Do you like your job?

[bar01]

I am pleased (love is too strong) with my choice of profession and my career. I am an engineer and executive in the Architecture/Engineering/Construction fields. I am involved in the design of all types of buildings all over the country. I have designed or built just about every type of building you can think of – from computer chip plants to automated pig slaughter plants (a pig every 3 seconds!).

I have been inside Fortune 100 headquarters talking with CEO’s and inside decaying jails talking with inmates. I have seen how many things are made including, mattresses, frozen burritos, computer chips, plastic cups, and so much more. Currently my work includes assistance in redesigning the WTC and expanding the Javits center in NY. Although I have worked for only 6 AEC companies - I think of it as having worked for over a hundred different companies all over the country.

Also every major city in the country has a bunch of Architectural Engineering or Construction companies – so there is good job security.

Now that’s wonderful – but sometimes a job is a job, sometimes the companies I have worked for can suck – jerks in upper management, bad decisions, under paying me, treating me like crap, lots of hours, and nasty clients. Like many business we are asked to do more for less, and often there is no demand for quality design – just quick and cheap.

However, I don’t regret my choice of career and I am happy. No one ever expected me to go into this field though - it was a decision that I made just before college - based on securing a good future.

 

[nytemist]

cnspotts- I aspire to be like you! I''ve been working a pretty much pointless data entry job for the past 6 years. I have a degree in fashion merch and design, but trying to make it in Boston as a designer is almost impossible if you have more of an avant garde style. I want to pursue that in NY, in the meantime I made myself find the money to go back to school for massage therapy. I finished a couple of months ago and had to relax, after working full-time and being in school full-time. I''m now in the process of getting my license and start job-hunting. When I swam in high school and college, we did pre and post-meet massage and for years people have told me I would be good at it. I finally listened and now I''m making a drastic change. It''s nerve-wracking at my age, but I needed to do it. Not happy, appreciated or have a livable salary where I am so had to shake things up!

 

[sarita]

To answer the question, no, I do not like my job, and I feel for and relate to the other posters who have detailed their unhappiness. I am going to take this opportunity to rant.

I work as a bank teller, 1 of 3 right now, head teller included, in a branch that's meant to operate on at least 6, 7, if you count the part-timer. The branch is also ridiculously busy, not just due to the fact that we are ridiculously short-staffed. And with the few we have now it's generally a line from open to close., at least a 9 hr day if we get out on good time. If I get a 15 min break to scarf down some food, that's lucky. We don't get lunchbreaks anymore with the tellers we have.

I used to work the sales side, at the desk opening accounts or selling Home Equities. I was pretty good at it, and often made the commission bonus but they kept packing on the pressure and enlisting "call nights" to meet the increasing goals which I hated. I wasn't into the sales part, which was most of it really, and with taking classes part-time after work I just wanted to leave my work at the office at the end of the day like I was paid to. The change to a teller wasn't a huge dip in pay (I did grow to miss the monthly commissions, though, as well as the branch bonuses received when we met our goals which the tellers did not get) and it made me happier for a while.

But then we got short-staffed and have been so for since after the summer. We were often short-staffed, but never quite this bad. I work like a dog and despite what I would guess is the public assumption about such a job there is a lot of work involved and functionally, we make the bank run. Because of the constant lines it makes it very hard to get any time to do the other work such a job entails (processing night & ATM deposits, balancing the ATM and filling it with cash).

I'm ready to leave but I think there may be an opening at a closer branch 2 mins from my home that is always slow when I go in. The job is easy if it isn't like a bomb dropped like the one I'm at.

I hate interviewing and starting over someplace new, especially now that I'm so weathered I'd have to gear up to give that right, perkier impression. But it's starting to seem more and more like I'll need to.

ETA: This isn't a "serious" job for me (I mean I take it seriously, of course, and it pays half the rent now, but do not find it fulfilling and I'd never stay in banking all my life as a career). I'm a sociology major and would like to do fieldwork & research but I'm not sure exactly how that will all go.

 

[sarita]

Sorry the other post is so long. Guess I just needed to rant to someone other than my fiance (!) for a change.

Anyway, just wanted to add that everyone should really read Barbara Ehrenreich''s Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America about the working poor. It really puts thing in perspective (Did you know only up until like a couple years ago low-wage employers were not required to give their workers a paid bathroom break?). It makes me feel a little guilty for wanting better, but these are the ultimate crappy jobs. And somebody out there does them, unfortunately with little respect or dignity either.

 

[ladykemma]

i too do science for a living. May I suggest a company called "Lab Support" they rent out lab technicians to chemical companies. it''s a great way to earn 15-25 dollars an hour while you figure out what you want to do. You do your 8 hours, and leave.

Then I fell into teaching high school science. I love it! very rewarding. 12 hour days but you get summer off.

 

[zekele]

sarita: Oh, I am so sorry to hear that. I always feel sorry for the tellers at my bank because they too seem understaffed and overwhelmed. I hope you can find something that is better for you. Sociology ... if only there were a multitude of well-paying jobs in the fields we love. My ideal choice would be to work as a science writer, but I don''t think I could ever actually try for that because those jobs are so few and far between...

 

[zekele]

ladykemma: Honestly, one of the huge problems in my current job is that, for whatever reason, I can't get my experiments to work. The procedures I'm struggling with are pretty basic, too. It is making me feel very incompetent and discouraged. Although I was hired to do lab work, lately my duties have been secretarial since we need to produce data for a grant and I can't get anything to work properly. It's pretty humiliating. I'd be afraid to look for another lab tech job because I think that I'm just bad at lab work

That is so wonderful that you are teaching science

. Are you at a public high school? I used to want to be a science teacher but I attended a public high school that did not take academics particularly seriously, and seeing what my teachers went though soured me on the idea...

 

[ladykemma]

zekele - exxon or whoever will train you on how THEY want it done. cookbook. can you cook?

 

[sarita]

zekele,

Thanks for your kind words. Hopefully things will be looking up for me - there is a branch 2 mins from my home that has an opening and is always slow and I am either going to post for there (am a little scared because I know my manager will be upset but it is my election to make) or if she gives me a hard time, leave and be an admin assistant at my school.

Don''t feel discouraged - is that not how it works in lab work? My fiance is a materials engineering gradstudent lab assistant (working in nanotechnology) and he has gone through a lot of what you are describing. Back when he was an undergraduate, when his project wasn''t producing the results it should he got moved to grant projects and helping post-docs with their research and sidetracked from his original studies. It is hard and tedious and there are so many variables that can go wrong to ruin the result you are trying to get - I don''t think you should think of yourself as incompetent but remember its all trial and error.

That said, like you, he also gets his tuition for free - that rocks! And I also agree with the other poster that stated you need to do research for a company (after you graduate) if you want to be fairly compensated. So many of my fiance''s coworkers have recently got their pHds and moved on to the same kinds of jobs at different universities with only a slight increases in their pay (mostly simply because they are drs now anyway). It just seems so ridiculous to me. Many of them have moral objections to working for the big gov''t contractors where they would earn twice as much but maybe not approve of the type of research they''re assigned or not be working on exactly what they''d like, but I think they''ve earned better than they are taking.

I wish you the best of luck and hope that soon you can feel more fulfilled about the work you do.