‘What is the most inappropriate thing you’ve seen someone do on their first day of work?’ – 22 people who royally screwed up the very moment they started

The first day at a new job is always a nerve wracking affair, and people are generally forgiving if you do something a bit silly. Stress makes us act in strange ways, after all.

However, sometimes someone does something so improper or odd that it marks their card for the rest of their employment.

Over on the AskUK subreddit, user SmellingThomas just asked this.

‘What is the most inappropriate thing you have seen or heard someone do on their first day of work?’

And began by sharing their own experience.

‘When I worked at a supermarket, I had to train a 17 year old girl on her first day. While we were putting out the ready meals, I tried to break the ice with some casual small talk: “Do you prefer Chinese or Indian food?”

‘Big mistake.

‘She immediately launched into a foul mouthed rant full of slurs about how much she hated Indian people. When I cut her off and explained how completely out of line and racist she was being, she just shrugged and said:

“You shouldn’t have asked if you didn’t want to hear the truth.”

‘Safe to say, her supermarket career ended almost as soon as it started.’

Yikes. And plenty of other people had had similarly hair-raising experiences with new starters, like these…

1.

‘I’m not entirely sure how he thought his working life would be, but within the first hour he said “I won’t take orders from a woman” and then he got to sit in reception while we told the temp agency to let him know he was no longer required and to not send anyone like that again.’
–BeardedBaldMan

2.

‘A new 30ish lad started with us. I was walking him down the main corridor to our office when he said “How do you not get distracted here, y’know, how do you keep it in your pants?”

‘We were in a Girls’ Secondary School.

‘He didn’t stay much longer.’
–Chockster

3.

‘Had someone from a temp agency start. She immediately found the address to email the entire company and started spamming out emails about some crappy remote control cars she was selling. She didn’t last the morning.’
–pip_goes_pop

4.

‘Get high during break… we worked for a rehab centre.’
–meowcatpanda

5.

‘I once had a fully grown adult ask if they could go home an hour into their first shift because they missed their cat.

‘Apparently me accepting they had cats and were a cat lover at the interview was a tacit acceptance that I would have to allow them to go home whenever they wanted in order to see their cat.

‘The tears and tantrums in an already established team who worked very well together were a sure fire indicator they weren’t going to last long.’
–Any_Crazy_500

6.

‘I started on the same day as another guy as a grad, with us was another elderly lady who he kept saying is old, smells and joking about her. A few weeks in we find out she’s the president of our engineering society and one of our new directors.

‘He no longer works here.’
–Senior_Yesterday_825

7.

‘Former radio journalist. Had a work experience kid in from local university. Not a disinterested 16 year-old, a 19-20 year old on a highly competitive Broadcast Journalism degree course. They seemed less keen to help out than most, and we’re all crazy busy, so we just gave them some basic writing task to do.

‘Then someone spots they’re in our contacts book (a journalist’s most precious commodity), copying down private numbers for some really high profile celebrities. Security were called and the university notified.’
–Gent415

8.

‘Before we’d even started, during our Lush training. She defended Seal clubbing as a Canadian pastime (she was Candian) in front of a room full of vegans and Sea Shepheard members.’
–Sea-Environment5246

9.

‘Was told by my new boss at a sandwich shop that he doesn’t make ‘stinky (insert racist term for Pakistani people) food’. I lasted two days before I told him I was not tolerating that language.’
–EchoesOfZhivago

10.

‘Can you put the milk in first before the hot water. Fucking savage.’
–Glittering_Box4815

11.

‘Not even first day but in an interview. Place I used to work (a toy shop where you’re basically entertaining kids all day) asked a light hearted question at the end of job interviews “if you could be any animal, what would you be and why?”.

‘One lad’s response was “a pigeon so that I could go and shit on everyone that’s shit on me in my life”.

‘Safe to say he wasn’t successful.’
–ChangingMonkfish

12.

‘A new legal secretary started in our City office. She was the type that thought the office was brand new the day she joined and everyone else was green and knew nothing. She had to deal with a young girl who wasn’t the brightest and slapped her round the face for giving her the wrong information.

‘The poor girl burst into tears and big headed arrogant secretary was sacked on the spot. How do these people get on in life. It was a shocker to happen in a prestigious City law firm but funny too.’
–catmadwoman