Was hired at a company as a designer. Went to the production meeting and sat down beside another designer (introduced myself and we started chatting). In comes everyone else and sits down. We all start chatting and do introductions.
Five minutes into the meeting the company owner comes in, chatting with a salesman. He glances around the room, then his face freezes on me - he then looks at the guy beside me and keeps looking back and forth. He finally motions for me to come outside the conference room. I walk out and he asks me what I was doing there. I tell him ‘remember, you hired me and my start day was today??’
He turned pale and just said ‘oh yeah I forgot’. He let me go back in the room but then I heard him call the guy beside me out.
The guy never came back. Apparently he had intended on firing him and forgot.
Needless to say I didn’t stay long before I found another job. The place was complete chaos.
Yeah, I was young and it was my first job out of college (technically I worked thru college but this was my first after graduation) so I was very inexperienced still and also didn’t know what to look for when it came to red flags.
The owner’s wife worked there in a ‘higher up’ position and was the major cause of a lot of conflict at the company. Basically he would give people orders then she would come along and contradict them.
If anyone disagreed with her then she would go to hubby and complain about said person(s) making it impossible to please either because you couldn’t prove her wrong. That designer in particular was just the latest of ‘trophy wife’s wrath’.
The place had an insane turnover rate I quickly found out.
At least it was a good learning experience and taught me to ask questions and meet people during the interview process.