Have you ever reneged on a job offer before you started?

Who here has pulled a Josh McDaniels -- or had one pulled on them?

I've been on both sides of it.

I was editor of a small daily and accepted a city editor job with a nearby, larger paper. When I went to tell my publisher I was leaving, he begged me to stay and bumped my salary. It wasn't just the money, I decided to stay out of loyalty, as he had been very good to me. I told the larger paper "you want me, he needs me." I later worked with the person I turned down at another paper and she was cool with it.

Three times I had people I hired quit in the two weeks before they started. One took time off between jobs to visit her mother in another part of the state and decided that's where she needed to be. I was fine with that. The other two called the Friday before they were going to start Monday telling me they had better offers. One of them called like a year later saying he was looking for a job again and I told him he could have won three Pulitzers and I wouldn't hire him.

 

No, but I should have once.

 

I worked at a place about three months once before leaving for another job. I just didn't like it. They weren't happy. Oh, well. Still friends with my boss from there.

 

The place I was referring to above -- I worked there three months and quit without another job. It was that bad a situation.

 

I left a really good situation after 20+ years to go to another firm and that lasted 8 mos. before I found out they failed to fulfill their promises and I bailed. As my wife says, I learned from it.

 

Stayed at a weekly when I got a bump to $165 a week over a daily offering $170. It's been so long I can't remember if I actually accepted the daily job and then backed out.

 

I never did that, but a guy who beat me out for a job did it once. That had the potential to work out well for me, but didn't for reasons that still nag at me.

For better or for worse, that situation did lead me to SJ.com.

 

It does always surprise me when news managers are surprised when they are turned down after offering someone a job. You treat your employees badly, you think they're not going to let a perspective hire now that? I think one supervisor of mine put me on "his list" when I told an job interviewee that she should be sure to get her job duties and responsibilities in writing because managers had a tendency to move people's schedules and beats around quite a bit.

 

At 34 and fresh out of returning to college for my AA, I accepted a job at a local radio station out of desperation. Mostly filling ad slots during talk shows and just part time.

A week later I got an email about an opening at a newspaper upstate. Drove up, interviewed, accepted the job and went in to work the next Monday to tell the boss. He was home sick, so I had to tell his wife. And I needed to leave pronto. Needless to say, they were both pissed, but it turned out to be one of the few big decisions I'ever made that worked out.

Years later, I started work at a paper 6 hours from where my family was living at the time. A month later, they sold the paper to a guy with a used-car-salesman smile who promised no major changes -- until he cut the pay of everyone in the newsroom. Looked and found another job pretty quickly. ANother solid decision, as they slashed the newsroom staff and laid off the photog.

 

I was working at a weekly, my first full-time newspaper job, when I got an offer from a small daily. The day I returned from the interview at said daily, I got a message that another daily – about the same circulation but miles ahead in terms of reputation and quality of life – wanted to know if I was interested in an opening.

I had to call the SE at the first daily and say, Yeah, I still want the job … unless the other daily offers me the position, and I won’t know that for a little while. He was not pleased and mentioned that he might have to start moving on in another direction rather than wait for me.

As it turns out, I got the job at the second daily. Spent more than 10 years there, working with one of the best bosses/colleagues I’ve had in any line of work, someone who became one of my best friends. Bought my first house there. Met the woman who became my wife (and the mother of my child) there.

During my 10 years there, I had many occasion to contact the first daily to trade scores and such. I always felt sheepish and tried to state who was calling really quickly, in hopes they wouldn’t catch my name, just my outlet.

 

Not exactly the same thing, but back when I was a restaurant manager, I hired a part-time delivery guy.

On his first day, I gave him $20 in change and sent him on his first delivery, which was right around the corner. An hour later, he was nowhere to be found.

I went out the back door to look around the parking lot, and I saw his delivery bag on the ground right outside, with the food and the $20 in it, along with a note explaining that he decided he didn’t want to do this, so he quit and left without telling anyone.

 

He's probably a Congressman now.

I've never backed out of a gig, though I did leave my first job out of college under some less than redeeming circumstances. I was working for a book wholesaler (a husband and wife team, both British and pretty condescending), and he had promised me -- an English major -- that I would be learning all about the book business, which sounded attractive. After two weeks, it became clear he wasn't going to teach me shit, that the job was data entry and he basically hired me to do the grunt work he didn't want to do. He became increasingly hostile whenever I asked him anything beyond my expected duties. So I waited for my first paycheck, took it to the bank at lunch and cashed it, drove straight home and then faxed him a message: "I quit," and signed my name.

He actually called me a week later and asked if I planned to return. I hung up on him.

I was 22 and obviously could have been more mature about it. But a certain part of me derives pleasure from having quit at least one job in my life with a big FU.