Ask a Manager

Remember the reader who was given 20 minutes of training on his first day on the job and then was fired a few hours later? He wrote in wondering about danger signs when you’re interviewing. Here’s his update.

I am still working the same part-time retail job that I had during college (now graduated with a Bachelor’s degree), but thanks to that experience with the one-day office job, I am now well-aware of how my steady retail gig is much better than many office gigs. My managers are considerate and more than fair (and very lenient about scheduling around my job search, how common is that?), my fellow employees and I get along, and I was even offered the opportunity to do some office administrative work, which is more suited to my personality and good experience for the office-assistant jobs that I am looking for.

You might also like to know that the company that I “volunteered” for (never received the paycheck) tends to update their job postings every couple weeks or so, with postings for the same jobs often recycled around once a month. I get the impression I’m not the first nor last person to walk out once they saw what the job really was like!