Shortest stint at a paper

damn. that's harsh. i can't believe you fired him. why didn't you just say there'd be no raise, so let's keep walking to HR?

 

I had talked with him several times in the three weeks when I hired him and when he started, including the night before to see if he had any questions/concerns.
He had none.
It was a bad play on his part to wait until that point. And it was made even worse by demanding it, rather than asking.

 

So technically he quit then?

What's he doing now, out of curiosity?

 

Quit? Fired?
Maybe it's not either because no paperwork had been signed. But he sure did look surprised when I walked him out the front door.
The situation could have been handled so many ways, but he picked the very worst. I really didn't, and still don't, think I had any alternative. Went to HR and explained the situation, and she had no problem with it.

I don't know what he's doing now. He failed in his attempt to go back to his former paper and eventually took a job as a technical writer. That lasted a short while before he moved to North Carolina. Haven't heard since.

 

Two hours?

OK, so it wasn't a paper. It was Hardee's while I was in high school and I got a job in the circulation department at the local rag two hours after Hardee's hired me. I guess technically I never worked for them. They hired me and said come back on (whatever day). Ultimately, that move led to my newspaper career.

 

So far, seven months, though it really wasn't a "newspaper," per se.

I was a reporter at a trade publication that put out daily and weekly newsletters. Some of my colleagues at this job came from major dailies to work there. I was pretty much right out of college. By the time my tenure there ended, I was a pretty good copy editor as a reporter.

I didn't get back into the business until five years later, when I became managing editor of a weekly newspaper after being entry level at a company that publishes government directories. I was there full-time for just about 10 months before I got a copy editor gig at a daily.