Having a HORRIBLE work history?

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Hi. I've been terminated from some of the jobs I've had, and have a LOT of gaps in my work history. The longest I ever worked in a place was 2 and a half years, and it was just menial labor at a restaurant when I was 19-21. I'm 30 now and I'm getting scared I'll be seen as unemployable with such an unconventional, random work history.

Is anybody in the same boat?

Well...the last job I had was back in 2000, and haven't worked since (besides bit of volunteering). That lasted about 4 weeks. The longest span of any employment for me has been 8 months. All these were basically menial gigs also.
Makes for one heck of a resume doesn't it?
As part of the state services I've been blessedly approved of, am going to pursue vocational rehabiliation.

A lot of people get jobs through voc rehab, but AZ isn't the best place to have a disability. It's kinda hard to get a dx. I don't even know for sure if I have AS, but I've sure had a similar experience to most aspies. Worse in some ways!

I [/b] PROMISE YOU [b], your work history isn't as bad as mine. I literally cannot keep a job more than a few days.

I totally 'crashed & burned' last week. I was on Prozac for the last month -- 40MG a day. Last week I started a Temp Job out of town and ran out of the med. I thought the doc could call it in but she wouldn't.
Everything seemed to be going well however last Wednesday at 7:00pm I got an email that stated Assignment at xxxxxx is Over dont' bother returning. The temp agency told me they just got a message and didn't get any reason. I cannot think of anything that happened but this seems to be a pattern on temp jobs -- I get let go in the first week without any explanation or a very vague reason.

And get this? NO ONE Can Help me, not the Unemployment Office, Not Voc Rehab here in Massachusetts, Not my Therapist or Psyc Doc (they both told me they can't see why I keeping getting terminated).

WHAT THE HELL DO I DO WITH THE REST OF MY LIFE???

I've been fired 3 times for vague reasons. Never kept a job for over 3.5 years. 9 employers in 15 years. I've learned that I don't fit in with office environments seeing the same people every day. I do better meeting at a job site working on a small crew where my work skills are more appreciated than my social skills. I was lucky to pick a trade (tree work) that had high turnover so it is easy to find jobs, and then when a job wouldn't workout, go find another job doing the same thing and keep building skills. Those of us who are different just need to find the right niche...

I agree that this is a very important part of the work place that makes for a happy asipe.

I've only had two jobs ever. One lasted two weeks and one lasted 5 or 6 weeks max. I haven't worked in over 10 years.

The two jobs I had I can't even put on an application, at least not the second one. I don't even know the name of the place or it's address or when I worked there or anything.

If I were to apply for a job I'd have nothing to put for previous work history.

The jobs I did have weren't even with people. I had a paper route where I didn't have to collect and a cleaning job where I was alone most of the time and the only other people in the building was my friend and another guy that didn't bother us. Then during a school vacation they had me working longer hours and going to another school and having different people in my school and I couldn't take it and quit.

Even without others there and working part time I found working there to be exhausting.

Last edited by hanyo on 14 Nov 2011, 3:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ugh, i'm in the same boat. i tend do abandon ship whenever things get awkward. here's the thing, and i don't know if any of you will agree with me on this but, is it just me or is it easier for guys to get away with being awkward and to themselves than girls? every time i start a new job, i dread the day when people are going to start catching on and start to think i'm weird and a snob. why can't a girl just be a loner without getting s**t from people? this has happened to me before actually. my longest job lasted 2 years and the girl's there didn't like me. seems like i have to talk s**t to be part of their group. no thank you.

Same reason a guy can't. I don't want things to degenerate into another gender argument, so please can we end that line of thought here.

I'm a guy and at every job I've had where I had coworkers I was quickly the target the workplace bullies. It was like clockwork; it never failed.

Maybe NT male social behavior looks simpler than it is when you're looking at it from the outside. I never found it easy to navigate; it was always complicated, trecherous, and repulsive

What sucks & is mysterious to me is that I have had a string of temp jobs that I have gotten fired from on the 2nd or 3rd day. Basically I get a call from the temp agency at 7:00pm at night telling me not to return. No reason or a very vague reason is given. I can't think of a single thing that I did wrong

Have any education, internships, volunteer roles, travel, etc. to fill any of the gap?

Have you not worked at all in 9 years?

I have had 100 or so jobs in 12 years..many of them casual or voluntary. Every time I have had a proper job i seem to either get fired or find it unbearable and have to quit. It is by far the biggest problem in my life. It is monday aftrenoon here at the moment i was supposed to go and do voluntary youthwork but i was so worried about going that i stayed up all night and then fell asleep when it was time to leave the house .. now im nervous and jaded and confused... this is a huge ongoing problem

I know it matters. I have three degrees but no work experience outside of internships and volunteer work. Without the experience even with education nobody is willing to give me a chance. I was on SSDI and needed that income to help pay for school so I was in a Catch-22 situation. I was unsure when I was younger than I could have kept a job going to college seemed like enough of a struggle. So I avoided all the firings thankfully but am still in the same boat for now. Very sympathetic.

I know our organization no longer uses temp workers because most of them were absolutely useless. For example, I had one person (from India I believe) try to boss me around, another person refused to follow basic rules telling me they aren't important and the third drank during work times. Remember this is just the very first day! In many cases the person just never showed up the second day even though the job is FAR from difficult or hard to understand. We got to the point where we pretty much assumed a temp worker is not working full/part time for a good reason as unfair of a generalization that is. There was also a couple of cases where we only needed a person to cover a sickness or family emergency and they end up coming back earlier than expected but more often that not, temp workers we were given had a lazy, arrogant attitude and couldn't even behave for 5 minutes.

In one case, we hired four cleaners to help set up for a major event. By mid-morning, we called the temp agency to replace ALL of them because they were acting like elementary school children!

I have never had a job in my life and I am almost 25.

What do you think looks worse - lots of short-term jobs on your CV, or absolutely nothing at all?
Personally I admire those of you who have had many jobs, as at least it shows you were willing to give it a go even though it didn't work out.

Also for those of you who have been dismissed without reason -- if it were me, I would be desperate to find out exactly WHY they had let me go. Surely if they don't give a reason, how can you ever expect to learn from whatever it is that you've done to offend them???? (if there's a valid reason, of course, there may not be and it could just be a coindicence that they have let you go).