Redditor yagirldebbie is a university student who left their old job on campus that demanded a grueling work schedule that interfered with exam studies.
But the memory of the job they quit did not stay in the past.
They were harassed by the former employer after the Redditor interacted with an inquisitive social networking user.
They visited the “Am I the A**hole?” (AITA) and asked:
“AITA for being honest about why I left a job, causing the new hire not to take it?”
The Original Poster (OP) explained:
“I’m a student in University, and my first year I worked in a lab. It was not a good experience.”
“One of my coworkers would constantly text me outside of work and demand that I answer her immediately. The bosses did nothing about it, but yelled at me if I texted her outside of work hours.”
“I was scheduled to work way too many hours, and pressured into skipping class to go into work. They gave me little to no flexibility for exams, and I was often running from exam to work because they wouldn’t give me time off.”
“I was being bombarded and harassed by the job so much that it felt like I was a student on the side and a full time employee, when the reverse was true. This was an on campus job, so my employers definitely knew I was a student.”
“Eventually I was fed up and just handed in my resignation and didn’t show up again. I was sick and tired of being run ragged for a job and got a new one.”
“Well, I put that I’d worked this job on LinkdIn and a girl contacted me saying she’d been offered a job there and wanted to know my experience.”
“I told her everything above and she ended up not taking it and going to a different lab. She ended up telling my old employers that I told her my experiences, and they are blowing up my email and phone, calling me unprofessional and an a**hole because she would have been a good addition to the lab.”
“AITA for telling her my experiences which caused her to not take the job?”
Strangers online were asked to declare one of the following:
- NTA – Not the A**hole
- YTA – You’re the A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everybody Sucks Here
Many Redditors sided with the OP as not the a**hole for their full transparency.
“Anonymous yahoo on the internet, so take this for what you find it is worth when I say this is my wheelhouse:”
“If the lab is part of the university, report them. Draft an email to the dean, department head, anyone above or ‘equal to’ the lab admin. It will NOT harm your future career; the advice you were given is kindhearted but old-fashioned.”
“Include any and all evidence of what you wrote here. Texts, emails, even approximate conversations of note with approximate dates/times.”
“Academia is filled with blowhard asshats who get away with cronyism and abuse. I would say do this only if you feel comfortable, but now that the other person admitted what you said it is a solid idea to defend yourself.”
“NTA obviously and good luck. If you truly don’t feel up to reporting them for your own reasons then don’t feel as though you have to do it. I can almost promise you other students have said the same to administration. It won’t be a shock to them.” – BendingCollegeGrad
“Professor here, please, please report this! Based on what you’ve described, this lab is not only extremely unprofessional, but they likely violated multiple university policies, if not laws (depending on your location). I’m completely appalled & furious on your behalf that any campus job would treat your work as more important than your studies.”
“By not reporting this, you actually are helping to perpetuate the problem. I certainly wouldn’t recommend using any of the people in this lab as a reference, so there is nothing about this situation that makes you less likely to a get a job in the future.”
“As for warning the person who contacted you about the circumstances in this lab? Not only are you NTA, but you are an incredibly good human to warn her about the toxic environment — way to go!” – mariposa2013
“I get that you are young so you do not have experience with probably more than 1 job, now 2, but your friends and family are AH’s here. You do not have to put every job you’ve ever been at on your CV/Resume or put those people down as a reference.”
“You can even take it off LinkedIn to make sure that no one would ever know you’ve worked there. Or you can use it as a great example of workplace hardship when asked if you’ve ever overcome or had to deal with any issues in the workplace.”
“Either way, it will not hurt you in the future unless you try to use those people as a reference. If you do not tell the administration what is going on in the lab associated with their University, they will never be able to fix the issue and the school’s reputation will suffer for it.”
“You would actually be helping your future employment opportunities if the lab gets a better reputation. Good luck!” – Acceptable_Day6086
“Absolutely NTA 👏”
“..if only more people did this so that employers would realize that they can’t get away with harassing employees and other nonsense Kinda YTA on her part for telling them about your conversation considering that you did her a favor ugh.” – Middle_Radish_137
“NTA. You had every right to tell your story when asked. If your former employer didn’t want you telling bad stories about them, then they shouldn’t have treated you that way. It’s not like you were lying.”
“Block them and go on with your life.” – bamf1701
“NTA, the lab can either change or lose good students, welcome to reality. University labs fall into this bizarro world where you can either end up loving your life or hating it, depending on the Principal Investigator and lab culture.”
“I pity students that end up in the gulag, sheer misery every single day. You did a great service, make sure you let everyone know including the university administrators. They can’t change anything without written documentation.” – whatsmypassword73
“Definitely NTA. You did the right thing by stopping this girl from becoming an overworked corporate puppet. If the employer can’t provide a good work environment and eats into your own hours then they can only expect others to warn against it.”
“It’s unprofessional of THEM to be harassing you afterwards.” – SniperSwitch77
“NTA. If you employ students, you have to be able to deal with the fact that they will have classes and exams. It’s not like those things aren’t scheduled in advance.”
“I’ve managed on campus college bookstores for the last 20 years and have never had an issue scheduling around my students’ schedules. If they can’t understand that, maybe they shouldn’t hire students.”
“Titles for this may vary by campus, but is there a student employment office you can go to so you can report their harassment? Or perhaps a dean or someone who is the head of the labs? Your advisor might be able to help as well.” – Queasy-Educator8670
“Wow. Sounds like they treated you like a graduate student there with tuition covered and a stipend, not someone with a regular lab job getting paid hourly. That does happen.”
“Grad students, post docs and tenure track professors tend to be wildly out of touch with what normal and healthy work habits are like. They live to work, they don’t work to live.”
“It’s actually really sad and it’s why I didn’t complete my PhD. The culture in university labs is horrible. Absolutely terrible and inhumane. NTA.” – littleln
“NTA at all. Your friend is a moron for throwing you under the bus. If you’re lucky enough to hear about inside info from a prospective job offer, don’t reveal your source and keep it moving.”
“You absolutely did the right thing—whenever ppl ask me about my last employer I mention to avoid like the plague, although now I’ll start adding the clause ‘don’t say sh*t to them that we chatted’ because here’s another example of the fact that common sense isn’t common.” – withurwife
“NTA. You are a hero! I once had this miserable job (that I quit after two weeks) where I was told the previous person had been fired.”
“Turned out she quit (after four months) because of how much of a nightmare it was and had been crying before work every morning. Her four months actually made her the longest person in that job to date, the shortest being the person who left during lunch on their first day and didn’t return.”
“I would have LOVED someone to alert me to facts before I accepted!” – KetoLurkerHere
Overall, Redditors encouraged the OP to report the former employer to prevent the ongoing toxic work environment.
Redditors also thought the potential employer throwing the OP under the bus was totally uncalled for, especially after being helped.