Would you ever consider volunteering for a company in exchange for “experience”?

In this story, one person decides to do just that. The company is a dog training center, and at first, he really loves being there.

Then things change.

He feels like his work isn’t appreciated, and he’s not getting the experience he was promised.

Should he quit or stick it out?

Let’s read the whole story to decide.

AITA for wanting to just disappear from a ‘workplace’ where I’m helping for free?

Hi y’all, last year a dog training center opened near where I live, I met the people there and a couple weeks later I ended up “working” with them.

At the beginning there were contract talks.

I don’t know what’s it’s called in other countries but it’s legally treated as kind of a sport club.

That was quickly forgotten and the offer I ended up with was “Help us with customers, weekly maintenance and whatnot, you’ll get experience.”

Quick explanation: there’s not much dog culture in my region so we mostly have clueless customers that end up requiring the same basic knowledge every time, few times I’ve had to ask for help I’ve received no answer other than deal with it yourself, you have to learn.

There were 2 owners, this trainer that acted as the boss and an older dude that ended up splitting early this year to enjoy retirement.

He’s basically a volunteer, but he enjoyed it.

It starts decent, lots of maintenance to do because diy was cheaper than buying proper material, fences etc.

I never worked with actual customers seeking dog training so I enjoyed it.

I already had a seasonal job at that point so I went there to help whenever I had spare time.

Now, things have changed.

This year, since the other dude left we were kinda short on staff(there’s an occasional trainer that comes but she’s not really suited for manual work), the remaining owner picked a night job so morning we were basically closed, meaning no income from daycare/pool reservations until 3pm, and I risked not getting a job because I wanted to find one that gave me enough time to help around(I passed on quite a bunch of jobs that would pay me double).

I’m no intrapreneur or things like that so I don’t really know how to make something like this successful but from what I’ve seen they tried several things that failed, wasted some money on these initiatives like paying an advertising agency for a couple months to sponsor our events.

It turned out the few people that contacted us did it through other means; we ended up with real strict deadlines and we’ll probably end up cancelling every major event we worked on.

He wants to walk away from this mess.

That might be one of the reasons of my recent treatment, stress that is, ’cause it’s been a month I’ve been getting random jabs at my ‘laziness’ and I don’t even understand why: I’ve been maintaining the dog pool from may to september, cutting grass every other week even on sundays while they chilled home.

I’ve dug holes for plants, fences, I’ve done their errands ’cause they had to entertain guests and bs like that.

I haven’t mentioned a single time the fact that the cooperation has basically been one sided until now(our last training was in late march, he canceled on me 4 times last minute and that’s when I started thinking that probably wouldn’t be a thing I can count on).

But at this point I’m kinda fed up, and I’m considering just giving back the keys and let them handle all the stuff that’s going on on their own, since my contribution is taken for granted and mocked even.

Do it! Turn in the keys and don’t look back. He’s been far too loyal for far too long.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This is a good summary of the situation.

Another person encourages him to leave.

This is the truth.

Yes, jobs that pay also provide experience.

There’s absolutely no reason to stay.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.