Woman shares how being 'honest' about work commitments got her fired on first day

A woman said a job sold to her as an 8-to-5 role became mandatory 12-hour shifts on her first day. She said she was removed after disclosing her existing commitments, prompting Reddit users to call it a bait-and-switch.Woman shares how being ‘honest’ about work commitments got her fired on first day (Representational Image from Pexels)A woman thought she had finally landed a manageable 8-to-5 job after months of applying, only to discover on her first day that the company wanted employees to work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week.When she honestly told management about her existing commitments, she said she was walked out of the job before lunch.The woman shared her experience in a Reddit post on r/recruitinghell titled, “Got hired for an 8–5, showed up on Day 1 to mandatory 12hr shifts 7 days a week, and was walked out by lunch for being ‘honest.’ Then my other job flexed me.”She said she had spent the previous few months applying relentlessly, submitting more than 68 internal applications and over 100 external ones before going through six rounds of interviews. She eventually landed a full-time role through a staffing agency, with both the listing and recruiter telling her that the schedule would be 8 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday, with occasional weekend hours. The arrangement suited her because she already worked at a hospital in the evenings and was trying to save enough money for her first apartment by January.She had adjusted her hospital schedule to start at 6 pm, noting that the two workplaces were only about 13 minutes apart and that she had planned a 30-to-45-minute buffer between shifts. But the arrangement changed almost immediately.On her first day of training, she said management announced that the role would require mandatory 12-hour shifts, six to seven days a week, starting in October. Employees were then asked to speak up if they had existing conflicts, childcare responsibilities, medical appointments or needed other accommodations.“Like an idiot, I believed them,” she wrote.She said she and several other employees, including parents and people with second jobs or medical obligations, gave management their availability and offered to work 12-hour blocks on their guaranteed days off and weekends.Management took down their names and appeared to acknowledge the arrangements.Then, during her lunch break, she received a call from her staffing agency recruiter. According to her account, she and every other person who had spoken up had been removed from the assignment. She said they were not even told directly and instead had security and the agency handle the situation while they were eating.She described the experience as a bait-and-switch, saying the role had been advertised as a standard full-time position before the company revealed the much longer schedule.She also said the timing could not have been worse because, while she was dealing with losing the new job, her hospital manager informed her that surgical cases were slow and she was being “flexed,” meaning she would not get to work her hospital shift that evening either.“In the span of four hours,” she wrote, “I rearranged my entire life schedule, got walked out of a job on day one for answering their own question honestly, and lost today’s hospital pay.”She ended the post by joking about sitting in her car with cold McDonald’s, saying she was too exhausted to know whether to laugh or cry.Take a look at the post here:Social media users largely sympathised with her and argued that, despite the immediate financial hit, being removed from the role may have saved her from a much worse situation.One person said they had experienced similarly bad days but believed she had “dodged a bullet” and urged her to call the recruiter back, demand answers and avoid working with them again.Another user said she had been removed from what they described as a scam job that wanted to exploit her, arguing that the company had misrepresented the position and then reacted badly when she pointed out the discrepancy.A third person described the situation as a “bait-and-switch” and said she should consider contacting an employment attorney, while other Reddit users similarly focused on the sudden change in working conditions and the way the employees were removed from the assignment.- EndsPublished By: Yashna TalwarPublished On: Sep 23, 2026 19:44 IST