Talk about getting out while you still can! We all are well aware of that old adage «when you know, you know,» yes? Well, these folks all knew that it was time for them to leave their workplace environment, and in many of these cases, they had just started. This list of stories was compiled via this r/AskReddit thread. 

Personally, I can relate to all of these stories. When I was 17, I was one of those wide-eyed students who thought that doing an unpaid internship would be a stepping stone to a serious career. Little did I know, it was a way to get unpaid labor out of me and that the most one could get from these experiences was a subpar letter of recommendation that was clearly a used and impersonal template in which my name would be substituted for someone else’s. But back to this internship! I was told this would be a theater internship in which I would learn from a renowned professor and help organize their teaching materials and classroom in exchange for being in the room. Oh, how wrong I was! It turns out that «helping to organize» actually meant scrubbing the floors, pouring bleach down the dirty sink, and trying to stop the never-ending leakage in this dingy studio as if I had real plumbing experience. I probably stayed longer than I should have, but essentially I quit at the end of the week and found a paid internship at a slightly less exploitative work environment.

Keep scrolling below for these stories and when you’re finished, check out these top Karens of the week!