Fastest you've ever quit a job.

[The Bith Shuffle]

I worked at McDonald's for two hours and quit.

What's the fastest you've ever quit a job? And by "quit" I mean it in the "quit" sense, not in the "discovered that I had other obligations, that I had time conflicts, etc" sense.

[Poysyn]

One shift. I guess it was about three hours. I was hired as waitress, showed up for my first shift to find out that "training" was working as a busboy until the manager decided you were trained enough to move up, and we didn't get a share of the tip pool.

Also, door to door soliciting for a paint company, a few hours.

[drastic_quench]

Doesn't technically count as quitting, but I turned down the job right after the offer. I was on summer break in college and went to an interview for a generic-sounding company that ran an ad in the classifieds, something like American or Dynamic something or other. Turns out it was a group interview to sell Cutco knives with absolutely no leads -- just prey on your family and friends! Because I could speak in public like a normal human and wore a tie, I survived the cullings of the first twenty minutes and was offered a job. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. It was a little fly-by-night office setup, and the people that ran the thing did it with a carnie-like slickness that comes with 10,000 repetitions.

[FlyingRamenMonster]

One week, selling phone plans door-to-door. I did not sell any phone plans, so I decided to quit before I got fired.

[torie]

My mother once quit a job at a bakery after just a couple of hours. The owner waltzed in, and instead of introducing himself to the new employees, he started upbraiding my mother for not assisting another employee in another task that was taking place in another area. Where my mother wasn't trained yet. My mom asked a fellow employee if she would have to work with him often. She received an answer to the affirmative, took off her apron and told them thanks so much, but she was leaving.

[Recliner]

Originally Posted by drastic_quench

Doesn't technically count as quitting, but I turned down the job right after the offer. I was on summer break in college and went to an interview for a generic-sounding company that ran an ad in the classifieds, something like American or Dynamic something or other. Turns out it was a group interview to sell Cutco knives with absolutely no leads -- just prey on your family and friends! Because I could speak in public like a normal human and wore a tie, I survived the cullings of the first twenty minutes and was offered a job. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. It was a little fly-by-night office setup, and the people that ran the thing did it with a carnie-like slickness that comes with 10,000 repetitions.

I got tricked into going to a Cutco "interview" as well. For the record, I remember the bogus name they used in the ad -- "Vector Marketing". I was already familiar with the company, so it only took me a few minutes to realize what the deal was. I was sitting with about five other people watching some dork demonstrate the knives awesomenes, when I cut him off and said "Oh, ah, gotta go!", and left quickly. Fuckers.

[Jettboy]

Less than an hour.

[jjimm]

Got a job unloading trucks at a depot. The first job was to unload heavy wooden boxes of exceptionally sharp industrial guillotine blades. One of the boxes had a loose bottom, and five blades slammed into the floor of the truck next to my and my coworker's feet. He and I refused to continue, so I was reassigned to undo the straps on another truck with tarp siding - and when I did so, a box at the very top of the truck fell onto the top of my head and gave me concussion. Though I was there for four hours, two of them were spent in the tea room recovering. I didn't go back after lunch.

[Unintentionally Blank]

Well, It didn't quit so much as not come back. Mom got me a job down the road at the Summer Camp doing janitorial stuff. Worked there for 10 hours and they wrote me a check for $70. I thought that was pretty good pay for the work. I was paid by the assistant director.

I got a call from the Director a day or so later and he said something like "hey, we can't pay you that kinda money, the Assistant Director overstepped his bounds and hey, if you eat lunch here, it's like We're paying you for that, and hey, if you stay here, that's like we're paying you room and board and the best we can do is $2.20 an hour" (minimum wage was, like, $3.25):

[Kalhoun]

I made it until lunchtime on one job. It was about 2 hours too long.

[TheScogg]

One week layin down basement walls. Basically consisted of carrying these 90lb. steel molds, tieing them to other similarly sized molds and filling them with concrete to create the walls of a basement. Lots of hammering and carrying too. It was backbreaking work in the middle of December in Kentucky, so think 35 degrees (Fahrenheit) and drizzling. We'd show up dressed in full winter gear and would leave covered in sweat and wearing nothing but a t-shirt and our pants. It was that physically intensive. But the thing that finally got me was my fear of heights. They wanted me to walk around 10' in the air on the top of these parralel molds which were about a third as wide as my foot while hoisting these 90lb. pieces of steel from the outside of the basement to the inside of the basement. I'm 6'2", 170lbs., and can bench about 130lb. No way in hell I was going to dead lift 2/3 of my max benchpress, 10' in the air, in the rain, on two railings that weren't even as wide as my feet. I tried with one of the lighter forms (about 40lbs) and felt like a baby mountain goat taking it's first steps. I was terrified. I begged the foreman to let me do something else (he was a great guy - a very efficient yet still compassionate / fun guy who was very good at what he did) and he said "Don't worry...it took most of us a few days to get used to it. If you don't want to do this, start picking up those 2x4s over there and we'll try again tomorrow". On my drive to work the next day, I took a left where I should've taken a right and went to see an old friend I hadn't visited in a while. A week later, I was back working at my uncle's printshop for the second time. He'd tease me about my hiatus doing manual labor, and I'd slip into a dream. For all it's hearteach, sweat, blood and tears, I sure felt like a real winner for that one week, lifting steel and swinging a hammer in the cold December rain.

[VunderBob]

Got suckered into what turned out to be door-to-door vacuum cleaner sales. I went to the training session in the morning, and didn't come back from lunch.

[Anamorphic]

A few hours, maybe 3 or 4. It was a waiter job during a summer break of college. The place was really strange. The main thing -- that they didn't mention until I showed up there for my first shift -- was that we weren't able to keep our tips. Tips went to the restaurant. To make up for that, the base salary was quite a bit more than you'd make at other restaurants, but no where near enough to make up for not getting tips. It was a reasonably nice restaurant -- not upscale, but hardly low rent either; entrees were in the $15-20 range, as I remember. Point being, I would have made far, far more in tips then the higher-than-standard-for-waiters-salary would have brought me. And I remember them being very specific on the point that we weren't allowed to tell the diners that we weren't getting the tips. Gee, I wonder why? It didn't take long to realize I was being ripped off.

There were some other pieces of oddness that I can't remember, but that was enough. Made it through the lunch shift, and decided to just bolt. I'd never done that before or since, but I knew I wasn't going to last long anyway, so I figured just make a clean break of it. Plus, I really resented the fact that I was being so obviously ripped off on the tips, so I didn't feel any guilt for just leaving them.

[John DiFool]

Tried to be a taxi driver once. Quit after 12 hours (and maybe $50 in gross earnings) after a pickup (African-American male) propositioned me, and then to add injury to insult stiffed me on the fare.

[Ellen Cherry]

And here I thought I would be one of the shortest. It was one of my first jobs, a reporter at a small daily. I was warned it was a crappy paper and I thought, "hey I can stand anything for a year or so while my husband finishes school." Oh God no. I knew the first day what a miserable outfit it was when I asked where the supplies were and the editor ripped the piece of paper off the pad he was writing on, and handed the rest to me.

I endured two weeks and fortunately, a nearby newspaper where I'd also applied called me. I interviewed, was offered the job and accepted. I turned in my two-weeks notice two weeks after I started, so I actually worked there a month. Add to the poorly run paper the fact that some of the members of the city council, which I covered, seemed to be certifiably insane. It was excruciating.

[Colibri]

Supermarket cashier, after school when I was in high school in the late 1960s. I lasted about a week. The worst day was when they put me on the express lane (10 items or less). For me, making change was the most-time consuming part of each sale, and since you had to do so every few items on the express lane I soon had a line of 20 customers glaring at me. As soon as I had made enough money to afford the senior prom, I quit.

[Oakminster]

Quit a med tech trainee type gig after a half day. Summer after my freshman year in college, pre-med major at the time. The morning consisted of classes explaining to me precisely what a catheter was, and I was instructed to come back after lunch for practice inserting same. Um, yeah. Really no way in hell I was gonna actually do that. Had a new gig delivering pizza before the end of the day. Thus ended my medical aspirations.

[Fetchund]

Quit a temp job 4 hours in - even though I told them I would do NO telemarketing or associated tasks, they had me "verifying information" - fishing. Nope - I'd been on the receiving end of that crap before.

I worked at a Perkins for one week before deciding to give two weeks notice. I went in to my boss to quit and he offered me the night manager's job. Guess they didn't know I wasn't happy!

[Ann Onimous]

One shift at Shoney's. Besides the massive amount of flies in the kitchen due to the back door being left open, I ate lunch there and got food poisoning. Not only quit, but never went back to that location. It was over two years before I was willing to try any other location.

[tumbleddown]

I quit a temp assignment after one hour and 22 minutes. It was just me and a man in a small office with one door and one window. The man sat between me and the door, and did no work and in fact, kept nodding off with his hand down the front of his pants.I began at 9 a.m. and shortly after 10 a.m. he sat bolt upright in his chair and pulled out his wallet and thrust a $20 at me. "The State Store is open now. Stop what you're doing and go get me a fifth of vodka right away."

I was 20 at the time, so I wasn't buying alcohol, and he really didn't seem like he needed more booze just then, in any case. I stopped in the building lobby, called my agency, told them that I felt unsafe and wouldn't be staying. Then I called my mother who worked across the street. She came over with a coworker who was 6'7" and a large guy who bodyguarded me while I went up and gave the guy his $20 back and got my purse and things. The guy couldn't fathom why I didn't want to be locked alone in a 10' x 10' office with a man who was going to be drinking at 10 a.m.

My agency had a "4 hour minimum pay" rule, if you went out to a location in good faith you were supposed to be paid for 4 hours. Not only did I not get paid, I got blackballed by the agency. Later that year, the head of the agency got married; when I saw his wedding announcement in the newspaper, the drunk was listed as his best man.

[kbear]

About 15 years ago, I took a job as the office accountant for a local architect. By lunchtime I had discovered that I was being paid nearly half the salary of the guy I was replacing, company debt was being guaranteed by the owner's country home and the bank called to say they couldn't cover payroll. Having just come from a job where the company went into receivership, I decided i wasn't living that life again and left.

[Fair Rarity]

I lasted at a kennel for less than a week. It was backbreaking, smelly, dirty, sweaty hard work for next-to-no pay a really long commute away.

Only afterward did I realize all the labor law violations (no pay for training, no breaks).

I was desperate fora job though and everyone else was there was so happy, so I thought it was me.

The final straw was when I was mopping and a teenage girl (I was in my late 20s) started telling me how to do it. Not where to get the supplies or what they wanted done priority, but how hold the mop.

Having to take orders in a menial job by a teenager on a power trip was too much for me.

[luv2draw]

Wow, after reading all the posts so far I feel like an old timer that I lasted for 4 days at the job I quit. Architect's office. I'm doing a set of construction drawings on the computer. Computer keeps crashing. One of the architects gets it going for me in some convoluted, makeshift maneuver but doesn't clue me in. It happened again. Obviously needs a service call but this architect tells me that I'd have to wait until their intern comes in to fix it. The intern who is in school and won't be in the office until his Christmas break which is 3 weeks away..... WTF?

Oh yeah, this was the place where the guy who hired me just kept talking, never asked me anything and never even looked at my portfolio that was sitting on the conference table during the interview. When the owner of the company called to offer me the position I was in shock but I accepted because I was out of work at the time due to a recession.

On my second day, 2 people in my dept. told me they had a bet to see how long I would last....... I wonder who won....

[Rysdad]

I think I was 16, and took a summer job as a dishwasher at a restaurant that was open 24 hours/day. When I showed up the next day at 11:00am to start, it was then that they told me that the night staff and the morning staff just stored up all of the dirty dishes, pots and pans until the dishwasher came in at 11:00. They were stacked from floor to ceiling and all along one wall of the kitchen.

I walked out right then. Estimated time: 3 minutes.

[UncleNito]

Once when I was woefully underemployed, I went to work for a company that sold credit-card payment processing services. The "recruiter" (boiler-room telemarketer) who contacted me and signed me up for training told me that I would be calling on qualified, interested prospects only so I gave it a shot. After one full day it was clear that it was just cold-canvassing, which I had no interest in doing. So it was back to factory temping to me. One day, or two if you count the training.

I've Googled the company since then and they have a pretty poor reputation. They've changed their name a couple times since then, too.

[River Hippie]

One day on the railroad. Rail and tie crew back in the mid-seventies. When I got the job, I didn't realize I would be travelling around living in a railcar with a bunch of rough looking older guys (I was 18). Plus within a half hour of starting I crushed my finger with a big iron prybar. That was enough for me.

[Chimera]

I took a job as a custodian at a small magnet school. The previous guy had quit something like two weeks earlier and the place was dirty as all hell. I worked 10 hours (all I was allowed to work in one go) and went home without having finished all the work (there was just too much of it) and aching from head to toe.

I called up an unemployed friend who was in much better shape than I was and offered him up as my replacement. He likewise lasted one day before quitting.

Nothing wrong with the job or the people, it was just too damned much hard work.


A couple of years ago, I took a job with a Security agency. On what should have been my first day on the job, it was 7am on Saturday morning and -20 degrees. My battery died on my car and I was unable to get it started even with a jump, so I had to call in and say I couldn't make it. I got a nasty disciplinary letter saying that I should have planned ahead (huh?), and under the circumstances, should have called someone for a ride or taken a cab. Now I understand them being upset with me, but no way I'm calling people up at 7am on a saturday at 20 below and asking them to drive me 15 miles to a job.

I was scheduled to go the same site (a liquor store) at 6pm on Monday. I got called at 2pm and told to be there at 3pm because the regular day guy was going to be fired. I went in and found that they had changed their mind and wanted me to go home and come back in 3 hours. NO. So they allowed me to stay. They were going to fire the guy for "allowing" someone to shoplift an expensive bottle of liquor, but the Supervisor who came in to deal with it actually had the brains and balls to tell them we'd pull the account if they fired ANOTHER guy for this shit.

No breaks all night. Got yelled at for leaving the floor for 3 minutes to use the restroom. Got yelled at every time they noticed something missing. Intentionally allowed two guys to walk out with obvious bottles under their coats because by the time I closed the distance, I would have been stepping between them *in the doorway*, and NO WAY was I going to put myself in that situation. Got yelled at because an expensive bottle of Tiquilla disappeared, despite an employee and the floor manager being in that area and me being elsewhere.

They pulled my schedule for the rest of the week. When I complained, they sent me to a "mall" of very small Somali and African immigrant shops in a former industrial building right in the heart of gang territory. The previous day, a 60 year old guard had been fired for pulling his gun on gang members. The guy who worked there told me how often his car had been vandalized and that he went through a large bottle of pepper spray EVERY WEEK. In one hour and fifteen minutes, we kicked gang members out of the building seven times.

ONE GUARD ONLY. Yup, about 60-80 small shops, about 300-400 people at any given time, loads of gang members hanging around because it's warm, has food and drink and shit to shoplift, and only one fucking security guard.

Here, I was a 45 year old white guy with no mace, pepper spray or weapons other than my gun, and this company did not provide health insurance. So I walked out.

The company pulled me from their schedule, but refused to fire me. So I refused to quit.

I got my first paycheck, for $105.35. IT BOUNCED.

Never bothered to call and ask for another shift. Still have their uniform somewhere. No one ever called to ask for it back, and I won't give it back until they pay me the $20 their bounced check cost me in bank fees.

[Cardinal]

I actually tried the Vector Marketing thing. It's not a scam, and I really like the knives, but I just couldn't do all that brazen calling and wheedling of names and numbers. I barely did any of it.

The one that I just left was calling for carpet cleaning. No one sounded very pleased to get this call, and they were running their "5-year anniversary special" for no good reason other than it sounded good. I suspect they'd only ever had "sale" prices, which is now probably against the law.

What beats that is not doing anything more once I met a guy in a restaurant and found out that the job was selling water filters for home faucets. I didn't even call him back.

[elfkin477]

Three days. I was hired to teach preschoolers, but they had someone quit the toddler program unexpectedly, and asked me to work there instead for a short while, you know, until they could find someone else. By the end of day three I'd been left alone with seven kids ages 18-24 months for half a day (with the director trying to heavily persuade me that I liked working with them), caught a cold from one of the little buggers, and had my alternator start to act up during the 1 hour drive home that night. I considered it a sign from God and quit as soon as I got home.

[Mindfield]

One hour. It was for a "registrations" job whose description in the paper suggested it was merely taking calls from people and filling out registrations for seminars or something like that. Turned out to be telemarketing, mostly cold calls. I quietly slipped out during the orientation.

[Ruffian]

I lasted six days detassling corn. I was 12, and soon learned there was a reason Indiana turned to children for such work: no one else would do it. I didn't mind the 90 degree heat and 90% humidity--and having to wear long sleeves and pants to avoid corn rash--too much as I could listen to my walkman while tediously removing those tassles, often four hours at a time uninterrupted. But when on day six the "boss" said no more walkmans as it was distracting us from our work, I said screw it.

On the first day of that job, the "boss" guy said, "This will be the worst job you will ever have in your entire life." Nearly 25 years later, I have to agree. Ugh.

[Chimera]

I never did Corn Detasseling, but my sister did it once.

Once.

[Boyo Jim]

I've quit two different jobs without making it through the first shift.

The first was pizza delivery. The oven sterno thing in my car wasn't well enough insulated and it melted part of the car seat and almost started a fire. Plus the manager literally screamed at everyone every minute. Two delivery runs and I walked out.

Another was a telephone survey gig. We had a script and almost the first words on it were a lie -- that it would take only 10 minutes. In fact it took more than 40, and I got tired of the pissed-off people on the other end, and never came back from lunch. BTW -- that's what the temp agency told me to do, just leave and don't come back. I would have stayed at least through the end of the day had they asked me to. I'm pretty sure they told the client another story about unreliable temps.

[kopek]

Under an hour; I think the check actually read "15 minutes". Back when I was 18 I had accepted a job at a 7-11/Open Pantry type store and was just getting the "rules" before starting my first shift. The manager went down several points and got to "When you get robbed, you do this, this and this". I countered with "You mean if" just to be told no - the place got knocked over every week or two. Of course, the manager quickly pointed out that no employees had been injured so far that year. Sorry - for 20 hours a week and minimum wage, not this kid.

[Cyberhwk]

Two days. Business #1: Good to employees so they always have lots of applicants. Business #2: Very bad to employees. Always have job openings.

So I applied to #1, got told they were full. Reluctantly I applied to #2 and was immediately hired since they can never keep any experienced employees. After day two (after I got disciplined for a truly worthless mistake) I went back to Business #1 as a customer and a friend of mine that worked there ran to talk to the hiring manager. He walked out and asked me if I still wanted a job. I said yes.

Other establishment banned me from the premises for 6 months.

[SandyHook]

0 minutes.

They offered me the job at the end of some testing/interview and I turned it down. This was just after graduation from college (age 40) with a degree in accounting. The folks at 7-11 wanted me to go from store to store doing inventory for $14,000 a year.

When I was a pipefitter and there was lots of work I'd quit in a heartbeat, "You want me to do what? Get my check, I'm out of here." When I was a pipefitter and there wasn't any work it was, "You bet, get right on that."

[MissTake]

I managed to work for TicketBastard for almost a month. However, if you actually added my hours up I maybe worked a week. I was pregnant and dealing with major morning sickness and there was something in the building with an off smell that made me want to hurl within minutes of sitting down in my cubicle. If business was slow they asked people to leave - I was often first on the list. More than once I paid more to park than I earned that day. Combine that with crappy business practices and managers with entitlement issues, I just never went back.

Getting a job in our division is not a quick process - it's not uncommon for it to be 8 - 10 weeks from application to hiring (including backround check). Last year we had a caseload open for a few months and were finally allowed to hire. Whoo hoo! My boss hired a woman who seemed pretty astute, had a great personality, and seemed pretty excited to get back into the workforce. She showed up for orientation... and never came back. It wasn't even our orientation, it was the filling out forms / welcome to the county stuff.

[Yorikke]

One four-hour shift telemarketing. Soliciting donations for some fireman's fund. Dunno if it was real or a scam. I felt dirty, and never came back for my second shift, or for my pay.

Joe

[MeanOldLady]

Originally Posted by Anamorphic

A few hours, maybe 3 or 4. It was a waiter job during a summer break of college. The place was really strange. The main thing -- that they didn't mention until I showed up there for my first shift -- was that we weren't able to keep our tips. Tips went to the restaurant. To make up for that, the base salary was quite a bit more than you'd make at other restaurants, but no where near enough to make up for not getting tips.

Originally Posted by Cardinal

I actually tried the Vector Marketing thing. It's not a scam, and I really like the knives, but I just couldn't do all that brazen calling and wheedling of names and numbers. I barely did any of it.

I did too, and I actually made some money from it. I decided then that sales was for me since for some reason people seemed to like buying things from me. I ended up getting away from sales after college. I figured I needed to decide whether or not I wanted that to be my career path, and ultimately found myself elsewhere. My first job out of college paid me much less than every sales job I had when I was in school. It was a little strange, but I'm thankfully past that now.

Now then, the quickest I've ever quit a job was five days. If you think you hate people now, try working at JC Penney, and for a cruel, red-haired petty dictator, no less. Do you have any idea how hard it is when someone asks "Where does the line start?" to not say, "It starts two feet over, at the sign that reads 'line starts here'" really sarcastically? Do you have any idea how hard it is to work for a condescending bitch who honestly thinks managing a JC Penney in the Del Amo mall is akin to managing the universe? The good part is how much fun I had telling her exactly how I felt when I quit.

[MeanOldLady]

Oh yeah, I meant to reply to Anamorphic with something or other about what bullshit that was. I forgot what, exactly, I was going to say now, but it was something along those lines, and I wasn't just randomly quoting stuff.

[fluiddruid]

I've never quit a job all that quickly. The fastest was just under one month. When the economy took a dive a few years back, my freelance work took a dive and I was a bit concerned. I took a part time gig with a big, well known bank as a collector. The job description explicitly stated that it was only for accounts less than 30 days due, so basically it was a reminder. I mentioned this in the interview and the guy went "Uh, uh, oh yeah, this position should be for just those new accounts." Yeah, turns out it was dealing with any account right up until it was written off or sent to Legal (6 to 12 months overdue). Also, they made it really clear that you could personally be sued by customers if you violated the debt collecting laws, which was really easy to do without meaning any harm. Oh, and did I mention I was assigned to a supervisor that never worked at the same time I did, and I was left on my own with nobody to ask questions or help me since I was the only one on my team working nights?

I completed the full training and made it a few shifts before I decided that I'd rather cut my personal spending rather than deal with a job that was exactly the opposite of how they described. I quit via email without notice and the supervisor wanted me to call so she could talk me back into the job. I said no.

Oh, and my paycheck bounced. Thanks, Fells Wargo. At least I learned never to work for them (they're a huge employer in my area).

[Lute Skywatcher]

When I found out that management was lying to us, which was about two hours after training ended.

[DianaG]

When I was ten or so weeks pregnant with my daughter, I worked at a bakery for about an hour, fortyish minutes of which I spent in the rest room being sick. I just couldn't take the smell. The owner was really very sweet about it.

[tdn]

I worked at a toy store for one week. My friend Jeff worked there and he was all stoked. He loved it. So I interviewed and got the job. When I actually started, I didn't feel so much hired as drafted. On the first day, Bill, the owner, threatened to fire us all. There was a lot wrong with the guy, but the worst was that however hard a task was, Bill would do whatever he could to make it harder. Or impossible. Then fly off the handle if it wasn't done to his satisfaction -- and it NEVER was.

One of Bill's things was that he didn't like repeating himself. His rule was that whenever he said something, we were to write it down. So everyone walked around the store with a pen and a pad of paper just in case Bill had something to say. Then he'd speak so fast that you couldn't get it. If you asked him to slow down or repeat the last bit, he'd fly off the handle because -- get this -- you didn't write it down. It slowly dawned on me that his entire purpose in life was to prove other people wrong. He cared more about that than running his business.

I remember Jeff, the happy coworker, red as a beet and swearing up and down about "that asshole Bill." He quit a few days after I did.

A good 15 years later, I learned that he went out of business. His son started up a similar business, and my friend Bruce worked there. Bill was hanging around all the time and doing some really crazy shit, making everyone's lives difficult.

[Mindfield]

While we're talking about terrible owners/managers, I worked two weeks at a printing company. I had prior printing experience, and needed a job, so on the recommendation of an acquaintance-of-a-friend I applied and got the job.

However, I wasn't to start doing any actual printing. Instead, my job was in shipping, wrapping skids of printed matter for large clients, and every client had their particular preferences to how they wanted it wrapped. This one wanted vapour wrap and shrink wrap, that one wanted that plus cardboard corner bumpers, another wanted no vapour wrap but cardboard bumpers, wooden reinforcements on top and banded two one way, two the other, etc. There was a list of about two dozen different clients and their wrapping preferences. And we were expected to wrap one skid every half hour or so. It was such a pain in the ass that I was doing maybe one an hour because of the difficulty working with the various wraps, the pain in the ass that was the banding device, and various other things. It was freakin' hard work, and every day I left work aching just a little bit more than the last.

However, what made the job even worse was that you couldn't sit down. Ever. Not even on breaks. You could go outside for your break if you wanted -- in freezing cold temperatures, but you were never to sit down. Even on lunch. No break room or lunch room to sit in, you had to stand at your station and eat. That's probably the largest part of why I ached so much; there was just no respite from being on your feet. I got yelled at once when I sat on the floor because I just couldn't stand a moment longer. The owners were real assholes.

After two weeks I came home, flopped down on the bed, and told my wife I'm never going back there.

[wisernow]

2 hours of telemarketing.

I was at the desk making calls for 2 hours, and getting increasingly frustrated at doing something I was not liking at all.

I suddenly got up and went over to the the floor manager and told him that I was leaving. Probably he did not get me because he said, "It is not time for a break yet".

I replied, "I am not taking a break. I am leaving".

He said,"But then you can't come back tomorrow".

I replied,"I don't think I am coming back ever.", got my coat and left.

[tdn]

Originally Posted by wisernow

2 hours of telemarketing.

That was probably my shortest job ever, but I didn't quit -- they let me go. It wasn't actually telemarketing, it was raising money for charities. I had to call people at dinner time and get them to contribute large amounts of money.

One night of training, and one night of seeing if I had the "right stuff." I didn't. They promised to send me a check for the time I worked (which didn't include the training). All of $13. But I'd signed a form saying that if I didn't cash it within a couple of weeks, they'd consider it a donation. It took them that long to even acknowledge that they hadn't sent the check yet, so I never did get paid.

[HeyHomie]

I had three jobs that lasted all of a day; two in factories (I'm not cut out for factory work, apparently) and one delivering flowers.

But even though I was there far longer than a day, my favorite job-quitting story is this:

I worked at a place that requires a lot of training for new hires; like, weeks. So I attended class after class and training after training (getting paid, of course), until it was time to actually start the job. The job was a job coach for a developmentally-disabled individual; basically I was to go to his workplace (the dishroom of a hotel) and motivate him to stay on-task, etc. Easy peasy, right? Well, once my job started, I actually worked... oh, I'd say six hours over the course of three days.

Day #1 (Monday): I show up at work, I'm there with the guy for an hour or so, then I'm called by my supervisor to go home because someone has alleged a complaint against me, and I can't work until the allegation is resolved.

Day #2 (Tuesday): Early in the morning, I'm called and told that the allegation was unfounded, so go to work. I show up at work, I'm there for an hour or so, then I'm called by my supervisor to go home because someone has alleged a complaint against me, and I can't work until the allegation is resolved.

Day #3 (Wednesday): Early in the morning, I'm called and told that the allegation was unfounded, so go to work. I show up at work, I'm there for an hour or so, then I'm called by my supervisor to go home because someone has alleged a complaint against me, and I can't work until the allegation is resolved. I tell the manager "Screw this. I won't be working here any more. Goodbye."

Thursday morning, I'm called by my manager. The allegation was unfounded, and I should head out to work. I reminded my supervisor that I had quit yesterday. "Such-n-such can't work without his job coach, and we don't have anybody else. You need to go out there." I hung up.

Friday morning, I'm called by my manager's boss. "I'm told you refused to go to your job site yesterday. You do realized that's grounds for termination, right?" I reminded her that she can't fire someone who has already quit. She replies, "I don't have time for this. Hotel This-n-That won't let such-n-such work without a job coach. I expect you out there." I hung up.

About a month or so later, the manager of the dishroom calls me, wanting to know why such-n-such has been without a job coach for so long, his work is starting to lag, blah blah blah. I told him that I had quit a month ago and he should call the agency. "Oh," he said. "No one told me that."

[ajdebosco]

Made it clean through the first day of telemarketing. Ten of us were hired, spent the a.m. listening to our assigned salesperson rattle through their two minute spiel, often followed by five or so minutes of scripted overcoming objections crap.
After lunch we were given a desk and a phone book of independent grocers in different states. The old pros had NY, CA, TX, etc. I pulled WV, but decided "how bad could it be?"

Problem was we were selling dippity-do stuff (Avido?) in an Icy-Hot jar from the same manufacturer, to one grocery store towns, that likely had a H&B section that consisted of Zest, Crest, Breck, and baking soda. One of our promotional gimmicks was a window poster of Buster Crabbe (Tarzan?) free with a full case order, terms net thirty. Somehow my officious sounding voice and non-pushy demeanor suckered enough store owners that when afternoon break came around, they sent all but two of the new hires home (a few others left at lunch.) As the afternoon wore on I kept ringing my bell, indicating another sale, and even unloaded a twelve case order on some unsuspecting rube.

Feeling like an accomplished pro, I discovered I would be training one of the next day's hires, seeing as how I was one of the best salesman, and they were letting all but five people go before tomorrow. That meant about twenty people were going to get a pink slip that p.m. Turns out none of them had been there more than a week. When I went home, I stopped by another place I had applied, and they said I was fortunate, they had an opening and had left message with my folks to come in the next day for training.

Hello Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor Restaurant, good-bye Hub-Stes Corporation. Still, those goofy boiler room operators sent me check for training $4.00/hr + 5% commission on my sales = $108 for one day's work, but I was racked by guilt from the rip-off of these rural grocers. Wound up making at least that much per shift at Farrell's, and actually enjoyed the noisy, entertainment/food mall joint.

[Rushgeekgirl]

I picked up a uniform and watched an orientation video at Krystal restaurant then quit.

I worked at Central Park for three hellish hours. All I did is stand in one place dropping fries and getting them out. Burned about a dozen times in those three hours.

I went to training at Kmart for two days, but I lasted only a few hours on the register before I got into a fight with a customer.