24 and a half hours. I showed up the first day and found out the training period was unpaid. They advertised $15 per hour W-2-style position, but when I showed up, they offered a totally different 1099 contractor position where most of my time would be unpaid. I went home and researched, and confirmed my suspicions that Vector Marketing was a total scam. I came back the next day and chewed them out in front of all the other trainees they were trying to scam.

Single day. It was work mixing cement with what was in a chemical lagoon for an ink factory. Basically the liquid would get pumped into a mixing machine and then piped over to a nearby site to make a more inert giant puck. Whoever was in charge of ratios was mixing things too thick and caused something to explode in a guy’s face. It wasn’t a big explosion, just enough to get the mixture all over him and into his eyes. I wasn’t really dealing with any of that yet, just starting on tarball duty where anything remotely black in the area around the lagoon was considered escaped contamination and got dug up with a shovel and tossed back in the designated area. This was in summer and we had to be in tyvek suits and rubber boots which both had to get taken off and thrown out in a special way every time you left the area. But seeing what happened to that guy just made me think all this wasn’t worth the risk and I didn’t come back the next day.

Six months. It was an IT-job, but the owner was related to criminal circles and acted like a criminal, with regular emotional and insulting outbursts directed at various employees. Imagine working with Tony Soprano.

Never hold your breath when your superior tells you that they’d promote you.

I’ve had a boss who was telling me from the start that he had plans for me. Three years passed by, no promotion, no raise, nothing.

Then I moved to a new job. My boss never promised me anything. I never got my rank promoted (yet) but I’ve had more raise than I could ever ask for.

One week.

Was asked to be the community manager of an online casino. I couldn’t deal with the morality of trying to encourage people to keep gambling away money they didn’t have.

In the places I have worked the first 3 months are generally a trial period and both parties can terminate employment at any time.

Not me but my ex spouse: They got a job as a breakfast cook. Came back the first day and started talking about the job the same way they talked about previous jobs shortly before they quit. I sat then down and was basically like “you might not see it yet but you’ve got to quit”. They quit the next morning and came home early it was great

About 6 months when I was 19 years old. 3 months in I tried to book a week of vacation 3 months in advance (they asked for at least 1 month notice) and the power tripping substitute manager declined it immediately without checking the schedule or anything. As far as I remember there was no “first come first serve” BS, he just wanted to be a douche about it.

So after another 3 months the time came and I went on the most epic camping trip with 8 friends and had the time of my life.

Came back to civilization to a full voicemail inbox of my direct manager asking where I was, sighing, and eventually saying I was fired for it.

I regret nothing.

Not me, but I used to work a role at a company that provided IT services and hardware/support.

We had a team that sat right behind me, basically they supported customer accounts, and they got a new team leader/manager.

She came in on a Friday I believe and the rest of the team were out, Thursday night is party night so most people worked from home Friday.

The next week comes in, IT puts all her equipment on her desk, she isn’t there. The next day or so comes around and she isn’t there but her team is and someone else strolls over to chat. He mentions he heard they got a new lady boss, where is she?

I say she was in last week, I saw her.

“Is she a looker?”

… this bloody place. Asks nothing about her other than her looks.

Later that week IT comes along and collects her equipment, she had left in under a week. I have no idea what happened but that was the quickest I have seen someone leave and on average we had a very short staff turnover time.

I only made it about 6 hours at one job, a shift and a half.

I had a job in college digitizing betacam tapes (old BBC/PBS footage, pretty cool!) but it was on and off. During a long lull, I needed cash bad and took the first job that called - Jimmy Johns delivery driver.

First day was fine but I knew I would hate it. Second day I locked my keys in my car.

While I was waiting for my roommate to bring me my spare set, I got a call for a different gig (production assistant on a film). It was only 8 days at $50/day but I quit JJ on the spot. Late 2000s for context on how pitiful that is

I took a job at a “robotics” company after the owner sold me a huge line of bullshit (that I completely fell for which is a story for another time) after being in a toxic job for a number of years before. On day one at about 8:30am, I realized that it was not what I fell for during the interview. The boss was someoletely unhinged, the expected hours were not what I had agreed to and the work was constantly being micromanaged by the owner who knew just enough to look like a complete idiot when the discussions got technical. The only positive thing with the job was that I had some company stock coming in at 6 months so I held out until I was 100% sure they couldn’t screw me on the stock vesting and then immediately resigned.

There is no inappropriate time to quit if you’re not happy. Just be sure you’re not happy as a very short time at an employer can look bad on your CV.

I worked at a McDonalds for a month. I’d done bar work before that and really enjoyed it, but fast food was depressing. Although my colleagues were pretty cool, the managers were absolute assholes. They made fun of all the staff and took the piss for the fact that I had a degree but was having to work somewhere like that. I was ‘sick’ for my notice period (I’d found work elsewhere).

Two days.

I started a job at a ‘shake and shingle mill’ on the west coast. These places essentially receive cedar logs and produce little slats of wood used for pretty shingles on the sides and tops of houses. Ooo, pretty. The process is unchanged since like the 1700s, and the equipment since the Great War, I think. To make one into the other, first a huge saw cuts the logs into 2’ segments. Tip that on end and drive a wedge into it repeatedly via pneumatic piston, and you have smaller pieces. Those pieces would go to the cut saw to be made square and tidy, and then bundled into a unit to sell. So far so good?

I started as the low man, the dude who takes the split wood to the saw, and who tips the sewn logs over to position the 2’ section for the splitfest. And I’m running back and forth and it’s dangerous as shit – the floor’s wet wood because it’s a big shed and the incoming cedar is rainforest cedar, and it’s always bleeding water out when it’s being cut. The entire place is wet. So I’m careful, but the splitter guy isn’t. It’s not the end of day one and he drives the wedge into his hand. WITH the grain, so he’s not losing fingers, but it’s gonna be a while melding that vulcan salute back together. Yay, promotion! We short-hand it - oho! - and I’m doing 1.5 jobs until go-home time.

Next day, like almost first thing, one of the guys running the big saw loses some fingertips. Go see that (sfw) video, see how the panel drops, and imagine how that could have happened. So he’s off to the doc. And another guy steps over and he’s gonna show me how to use that machine so we don’t fall behind – and it’s like 2 min before coffee and the guy they just hired to fill the job I started at, he slips on the wood in his sneakers and falls out this big hole in the side of the barn where there’s a conveyor the wood comes in. He falls like 10 feet onto the ground, hard. It’s dirt, but when a 20 year old kid pauses you know he’s injured. Yep, he’s twisted the hell out of his ankle and fall on his arm a bit. He drives automatic, so he’s off in his own car to take himself to A&E. And we’re down two.

During coffee, I go to the boss. It has been a rough two days; and despite how safe it normally is, I definitely need my hands or I don’t need to save for the comp sci degree anymore. Reluctant handshake and it’s all in the rearview.

3 days of real time, 2 hours of real work.

1st day, the boss has a problem with a truck, sends his father to guide us to the place and give us the tool. The father never finds the tools, cannot get his son on the phone, tells us to come back next day.

2nd day : no one on site. I call the boss, he seems surprised i’m here, gives me the number of his father. His father tells me he has an appointment with a doctor, tells me to clean the place til he comes back. I do so, 2 hours later i have nothing left to do. I wait one more hour, he doesnt come back. The boss sends me a message to be there next day.

3d day : no one on site, no one answer the phone. I waited one hour and went off.

Never got any message nor explanations. Sometimes they just don’t care, and anyway if they cannot provide you with a stable schedule, dont worry too much about leaving quickly