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Certain "events" this week have left me wondering how long I reasonably have to stay and do a job for...
So what's the shortest time you've spent in a job before quitting (or perhaps being sacked!)?
Maybe for balance I should ask what the longest time is too?
2hrs 43mins
Outbound cold calling to a script. Thats not what was described at the interview
Just over a day. With a well known UK cycle industry company.
about 30 mins...bucket factory in holland when travelling,got sacked,wasnt quick enough putting the handles on(got small hands)
4hrs 35mins. Pot washing at a restaurant when I was 16. I asked for a break and was laughed at by the chef. I told him that I was entitled to a break after four and a half hours and I would be going for a smoke either way. He laughed again and I walked home.
Six months, to the end of probationary period. I hated the job, found it incredibly stressful, and it was a mutual decision.
Just under 30 minutes.
I got a job stripping out shops. Good money too. Turned up with a colossal hangover from a variety of substances, carried a few boxes outside and thought **** this, I'm going back to bed.
2 days for me.
Leroy Rosenior had 10 minutes in charge as football manager at Torquay before being sacked.
I managed 34 years with the railways.
About 3 hours. Call centre for windows, I would have walked sooner but I'd have only been waiting at the train-station in the snow and the call centre was warm.
"If you don't get a lead within 15 minutes were tying a balloon to your chair so everyone can see who isn't up to this job"
one and a half days. Taken on as a trainee. Got talking to the people that had been there for 5 years and were still doing the same job as on day one, realised there was no potential to do anything different and didn't go back after lunch on day two.
Also did a week at one place. Engineering company which initially looked like it had promise and would be interesting but the job turned out to be mostly putting stuff in the CNC lathe, watching it for a bit, then taking it out and deburring it. That was the job that made me decide to back to college/uni and have a proper go at getting some qualifications.
longest time is around 8 years which I've done a couple of times.
4 days as a lecturer/instructor at an industrial training facility, the boss was a c@ck and I decided not to go back the next week.
went for an interview, turned out to be one of those group interview things, and they seemed a bit weird tbh.
left the interview after about 15 minutes.
6.5 days; took over a mental health service and it was just dangerous; they had lied about the situation and weren't prepared to do what was needed to sort it. The penny dropped on day four when i was heading into a meeting to prep for some coroners court cases coming up; me and the solicitor got there first, and his off the record comments were 'there is nothing to save us in any off these cases, you are ****ed and you really need to watch your back'. When one of the devils own was willing to share that with me, i knew it was beyond hope. In a very short meeting, about 15minutes before i left i advised them i wouldn't be stepping foot back in their Trust. But in the time it took me to clear my desk one of the assistant directors drove half way across the city and tried to assault me in the car park. One of the neighbouring Trusts employed me on the grounds i had the sense to walk away from the other one!
Shortest: 7 Days, and was escorted from the building. I made the senior manager look stupid (he was), and was convinced that they were comitting fraud (they were, and got caught a few years later, good old A4E).
Longest: My current job, 6 years and 7 months, looking for something else now...
25 minutes at a call centre. Got told you only got paid if you made a sale, phoned one person and thought "Bollocks to this."
Less than an hour.
Malton Bacon Factory.
Shortest - 3 weeks at a company that made switchboards. Longest - 12 years with current company.
2hrs 2min, the time it took to get to the first tea break.
Half hour
In a bodyshop in Australia. I was the only person who was fluent in English. They were painting isocyanates in the work shop no extraction,no masks.
I would soon discover that they were always advertising for people.
No doubt to replace the dead.
Not 100% certain this counts as I run my own company like.
I'd secured a few bits of work with a newish client but after a bunch of chit chat back and forth over the brief and the cost implications of various web and print packages I could offer him for a rather big job he sends and email essentially saying he wanted this doing for this amount of money in around 4 weeks.
My email turnaround was about 45secs telling him where he could nip off to.
Still time to edit or it's bye bye, Billy.
My quickest was a day of door-to-door sales. Got some serious abuse from some guy because (being young) I had no idea what a hawker was.
Almost put me off Ruislip for good, TBH...
Three months with a PAT Testing manufacturer. The Owner spoke to me in a way which was not fitting. That was it i was off within the hour. Was completely sold the wrong job
Took 6 month off chilling out, feel a better person for it
Anyway. The way i look at it is. If a company does not like the performance of an an individual or does not come up to scratch then they can terminate. If you order a plate of food in a restaurant and don't like peas (for example) why eat them, just leave them and move on.... Employment is the same for the employer and employee. Easy to say now but the job environment now speaks a different story
3 days.
Was pushed into making a very quick decision on taking a secondment whilst working with a large telecoms company.
Three days later I'm at an induction event and advised that I would be working away form home two out of four weeks effectively baby sitting young telecoms apprentices at a training college. The previous manager had chucked it after an extremely stressful disciplinary involving allegations of physical violence, drug taking and rape!
More hours, less pay, potentially huge amounts of stress yeah that a great deal you corporate idiots.
My email turnaround was about 45secs telling him where he could nip off to.
Classy.
Classy.
Yes, it was actually.
1hr in a giant industrial dish washer, loading those plastic pallets that supermarkets put vegetables in.
Up until that day I'd always said I wasn't too proud for any job, but that one broke me.
0 hours. Did an interview and on-the-job appraisal thing, was offered job, accepted, decided next day that actually it was rubbish.
Just over an hour when I was temping.
Started a placement on a Monday morning (and the agency aware beforehand that I was awaiting the outcome of an interview the previous Friday for a longer better paid placement), got the call about 10am and they said start tomorrow, so no point in wasting their time or mine. Thanks but I'm off home.
I didn't expect to get paid, but received about half a days pay without even submitting a timesheet.
Shortest full time permanent 12 months, worried I'd look flighty! Longest 9 years. Shortest temping - 2 days, cold calling companies, but lying, and telling them that someone else from the company had already talked to the company I was calling from...
@muppetwragler. Started out in the same type of job. Got made redundent halfway through apprenticship, blagged a job cnc turning saying i could do it, i couldnt but can learn fast. The money was over double what was previously on. Eventually the company go an order for a millon off. Told the manager wasnt making pins and bushes for rest fo my days so spent the next year doing 3 month stints at different companies trying to gain experience. Now work in a college and have been there over 7 years.
4 hours selling alarms door to door
Two days on a building site. I lasted longer on other sites but this particular site were asking me to clean tar of windows with petrol up a ladder. Didn't fancy it.
My longest job is my current job at over four years but its definitely time for a change, too much time at a desk on my own.
one night, shelf stacking for Morrisons, current job's 11th year
Cap'n. I bet it was one of two companies. One begins with 'M' or the other one is 'northern' and I bet I know why you walked
Erm 5 weeks whilst waiting for another offer contract to come through. It did, I moved on with a teeny weeny bit of guilt, but then hey...
I have sacked folks on the spot within hours of turning up though, that I think is worse.
If someone sacked me within hours of starting I'd pick em apart. Afterall you don't need you for a reference.
That would tear down ones ruthless facarde 😉
a mate got a job in a postal room.
went to the loo after 25mins and went home.
about a week here.....got a job at a local artisan bakery, where everything, and i mean everything was done by hand.
sacked me on the 5th day cos i had not learnt it all........ 😯
Two hours chugging. Hated it as I had no connection with the charity, and I was useless at it.
Well hora they were full of shit, simple really, saves prolonging the inevitable.
Hora, re your earlier post. No, neither. 🙂
About 2 hrs taking pork pies out of a baking tray and putting them in the 'jelly tray' ready for injecting. 5mins when I realised that a 'sales' job was actually door to door hasseling and I would be 'required to run between houses to fit more in' as the mini bus turned up to take me Christ knows where. I walked away.
Shortest was minus 5 minutes as my mate and I quit whilst following the worker bus to the packing factory we were going to temp at.
Decided that at 16 we didn't need temp jobs so turned round before we got there.
Shortest proper job was 3 months with supposedly the largest bike company in the country at the time. God damn awful place to work and got sacked for telling my boss to shove his bikes where the sun doesn't shine :o)
Longest job was the one I left to go to the bikes - 12 years... oops.
Been in current company 10 years, so the 3 months was but a blip.
Capn darn. There are more bad bike companies here??!!
I got a call from an agency to go to a company that needed some admin help. Went there wearing suit to find a load of people stuffing envelopes, I didn't go back.
My wife got offered a job that I quickly decided was a bit of a scam - it was dressed up as something fairly interesting referring to 'clients' but all it was was cold selling on the street. I persuaded her to call them up to check what she'd actually be doing and she decided not to go.
Less than a minute at a guess, I was young and she was very sexy.
2 days.
Started working for an advertising sales magazine, selling space in a fictional magazine. Cold calling to people who have already been ripped off is the least fun I have ever had at work.
At the end of the second day, I stood up, announced that they were the worst sort of people and left. Similar thing happened at a mobility aids sales company whose high pressure tactics were vile.
There is an awful lot of money to be made if you have no conscience.
Ah!! I miss read. I thought it was [b]on[/b] the job not [b]in[/b] a job.
1 day for me. In a LBS. I came in the first day, boss was having family troubles, told me I didn't have to come in the next day or the day after(actual day off) rang me 15 minutes past 9 and fired me for not coming in when he'd told me I was meant to be off both days. I even confirmed it with him and his father who also worked there.
Place I used to work, my main staff were those that came back for a second day, they'd often last the season.
Boss brought one lad in that I knew of for the wrong reasons, he was out the yard before he got introduced.
8 hours.
In the Virgin mail room putting copies of the NME into pigeon holes for delivery all over the world.
It wasn't for me but to be fair the other lads there liked it, they got free virgin cola at break time and long service earned points they could spend on virgin flights.
About an hour as a temp forklift truck driver. Spent that time filling in HR paperwork, then shown round the small factory. When they stated that they didn't have a forklift truck ATM and I would have to load about 100 pallets worth of produce on to trailers by hand, I walked out.
The agency tried to send me there again the following week. Did work for that agency again either.
Longest job was 13 years with the same company. Did lots of different and interesting stuff. That started as a temporary job too.
About 6 hours in a now defunct clothes shop called USC.
Not exactly back breaking work but the manageress was mental and constantly doing the whole passive aggressive thing, rolling her eyes whenever me or the other new guy did something she perceived as 'wrong', blanking us when questioned, death stares etc. **** this, I thought.
I don't have a problem with um.. 'those' kind of jobs though as I worked in a plastics factory for ages which had very little redeeming features and also did a stint at a sandwich factory which is much less fun than it sounds.
It's nice when you're in a position that when you're feeling like you want to walk out of a job, you can. Not always the case though that it's possible though.
I think I have about 7 years continuous service in the same organisation now, though probably done four or five different roles in that organisation so not sure if it counts as one job really.
We someone who walked in, sat through morning meeting, made themselves a brew and then headed to bosses office and quit. I count it as a lucky escape - issues... 😕