Casual Conversation

Under five minutes.

I interviewed, accepted the job offer at the end, showed up for my first scheduled shift and found out my manager wasn't the polite manager I interviewed with.

For the record, I was supposed to start at 9am. It was 8:45 when I walked in.

Manager, literally yelling from about 300ft away: YOU'RE LATE!

Me, confused: I'm 15 minutes early?

Manager: I EXPECT YOU TO BE HERE HALF A HOUR BEFORE EVERY SHIFT, IF YOU'RE LATE AGAIN YOU'RE ON THIN FUCKING ICE

And I turned my happy ass around and walked out.

I don't care if it was some bullshit tactic to "weed out" people, that is completely unacceptable behavior and in my younger years I have gotten into fist fights over someone speaking to another like that.

I had another job inside a week.

I don't care if they had someone to fill my spot the next day. It wasn't worth the time.

I knew someone who did overnight chicken catching (to get them from the barn into the truck to go off to slaughter) and lasted about twenty minutes. The straw was accidentally dropping a chicken two stories because of the time pressure; shit like that is commonplace in animal agriculture.

The crew lead told them it was fine and they could wait in the van until the end of the shift. He made a comment like, "yeah you have to have a bit of a screw loose to work a job like this."

That story sticks with me a lot when I think about the conditions for both labourers and animals that are necessary to get meat onto the table.

2 weeks. canvassing for Working Families Party in Brooklyn

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

My two cents.

If it's not so terrible that you dread every day, keep it and the paycheck while you look for another job. As soon as you have a new job lined up, quit.

You seem concerned about making it easy on them, maybe help them out a few weeks to soften the blow. Don't bother, you're taking up their time and training resources that they could be spending on the next person who is going to replace you.

Be professional in how you quit, but don't be a doormat. Remember this company could lay you off at any moment and the "best" company will only be professional. They aren't your friends. Match that energy.

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).

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.

Started in the morning. Resigned by noon.

As far as I was concerned it wasn't a business I was working for, but rather a criminal enterprise (the crime being fraud), only a really incompetent one.

They were a "tech firm" but their product changed literally daily, depending on who they were trying to sell to. They had no actual product. They had a couple of programmers who would be told every day what the product actually was today who would gnash their teeth and cry. Then they didn't even have that much. Which didn't stop them trying to sell it anyway.

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 I was assigned to train a new machine operator at a factory, and he lasted about 80 minutes. I could barely explain the scope of his responsibilities. He went on a scheduled break and then I never saw him again.

I didn't blame him, morale was low because of COVID and supply chain issues, and he started on a night shift.

For your issue, it is sane to wait until you get paid before resigning given the number of companies who routinely "forget" to pay the final paycheque and generally make it a pain in the ass to collect.

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.

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.

Personally, 6 months. Sounded great on paper and even today it sounds great, but I really didn't like it. Now I'm somewhere that sounds rubbish on paper and in many ways is, but I'm pretty happy.

Quickest I ever saw was when I did a 2 week school placement in an IT support company. The whole company was like 4 people including me. Back in the late 90's it was all reinstalling Windows, ISDN lines, that sort of basic IT provided in to companies. They hired a new guy and sent him off to install a couple of Windows PCs for some company. The next day he left as he was out of his depth.

How you know this job is a scam, in your own words:

I also get paid exclusively based on how many people I get to donate (this was not on the job ad on Indeed).

This means that you're likely getting less than minimum wage, indicating dubious legality and (as you're experiencing) poverty inducing fuckery. It wasn't on the job description because it's likely illegal.

Also, never ever ever use Indeed. It's a den of lies and villainy. You will find nothing but skullfucking third tier recruiters, AI bots programmed in Hindi, and suspiciously lucrative offers from Dubai that require you to turn over your passport. You will literally have better luck on craigslist.

I landed a job last week (hired me on the spot, did training 3 days later)

Translation - no one wants this job and they're desperate for suckers

Reputable charities for the record and without cash donations, so not some scam

Cash donations make it too easy for you to supplement the sub minimum wage you're earning under the table, so that's why they don't accept them. Their business model is likely based on a subscription donation model that allows them to hook the donor and get them on their marketing lists. The only way to ascertain that the charities in question are actually getting any donations is to contact them independently. My guess is that if it's not a scam, the charities in question end up with about 10% of the actually donated $ with most of it going to company overhead.

Personal experience - I worked a number of these types of jobs when I was younger and trying to make my way, including working donations for non-profits and political campaigns, as well as your more traditional pyramid schemes like Cutco. They operate in a very similar fashion, but you're more likely to make at least some money with the regular pyramid schemes - non-profits will work you harder and pay you less, because you're "doing it for the cause" and not a paycheck, supposedly.

GTFO now. I wouldn't even bother about the paycheck or giving notice. Any basic office temp job will pay better and give you more security. Hell, even fast food workers are paid hourly.

Do people donate through the store paiement system? If so, it may be a scam based on tax evasion, depending on the country. In France for example donations to non profit lead to tax deduction. Big stores ask for donations at checkout. This way, they can deduct like 60% of people's donations from their tax