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.

A year ago. I lasted 5 days. I was crawling home after working 9 hours per day and having to miss breaks due to the amount of work I was expected to do. In the end I just thought life is too short for this bollox and resigned.

@WiddlinDiddlin Did this exact same 'job' - lasted about 3 hours! Thankfully it was home based. Utterly soul destroying.

Thorpe Park - I lasted a day. Horrible ominous music on a two minute loop, an itchy uniform and infuriating supervisors just about finished me off, but the final straw was being told I was 'expected' to come in an hour early (unpaid) the following morning to join in with some INCREDIBLY FUN team-building game bollocks. Nope nope nopety nope.

I'm slightly ashamed to admit I actually got into a fight with a work bully just over ten years ago when I was on my gap year. Would've been about 19yo.

It was a production line job in a not great part of town and there was a slightly older woman who was basically a vile bully. She was a fat chavvy cow which is a horrid description but pretty accurate. I think she just saw me as some spoilt brat although I was a grafter and worked hard. Just made my life a misery.

She was way bigger than me but I'd been training thai boxing since I was 15 - my older brother used to compete, went to training camps in Thailand etc, the whole thing. I'd had a good few years of hard sparring behind me at this point and I was skinny but could hit the heavy bag pretty hard. I was already looking for another job and that particular night I wasn't in a good mood at all as I'd just split up with my bf.

She had been making snide comments about me in front of other people and I'd just had enough and said at least I didn't have more chins than a chinese phone book. 😂 It didn't go down well at all and she would see me outside etc.

I actually stupidly decided to call her bluff as I was so angry that day and went to have my coffee outside while she was having her fag break. She started saying threatening stuff and I basically laughed in her face. She saw red and pushed me and I just reacted without thinking and gave her a corker of a thai elbow in the face. 😯 Totally knocked her on her arse and she didn't have much to say after that. Looked totally shocked.

I walked straight out and never went back. Didn't hear anything else of it. It's the only 'fight' I've had in my life aside from in sparring and tbh I know it's bad but I felt good afterwards despite shitting myself I'd get in trouble.

I don't think I've told anyone that story in almost a decade!

1.5 days went for lunch never went back . Thames Water .

I worked on a production line..... went to the loo and never went back 😂😂 think I lasted about an hour 😂😂

Before I had even started! At the interview, in fact. I was working as a bar supervisor, got new managers and decided to jump before I was pushed. I went for a job at Mecca Bingo. I had no idea what happened at Bingo (still don't) but I was offered the job on the spot. I asked what the pay was (bear in mind this was 30 years ago) she said £1.87 p.h. I was already getting £3.56 so I turned the job down.

Looking back, getting a job in a steak place may not have been the best idea for a vegetarian, but I’d been waitressing throughout my teens and my boyfriend at the time worked there.

First shift was 10 hours on a rugby international weekend. I expected to be busy waitressing but they took me up to the attic space which just had freestanding kitchen units and a load of fridges, gave me a 25kg bag of garlic and told me to peel them. They left me to it.

About an hour into my shift I noticed liquid on the floor. It was red.

They used to put cardboard boxes of frozen steak in the fridges to defrost and the blood used to run out and across the floor.

I handed my apron in about 20 seconds later.

I lasted 14 weeks in an awful job, seems like an eternity compared with the accounts described above!

I hated it at point of being offered the role, the atmosphere at interview was horrible but I'd been made redundant and was a single parent so had no choice

Every Sunday night was filled with dread but I was determined not to leave for just any job, it had to be the right one. Took two and a quarter years.

Got made redundant en masse from a job that was shite, but paid not bad, and great social craic.

Got a payoff and decided to go travelling. Had a few months until I was due to go, so got a job with another call centre.

First day, walked in and there were the absolute dregs of my old job all working there.
I left at lunch and signed on for the rest of my time in the UK.

Ohhhh... the time I nearly lost my last marble... piecework, from home.

It was decidedly dodgy I think too.. but anyway, we were putting the strings through the plastic JD Sports bags.

You got boxes of bags, boxes of strings, and a metal doodar to shove string through the channel at the top of each side of the bag, then knot it, seal knot with a lighter.

It sounded great, but in fact to do enough to earn anything, you had to work at a backbreaking, mind melting rate. My kitchen was rammed with boxes, my fingers were bleeding after the first hour, I also developed a dry socket following a molar extraction two days in.

So there I am, in extreme pain, with a mountain of boxes, bleeding fingers (so wiping them before each bag to stop them bleeding on the bags, plasters were no go they left sticky bits on the bags and slowed things down), desperate to stop... get pain relief... anything..

The man coming to collect the boxes would not pay out on a box if it was not full, and if you didn't do the boxes you'd agreed to do there'd be some other penalty, I forget what.

That night with more boxes than I could possibly do left over, I accidentally nearly offed myself - my gum was now spitting out shards of broken jaw bone from around the socket, I wanted to shoot myself. I downed enough ibuprofen and paracetamol to kill a horse and washed it down with quite a lot of vodka... came close to ambulance time but the lass at 111 finally thought to ask my weight.. and fortunately I was fat enough that i'd NOT taken an OD.. just!

I recall bashing my head against a wall hoping it would be better than the pain I was in from both hands and face!

I suspect my mental health wasn't at its most stable either... I did get paid (friends came and helped with the last box) but never again...

2.2 days

I had interview previously for them but didn't feel that particular job was for me.

Some time later they contacted me out of the blue for a different role, wasn't quite in my skill set but they said they'd give me all the training I'd need as they really wanted me on their team. I was in a super rubbish role so thought why not.

Walked through the door on the first day and was just overwhelmed with dread. I should have just turned around at that point and gone home but needed the money. From the moment I sat down they barely interacted with me so no training. Was given a list of tasks but not given anything on how to do them or where things were located so spent 2 days scrabbling round trying to figure things out. Then a customer turned up an hour early for his meeting and they had a go at me for not being ready to receive him. Had he turned up at the time he was supposed to I would have been!

Morning or the third day I turned up put my lunch in the fridge in the kitchen, walked down to the office to see the two bosses sitting there waiting for me. They started having a go saying I wasn't performing as expected, not ready for customer etc and I reminded them that they hired me knowing my skill set and that they said they would train me and at that point hadn't spent 5 minutes with me. They told me to take 10 minutes and to have a think if where I was going wrong and come back to them. So, I went and fetched my lunch, sat at my computer and typed up my resignation letter in front of them and stuck it on the desk. They said 'aren't you going to fight for your job' I said no as I walked out the door and they sat there with a WTF just happened look on their faces.

About 30 years ago (aged 17) I got a job at a well known fast food restaurant next to a cinema. First shift I was trained on the till right when Batman Returns was turning out of the cinema. It was so busy and a very manic environment with everyone shouting their orders through to the ‘chefs’ - hated it. Managed 3 shifts in first week, got the rota for the following week and I’d asked not to be put on for the Tuesday as I had a season ticket for football and there was a match on. They’d put me on to work on Tuesday so I left there and then. Such a relief!

@ReginaRegina Way to go! I’d be very proud of myself for sorting out a bully, especially as she made the first contact, good job!

So many. When I was 14 I started work in a clothes shop, was taken to a back room which was full of wire coat hangers and told to untangle them all. After 3 hours I had made little progress and my mum popped in to see how I was doing. I burst into tears and asked her to take me home.

Temping at uni, I was working on reception where I lasted 2 days. Not a single person spoke to me and every single one of them had their phones straight to voicemail so I was dealing with very angry people trying to contact them all day.

Cold calling for mobile phone upgrades. Did three days (they did pay me). It was awful.

Just thought of another one. Temping at a workplace where I had to type handwritten notes up from interviews with children who had been sexually abused. Absolutely horrific and I still remember some of the stories 25 years later.

I got roped into one of those multi level big girl boss schemes. They really pump you up like you have something special. Ended up walking around wolverhampton in the pissing down rain in a suit and high heels trying to get charity subscriptions from cold calling knocking on doors. I got nearly an hour in and just walked off. Didn’t even say bye

Applied for an office admin role for an energy company, I was assured numerous times that the role was not customer service or phone based at all, as I had worked in a call centre environment before and detested it.
I was told this role was just internal admin stuff (boring but easy and relatively well paid)
Did 2 weeks training with people all training within the company but apparently we all had different job roles/titles and this was just basic training about the energy sector that we all needed to do to work for the company.
Red flags were waving but again I was assured I was an administrative role not a customer service role so I stayed.

Day 1 after 2 weeks training I was plonked straight onto a bloody call centre floor first thing in the morning, told to answer calls and essentially fob all customers off without resolving any issues, and that was that. As was everyone else who was in my training group, and although we all had different job titles we were all doing the same job.

I went straight to my 'manager' who refused to discuss my concerns, said I could only book a meeting after I had been there a year to reassess my job role.

Fucking shysters knew exactly what they were doing from the start as it wasn't just me they had done it to, and they were relying on young people who wouldn't kick up a fuss or know the ins and outs of hefty job contracts, and also people being trapped due to financial responsibilities/families so that they couldn't quit immediately and they would have a call centre worker for a few months until they could trick someone else in. And so the cycle continues.

Left a temp admin job last year after a week. It was well paid, £27 an hour from memory, but the culture was toxic and everyone was micromanaged. I had to work my 1 weeks' notice period so was there a total of 2 weeks. Every day was awful in that place.

3 shifts. I was a part time room cleaner at a hotel at the age of 16. First 2 shifts were fine but then they expected me to clean up body fluids of all descriptions without PPE, not even gloves. I did a hell no and walked out!!!

Forty minutes.

Got a job working on a factory production line slicing cakes. Walked out. Can't believe I stayed that long tbh.

A day and two hours. The first one was just training then the second was the real day.

That's when I realised that far from being a customer support person I was actually supposed to cold-call people and try and flog some home appliance that didn't work.

So I walked out after 2 hours.

I did a month, had a breakdown never went back, which was awkward as my husband worked there at the time.

It was a fairly large company, but my manager was rude, and a bully. I had never worked in a office before and while my husband tried to teach me the basics, he had his own work to do, while my manager refused to teach me anything.