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Starting a new job is supposed to come with the understanding that you won’t be great at it right away.

That’s the whole point of training, onboarding, and the grace period that every decent employer builds into the first few weeks.

But some bosses expect day-one mastery and treat anything less like a character flaw.

A new hire walked into a job she’d never done before, and within six shifts was already being labeled as slow and lazy.

Her manager compared her speed to a coworker who’s been there for three years, and complained that she didn’t know how to use the register, even though nobody had shown her until five shifts in.

You’ll want to keep reading for this one.

My manager won’t accept that I’m slower because I’m new

Every job I’ve ever heard of works like this: new employees will be slower and then they get faster as they become more confident in what they’re doing.

She doesn’t want to accept that I’ve been at the job for 2 weekends (6 shifts) and not doing everything for the entirety of those 6 shifts, and am slower than the person who’s been at it for 3 years.

I don’t even have a login to the cash register, and was shown how to during my 5th shift.

There’s no end to this boss’ relentless complaining.

But she’ll complain that I don’t immediately know even though I was never even shown before that.

Someone else always has logged onto the register before, so I never even got to see.

But somehow they’ll act like I’m slow, lazy, or don’t learn fast enough.

But this type of job is new to me.

Sounds like this boss is setting this employee up for failure.

Did Redditors agree?

The fact is that not everyone is cut out for leadership.

Maybe it’s time to choose a different de facto boss.

New employees deserve a little grace when first starting out.

This user has been through a very similar situation.

Six shifts. This employee has only been there for six shifts and is already being written off as slow and lazy by a boss who apparently thinks onboarding is optional.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a military employee who kept repeating the same “wrong” audit until his commanding officer was fired.

This is not a performance issue at all. This employee is learning at a completely normal pace for someone operating with almost no guidance.

Her boss just can’t see that because she’s too busy comparing her to a coworker who’s had three years to build the muscle memory she’s being expected to have by week two.

This employee deserved a mentor, not a ruthless critic.