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So What Does Everyone Do For A Living?

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paranoidwriter waves hello

10:12 / 08.07.05

"Giz a job? I can walk straight lines...." (Boys from the Black Stuff)

11:37 / 08.07.05

I'm a project coordinator, doing software and web app stuff for a big-arse gubbmint quango.

I write technical documentation, do fourth-line support, test software applications and databases (my favourite thing -- I love getting paid to break shit), specify apps & dbs, and just generally make my boss' life more like Dilbert every day.

It's good fun. The people I work with are a hoot, but I think that this whole "target-based gubbmint" idea is fucking bollocks.

12:15 / 08.07.05

What is "fourth-line support", precious?

rising and revolving

12:24 / 08.07.05

To be honest, I'd rather have Sylph's job. Design videogames for a living. Geez. Architecture would be way more fun without all the damned physics and legal stuff to get in the way.

Actually, it's funny you should say that - one of my level designers is an ex-architect, who got into videogame design for pretty much exactly that reason. Well, that and it was a pain in the arse to get the "Man" to let him build death castles in the clouds.

lord henry strikes back

12:41 / 08.07.05

I have the lowest of IT support positions with a massive media firm. I basically act as an interface between foreign language translators, many of who have no experience of using computers, and some shockingly unstable industry softwear.

If you've watched a DVD from Fox or Disney recently then chances are that the foreign subtitles that you can select will have been translated in my office. For the most part I hate my job: the pay's awful and the people are worse. On the plus side I do get to watch films a good two or three months before they reach the cinema.

12:49 / 08.07.05

Bah, you all have better jobs than me. I am disgruntled at the shitness of my job and the fact that it took me 3 months to obtain it, and the fact it was the best I could get.

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:53 / 08.07.05

I'm MAAAAAHHHHD.

No really, that's how I get my cash - Incapacity Benefit for severe depression.

The salary ain't up to much but the hours are ace!

13:01 / 08.07.05

I'm still a photographer, albeit with a slightly better wage than last time I posted.

Still looking but I refuse to move until I find something I really want to do.

Whisky Priestess

13:27 / 08.07.05

I'm krazy with a K!!! but that's more of a hobby than a profession.

By day I temp and apply for breadline jobs in PR (I now have the magic one year's experience). This is my fags-n-booze career.

By night I am a writer of short fiction, poetry and plays (but only paid when I win something or sell a story) and the glamorous, singing, female half of Beauty and the Bitch with Orr. We had our very first paid gig a few weeks ago and got more than double what we expected, so now we can a) afford to eat and b) call ourselves professional cabaret artistes!

Pooky Is Just My Pornstar Name

16:20 / 08.07.05

At present I do actually hate my job to the point of feeling nausea every morning when I get on the train to work, and spending the day with a screwed up pain on and off in my stomach.

But, on a broader note, it is a career that I love. It's just the specific place I'm working in at the moment.

WaxyDan, if your job actually causes you physical pain, then you may want to consider quitting. Seriously, life's too short as it is - why spend the 40+ hrs that we allocate to our jobs in physical discomfort? Though you love your job, it's your place of work and your colleagues that are the problem, yeah? If you're being harrassed or unduly stressed by your co-workers, speak to HR about it - maybe they can fix the problem(s). If you feel that this is not an option, then consider getting another job in the same field.

17:57 / 08.07.05

I'm earning money killing my soul. I slice off tiny pieces every day and feed them to the IRS.

That's how it feeds, you know.

18:12 / 08.07.05

I work for a charidee, taking care of their Christmas cards and the legacies that people leave to them. It's quite nice. I get to do my own thing, plus I get to learn lots of cool legal stuff and argue with lawyers over the legacy admin. Fight for the charity, and organise pretty cards. It's a damn sight better than working in London's largest independent book shop which will remain nameless but is on the Charing Cross Road and is famous for once upon a time being full of dusty shelves and having a bizarre system for payment. That was a baaaad job....

18:50 / 08.07.05

I work for the local council's Stonehenge Team and my job is to look at the planning application called The Stonehenge Project and to think about rare snails and bats and druids and the World Heritage Site and the people who live nearby and all the things it might affect if it goes ahead.

I feel really proud I got the job, loads of people applied and I really, really wanted to do it.

Because it's such a contentious issue I've also been responsible for keeping immaculate records and have had to use every ounce of diplomacy I was born with. It's only temporary (until the application is decided) and that will happen in the next few weeks. I've already been there 4 months longer than planned though, so I'm not yet completely convinced I will be going soon.

In my other life on Monday I am going on a course to learn how to work silver to make jewellery, I'm a sometime painter and one day the beautiful man and I plan to have a geeky little shop.

03:09 / 09.07.05

I'm another one in software, working as a professional research associate at a university. If all goes according to plan, I'll be starting my PhD in computer science in the spring. Generally, I love my job, because despite the fact that it's just pushing bits around there's a tremendous amount of creativity involved in designing systems and I never have time to get bored. Naturally there are days when I'd rather not be in the office, but I can't think of a single think I could do every day without having days like that.

And, for an American, I get an astounding amount of paid vacation time (about 6 weeks a year) because I work for the university. It's a hard setup to beat.

semioticrobotic

02:30 / 10.07.05

I'll be beginning my graduate studies in communication very soon, but right now I work as a features writer/reporter for my hometown newspaper.

I'm hoping to get into academe, because the life of the reporter is just not for me. I can't deny the experiences it's brought, but I need a bit more structure in my life.

10:00 / 10.07.05

I'm a dolphin trainer, using an array of incentive and torture based methodologies. I have a second job as an ass model.

10:49 / 10.07.05

We had our very first paid gig a few weeks ago and got more than double what we expected

Hey, congratulations! And to Jack Fear, and Lula, and Xoc, and everyone else who likes their jobs.

I'm a lecturer, but I haven't started my new job yet - in fact I have to leave now and go look for a flat in my new home town.

22:20 / 10.07.05

i love my job! i have my own office in a single storey set of offices with a long verandah covered with wysteria running along them, doors and windows i can open to let in real air [!!] and a view from the back of the office to a lake and across to mountians - currently with a dusting of snow on some, a very rare thing for an australian to see, lemme tell you!

i work on a wonderful campus, working closely with an idiosybcratic professor in a wild mind research centre, whose contacts read something like a who's who of australian society and global academia and i get to write lots, read interesting stuff, be creative, be proactive and still have time to 'lith. what more could i ask (apart from uni salaries; which aren't bad, but would be nice if they tripled!)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:29 / 10.07.05

I used to like my job (reading newspapers, as I said earlier). Until a few weeks ago, all my clients were government bodies and people who are actually interested in stories in the papers WHICH ARE ACTUALLY STORIES (ie- stuff actually happens in them).

Then they moved us all around.

NOW all my clients are TV companies and stuff. They want to know business stories about the media, and whenever they're mentioned in "what's on this week" listings.

This used to be my ideal job. Now I would rather be doing anything else. (But I'm on holiday right now, so I don't care).

22:51 / 10.07.05

I have a second job as an ass model.

He's so modest. His mansion in the Cotswolds was paid for by the profits from his internationally renowned ass.

IRL, I know a guy who let his photographer friend take a picture of his ass and she sold the image. It was widely used in advertising and the postcard is on sale everywhere. Odd to see his butt become ubiquitous and odder still that he never made anything from it.

09:32 / 11.07.05

I'm a "failed" architect who became a chartered surveyor (or "real estate professional" for non-Brits). I used to work for a firm of "international property consultants" in London but now work for a local council in Scotland.

I thought I could ease my conscience by ditching clients like the Ministry of Defence and British Aerospace and work for the local community but now I'm not so sure. The bureaucracy, petty politics and lax attitude to work are turning me into someone who has, well, a lax attitude to work due to bureaucracy and petty politics! I can go for days without having to do any work. Nice for a while but could I hack it for another 20 years? I might have to go back to the "bad" clients....but not in London.

09:45 / 11.07.05

Brunner, my solution: Do something else in the meantime, continue to get paid, and revel in your freedom.

Blimey, sounds like the perfect job to me.

And, Stoatie, does reading papers for a living pay reasonably, and, ummm, how can I get into that line of work?

Hattie's Kitchen

09:52 / 11.07.05

I used to be a press-cutter like Stoatie, reading newspapers for other people, now working as a financial journalist on a business magazine. I'd always aimed to get into journalism or writing of some sort as a career so I'm happy enough.

09:54 / 11.07.05

That's nice, so I guess you could answer my questions too.

Go on, you know you wanna.

Hattie's Kitchen

10:05 / 11.07.05

Boboss -

Wellll, I found the press-cutter job through a Guardian advert, most of the media monitoring companies in London will advertise in the Guardian on a Monday...pay isn't all that great (I recall starting on £14,000) and most of the work is done on night shift - hours are usually 11pm-7am on a 7-day on, 7-day off shift basis (so if you ilke having every weekend off, you're a bit buggered by the hours, basically.)

Day shift jobs are a lot less busy than on night shift, but they don't come up so often.

No idea where you live, Boboss, but the main media monitoring companies in London are:

Durrants
Romeike
Precise Media

The job's split between reading and electronically clipping the newspapers, sorting news stories into business sectors and then writing summaries of the articles, then compiling press packs to be sent out in the early morning.

I have to say I enjoyed it for the most part, once I'd sorted out the insomnia and sleeping during the day bit...

10:23 / 11.07.05

Boboss, half of me completely agrees with you while the other half, predictably, does not. I think I have a "professional integrity" problem with some status anxiety thrown in for good measure. Still, I guess I have the time at work to pursue other things so.....

10:24 / 11.07.05

I must say, £14 grand for reading newspapers is probably better than most starting wages for writing newspapers.

10:26 / 11.07.05

yeah.
add me to the 'wouldnt mind that job' list.

10:29 / 11.07.05

Ach, cheers, Hattie, but sadly it's not for Boboss. Weird shifts and suchlike are pretty much out of the question now that the baby's on its way.

11:03 / 11.07.05

Says you. You're going to be up all night anyway, might as well earn some money.

11:11 / 11.07.05

Are you suggesting I take the baby to work with me?

Sax, don't be a dinlow!

11:49 / 11.07.05

What's a dinlow?

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:52 / 11.07.05

Dude, send the kid to do the work. It's not going to be sleeping through anyway, and it has to start earning its keep sometime.

11:53 / 11.07.05

According to theLawoftheplayground.com...

dinlow

A prat, wally, dingbat, prick or twat. A cunt. A short-lived insult that died out once we learned how to swear properly.

I'm not sure all that swearing's necessary, but you get the gist.

11:56 / 11.07.05

Haus, nah, we've already landed the kid a job down pit.

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