Inspired by a thread I recently saw on Reddit about people quitting their jobs, I wondered whether folks here had had any experiences where they accepted a job, only to discover it was very different to what they were told it would be during the recruitment phase? If so, did you nope out of it? Asking as I'm pretty much in this boat now. Accepted a new job offer, started and it isn't what was described in the slightest. Now considering my options and applying for other jobs only a few weeks in. Anyone else had this? If so did you have any awkward conversations with the hiring manager?
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Realising a job isn't what was described
- Thread starter Cattlyst
- Start date
nush
Gold Member
Yes, as it does not need to go on your CV becuse it's still during your "Looking for a new job" period. I bailed or I styed for the income while I actively continued to look for a new job.
It won't get better, job descriptions not matching the role is an indicator they do not respect you and just fed you bullshit to fill the open position.
I think this is what I'm going to do. Just actively look for something else and do the bare minimum in the current job to keep a wage coming in.
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Yep, fresh out of uni I applied for a job at the local council working in the IT department. It turned out to be archiving documents, which was mind-numbing enough as it is. To add insult to injury, it turned out it was an internship, I wasn’t being paid for the work I did, and there was no guaranteed job at the end of it. I nope’d after two days.
Wow that is appalling. You definitely made the right decision there!
Irobot82
Member
Did you not ask to see the process or anything like that? Just whatever the interviewers said the job was?
BadBurger
Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Yea, I relied on the info of the recruiters or whatever.
Irobot82
Member
Yeah I hear ya. I always ask to see the team and or meet them.
Two reason.
1. To see what they actually do.
2. To see if I can work with them. Working with asshats sucks.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Irobot82
Member
For sure. I've been burned a few times. I get it. The nice thing is we can learn from our mistakes and try to do better. It's a good rule of thumb to follow though. You may end up finding that job you love doing but working with assholes can ruin it.
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
Most of my jobs were not what was described because I would do the things I wanted to do and work toward what I enjoy more than what I was described. I had one job where I was just doing analysis, and instead got myself out in the field working with real hardware or going on travel instead of being stuck in the office.
Tschumi
Member
welll... i've got one... i got work in a call center... what i didn't expect was it to be run by a genuine new jersey crook (this was in melbourne, australia), to have 2 other coworkers in an office with space for like 30 employees (a dusty office), to try to sell wheat newsletter subscriptions to suicidal wheat farmers, for the boss to spend the whole time trying to convince me that taxes were entirely bad and bragging about owning a sports car first thing out of college despite not being able to afford it...
... he drove a yellow hummer...
...his wife, this was australia but i rather suspect she had an oxy addiction or something because she was rather serene and empty headed all the time, she was the receptionist lol
yeah that was pretty awful, i quit in about a month, next time i went past the building it had clearly been bought out by a new company... worst thing is, i had been given a lunch by my favourite nearby lunch shop on the understanding that i'd pay them back the next day, er but i never got around to it so i still owe that place like $8 and it genuinely bothers me whenever i think about it
... he drove a yellow hummer...
...his wife, this was australia but i rather suspect she had an oxy addiction or something because she was rather serene and empty headed all the time, she was the receptionist lol
yeah that was pretty awful, i quit in about a month, next time i went past the building it had clearly been bought out by a new company... worst thing is, i had been given a lunch by my favourite nearby lunch shop on the understanding that i'd pay them back the next day, er but i never got around to it so i still owe that place like $8 and it genuinely bothers me whenever i think about it
I woundnt worry about the $8 - great story though!
With my job I have waaaay more responsibility than I should have. Which is nice because it means people obviously think I can do the job, but also sucks because I'm not being paid to dictate stuff to other people and teams.
Oh, yeah, ever since then, I’ve always been a lot more inquisitive when applying for a job. Thankfully, I’ve only ever had two jobs since - one was in a call centre as a debt collector, and the second, my current job, is in finance. I love it, even though a few of my colleagues are absolute wankers.
haxan7
Banned
that can be a good thing if you look at it from the perspective of the experience / value you'll gain for the long term.
lachesis
Member
Well, I stayed on same company for past 20+ years fresh out of college (as fine art painting major) and the job evolved as the industry evolved too.
Started my job as desktop publishing/printing as a junior designer - I remember my first actual job (after non-paid internship) was making color copies.
My initial reaction was that I'm in-house Kinkos, rather than being a designer. I was hungry and desperate though, so I stuck thru.
Back then, color copiers had to make 4 passes to make one copy - at least that Canon color copier did - and took almost 1 min per page to scan 4 times and print in 4 passes (CMYK) - and the document that I had to copy had hundreds of pages. I literally sat on a carton of paper next to the cramped copier room and sat there, feeding one page by page.
Then moved onto scanning documents. Sometimes I had to scan in a physical newspapers section by section and piece together as my given scanner was pretty small.
Then moved onto designing, laminating hundreds or sometimes thousands of credentials for various political/non-political events.
Then internet became thing... so I was stationed to work with the .com department of the company for designing web banners and promos.
Then 2nd Iraq war happened... so I was moved to maps - did overnight shift for several months, (12 hour shift from Midnight till Noon, 7 days a week) - specializing software called Keyhole, a precursor to the google sattelite maps before it was bought out - it was a lot more customizable back then - I was able to setup my own textures over earth and all.
Then the set designer hired by the company left, and a 42" plotter that he used to use came into the our printing dept because they didn't know what to do with that asset. Originally was meant to print out some large schematics - but ended up using it to make set props that we used to send out to outside printing company at exceptionally high cost, saving serious $$$ and time for the company... now we have 2 of larger 60" plotters running in tandem printing photos, set pieces, canvas banners, transparent back lit films... to bathroom signs and in-house posters.
Then moved onto helping out company's booking department to score exclusive interviews and specials with big name people & celebrities by providing them a custom sizzle pitches.
Now I'm doing a lot of initial design concept/pitches for upcoming shows along with producers, promotion materials, podcast logos & visuals, and making pretty much all the presentations for my president to report to CEO of the parent company, or when she's making outside presentations - basically representing entire company.
... and still doing ALL of above, and yes including making color copies or laminating or scans if need - but thankfully we have feeders, and new copier shoots out 60+ full color pages in a minute, I have much larger scanner and the computers are much faster/intelligent than old Power PC Mac that was so slow.
Someone who came into our area didn't see the future, called it a dead-end and left less than a year. Many do. I don't really blame them.
I stuck around and took it day by day - and job evolved. Some by luck, some by coincidence, some by my own effort, and some by necessity, and some by my boss's help.
Even today - I honestly don't know how my job is going to evolve from now on, or what will be on my plate when I come in for work - that I feel like Forrest Gump, and my work being box full of chocolate. Not that I enjoy working like loving the chocolate, it's more like Harry Potter's jelly beans that you don't know what kind of flavor you'd get - but I like people I've been with for many years together & I like helping out them with whatever I can... and am glad that I was able to so far.
And the sheer variety of things to do, at least didn't bore me so far... but sometimes it is overwhelming. Just got done with another presentation for President, and our CEO - been working all weekend, back-to-back 12+ hour shift for few days in a row, with another big presentation & ad design for a magazine on my plate today. Several big printing job waiting for me when I'm in office tomorrow (doing remote today) I'm pretty burnt, and I haven't had a vacation (other than company holidays) for past two years...
So... my take of it is - although I admit I may be a lucky (?) one - there's certain amount of control you can assert of what you do. Some patience and persistence is indeed a virtue, and strike when iron is hot. Worth trying & what can you lose... or maybe I'm too much of a boomer to think like that..?
Started my job as desktop publishing/printing as a junior designer - I remember my first actual job (after non-paid internship) was making color copies.
My initial reaction was that I'm in-house Kinkos, rather than being a designer. I was hungry and desperate though, so I stuck thru.
Back then, color copiers had to make 4 passes to make one copy - at least that Canon color copier did - and took almost 1 min per page to scan 4 times and print in 4 passes (CMYK) - and the document that I had to copy had hundreds of pages. I literally sat on a carton of paper next to the cramped copier room and sat there, feeding one page by page.
Then moved onto scanning documents. Sometimes I had to scan in a physical newspapers section by section and piece together as my given scanner was pretty small.
Then moved onto designing, laminating hundreds or sometimes thousands of credentials for various political/non-political events.
Then internet became thing... so I was stationed to work with the .com department of the company for designing web banners and promos.
Then 2nd Iraq war happened... so I was moved to maps - did overnight shift for several months, (12 hour shift from Midnight till Noon, 7 days a week) - specializing software called Keyhole, a precursor to the google sattelite maps before it was bought out - it was a lot more customizable back then - I was able to setup my own textures over earth and all.
Then the set designer hired by the company left, and a 42" plotter that he used to use came into the our printing dept because they didn't know what to do with that asset. Originally was meant to print out some large schematics - but ended up using it to make set props that we used to send out to outside printing company at exceptionally high cost, saving serious $$$ and time for the company... now we have 2 of larger 60" plotters running in tandem printing photos, set pieces, canvas banners, transparent back lit films... to bathroom signs and in-house posters.
Then moved onto helping out company's booking department to score exclusive interviews and specials with big name people & celebrities by providing them a custom sizzle pitches.
Now I'm doing a lot of initial design concept/pitches for upcoming shows along with producers, promotion materials, podcast logos & visuals, and making pretty much all the presentations for my president to report to CEO of the parent company, or when she's making outside presentations - basically representing entire company.
... and still doing ALL of above, and yes including making color copies or laminating or scans if need - but thankfully we have feeders, and new copier shoots out 60+ full color pages in a minute, I have much larger scanner and the computers are much faster/intelligent than old Power PC Mac that was so slow.
Someone who came into our area didn't see the future, called it a dead-end and left less than a year. Many do. I don't really blame them.
I stuck around and took it day by day - and job evolved. Some by luck, some by coincidence, some by my own effort, and some by necessity, and some by my boss's help.
Even today - I honestly don't know how my job is going to evolve from now on, or what will be on my plate when I come in for work - that I feel like Forrest Gump, and my work being box full of chocolate. Not that I enjoy working like loving the chocolate, it's more like Harry Potter's jelly beans that you don't know what kind of flavor you'd get - but I like people I've been with for many years together & I like helping out them with whatever I can... and am glad that I was able to so far.
And the sheer variety of things to do, at least didn't bore me so far... but sometimes it is overwhelming. Just got done with another presentation for President, and our CEO - been working all weekend, back-to-back 12+ hour shift for few days in a row, with another big presentation & ad design for a magazine on my plate today. Several big printing job waiting for me when I'm in office tomorrow (doing remote today) I'm pretty burnt, and I haven't had a vacation (other than company holidays) for past two years...
So... my take of it is - although I admit I may be a lucky (?) one - there's certain amount of control you can assert of what you do. Some patience and persistence is indeed a virtue, and strike when iron is hot. Worth trying & what can you lose... or maybe I'm too much of a boomer to think like that..?
Cockles & Whelks
Banned
That sounds like the premise for a hit HBO comedy drama.
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dr_octagon
Banned
told my boss i could never do his job because i wasn't planning to get lobotomy
EverydayBeast
ChatGPT 0.1
You have the ability to move on from a job it’s possible you were sold the wrong job.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Good call. Never work for free unless someone wants to do charity work knowing full well its a short term gig for a good cause (and the charity might be half broke already).
Our company would hire college coop students for $20/hr. All they did was some basic help with excel, powerpoint and boring tasks to get their feet wet. Pretty good gig for $20/hr and you got zero hard core responsibilities.
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Here's a good one from the 80s. My brothers worked at the post office part time during school and Christmas. Paid fucking great. Minimum wage back then in Canada was probably $4 but stand there being a mail sorter (not even a mal carrier in winter) paid double digit. With OT they were making something crazy like $15-18/hr in 1985. I think holiday pay was double time. No wonder they bought so many video games and board games for the family.
The best part wasnt that.
Part of the job was literally standing in the mail bag room where carriers would drop dirty dusty mail bags after their shift down a steel chute. My brothers' job was to sit there for hours twiddling their thumbs waiting for bags to fall.
They pick them up from a bin, dust them off and fold them.
That would be their job when they werent sorting mail. Paid double digit $/hr 35 years ago.
The best part wasnt that.
Part of the job was literally standing in the mail bag room where carriers would drop dirty dusty mail bags after their shift down a steel chute. My brothers' job was to sit there for hours twiddling their thumbs waiting for bags to fall.
They pick them up from a bin, dust them off and fold them.
That would be their job when they werent sorting mail. Paid double digit $/hr 35 years ago.
Had I known it was only an internship, I wouldn’t have taken it, doubly so if I knew there was no guaranteed job at the end. But, like I said, I was fresh out of uni and took the first ‘job’ I was offered. Live and learn.
I_D
Member
When I accepted a "Director's Assistant" position at a tutoring institution, I assumed I would be interviewing, reviewing resumes, booking appointments, handling calls, handling customer support, handling money, keeping the calendar, etc.
What I actually had to do was drive around town planting ground-signs in traffic hotspots. That's it. 10 hours per day, 4 days per week.
When I actually did it, and the sales increased by like 1%, I was offered a "Center Director" position.
Even though I knew it wouldn't be what I assumed, I still figured I would be doing basically all the stuff I thought the previous position was supposed to do.
What actually happened is that I was flown out to various states to attend "conferences" in which all of the other Center Directors were taught hyper-aggressive sales techniques. For example, given that I'm in a one-party-consent state, which also coincidentally considers spoken contracts to be legally-binding, I was told I should record all moments of all conversations with all people. Then I can use clips from the audio as proof of contracts. Then we were taught how to lead conversations in ways that will cause customers to agree to contracts.
When not attending conferences, the job responsibilities were basically everything I assumed the first position would entail. Though I also had to step in to cover missing teachers, even though I wasn't certified in any way to teach those particular subjects. I taught Spanish to a Romanian lady for two days. I don't speak Spanish or Romanian.
So at that point, I basically quit my job, but kept showing up all day and doing nothing. I was waiting to see how long it would take to be fired, while I was looking for other jobs. I lasted for almost a year.
During that year, I saw all kinds of weird shit. The job was certainly not what I expected.
What I actually had to do was drive around town planting ground-signs in traffic hotspots. That's it. 10 hours per day, 4 days per week.
When I actually did it, and the sales increased by like 1%, I was offered a "Center Director" position.
Even though I knew it wouldn't be what I assumed, I still figured I would be doing basically all the stuff I thought the previous position was supposed to do.
What actually happened is that I was flown out to various states to attend "conferences" in which all of the other Center Directors were taught hyper-aggressive sales techniques. For example, given that I'm in a one-party-consent state, which also coincidentally considers spoken contracts to be legally-binding, I was told I should record all moments of all conversations with all people. Then I can use clips from the audio as proof of contracts. Then we were taught how to lead conversations in ways that will cause customers to agree to contracts.
When not attending conferences, the job responsibilities were basically everything I assumed the first position would entail. Though I also had to step in to cover missing teachers, even though I wasn't certified in any way to teach those particular subjects. I taught Spanish to a Romanian lady for two days. I don't speak Spanish or Romanian.
So at that point, I basically quit my job, but kept showing up all day and doing nothing. I was waiting to see how long it would take to be fired, while I was looking for other jobs. I lasted for almost a year.
During that year, I saw all kinds of weird shit. The job was certainly not what I expected.
I_D
Member
I took five years of Spanish in school, so I only really remember how to pronounce words.
Most of the lesson involved looking at Spanish-Romanian translations, and just pronouncing the words for her.
I also remembered "O, As, A, Amos, Ais, An" so that helped a tiny bit.
BadBurger
Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Well the story is a bit more involved. I had interned with another portion of this big corporation before, in that field (for imaging technology) just a different group under their umbrella. I did go through a non-technical interview as well with the company HR and some middle manager who was not technical themselves.
I don't know if it was crossed wires, the recruiter straight up lying, higher ups in the company saying "wait are we crazy trusting engineering design to some kid with a bachelor's and not even a master's (I bailed on my post grad studies after a few semesters)? Who knows, I didn't stick around long enough to find out.
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Trogdor1123
Gold Member
I had this once. Job was sold to me as a strategic role with an administrative assistant. Started the role and there was no assistant and the work was entirely administrative. I left fairly quickly once my old job called me up and offered me the actual role I wanted.
Dural
Member
The company I currently work for likes to oversell the company and twist job descriptions. I was contacted by a recruiter, was pretty happy at my previous job and hadn't been looking to leave but figured what the hell and talked to the recruiter. They put me in touch with the VP of Quality, the job was for a quality/lab manager position, and I'd be managing the metallurgical lab and helping out with audits. I asked about bonuses and was told they have quarterly bonuses for salaried employees and they're pretty much guaranteed (my previous job bonuses were all over the place and I was hoping for something more concrete), I've gotten one in 11 quarters. Within six months of starting I was asked to figure out how to get a new machine running with no experience with the equipment and barely any training (that machine is a POS and won't stay working plus every person they've hired to run it that I have to train ends up quitting because of how bad it sucks). The VP of Quality that had hired me was fired about 8 months after I started and pretty much all the salary employees that had been with the company for any extended period of time were gone. The helping with audits turned into me taking care of them completely and trying to find the documents that were all over the place and out of date. I've been here two and a half years now and they've hired a couple people to help out so it's gotten better, but the overall management of it is pretty shitty. We were without a maintenance manager for about 9 months last year, the job description made it seem like they would have a team but in reality it's just the one person and they are on call 24/7. We've been through 3 since last year because of it and I don't see the current guy staying. The thing is; the pay is good, it's only 4 miles from my house, I have tons of freedom and can go meet my kids when they get off the bus if I want, the benefits are good, and it's gotten pretty damn easy now too with the other people they've hired. So even though it's not what I was originally told, I'm pretty happy with it.
chixdiggit
Member
My wife got offered a one time job in Dubai. Pay was 10K from an oil Sheik. We assumed she would have to just eat some shit or something (you know, easy work). Turns out they wanted her to be a receptionist. She quit after an hour.
nush
Gold Member
I had a job that was just like that, the day I started the owner said to me "We better think of something for you to do", which was red flag number one for me. He then hands me an audit report and asks me to fix all the issues on it as they have a reaudit due soon. This is something I know NOTHING about, but I look at the report and see it's a year and a half old! So I question it and the owner sheepishly say "We had someone working on it but they left".
That became a running theme at the company, any problem was always cuased by "Someone that left". Those roles remained unfilled. 4 months later I added myself to their high staff turnover and just walked out. There were too my issues working at that place even though the money was good.