Shortest time you've ever been on a job?

[Young Drachma]

We're talking jobs in your professional life. Not when you worked at the soda fountain as a kid.

[gkb]

I had a paying internship when I was an accounting major. It was for some small mortgage firm (the owner was a hottie). My first day I'm sitting there with another intern...she asks me how much I make. I tell her and she says something along the lines of, "You make more than me, I wonder if that's because I'm a woman." She marches into the owners office and comes back out and I believe she had gotten a raise, but I can't remember for sure.

The next day we both show up for work and get called into the bosses office. She lets us know that times are tough and they can no longer afford interns...I was there for less than a week.

Never discuss salary with co-workers.

The end.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Not counting temporary assignments, the shortest time I've been with a job is two years... and counting. I was at my job in New Orleans for five years, and then I moved here, and we're at two years and hopefully not much longer. Those are the only two "real jobs" I've ever had.

[rjolley]

I actually had a job for ~30 minutes.

I took a contract as a remote DBA for IBM. After a few days of not gettng my work information, I talked to the recruiter who got me the interview and she said she'd talk to them. The next Friday, I was on a conference call, was introduced as the new DBA on the team, and was told I'd start my assignment on Monday.

On Monday, I get an email saying I was part of a company-wide layoff.

30 minute conference call and the consulting company hounded me to file a timesheet for the 30 minutes.

The next shortest was about 2 weeks doing telemarketing in college. Hated that with a passion.

[Axxon]

I worked for about 4 hours in the most inhospitable environment ever. I never came back for lunch; I never bothered to pick up the check. Horrid.

[Young Drachma]

I spent five months working at a residential school for delinquents. It was too taxing to do much more than that and I never intended to be there that long. Umm..the reason for the poll was because I think I might end up beating that record here before too long. But who knows.

[Ksyrup]

Five months. I left the state to join a firm, and 5 months later the partner I was working for jumped to another firm, and I went with him. It worked out fine, because I got 2 huge salary bumps out of it.

[thesloppy]

15 years ago I got my dream job at a skate shop (I was 18, cut me some slack), so I showed up for my first day and waited around for the owner to show up...which he never did. The owner's house was literally right next door to the shop, so the assistant manager scaled the fence and peered through the shades to find my new employer still lying in bed...where he had died the night before.

[MikeVic]

15 years ago I got my dream job at a skate shop (I was 18, cut me some slack), so I showed up for my first day and waited around for the owner to show up...which he never did. The owner's house was literally right next door to the shop, so the assistant manager scaled the fence and peered through the shades to find my new employer still lying in bed...where he had died the night before.

Wow! That's crappy!

[Ksyrup]

15 years ago I got my dream job at a skate shop (I was 18, cut me some slack), so I showed up for my first day and waited around for the owner to show up...which he never did. The owner's house was literally right next door to the shop, so the assistant manager scaled the fence and peered through the shades to find my new employer still lying in bed...where he had died the night before.

Weekend at Bernie's Skate Shop!

[Passacaglia]

I worked at this IT place for one morning, until some creepy guy with a stuffed penguin scared me and I left. Of course, that was before I had my breasts surgically removed.

[MikeVic]

I worked at this IT place for one morning, until some creepy guy with a stuffed penguin scared me and I left. Of course, that was before I had my breasts surgically removed.

And now you're carrying Coffee Warlor- err penguin hat's baby?

[Mustang]

15 years ago I got my dream job at a skate shop (I was 18, cut me some slack), so I showed up for my first day and waited around for the owner to show up...which he never did. The owner's house was literally right next door to the shop, so the assistant manager scaled the fence and peered through the shades to find my new employer still lying in bed...where he had died the night before.


http://www.videogameconnections.com/Merchant2/pictures/full/nes/las3nes.jpg

[SteveMax58]

I was working as an assistant manager at a skate shop for nearly a full day when we had an applicant come in who was to speak with the owner about working there.

Since the owner lived right next door to the shop, and was rarely late, I hopped the fence to try and get him to deal with this guy(this was a pretty sloppy guy if you know what I mean).

After a minute or 2 of waiting for him to answer the door, I went in to the house and discovered the owner was actually playing dressup with his wife's underwear & bra. This completely shocked me, so I told the sloppy guy that the owner died and I quit that day.

That was definitely weird.

[lordscarlet]

This is the longest job I've had after 8 years of full time employment. I've been here 3.5 years.

dot com job: 6 months, bankruptcy
after dot com job: 2ish years
after that job: 1 year, laid off
after that job: 1 year to come here and work with people from job #3

[Barkeep49]

I was in a weird situation where I had decided to make a career change away from teaching and so started working at a new job over my spring break, and decided that I didn't really want to work there, mostly because of my boss. My current job (this was a private school) coughed up some more money and so I decided to stay in teaching. However, I continued to work part time at this other job, and then started working there full time during the summer to earn some extra money.

[Mustang]

discovered the owner was actually playing dressup with his wife's underwear & bra.

"Would you hire me?"

"I'd hire me"

[SteveMax58]

"Would you hire me?"

"I'd hire me"

Yeah...it was a lot like that. He was making unintelligible noises as well, but every once in a while you could hear something like "Puhhhmm...peeee" coming out of his mouth.

Just bizarre.

[thesloppy]

Weekend at Bernie's Skate Shop!

Sadly that's pretty close to the truth....although dude died on my first day of work, he had no will and his estranged daughter took over, and I managed ti work there for another year (contrary to this thread) and she left the store in the control of the assistant manager who I had known since 8th grade, me and one other worker...who I had known since 6th grade....and although Portland is a semi-large city, this shop was literally across the street from where I had just graduated from high school.

Every single day of work was split evenly between:

Stopping the pre-teen skatepunk customers from stealing the merchandise.
Assisting the teen skatepunk staff with stealing the merchandise.


I had to spend nearly 5 years un-learning the lessons I took home from that job.

[thesloppy]

"Would you hire me?"

"I'd hire me"

IT PUTS THE GRIP TAPE ON THE SKATEBOARD OR ELSE IT GETS THE HOSE AGAIN!

[samifan24]

I worked for one company for just one week. I was hired for a full-time position but when I got there, I found that it was actually an internship and the person who hired me misled me into thinking it was otherwise. It was probably the worst experience of my professional life (so far) in that I moved there for the job and wound up moving back home three weeks later.

[Crim]

IT PUTS THE GRIP TAPE ON THE SKATEBOARD OR ELSE IT GETS THE HOSE AGAIN!

Great post.

[Groundhog]

Shortest for me, outside of a temp 6 month role, was 3 1/2 years.

[finketr]

6 weeks and laid off.

[Butter]

1 week putting up shelves for a big box store... went on a previously planned vacation, came back and found that a departmental supervisor role was given to someone else instead of me while I was gone, quit that afternoon.

[Pumpy Tudors]

1 week putting up shelves for a big box store... went on a previously planned vacation, came back and found that a departmental supervisor role was given to someone else instead of me while I was gone, quit that afternoon.
So you were expecting to become a departmental supervisor after a week on the job? How good were you at putting up these shelves, exactly?

[MikeVic]

The BEST.

[Butter]

The BEST.

The store could have been destroyed simultaneously by fire, hurricane, and tornado, but those shelves... they would've stood proudly, and strong.

[Draft Dodger]

8 1/2 years.

[Draft Dodger]

(and counting)

[Cringer]

I am not sure what this professional life crap is? I have never been a part of that.

I worked a week for a place in Spokane when I was 19. It was a small company that made steel/iron castings for other companies. My job was grinding parts smooth, usually small flaws from the casting. It was a 12 hour shift with a half hour lunch and no other breaks. The constant use of the grinder with no stopping gave me carpal tunnel in one of my hands which can still give me problems today. The break thing pissed me off the most, and I quit. I don't understand how they got away with no breaks when it was the law, I guess guys just quit like myself and never said anything.

[Glengoyne]

Never had a real job where I was there less than five years. I was once one of the principals in a private company, that did exceedingly well for three years, and then went out in a blaze of glory. I've never had a job where I wasn't promoted at least once.

Thinking back...I've never been interviewed for a position and not gotten the job.

Something is going to go terribly wrong now that I've posted that.

[Izulde]

Two weeks at a certain collegiate newspaper that never paid me for the one story of mine they ran and then the next week proceeded to run a pathetic "By staff" story on my assignment, even though I'd done the exact story they asked for.

So I quit in disgust and have vowed never to return to journalism since.

[Crim]

21 years and counting.

[RendeR]

I put Other, I spent 4 hours at a job once. I was hired to come in and revamp their inventory system. It took me 4 hours to realize that A- their old system worked perfectly and B- their computer system simply had bad data.

I corrected the data errors and suddenly their computers and their inventory on hand matched almost perfectly.

I told them I didn't really need to take over the position and they agreed. I moved on to another job offer I had received at the same time.

They paid me for a week for my trouble. I was jazzed.

[wade moore]

My shortest job after college was at the university, but it was moving from part-time work I had done for 5 years at the university before starting full-time. I did full-time for about 6 months before leaving. So to me, that was just a continuation of the 5 year job.

So - in my adult life, my shortest job was about 4 1/2 years (5+ at the university, 4 1/2 years at the job after that, and coming up on a year at the next job).

[Sgran]

I guess I'm the only one who actually deserved to be fired after being on the job for less than a week. I had just left a my job after 4 years to do something different because I was tired of how I was treated. I decided to try translating Hungarian to English even though I'd only done a few small jobs by that time. An online news service tested me and handed me a job that ran from 10 PM to 3 AM. My job was to take the next day's newspapers that were delivered in the evening and scan them for business news and then write summaries in English. I simply wasn't ready for it, and understood that they let me go. On the other hand, they had tested me and didn't really give me a chance to grow into the job.
After that I became a decent translator but got into copyediting instead.

[Buccaneer]

Back when I was 18, I got hired to work at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor. Spent about 2 hours watching what to do (scooping in the back room). When a manager came in and asked what my plans were, I told him the truth that I was leaving for college in about 4 weeks. He told me to go home.