The SHORTEST Time You've Ever Held a Job?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

That “longest bad job” thread got me thinking . . . I worked half a day as a customer-service operator at Lord & Taylor’s, when I first came to New York 20-some years ago (one of the many cute That Girl jobs I held).

People would call me at my little switchboard, where I sat with the recent L&T catalogs at the ready. They’d say, “I want to order the flowered stretch pants on page 28, in a size 16,” and I’d say, “No. No, you don’t, dear. What you want to order is the nice, slimming A-line skirt on page 42.”

I didn’t even last till lunchtime.

2

One day.

While in central IL taking a year off between college and law school, I basically survived on mac&cheese and popcorn, subsidized by various part-time jobs.

At one point I foolishly agreed to some kind of collections gig, where I was to drive to every podunk farmtown in a 50 mile radius or so, and track down folk who had agreed to advertise in some BS publication, and collect what they had agreed to pay.

After about 6 hours of driving thru every imaginable type of flat corn and soybean field in 95 degree heat, locating only 1 or 2 of the folk I was supposed to look up, and collecting from neither of them, I decided it would be better to go hungry.

3

The shortest job I held was 6 weeks. It was at a seedy little garage. The type of garage where the mechanics sell you things you DON’T need. My co-worker kept falling asleep at her desk. I did 3 times the work she did and got paid 3 times less. Everyone had been there YEARS and I felt like a total outsider. I ran the place while Sleepy was on holidays, worked 12 hours a day and got paid a meesly $6.75 an hour.

Thank goodness I got pregnant and had an excuse to get the hell outta there! “The fumes are making my morning sickness worse”

4

Don’t know if it counts since it was a job with a temp agency, but I lasted one day at one of those jobs. It was initially supposed to be for only one day but they wanted me to stay on, and I turned them down. It was December, and I manned the switchboard for a Christmas decorations factory/office. It was mayhem. Not only did I have to get the customer support/questions calls (why won’t my lights light, where can I buy your product) to the right people, but calls came in for the other business people as well, and if they weren’t at their desk, they might be out on the factory floor; I’d have to transfer the call there and hope someone picked up the one line then checked around for the person. To top it off, there were special incoming lines that were calls from the Big Bosses - outside lines from the company that owned them. If a call came in on those lines, it got first priority and I was told that I had to sound perfectly pleasant and unrushed, no matter how many other lines were ringing. It was nuts, I couldn’t handle more than a day of that.

5

Four days.

I graduated from college in May and was getting married in August (I know, I know - it took me 14 years to figure it out, so sue me) and was in real need of a job. I had had a first interview with a law firm for a paralegal job, but had not yet heard back regarding a second interview. In the interim I took a job working in the back office operations of a bond trading firm. Did I mention that I can barely add 2+2 and get 4 as the correct answer? I was responsible for managing this firms petty cash accounts, verifying trades, etc.

On Thursday of my first week I got a call from the law firm asking me to come in for a second interview. That afternoon I told my boss that I’d be late in the morning, as I had heard from the law firm and was interested in speaking with them. He said, “Well, we need someone who has a real desire to work here. Why don’t you just not come back tomorrow?” A reasonable enough request.

Luckily, I got the job with the law firm and never missed a beat.

6

About an hour and a half. I was about to graduate from college as a graphic artist and had gotten an offer for a part-time gig doing cleanup on company logos for an advertising specialties place. I thought, “What the heck, I’ll take it until something full-time comes along.” I’d already worked in a printing place where the dress was casual (sensible, because the work can get a little grubby, or at least could back then when we still used ink instead of a keyboard), so I showed up for my “first day,” which was really just an orientation, wearing my best black jeans and shoes and a very nice shirt.

The supervisor, a chick a few years older than me, took me on the tour as she explained the job. The hours would be 3 or 4 hours a day, 3 to 5 days a week (or something like that). When we got a a part of the building that was being remodeled, and therefore rather deserted, she “took me aside” and said, “By the way, we have a dress code here. We require office attire. You can’t wear jeans like that here.”

Uh-huh. I just got out of college. I’m supposed to go out and buy a professional wardrobe so I can work in your little graphics shop (where no customer will see me) so I can meet your dress code for a few hours every day at $4-something an hour?

After I was done with the orientation, I just left. I called the next day and said I wouldn’t be able to work there. I supposed I could have fought to get paid for those couple of hours, since technically I had been hired (and had even filled out a time sheet), but I deemed any further contact with them not worth my time.

(After I graduated, I temped for a week and then got a full-time job where I stayed for 5-1/2 years, until I started my own business. So there. :p)

On preview, an after thought: Oh, and they absolutely needed me to start right away. During finals week. Couldn’t wait one more week. Granted, I was an art major and didn’t have finals, but I had presentations to do, projects to finish, etc. Don’t they know what it entails to be about to graduate from freakin’ college??

7

Two weeks

After college I worked the graveyard shift at a factory making Golf Grips. The mind-numbing repetition drove me nuts (yup. in just two weeks. I think the fact that I could just turn off my brain for eight hours at a time without affecting my work quality really got to me), not to mention the lack of anyone else there with an IQ above 80 (or so it seemed - I’m sure there were lots of smart folk there).

To this day (15 years later) I can still recite the entire work cycle involved in running a two mold grip press.

8

Less than 10 min.

I was looking for summer work while I was in college. I found a Radio Shack that really needed help, the guy was desperate.

I knew a lot more about computers than he did so he hired me.

He then waggled his pathetic little tie at me… (It was one of those narrow black things and it was tied wrong… it ended about 3 inches over this belt…) And told me, “If you want to make it in the real world you better get yourself a tie…”

I started laughing and walked out.

A tie? For a radio shack? Good lord.

9

Wow. I must be a glutton for punishment. I stayed at my crappiest job for a whopping 23 days.
I was a <gasp!> telemarketer. For Sears Termite and Pest Control. I was that annoying girl that called you and asked you if you wanted a free termite inspection. I hated the job, but it paid $5 an hour, so I spent most of the day calling busy numbers or my own desk #. While I was there, I got one company to agree to the free inspection, which led to a contract.

I still get my $5 commission check every year. (And I haven’t worked there in 12 years.)

10

Two-and-a-half weeks. I worked at a collections agency that specialized in–

Dental bills. :eek:

God, the horror. Calling people up and threatening to repossess their fillings. (well, no, actually, but that was lurking behind what we DID say…)

I was 16; they decided I wasn’t aggressive enough.

Thank god

11

I’m not sure if this counts or not…

Short job #1:

10 seconds. After I received my Chemistry degree and before I decided to go back for my Education degree. I interviewed. Got a phone call later that week to start the job on Monday. I showed up Monday and told them that I wouldn’t be working there after all (I figured that I owed them a personal “quitting”.) I consider it the Environmental Protection Agency’s loss.

Short job #2:

4 seconds. Summer job in highschool. It was a “part-part-time” job, according to the owner of the boat store. I’d work a few hours a day a few days a week sweeping and cleaning up. I was to show up at 7:30 a.m. on Monday. I called at 8:05 a.m. and told them I wouldn’t be showing up. So, either I was employed for the 4 second phone call, or I was employed for 35 minutes and was over half an hour late! :eek:

12

Disc jockey at Sizzler (U.S. steak house ads still crack me up) strip joint in Montréal: about 3 hours.

For some reason, I couldn’t stop saying “La voici, here she is” in the same manner as the Blue Bonnets (local harness racing track) announcer when the sulkies come to the line. [Marcy]I just couldn’t…stop.[/Marcy] Also, I played the wrong remixes of all the songs and alienated most of the dancers. “Artists” are so tempermental…

Did you know that when strippers bend over lanuorously it’s a signal to the DJ to fade out the song? I didn’t…

“La voici la très belle et séduisante Jessie avec son sexy slow show! N’oubliez-pas-messieurs-notre-super-buffet-servi-chaud-et-avec-amour-de-midi-à-deux-heures-et-de-cinq-heures-à-sept-heures-ici-même-au-Club…Sizzzzzzlerrrrrr!”

What memories though.

13

I forgot: “N’oubliez pas messieurs, don’t forget gentlemen, nos jolies demoiselles dansent à vos tables sur demande seulement! [Extra-salacious phony French accent]Doooon’t be shy!”[/E-spFa]

heh heh…

14

Hee hee! You guys are fuuuuny! [ahem]

Mine was about two weeks as well. Desperate for a job close enough I could walk to after my car had been totled and I was fired from my last job, I worked out a deal with the weird lady at the Turkey Hill one-stop up the street from my Pop’s. I told them I would be leaving in a few months for parts unknown, so I would happily work as much as they wanted me to so long as it was not on a holiday.

Very shortly thereafter, they scheduled me to work on New Years Eve. Of the Year 2000.

I simply never bothered to show up.

Which is just as well. I was so drunk and stoned they wouldn’t have wanted me there anyway. :smiley:

15

Two hours.
I worked at the potato-packing factory in Winnemucca NV. I stood at a conveyor belt, watching spuds rolls by, and I had to throw out all the green moldy diseased ones. The movement of the belt and the smell of moldy taters made me queasy and I went home.

Four days.
I was hired to be nighttime manager at a 3-hotel property. I had not idea what to do, so I asked the daytime manager for any tasks or assignments. She just blew me off, saying ot do what needs to be done. I spent most of the shifts walking around the compound, seeing if the desk clerks needed help or a break. I did some room-service trips and cleaned a couple rooms too. They fired me because I wasnt doing what they wanted.

16

One evening.

I got a job (ca. 1990) with “Texas Watch” (or something like that), a Dallas-based environmental non-profit that was partly founded by Willie Nelson, or something like that. I answered the ad because they claimed to pay $412/week. Turned out that the job entailed canvasing a different neighborhood in the Dallas area each night looking for donations and signatures for petitions. Except that they didn’t actually give a rat’s ass how many signatures you collected–just make sure that you collect more than $150 each night: your salary was linked to how much you collected, and that was the average nightly minimum you needed to “make” that $412, otherwise you only got something like 55% (?) of what you brought in. I smelt a scam, so only made a half-assed attempt at it one evening, collecting several signatures (to “Save the Trinity” or something) and… $0. So, after goofing off for several more hours, I walked back to the van for the re-gathering and put the $9 I was carrying in the bank bag. The head dude asks: “how much did you make?” “Nine,” I reply. “Ninety?” He exclaims, “that’s great for your first night!” “Not ninety,” I explain, “NINE,” which I then handed over. “Don’t worry,” says he, “you’ll do better tomorrow night.”

Except that I didn’t show up–I didn’t even call in to say I wasn’t going to show up. Four weeks later, I got a paycheck in the mail for about $4.50. So, not only did I only last about four and a half hours, I also made -$4.50. That’s about negative one dollar an hour!

17

Pre-Christmas, penniless and back home with my parents for the hols I worked at a chicken farm for 45 minutes. It was just long enough to attend neck wringing school (theory and practice), advanced plucking theory and put an end to one hapless turkey.

I still picture that damn turkey occasionally at Christmas time; looking up at me with a curious countenance, full of energy, hoping I was going to dispense more feed…

18

Not including a summer job at Domino’s Pizza before I started college, 10 months at a semiconductor probe card manufacturer. The work I was hired to do was boring enough. Then, they eliminated the analysis work and just had me doing whatever shit they threw at me. Coincidentally, this also fits in the “longest bad job” thread.

19

I don’t know if this counts, but I was hired as a telemarketer. Despite my desperate money situation, I couldn’t even make it to the first phone call. I walked out during the “training”.

20

Shortest job - 1 afternoon.

I was suppose to walk up to strangers in a shopping center and get them to take a survey. After about an two of having people turn me down and only filling out one survey I hid in an alley and filled out about a dozen of them with my own answers. I brought them back and quit the job.

I am not very good at talking to strangers.