To ask, what was your sign to leave a new job?

[ThatDenimPombear]

Sometimes you just know early on that a job isn’t right for you. Maybe it’s a toxic culture, a nightmare manager, or the role isn’t what was promised. If you’ve ever left a job quickly, what was the moment that made you realise it was time to go?

When a cocky and manipulative colleague was suspended and allowed to return as they messed up the investigation rather than because he was innocent. Next month he was made employee of the month to 'boost his confidence'!

Micromanaging. Left by lunchtime on the first day because it was very clearly a micromanaging culture.

One job I had I heard office staff disparaging the warehouse staff. Nope. Left as soon as I could.

When I found out they'd covered up the serial assault and harassment of junior female colleagues and the person doing most of the covering up was my boss, the only female director.

Sunday night fear

I had a good inkling when I discovered that my manager had offered me the job on the one day he had back at work between being suspended and going off on long term sick.

When I was asked to pick up his work, I opened the most recent draft of the strategic plan to find that more than half of the content was copied and pasted from essay questions I had answered as part of the application process.

I wasn’t happy.
I quite like new challenges and learning new things, but if a new job makes you unhappy, you leave.

Only ever happened to me once. I left after 15 months, but was looking for a new job after about 11 months.

When I discovered (day three) I was expected to work alone, at night with a registered sex offender. HR knew and they also knew of several other woman who had been attacked by him, on work premises during working shifts, during the day with other people around.
I refused to put myself at risk and walked out without giving notice.

A hands on manager. Very hands on.

When i completed a piece of work that I had never done before and sent it off to be proof read....for the whole thing to be rewritten by my manager. She had given me no guidance even when I asked. She just said "copy it from the previous document made". What was even better was watching the changes happen in real time as it was a Teams document. This all happened within the first few weeks.

For her mentally deranged manager to scream at her saying it was all wrong. Apparently I had done it right the first time, but my manager would never admit that and I was too scared to speak up.

The mental deranged manager would chew people up in meetings all the time and we would just have to sit there.

Lasted a year only because my confidence was on the floor and I found looking for another job extremely difficult and mentally draining

I lasted 3 weeks in an admin job. The interview panel (ops director, office manager and account manager ) all seemed nice at the interview, but once I started, their masks immediately dropped. The whole team were bitchy, snide , drama-seeking arseholes. They made racist comments about the warehouse team. They weight shamed me. They barely did any of their actual work- they passed most work on to me , so they could sit there bitching about everyone and micromanaging my work. The director was one of the worst, he was an absolute bully. I knew it wasn't for me so as soon as I had another job lined up, I emailed my notice in at 5pm and didnt go back the next day. I had a load of missed calls from them the following morning and the account manager turned up at my house (I didnt answer ).

I left a job after 7 weeks, it was so stressful but so boring as well. It flared my IBS up and was constantly in the loo. I new in the first week I hated it but thought I'd have to give it 6 months!

Abuse of power. My manager telling me at the last minute I was needed to fill in for my her at an office an hour away. It messed up a Dr appointment I'd waited weeks for after work. To find afterwards it was because she'd made a hair appointment at the last minute.

Another one, complete lack of gratitude. Working unpaid overtime for someone who was just abusive. Kept demanding more and more. Never said thank you. After I left they'd phone me and ask me to help them with things they didn't know how to do. For a while I did, but then I refused as they just never said thank you. There'd be a comment instead like "you should have done this" when I'd left two years ago and it was this year's tax return.

Working in a small team (4 of us). Two of the team were of long term sick at our busiest time of the year, so I ended up doing lots of unpaid overtime. I did ask if my hours could be temporarily increased to reflect the extra I was doing. I was told no- there was no money. A while later, when the team was back up to strength, but there was still a bit of a back-log, we were told in a team meeting that someone else from another team will be ‘helping us out’ and getting paid for her time.
That was when I decided to leave.

I had an underpaid job in a small tech company in London. I had just finished my masters, I was very junior. There was no onboarding, they gave me a project that had been running for 2 years and had JUST gone to production. No documentation, a 1-hour handover session and a technology stack I hadn't used before. The guy I took over from seemed annoyed whenever I asked him any question. I would get angry emails from the client about issues I didn’t even understand which always had to be resolved by the following morning.

Then one day, during a team meeting, I asked for support with a project proposal they’d asked me to prepare in 3 days about a topic that was not from my field of expertise. A senior guy said “you can google it”. I quit that week. Two years later everyone I knew in the company, with the exception of 4 or 5 people, had left.

It took me years to get my self esteem back after this experience.

When my new line manager came into work with a stinking hangover. Incidentally the company had a policy of taking new starters out lunch in their first week.

HE FARTED IN THE CAR. it was so foul and I couldn’t escape. I was so offended I quit the same night

On return from maternity leave despite having agreed core hours of work, I was expected to continue working beyond closing time of my child's nursery.

Nope.

Love this.

My record was one day as a temp. Grudgingly shown to a filthy messy desk with a broken chair, told I couldn't have a hot drink of any kind as I wasn't part of the "drinks kitty", nobody told me anything about the company, where the loos or emergency exits were, expected to use a headset with filthy waxy earpieces to listen to badly recorded and incomprehensible audio tapes which were weeks old, so obviously nobody had been able to understand them. Phoned my agency at lunchtime, told them I would finish the day but not return, used the rest of my lunch hour to type out a feedback email to the department manager, which I sent at 4.59 pm, 10 minutes after getting my timesheet signed, and one minute before I left!.

This was the worst, but while temping I got so used to the disgustingly dirty state of many offices, keyboards, phones and headsets, I got into the habit of taking Flash wipes with me, arriving early on the first day, and cleaning my workstation. If anyone said anything, I'd simply say "Sorry, I'm a bit neurotic about germs as my husband has cancer and has very low immunity." This was true at the time, and also shut them up. In fact, when I showed them the state of the wipes after cleaning the phones and keyboards, quite often they were shocked and cleaned their own workstations!

Truthfully it was when nurseries became so over run with autistic kids it was unmanageable not enough support staff. 140 kids am/pm over 50 % sometimes sort of needs 3 support workers.

The 1st I left 30 years ago because of a pervy salesman and a refusal to pay me the same as the men.

This year I left 2 jobs. One was long term employment but I was fed up with bad management and then they tried to completely alter my contract and job with no discussion. I quickly got a new job but left after day 1. At the interview I had said it was my perfect role as I wanted to get out of sales. On the first day, they put me in sales! I queried it and was told they had given the role I interviewed for to a man & they had found this role for me. Just no.

Now in a completely new role, finger crossed.

The following -
a) in a team of 6 people, 4 had left (and been replaced) in the previous year. These 4 people had been in the team for several years prior, and the only change was the new manager (also see point c) ).
b) one kind colleague who I knew from a previous role took me aside and told me to leave as soon as I could otherwise I'd end up getting stuck (in terms of professional development).
c) the main issue - an absolute bitch of a micromanaging, bullying line manager with a queen bee complex. Re-wrote all of my work, re-wrote my emails (which I had to forward to her to 'approve' first). Told me I wasn't doing things properly, despite excellent client feedback, but refused to send me for training. Told me off like a child for responding too quickly to her emails, as I couldn't possibly have read, digested, and responded to an email within 5 minutes, and therefore wasn't reading them properly. I'm a fast reader and type at 100+ WPM. Refused any home working for anyone other than herself and the kind colleague from b) (who knew exactly what she was like and had managed to get in her good books).

Left less than a quarter of the way into my contract and battled with resulting anxiety and insecurities about my work for a good 8 years afterwards.

Within the first few weeks, no training plan, the course I was supposed to be sent on didn't materialise. No actual desk/ workspace once they moved into new building. A kitchen chair and rigged up worktop to sit with a laptop. No lunch break. A boss who sniffed incessantly. Four months I gave it.

A factory job I left on day1 as was instantly made to feel unwelcome and second class (temping job), they then followed up the hostile unfriendly colleagues with an instruction that I'd be sat at one machine for the entire 6 weeks.
Other factories I'd worked at made an effort to keep rotating you and keep you from getting too bored but not this one .
On 2 occasions the job had really not turned out as expected (no one's fault, just changing circumstances), on one the change didn't matter and I still liked the work, on the other it was very dull and I immediately started looking again.

interviewed for and offered Sales Admin role. Turned up day one to be told you’ll be sales director’s PA. Didn’t want to be a PA. She was a bitch. Lasted about two weeks. Told her why I was going and she told me it was just as well, I wasn’t PA’ing to her standard. I replied that as I’m not a PA, that should explain why I’m leaving. It was the most I had ever stood up to anyone (early 20’s).