To ask you - what's the fastest you've gone "f*** this" to a job

[Weston14]

Inspired by some chat in my office today.

Worked in one of those horrible, sickly, neon-lit dessert type places as a sixth former. Did one shift where I came straight from sixth form and was rota'd until 10pm, didn't end up getting out til about half midnight at which point I'd missed the last bus, I was covered in batter and chocolate, it was roasting, they had Capital on which just played the same three songs over and over again, and I ended up spending half the shift hidden in the fridge in the stock room. Ended up getting paid for a full week's work and blocked the recruiter's number and the manager's number in case they came asking for it.

I think you've won the thread 😳

@WiddlinDiddlin that is just gross 💩

1/2 way through a shift

One day. Well, I only lasted a day, but I’d already decided after an hour that I wouldn’t be coming back. London marketing company run by a husband-and-wife team. They were splitting up, and it was acrimonious. Basically the staff had chosen a side and were sticking to it. Not one person was pleasant towards me: between 20 to 30 people. It was a long-term temp job as a front of house/receptionist role… The first hour that I was there, a woman from the HR department was talking through their way of doing things. I wasn’t allowed to use the words such no, sorry, I’m afraid Ms X isn’t available, etc: I had to use ‘sexy words’ - this is how she actually phrased it. Apparently me starting a sentence with, ‘Ms X is unavailable right now’ would make people ‘sad’. Again, their words. Anything negative that I had to say, I had to put a positive spin on it. I had to do role-play with her. Utterly ridiculous. Every now, and again, a member of staff would come out, screech something at me, roll their eyes, slam a door and disappear. It was absolutely horrific.

Job writing manuals for a software company, back in the early 1990s. Stuck in a tiny airless, windowless office with two men who were possibly in their late 50s, and me, in my 20s.

I was only allowed to ask questions in a half-hour window at the end of the day (the 2 men didn't want to be 'disturbed' by questions all day). So if I got stuck on something at say 9.30am, I had to wait all day to get an answer. It was absolutely grim.

I lasted 3 days.

2/3 weeks in a supposed "marketing" job which was actually just being a charity chugger knocking on people's doors asking for money for charity. Utterly dreadful and complete pyramid scheme. Fortunately I cottoned on before getting too sucked in. Never got paid anything either.

This was during the 2008/2009 crisis and so irritated me even more that this company were taking advantage of young people desperate for work. The horrible smarmy manager (the only one getting paid a dime) holding the essential "team meetings" every morning to encourage us to go and make money. Grim.

I remember texting my "team leader" saying I wouldn't be coming back because i believed it was a scam, and she sent me some bs back saying "it's not a scam you're just not dedicated enough" as if I should be dedicated to a job where I never earned anything 🤣

Funnily enough one of MY worst jobs when starting out in comms was with a company run by a husband and wife. I lasted a fair bit longer than a month, but it taught me a lesson about workplaces which mix business and family!

Two weeks at a place that made fibre optic cables

Bunch of twats

Similar, age 17 in a call centre. We were basically pretending to be Sky and getting people to sign up for a subscription service. It was so shady, technically we didn't say we were sky but the speech implied it strongly. I was thinking, surely this is suss...
2nd day, there was an article in the paper about them that confirmed my suspicions. I walked out on my tea break.

Mine was during the long interview, as well.

Applied for a Teaching assistant job, which I’d seen advertised many times before.

Appointment was 9am. Turned out to be all day. For a £9 an hour job, I had an IT test, interview with Head Teacher then a Governor then the school’s Council. Did a playground duty (even though I hadn’t got my DBS) and cover lunchtime. Listening to the staff in the staff room was enlightening and made sense why they had such a high turnover in staff.

Waitressing in a restaurant when I was a student. The owner was a lech, kept saying how glad he was to have someone young and pretty working at the restaurant <vomit> and kept trying to force me to get a lift home from him. I had to practically run out the door at the end of my shift to get away and I never went back.

On a more professional-career level - this year! I left a long term role in December and started a new role in January. Handed in my notice in February. I just realised very quickly I wasn’t going to be happy there - long commute, boss with poor boundaries, expectations of my commitment and time too high for the salary. Managed to get a new job almost straight away <thank fuck> and so much happier. Life is too short!

I think there's a bit of a fear of throwing in the towel career-wise, which is largely unfounded. If it doesn't feel right, ride it out until you find the right fit and you don't even have to include it on your CV!

@Weston14 @WeAreAllLionesses At least it was all from the other side of a screen... but still, there isn't enough mind-bleach in the world either!

Oooooh... I went to an interview that sounds realllllly similar... it was in a unit next door to where my band practiced, so I'd seen 'hiring now' signs outside.

Despite being a very naive 17/18, I thought this call centre looked... odd, very scruffy, set up on a shoe string, wires everywhere, mismatched chairs and desks etc, no company branding anywhere.

We were given a script and told we were doing training calls but like someone else said up thread, it rapidly became obvious these were live calls and that what people thought we were selling is not what we were actually selling. I forget what it was, but similarly, the script made it sound like we were from a well known company, but we could not actually say the name...

I did a bunk on our lunchbreak and I noticed 3 weeks later, that unit was totally empty!

Lasted til day lunchtime on my first day when I was in my twenties. Just walked out! Oops!

Parked in car park morning of Day One...decided No - fuck this and drove home.

How bad was it?!

I spent one morning of a two week work experience in an infants/junior school when I was 16 because I thought I wanted to train to be a teacher. it was absolutely awful. I hated it with a passion. so many kids unable to do as they were told, shouting, running around and generally being naughty. It made me realise that I should never ever become a teacher or look after other peoples children. which in itself was really useful because it stopped me making a massive career mistake. i became an Environmental Health Officer instead.

I had really bad vibes in the interview but took the contract as desperate. The commute on a Monday morning was hell and I just left. Didn't even get through the door! My DB got a job there a couple of years later and did exactly the same thing as me but didn't even bother to park 😂

Before I'd even had the interview really.
It was for a crappy post-uni call centre job intended to tide me over.
I'd done similar throughout my time at uni. Got
In and a supervisor was actually screaming and swearing at a group of staff.
I stayed long enough to tell the interviewer that no, that's not how you motivate people.

Got booted out of the interview for saying so.

Never came back from my break on my first day. I worked in retail and as I was walking upstairs to the staff room to go on my break, I heard 2 colleagues slagging me off. F that

I worked in a nightclub bar for 1 shift when I was young. I was looking for a bit of extra money whilst I was doing an apprenticeship and I thought it would be great doing 1 night a week there. It was disgusting. We've all been in clubs and they're not the best of places but you don't really think about anything when you're tipsy and enjoying yourself. Well when I was sober it was grim. Sticky floors, drunk people touching me, loud, smelly. I made my excuses about 12 o'clock and never returned. It was SO grim!

NHS job, in my early 20s. Very low grade admin job in a hospital in a very socio-economically deprived area. Basically people who were on benefits and had chronic conditions got their travel to and from their appointment paid for by the government. My job was to recieve their tickets and process them for payment.

On the surface of it, it looked like a great opportunity - public sector work with a clear path upward. In practice, it was horrible - a lot of the patients were abusive and there was a horrible working culture and atmosphere.

I said f* this 6 weeks in.

My boss constantly told me how bad I was at the job even though they had given me no training. Then when I resigned she shouted at me for that too.

the only other thing I remember was getting into loads of trouble because I had half sat/half leaned on a colleague's desk to chat to her and that was against health and safety.

I worked somewhere once where a woman started, got given her locker key, introduced to the team, shown her desk etc at 9am. We all went for a coffee break at 10.30am and she disappeared. Security rang down to say shed handed in her locker key and left 😳

Not me but the teenage work experience student who didn't even last a morning in my classroom 😂 She didn't return after the first morning break and as she was only 16 it actually became a bit of an incident because nobody could find her (she'd asked someone where the toilets were in the staff room then fucked off!) and she hadn't signed out or anything! Eventually her mum tracked her down on her mobile and she was in town.

It transpired that she was unimpressed by the activities I had offered for her to help with and was under the impression she would be leading the class so decided just to leave as there was 'no point her being there' 😳