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

[Ripthevivienne2025]

Been in mine since the last week of November and really don't like it. Not sure how much longer to stick it out..it's a 'professional' job and it does have good benefits, but the actual work i hate.

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.

I did 1yr minimum on 2 different jobs I hated, just for the CV. I've had longer periods of work since then so wouldn't hesitate to leave after a few months if I hated my job now, life's too short to be putting up with it.

About 5 weeks as a newly qualified solicitor. The sole practitioner I went to work for was an utter arsehole. I had to take him to the employment tribunal to get him to pay me!

4 weeks, I couldn't get out of it any sooner, for legal reasons, - and it was the longest month of my life. Makes me shudder just to think about it.

Me and my bf took the same train to his new job and my new uni course. We took the same train back home and he announced that the job gave him bad vibes and he called one of the jobs he rejected and will start there tomorrow. So his record is one day. Mine is 1.5 years.

7 weeks and 2 days (mid 90's)

It was in a nursery and my face didn't fit

I've never worked so hard in my life-i was 16 years old and left alone with over 20 small kids,most days,while the main staff members went for a bitch session in the kitchen every shift

If anything went tits up,it was all my fault even though loads was beyond my control

I worked 50+ hours for £34.50 a week (I seem to remember the hours where 8am-6pm,mon-fri and we where often still there well past 8pm,unpaid,but the favourites could leave on time) and someone stole my purse with my wages in one week

I lost it when I really needed a wee (I've always had crap bladder control,so when I need to go,I have to go) and wasn't allowed to go to the toliet as the main ones had pissed off for a coffee and their daily bitch,so I couldn't just nip off as I was alone with over 15 kids

I told the manager where she could stick her job and walked out-my narc mother hit the roof and tried to make me go back to grovel for my job back

Not a chance-I was suicidal by the time I grabbed my bag and coat and marched out of that door

Best thing I ever did

It went bust about 6 months after I left

Temp office job many years ago - 3 hours. The boss was one of the rudest and most unpleasant people I’ve ever met. I left at lunch time and went back to the agency and they told me that I was the third temp to walk out in a fortnight!

2 1/2 days, but it was temp role and I was a teenager. I walked out at lunch time on the third day, called the agency and said I wouldn't be going back. The manager called and said he new the person training me was a nightmare but could I give it another go. They had been through a lot of temps apparently.

One evening shift on reception at a sauna and massage parlour. I was suspicious as the clients were paying way more than the advertised price list. It was exposed 6 months later in the News of the World as a brothel. 😳

‘Market research’ 0 time, or perhaps minus half a day.

It really was market research and not selling. I had just completed a OU degree with a lot of statistics/social sciences research in it, and was interested in the collecting data side of things.

I did a day’s unpaid training and then was supposed to do another one shadowing an experienced worker. That day’s job involved knocking on doors (in a housing estate they directed us to) and asking people if they would answer ‘a few questions, it will take 5 to 10 minutes.’ Except it would be at least 25 minutes, and that’s if they answered every question quickly and didn’t say a lot more.
We were also given the demographics of who to survey, eg 2 women aged 30-50, 2 aged 50+, probably other categories too, like job type, so at the end of the day it could be difficult to find people who fit the groups we hadn’t already seen. It would also have involved going into strangers’ houses on my own or standing on the doorstep asking questions for far longer than they expected.

I wasn’t happy with that, went home at lunchtime and didn’t continue any further. I imagine that online surveys have cut down the need for jobs like that.

About twenty minutes. A temp agency sent me for a job I was totally unqualified for. I had time to be shown into my fancy office, have a mini breakdown, and then leave.

God I've had some shite jobs in retail. I think it's a bit of right of passage when you're younger and/or a student to earn a bit of pin money. I worked in Superdrug (manager was a horrible woman who snapped at everyone all the time and was just generally unpleasant. She clearly didn't value her staff the way she spoke to them.) Also worked my "work experience" week in Next - hated that too. So fucking BORING. Dealing with the general public in retail is the work of the Devil.

Then whilst at Uni I worked shifts at a local Macdonald's. Manager was rude, overbearing, and the customers were pushy, complained about fucking everything and were a complete monstrosity to deal with. Stuck the Superdrug job for about two months, and Maccy D's - which was actually better pay and only marginally better treatment - about six months because it was easy money.

But kudos to all who remain in frontline retail roles. The general public make you lose faith in humanity TBH

A couple of hours, (after a week's training though). Customer services (phones). I did the training but the first day on the phones was a no no. I took one call and we also had to try and upsell the product. I got an irate woman on the phone who just sounded mardy and I hated it. I didn't have very much confidence then and used to panic ringing/talking to anyone in person and over the phone! I told my supervisor I didn't think that this is the job for me and I left there and then! This was many moons ago And I am a lot better confidence wise now, but still wouldn't ever work in any kind of sales.

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.

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

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

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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