Quit a job on the second day...

tl;dr: I quit a job on the second day because it was an obviously bad fit, and had to wrestle with my own guilty conscious in order to let myself do it.

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I'm currently freelancing for a former employer as a technical writer. I thought that it would be ideal to have a part-time job to help pay bills and offer a bit more stability, so I emailed a small business owner in my neighborhood that I had talked to in the past.

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I have some experience working in food service in the past, and the owner offered me a job doing prep in her restaurant. I agreed, and went to the training shift with optimism that it would be a good fit.

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Unfortunately, I saw the following red flags on my first day:

• "Training" was just shadowing someone for four hours and I only learned how to make four things (out of 50+)
• While I shadowed the other prep cook, she told me that she almost never follows the written instructions they have (there is a binder full of recipes and specific instructions).
• We didn't cover the basics, and instead they gave me a booklet to read that covered their policies.

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I reasoned that was just the first day, and things would be better the next day. Surely they would train me more thoroughly when I actually needed to do the work, right?

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Then the second day came around:

• They threw a full list of prep work at me and gave me the binder of recipes to work from... the person training me was not present... so I was by myself.
• The binder of recipes, as the employee who trained me pointed out, was not adequate and did not have the information required to actually do the tasks
• The owner asked me to direct all questions to the shift manager, who did not have prep experience and was busy doing other things.

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Finally, my frustration hit a peak. I realized I could either wing it and risk getting yelled at, or just walk out the door.

Now, I don't advocate for quitting jobs purely on the basis of being frustrated, so I thought about it carefully before actually going through with it.

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Here was my reasoning:

1. This was a minimum wage position (w/ some tips)
2. I already had another job.
3. The situation was unlikely to get better on it's own.

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Finally, after working up the courage, I politely explained to the owner (who was there that day) that I was finding it quite stressful to do the list since I had very little training.

She replied "well, this is actually an easy day..." and essentially told me that if I couldn't handle it then I needed to leave.

I walked out pretty shortly after. I feel like I dodged a bullet, but it still felt wrong to do.

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I think ultimately I learned that you can't expect all jobs to treat you equally, nor can we treat all jobs equally. If it isn't offering you value and you don't need the position for financial reasons, then don't stay.

Dunno. What do you think?

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