What's the shortest time you've stayed in a job you hated?

3 hours.
Care work, I quit because they asked me to shower an immobile patient but wouldn't show me how to use the equipment. Then asked me to feed someone on my own who I was told would likely choke but I would just have to deal with it as there was no one to help if there was a problem.
Walked away before I got myself into hot water.

I stayed in one job for 4 months but only because another job I was waiting listed for came up.

I generally use a 6 month rule of thumb before looking elsewhere. I figure that by 6 months you've given it a fair shot, you've learned most things about the job to understand it and you've a good sense of team dynamics and the organisation/business you're working for and how you fit within that. Plus 6 months is a reasonable time frame on a cv.

The worst job I've ever done I did 6 months in. But as awful as it was the experience I got in it meant I was able to move into a more senior position in a different type of role.

3 months and I knew in both instances something was off from the very first minute. I was lied to. Move as soon as you can. I'm a year it won't matter.

A day. It was a secretary job at a solicitors. It was an old 3 storey house that had been converted into an office. The 'office' the secretaries had to sit in was the basement. There were rat traps and cockroach traps everywhere. The toilet was outdoors.

One shift. I was left alone with zero training on an evening shift dealing with offenders. Only 19 years old. Luckily it was temp work anyway so I dobbed them into the agency and said I wasn’t going back

@CoastalCalm

I did exactly the same once, never went back after dinner.

A year. Should have walked as soon as I realised it was definitely not for me (within three weeks) but stuck it out for too long.

Four months as a GP receptionist. I could handle the rude patients but the practice manager had it in for me for some reason. One day she came thundering into the office with a significant error that had been made. Assumed it was me. It wasn’t, I was nothing if not meticulous. After that I decided to quit.
I’d worked in retail in the past but GP reception work is like retail on steroids.

One afternoon. Working for a double glazing salesman, arrived and was given a set of keys then left by myself in a grim, freezing shop, which was absolutely absolutely filthy, piles of window broken frames everywhere, no loo, no kettle and people phoning and screaming at me, including one woman who said “you’ve got a lot to learn about the people you’re working for”, no reply from ‘the boss’ when I phoned him for help. Lasted from 1pm til 5pm, left a note on the desk and posted the keys when I locked up!

I was in a job 18 weeks. After about three I realised it would not be long term, last in first out.

1 month working at the Daily Mirror in the late 80s, I was PA to the HR director. Everyone there was horrible, from the cleaners to the executives and everything inbetween. It was the days of Robert Maxwell.

A little over three hours
It was listed as a job cleaning apartments , but it was hauling construction waste in 5 gallon pails , and tarp bag, down 12 flights of stairs (no elevator yet) in an apartment building under construction.
Add to that a mix of workers who refused to speak English (after I heard them easily chatting with each other) when I asked for help with something, and then grabbed my butt as they passed me in the stairwell.
I was an idiot to stay that long

I left a job in under half an hour once. Realised it wasn't for me and just walked straight out

can you do hca or nursing auxiliary or NHS or council @Ripthevivienne2025

Three hours (casual job at 19 years old). I was expected to work in a basement in sub zero temperatures where there was actual snow and ice indoors and I wasn’t allowed to wear a coat - no thank you! I left at lunch and went home.

Professional career job - six months - I resigned just before the end of probation, as my notice would increase from one week to three months - and I was bored rigid! I was very polite with my exit though and kept it very neutral. And I had lined up another job starting immediately.

Half a day, Woolworths when I was 17, in 1984.
The Women were utterly vile to me, wouldn’t show me where anything was in the stock room and kept saying they wished the Woman I replaced had never left.
I walked out at lunch time and went straight to the job centre.

I've had two of these!
First was straight out of uni and didn't go back on day two was a sales role and when I was shadowing the sales people it was total cold calling. Luckily my old job hadn't closed me off.

Second time was 2 months - promised a busy role but was the complete opposite, never experienced boredom like it.

Both times I knew from the minute I walked in it was a mistake.

Life is too short to be unhappy!

Not me, but DH left a job after one day once. Looking back, he wasn’t mentally ready to go back to work at that point after working in a toxic workplace for many years and then being signed off sick with work-induced stress. Also he was matched with the job via a recruitment agency and it wasn’t really a good fit but they obviously only cared about their commission or whatever.

4 months but the writing was on the wall in the first month, when they paid everyone late but paid themselves their commission on time. It was a small business - a total law unto themselves.

About an hour and a half. Care home as a teenager. Walked out after witnessing the matron of the home refusing to take an immobile lady to the toilet as she'd "missed toileting time", then screaming in her face when she wet herself. It was my second care job and I'd never witnessed anything like it. Went home and told my mum, who worked for social services, and she put a report in.

Two hours. A bloody awful job in a freezing cold German railway station selling posh chocolates in the late 1980s. Although the one where I had to count bales of material in a Karstadt warehouse came close in terms of bloody awfulness.

It's a crying shame that care workers get paid as little as they do, if we lived in a world that was fair and measured contributions to humanity they'd be one of the best paid professions in the world.

@Ripthevivienne2025

I really enjoyed being a Care Assistant sadly that's a looked down upon career which is a shame, it was rewarding though and I was good at it. Part of me wants to go back if I can find one with contracted hours.

Please do consider looking at becoming self employed care assistant if you were good at it. I wanted to keep a relative at home and did not want to use agency care because I wanted consistency of staff and for them to buid a relationship with the 'patient'. There are a lot of people like me in that situation and many are desperate to find good carers.

The plus side of it is, the job is likely to be more pleasant and less intense than working in a care home or for an agency becuase you are working directly for those driven by love.

The downside is a bit more admin - you would need to organise your own insurance for example but honestly, if you are good and you liked it please do look into this.

Dr's surgerys, local Age Concern, local FB sites, the Lady magazine database all have lots of people looking to recruit care assistants directly.

I can tell you because I was caring myself, I valued the care assistants I had SO highly because I was doing it myself, knew how hard it was and had enough experience to see who was good.

3 months. A Sales role. Their expectations were insane and the day they extended my probation I resigned with no job to go to.

Never had the Sunday night dread as much in my life as I did with that job. Shudder.

11 months. I wish I had just quit after 4 weeks.it was truly terrible.

Just under 4 months. Realised it was a glorified admin position under a micromamager when they made out it was a project manager with loads of interesting work. I hesitated as it was a permanent role and chanced it for a maternity cover role elsewhere. Been with that employer nearly 4 years and love it And no one has ever asked me about that 4 month stint since. And I work in quite a small sector where everyone knows each other.

I think as long as you don't make it a habit, you'd be fine

If the money isn’t an issue then go back to care work. I loathe job snobbery in the uk. Care work is such an important job and not everyone can do it.