What was the shortest job you ever had?

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Howard

Lifer
Oct 14, 1999
47,982
11
81
3 days at a baked goods plant. Had to unpack and load butter onto a conveyor that brought it into the massive dough kneader. Certain blocks of butter needed to be sectioned and added to other pieces in order to make the blocks uniform, too, and that was done with a knife. Cutting a cubic foot of cold butter is a bitch.
 

alevasseur14

Golden Member
Feb 12, 2005
1,760
1
0
A year and a half doing a delivery job. It was actually fun being out there on my own riding around the city on my bike until the economy dried up and the new management they brought in drove the place into the ground. Working an 8 hour shift for minimum and coming home with 10 bucks in tips in my pocket got pretty old after a while.
 

Perknose

Forum Director & Omnipotent Overlord
Forum Director
Oct 9, 1999
46,894
10,720
147
Living in Munich, I had a job as the cook in popular student pub in the evening. One of my stipulations was that I got all the free beer I could drink. Good times.

An American woman friend had an early morning job cleaning these doctor's offices, 6-8 am each weekday morning. She was traveling on and offered it to me. She told me, "It's a three hour job but they only pay you for two. I can teach you to do it in two." So I went with her one morning and she did and I took over.

At the end of the second week, the head physician called me in and told me they had hired a German woman to do the job, as women clean better. I KNEW they were probably in trouble as it really WAS a three hour job.

At the end of the that week, they called me back and said she couldn't do it nearly as well as I, and I told them in measured but semi-salty language what they could do with that job, and why.

I actually LOVED that job. I'm a perfectionist of sorts, so was the woman who taught me how to do everything that needed to be done in a first class way in the two hours they payed you for. So, the pace was insane, but that made the time FLY by, and I came out into the day @ 8AM revved up and roaring, ready for another fine day.

Silly sexist krauts. ;)

 

JJChicken

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2007
6,165
16
81
Originally posted by: Perknose
Living in Munich, I had a job as the cook in popular student pub in the evening. One of my stipulations was that I got all the free beer I could drink. Good times.

An American woman friend had an early morning job cleaning these doctor's offices, 6-8 am each weekday morning. She was traveling on and offered it to me. She told me, "It's a three hour job but they only pay you for two. I can teach you to do it in two." So I went with her one morning and she did and I took over.

At the end of the second week, the head physician called me in and told me they had hired a German woman to do the job, as women clean better. I KNEW they were probably in trouble as it really WAS a three hour job.

At the end of the that week, they called me back and said she couldn't do it nearly as well as I, and I told them in measured but semi-salty language what they could do with that job, and why.

I actually LOVED that job. I'm a perfectionist of sorts, so was the woman who taught me how to do everything that needed to be done in a first class way in the two hours they payed you for. So, the pace was insane, but that made the time FLY by, and I came out into the day @ 8AM revved up and roaring, ready for another fine day.

Silly sexist krauts. ;)

How is this line connected with the rest of your post? I question only because I wouldn't expect such discontinuity in a perknose post.
 

gar3555

Diamond Member
Jan 8, 2005
3,510
0
0
what a bunch of quitters here...hehe ;).

my shortest job was half a summer, 2 monthes. It was the GAP. It was boring as shit, but there was a lot of hot girls working there, the cheap clothes didn't make up for the shit pay. I had to quit b/c it was football season, and I wasn't giving up my tailgating/game time.
 

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
80,287
17,082
136
My first real job was also my shortest.
Bakers assistant at a Cub Food. Only lasted about 3 months before they tossed me out. I was too slow.
You have to move fast all day long and I just couldnt keep up.
 

Perknose

Forum Director & Omnipotent Overlord
Forum Director
Oct 9, 1999
46,894
10,720
147
Originally posted by: Barack Obama
Originally posted by: Perknose
Living in Munich, I had a job as the cook in popular student pub in the evening. One of my stipulations was that I got all the free beer I could drink. Good times.

An American woman friend had an early morning job cleaning these doctor's offices, 6-8 am each weekday morning. She was traveling on and offered it to me. She told me, "It's a three hour job but they only pay you for two. I can teach you to do it in two." So I went with her one morning and she did and I took over.

At the end of the second week, the head physician called me in and told me they had hired a German woman to do the job, as women clean better. I KNEW they were probably in trouble as it really WAS a three hour job.

At the end of the that week, they called me back and said she couldn't do it nearly as well as I, and I told them in measured but semi-salty language what they could do with that job, and why.

I actually LOVED that job. I'm a perfectionist of sorts, so was the woman who taught me how to do everything that needed to be done in a first class way in the two hours they payed you for. So, the pace was insane, but that made the time FLY by, and I came out into the day @ 8AM revved up and roaring, ready for another fine day.

Silly sexist krauts. ;)

How is this line connected with the rest of your post? I question only because I wouldn't expect such discontinuity in a perknose post.

What the hell do you know? You weren't even born in this country. :| :p
 

Squisher

Lifer
Aug 17, 2000
21,204
66
91
During the economic downturn of the early 80s I got a temp job for a cement company. It was supposed to last no more than a week.

The conveyor belts from the adjacent quarry brought basket ball sized and smaller stones from the quarry to the crushing machinery in the cement factory. The belts were about 6 feet off the ground and ran about a mile to the plant. My job was to pick all the stones up that had fallen off the belt for the last year and military press them up onto the belt.

I lasted about an hour.

 

SparkyJJO

Lifer
May 16, 2002
13,357
7
81
1 week 2 days.

On my last day the boss said "well umm... we rushed, and really can't afford another guy right now..." and that was it. That was this past June and it SUCKED. Here I thought I was doing well to have a job only a month out of college in this economy.

And now I'm still looking for work :(
 

Steve

Lifer
May 2, 2004
15,945
11
81
Originally posted by: jonnyGURU
Originally posted by: Steve
Had a temp job doing customer support for VisionTek back in 2004, that lasted two months before I got my first 'real' job.

Ha! Back when they were up in Gurnee, right? I bet you know some of my co-workers. :)

Nope, this was when they were in Inverness (near Palatine), but I bet I know a couple names you may recognize.
 

child of wonder

Diamond Member
Aug 31, 2006
8,307
176
106
3 days. Tech support for a Christian Home Schooling software company. First few days were going through the program to get accustomed to it. After 1 day began to have SEVERE reservations about working for a company that sold brainwashing software for children. After my third day my son was sick so I emailed my boss informing him I wouldn't be in. He got all snippy because I should have also said in my email that I was sorry, it wouldn't happen again, and he wanted to know further in advance when I was going to be out (I emailed him 4 hours before my shift which was 30 minutes after my son's daycare had called me and I had picked him up). :confused: I apologized and said there wasn't much I could do because my son's health isn't on a time clock. Family comes first ALWAYS. Then he fired me via email. Oh well.
 

ScottyB

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2002
6,677
1
0
1 hour. I got a job answering phones for a PBS telethon through some private contractor. We went in for training, and after an hour meeting they told us to go into another room for the remainder of training. Someone asked about being paid and they said that we weren't getting paid for the day but we were getting free pizza for lunch. I left, contacted my state's Labor Dept., got paid for my hour of training.
 

boomhower

Diamond Member
Sep 13, 2007
7,228
19
81
About a month. The recruiter and manager got their lines crossed and hired me for the wrong job. They told me hang on and the job I wanted would open up but I got tired of doing twice the work for half the money so after about a month I quite.
 

sao123

Lifer
May 27, 2002
12,653
205
106
Originally posted by: SonnyDaze
I went through an interview, was hired and given a start date of a week later. I got a better job offer during that week and took it instead.

doesnt count if you didnt show up the first day... technically you never workrd.
 

invidia

Platinum Member
Oct 8, 2006
2,151
1
0
I was offered a position via phone for a tech support and accepted the job. I called in the next 30 minutes to decline the offer.
 

ArizonaSteve

Senior member
Dec 20, 2003
764
105
106
2 months at a position that was somewhat misrepresented. Brought on, supposedly, as a Java/J2EE programmer to create web services, ended up being pushed into IBM mainframe programming (which I had been doing some years before, but there was a reason I'd got out of that and into Java). One month into the job my mother died and I had to take a short notice trip to England to attend the funeral. I was let go a couple of weeks after that, apparently for taking too much time off.

There was way too much food in that office, and nearly every employee there was 100lbs overweight. The manager had bought himself a nice 30" LCD monitor while the programming staff were stuck with 17" CRTs and LCDs. There was one person in particular who did absolutely nothing except concoct useless meetings all day every day. Now that I think about it, there were only a couple of people in a team of 30 that actually did any work at all.

I found a much better job 3 days after being let go (and I'm still working there to this day).
 

KentState

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2001
8,397
393
126
Back in college, I was hired at Target. The first day I was suppose to work, received a job from the Best Buy next door so I never showed up.

Last year I received an offer from a consulting company and excepted, but was in talks with another company. The other company finally offered a $40k signing bonus, plus 6 months of rent, plus they moved me to Atlanta. I took that instead and had to call the place the Friday before I was suppose to start. Felt somewhat shitty, but I had to do what was best for my career and finances.
 

LikeLinus

Lifer
Jul 25, 2001
11,518
670
126
I think 2 years at Microsoft was my shortest job. It was my first job and a great learning experience. I've never really had problems at jobs or not have a job I didn't just love.
 

Blayze

Diamond Member
Feb 22, 2000
6,152
0
0
4 hours at a telemarketing job (It was supposed to be a 2 month Temp Job). When everyone went to lunch, I quit and went home.
 

2Xtreme21

Diamond Member
Jun 13, 2004
7,044
0
0
I did temp work for about 3 months after I got back from France in 2007. One company requested 2 temps for a week to effectively do the job of a conveyor belt in a big factory that made steel beams for building foundations. The beams were made, put on a table, and the temps (one being me at 140lbs, the other being a 30-something woman) were to carry the beams by hand to the other side of the factory where they were to be put in a truck.

The woman, upon hearing what the job required, walked out on the spot. I toughed it out with another worker brought over to replace her for a day, but when they said I probably would be doing it by myself the next day as "they weren't that heavy" (my ass they weren't), I politely told them that they should find someone more suited for this line of work and then left.
 

SearchMaster

Diamond Member
Jun 6, 2002
7,791
114
106
I worked at Burger King for about a month when I was 16. Sadly, the reason I left was they weren't giving me enough hours.
 

lokiju

Lifer
May 29, 2003
18,526
5
0
2 weeks working at a 5 star resort, they had me doing all sorts of stuff in the restaurant portion like washing dishes, rolling silverware, clearing tables, etc.

But my manager there was a huge bitch and every chance she got she told me how I was not even close to as good of an employee as my (older) brother was, who had worked there for awhile already.

So on the second week when she told me this again I took off my apron (which I had to wear while washing dishes) and told to her "I'm not my brother you bitch!" and threw my apron at her and said "I quit!" :p

I was sixteen so I guess that explains my short fuse at the time.