Imagine getting fired for staying at work late?
Well, that seemed to be the case for an intern who was lucky enough to land the gig, especially in today’s difficult job market — but then got the boot as soon as they started for a head-scratching reason.
The defeated worker shared their frustrating experience in the r/recruitinghell Reddit forum in a post titled, “Fired on day 1 for leaving at 6:30 PM. The audacity is unreal.”
“I just had the most surreal ‘first day’ experience at a company called Alpha Test (an SAT prep/coaching firm),” the original poster wrote. “The official hours are 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. I stayed until 6:30 PM to make sure everything was wrapped up. I thought I was being a ‘good intern.’”
“At 7:30 PM, while I was finally home, the Partner called and ordered me to return to the office immediately. No emergency, just a random demand. When I told her I couldn’t make it back, she fired me on the spot,” the post continued.
This story gets worse.
“Her literal words: ‘Our company focuses on efficiency and profit, not on the employees’ personal time. Our philosophies do not align.’ Let’s do the math: The pay is 200 RMB (about $28 USD) per day. They expect to own my entire life for less than $2.50 an hour,” the OP explained.
It didn’t take long for hundreds of people to chime in with their opinions in the comment section of the post, agreeing with the intern.
“Make sure the school knows how they abuse their interns. They shouldn’t be allowed to have interns,” one commenter pointed out.
“If they pride themselves on efficiency… how come they can’t even finish on time?” another comment read, in which the OP responded saying, “Exactly! Their ‘efficiency’ is just a fancy word for ‘we expect you to work 24/7 because we can’t manage our own schedule.’”
“They have sites like Glassdoor where you can post your experience so others avoid this fate. I would post it there. They won’t last long if this is how they treat employees,” someone else suggested.
Having gone through something similar, another commenter chimed in with, “I hate jobs where the communicated expectations and the ‘actual’ expectations are different. It erodes trust and puts people on edge. Don’t tell me the hours are 9-6 and then freak out when I try to leave after 6.”
Sadly, this isn’t the first time a worker got fired for not doing anything wrong.
One eager new hire got laid off due to a shocking miscommunication.
Shared in the r/jobs forum on Reddit, the shocked new hire received an email that read, “This email is to inform you that your employment has been terminated from [redacted] effective 09/02/2025 due to not reporting to work on the first day. If you have any questions, please [reply] to this email or contact me with the information below. Thanks.”
Many commenters jumped in, sharing their thoughts and advice on the situation.
“Offer letter is usually a proposed date and not a set date. Most of the offer letters I send out are different from the actual start date email since it usually gets changed due to background checks or drug tests,” one person in HR shared.
“Even with it being the first day, I feel like I’d at least give you a call asking if you were still planning on coming in. It’s strange that they would just immediately fire you with no attempt at communication. You probably don’t want to work for these people. Bullet dodged imo,” someone else pointed out.
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