What is your longest-held job?
US Air Force. 24.5 years. Enlisted aircraft mechanic.
In a way I’ve worked for the USAF even longer. I’ve been a contractor doing IT work for about 15 more years but with 3 different companies but with the same customer.
What is your shortest-held job? Bonus points if the story is funny.
Cook at Sambo’s Restaurant in Clovis NM for 3 months. The place sucked.
If it is different from #2, what was your shortest REAL job? That is, eliminating jobs like you worked at a convenience store for 2 days when you were 15 and left when a robber hit you with a bat or some other kid-job story.
The same.
Age would be a good thing for context if you don’t mind sharing it.
Longest: 31 years, 4 months as a professor of math.
Shortest: 4 days. It is an amusing story IMHO: I was 15 and got a summer job at a drug store. In those days, drug stores nearly all had soda fountains and doing that was, I assumed, my job. But on day 3, the druggist decided to go off and take a nap, leaving me in charge. A man walked in and came to the drug counter and hemmed and hawed, ask my for “you know what”. “No, I don’t”. It’s below the counter. I hadn’t the foggiest idea what he wanted. He must have complained to the druggist because on day 4, I was let go without explanation.
Shortist real job. Five months as a stock boy in an auto supply store. I don’t know why I was fired.
What is your longest-held job?
9 years, 4 months. Twice. Two separate telecom companies. GTE from 1989-1999, then Nextel from 1999-2009
What is your shortest-held job?
6 months. I had a sneaking suspicion during the interview that my new possible boss was a psychopath, but I took the job anyway. Yep, she was, I stayed 6 months until another opportunity that I knew was coming finally developed. Only job I ever left with no notice. And not one of my co-workers was upset.
See 2
Age would be a good thing for context if you don’t mind sharing it.
Just turned 52 last week. Since starting to work two weeks after college graduation in 1988, I have been unemployed exactly two weeks. (desperately looking around for some wood to knock on)
My husband earned great wages where he worked. I was able to leave my job if I became bored, annoyed with co-workers, found something I thought was better, or any other trivial issue. That was a luxury most people don’t have. My employment history is quite varied.
4 years - home health care
2 years - retail sales clerk
6 years - cook
8 years - recreation department supervisor in nursing home
3 years - sewing ironing board covers
4 years - dog groomer
4 years - sewing horse blankets
1 year - the IRS as a tax examiner
1 year - mimeographed orders for a catalog company
2 years - short order cook
Longest held jobs are my two current ones, full time at a feline rescue clinic since 2003, and part time at an animal ER since 2004.
Shortest was at a mortgage broker in the 90’s. Three months IIRC. Small single owner brokerage, she was sinking and making desperate loans to unsuspecting people. I called a client to go over what paperwork I’d need and go over the specifics of the loan with her, and I hadn’t read through the file yet. I usually just started the call and caught up on the fly while talking to the clients. When I discovered this was for a third mortgage so the client could buy a car with the cash, I politely ended the call and quit.
Speaking of my current full time job being my longest term one, here’s a thread from earlier this year when I thought it was soon to end: My job since 2003 may soon be over. I feel sick. Update as of last week included, with good news. So I’ll be here a while longer, anyway. Lots of changes, but I think now they’ll be for the better!
What is your longest-held job?** 34 years, 8 months working for the Department of Defense (I retired at the end of April 2016), Held several positions during that time in different places, but all the paychecks came from the USG.**
What is your shortest-held job? Bonus points if the story is funny. One day bussing tables at Red Lobster. 10 hours without a break, decided that was not for me.
If it is different from #2, what was your shortest REAL job? That is, eliminating jobs like you worked at a convenience store for 2 days when you were 15 and left when a robber hit you with a bat or some other kid-job story. One year as a schoolteacher (9 months). Turned out I wasn’t very good at it, so when they downsized (so they said) I was let go.
Age would be a good thing for context if you don’t mind sharing it. 64
What is your longest-held job?
Current employer, October 1978 to present
What is your shortest-held job? Bonus points if the story is funny.
Cook at Bonaza steakhouse, fired after 1 day.
If it is different from #2, what was your shortest REAL job? That is, eliminating jobs like you worked at a convenience store for 2 days when you were 15 and left when a robber hit you with a bat or some other kid-job story.
Worked for State of Illinois for 4 months in 1978
Age would be a good thing for context if you don’t mind sharing it.
59
My longest job was from 2/08 to 10/11. I got progressively more experience and eventually left to go to grad school.
My shortest real job started 4/13 to 11/13. The day I started work they held a company wide meeting to say we were going to have 20% layoff and six months later we did. The craziest part of the story is they hired another engineer after me. She got a sign on bonus worked for two weeks and then got laid off. They were one of the worst companies I’ve even been around.
If we count a graduate assistantship as a job (sometimes teaching labs, sometimes grading homework, sometimes research), then I think that ran 11 years, my longest.
Like many, my shortest was one day, doing some landscaping work for a local business as a teen. It wasn’t an inherently one-day job (probably a few days), but they treated me like crap, so I didn’t come back.
Discounting that, and also things like babysitting, I can’t remember if it was one summer or two that I worked as an electrician’s assistant. I got a real printed paycheck for that, though I was still a teenager, so maybe that doesn’t count, either.
19 years…and then they pulled up stakes and moved to Pittsburgh.
They offered to relocate me, but (no offense to a beautiful town!) I didn’t want to move to Pittsburgh. I’m a California boy. I have never actually seen a true winter.
I’ve been a professor here since July 1982 so almost 33 years (unless yo don’t count my first year as a visitor). I was a professor at another school for 7 years before that.
Before that I only held par-time or summer jobs that I knew would just last the summer.
In my case its a little harder to call since I usually have some sort of daily/regular job and different sidelines. I’ve collected a paycheck of one size or another on a yearly basis from our state DCNR for about 19 years. I had one sort of daily job for 15 years. Those two are probably the record holders.
6 years or so as an employee. I worked one job continuously for 7ish years, but I was contracting and my employer changed several times over that period.
My shortest job was a real job. I had two offers and an interview after I moved to the UK. I turned down one, accepted the other starting on a Friday, and had the interview on the Thursday. After the interview I got a call from the recruitment agent I had turned down. He told me he had seen the CVs of a lot of sales staff from my new firm, and I should be aware of that. So I started Friday, and immediately got calls from the recruitment agent saying that my Thursday interview went well and I should get an offer. In the meantime I was being shown round, including a stack of 25 laptops that had once belonged to the sales staff (but no one would tell me that). I got and accepted the new offer on Monday morning before work, I asked my manager about the sales staff, was told that things had been difficult, I said that I didn’t like risk and didn’t appreciate the fact that I hadn’t been told about situation, and we agreed to part company without them paying me. I started the other job and stayed for 5 or so years.
I’ve done what I do today for the past 27 years, initially employed by someone but owning a business for the past 18 years.
My shortest job was a month of telephone solicitation for a super-scamy outfit. I was happy to just put in my hours and collect minimum wage ($2.50). Once they caught on that I wasn’t really trying to sell overpriced magazine subscriptions they let me go.