What was your shortest employment?

[KrisZ]

Mine was one week.

It was a summer job back when I was in high school. The place was making all sorts of candles. Scented, not scented, various shapes etc. The various smells were quite nauseating when you walked in.
My job was to melt the wax, mix in the color, the scent and get it all ready for pouring into the molds. It wasn't bad, I had some idle time when the wax was melting, but it was all guys working this.

Well, there was another section where all the sorting, wrapping, packaging took place and it was done by mostly women some of which were about my age.
Naturally I started going over there to talk to the girls, during my idle time.
Their manager, also a woman, didn't like me talking to the girls. She would give me the dirty eye look for the first few times, but didn't say anything.

Finally, around day 4 of my carrier as a candle maker she started yelling at me that I cannot come over from my section and talk to the girls. I don't take this kind of treatment, so I started yelling back. I told her that I'm not a dog and she cannot prevent me from talking to people. Thinking back it was quite funny. I would probably laugh at her, instead of yelling if it happened today.


Interestingly enough I was not fired, I did my shift on Friday and quit after that.

 

[buster]

9 week contract job.

 

[cptbarkey]

1 day on the assembly line. My brain melted after 30 minutes. I finished the day, but quit that evening.

 

[Passport1]

Three months. 2000 Census taker. Interesting job.

 

[wander2039]

2-3 months at the Sears in the tool section. The manager, lead or whatever he was had issues. When I was refilling stock I over heard him talking about me and other employees, and none of it was good. It was funny that I never talked to him or was really around him that much. I just didn't show up one day.

 

[RitcheyRch]

A few weeks. Program manager cussed at me and I walked out. Told him he doesn't pay me enough to talk to me like that.

 

[Chris142]

3 hrs directing traffic at a ski resort.

 

[zzyzzx]

Not me but I used to work someplace where some guy went out to lunch on his first day and never came back.

 

[CheezWhiz]

Chippendale.

 

[Leo99]

I had two short stints.

My first job as a busboy in an Italian restaurant that had "connections" lasted a few weeks. I was not a good busboy. As an employee, I got to eat at the house table before my shift. It was nice that they fed us. An older gentleman joined me one evening. He was quite the character. My mother saw him and informed me that he was a high ranking member of Mafia. In fact, I would later read about him in the news when his son got whacked and there was retaliation.

Another short stint echoes that of KrisZ. I had a position trying to clean up someone else's incompetence. Instead of processing claims, this person fell behind and stuffed them in their desk. They got fired and they brought me in to fix things. It started out toxic with the librarian hating that I was allowed in her library unsupervised. Instead of being helpful, she felt threatened and exudes negativity. Then there was the subject of quiet hours. From 10am to 11:30am and from 1:30pm to 4pm were quiet hours and personal conversations were to be avoided. Being a single man in my early 20s and being there were quite a few attractive young ladies there, I got called into the VP's office for violating quiet time. The VP called me into his office and said that I was observed to be violating quiet time and if I'd like to stay with the firm quiet time would need to be observed and could I change my ways. I told him no, quiet time is ridiculous and the place had bad morale and it was not a pleasant place to work and walked out the door. He seemed a bit surprised.

 

[DougR]

Walked off a summer job in the 70's spray painting furnace heat exchangers when the ventilation fan broke down and supervisor told me it would take a week or so to repair.

 

[Hillbilly Deluxe]

Less than 12 months.

I left a very comfortable position at an MEP Engineering Firm, something I had done for a couple of decades to go to work for a Mechanical Contractor who performed a good bit of the work I had done design projects on at a mutual client's facility. I was fairly familiar with that facility and I was primarily working on projects at this facility with the mechanical contractor as a Project Manager. I would also be given some smaller projects here and there to look after and to walk a potential project, estimate and write a proposal.

All of this was very new to me. I received no training. This company was extremely poorly run, all by family.

A few weeks into the new job, I began to learn that they weren't paying their bills at supply houses, equipment rental companies, etc. I think they owed the major supply house in the area over $400k and two of the four equipment rental companies wouldn't even talk to us.

A few months after working there, I had a major project going at the primary facility. I show up on Friday morning and about 6 of the 8 guys there working said they were about to "drag up" (tradesman speak for gather their stuff and quit). I freaked out. I learned that the owner of the company called them the night before to tell them their paycheck was going to bounce, but not to worry, he was going to bring them cash later that day.

Holy cow. Paychecks bouncing? By this time, getting supplies (as in tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in materials, equipment, etc) was a whack-a-mole game, going to a supplier who wasn't that deep in the hole with them who would still sell to them on monthly credit. I had made two trips to the ER for anxiety attacks (didn't know it was anxiety, felt like heart attacks) by this time. I had seriously started looking for a new job.

About 10 months into the job, I had a pretty good lead on a new job. It took about another 3-4 weeks to get a written offer. I got the offer on a Tuesday. My wife and I went and parked my truck at the office on that Thursday night. Friday morning I show up to the office with my laptop and a letter of resignation. I walk into the GM's office (not family, he was hired the same time as me, going through the same thing as me), told him I was done and leaving. He didn't get it at first, but I said " I'M DONE. Here's my laptop." He got it then and said "I'm not to far behind you." He quit about a month later.

I've never done that before that and haven't done it since.

 

[Bud_One]

One week... at a GM owned dealership (Buick, Pontiac, GMC) in the late 90s , as a service dispatcher.
It was a zoo.. the whole place was run like a frat house and chaos ruled supreme.
Had no structure to any dept or way of running the place. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

 

[dadto2]

I think my shortest job was a few weeks running the cash register at a seasonal kiosk in the mall. I wasn't really interested in working there, but my buddy was a manager for the company and just handed me a schedule one day. I needed the money, so I worked there for a few hours each day that Christmas season.

When I was in college, I had a summer job at an ice cube factory for 5 summers. Every week we had a new person who "went out to lunch" and never came back on their first day! lol

 

[Lubener]

I was technically hired by a company and scheduled to start but never did. A better offer came from a competing company which I had also applied to. I ended up working for that same company for 30 years before retiring.

 

[PF52]

Then there was the subject of quiet hours. From 10am to 11:30am and from 1:30pm to 4pm were quiet hours and personal conversations were to be avoided.

What was the purpose of those? To double-down and get some actual work done without the idle chit chat? I bet that could backfire and people will just goof off during non-quiet hours.

Reminds me of the "clean desk" policy some places have. We briefly had a boss who believed in that.... He wanted us to go home each day without any paperwork left on our desks, not even a single sheet. His unwritten rule was that if there was any unfinished paperwork, we should stay late to get it finished. Of course that quickly backfired and everyone just hid any unfinished paperwork inside their desks.

 

[Pew]

8-9 months as a BMW porter. Was just a second job until I cemented into my actual career.

 

[PF52]

I was technically hired by a company and scheduled to start but never did. A better offer came from a competing company which I had also applied to. I ended up working for that same company for 30 years before retiring.

As we were coming out of the last recession, there were a few people we called back from layoff who hadn't worked here for two or three years. There was one guy we called back who had just that very day started a new job at a different place. So he quit there (after just one day) and came back to work for us. Unfortunately, he quickly got on the boss's bad side (he'd picked up some serious laziness habits during his off time) and we laid him off after just a few months. But maybe he'll chime in if he sees this thread!

 

[Leo99]

I was technically hired by a company and scheduled to start but never did. A better offer came from a competing company which I had also applied to. I ended up working for that same company for 30 years before retiring.

Oh, yeah. I had one of those "jobs". My father knew a guy that owned a pizza place. We go there on a Wednesday and talk to the guy. I was about 14 or 15 years old. The owner says I can start on in 3 days on Saturday. Come in at 2pm and work to 6pm. My father drops me off at 1:50pm. The owner isn't there. It's some new guy that says he just bought the place and doesn't need any help. Now, I'm stuck there in a sketchy area for 4 hours with nothing to do. Luckily, my father drove past soon and saw me and he's like how did you get fired in 5 minutes. Just a weird thing to happen.

 

[Pablo]

Chippendale.

Forum handle fits.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I guess we are including teen jobs, not career, real jobs.........hahaha

I worked at a plastic 1 gallon bottle blow molding and stenciling factory for less than a day ca 1975. Basically my job was everything after the stencil ink was applied.

It was a tough job. Two lines running pretty fast.

Allow stencil to cure..........which was not as fast as you might think
Inspect stenciling
Allow to cure some more, but don't let too many bottles stack up
Fold and tape cardboard (4 bottles) per cases, insert dividers
Place cured, inspected bottles in box, stack box on single cart
Move full cart to warehouse, stack on pallets
Roll empty cart back...........

No way could I alone keep up. I was so shy and young, I didn't tell the boss guy he was nuts.