Is 3 days enough to decide whether you like a job??

Jerryjerryjerry

If its a permanent job, then I'd say three days is not long enough. For a temping job, you can usually decide within a day!

This week, I had to walk out of a temping job after 1.5 days (1 week booking) because I found it too hard. It was a job as a legal secretary. They had their own inhouse system which was brilliant but so complicated!

I could see how their system would be time-saving and useful had I had enough training on it. But the office manager (bless her) gave me about 3 hours training and then the work started piling in! two fee earners and a partner - all bringing stuff to my desk. I was constantly on the phone to the office manager asking her how to do this.. and how to do that... then I started to feel guilty and stupid because I couldn't manage one document without calling the poor woman upstairs to my office. She might as well have sat next to me during the whole 1.5 days - for the amount of her own work she probably managed.

The final straw came, when it had taken me 3 hours to send an email which would normally take 5 minutes... (due to their complex system/way of doing things). I looked at the time... it was 12.30.

My head was racing. My neck was aching from all the tension, I was stressed out. Thoughts like, I can't leave, I need the money, I can't leave, the agency wont give me any more work, I can't leave, what will the husband say?, I can't leave, I can't tell them I can't do it, I'm going to look an idiot, I wont get any more work, I can stick this out, I know, I'll ask her to come and sit with me for another three hours - I need some more training! - then I realised, that it would take me a week to learn the system... and I was only working there for a week! So I thought... F it.

In the end, I picked my bag up, shoved my sarnie box into it, walked out into the car park, drove off home. The sense of relief I felt! It was like being released from a prison.

I had to phone agy and tell them I had a headache (almost true), the job had given me a stress ache. I don't have any work now. However, I've got an interview next week for a great job and I'm registered with another agy who i'm sure will give me some work.

Life's too short to fret and waste on a stressful job. Stay if you desperately need the money, but walk out and find something else if you can tighten your belt and manage somehow..

chris1973

First of all, are you sure that your colleagues are really the problem or is it that you simply just hate the job and are looking for other excuses to quit?

Either way, Sadly, you cant choose the people who like you....or dislike you for that matter. You'll meet people in life who, for whatever reason, will take an instant dislike to you, we all do and inevitably sometimes those people are in our workplace.

Besides, it often takes more than 3 days, if not 3 months to really get to know people. If I look back at some of my longest standing friendships, it took more than 3 days to get to know those people.

At the end of the day, its a job. You go in, do what is expected of you and then go home. At the end of the month you get paid. Thats all there is to it.

Of course, you make an effort to get on with people, be sociable and approachable, but at the end of the day, you can't make people like you.

You go to work for your own reasons, and more often than not its not out of choice but out of a need to live and support yourself. If you can make friends and get on with everybody then its a bonus but its not meant to be an extension of a social life, all you can do is to be as pleasant as possible but if its not returned then don't lose any sleep over it, you'll still get paid.