What is the shortest amount of time you have stayed in a job?

[TravellingSpoon]

I have been in my current role for 5 months and am hoping to be able to hand my notice in at the end of this week, which I am dreading. They are short staffed as it is but the role isn't for me.

So make me feel a bit less shit and tell me the shortest time you have been in a job before you left.

I started a new job that was so mind numbingly dull that when I went out to get a sandwich at lunchtime I also bought a small pot plant and left it there to make sure I went back the next day .

I lasted 2 weeks in the end I think, and persuaded them that they didn't need a numerate graduate, A levels would be fine. Though truthfully a well trained chimp would probably have done equally well.

Quitting quickly can be beneficial if you can show in job applications that you were 'missold' the job you wanted to leave, rather than saying you were too good for the job.

My plant and I were very happy in my new job for several years

1 shift in a holiday job as a student, as a waitress in a supposedly classy hotel that treated its staff like dogshit, overworked them and kept the family dog in the kitchens (where it was the staff's job to ensure it didn't get out, and the waitstaff used to stroke it in passing). I wish I'd reported them to environmental health when I handed my notice in, tbh.

In terms of full-time/permanent jobs, 3 months in a screamingly tedious admin role no one ever bothered to train me properly for so it was constant guesswork and no feedback on how I was doing (oh wait, I tell a lie, one appraisal where my manager basically told me never to challenge him.) Oh, and a two-hour commute.

A friend of mine once worked one day in an office job and never went back.

Greentheme - tell us more

One day. Student job flogging double glazing door to door.

Unconscionable. I left after one day with no pay.

One week, long enough for my first paycheck.

9 months and I was glad to hand in my notice. The arsehole boss was in a "reality" tv show on BBC3 a while later. Nothing about the moonlight flit from his previous premises was mentioned on the programme.

6 hours - they wanted a skivvy to do the work whilst they had their fag and a cup of tea. Awful place.

4 hours. Went for a lunchtime walk and never went back.

Couple of weeks. Such a bloody involved process to get the job and a long wait to start, and it was utter shite. Boss was a prick. No work is worth going crackers for!

A week. Placement as a temp. Was meant to be there 3-4 months.
God awful place, no air or natural light, everyone either silent or having blazing rows behind closed office doors that were heard across the building, no structure or leadership, no training, AND we had to pay for the tea/coffee stuff whether you drank it or not.
I phoned my agency on the Thursday and told them to find me something else for Monday. They did.

one morning it was working out cheaper electric bills for big companies passed the maths test on interview started the job at 9 am by lunchtime decided i absolutely hated the job went for lunch and didnt go backi was only 18 at the time though

Not quite three hours, called DH from the portapotty to come get me, bawling my eyes out.

I was hired as a cleaner, sent on the job but turned out it was for a construction site.
Six floor building, elevator not yet hooked up, hauling construction waste. No guidelines, as to what to do with anything, wires, everywhere, but no where to put in a shop vac, ...
That was bad enough, but then the building crew started with the ass grabbing, and I was done.

Just under a day. I started at 8.30am and was home by 3pm, having called my Dad in tears to tell him my boss had felt me up. My Dad phoned the next day to explain why I wouldn't be returning and the woman who he spoke to sort of sighed resignedly and said I wasn't the first.

Twenty years on I'd staple his bollocks to his office door in that situation, but having just graduated it was terrifying.

One morning

I just knew I would be incredibly bored the company was in the middle of a take over/move and the set back was two months I would have had nothing to do and the thought made me panicky

The recruitment agency had lied they agent went mad on the phone as she had obviously lost her commission

1 day.

I had just turned 18 and a touch naive. On paper it was sales with customers that had been in touch previously to ask for appointments. In reality myself and 2 others were dragged round retirement flat areas to sell god knows what to them and the people "training" us were aggressive arseholes to these lovely people.

I couldn't ever target vulnerable people so just never went back. It was horrendous.

Im 2 years into my job. I like it but im not settled there. Ready to leave term time i think and start looking for something with doesn’t restrict me to school holidays and id love something where i can book my own annual leave.

2 days. It was a call centre job which i was told was customer service but it was actually cold calling people trying to sell double glazing. I just couldn't face going in on day 3.

1 day. It was a temp insurance admin job. All the smokers got regular breaks while the non smokers had to carry on working.
It was boring repetitive low paid work & i had recently just got out of a similar job so had no intention of repeating the experience.
I don't think I got paid for that days work.

1 day. I knew after 10 minutes it wasn’t for me, it wasn’t what I’d applied for - assistant office manager - I was told they had a shortage in the area I was put in - shipping, I was packing boxes from a conveyor belt. Apparently my job was being covered by the boss’s daughter while she was home from uni so I’d be manning a conveyor belt until she went back and presumably every other time she came home! I finished the shift and left.

Hubby is almost 70. When he first started work he had his own draw at the job centre. He'd start a job in the morning, not like it and they'd have another one for him in the afternoon . Really easy to switch jobs then. He got into IT when he was 18, it was the making of him and how we met in the early 1970s.

4 months. Despised the place. So relieved to go.
Only reject was not calling the vile cow I sat next to a vile cow to her face before I left

A morning. The person training me was both unfeasibly stupid and incredibly patronising. I would have ended up in some sort of horrible shouty row and disgraced myself.

Proper job: 6 months. Hasn't caused any probs on my CV in amongst other, longer periods as I just explain why it wasn't for me, and it makes sense in the context of what I did before/after and experienced gained.

I also worked in Subway for 3 hours as a teenager: it was shit. Bloody freezing as most of the prep. was taking things out of the freezer.

When I was made redundant I had enough money to not need to work for a few months but I signed up to an agency specifically requesting office work, I got sent to a packing factory after being told that it was an admin job, got there and was assigned a packing role in the warehouse, climbing up and down ladders getting products

I left at lunch time! I wanted to work but not manual labour!

*made redundant after 11 years with same company