Fastest you've ever quit a job.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

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).

42

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

43

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.

44

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.

45

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.

46

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.

47

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.

48

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.” :rolleyes:

49

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.

50

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.

51

Eek. Did they ever offer any explanation or justification for this policy?

52

When I was 14, I got a gig working at a local strawberry farm. A girl from school who didn’t like me much was my supervisor. She had me standing in the middle of an open field at the base of the drive up to the farm for 4 hours at the height of summer. I’m blonde and very fair skinned. I was so badly burned, I blistered. When I climbed (nearly crawled) up the hill to ask for a break, I was instructed to get back down to my post (blisters and all). I walked home and never went back.

53

I was hired for a crappy job in the beginning of pregnancy and I fainted. Then I fell asleep at home and got back late from lunch. Then I quit. Ugh…horrible. I think I was there 2 weeks.

54

Did they tell you what the (alleged and unfounded) complaint was?

55

About 4 hours (just until lunch).

Temp agency sent me to a bank to work in the back processing checks. Come to find out, it was actually a 2 person job and both people had quit, but the bank was only planning to hire 1 person to replace both of them. The job duties just seemed to go on and on, the other girls who worked back there (doing different jobs) were all skeevy and there was no official quitting time-I couldn’t go home until all the checks were processed and routed to the correct departments. The girl training me said that usually I’d have to stay until 7:00 or later on Fridays because that is a popular payday (lots of checks), plus the day after a bank holiday and the 15th and 30th of every month were usually late days as well. That was the worst part of the job as far as I was concerned-I was 19 years old and not looking to work late on Fridays! And all of that for minimum wage.

At lunch I went home, called the temp agency and told my rep that I wasn’t going back. He argued with me and told me it was going to make him look bad if I didn’t come back and I told him I didn’t care.

I then promptly found a full time job on my own.

56

Our office just received the November 09 Yellow Pages. That reminded me of one tough gig I suffered through to the bloody end: delivering phone books. If I remember correctly, the contractor maintained an attrition rate of approx. 80% per day. The crew I was on, though, had a supervisor that cherry picked our areas, showed us how to cut a few dozen corners from the regulations, and spent the last two weeks delivering a handful of books at a time to the customers that other crews “missed.”

Given the backbreaking work and low pay, I’m surprised I stuck it out, but I’m more surprised anyone still takes those temporary occupations. Seems to me they’d be better off using work-release or community service convicts for much of this stuff.

57

I had one of those “left in the middle of orientation” experiences for a home-water-filter seller. I was home from college looking for summer employment and answered an advertisement for something that sounded vaguely water-y with openings in installation, customer service, and other such. I figured, yeah, I could go for installing sprinkler systems or whatever it was they had. The adverstisement was a flat-out lie. I showed up at the appointed time and place to apply for one of the advertised jobs installing their systems; it turned out to be nothing but training for cold-call sales. I stuck it out into the early afternoon but headed to my car during a break.

58

Wow. Thanks. That was both entertaining and informative. Yes, you technically answered the question, but you didn’t exactly answer the spirit of the question.

What job did you have that was so bad you didn’t even last an hour?

59

Grace us with a few more details; sounds like a real stinker to me.:eek:

60

No, although they did tell me who made it (another one of their developmentally-disabled clients who I passed in the hall on training days and who worked in another department at that hotel).