I’ve thought about one of my jobs, and the effort it takes to perform the job (relatively little). I would probably be lying if I said that I bust my hump working as a Crossing Guard. Sure, it has bad days, like when there’s a fistfight that breaks out right behind me, or when 100 kids are crossing a street and a fire truck is approaching at 50 mph, but generally it is a cushy job. Stand around for an hour in the morning, and an hour in the afternoon.
Sometimes I think about the fact that someday I will have to quit that job to get a full-time job. I don’t like the prospect, because the job is pretty nice for what I get paid, and I can work it around my school schedule (or vice/versa).
So yeah, I get paid to wave a stop sign around for 2 hours. Anybody else have similar arrangements?
I work as a barback, or more often. a CAT (club appearance technician, or a lazy janitor) at a local nightclub… get about 20 bucks an hour for doing 5 hours of nothing, then one hour of extremely heavy labor.
Of course, my hump is pretty much unbustable, so I can handle it
I work so little, my hump has turned into a soft, wiggly bulge. Most of my day consists of surfing the web, posting here and shooting the shit with the guys in production. I’m so over-paid and underworked, I’m almost ashamed of myself.
Almost.
My old man always told me to work smart, not hard.
Where I really bust my hump is in the elaborate ways I create the impression that my job is, in fact, a hump-busting one, and checking Dilbert comics for novel ways to goof off.
Since I’m trying to run my own company while working part-time for a friend’s company, my hump is, well, bustin’ out all over. I have engineering projects running out my ears and half of them seem to be the kind that need constant attention to keep 'em from running off the rails.
Demanding clients, balky computer programs, gridlocked traffic as I rush from one office to another …
Add to that single mom of two teenagers and y’all can see why I’m at a steady run from 7 am until 11 or 12. Whew.
I work in a museum which has a huge collection and a small staff. Thus, I’m a Jill-of-all-Trades. You know, I never thought working in a museum would involve hard, physical labor, but it does. Setting up exhibits, moving collections to storage and cleaning artifacts can be hard work. There’s no slacking in my job.
In a past life (the one I occupied when I first came here), I was CEO of an oil & gas exploration service company, and I burned the candle right down to the middle (starting at both ends, of course). But I was hired away from my own company to work for an exploration company.
While I like the fact that we pretty much stick to the 40 hour work week (that was a big change), I’m expected to be on most of that time, and producing. The intensity varies, and those just a tiny notch lower do spend a lot of time bullshitting. But they, too, have to lean into the grindstone when the drop light comes on.
So, while it beats innumerable hours in a week, my 40 hours are spent in afterburner, usually. There are occasional periods where we’re waiting on several different things to come together, and then I make my rare appearances at the bull sessions.
I’ve had jobs in the past where it was different. When I was a hack, ferreting out the fares determined my income, and I could take whatever breaks I felt like. Other jobs, such as being a chem lab assistant at UT or a night desk clerk at a hotel in Austin, involved great periods of having nothing really to do besides being a warm body on station, prepared to react should the need arise.
I’d hope the warm body part of my career is behind me.
As I was standing in the zodiac, on a bright, sunny day, taking notes and pics regarding drums that had been dumped at the north shore of the lake we were investigating?
I thought, for probably the hundredth time, “GOD, I LOVE my JOB!!! Thank you Lord, that I don’t have to waitress!!!”
There are times, like when a report is due, and the printers are on strike (specially the 2500 C+, I swear, it can SMELL desparation), that it can get stressful, but “bust my hump”?
Not even when we’re doing hard physical labor do I ever feel like I’m “busting my hump”.
Any time I feel even the slightest “overworked” I think back to my waitressing days. Now THAT is hard work.
6 AM - 8 AM Timbuktu in from home, change some Field Definitions
10:30 AM meander in to office. Eat breakfast. Read emails. Answer one end user question. Read Straight Dope.
12:45 PM Head out for lunch. Shop for picture frames, rent a videotape for tonight rest of day, probably:
1:30 PM Check Straight Dope for new posts. Check VersionTracker for new software. Read latest Stephanie Plum book at desk.
3:00 - 3:01 PM Receive call from user who wants a field widened to handle more info. Enlarge field while user is talking about it.
3:10 PM Put on some MP3’s. Climb under desk and take a nap.
4:30 PM Get bored. Timbuktu into other computer and have it Timbuktu back to me and watch it make an infinite tunnel on screen. See if I can get Entry-Level SoftPC to load in the Basilisk emulator so I can say I’ve run an emulator in an emulator in an emulator in an emulator. Download some porn. Defrag hard drive. Clean fingerprints off monitor. Reread old emails from 1998.
My company hasn’t sold anything in 2 years. So my main job is too “look busy” I keep myself entertained by emailing friends, hanging out on the SDMB and forwarding jokes. I do this probably 7 hours out of the day and do piddly work for the office about 1 hour out of the day. Some days I am bored out of my mind and other days I can get so “into it” that I get ticked if someone asks me a question and interupts me.
I am just a summer student, but I’m in a pharmaceutical lab for a VERY rapidly growing outsourcing company. I am part of the smallest (8 people + 1 manager) groups, and we deal with the physical tests for EVERY SINGLE PRODUCT our company works with (in the range of 150-170). We are totally underappreciated, and nearly everything comes at us rushed, meaning we have to get it done in a day or so. The things that aren’t so rushed (like a current project) usually allow 2 weeks to finish, but they throw a dozen separate lots at us at the same time under the guise of “it’s just one product”.
Also, I am fairly decent with computers, as is the other summer student, so we are given constant Excel spreadsheets and documents to write up because no one else is able to do it without messing up, and since we are “young” we therefore are required to run back and forth from one end of the building several times a day (at a brisk walk, it takes 3 minutes each way!) to hand things over to other groups, or reviewers or whatever, regardless of whether or not we are actually busy doing our own work. The other student once work a piedometer (sp?) for an hour, and he walked about 2.5 kilometers in that time.
Techically, I work 8-4:30, with a half hour unpaid lunch and 2 15-minute paid breaks. I’m usually there until about 5:30 or so, sometimes later, I barely take a half hour to eat, and I never take my breaks because we can fall behind THAT easily.
Although I do love my job. I love most of the people, and it’s great experience. It’s just also REALLY tiring! Add to that a 1 hour commute each way…Consider my hump busted!
I work as a hospital insurance biller. 99.999999999% of my job requires me to sit in front of my PC and call insurance companies to make sure they’re paying our claims like they’re supposed to. I have a quota to meet: make calls on at least 40 claims per day. Sounds easy enough and most of the time I manage to do it. However, some insurance companies are woefully understaffed and I end up on hold A LOT! For every 10 minute call, being on hold accounts for about 7-8 minutes. I also have to file appeals, which involces standing at the copier making copies of medical records and associated documents to send to the insurance company in hopes of getting that 40% of billed charges.
Still, it’s a lot better than my last job. In this job I am pretty much left to my own devices as long as I produce. I’m in a cubicle all day, but I don’t mind.
I’m thinking about starting a “Ask the Hospital Insurance Biller” thread soon.
Just what is it that your company is supposed to be selling, and how can you stay employed there (to say nothing of how the company itself stays in business) if it hasn’t sold anything in two years?
As for me, I sit at a desk for eight hours and run printer tests. While the tests are running I peruse the SDMB and a few other places, especially when the hamsters aren’t up to the task (they did very well yesterday, BTW).
My hump busting is of the cerebral kind. I stand around - sometimes pace with head down - and mold late teens/early twenties human minds. Occasionally I get an older human who get’s straight A’s because they are a returning student and really want to learn. You know the stay at home mom who sends her last child off to school and goes to college. The one that says, “Heh! wait till you have two kids, and a cranky husband to interrupt your homework…”
