Chalk me up as another programmer who generally likes her job. If I’m writing code, or helping a user, or being “the one who knows [Unix, Oracle or C]” I’m in heaven. I’ve literally thought “They pay me this much to do something I enjoy doing this much?” OTOH, I hate working 8 hour days, and doing the piddly things that companies like, like timesheets. I also hate when I have nothing productive to do, and am doing busywork.
When I worked for peanuts ( no, I wasn’t a circus elephant), I was a corporate travel agent. Not any monkey can do the job, it takes at least a couple of baboons.
I liked my work and the variety that came at me every day. I had some great clients and whenever we would get new brochures in the office for some spectacular place in the world, we’d all sit around and talk about it, research and basically dream. The pay sucked big time, considering the accounts I brought in and maintained and sucked up too, but I had lots of freedom at the office and abused the stamp machine privvies with reckless abandon.
The travel was nice too ( no freebies, like everyone thinks) but after awhile and a few years with phsycotic co-workers, you need to jump ship. And I did. Right on to the S.S. Mommy. It’s a barge that doesn’t move to fast and the ports of calls are hardly exotic. It’s a budget cruise and whoo-boy, what fun!
Now I love my job. No pay, I am on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year. I am my own boss and despite some interesting yoga moves that I can do, I cannot kiss my own ass.
I handle more hazardous waste in one day than a nuclear plant. I can multitask better now than ever before and never finish anything I started. Housework is completely circular, as in, by the time I finish picking up a room, it’s already back to its former chaotic self. I’m not sure how this happens, but I freely blame my husband and he blames the dog.
People think I sit at home all day and eat bon bons. Not true. I rarely sit, although my ass indicates otherwise, and since the budget won’t allow for bon-bons, I eat handfuls of chocolate chips as a reward for getting through a tough negotiation with my toddler (* PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go pee pee for MOMMA!*) and I am beginning to see that my left arm is more developed from constantly hauling my four month old around like a 12 pound bag of rice to keep her a) happy b) burp her c) in the same room with child number one because if I don’t, one or the other starts to put up a fuss. This is commonly known as Splitting Mommy’s Defense.
People ask me why I, an obviously smart person, wanted to stay at home to be with my children. Instead of pointing out the obvious of " I wanted to be with my children."
I retort, " This way I will know where they got their bad manners from."
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, another pro to my job:
I have access to all kinds of drugs! Morphine, anyone? 
Note: I would never really steal drugs from my job! Bad!
You did mention that Dan guy on saturday…
Sniff Sniff… "Dammit, It smells like Dan in here!"
You get to drink on the job?
I envy you.
Do they have any job openings in IT?
Well, I can’t say that I’ll continue to stick around if I win $250 million from Powerball (I’ll be taking lots of music lessons and traveling around the world if I do that), but I do enjoy my work. I do stress, dynamic, and heat transfer analysis (mostly involving finite element analysis) as well as technical support and training for the finite element software that we use/represent. Since we’re a consulting company, I get a wide variety of tasks. I’m always learning something new. Plus, we get bonuses from profit sharing, commissions, rewards and recoginition, and investments in new technology that we help develop. I also find the things around here that I’m not involved with to be very interesting, such as rapid prototyping and our fuel cell miniaturization project for the Army. The only drawback (not that I’m complaining) to having such a challenging job is that, by Friday afternoon, my brain isn’t capable of much more thought than “Ooh! Look at the pretty colors, Mommy!”
This is in stark contrast to my last job, which just sucked all around. You may notice that I post a lot less frequently now than I did before the end of February this year.
I love my job.
I get to be outside and catch birds and take a little blood and get it tested for West Nile virus (before that, it was Eastern Equine Encephalitis). I get to think about ways arboviruses manipulate their hosts and what it means regarding emerging diseases. When I’m not thinking disease, I can think about how to tell a Canadian Canada Goose from a New Jersey Canada Goose.
When the weather is lousy, I’ll stay in the department and play LAN Administrator or Statistical Consultant. Fortunately our LAN is peer-to-peer and there is little to do (and little that I could do since there is little I know). Like cher3, I also find stats fun. (I began in psychology, which really stressed statistics. Although I initially went in kicking and screaming, the behavior of numbers eventually stirred my interest.)
Sure, sometimes the job is not fun. Getting up at 2:30 in the morning and hauling nets, rebars, and mallets in the cold is not fun. But watching birds fly into the nets and handling them is incredible. Waiting 2 weeks at a cannon-net to catch crows is not fun. Radiotagging that crow and following it is a blast.
And sometimes it hurts. Smashing your hand with the mallet, carrying nets and poles on your shoulders…uugh. And I can’t grow decent nails because they break all the time. And don’t get me started on bites from Northern Cardinals. They don’t have nutcracking bills for nothing.
But when I hold an American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos-hence my name) in my hands, I see a beautiful creature that resulted from a gregarious life style and cooperative nature. He lived with Mom, Dad, and maybe big Sister and Brother. He’ll stare at me…and then take a big piece of my flesh and twist it about. OUCH! So I’ll give him a bracelet courtesy of the US government and send his nasty ass away.
I wouldn’t trade this job for anything.
The problem I have with my job is my boss. That a*****e sits around all day SAYING that he is looking for work for me but all I see him doing is posting here. If I weren’t self-employed I’d kick his ass.
I like my job. For the last year, I’ve been working as a grad assistant, but it looks like I will be hired on full-time for a temporary position after I graduate in August. Woo hoo!
I work in a branch of the university library which is a political archive. I process the papers of figures in state and national politics, past and present. I also help conduct oral-history interviews with political figures and transcribe and edit them.
I love it because it allows me to use my history degree(s) without having to (shudder) teach. I also am always interested in what I’m working on, even the most menial tasks, because it’s all political stuff and often involves juicy gossip 
Here’s how: Canadian Canada geese say “Honk, honk, honk.” New Jersey Canada geese say, “Honk, honk, honk, motherfucker!”
Anyway. I’m working as a freelance translator right now, which is gonna seriously rake in the money. (I’m not joking. I get paid by the word - the other night I did an hour’s work for $110. And I’m the lowest man on the totem pole.)
I have a job interview on Monday for a job in the secretariat, which I’m ambivalent about. I don’t know if I’m ready to work full-time and still translate. I’d probably better, for the experience.
I liked the job I had last summer (as an office intern) a hell of a lot.
I’m in the newspaper reporting gig, too… What is it about that crappy pay that keeps driving everyone away?
Oh that’s right… it sucks!!
(and the editors keep scratching their heads about the high turnover rate here… it’s hilarious)
but aside from the slaves wages, I do enjoy my job… most of the time…
I love my job.
I’m the CEO for a very young, rapidly-growing software startup. I’ve got a pretty strong technical bend (which can be a disadvantage for my position), and I’ve always loved technology; started coding when I was 11. In this field and at this stage in the company, there is tremendous and constant re-invention, so there’s tons of creativity and energy in the air.
The best thing about working at a startup is that everyone truly has common goals, and you’re all striving for the same thing. There’s a lot of excitement and energy. It’s very invigorating. (It’s also an enormous amount of work, for less than market wages, striving for a big payoff down the road). The other great thing about startups is you learn so much so quickly because you’re forced to. And not just new techniques in your area, but about the needs of other people in other departments because you’re working so closely.
This is the third startup I’ve been through. There’s a pattern that startups follow. In the beginning, titles are secondary, and everybody does everything. Things move very fast, and there’s some uncertainty in the air. Later, people start to occupy specific positions and things become more solid, but some politics creep in.
This is my favorite time in a startup. I love my job.
I love my job! I have the best boss in the world, I love my co-workers, what more could you want? My favorite part of the job is making people feel better when they leave than when they came in. I love giving people new looks, and I love fixing any mistakes people do to themselves.
The best part is when your regulars get comfortable enough with you that they share secrets. I get to hear some juicy stuff.
Hmmm…I’m a UNIX system administrator. Well, I rarely use that l-word. But if I won the lottery and suddenly had a few million dollars, I would not quit. But like everything, it’s a package deal. It’s very cool having millions of dollars of cool gizmos to play with. And the pay is pretty good.
The biggest downside is the pressure. Standing in front of keyboard in a noisy computer room knowing that an error could cost my company its very existence can suck. I have learned to think hard before I press “return”!
But, I gotta admit…I don’t want another job.
Hmmm…I’m a UNIX system administrator. Well, I rarely use that l-word. But if I won the lottery and suddenly had a few million dollars, I would not quit. But like everything, it’s a package deal. It’s very cool having millions of dollars of cool gizmos to play with. And the pay is pretty good.
The biggest downside is the pressure. Standing in front of keyboard in a noisy computer room knowing that an error could cost my company its very existence can suck. I have learned to think hard before I press “return”!
But, I gotta admit…I don’t want another job.
I bet if the question was “Does ANYONE who works with the public like their job?” there’d be a lot less LOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVEEE.
I run a health food store and deeply believe in most of the products we sell. However, working with the public and trying to staff a store with competent workers in the current economy has drained much of the positive energy I’ve had over the past few years.
It’s been said over and over, but everyone ought to have to work retail and restaurant jobs sometime in their lives. Perhaps there’d be more understanding of what we do, and how demanding the work is for a very low wage.
Hadn’t seen any posts here by gummint pencil-pushers, so I figured I ought to jump in.
I love my job; it’s easily the best job I’ve ever had. In the 20 months I’ve been working for the Feds, I’ve had two bosses that I absolutely loved, challenging assignments, and lively co-workers who I sometimes get together with outside the office. No, I’m not being facetious; my job really is that good. Of course, I’m doing the sort of thing that I really love: being given complicated puzzles to make sense of, and to try to solve. Can’t beat that with a stick.
Mind you, I’d still love to have the income materialize without having to show up at work, but most mornings, by the time I’m in the shower, my mind’s already happily into what I expect to be working on that day.
And as far as benefits and whatnot, the gummint’s a pretty good employer. Once we’ve (the missus works for the same agency; we started the same day) been here three years (big party at the Firefly place in October 2001!), we’ll get 4 weeks a year vacation, and that’ll be sweet.
Of course, I’d still like to see SaxFace’ list of job openings.
Joe - since I’m familiar with RSA (taught it to my Modern Algebra students a few years back), I’d say that encrypting it in 4 lines of anything is pretty impressive.
Reality check time: the median household income in this country in 1998 was $38,900. Meaning, half of the households in America made less than that. So, realistically, maybe you could be doing better, but c’mon. You’re relatively young, you’re making more money than most in a job you love, and you’ll probably make noticeably more in the future than you’re making now. For where you are, the money ain’t half bad.
I gotta say I’m pretty lucky to have found a job that suits my talents and temperament pretty well. I’m a professional cynic. Specifically, I’m a junk bond analyst. I check out companies on the bottom tier of the credit curve, and those that show promise and feed me the least amount of crap I loan my customers’ money to.
Turns out I have a knack for detecting BS and an eye for an improving situation, so the customers are happy. Our funds are pretty close to the top of the long-term performance charts, with less volatility than our competitors. My bosses are great, and I’ve learned a lot from them in addition to having fun.
From time to time, of course, I goof and make an investment that turns sour. That sucks of course, unless my boss gives me the freedom to really go after the lender. Then my Holy Righteousness Streak comes out and I get to have fun whilst recovering my customers’ money.
Another job lover here. I work with kids all day long, teens to be exact and 99.9% of the time they are awesome. The best part is that this position is flexible, the best of both worlds. I get all school holidays off to spend with my son (including the summer), but also get to spend my working days with kids, which I love.
I don’t think I could go back to a regular office type job again.
Um, let me go down the list and see how I feel
job 1: – computer tech support: its okay, I dont dislike it, I dont love it. Its just a job. It does give me 8hrs a day to surf the dope
Job 2: – Volunteer Firefighter/EMT: Oh, if I could only get paid to do this full time. I dont think I’ve ever had so much fun in my life
Job 3: – EMT Insturctor: Almost as much fun as actually working in the field. This one here is a keeper too
I guess I would have to say that, for the most part, I enjoy my work.