I would have to say my most temporary job was making mattresses for a mattress company in Houston, Texas having to lift them off of the assembly line and fill up an 18 wheeler trailer all day.
I lasted one day :eek:
The local photography studio that handles all of the school pictures wanted someone to do some simple landscaping work around their building. They treated me like dirt, and so I not only lasted only one day, but had a marked decrease in interest in getting any school pictures.
I answered a help wanted ad one summer in HS. They claimed it was going house to house doing a survey. I reported at 9 one fine morning and went around with someone to show me the ropes. Turned out to be selling magazine subscriptions. At noon, I went off the have lunch and didn’t return for the afternoon.
Right after I graduated high school I took a canvassing job for an environmental charity. I thought it would be about gathering petition signatures and building community support. Turned out the only thing they cared about was how many donations you brought in. I was fired on my second day.
I have had LOTS of very short temp jobs.
A couple of memorable ones -
In the small mid-west farming community where I grew up it was a rite of passage to get a job picking sweet corn at J farm. At harvest time they would hire any 14-15 year old who would sign on. This was back in the days before widespread migrant farm labor, so I don’t know what they do nowadays. The job was to walk down the rows moving your arms as fast as you could go picking the cobs off the stalks and tossing them in the truck rolling slowly behind you. It was brutal, back-breaking work, and nobody lasted more than a few days. But that was expected, the goal was to get as much labor out of the kids as they could before they all quit. Then the family took care of harvesting the rest (I assume at a slightly more leisurely pace.)
Later in life, after I had moved to Los Angeles, I got a one day temp gig at Warner Records. I was tasked with cleaning up and organizing their storage room. The Warner Records office walls were festooned with all of the framed gold and platinum records they had released, and the storage room was stacked with all of the lesser known framed gold/platinum records they had accumulated over the decades. What was most memorable about the gig was that, everywhere you went in the building were stacks and boxes of cut-out LPs and CDs. Cut-outs are LPs and CDs with a notch cut into them (so they can’t be sold retail) that are sent to radio stations for them to add to their libraries or send out to “caller number 5” (ask your parents about calling into radio stations). Even though I was only there for one day, they told me I could take as many of those as I could carry, which I did! NICE!
Raking leaves. Huge yard, dozens of trees. I had a windrow three feet high and about 50 feet long. One day, no more.
Worked as a carpet cleaner briefly. Hands and knees work, no machines. The guy was an asshole and didn’t pay on time. Three cleaning jobs and done.
Car wash. Brutal. Lasted about two months.
I got offered a job at a bakery. Dutifully reported for my first day of work as requested at 3 a.m. The door was locked and there were no lights on. I rang the buzzer…no answer…rang the buzzer and knocked several more times…no answer. I waited in the parking lot for a whole hour thinking maybe I heard wrong and they meant 4 a.m. When 4 a.m. passed and no one showed up, I asked myself “do I really want to work for this outfit?” decided not and returned home.
I worked a few pizza delivery jobs in college. When the first place went out of business, I got hired by another place that was famous locally for delivering beer as well as pizza and calzones and such. Showed up for my first day and discovered their drivers worked 12-hour shifts. Told them it wasn’t for me (I was a full-time student) and left. I was technically on the clock for five minutes; didn’t get paid (didn’t ask).
I also briefly had a job with a third party vendor that did guest satisfaction surveys at Universal Studios in Orlando. Unfortunately, the surveys were done just as people came through the main entry turnstiles - meaning a lot of them had been waiting half an hour to get in on a 95-degree Florida day. I was supposed to stop every third person through or something like that, but 99% of them would tell me to fuck off. Standing in 95-degree sun for eight hours at a time wasn’t much fun for me either, especially in the itchy khakis that Universal front gate employees wore back then. I think I called in for my third day and never went back.
I worked 2-3 hours in a “dish pit” (cafeteria dishwashing room) and quit as soon as the shift was over.
Years ago I applied for a job. I went in, filled out an application, was interviewed briefly, then shown what turned out to be a classic stereotype boiler room operation. They said I’d be selling [worthless] coupon books by phone. They told me the wages, and said I started tomorrow at 9. Didn’t even ask if I wanted the job. I said “O.K.”, left, and never came back.
I had several jobs that only lasted one day. My record for shortest-duration job is when I got fired before the job itself actually started, so 0 days 0 hrs 0 minutes. It was a live-in position at Katonah Boys’ School; I had been placed there by one of the then-ubiquitous 14th street employment agencies in manhattan and told who to report to when I got there. She (the supervisor) met with me and we seemed to get along fine and she told me where to put my bags, where I’d be sleeping, and directed me to where I could get supper and I would start first thing in the morning.
I left the dining room with a styrofoam cup of coffee and was walking down the hallway to my room. Finished the coffee, was now holding an empty coffee cup. Spotted a trash can in a room to the side, via its open door, stepped in, tossed empty coffee cup into trash can. The room wasn’t empty. Dozen or so people gathered around a table all staring at me. I nodded to them, left, went on to my room.
Got called in an hour later by supervisor. “I can’t keep you on. You barged in on the Board of Directors and they want to know who the heck you were. They want you fired for intruding on their meeting”. Didn’t get to spend the night, got sent back on the next bus.
I related this once before a few years back but ------------ I was taking a job part-time back in college as a night clerk at a 7/11 and was in for the training. The manager was going through how you open the register, close out, do credit cards and then he got to the part about “when you get robbed you ------”. So I asked him if he meant “if” and he said: “No – when. Where we’re located here we get hit at least a couple times a month or so”.
When he asked if I had any questions, I did – “Is it too soon for me to tell you I quit?”
I got paid for the 15-20 minutes of training time. He drew me a check right then and there.
It gets better: I took the check to the bank and got my regular cashier who saw it was a paycheck type check and not a personal check and said “I hope you don’t want it all in cash; my drawer is light right now”. I did take it in cash but it was no problem for her – it was like $.72
I took a job working in a carpet store, and was told I’d be paid in cash at the end of every day. Turns out the guy wasn’t only selling carpets. He left a pile of brown envelopes with me. People would come in, give me cash, and I’d give them their envelope. No receipts.
I worked there one day, got paid in cash, and left.
One day for me. Citizens for a Better Environment. Approximately 1984. We were bused to the suburbs from Chicago to go door to door educating and soliciting. I had no beef with the group, but the job didn’t fit my personality one bit.
I had a ‘one day’ thing, but I don’t even consider it a real job.
I took a part-time job as “Bartender” at a pizza place. A few shifts in, they come to me with a mop and scrub-brush and tell me to clean the bathroom/toilet. In no way does that fall under the job duties of “Bartender”.
I quit.
I lasted three shifts at McDonald’s back in the 70s. Assembling sandwiches mostly. Was clear I wasn’t going to get full time, so I left for something better. My hands *still *smell like Big Mac “special sauce”.
I don’t have anything that short but i showed up for an engineering job once on the day they announced 20% layoff and 6 months later when the layoff happened i was gone.
I worked at place that made handheld calendars\organizers. The paper kind.
There was large table, with stacks of paper, with A, B, C…
Several of us had to walk around the table picking on page with A, then one B…and so on…and on…
It was even more boring than it sounds. I did it for 2 of the longest days of my life.
I forgot the job that as soon I got hired I quit …
It was right after I got out of the US Navy as a submarine sonarman and the employment agency in Texas sent me to a nice looking building in Houston with nice looking offices and I sat down with the top man of the company and he explained that I would be on an oceanography ship doing soundings/looking for oil and that I was perfect for the job. So he hired me with a nice salary and I said fine and then he said we will be flying you to the ship off of the coast of Africa on a 6 month deployment.
I said “DO what”? I just got out of submarines doing three month patrols no way am I going back to sea for 6 months.
I had to walk out of that one, but in hindsight I should’ve taken it now that my ex-wife has gone off with another man.
Got hired by the state of Washington to work at a mental hospital. My brother had been working there for about 5 years at that time. I lasted just over 2 days. Went outside for a break on day 3, walked to my car and left.