Should DD quit her job?

[Sworntofun]

DD 23 has her issues. She has autism and ADHD but with much support made it through uni and graduated in 2025 with a good degree but in an Arts subject that is very niche. She spent the next year trying to get a job and did all the right things, volunteering and staying in her casual student job in hospitality. Unfortunately they started giving her fewer and fewer shifts as she’s obviously a full adult wage at her age.
Finally in July she started an 18 month contract at a local firm in conjunction with doing a marketing apprenticeship. I was delighted. A job at last! However, she has not liked it from the start. She works 40 hours a week for an apprenticeship wage of £8 an hour. It’s a very small team of five in the office and she doesn’t feel she fits in. Now she’s found out that her boss has a spent conviction for child sex offences 15 years ago and she is saying she cannot work there any longer and is going to quit. I can’t help feeling that she should stay as there are so few jobs round here and leaving after only 3 months will look flaky to other employers and what about a reference? She has artistic skills and really wants to start a business but has no real skills to do this. Also without being too outing, it is making and selling an article of clothing that few people wear nowadays. Am I being unreasonable urging her to stay in her job? It’s not forever after all.
thanks for reading

Edit - just seen you said it was an 18-month apprenticeship so ignore my post!

How did she find that information out?

It's not something the boss will have shared himself and it's information that is strictly protected by GDPR.

My point is, it might not be true.

You are not being unfair. She needs to stay in her job. Maybe start a side business in her spare time. She doesn’t sound ready or equipped to start her own business full time yet. You will end up carrying her. Even more than you do already.

I would encourage her to stay in the apprenticeship until she passes it. £8 an hour is more than £0 an hour. When I did my apprenticeship I was paid £17k a year in central London… in 2018. She’s lucky to be paid to train.

The CSO record is obviously unpleasant but there will rarely be a time when she won’t find something she dislikes about the people she works for or with. It sounds like an excuse to me because she doesn’t like her colleagues and it’s a lot of work for not a lot of money.

Three months isn't long enough to give anything a go - even when I go into a new role I give it a minimum of six to feel if I have properly got into the swing of things. Is she only looking at the negatives and not the positives? It's not a great wage but presumably she can look into other ways to top up her wage - 40 hours a week is full time but it still leaves with her evenings and weekends to focus on her side-hustle. I don't see what her boss' spent conviction has to do with anything - we all work alongside people who have past history - it's weird that she knows given that it was 15 years ago. It doesn't impact on her at all, she's just finding excuses to leave isn't she?

And I agree with the other posters about the job itself.

Not fitting in / not liking something you heard about someone at work aren't valid reasons to leave a job and she will come across as flaky if she leaves 3 months into an 18 month post.

She'll learn more and have a much better CV from sticking it out, learning how to deal with people she isn't that keen on/ hasn't clicked with, gaining some experience. If she really isn't happy there then she needs to have another job lined up before she quits this one.

Three months isn’t very long in the grand scheme of things.
I would encourage her to stick with it and look at it as a learning opportunity to better things.
First jobs are rarely great but they are good as a foothold to something better in the future.
Learning how to get along with other people no matter how annoying or tiresome they are is a skill everyone has to learn at some point.
Up until this point school, uni and volunteering will have been very accommodating of her needs but the paid, working environment is a very different arena which she needs to learn to navigate.

I would encourage her to stay, maybe get her to think about booking a few days off here and there so she can look forward to that.

Am sorry but I would want to ascertain more about the CSO? If it was a 16yo having sex with a 15yo that is one thing - but it rarely is, is it?

My DH sat next to someone for 3 years who was arrested for having thousands of child sex abuse images on his home computer. It completely reframed his interactions with work colleagues afterwards.

The issue is that your DD has no right of enquiry (sarah’s law etc is for where a minor may be at risk) so my advice would be to keep her head down and start applying for jobs elsewhere now and not to move until she has somewhere to move to.

How does she know about his alleged offences?

Does she get any support at work with her ASD/ADHD?

Why would she quit? He has paid his debt to society- that is what a spent conviction is. He is not around any children. Convicts have to work for a living like everyone else. It is stupid to quit a job for this reason. For all she or anyone knows they have a serial rapist for a colleague that hasn‘t been caught yet.

Of course she should stay in her job, she made a commitment. I'm sure we all did jobs we didn't enjoy and worked for people we didn't respect but the only way to leave a job is to get another one, and yes other employers won't be charitable about changing jobs after just 3 months. I think your DD needs to realise this is the real world now, she has choices yes but they will have consequences. It sounds like the apprenticeship is the best bit, if she can get through the next 18 months then she'll have got a decent qualification out of it, then she can move onto another job.

She shouldn’t leave unless she has another job in place first. Sometimes something just isn’t a good fit. Unemployment is rarely the solution.

Anyone convicted of an offense is identified in the media, there is no Data Protection legislation to protect their identity nor should there be. If I was employing someone I'd want to know their criminal background. If he's on the sex offenders register he will have that for many years to come and I agree with your daughter, I would never want to knowingly work with someone of such despicable character. It's never a 'spent' conviction, it's an addiction and a personality trait.

She needs to stay to get the experience. She is earning 320 a week and presumambly living at home which is fine. A bit of resilience is needed here.

Sometimes we have to put up with things we don’t like so we can put food on the table and a roof over our heads. You have to be in a place of privilege to be able to quit a job because a colleague has a spent conviction from over a decade ago. Besides, where does it end? Over 12.5 million people have spent convictions. That is almost 1 in 3 workers.

She may be on £8 an hour but she has no bills to pay. She needs to be told over and over again that she is an adult therefore needs to earn. I wouldn't be too quick to believe her about the boss either. She also needs to learn that she will have to work with people that she may not like, it;s life and she needs to get on with it.

I think she’s old enough for some realism, albeit delivered sensitively to her needs. A new job is often difficult until you’re into the swing of things, can see your work making an impact and understand what it is you’re doing properly, and started to settle; many workplaces will have somebody who you dislike or feel you don’t want to work with but it’s not realistic to respond to that by quitting. I think it’s normal when quite young and only having the dynamic of education as a reference point to have an idea of colleagues as being people you’ll get on well or be friends with, you can explain that it’s totally normal for this not to always be the case and that as long as everyone is polite and reasonably friendly at work and supports each other to get things done, you don’t need to “fit in” or develop any sort of relationship beyond that. Whilst she’s obviously had some struggles, you need to encourage her to think of the long term: she isn’t going to progress and get beyond the tough stage of being the lowest paid and most junior if she leaves things early on.

Her business idea is something she can work on in her own time. She can develop a business plan, do market research to establish whether there’s any demand for her product, explore where she’d sell and how she’d market it, make some samples and target craft fairs and pop ups etc. Having a marketing apprenticeship and a good grounding in the fundamentals of product and marketing is going to benefit her if she wants to found a business or seek outside investment for it, and you can point that out to her.

It's easier to get a job when you have a job... she can quit when she has something else lined up.

"her boss has a spent conviction for child sex offences"

Good thing she is 23 and not a child anymore.

Anyway, as someone else said, is this proven or just hearsay?
I'm sure being Autistic is making it difficult to feel like she fits in but that's going to be a problem with almost any workplace.

Suck it up. (the job, not the boss)

I didnt think child sex offenses do become spent?

Unless as someone said up thread is more of 16+15 year kinda situation but even then I dont think they do?

I was going to post this too. Child sex offences are surely unspent forever.

No, she should not quit an apprenticeship because she doesn’t fit in and because her boss has a criminal record.

Most people can’t afford to leave jobs because they don’t fit in. It’s an absolutely enormous decision to leave an apprenticeship, the state of the job market at the moment.

When my dd finished her degree she couldn’t get any job at all. She started going for apprenticeships that she had absolutely no interest in she was so desperate. She has a job now in an office. Her desk mate is 62. Everyone else is in their fifties and she’s 22 but she is not there to be friends with people, shes there because it’s a job.

She will have to learn to work with people who she might dislike. Even if she went self employed. She would have to deal with, negotiate, have dealings with people she cannot stand.

She will have to learn it is best to get another job before quitting the one you might not like too much. She has to keep looking for something else.

What she needs to learn is that the job market is a market like any other. And can be very ruthless. She is marketing herself to an employer.

She says she doesn’t fit in. I would explore that a bit more.
She is a trier which is excellent. But needs to try for herself. If she is keen on self employment she needs to dip her toe in it ( and learn the legals), before jacking her job in.

People invariably often do not get a job where their degree is relevant.