[Rolebama]

I think my shortest one was being employed as a Tool Fitter, and it turned out they just wanted a machine minder. That lasted about 5mins, although I demanded a full day's pay for their deceit, and got it.
Second was about 20mins working as a Partsman in a fork-lift manufacturing depot. Guy came down from Accounting and told me my wages had been over-inflated at interview, and they would pay me £1.50 an hour less than agreed. Left about an hour later with a day's pay at the interview agreed wage.
Desperate for cash, I took on a job sand blasting. Put on a very heavy full-body canvas suit, and turned on the breathing system. (Very dusty atmosphere when blasting.) After a few minutes it seemed like I was breathing pure Dettol. No job was worth that, so left in amicable agreement with a day's pay which they volunteered. That lasted around 30mins total. I later got a job at the same place managing their workshop, before they were bought out and I was made redundant.

[NMNeil]

Interviewed and got a job as a dispatch rider back in the 80's.
Turned up at 8am on the Monday and the first thing they said was "We all take it in turns to be on standby until 10pm for our biggest client, what day can we put you down for?"
No mention of this at the interview. turned around and walked out without a word. That 'job' probably lasted less than a minute

Started a job at a Vegas auto repair shop as an emissions tech.
Vegas has smog checks and to conduct the test you needed a class 1 emissions inspector license, but to fix the failures the garage had to employ a class 2 tech to stay open. There were only about 800 techs who held the class 2 license in the whole of Nevada, and I was one of them, so we were in high demand as you can imagine.
So my job was solely to diagnose and fix emissions failures.
First day on the job they wanted me to remove the transmission from a Winnebago RV, because the transmission tech was a no show.
Took over an hour for the tow truck to arrive to move all my toolboxes and all the time the shop owner was spouting excuses and promises.
At that time there was an auto technicians forum and the shop owner posted a few days later complaining how difficult it was to get a class 2 tech.

[Drivingforfun]

Who said "what can the job do for me?" not "what can I bring to the job?" was a modern problem!!

Although admittedly sounds like far better reasons ... I think today employees get the hump at being asked to turn up on time

[Rolebama]

@NMNeil I have had a few interviews where there is the usual give and take conversation. No mention of salary whatsoever, and when I brought up the topic, they offered peanuts. Then 'they' get upset when I laugh.

[Santa]

I was working as an agency driver and was sent to a council depot at six am. It was freezing, and the road was treacherous, but I allowed extra time and knocked on the door of an office just after six.

"You were supposed to be here an hour ago," the man inside snarled, obviously in a bad temper. I pointed out that I had been working until seven the previous evening and had to take a statutory rest. "Not my problem," he said.

There was a canteen of sorts, and I sat in the cold, with a tepid coffee from a machine for an hour before someone came and told me that the machine (a gullly sucker) was frozen and they were trying to thaw it out.

I asked how long it would take, and he had no idea - "quite a while, he thought."

I got up and told him to ring the agency when it was ready, and went home. The agency offered me a job elsewhere, starting as soon as I could get there.

[olduser]

Originally Posted by Drivingforfun

Who said "what can the job do for me?" not "what can I bring to the job?" was a modern problem!!

Although admittedly sounds like far better reasons ... I think today employees get the hump at being asked to turn up on time

I think, I can remember this saying becoming fashionable after JFK president of the USA used a variation of it in his inauguration speech. - "Think not of what my country can do for me but think what can I do for my country?" Coming from an ex-soldier made perfect sense.

I am not sure where he got the quote from but in management circles I have only ever heard the employee variation quoted downwards, and always in an 'Us' and 'Them' context.

Without fail, if the quote was echoed back to the user, there would be a long embarrassed silence.

If challenged, my response was along the lines, "I bring me, my talents, and experience" and I expect fair remuneration, human dignity, and not to be bored."

I was never specifically taught to interview people but common-sense dictated that there was no point in 'selling' the job, better to describe it warts and all, on the grounds that I was not trapping people into a job, if they were suitable, I wanted them to want the job. And of course, the interviewee needed to know the pay rate along with any in house rules we worked by.
The intention being to head of any, "but I didn't know" claims later.

Yes, I did make mistakes, and employed the occasional square peg for a round hole job but I cleared up the resultant mess myself, so I learned.

[Rolebama]

@olduser I was interviewing a man for a job, and after explaining the nitty-gritty, I asked him why I should choose him over other applicants. His response was simply: "I'm perfect". Around 12 months later, we were all given 4wks notice that the branch was to be closed. (New management were pulling the plug on us.) A couple of days later I received a phone call from his prospective employer who had interviewed him. They were asking for a reference. I told them he would be a perfect fit, and the person I was speaking told me that that was what he'd said. He got that job as well.

[NMNeil]

Originally Posted by Rolebama

@NMNeil I have had a few interviews where there is the usual give and take conversation. No mention of salary whatsoever, and when I brought up the topic, they offered peanuts. Then 'they' get upset when I laugh.

Then this is for you 😁

[Rolebama]

@NMNeil I found out, indirectly, that I lost £250pa off my pre-tax entitlement when working for the AA. This was because the tax-man decided we should be taxed on our tips. I only found this out when they tried to up it to £2000pa, and we were asked how much we actually got. So we were taxed on that same expectation.

[Santa]

I was once interviewing drivers for a job that mainly involved driving a van to local doctors' surgeries and collecting specimens for the pharmacy.

The interviews, conducted within the NHS, involved strict adherence to rules and a significant amount of paperwork to ensure complete objectivity. I also had two minions from HR sitting with me.

We had selected a shortlist of six from a large volume of applicants, which was going to take up a whole morning. The first couple were okay, but the third was rather special. He was smart and seemed quite capable until he explained why he had left his previous employment. He said that he had a disagreement with his employer and punched him, which earned him immediate dismissal.

The two HR people looked at me, and we agreed to terminate the interview. In reality, he had only applied to satisfy the benefits/employment people and did not want the job.

[Rolebama]

@Santa At the last place I worked, the van driver left and had to be replaced. The owner made the mistake of going to the Jobcentre to see about a replacement. The requirements were quite simple: Hold a valid full licence and be over 25, for insurance purposes, as there would be times when they would be driving customer's cars.
We had what seemed an endless queue of non-licence holders under 25yr olds, who were turning up to get their cards signed proving they had attended interviews. As you can imagine, the time wasted began to have a detrimental effect on the workload, so he cancelled the Jobcentre request. They tried to turn it back on him because of his 'unrealistic expectations'. We concluded that the only 'unrealistic expectation' he had was expecting the civil servants at the Jobcentre to do their job.

[olduser]

One of my granddaughters finished at Uni (Degree in Computer security) and got involved with the Job Centre (JC). She had of course, turned applying for jobs into a job. The JC offered her several vacancies (shelf stuffer, carer, and so on), and told here she would loose her allowance if she did not apply for them, she explained her field of expertise, again.
So they sent her on a course, basically how to apply for a job, she showed the lad delivering the course, how to set up his computer to talk to the projector (for his bullet points) and how to work it!

The next course was on Office Work, all the participants had a laptop on their desk meant to use the rooms WiFi but no one had told the laptops the WiFi's password!
Not even the lecturer's machine was setup.
While the granddaughter was setting them all up she found out the lecturer's laptop was on one of the desk's, and the lecturer had not seen the material to be delivered before!
She also discovered there are people paid in the JC to look at clients skills, and create a list of appropriate vacancies for that client.
When she was next in the JC she asked but just got a blank stare.

She has finally, found a job herself, she started at a bank last week.

[Lily]

@Rolebama very late to the party but I still wanted to share my experience:

I had just graduated uni and I was full of hope about the future... little did I know. 😂 Languages are my thing so I applied to become a teacher (I had worked in a comprenhensive school and I knew it wasn't for me).

After several interviews I got a job in a very "prestigious" language centre. The salary was competitive and I was very excited. BUT! Things went downhill super quickly. The "training" started at 9 am and finished at 10 pm, Monday to Saturday. The didn't allow us to take the books back home in case we would "steal" their methodology, so we couldn't prep the classes in advance. All the teachers working there looked completely exhausted.

I was supposed to get paid for the two weeks of training so I was counting the days for payday (remember I was young and broke), and when it finally came, they told us we had misunderstood, that we weren't getting paid for all the free classes we have taught while "training". I inmediately left and never looked back! One of the best decisions of my life, I ended up getting a much better job.

To this day, almost 15 years later, I can't see their logo or hear them mentioned on telly without shuddering.😂