I have the wierdest life. If I wasn’t living it, I wouldn’t believe it could happen. If any of you read my world’s loneliest doper thread you have read about how lonely my life is, but it is getting beyond lonely, it is just unfriggin’ believable.
I work as a software consultant and make a very high wage. I work very quickly and keeping busy has always been a problem. Early in my career I used to feel guilty if there was even 15 minutes in my day I didn’t have something to do and it got to the point I could see the dread on the boss’ face when I went into his office looking for more work. Over the years I have kind of refined the whole process to where if I am not busy I mention it when I first run out work and then reinforce it nicely every day or two. But my latest job has taken things to extremes that I find hard to believe, or to deal with. I have worked at my present consulting position about 2 1/2 months. I had work to do the first 3 weeks and then all the work I have been assigned I think totaled less than 1 days work. So for 8 hours a day, I sit at my desk, trying not to draw the attention of others around me to the fact I don’t have any work, but other than that I do whatever I want for 8 hours a day. This has gone on for almost two months and last week I sent an email that was actually a little less gracious than usual to my boss reminding her I had nothing to do and she shot back, “what about such and such a job?”. Well yeah, I had that job done in about an hour the week before. But there was no point being a smartass so I just went back to my gracious emails asking “if there is anyone who can use my assistance as my work load is fairly light”.
So I don’t have any friends, don’t socialize, don’t talk to anyone at work and don’t have any work to do. And for this I get paid $95 an hour 40 hours a week. I swear to god this story is true and if you doubt me, if you send me email that I believe is sincere I will send you a copy of a recent check stub scanned in to show you I am not lying about my pay. I don’t know why they hired me when they didn’t need me, though because I work so quickly it is the norm for me to finish a job before the boss has even gotten around to thinking about else needed to be done, but this job has taken the cake for keeping me out of work. I am wondering if perhaps the only reason I was hired was that the manager had a certain quota of consulting positions she could fill and if she didn’t fill them all maybe next year she wouldn’t be given the budget for the same number of people. But on the other hand, I don’t exactly get secretarial pay and it is hard to believe companies will throw money around like that just to make sure the body count stay at the expected level.
I don’t know exactly why I am writing about this except I am going out of my mind out of lack of contact with humanity and am beyond bored with work.
Iswote, I really am trying to feel sorry for you, and I do, in some ways, b/c I live alone and don’t have as many friends as I used to…
But when I know I’m only going to be making about $16-17 an hour, for doing something i went to school for five years…I can’t feel sorry for you in the money aspect.
I know money does not necessarily make a person happy…but it would make me a little happy at this point.
Darlin’ your life may be lonely, and for that I sympathize. But it is far from wierdest.
My life is wayyyy wierder, no contest. And I know of others who have even stranger lives. Art must truly imitate life, for some of this stuff no one would even want to make up.
Rest assured that you are not alone in haveing an odd life.
Ok, at the risk of sounding insensitive: Get over it. All my friends have left the area. I would like a bit of a social life. So I take classes at the local university. I enjoy theater, so I join a professional theater group. I make $9.30 an hour, and I live alone. I also have a job that doesn’t take all my time, so I spend most of it posting here.
It’s hard when you get in a rut, but you are the only one with the power to pull yourself out. Feeling sorry for yourself because you’re lonely? Take a cooking/dancing/film/what ever interests you class. Feeling bored at work? Bring in a book. Surf the net. Write the Great American novel you’ve considered (or whatever.) You’re feeling sorry for yourself when you really have nothing to feel sorry for. You don’t have to worry about making rent every month. I do. You don’t have to worry about failing statistics. I do. I don’t know how your health it, but I know my sucks ass, and it is a constant worry. If you’re feeling depressed and apathetic, go to a shrink. They can help, and no one has to know.
You are the only one with the power to change your life. And you possess that power. We all do. It’s a matter of not taking the easy road. Go to it, man.
I do actually feel sorry for you. I had a job that did compare to that, it got to the point that I “saved” work so that i would have something to do tomorrow. Howvere any sympathy I feel is dulled by your outrageous pay, I make, right now $8.25 cents an hour to work in a non-busy office, if I could trade I would work in my fiend, be really busy and make a competitive salary. My mom has no smpathy as she makes about $7.00 an hour and works her ass off. Ah, well, I’ll just keep plugging away.
Wow. I wondered why you were able to respond so quickly with so many suggestions to my “naming the screenplay” inquiry, but this explains it. (It’s more than a little amusing to think that this company paid you to help me think of a title, isn’t it?) If I come up with more ways to help you fill your day, I’ll definitely post 'em up.
Money isn’t everything, my friend. You only have the life you have, and you only have this one chance to live it. If you are lonely, bored, not challenged by your work, and not fulfilled by anything you do, either professionally or personally, then I would suggest you do some serious reevaluating of what you want for yourself and how you can get it. You can’t let a nice salary be the chain that keeps you from having the life you want and fulfilling your own potential.
If you can find a job you love then you’ll be happy professionally, and that will seriously impact how you feel in every other realm of your life. And if you can make the rent, salary shouldn’t be that important. Life is way to short to sit around with your metaphorical thumb up your metaphorical ass, even at close to 100 bucks an hour. If they pay you that much (and I believe you when you say that they do), then you must have considerable gifts. Use them.
Y’know, this doesn’t seem to be too uncommon. I don’t get paid $95/hour, but I’m finally to the level where I make a pretty good salary. And you know what? The higher up I get, the less work I’m expected to do. I worked my butt off when I was making 20K/year. Now that I’m making over 4x that amount, I surf the web a lot. There have been months at a time when I literally didn’t have any work to do. Just show up, don’t be too loud about your lack of work, and collect your paycheck.
Granted, we get busy at times, but all in all I worked much harder when I was making nothing.
My theory on bosses is that they don’t want you to scream too much about not having enough work to do. After all, it’s their job to keep you busy. If they don’t, they’re not doing their job. Bringing up that fact in public is not particularly good for you. My advice is as above - figure out ways to keep yourself busy. Write a book. Surf the web. Write that De-luxe text editor that you’ve dreamed about for years.
I know how you could solve all your problems at once: Come to the mini-Doperfest this weekend and buy a round of beers.
See, then you will have a dozen new best friends who will do nothing but email you and tell you how wonderful you are. You will spend your work days responding to your grateful fans.
Plus, this plan will relieve you of all that extra money cluttering up your pocket!
Here’s some West Coast advice. First, keep sending those gracious e-mails, which will give the impression that you’re working. I see you haven’t made the mistake of admitting you’re out of work, merely that your “work load is light.” Good. Read a book, write a book, surf the net, use message board like these to keep your mind occupied and sharp.
Meanwhile, let your checking account swell. Spend little. I assume at 90-something an hour, you’re perfectly capable of handling mortgage/rent, car insurance, groceries, what have you.
Eventually, someone will end your assignment. If, however, you get fed up with the situation, simply send an e-mail reporting that your services are no longer required and give them a number/e-mail address where you can be contacted if the need arises.
Now, live as a gentleman for two or three months. Contribute nothing to society except your company. Relax.
Surf the web. Post on SDMB. Write a novel. Invent a philosophy. Write your own computer program. Take a correspondence course and do you homework. Start working on winning your Nobel Prize.
Ways to have human contact at work:
Post on SDMB. E-mail your friends. Install ICQ/AIM/Yahoo Chat. Go to a web-based chat room. Annoy your co-workers.
In general:
Get interested in something and pursue your interest. Life does not owe you entertainment or fulfillment; you have to find and/or create it yourself.
I work in an office where I either have ten things
to do in an hour, or nothing to do. I make $7.50
an hour. Fortunately, I’ve lived in my present
apartment for decades, so I am paying very low rent.
I spend most of my time work surfing the net, and
finding cheap things to buy on ebay.
As far as my salary goes, a lot of it just had to do with picking the right career at the right time. I am a computer programmer with experience at almost a dozen Fortune 1000 companies. It seems like the more experience I get at the companies, the more I am wanted by similar companies. But when I was in college I didn’t have any hopes or plans of making big bucks.
I have wanted to start my own company but always stalled at exactly what to sell. What I mean is you have to write computer software that there is a market for or you think there might be. I wrote a shareware card game in the early '90s and had some of my friends beta-test it for me, and while they all liked playing it, none of them felt they would have even payed $5.00 for it. So the right product at the right time is everything and even in a hot market like computer software the ideas just aren’t falling off trees.
As far as the trying something else idea I might do just that. When I got divorced last year, I took a job in NYC to get away from Texas and kind of make a new start. I am no longer at the job I took when I moved here, but I signed a years lease on a house and seeing how they do business here in New Jersey (making me get a New Jersey driver’s license and plates before insuring my car but dropping the insurance I had for the other state is one example), I figure if I tried breaking the lease I would not only lose my hefty $2400 security deposit but would have bill collectors coming around trying to get the remaining rent for the lease period. So until the lease is up at the end of August I am staying put and trying to hold on. After that I am not sure what I will do but whatever it is, I have to sit tight for the time being.
Until I left Texas I was fairly physically active but shortly before I left a physical problem cropped up which was diagnosed as peripheral neuropathy which means the nerves in my feet are dying and I have a lot of pain which prevents me from doing the running, biking and roller-blading I loved so much and which helped pass my free time. I have replaced those activities with smoking cigarettes (so much for starting smoking in your 40s) and watching tv which I hate but I can’t bear all the loneliness.
This keeping busy thing has always been a problem. My last job in Texas I was working at $100 an hour from home (telecommuting). One week I didn’t have any work so I installed a new long-block in my pickup. I had the phone within a couple feet of me at all times if they had chosen to give me something to do, but as it was, I got paid to put a new engine in my pickup. This part of it is pretty crazy.
Green Bean I am considering the mini-doper-fest but I read a post in the BBQ Pit where a good number of the attendees of the last NYC doper-fest flamed each other pretty badly. If absense makes the heart grow fonder, perhaps I would be best to avoid the get together and save my thin-skin from being singed.
Let me see, you’ve got PLENTY of money but NO friends. . .hmmm. How about you send me a plane ticket and some spending money on the first of every month and sometime that month I’ll fly out to visit you, thereby gracing you with my suave, sophisticated, worldly presence? We can descend upon museums, theaters, bars, S&M clubs, 5-star restaurants and scores and scores of unprepared-but-willing woman!
I’m lucky!! I do get to work on my fiend, almost every night. He’s nearly done… all I need is the brain! A late night raid to one of the university medical centers is in my future. And then, one night very soon, I shall stand back and shout, “HE’S ALIVE… OH GOD! HE’S ALIVE!!”