Wasn’t sure whether to throw this into an ask community or here, but ultimately chose casual convo because I am lowkey also looking for advice lol
I landed a job last week (hired me on the spot, did training 3 days later) as one of those people who stand outside shops/etc. asking people to donate to charities. Reputable charities for the record and without cash donations, so not some scam. But the way this is organised is miserable!! I literally get told where I’m supposed to go the night before I go there. I also get paid exclusively based on how many people I get to donate (this was not on the job ad on Indeed). The job itself is fine, is whatever, but between the chaos of having to schedule my day last minute and never being sure how much I’ll make in a month… I need to hightail it out of here.
I get paid on the 15th of May, would it be inappropriate for me to quit right after? I’ll give two weeks notice of course. My team leader has been super sweet to me and is already telling me I’m a natural and she wants to promote me inside her team… I did hint at the fact this is just a temporary thing for me and what I really want is an office job, but she keeps insisting I should stay and can earn a lot more here (and tbf she makes €3000/month). To be honest this whole structure feels very pyramid scheme-ish lol minus the fact people don’t pay into it.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this or any experience you want to share!
This was decades ago.
Not even an hour on the job. I was early 20ish, new to a city, answered an ad for an art gallery receptionist. Had the interview at the gallery, guy seemed straight-forward, I got the gig, was told I’d start in a week. That night, around 2am he started leaving phone messages, saying we needed to have a meeting immediately. I needed to be at his house by 6am. Went from inappropriately sweet to hoarse with yelling down the phone at me within a day. Call after call at all hours for a week. Told me at 8pm on a Saturday I needed to bring him donuts at his house by 9. That I needed to go shopping with him for a new skirt that would suit the office better. That I needed to respond immediately whenever he called. Literally did the “Don’t you know who I am?” “I can destroy you with a snap of my fingers,” “Don’t you understand what an opportunity this is for you?” whole shtick.
Didn’t even make it to the first day of the supposed job. Changed my phone number. Moved again.
The other was half a day, but not making it past the training phase of a call centre job probably doesn’t count.
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.
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.
Not long ago I managed the claims database (among other duties) for a large company that contracts with industrial facilities. Built a report for accident free days that also happened to have a count of employees and other metrics. I quickly realized that safety was clearly a matter of the facility and/or the people running the gig and not so much related to company policy or training. Seeing some facilities with an accident every few days and others that haven’t had an accident since the turn of the century, and no obvious trends related to the number of employees it was interesting to say the least
Not me, but about 4.5 hours including half a day of induction. The company I worked for did a lot of crunching data in Excel and producing reports based on that data. This girl started, did her half day induction (“fire escapes are here”, etc, etc) then was assigned to me to work on a project. I sat down with her for about an hour and a half and talked her through the easiest part of the project that I wanted her to work on. She nodded, said she understood, then asked what the process for quitting was.
I’ve no idea how she got hired because she said she had been expecting the job to be mostly creative, not working with data, and that it didn’t interest her at all.
I was maybe 50 minutes into the training of a job that I had gotten.
It was at a home for mentally and physically challenged individuals. I have had some experience with it but here they had an individual who did regular massive self harm. Like 200 stitches every week, and they happened to start doing selfhalm right when I started that day.
It was a pass for me
