Need some thoughts and possibly advice on this… Just got hired for a $13/hr entry level front desk position at a chain massage place. I did two interviews and everything seemed somewhat acceptable, they say they want to hire me so I come in to fill out paperwork. First red flag was when I inquired about how to put in for time off on the employee app. The manager danced around the question for a bit with various uhhs and ums until she asks me, “well when would you even want time off??” I told her about a specific family event I go to every year for a couple days in late May and she first asks if I put that in my availability on my indeed resume… which I did not because that seems pretty ridiculous honestly. She then tells me to put it in the app now and that MAYBE it will be approved… over two months in advance notice for a five day absence seems extremely reasonable to me but whatever. Anyways after we finish the paperwork she tells me they’re going to email me a link to “just a few” training courses that need to be completed before they can put me on the schedule. Sure, can do. Then she goes “maybe pay attention a little bit to the courses so you already know some of the stuff, but we’re going to teach you everything you actually need during the three week training period.” I’m now thinking this is gonna be a few quick slide shows and a quiz or two, no biggie I can handle that. I go home and don’t receive anything for a few days until I get a phone call from the manager saying the email was just sent and I need to have the online courses done before midnight on the 19th, which gave me about two days to get them done. My bday is the 19th which I have all day plans for, so I was planning to do them before then so I didn’t have to do anything work related on my birthday. I open the link the night of the 17th and am met with sixteen courses. I begin to do the first one and was pretty much immediately infuriated. It’s roughly about fifty slides, each one is read out loud excruciatingly slow and you cannot advance before it reads every. single. word. Every fifth slide or so it requires you to click continue so you can’t walk away and let it auto play. What are these slides about you ask? Covid. No no, not anything as silly as how to do covid cleaning procedures, or even how to take precaution in the workplace. It is fifty plus snail’s pace slides with extremely detailed, seemingly random information about covid. My favorite part was the SEVEN SLIDES on bloodborne pathogens featuring helpful tips like “don’t pick up glass with your bare hands” and “don’t put your bare hands in blood” first of all in what situation as a front desk associate would I be faced with large amounts, possibly even puddles, of blood??? Then after quite possibly the most painful hour and ten minutes of my adult life it finally ends, mind you this is part one of sixteen. They don’t even have any sort of questionnaire at the end or ask you any questions about the information given, it’s just slide shows throwing information at you. I go to the main page listing all the courses and it says the “estimated time” each one will take. I added them up and physically flinched when i figured it would take about NINE HOURS to complete everything. Reminder: I was given two days to complete this. Oh and the best part is that this is entirely unpaid. I checked out a couple of the other courses and they’re all full of the same lock you in place until it feels like you’ve stared at the useless information for long enough garbage. The first course I did claims to take up 50 minutes of your time but was about 20 minutes longer than stated, so we can assume most of the others are going to go over the stated time as well, I’m seeing this taking at least 10 hours to complete. That’s a full shift plus two hours of overtime, entirely unpaid and apparently all of it is rendered useless because you learn everything you actually need during the in person training period, according to my manager. I’m seriously considering calling them and telling them they’re going to have to look elsewhere for a new hire, because they’ve already proven they obviously don’t give a shit about my time or compensating me for it. Also I’m 99% percent sure this violates some sort of labor laws. What are you guy’s thoughts? How should I approach this if/when I tell them I’m not going to proceed with this job?
TLDR: entry level low pay job gives me about 10 hours of unpaid, useless training courses to do within 2 days. Looking for thoughts and/or advice on how to proceed.