The second shortest job I’ve ever had was doing data entry for an advertising agency, where I once spent a week and a half creating sale posters for Briscoes and Rebel Sport. You know the ones. The sale prices printed in bold on plain paper and placed in frames on flimsy stands. They get dotted around the stores and make them look chaotic, but what a bargain! Was $14.99 now $12.49!
On my first day Human Resources took me for a tour through the agency where they did all the interesting things, like the photography, or the having of ideas, and then they showed me my desk and it was there that I died of boredom. I was 20 years old. Too young to be quietly swallowed up by mindless task-completion in the endless pursuit of consumerism. That comes later once the realities of paying the bills in late-stage capitalism beats you down.
When I made the posters, the SKUs had to be perfect. The prices had to be perfect. There was no proofreader, no scanner, no one to check my work. Just me. I was the checker. I made the signs every day, from pages and pages of details. Yes, Briscoes IS always having a sale.
Usual price.
Sale price.
Savings.
Stock-keeping Unit.
Model.
Colour.
Size.
After I’d entered the details into the template and saved under the correct file name in the correct location, they were printed and sent to stores round the country. Thousands of people saw my work daily (a feat I have yet to replicate).
My supervisor spent an hour training me but an extra hour of additional training was available if I needed it. (I didn’t.)
I had to be careful, of course. If I got something wrong, and a customer noticed, they would demand free or discounted mops or silicone oven mitts (available in six modern colours) or slate-grey embossed dinnerware (large plates, small plates, salad bowls, soup bowls). I should have received danger pay for the pressure. Am I resorting to sarcasm to stop my brain shutting down just from remembering the mind-numbing boredom? Yes.
I began to go to the bathroom every hour so that standing up would prevent me from falling asleep in front of the computer. It was genuinely difficult not to doze off. This soon turned from a farce into a real need due to the amount of coffee I was drinking, also in pursuit of wakefulness. I realised that no one talked to me and I had no reason to talk to them, so I listened to music in my headphones all day. People continued to have nothing to say to me.
I started on a pay week, so I got my first fortnightly paycheck in advance. This is how long I lasted: on my second Tuesday I went out during my lunch break, got on the next train home, and emailed them to say I wouldn’t be back. I could not make myself walk back into that office. I would lose most of my remaining brain cells and become some kind of NPC worker drone. Like Ryan Reynolds at the beginning of Free Guy but way less perky.
“We want to make sure we’re not hiring someone who is taking the job to break into corporate advertising,” they’d said at the interview. “We need someone reliable. Do you want to work in advertising?”
I was able to sincerely reassure them that I had no previous interest in advertising. The office had free breakfast, unlimited espresso, a large brick feature wall, no expectation to wear pantyhose, and it was a short walk from the train station. That all seemed pretty decent. I wanted to be paid for a job that didn’t involve standing up for hours on end serving customers, and according to the information provided, I would have a desk and a fortnightly paycheck. Turned out I did want a bit more from life than a salary and a seat.
I had to pay back my advance for the rest of that week.
The shortest job I ever had was when I spent one day picking delicious fat blueberries in the Motueka Valley when I was about 14. It was so hot that I worked in a bikini top and shorts, and despite applying sunscreen more than once during the day, I got badly burned. Nothing could convince me to expose my overheated, painful skin to the sun the following day, even with a shirt on, so I didn’t. I probably sat around whinging about my sunburn while making a mixtape from the radio instead, or whatever rural teenagers did in the early 2000s.
What are the shortest jobs you’ve ever had? Share your short-lived work stories.
I had an interview once for an East-end “fashion” company. (A warehouse that made shoddy cheap reproductions of vaguely fashionable apparel that was sold in market tents around London)
The area was dodgy af. Throughout the interview the elderly owner ate biscuits that dropped crumbs all over his top while he talked and he had a lazy eye so I wasn’t quite sure where to look when talking to him.
The offered me the job and I accepted because I was a bit desperate. On the day I was due to start I emailed to say I quit. They immediately tried to offer me a more enticing role. It did not entice me.