shipper/receiver in a better business is a good gig. you do have to use you noodle sometimes, but most of the time you are alone and can listen to who/what you want to on the radio. you have to stand for your shift, and it is repetive work. try a bridal shop or something along those lines. the pay at the right place is better than average because you must be able to work unsupervised. this is my job now but i am training to for another position and know i will miss many aspects of this job. good luck.
Sad ain’t it? I have no excuse either, I just couldn’t get the thing to fit on the first couple of attempts. I think it may have been bent…yeah, that’s it…bent.
When I do the training and find out which actual product they support I’m assigned to, I’ll warn you.
Arcite, you’re in the right industry, but have the wrong job. What you need is a job as a computer operator, either in a government job, or in private industry. There are tradeoffs either way. The government doesn’t pay as well (about $35K per year) but has better benefits. Private industry pays better (about $40K per year) but doesn’t have all the benefits.
I mostly speak from my experience in government, but I have talked extensively with my brother who is in private industry (at a high level job now, but who formerly started out as an operator and now is a project manager who is partially responsible for hiring operators). Operators I have talked to usually have between 2-4 hours free time per day. There are enough of us that our employer has no problem with us taking time off – the rest of us just fill in. We have various paid tuition plans, which offers you a good chance to study during the free hours that you have at work – or you can spend your time reading, writing or whatever. As long as we get the processing done that needs to run that night, nobody has a problem with it.
Personally, I find it much more interesting than a job as a night watchman. It gives you enough intellectual stimulation to keep your mind from “rusting up”, and enough free time to allow you other intellectual pursuits. It’s true that I have to wear a pager, because I am technically on call 24 hours a day, but in practice, I have never been called in – the most that happened is that I had to call back and talk a co-worker through a tricky problem. And that only happened once in the last 6 months.
Other than that, when I go home, I don’t think about my job at all, I can leave it behind when I walk out the door.
There is a reason that some(most) employers don’t want to hire someone who is overqualified. They are concerned that they will invest time and money training you for the new job, but that within 6 months you’ll find a better paying job that matches your skillset and leave.
Sorry. I just gotta ask. How does one ork a cow? And, does the cow enjoy it?
i am also looking to go down the ladder. also a music major…hhhmmm.
so far i have thought of: radio stations they usually have 'round the clock people. nights answering the phone… perfect!
hospitals, also 'round the clock, just need a person to man a desk.
it depends on how much you are looking for in salary. at this point i’m not opposed to going down in pay, if it will get me out of the work load.
I like the sound of this. But… from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook:
The idea of this job appeals to me in a way, but is there any chance the field will still be around in 5 years? 10? 20? Anyway, I might as well ask: how do you get into the field? I did a search for “computer operator” on careerbuilder.com, and there were only a couple of matches in my state; I don’t think there were any in my area. Will pretty much all computer operator jobs be called “computer operator,” or are there other synonymous titles?
<sigh>… Everyone who’s posting about union jobs, working in record stores, answering phones… thanks, but, well, I’m not sure I don’t want to do anything with my life. I like to console myself with the idea of taking such a job, but at the end of the day, would I really be happy? I can’t see going through my whole life that way. I want to own a house. I want to be able to retire someday. I don’t want to be alone; I want companionship, and for me, companionship means marriage, and marriage most likely means kids, which means more mouths to feed. And a schmoe who works in a dead end job, because, even though he may have been capable of more, just never got his life together, to look up to as a husband and father? Sometimes I think I should hone in on that thought I’ve been having off and on over the years: to try to go to medical school. But I don’t even know where I’d start. I’d have to take all the science prerequisites, and how am I supposed to have the time and money to do that as well as volunteering while working full-time and supporting myeslf? I’m just torn. I have a girlfriend, and I really love her, and part of me wishes we could just get married right now. But I’m stuck, I’m trapped, and I don’t want to bring her into that. She deserves a guy who’d be a good provider, and part of me wants to rise to that challenge… but how? I wish there were such things as high-paying but easy jobs. That always seems to be the tradeoff here. You can make enough to support a family, but have a difficult and stressful work life which consumes all your time and energy so that you can’t spend time with or enjoy said family, or you can have an easy job and lots of stress-free spare time in which to enjoy the company of your wife and kids which you don’t make enough money to support. Isn’t there a way out?
I like the sound of this. But… from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook:
The idea of this job appeals to me in a way, but is there any chance the field will still be around in 5 years? 10? 20? Anyway, I might as well ask: how do you get into the field? I did a search for “computer operator” on careerbuilder.com, and there were only a couple of matches in my state; I don’t think there were any in my area. Will pretty much all computer operator jobs be called “computer operator,” or are there other synonymous titles?
<sigh>… Everyone who’s posting about union jobs, working in record stores, answering phones… thanks, but, well, I’m not sure I don’t want to do anything with my life. I like to console myself with the idea of taking such a job, but at the end of the day, would I really be happy? I can’t see going through my whole life that way. I want to own a house. I want to be able to retire someday. I don’t want to be alone; I want companionship, and for me, companionship means marriage, and marriage most likely means kids, which means more mouths to feed. And a schmoe who works in a dead end job, because, even though he may have been capable of more, just never got his life together, to look up to as a husband and father? Sometimes I think I should hone in on that thought I’ve been having off and on over the years: to try to go to medical school. But I don’t even know where I’d start. I’d have to take all the science prerequisites, and how am I supposed to have the time and money to do that as well as volunteering while working full-time and supporting myeslf? I’m just torn. I have a girlfriend, and I really love her, and part of me wishes we could just get married right now. But I’m stuck, I’m trapped, and I don’t want to bring her into that. She deserves a guy who’d be a good provider, and part of me wants to rise to that challenge… but how? I wish there were such things as high-paying but easy jobs. That always seems to be the tradeoff here. You can make enough to support a family, but have a difficult and stressful work life which consumes all your time and energy so that you can’t spend time with or enjoy said family, or you can have an easy job and lots of stress-free spare time in which to enjoy the company of your wife and kids which you don’t make enough money to support. Isn’t there a way out?
All right, my first double post! Until now, whenever I saw someone do that, I’d always think “that nitwit, how could they not know that if you hit the submit button more than once, their message will be posted more than once?” Now, I sympathize: I’m absolutely, positively one-hundred-and-ten percent certain that I only hit the submit button once.
This will be my first time doing this, too: That question has been asked, and answered, before! 
Still, what if I say “I don’t WANT to use that skillset anymore; I don’t like the field I was in. I WANT a lower-level job.” Would employers still consider me overqualified, and therefore not a good candidate?
Then they’ll say you have a poor attitude and won’t hire ya.
First of all, can you guarantee that any job will be around in 10 or 20 years? With the constant advancement of technology, and the unstable state of the economy, no job is guaranteed.
And, I should probably say that your chances might be more likely in government jobs than in private industry. Even the private industry job that my brother has involves contract work for the government. I would say that computer operators will probably be around in government for the next 10 years simply because governments try to keep the old stuff working rather than get new stuff. We still have programs running in COBOL, and we just in the last 2 years got away from 9-track tapes. A lot of what I do is because we have several different computer systems at several different locations with varying degrees of compatiblity. I run a program on one system and then FTP the output to another system to generate reports for another location. Some programs run on mainframes, some on minis, and some on desktop computers.
How do you get this kind of job? You take a civil service exam and get put on a list. I think you mentioned in another thread that you live in Pennsylvania. You can go to the civil service web page here, or go directly to where they talk about computer openings here.
I don’t have the time to look up the details about how it works in PA, but I can tell you how it worked in Ohio. I had to go to Columbus to take the exam, and at the same time that you take the exam, you give them a list of counties in which you are willing to work (so that they won’t offer you a job across the state if you aren’t interested in moving). In my case, I scored in the top 5 for all of the counties I was interested in. When an opening comes up, they call the first 5 or 10 people on the list in for interviews.
Oh, and lest you think that I inflated the salary range I mentioned earlier, that was for the average rate. Starting salaries are more in the $26K-$35K range. If you don’t think that is enough, I would suggest trying it just to get your foot in the door. Once you are there, starting at the bottom gives you a good chance to look around at what else is available – there are programming jobs available that also allow you the same type of 40-hour-and-then-go-home-and-forget-about-it type of work. I have a feeling that I will be looking for a programming job eventually – I have a tendency to get bored with the same type of thing year after year. Just stay away from the management positions – as soon as you become responsible for other people’s performance your time is no longer your own. And the non-management jobs are in the public employees’ union – it has little or no power to go on strike, but it does have power to enforce work rules that are a lot more humane than what management employees can be coerced into doing.
It can be done, Arcite. My husband and I don’t have huge incomes–we both average $14 or so an hour, although I work fewer hours than he does–and we get by okay. My job is pretty stress-free; his is more stressful, but he loves it so it’s a good tradeoff for him.
What you really have to do is look at the cost of living where you are, and what you really NEED to live on. Set up an imaginary budget that included all of your average expenses for the area, and include whatever items are important to you, whether it is retirement funds, saving for a boat, etc. Then you’ll have a more realisitic idea about how much money you need, and that might help you focus on jobs within that pay range.
I cut my income by half or more when I left teaching, but it’s been worth it. I have a whole new way of looking at money, and a much healthier way of life, I think. Raising a family of four on our budget (and considering our house payment, which is over $1000/month) hasn’t been easy, but we’ve made some adjustments and it’s working pretty well.
If you get to that point, holler–there are quite a few frugal family types here, and we can get you started on the whole business of living on less.
We have a friend who makes about $10K more than we do (not including his wife’s income) and he can’t manage to hang on to a dime. We always have money in savings and drive nice vehicles and such. It’s strictly about managing the money. People can always live on less than they do. It’s fun to see how much you can trim without trimming back on fun!
Hmmm…I would hope it wouldn’t come to that. In my experience, asking for three days off around a long weekend shouldn’t be a big deal. If it is, then I probably wouldn’t go to HR, but would seriously consider leaving.
NO! Don’t be overtly flippant. What I mean is, you don’t have to take the work home with you. Do as much as you can while you’re there, work the hours required, and go home. Don’t think about work away from work, EVER. If you’re not interested in promotions and moving ahead, you should be able to get by doing the absolute minimum required. Never be late, and don’t be rude. Just do your job and go home.
Yes, though it depends on what part of the country you’re in. I’m in Boston. In South Carolina, pay is about $25 - $28 K per year (for a really good call center position). Call centers are pretty picky at this point, as all employers are, because they can be. But if you find work in a tech help desk, it could possibly pay more than $40K.