Getting to know you August 2020

[redambrosia]

13 hours ago, Corsair said:

Question for 6 August 2020: Tea...hot or cold, sweet or not?

I am not fond of iced tea, sweet or otherwise. I do like hot tea though, unsweetened. If you add stuff to it, like ginger or peach for example, I like to put a bit of honey in it. And I prefer honey in most of my herbal teas.

[Corsair]

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

[Jasper_the_2nd]

18 minutes ago, Corsair said:

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

The first 8 months or so of being laid off were pretty sweet.  That whole getting paid to not go to work (but before I started worrying about getting a new job), and spending lots of time at the race track....

 

If we include volunteer positions, marshaling is definitely my favorite "job".

 

Otherwise, the 3 years I developed and implemented a first generation middleware solution was pretty enjoyable.  Getting to focus on one system, with basically complete control over the solution, was pretty excellent.  It was also exhausting, and not great for my health (I developed type 2 diabetes during that period), but outside of that it was very enjoyable.  Interestingly, that was also the period I started painting miniatures....

[WhiteWulfe]

45 minutes ago, Corsair said:

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

I've had numerous jobs over the years, and in all honesty, I can't really think of any that I'd love to go back to, or that I held in really high regard. 

 

I'd love my old UPS paycheques back though, especially the version of what they would be now though! 

 

I sure did enjoy twisting wrenches on cars though, but the pay model always drove me nuts (I hate commission work, and I hate per diem (by the job) based work almost as much) 

 

Edit: so I'll say this... Most jobs I'd love to do if they were enjoyable, but I'd love to go back to the days where I would take home all of $600 (or less) after two weeks and I COULD SPEND IT ALL ON STUFF I WANTED TO SPEND IT ON! ...No bills, no maintenance, no having to refill the fridge and cupboards with that money... Just all of it going into my car and various adventures... 

Edited August 7, 2020 by WhiteWulfe

[Pezler the Polychromatic]

10 hours ago, Corsair said:

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

The one where I had met my wife tops the list.

Edited August 7, 2020 by Pezler the Polychromatic

[aku-chan]

57 minutes ago, Corsair said:

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

 

Nothing really springs to mind.

Every job I've had I've done for the money not because it was something I enjoyed.

[malefactus]

1 hour ago, Corsair said:

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

 

I pass.

[Crowley]

1 hour ago, Corsair said:

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

Probably working at the comic store, but I've liked most of my jobs. At least until I didn't.

[redambrosia]

1 hour ago, Corsair said:

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

Homemaker. I got to stay home and make bread. 
 

Sadly, it doesn’t come with a paycheck.

 

Of the jobs I got a paycheck for, I’d say night auditor at the hotel was my least despised job.

[Thoramel]

2 hours ago, Corsair said:

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

 

My current one. Enforcement of Section 401 of the Clean Water Act for a midwestern state. I'm pretty much an ecologist for the government. Not only do I get to travel the state exploring some of the most beautiful natural places it has to offer, but the restoration and preservation work saves water customers something like 4 to 6 million dollars a year in treatment costs (positive externalities for the win!). There's a few things I don't like, like dealing with politicians on a face to face basis and their hangers on. But that's outweighed by stuff like enthusiastic interns and the ability to get out and observe rare and endangered species. It's pretty much my dream job and I'll keep doing it as long as my body will let me.

[Glitterwolf]

3 hours ago, Corsair said:

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

 

I've had a few minor jobs before joining the Royal Netherlands Air Force ( RNLAF) in 1988.

One of the positive sides of such a career is that you get to work in different jobs for the same employer..

 

I love my current position ( which I will keep doing till I will retire in 4 years) and my position before that one is a great second.

All in all I've only had one position where I didn't like it and I got out of that one as soon as I could.

Edited August 7, 2020 by Glitterwolf

[Inarah]

1 hour ago, aku-chan said:

 

Nothing really springs to mind.

Every job I've had I've done for the money not because it was something I enjoyed.

 

Same here. Most of my jobs have been the soul-sucking, grind you down types.  I've had a few that weren't, but none I really enjoyed. Even the nicer, higher paid jobs ended up being poisonous. 

 

[Weird-O]

2 hours ago, Corsair said:

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

 

I think my current job is my least hated. It pays a living wage wage, gives me overtime on occasion, and barring total societal collapse(shut up, you'll jinx it), I might actually be one of the few of my generation that stands a chance of actually retiring someday.

 

Also, like others here, it's given me new appreciation for the rank and file of government agencies. When we force you to fill out a seemingly endless series of insane forms and dot every I and cross every T, it's not because we're pretty sadists. It's because we actually *want* you to succeed in your endeavor du jour, and the policies that force us to fail you if you don't do things just so are actual laws that could send us to jail if we try to skip steps and expedite you.

13 hours ago, Lord of the Dish Pit said:

That was how we first discovered tea belongs in the harbor. However since there were far fewer attacks on shipping by mermaids after that, it became obvious that something in it acts as a mermaid repellent and the effect lasts for far longer than anyone could've anticipated.

Therefore, if people go around drinking the tea instead of dumping it along the coasts and shipping lanes, then the increased demand makes anti-mermaid defense more expensive than it needs to be.

Then there's the fact that tea is a vile plot by the Elves, by drinking it, one opens oneself up to Elven influence. Which is a possible explanation for some of the things that British Empire got up to once they got hooked on the stuff. 

 

Are you sure it drives them away, and doesn't merely appease them?

[Lord of the Dish Pit]

1 hour ago, Corsair said:

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

I miss factory work. 

I miss it with a fierce intensity 

Once you got the process down, it was mindless and repetitive, which I liked. I could zone out into a trancelike state, made the day go by faster, gave the rest of my mind the space and time to analyze whatever I had most recently read about, or other things. (Like the bosses always said, they weren't paying me to think, which I agreed with. If I am being paid minimum and am told in no uncertain terms that I am disposable, then I certainly am not about to put in an ounce more of giving an elf about what I am doing than I have to)

At the end of the shift I could look and see a stack of parts that I'd brought into being, which gave a sense of accomplishment. (Unlike kitchen work, where there is no physical evidence you've been there at all at the end of shift. Gets demoralizing after awhile)

Best of all I didn't have to pretend to be nice to anyone, I could just do what I needed to do without interacting with anyone if I chose, so long as I kept to the quotas which wasn't difficult. I didn't have to worry about customers going on a powertrip and causing me problems because they felt their sense of superiority and entitlement was not properly appeased.

I didn't have some milksop manager getting on me because I don't "smile enough" or I'm not "positive enough". Which is something that enrages the elf outta me. The similarity between the factory jobs, and the restaurant jobs I've had to replace them with do to them disapearing or turning into slavery for the temp agencies, is that both are at the bottom of the pecking order. Neither one was a route to anyone thinking you had any kind of serious place social statuswise, and both paid peanuts.....but in the factory, the managers and bosses understood that the only important thing in their eyes was that things got done right, and got done on time. They couldn't care less about making you pretend your situation was something it was not. The factory bosses also had less of a tendancy to try and micromanage you, because the shop floor was filthy, extremely hot or cold depending on season, so they didn't leave the office unless they had to.

The new crop of resturaunt managers can't seem to understand that when you cut someone's hours to the point that they only have 20-30 bucks left after paying rent on a bedbug ridden hellhole every week, and they're constantly having to perform the jobs of three people besides...that person is not going to be "happy". That person is not going to be "positive", and expecting that from them is insulting and insane.

Especially when even with two crappy restaurant gigs, I was making less than what even the crappiest of factories paid per week ten or so years before, and I actually had vacation days back then. 

Unfortunately around 2004, it became impossible to get factory work without going through a temp agency, which meant less money, and no job security whatsoever, and the uncertainty of whether or not you were going to be able to make rent any given month because whether the gig was for 2 days, 2 weeks, or 2 months, the &*^&^%$ in the temp agency would always tell you it was "permenant" or "temp to hire", so you never had any way of really knowing(and which is how I wound up bouncing in and out of the homeless shelter 2007-2010)....restaurant work in the beginning was a way to avoid that. However the current trend of "keep 60 people technically on payroll, but no one gets above 20 hours a week under any circumstances" has brought about a similar result. 

(rant mode disengaging before I yield to the temptation to take this into bee territory)

 

 

5 minutes ago, Weird-O said:

Are you sure it drives them away, and doesn't merely appease them?

Either way, they stop sinking the ships and eating the fishermen.

[Cranky Dog]

3 hours ago, Corsair said:

Quizzle for today 7August 2020: What is, or was, your favorite job?

Favourite to date would be the years I worked as a maintenance engineer on a mine site in northern Labrador (2014-2017). The work itself wasn't particularly demanding, but I really appreciated the work environment.

 

Then I got downsized, and the next company I worked for had similar work, but just not as fun. Then that mine shut down. Been job searching since the beginning of the year.