Surely the record for a short lived career belongs to former Australian rugby league captain Mal Meninga. After retiring from football he was convinced to go in to politics. He was appearing on radio to announce his candidacy when according to ABC news:
*LOUISE YAXLEY: Rugby league super star Mal Meninga this morning broke down just as he was launching a political career, deciding mid-announcement he couldn’t do it.
MAL MENINGA: I was, I’m buggered. I’m sorry.
COMPERE, CHRIS UHLMANN: That’s all right.
MAL MENINGA: I have to resign.
COMPERE, CHRIS UHLMANN: Okay. So Mal Meninga is leaving the studio. And he says that he can’t do it.*
I worked plenty of retail in my life, and it did indeed give me a different outlook when I’m the customer. Not that I was rude or inconsiderate before, but stuff I might have absently done before, like picking up a product and then just dropping it wherever when I decide I don’t want it, I don’t do anymore. Matter of fact, every once in a while when I’m in a store, I’ll catch myself noticing something out of place and putting it back where it belongs.
I never had a truly bad retail job though – at least, none where the job itself was truly bad. I’ve dealt with enough bad customers that it has forever damaged my faith in humanity, but at least I can say that the jobs have all been pretty decent, or at least not terrible.
My ususal wise guy reply was “No, but if you ask that nice lady at the nurse’s station, she will be able to tell you.”
Fortunately, the retail joint I worked for right after my hospital stint had a salt of the earth owner that told us: “The customer is always right, BUT if a customer comes in and is WRONG, unreasonable, insulting, and rude, they are no longer a customer!! We don’t want their business, so feel free to get your manager and tell the aholes to go fk themselves.” Rather refreshing to have an operation with enough confidence in their products, staff and training that we could afford to make everyone happy about selling them stuff, and if they weren’t ever going to be satisfied, they were encouraged in no uncertain terms to go elsewhere.
my shortest job was about 2 weeks(by some act of god they paid me for 3). standard telemarketing, we were supposed to get 4 weeks of training but got only 2. the other two weeks of training were on the floor actually taking calls. i just gave out credits to every call and fixed what little i could.
my most recent job was at a butcher shop. the shop was run by a man and his wife who trained with the original owner. Unfourtunately this made for two diffrent often conflicting sets of instructions. this led to me going off to clean something already clean while they argued. compounded by this was the fact that whenever they fought they would take it out on me rather than blow up on each other. In some cases the wife would not even say hello to me in the morning. prefering to lightly bark orders and ignore me until her husband arrived still half in the bag from last night.
oh did I mention he was an alcoholic? by the time my shift was over he usualy had three tall cans in him(more on fridays as we worked till 9pm, a 12 hour shift for me). after work on fridays we would sometimes have a ‘talk’ about my progress. the talk usually consisted of him rattling on about his younger days as a junkie and his dead, heroin OD’ed ex-gf.
i took all of this as idiosyncratic and worked there for 3 months. I would have kept working there too, however business plummeted. the final straw was the insane freakouts my boss would have on especially slow days. a steady stream of f-ck f-ck f-ck for 15 minutes followed by him smashing whatever he could find into whatever else he could find for another 15.
sorry to write a novel i just havent been able to talk about this with many people. things i left out were the boss asking me for pot and interrupting anything i said.
hah sorry once again but there is MORE. again in the butcher shop. Buddy and his wife always smoked in the back room which was located just off of the end of the counter. i thought this was extremely gross. besides the fact that im expected to show some pride in the product i wanted to get outside once and a while. so i took my breaks outside until boss told me he didnt like that and that i would have to take my breaks in the same room.
when i started i was told i could get the cutting boards raised as im quite a bit taller than the butcher or his wife. about a month in after no raising. he just says “yeah, im not going to do that for you”. by this time i was used to it, but the tone in his voice was so dickish that it pissed me off.
during the interview i specifically asked the guy what he wanted me to wear. ive had discrepancies in the past and its better to know. he says anything without profanity is fine. i went and bought 3 collared shirts and 3 non staining t’s. 2 weeks in he told me to only wear collared shirts. living out in the country its not exactly easy to get into town. i was even more pissed off when he and his wife continued to wear t-shirts.
finally i was at first expected to deal with the ‘annoying’ customers which i figured comes with the territory. however the demographic was upped to the level of all customers. my boss’ traditional greeting was to head to the back room for a smoke . this absolutely ensured that i would not get to touch a piece of meat unless it was fully prepared. meaning as far as training went i was getting none.
It was selling knives (sets for kitchen use) door to door, many, many years ago in East Orange, NJ. I attended one training session, and the “instructor” actually suggested we could use the demonstrations of what we were selling, as a mild or subconscious form of intimidation, in order to close the deal. It wasn’t quite “buy these knives or else” but it was pretty close. Let me show you just how sharp these are . . . that sort of thing. I was horrified at what he was almost openly suggesting, and I left. I never actually made any effort to sell them, and never knocked on a single door.
A department store, but now I can’t remember which one, on the first day of training. I remember that you had to carry your personal items around in a clear plastic bag so they could make sure you weren’t stealing anything and the employees entrance and exit had a scanner. The whole training process (well at least that first day) was about how incredibly untrustworthy we all were.
My present job in IT support is exactly like this. Problems all day every day just because people can’t be bothered to think for themselves.
My shortest job was 3 months. I was taken on to replace several people who had left - then I realised I was pretty much the only staff member there. Started looking for a new job the same week I was taken on.
Had a temp job when I was 18 working in a factory that made cabinets and tables and wood products like that. After getting shuffled around for a bit, I was assigned to a ‘team’ that used acetone and rags to get dried glue off of the outside of cabinets.
The shift was from 6am-4:30pm which was crappy enough. The main problem was how harsh the acetone was - after an hour of this, both hands and forearms absolutely reeked of nail polish remover. After three hours, my hands and arms were turning red and my nose and throat were burning. After six hours I was lightheaded, nauseous, eyes were watering, and I had no more sense of smell. By the end of the day my arms were exhausted and I basically wanted to die.
When I got home that day I had to put my clothes in two plastic bags and eventually throw them away because they smelled so strong of chemicals. I sat in the bath for almost an hour and scrubbed my entire body half a dozen times with soap. I could still smell acetone when I was done, but I was so tired I didn’t care.
I could already smell acetone before I was even awake the next morning. When I woke up, my eyes were watering and the inside of my nose was numb and raw. I brought gloves and a bandanna to wear around my nose/mouth and somehow managed to power through the entire day. I called the temp agency and told them there was no way I was going back again. I think I made about minimum wage for all this, too.
Reading all of these, I just remembered the job that I quit before working a single day. It was the summer after freshman year of college, and I was home and broke and looking for some crap job to save up for the next year. I filled out applications all over the place, and eventually got offers from a local supermarket and Sears. The supermarket paid $0.50/hr more, so I called up and accepted. The manager there (my boss) told me that the schedule had already been filled out for that week, so I’d be starting in a few days. He said someone would call me with my schedule.
A few days go by, and I’m enjoying my summer. I get home and there’s a message to call my boss. I call him, and he asks me why I didn’t show up and complaining about how I need to be reliable… I told him that no one ever called to tell me to show up. He tells me I was scheduled today, and tomorrow at 2. I’m annoyed, but I say, ok, I’ll be there tomorrow, and hang up.
The next day at 1, I get a call from him, complaining that I missed my shift from 8-12. WTF? I call Sears back, and take the job, then call my boss at the supermarket and tell him I quit.
I got 3 more calls from this guy leaving messages berating me for missing my shifts before he got a clue.
I would love to do an “Ask the Former Associate Producer at the Jerry Springer Show” thread, but I bet it would conflict with the non-disclosure agreement I signed, promising NOT to tell everyone about the show. Maybe I could do one and insist all of my answers are completely fabricated. wink, wink
Zomg - just last week a new girl was supposed to start as a business analyst. She told the management she wanted to take her previously-scheduled 2 week vacation first.
She called last Friday and resigned - before she ever started.
My father-in-law talked me into joining the Men’s Garden Club. I had to work overtime at the time of the next meeting, and the bastards elected me to Program Director. I never went back.
WOW… a lot of people got suckered into the CUTCO / VECTOR thing… as was I!
The sign said “No door to door, 12-15$/hr, call #######”. Too good to be true I thought, and I expected it to be sales anyways, but I still gave’em a call. No real details over the phone, so I had to come down for an interview. Interview turned out to be a corny ass presentation by two douchey guys. They played the part very well. One of them looked exactly like Jason Priestly from 90210 and had an overbearing yet charismatic personality. They gave us the whole schpiel about the knives, including the fact that yes, we wouldn’t have to do door to door but why don’t you dig into your address book and harass friends and family? It wasn’t mandatory to buy the knives themselves but they wouldn’t provide a demo set, so guess what you have to end up doing anyways? The Jason Priestly guy interviewed us one on one and when it came to be my turn, I wanted to say no but the dude was so hyped up about the freaking knives that I ended up accepting. I called a friend to try my sales pitch on him and the first thing he said to me was “get the fuck outta here with that bullshit son”. At that moment I knew that this wasn’t for me, so I called Jason Priestly back and managed to blurt out that I wasn’t working for them anymore. I hadn’t bought the knives yet.
The knives really ARE awesome (expensive though).
I’ve had a few jobs that didn’t last the 1st day:
-A similar job to the CUTCO gig, this time selling restaurant and retail store VIP cards (for discounts and deals).
-Door to door sales of chocolate covered almonds, to help victims of crime. This one was a complete scam and wanted nothing do with it.
-Picking berries. I have new found respect for people that do this. Bending your back, sticking your arms in thorny plants while baking in the sun is not that much fun.
-Also did the phonebook thing. That was a huge pain in the back (literally).
WE HAVE A WINNER! I don’t think anybody else in this thread has actually showed up on premises after accepting a job and left within 5 minutes.
Myself, I quit a factory job I’d taken over Christmas break. Lasted 6 days. The manager gave a mini-speech and told everyone I was “going back to school.” I was a high school senior. :rolleyes:
One day for me. Back when I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I was hired by a convenience store/gas station across from the UNM campus. It was horrible. The manager, a slimy putz, helped train me himself. It was incredibly busy, so there were always two or three working in the daytime. Busy is not bad, but the manager kept up a running commentary about what sorry shits most of these customers were, and they could hear him! He showed me a large club beneath the counter that he said I should not hesitate to use to beat any customers getting ornery with me. Indeed, he started screaming at one he had kicked out in the past for some infraction or other (but he did not threaten him with the club). And this was supposed to be six days a week. I did not return after the first day.
But when I showed up to get my check, the attendant told me the manager had said he wanted to “talk” to me before I could have it. I didn’t want anything else to do with the guy so reported him to the state labor office, who confirmed that was an illegal requirement and got the check for me.
Rather refreshing to have an operation with enough confidence in their products, staff and training that we could afford to make everyone happy about selling them stuff, and if they weren’t ever going to be satisfied, they were encouraged in no uncertain terms to go elsewhere.