Red Flags That Scream "Don't Take This Job!" - AskReddit

we all stay here too long then go get hammered because we hate our spouses and children and will do anything to avoid going home what's a big red flag when looking for a job if the Job Description has about 20 items of which one is sales your job is going to be sales when the earning potential is stressed over current salary in five years you can be making X cool and that to my offer is guaranteed and we have a deal well it's not guaranteed Oh gotcha so what you're saying is that statement holds no value a bit like occasional weekend means occasional weekend off one summer I applied for a construction job the interviewer told me I might sometimes need to work Saturday's fair enough I thought to myself unexpected stuff can come up and require some extra work it's fine first day on site the foreman told me I'll be working both Saturdays and Sundays with no days off indefinitely my co-workers said this has been going on since Easter it was August oh and my daily schedule got extended by two hours that very next day I lasted less than a month master's degree preferred for an entry-level job at my job we were hiring for an analyst level role something that's maybe three to five years of experience for some reason HR kept pushing through the resumes with ten plus years of experience and master's degrees for us to interview and I kept looking at it like isn't this person way overqualified for this role they were a manager before this and we're interviewing them for an analyst level role which sucked for the people who actually made more sense for the role because they'd get passed over for someone who was extremely overqualified for an analyst position but willing to be super underpaid for their experience I guess they ended up extending an offer to one guy who in fact had a master's and like over 15 years of experience but then coronavirus happened and his offer got rescinded making jokes about overtime and crunch time guaranteed it's going to be a nights and weekends are optional but not actually optional place I went to an interview where the guy said we don't end the day until everyone is done and sometimes that takes another hour on a busy day then my genius brain said yeah I don't want to work constant overtime what was thinking expecting to go home when my contract says I go home in reality maybe an hour over time can easily turn into two hours overtime every day having to pretend us as normal as toxic as hell initially unpaid but will result in full-time offer upon completion of XYZ I was looking for a junior developer job right out of college had a firm tell me unpaid for 16 weeks of training then my base salary will start at 49,000 with no benefits upon 30 seconds of investigating I found on glass store that they have some sort of weird paycheck system where workers usually end up getting minimum wage for their two years of work and the exit fee for the contract is $29,000 probably not going to work their high staff turnover in a job interview I asked how long do people in this position stay the manger danced around the question and didn't give me an exact answer he just told me I don't know people come and go they found other jobs and leave me hanging that is a sign of a place with high turnover that answer made me take a hard pass on the job we work hard and play hard it actually means all work and for sure no play translation you will work 60 plus hours a week and are expected to come to the company happy hour whether you drink or not also we all stay here too much then go get hammered because we hate our spouses and children and will do anything to avoid going home I like my job for the most part but whenever some refers to us as the company named family I cringe this is not my family and I will not use the terminology I do brand management so whenever they drop that into something that they want me to send out or share I change it to company name team hiring lots of people on the same position everyone who calls gets a job often means the job is either BS or they are setting you all up to compete for the actual job I had this once turned out it was Commission only door to door vacuum sales I did that for a month my breaking point was when I was told I couldn't carry any water with me and what is essentially desert climate in middle of summer was told to request a glass of water from random strangers same if I needed to use the bathroom I wound up so parched I was risking real dehydration and the other sales people the nerve to drink all my water oh and I sold a grand total of three vacuums I actually has five sales but I quit on a Friday and by Monday they claimed my last two sales were canceled and I now owed them something like $150 for accessories convinced them to zero out my entire account and just closed it the brand was Kirby always asked them why the person you are replacing left the job the way the answer this could be a red flag I always ask hours performance measured and what's the next step and when will I hear back and any other question that may have come up during the interview but I like this question I'm going to add it to my interview question list depending on the truthfulness of the answer this could have saved me from a job a few years back we are a family here which means this is how they try to make up for the bad pay in long hours yes it's a family in the sense that the company expects me to be willing to do anything to help you and your company anytime anywhere anyhow you and your brothers and sisters aka the other overworked unappreciated PN's are conditioned to work harder to help each other out the problem there is that the only people who benefit are the people at the top it's essentially a predatory practice designed to force extra effort out of you by abusing your empathy and your connection to your coworkers Johnny MC corporate F bag literally wouldn't flinch if he dropped out at your desk from the stress he would just be pissed at a loss of output and immediately be concerned with finding a new cog for the machine he calls a family a former coworker shared this tidbit with me years ago and it works wonders try to schedule your in-person interview as late in the afternoon as possible relevant to your position if you're expecting a nine-to-five job schedule your interview for four o'clock or 4:30 you probably discussed after hours work etc during the interview when you are done you should be able to look around are people still working is the parking lot empty you can match up the evidence with what was claimed during the interview and from that judge how realistic the entire Job Description is based on how they treated the after-hours work this was a red flag I had during an interview process once I was doing a phone interview for a 90 position and the person I was interviewing with basically changed the details of the job during the inner of instead of the first shift hours the position promised he immediately went into saying it would be six plus months before the opportunity for first shift would even be a possibility also he was big into asking how dedicated I was to jobs the idea of weekend shifts again not in the original description kept coming up and how everyone had to be a team player and help out on weekends when needed the kicker was when he started talking about how many hours he worked he was bragging that he was up at 6 a.m. every day working then he'd go into the office for the day come home to see his family for dinner and get right back to work until 10 to 11 p.m. every night I had never been turned off from a job faster in my life he asked me to think things over and he'd send me some paperwork via email needless to say I called him the next morning and declined the job it was the worst interview process I'd ever been in open interviews admittedly I've fallen for this a few times but I was young and stupid it's clear they have a high turnover so they're trying to secure as many people as they can most of the time these open interview jobs don't have salaries just commission and refusal or reluctancy to share details over the phone this is what usually ends up in you turning up to an open interview if they withhold information about the role what you'll be doing etc that's a huge red flag they just wanted to get you in the door for an interview to pressure you into joining looking for rock stars in the job description unless of course the posting is in fact for a position to be a rock star similarly ads that read along the lines of do you like sports come be a part of our team we're laid-back and have fun we want all of our MVPs to succeed so we work hard and we play hard too if they're trying to sell you on the work environment in the ad most of the time you should run I'm sure there are exceptions but most of the time you can substitute rock stars and sports and MVPs and all these ads interchangeably with all of it loosely translating to we are going to load a bunch of you up in a van at the butt crack of dawn to drop in neighborhoods for door-to-door cold calls selling cutlery arrived for an interview not too long ago showed up 15 minutes early and had all my certs to prove training waited over 20 minutes before the secretary led me to a conference room waited another 40 minutes and got fed up Quality Manager walked in as I was getting up to leave he was very offended when I told him he had wasted my time and I would never accept a position after being left to wait almost an hour while having an appointment Job Description you will be in charge of the online marketing because of that we expect that you will also be the web developer Photoshop er community manager coffee maker and genital sucker that kind of crap will tell you if that business understands the role they are looking to fill or are just expecting some kind of magical entity that will do everything online related by himself any job that requires an upfront cost this is a telltale sign that you are getting wrapped up into a MLM pyramid scheme I worked at a 7 to 11 for all of a week once I quit when the owner said he wouldn't give me my pay for my training week until I had been there for six months and he had the audacity to sit there and threaten to call the police for stealing a uniform if I didn't return it or pay him back because obviously he can't dock wages he won't give me I called the department of labor and his gas station got shut down the only situation where I'd willingly pay for my uniforms is when I want extras I turned down a second interview for a position in which the interviewer said something to the effect of if your boss emails you on a Friday night you don't have to respond but you know how that looks made it pretty clear that they expect work to be your first priority my employer who treats you like they are doing you a favor with good servant leadership it should be the other way around an unclear job description or a job description that includes too many duties not being offered the opportunity to see the working areas or talk to people who would be your peers just generally trying to feel out whether or not they have things under control or not I don't want to walk into a show I can think of a few specific examples a when I was younger I was in between my dad's house and my eventually wife and later ex-wife's parents house kind of living both places but I was transitioning to move in with her family we lived about 50 minutes apart she stayed with me on occasion at my dad's too this all becomes relevant I applied at the McDonald's in her town just trying to do anything well I got a call one morning at 7 a.m. MCD manager says interview in 25 minutes we were at my dad's and that call woke me up so I told him look I'm almost an hour away there's no way I make that he said then I guess you don't want the job that badly today me would have told him to jog off but back then me jumped in the shower and together me and my ladies spent 120 through country roads and somehow managed to make it just in time I gave my best damn interview he never called me back be a job for online Apple tech support through a third party working from home in the interview they told me they'd send me a Mac to work from an ax phone to use I was a little smarter than than me an example--a so I had questions my main red flag popped when she said you're responsible for the equipment and the cost of any repairs if it breaks ok makes sense but I asked are these new devices she danced around the question but I was persistent finally she said no they're refurbished so my next question was so if you send this Mac to me and day 2 it stops working because of some non damage issue do I still have to pay the repair yeah apparently I would and these suckers are not cheap after that she said I don't know if this job is right for you because I asked strong questions to see if I could get effed over by you guys yeah maybe not I interviewed for a company that had a recruiter after me pretty hard the company was just moving into my market and the reviews on Glassdoor definitely mentioned people being frustrated with the bro culture all of my interviews were over FaceTime with the manager showing up in their pajamas from home and admitting that since the company is still growing the workload was pretty much seven days a week until you got your new team hired and running it just wasn't very professional and it was obvious they didn't have structure or care about people's time I also don't trust companies that brag about things like nerf gun fights around the office and constant happy hour events those perks are fun but it's clear when Nats all they talk about in the job posting that they're trying to distract you from other issues I need to see that your company culture enriching and creates success not free lunches if they ask you to pay for training that's usually a red flag that it's an MLM or pyramid scheme if they ask you to buy stuff on Commission and then it's your job to resell it big ol red flag I've had job interviews where the whole company gave me a weird vibe lots of psychology questions like do you like to be in control while sitting in an office building with zero privacy all of the offices had glass walls so everyone could see everyone else needless to say I didn't accept their offer I was recently roughly two months ago given a job offer from a company I was really interested in the job sounded great was in a career path I was originally helping for when graduating and was back in my hometown so I could see some old friends and family regularly when they made me an offer it was a pretty big pay cut from what I'm currently making actual salary would have been flat out even I hate my current job so that would have been okay by me however I would be losing a week of vacation a week have paid sick time getting slightly worse benefits and half of what my current company offers in 401k matching when I asked what was available for negotiation they got mad at me in fact they expected me to make this life-altering decision in 24 hours with little to no questions asked and got even more mad that I wanted to negotiate my life instead of just say yes or no so I ended up just walking away I hate my current bosses but not enough to walk away from four weeks of vacation and an extra week of sick leave and especially not for given the signs people who will treat me the exact same way as my bosses I remember a specific red flag from when I was interviewing senior year of college went to the initial interview hit it off with the guy right away he was the supervisor in the type of guy I could see myself being happy to work for went to their office for a second interview everything went great met the rest of the team they all seemed like nice people plenty of other young folks just starting out who seemed cool just all around a nice place to work there were a small division of a large insurance company great benefits and corporate resources but plenty of autonomy to do the kind of specialized work my degree was for it was also local I was basically debating between this and one other job which was out of state so location was a big plus on their side about a week goes by and I get another email the supervisor tells me that they're all sold on offering me the job but they need me to come in again apparently that week they've been bought out from their parent company by a consulting firm whose entire business was our specialty this firm was fairly notorious in our industry they had a reputation for snatching up half our graduating class every year burning them out with unrealistic benchmarks and expectations losing almost all of them to better jobs and doing it all over again the next year they were also expanding at an alarming rate and gobbling up a lot of smaller firms in the process some of which had been around forever and had great reputations in the industry word was that they weren't run by people with any experience in our field it was some Wall Street finance guys who ran it purely to increased profit and shareholder value very little concern for a quality of work or quality of life for their employees I went in for this third interview and it was a completely different vibe there was a new guy from the firm making the acquisition who I did not vibe with it all he really did not seem like the type of person I wanted to work for they also suddenly wanted me to relocate they did a weird dance of bragging that I could go anywhere because of their nationwide footprint but also heavily implied that they were gonna make me go to Atlanta it was weird I didn't like any of what I was hearing and I didn't really hide my skepticism during the interview slept on it for a few days and made the call to take the other offer I had that was a relocation too but it was much closer than Atlanta and the job itself was much more of a unique opportunity lower pay but better benefits slash security I'm still at that job now almost four years later never heard a word from the other guys since the third interview I think I really would have liked working for that original firm pre-acquisition it's wild how quickly that dynamic completely shifted I'm just glad it happened before I signed on to work there thanks for listening to radio TTS hit the subscribe button and activate the notification bell for an internship that costs you money right you have to pay to be an intern what a great deal click the right box for the radio TTS career advice playlist let us know in the comments what you think about these stories

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Id: PF7ACEFaIJU

Length: 17min 51sec (1071 seconds)

Published: Tue May 05 2020