People Share 30 Workplace Red Flags That Just Scream “Working Here Would Suck”
Interview
Your first day at work is usually the most stressful one. You work hard to show your best side, you try to make friends during lunch, you do everything to leave a good impression.
And usually, we are so preoccupied with our own performance when starting a new job, we may actually not realize that the workplace is not doing a good job either. In fact, people in these threads (this and this) say that the first impression, not just of you, but of any workplace you enter, is the most important one.
So you have to stay alert and make sure you don’t spot any of these screaming red flags, either during the interview or during your first day at work, that show you that you gotta run, not walk out of there.
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Constantly having people leave. Constantly hiring people. No real training structure for new hires.
To find out more about what red flags you should watch out for when entering a new workplace, Bored Panda reached out to Gleb Tsipursky, the CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. Gleb has been consulting Fortune 500 companies for 20 years and is the author of 7 books, including the global best-seller “Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters.”
“Some potential signs of trouble to look out for when joining a new company,” Gleb explained, “include a lack of transparency from leadership, high turnover rates, and a lack of clear communication and expectations.”
If you have to pay any amount of money in order to work for them it is a scam and stay away.
"We work hard and play hard"
translation: You'll have no work-life balance but we also all drink too much.
It's just an incomplete sentence. The full version is "We work hard and play hardly at all."
“Another red flag,” Gleb continued, “to be aware of is a toxic or negative work culture, which can manifest through gossip, backstabbing, and a lack of support among colleagues. Additionally, it's also important to be aware of any cognitive biases that may be present, such as the sunk cost fallacy, which may lead you to overlook red flags in the hopes of making the best of a bad situation.”
I always ask in interviews what the turnover rate is, or why the person I am replacing left the position. Definitely avoided some sketchy scenarios with those questions.
Treating you like a child- ie. monitoring the time you arrive/leave, timing your breaks/bathroom visits, dress codes that don't make sense for your role, and any other rules that make more sense for a kid than an adult.
If you're an experienced professional in an office setting, you should be basically left to take care of yourself as long as your work is getting done.
Obviously, these rules make more sense for jobs where you need to schedule breaks around other people, or service jobs, or jobs with lots of people with little experience - but still, I hear stories of places that give people warnings for being a minute late.
I always arrive late at the office, but I totally make up for it by leaving early.
If you constantly get “this is how we’ve always done it” responses to your suggestions.
Had that happen to me at the first company meeting when I made some suggestions. A year later they were repeated by someone else and implemented. Another year later I had a more rewarding job/management.
If you identify one of these red flags, Gleb argues that it's important to weigh the pros and cons before making a decision.
“On one hand, it may be wise to walk away if the red flags are severe and it seems unlikely that they will be addressed or resolved. On the other hand, it may be worth giving the company a second chance if the red flags are relatively minor and there are good reasons to believe that they can be addressed or improved,” the CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts explained.
People have either been there for decades or a few weeks. No people in between.
That could just mean that the company survived some difficult time before and now they are just bouncing back up. This can, but does not have to be a red flag.
You realize that all of the other people working there are related to the person who hired you or the person who is running the place. Run while you still can.
The problem with family-run business is when...you're not part of the family.
If everyone is trash talking everyone else, you don’t want to work there.
hahaha no but really, you're like the bonus I got this year, nothing! Ahahaha
Moreover, “checking with your gut is an initial step to evaluate whether to join a new company, as it can help you to identify potential red flags and to make decisions that are in your best interest.”
“However, it's also important to be aware of cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias, which may lead you to overreact or overlook red flags or to make decisions that are not in your best interest,” Gleb explained.
“Therefore, it's important to check with your head and use your head to overrule your gut when your gut and your head disagree,” Gleb concluded.
If they ask you to clock out and then keep working to finish closing or whatever, run away fast. It's never just a one-time thing.
In the UK when you clock out it not only sets your working hours, so you get the right pay, but it also doubles as safety so that in the event of a fire they can make sure everyone has got out. How can they make sure you are out when it says you were not even in?
Employers who bemoan the lack of “good employees who want to work”. If everyone who hires sucks then either you are the most unfortunate business owner in the world or you need to look in the mirror.
Just like in relationships, "all my girlfriends have been whackos".
My friend got hired at a place that called itself "the family".
Nahhh.
If they lure you into an interview for a management position, but tell you during the interview that the position has already been filled. Then they ask if you're interested in interviewing for the entry level position instead.
Having a guy saying in the 1st group meeting: this company IS NOT a pyramid scheme.
They like to micro manage you but then tell you off for not having enough initiative to do something.... then tell you off for doing it due to micro managing and the cycle continues
"I'm not micromanaging you, just advising how to phrase that sentence in your email"
My workplace has a sign in the employee bathroom that says, “The best way to appreciate your job is picturing yourself without one.” They also don’t pay benefits until after 2 years and have an incredibly high turnover rate.
They’re great..
I can't imagine how happy is the people working there! How awful 🫤
They don't ask you what your wage expectation is, but instead ask you what you were making at your last job.
"We don't "technically" have breaks. We just take smoke breaks and stuff here and there."
No, f**k you. I don't smoke. You can't deny me a meal break, I don't give a s**t how busy you are.
I used to work at Mr. Pickles and the owner would fire people if they took more than 15 mins for their 30 min lunch. I obliged until I got pregnant and had sciatica problems knowing I could raise hell if he fired me and he knew that too. All he could do was talk s**t behind my back 😆 he also once fired a young girl that was sexually harrased while she was wearing the pickle suit outside, just because he didn't want to deal with it. So tired of POS business owners
A side room to nap is probably the #1 red flag
Not necessarily... I worked at a place with an extra room. It was used for customer meetings that needed privacy, it was also used by employees that were breast feeding and needed a clean private place to pump.... And yes, some employees did take naps lol
Being hired for a specific job and then having additional duties tacked on after you are hired.
The company doesn't follow it's own employee handbook or whatever rules and guidelines they have.
Work hours and days change after you are hired.
Telling you which holidays you have off, then not giving you those holiday's off.
Every employee is talking s**t about every other employee.
Poor or non-existent training time.
Management with no management training or knowledge.
Better yet, their Handbook is a live document they edit on the fly.
If they tell you overtime is voluntary, then get mad when you never volunteer.
Places with truly great culture don’t have management teams constantly gushing about how great the culture is.
If management talks about the culture ten times in the first week you’re there, run. Don’t look back.
If they say they are family-friendly. It mean that as a childfree person, i will have to pick up the slack of parents. No thank you.
I am child-free in a mostly child-having environment and while I understand the strains that come with it...it is clearly biased when you hear in a meeting "well x doesn't have kids so x can...."
If you work in manufacturing, the company buys cheap and s****y machinery to save money.
If they don’t even value their equipment, they definitely won’t value their people.
Totally agree : in my best job ever the boss said : I'd rather have expenses (tools etc.) than make more profit.
The look of defeat on the faces of their employees.
When a place is good to work, their employees seem to be excited to be there. There are smiles, there are jokes, there is enthusiasm.
When a company screws over and abuses their employees? The employees get that look of defeat in their eyes. Their job has no enjoyment, it is merely about survival. When I say survival, I don't mean working to make some money to get food to eat, I mean that you are trying to make it to the end of the day, just to go home and repeat the cycle, each day a bit worse than the next. People don't joke and if they do, it seems to be morbid jokes about the workplace. People aren't social. You can feel the lack of joy. The company has managed to defeat their workforce.
Interviewed at a big health company for an IT position and as I walked through the work area with maybe 30 employees I noticed that there was no sound, nobody was talking. Not a good sign. Possible clue for it came during the interview when I was randomly informed "I don't care if your son has a soccer game, if I need you to work OT, I need you to stay". I don't do slave work, so informed him I'd be looking elsewhere.
They have literally everything in the building. I interviewed at a place where they had the cafeteria and a nurse station (not healthcare related) in the building. I was pretty desperate for a job so I overlooked this, but was glad they didn't call me back. They didn't allow missed days, and I was told by one of the ladies who let me listen in on her phones that she had missed a day of work so she didn't get any sort of raise that year. If you're sick, they expect you to be in there and doing the job. Worst case scenario you need to visit THEIR nurse.
I had accidentally rubbed a piece of cloth on my face that had little insect poison. I was already in office when the actual burning started. I went to the nurse at the office's medical room and told her everything. She asked me to go to a dermatologist for my white spots (I have vitiligo). I just rolled my eyes, went to the washroom to wash my face, applied some aloe gel and went back to work. Never went for medical assistance there again.
Everyone has their own best way to do something and they all tell you in private. It sounds like their helping, but it’s really a symptom of bad management.
Toxic work environment such as refusing to address issues and becoming passings aggressive about it.
Sometimes the toxic work environment is due to low to mid level management and if the company has ANY morals whatsoever, that management will be gone quickly after it's brought to their attention, even in large corporate chains. I've watched it happen at least a couple of times and it was SO satisfying! With enough formal complaints, there's a good chance the higher ups will listen, especially if a lot of complaints are from customers. I once worked at a hardware store and one of the managers was so bad that employees would run away whenever she came near them. One cashier was listening to customer after customer complain about her, so this cashier started keeping complaint cards at her register. It wasn't long after that that this manager was demoted twice over and transferred. Don't know why she didn't get fired, but at least we didn't have to deal with her anymore!
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!["Karen Complains To HR About My Body, I Uno-Reverse Her Complaint, [And Now] Everyone Hates Her"](https://www.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/coworker-complains-to-hr-about-womans-body-revenge-latest.jpg "\"Karen Complains To HR About My Body, I Uno-Reverse Her Complaint, [And Now] Everyone Hates Her\"")
Worst for me is a "newly created role or department" which means they don't know their expectations and you will be reporting to someone like the CFO with little to no oversight.
My employer falls under a few of these, and every day that I work for them I am miserable. Every time an opportunity for advancement comes up I am passed up for it, even though any one not in management will say they are surprised I am in the same position 7 years later. Every time one of these post come up I comment, so i am sure you have heard me complain about it before. But I have tried to find a new job, but no one wants to pay me for my experience, they want to start me off lower than I started at my current job 7 years ago.
But wouldn't you rather look forward to go to work, than make the same amount of money, you do now and be miserable for a whole working day every day?
Having to use your own tools, laptop or phone in order to fix equipment or effectively conduct company business has always been a big one for me. The company you work for rents your time - not your stuff too.
Worst for me is a "newly created role or department" which means they don't know their expectations and you will be reporting to someone like the CFO with little to no oversight.
My employer falls under a few of these, and every day that I work for them I am miserable. Every time an opportunity for advancement comes up I am passed up for it, even though any one not in management will say they are surprised I am in the same position 7 years later. Every time one of these post come up I comment, so i am sure you have heard me complain about it before. But I have tried to find a new job, but no one wants to pay me for my experience, they want to start me off lower than I started at my current job 7 years ago.
But wouldn't you rather look forward to go to work, than make the same amount of money, you do now and be miserable for a whole working day every day?
Having to use your own tools, laptop or phone in order to fix equipment or effectively conduct company business has always been a big one for me. The company you work for rents your time - not your stuff too.