One company I handed my resignation into - they were a horrible company to work for.
In the department, I worked on we had two people who were trained up by a guy who’d flown in specially from Germany to train us on what we had to do.
He spent a week with us training - about a month into the job the other guy that was working with me decided it wasn’t for him and left as he realised the company were taking the mick - pay was appalling (minimum wage) for what you were expected to do and so he walked.
The company itself was full of temps - everyone there was on a temporary contract that was renewed every week but it had one of those terms in it that said we can finish you at any time we see fit and for any reason and likewise you have the same deal - you can hand your notice in at any time with no contract.
Usually, when you work for companies even if you have that “you can hand your notice in at any time” clause in your contract you do try and give them a few days warning to train someone else up.
However, this firm was awful to work for - they were such cheapskates. They were an outsourcing firm and if they could find some way of doing something cheaper they would. We had no CCTV in our office as “it was too expensive” - despite dealing with a lot of high-value contracts - when visitors would come round to offer contracts we were always told to shut up about CCTV and if we were asked the cameras were well hidden!!
The company that was asking us to do this work for them had it down that it would take two people to deal with this outsourced contract - hence the reason why they’d trained two people up. When this other lad left the office the company decided that I was working more than fast enough, plus I’d made the whole process a lot more efficient, that it wasn’t worth hiring an extra person and that I was coping fine on my own (when they’ve got one person at minimum wage doing the job of two people - why pay more? in the warehouse they’d done the same with the forklift truck drivers - originally there was four fork lift truck drivers, but they found that one of the drivers was super efficient so they got rid of all the other FLT drivers). The problem was though neither of us could take any holidays as there was no-one to cover us during the time.
Also they were really horrible to work for - at one point there was a major storm hit the area and it blew the roof off the building, the building was shared with two companies and when the roof blew off the other company sent all it’s employees home for their safety, this company told us that we had to stay in the building and they were quickly doing repairs to the roof, also once the area got cordoned off by armed police due to an incident, they weren’t letting anyone in or out of the area from the end where I came in from. I had no idea what was going on and the police told me to just go home and the works will let me know when it’s safe to go in - I called the works up from home and they asked me why I didn’t just sneak across the field evading the armed police or go the long way round (it’s ok if you’re in a car but the “long way round” when your on a bike was a 20 mile journey) and besides telling employees to sneak into an area across a field to evade armed police isn’t the most safest or sensible option - plus I’m quite sure it’s against the law to ask employees to evade police closedowns - also bear in mind this is the UK - now if you see armed police in the UK you know something big is going down - police don’t tend to be armed in the UK.
They kept saying they were thinking of getting someone extra to work with me, but no-one ever came through. About 12 months later I went in and decided I’d had enough - I enacted the “zero notification rule” - I still remember the bosses face - the amount of times he asked me am I sure? I was like certainly. I went in and handed him my notification - he kept saying is there anything we can do to make you stay as you’re one of our best workers and we have no-one else trained up on this contract so we don’t know what we’re going to do… that’s my problem??? maybe if you’d have paid everyone more than minimum wage for the job they’re doing, not took the mick, ensured you’d hired two people to do a two person contract as a backup, took people on permanently with a permanent contract who are essential to the business and not keep them on a zero notification temporary contract… then just maybe you’d have been in a better position than having to call up Germany to explain to them that the only person who was trained up to do the job has just handed their notification in and walked out (I would have loved to hear that conversation as I’m quite sure the company in Germany thought they were hiring two people to do that work and were unaware the other guy had quit too!).
One thing that was a shame was that the people I worked with were all very nice there, it was just the top managers at the company that were awful, even the manager I handed my notification into was nice - it was just the people above him that were bad.
Quite funny as a few months later I ended up working in the same building again - this time I was working for the firm that shared the office space - the one that allowed their employees to go home during a storm… they were much more nicer to work for - originally both companies were owned by the same company but the other company got sold off and that’s when they started cutting corners and being really cheap.
I have since moved away from the town where I worked in this office, however before covid happened I went to the town and drove past the place I used to work - it’s now an empty shell warehouse up for sale - no sign of either company - I know the nicer company certainly does still exist and has just moved elsewhere - but as for the cheapskate company - I don’t think they’re in existence anymore - all their websites are dead.