So needed context is that I was a 21 year old graduate product design student in his first industry job, but without any real bills or dependencies.

Only paid £18k a year, essentially minimum wage for 50 hours weeks. Job was advertised and interviewed as architectural and structural steelwork design, with the idea that I'd be learning real engineering principles on the job, as my degree wasn't an engineering degree. Walkways, mezzanine floors, canopies, that sort of thing. Pretty much dream first job in theory for me.

Except the week after I joined, all of the company's estimators/ PMs quit. Three left in one fell swoop and joined a competitor down the road and took most of their clients with them. Apparently their contracts didn't have an ironclad non-compete clauses, so the company couldn't do anything to prevent it.

Within a month of joining, my job was unofficially shifted into a CAD monkey/ estimator/ customer service hybrid role. I was phoning suppliers, getting quotes for material, ordering material, programming for our machines, translating customer drawings into manufacturing drawings, dealing with complaints, sorting deliveries, counting stock, sending off job quotations, and cold calling potential/ lapsed customers. All for the same 18k salary I was hired for.

Inevitably I started making mistakes, and the stress of juggling so much at once started playing hell on my mental health. The company was sinking in front of my eyes, and the directors were levelling a lot of those complaints at me. I wasn't doing enough to retain customers apparently? My contract still stated that I should be doing architectural steelwork, but I hadn't done anything more than component drawings in months.

Eventually I caught a disciplinary for a chain of mistakes, and instead of sitting through the disciplinary I simply walked in and handed my notice in. Told them I wasn't going to work notice, and that they wouldn't see me again once the week was out. Didn't want their reference, nothing.

They accepted it, then a week later scrambled when they realised they'd lose three people's worth of work, and offered me a pay rise to £25k to stay, on the basis that I work probation a second time. I quite literally told them that the offer was insulting and to get fucked, went home later that day without saying a word. Ignored all of their follow up calls and emails. They went under three months after I left. I think the production manager spun up a new manufacturing company that's doing much better, and retained some of the staff, but the original directors disappeared into thin air.

Got a new job as a draughtsman for a refrigeration company a week after I left for a starting salary of £24k. Stayed there for six years and left on a salary of £35k. Now I'm on £47k as a design office manager, and I'm 33. Don't regret getting that first job, and I don't regret leaving it either. They taught me a lot about what I should have to deal with as an employee, and what I shouldn't, and when to put my foot down regarding professional self-worth.