I was maybe 50 minutes into the training of a job that I had gotten.

It was at a home for mentally and physically challenged individuals. I have had some experience with it but here they had an individual who did regular massive self harm. Like 200 stitches every week, and they happened to start doing selfhalm right when I started that day.

It was a pass for me

One month because they suspected me doing drugs during work while it was legit meds from my doc, they didnt even consult me just straight up rejected me after my trial period.

This was decades ago.

Not even an hour on the job. I was early 20ish, new to a city, answered an ad for an art gallery receptionist. Had the interview at the gallery, guy seemed straight-forward, I got the gig, was told I’d start in a week. That night, around 2am he started leaving phone messages, saying we needed to have a meeting immediately. I needed to be at his house by 6am. Went from inappropriately sweet to hoarse with yelling down the phone at me within a day. Call after call at all hours for a week. Told me at 8pm on a Saturday I needed to bring him donuts at his house by 9. That I needed to go shopping with him for a new skirt that would suit the office better. That I needed to respond immediately whenever he called. Literally did the “Don’t you know who I am?” “I can destroy you with a snap of my fingers,” “Don’t you understand what an opportunity this is for you?” whole shtick.

Didn’t even make it to the first day of the supposed job. Changed my phone number. Moved again.

The other was half a day, but not making it past the training phase of a call centre job probably doesn’t count.

I worked some side job cleaning a medical building. The cleaning company used a fungicide as one of the chemicals. No one was wearing a respirator so I didn’t think I’d need one. Worst mistake. That chemical burned my nose and lungs for a few days after. I just ghosted them and didn’t go back.

Not me, but about 4.5 hours including half a day of induction. The company I worked for did a lot of crunching data in Excel and producing reports based on that data. This girl started, did her half day induction (“fire escapes are here”, etc, etc) then was assigned to me to work on a project. I sat down with her for about an hour and a half and talked her through the easiest part of the project that I wanted her to work on. She nodded, said she understood, then asked what the process for quitting was.

I’ve no idea how she got hired because she said she had been expecting the job to be mostly creative, not working with data, and that it didn’t interest her at all.

Not me, but I started working part time at a Wetherspoons bar in Manchester, UK when I was about 19. Me and this other guy (similar age) started on the same day.

We got on well, and after a few hours we were given a break, he would go first and then I would go second. Before the guy went on his break, he told that he wasn’t going to come back. I was shocked but kinda got it, bar work sucks.

After 15/20 minutes the manager was frantically looking for him, even demanded I tell her where he was, but I just feigned ignorance. Chuckled to myself that this guy had the gall to walk out and not tell anyone.

I worked there for another year, in that time he turned up again with his mates, we both recognised each other immediately. I told him how everyone was pissed at him and that I was jealous. A manager asked if he used to work there, but I feigned ignorance once again 😅.

Two days?

A friend worked at a company with a one-man IT crew aka “the friend”. Technically they worked part time, but occasionally had to come in and fix things that broke overnight. So they were “always” on call, but things mostly ran smoothly and unless it was super important it could wait until business hours/the next working day. Basically computers working was useful, but not a requirement for this company.

Anyway I was looking for a job, friend convinced the owner they needed help, so the job was mine, no interview needed.

So day one I get a look around, get a jist of how things work, get accounts setup, get HR-type stuff setup, take long business lunch and talk shop.

Day two, meet the owner and eventually the conversation turns to, “So let me know which days each of you are covering.” As in a single 30 hour per week job for one person, is now two 15 hour per week jobs for two people.

Needless to say my friend was mortified. Obviously I wasn’t going to screw them over, so I quit. I found a job shortly after that was way better and my friend got a small (although not nearly enough) pay bump. So guess it worked out.

Under five minutes.

I interviewed, accepted the job offer at the end, showed up for my first scheduled shift and found out my manager wasn’t the polite manager I interviewed with.

For the record, I was supposed to start at 9am. It was 8:45 when I walked in.

Manager, literally yelling from about 300ft away: YOU’RE LATE!

Me, confused: I’m 15 minutes early?

Manager: I EXPECT YOU TO BE HERE HALF A HOUR BEFORE EVERY SHIFT, IF YOU’RE LATE AGAIN YOU’RE ON THIN FUCKING ICE

And I turned my happy ass around and walked out.

I don’t care if it was some bullshit tactic to “weed out” people, that is completely unacceptable behavior and in my younger years I have gotten into fist fights over someone speaking to another like that.

I had another job inside a week.

I don’t care if they had someone to fill my spot the next day. It wasn’t worth the time.

Two days.

I started a job at a ‘shake and shingle mill’ on the west coast. These places essentially receive cedar logs and produce little slats of wood used for pretty shingles on the sides and tops of houses. Ooo, pretty. The process is unchanged since like the 1700s, and the equipment since the Great War, I think. To make one into the other, first a huge saw cuts the logs into 2’ segments. Tip that on end and drive a wedge into it repeatedly via pneumatic piston, and you have smaller pieces. Those pieces would go to the cut saw to be made square and tidy, and then bundled into a unit to sell. So far so good?

I started as the low man, the dude who takes the split wood to the saw, and who tips the sewn logs over to position the 2’ section for the splitfest. And I’m running back and forth and it’s dangerous as shit – the floor’s wet wood because it’s a big shed and the incoming cedar is rainforest cedar, and it’s always bleeding water out when it’s being cut. The entire place is wet. So I’m careful, but the splitter guy isn’t. It’s not the end of day one and he drives the wedge into his hand. WITH the grain, so he’s not losing fingers, but it’s gonna be a while melding that vulcan salute back together. Yay, promotion! We short-hand it - oho! - and I’m doing 1.5 jobs until go-home time.

Next day, like almost first thing, one of the guys running the big saw loses some fingertips. Go see that (sfw) video, see how the panel drops, and imagine how that could have happened. So he’s off to the doc. And another guy steps over and he’s gonna show me how to use that machine so we don’t fall behind – and it’s like 2 min before coffee and the guy they just hired to fill the job I started at, he slips on the wood in his sneakers and falls out this big hole in the side of the barn where there’s a conveyor the wood comes in. He falls like 10 feet onto the ground, hard. It’s dirt, but when a 20 year old kid pauses you know he’s injured. Yep, he’s twisted the hell out of his ankle and fall on his arm a bit. He drives automatic, so he’s off in his own car to take himself to A&E. And we’re down two.

During coffee, I go to the boss. It has been a rough two days; and despite how safe it normally is, I definitely need my hands or I don’t need to save for the comp sci degree anymore. Reluctant handshake and it’s all in the rearview.

Three weeks is my personal record for proper jobs, not counting walkout from bait-and-switch jobs.

Interviewed at two places, accepted the one that gave an offer, then 3 weeks later the second place provided a better offer. Accepted the better offer and handed in resignation. I know the bridge is now burnt at place 1, but no regrets.

Look after number 1.

About 6 months when I was 19 years old. 3 months in I tried to book a week of vacation 3 months in advance (they asked for at least 1 month notice) and the power tripping substitute manager declined it immediately without checking the schedule or anything. As far as I remember there was no “first come first serve” BS, he just wanted to be a douche about it.

So after another 3 months the time came and I went on the most epic camping trip with 8 friends and had the time of my life.

Came back to civilization to a full voicemail inbox of my direct manager asking where I was, sighing, and eventually saying I was fired for it.

I regret nothing.

Exactly one month. It was a secure place where I needed to provide two forms of ID to get into… so you can probably imagine. Needless to say, my very first day, the person that trained me spilled the beans on how *they *were lied to starting out and ever since that day, I slowly began to realize that I was also lied to. Horrible people, horrible [mis]management and just outright horrible working conditions. It’s amazing what society will convince people as worthy all because it’s “for your country” even though to someone like me, it’s practically cruel and unusual… you know the rest.

24 and a half hours. I showed up the first day and found out the training period was unpaid. They advertised $15 per hour W-2-style position, but when I showed up, they offered a totally different 1099 contractor position where most of my time would be unpaid. I went home and researched, and confirmed my suspicions that Vector Marketing was a total scam. I came back the next day and chewed them out in front of all the other trainees they were trying to scam.

Two months. Got brought in as a sales engineer with no one to train me. My days mostly consisted of spending 8 hours alone in my office reading ISO and ASTM standards for the test services the company offered. Got sent to Minnesota for further training for a week with no one to train me there either. Found a job right after and left my boss bewildered like he couldn’t believe it after I kept reminding him no one was actually teaching me how to do the job.

Single day. It was work mixing cement with what was in a chemical lagoon for an ink factory. Basically the liquid would get pumped into a mixing machine and then piped over to a nearby site to make a more inert giant puck. Whoever was in charge of ratios was mixing things too thick and caused something to explode in a guy’s face. It wasn’t a big explosion, just enough to get the mixture all over him and into his eyes. I wasn’t really dealing with any of that yet, just starting on tarball duty where anything remotely black in the area around the lagoon was considered escaped contamination and got dug up with a shovel and tossed back in the designated area. This was in summer and we had to be in tyvek suits and rubber boots which both had to get taken off and thrown out in a special way every time you left the area. But seeing what happened to that guy just made me think all this wasn’t worth the risk and I didn’t come back the next day.