I’ve been at my current full time job for 18 years.
I’m in the process of retiring from the National Guard after 27 years. 6 of that was active duty.
Thanks for your service.
The longest I held a job for one company was (thinks for a minute) 11 years. I worked for another company for sixteen, but some of that was as a consultant.
Shortest was three weeks - the company closed down almost as soon as I joined. Not sure what that means.
I’m 60 (so far).
Regards,
Shodan
Was hired by my current employer, in a related but different position, in June 1986. Around 1990 I left to try a different job, but didn’t like it and after 6 months returned to my previous job. Held that job until October 2011, when I started my current job for a different component of the same employer.
So, depending on how you want to view it, I’ve worked for my current employer for just under 30 years (with a 6 month break).
I held my previous position for 25 years total (with a 6 month break), for an uninterrupted stretch of 20 years after that break.
I guess I’ve only held 3 full time “real” jobs in the past 30 years. One for 25 years (2 stretches of 5 and 20 years), one for 6 mos, and my current one for 5 years.
In college I tried one job for 1 day. Supposedly driving all over central IL collecting on advertising. After a day’s driving with no collections, realizing it wouldn’t even cover my gas money, it was a pretty easy decision not to go back for a second day.
I’m 55.
- What is your longest-held job?
- 9.5 years. My current position at a 9-1-1 center. I’ve held a couple different positions, but all at the same place.
- What is your shortest-held job? Bonus points if the story is funny.
Dismissing one day and other intentionally short assignments I had working for a temp agency while I was in school…
- One semester. Various college jobs working in research labs. Poultry genetics. Plant genetics. Whatever would work given that semester’s course load.
- If it is different from #2, what was your shortest REAL job?
- One year. Contract position. I’m not allowed to say what it was.
- Age would be a good thing for context if you don’t mind sharing it.
I am 28 years old. The job I’m currently in is the longest I’ve had a job - about 5.5 years and still going. I hope to work it for at least several more years, too.
26 years in real estate
1 day working in a friend’s office
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My longest job started off as a kid job (pizza delivery driver), but I eventually became the general manager and made a decent salary. I was there 13 years, 1992 - 2005.
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When I was 18 I got a job as a telemarketer selling newspaper subscriptions. I think I lasted about a month.
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I quit the pizza place, went back to school, earned a master’s, and now I’m a math teacher at a couple of community colleges. My shortest real job was four years ago: I taught at a community college for one quarter, and they didn’t ask me back. So 11 weeks.
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I’ll be 45 in a couple of weeks.
I’ve worked for the same University research lab since I was 18 years old. In the intervening 34 years I’ve changed positions within the lab a few times but I’ve always worked in the same building for 34 years. I’m 52 now. I’ll probably stick it out a few more years. I might try to make it an even 40.
Longest at one employer - 15 years, then laid off. “Here’s your service award and pink slip!”. Well, pretty close to that quick, anyway.
Shortest - 1 week.
I was working in big box retail and was well liked by my managers. When I told the store manager that I was leaving to take a manager trainee job at a high end rent-to-own operation he smiled and said “Look, you have a week vacation coming, why don’t you take that? You can go work for the other company and, if you don’t like it, come back here the following Monday like it never happened.” A wise and gracious man, he was. It took very few repo runs to convince me my health/life was worth more than a color TV.
I’m 42. I’ve been working one job or another pretty much constantly since I was 14. I think the longest break between jobs was three weeks, and that was right after I left the Army and travelled halfway across the country to live in a brand new place. Technically had the next job after two weeks, but the business hadn’t officially opened yet.
Longest job I’ve held is the current one. It’s been almost exactly 10 years. I’m a programmer. My official title is Senior Consultant, which I find ridiculous. Second longest was the Army, where I was active-duty for four years.
Shortest was a bullshit bar-back job at a nightclub that had just opened. The management didn’t exactly have its shit together and I just stopped going after a month or two. Didn’t even bother going to pick up my last check and waited for them to mail it.
Shortest grown-up jobs were two where I worked about a year at each. The first was an entry-level deal, and I jumped ship to head to the next one which was a 50% pay increase. Then I left that job for my current one, which was a 50% pay increase. Wish I could have kept up that trend for a few more years!
- Longest-held job was just over nine years (June 2006-July 2015) working for a sports website. Would in all likelihood still be working there had it not been sold and our location closed as a result, with the department I worked in being eliminated entirely. We did get a three-month severance and I was able to collect unemployment on top of it, which worked out well as I ended up getting a new job almost exactly three months later.
2-3. Shortest job was about four hours working as a groundskeeper at a golf course when I was 16. It was pretty rough on the allergies. Otherwise, I spent a month working on the overnight stock team at Target when I was 21. I was hired to work full-time, but was never given more than 24 hours in any of the weeks I worked there. I had a part-time day job at the time, and was able to pick up some extra hours before eventually getting bumped up to full-time.
- I will be 36 in August.
If working at the same facility through a couple owner changes count, then I spent 29 years at the same place.
The place was originally owned by 3 guys, worked there for about 10 years under that ownership. They sold out to Mitsui of Japan and I survived the purchase and kept my job. Then after about 10 years Mitsui parted out the business but they didn’t know what to do with the local facility, so a couple of the managers bought it and I got another 10 years out of the place.
By parting out the business I mean the selling and relocation of the various divisions within the corporation. Rebranding, renaming, firing most people or moving their jobs with the new business.
Surviving through these business changes was no small feat.
I was one of the last men left standing when those 2 guys sold all the parts of the business, again, but I left when all the other managers started to disappear one by one. I knew I was next and left. 4th new owners were assholes.
The other jobs before don’t matter.
Am 59.
I’m 36 and my longest job was 10 years and 10 months, which I left almost 2 years ago. I really liked that job and the people I worked with, but just saw greener grass elsewhere. Don’t regret leaving it a bit.
My shortest job lasted about 10 minutes. While in college a friend recruited me to work at the campus call center with him. They did phone surveys. I didn’t make it past observing a couple calls in training before saying, “this ain’t for me.” I really just didn’t feel comfortable bothering people.
My shortest real job was 4 weeks. I had just graduated with my BSEE and took what I knew would be a temporary manual labor job, but was prepared to be there for a long time depending on how my job search went.
My longest-held job was also my first ‘real’ job. I went to college. One of my friends started a software consulting company instead. When I graduated, we traded - I gave him advice on picking a school to go to, he gave me a job. I worked for him for about five years before moving away. The pay was low, but so was the cost of living, and in a field where ‘entry level’ jobs require 2+ years paid experience, it was a good deal overall.
I had a half-a-summer job working as a cook/dishwasher at a Friendly’s franchise. I agree with the other posters - dishwashing at franchise restaurants is hard, physically taxing work, far more so than you’d expect. Also, they thought I was a wizard because I knew how radio antennae work.
My last job before the current one was at a ‘late-stage startup’. What this turned out to mean was that they’d already been bought out by a giant corporation, but still operated largely independently. Unfortunately, it turned out all of the customer count projections used to convince said company to buy them out had essentially been pulled from the asses of the founders. Said founders had already left with their share of the money, of course. After I’d been there almost exactly a year, the fact that we were nowhere near any of those projections finally percolated up through the ranks of the parent company, and boom, 75% of employees laid off, including me.
Early 30s.
I’m 48, and have been at my current job for not quite 18 years.
I’ve only had 5 jobs in my lifetime. My first couple jobs were part time during high school/college. My first ‘real’ job after I graduated was working at a car rental agency, where I survived for 2 or 3 years. I was lucky enough to get laid off shortly before the company ran itself out of business, then found a logistics job (shipping-receiving) in the computer industry…they paid for tech training and then failed to give me a position where I could use the knowledge they paid for, so I left there and found the job* I’m still in almost 20 years later…and hopefully will still have when I’m ready to retire.
*Technically, I’ve held either 5 or 6 different positions, working for two different companies within the same organization, but it’s all been the same ‘job’…and my ‘date of hire’ says October, 1998.
- What is your longest-held job?
My current one: 11 years last month.
- What is your shortest-held job? Bonus points if the story is funny.
Three days in the tobacco fields. I knew that it was short term when I went in and it was the hardest physical labor that I’ve ever done.
- 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.
Six months. After closing the plant where I worked, I decided to try something that I had never done full time before: sales. In particular, selling advertising solely on commission. Mistake.
- Age would be a good thing for context if you don’t mind sharing it.
53
30 years for one company in various jobs. The company renamed itself a number of times but I never had to reapply for any reason.
Shortest was 5.5 hours as an inventory worker. My 16 year old sister wanted to pick up some pocket money in a one day walk on inventory job. I went along and lied about my age (13) to get some money too. My sister got mad when she was released after 3 hours and had to wait for me to finish (and pick up a bigger check than hers)
1. What is your longest-held job?
Not counting minor changes in position level, job title, physical work sites, etc., the longest is my current at ~26 years. It’s a semi-secure government job and I’ll probably be retiring from it, barring some unforeseen catastrophe.
2. What is your shortest-held job? Bonus points if the story is funny.
1 day at a sporting apparel retailer, handing out flyers on the street and doing some stock work. Nothing amusing about it, sadly ;). It was well over an hour bus-ride each way from my home for crap pay and I didn’t like anybody there. Just wasn’t worth returning.
3. If it is different from #2, what was your shortest REAL job?
A couple of months doing political telemarketing as a young college student. Fucking dire - begging for cash and push-polling. An awful job that I stuck with as long as I did partly because a good friend had got it for me and I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. As soon as something remotely better came along, I bailed.
4. Age
48
- About 4 years
- 1 day. It was a summer temp job for Pitney Bowes testing their postage meters when I was in college. The job involved sitting in a big room filled with envelopes and a single postage meter and then running the envelopes through the postage meter. At the beginning and end of the day, I record the counter on the meter. I never went back after the 1st day.
- 1 week.
- 43
I spent 11 years in the USN, at eight different commands, none lasting more than four years.
I’ve been in my current job for eight years, three weeks and one day, and it’s the one I consider my longest.
My shortest? I worked one night as a security guard in a Coca-Cola bottling plant. The next day, I got a job as an electronics technician for a Japanese test equipment manufacturer. I never got my security guard pay, but it wouldn’t have covered the $50 security guard certification they reequired of me anyway, and since I never paid them that, I call it a wash.
My first full-time job was overnight security guard at an upscale mobile home park. I stayed there a bit longer than six months.
I just turned 60 a couple of weeks ago.