was an easy commute by train into London. I would have been bloody good at that job

A pt job straight after uni in the subject I studdied... these jobs were like rockig horse shit In my defence, I didn't know if/ how I would support myself if I took the job. Think big expensive city far away from home...

I had a choice between a job in cricket or one at the BBC. I took the one at the BBC. Learnt a lot and made some long lasting friends but England won the Ashes the year after and I still think “what if…?”

A David Bowie concert

Why do people do this? We all have regrets. The thing is to learn from them. And don’t do it again.

Mine was something I found out about afterwards, a free or very cheap Prince concert in London, it was apparently awesome.

Job at the EU…. I’d just met DH and was all loved up. Eighteen months later I was made redundant…. At the next place, shortly after we got married , I was approached about working in Nice. He wouldn’t even consider it 🙄

In the 90s, I went to stay with my student boyfriend's family. They were putting bets on Ascot, and I hadn't got any money on me at the time. I said 'oh I'd put it on Frankie Dettori to win everything '. They offered me a quid for the accumulator, I declined as didn't want to be rude.

He won all 7 races that day and I would have cleared north of 100k, enough to buy a flat, then.

I still kick myself.

Turned down a job that was more than double my income because I knew I'd be bored rigid and I enjoyed my badly paid one. That led me to to a career I loved but also burned me out in a decade. So who knows which would have been the better option!

Mine's mostly career related. I sidestepped a couple of v good promotion offers when I was younger because I didn't have the nerve to step up and do them. I bloody could have done them too but I was too scared of failure.

Not a specific thing, but I moved home to my small city when my mum had cancer and now I’ll stay here to be close to dad. Previously worked at large accountancy firms but there are only two mid size firms here, so my career won’t be what it could have been. I do feel sad about it but I’ll just have to make the most of where I am.

I had just returned from an academic exchange in the USA and was offered another one the following year. I enjoyed the first trip. However I had moved into a housing association and managed to cover my absence for a year (a friend went in weekly to collect my mail and email anything that had to be deat with. He even stood in for me on a fire door inspection.) I thought a second year might be chancing it so I turned the role down. Always regretted it as I could probably have managed. When you live in a large block of flats its pretty anonymous. If the HA want to send a workperson to do a job they are not bothered who opens the door so long as they get access and the rent is paid.

In my 20s, I used to help out a friend by working in his hotel kitchen at weekends. This was the equivalent of a zero hour weekend contract. I had a FT office job during the week.

My friend offered me a FT live in job at his hotel with full training.

I turned the job down

I progressed extremely well in my FT job.

We are still friends

I often wonder how my life would have changed & progressed if I had taken that opportunity !

When I was 15 a boy fancied me and I turned him down and he now is a millionaire founder of a successful tech start up and I’m on £30k in a shite job 🤣

(True incident, semi serious point of view) Being offered £6,000 in 1983 to spend the afternoon with a Japanese business man with very little English. I was in Shepherd Market in Mayfair so he must have thought I was a sex worker. £6,000 was 18 months salary for me at the time. All I was doing was getting some photocopying done and he followed me into the printers. I declined because I didn't want to not like myself afterwards but I do wonder occasionally whether I should have said yes. He may just have wanted me to strip naked and pour tins of rice pudding over him, which isn't sex at all.

I turned down a very well-paid job in Europe as it would have meant living there for at least two years, but at the time I had three cats.

There was absolutely no way I was giving them up for adoption, and there wasn't anyone to ask if they could look after them whilst I was gone.

I have never for a single minute regretted that decision.

I should have flown to Australia and fought for a relationship - but ‘being noble’ got in the way. I still dream that when I am on my world book tour there will be someone in the audience in Canberra who comes up to me afterwards and says: “I made a mistake.” We both did love, we both did. You let yourself be emotionally blackmailed and I didn’t fight for you. Ah well.

I was a student & going to see my boyfriend

I got on a train, then realised, that it was the wrong train

A young; good looking man in a suit, said "come home with me"

I jumped off the train & got the correct train to see my boyfriend.

I split with my boyfriend after we finally moved in together

I often wonder what my life would have been if I had stayed on the train with the other person !

You turning him down might have been the catalyst for founding a company. As in I’ll show her what she could have missed ! ! 😂😂

In my first graduate job, I worked with a guy who had been a year ahead of me at university, knew a bit, and really fancied. He left to go and work in Hong Kong. At his leaving do he asked me to go with him. I didn’t. It was 30 + years ago, but I do sometimes wonder what might have been.

Centre court semi final Wimbledon tickets.

Sob sob sob

When I was 18 my parents wanted to buy me a 4 bed house in south london rather than me go into halls of residence…… I said I would never make friends that way and insisted on halls. I’m 45 now and would love the same opportunity again!

When I was 7 or 8 years old I had the chance to spend 6 weeks in Finland going to school with my brother - my Finnish skills would have improved so much that I'd not have had half as much difficulty moving here as an adult. But I didn't go because I would have missed my mum too much, my brother did though and it was great for him.