I’m what is (somewhat pretentiously - don’t tell my colleagues I said that!) referred to as a professional petsitter. Some days I’ll scream if I see another pile of vomit on a carpet, and the monthly Did I make enough to cover the bills and if not how shall I juggle? session is seldom fun. But I’m on Year 2 now of being on my own, and all in all I’m pleased to have traded florescent light for sun (and wind, rain, snow…)
I rather like my job. Not all the time or every day, mind you, but except for not having enough to do it’s not bad at all. I’ve complained about my underwhelming workload and have volunteered for new things as they come up (including moderating a message board that’ll open in a few months), and I think it will get better.
But I always wanted to be a copy editor, and I spent 4 1/2 years learning and doing everything at a tiny publisher to qualify myself. And now I get to fix up other people’s grammar and spelling! A word geek’s dream 
Catrandom
pluto is right on target. It’s what you make of it. I’ve worked in places with varying degrees of unpleasantness, but my attitude has the biggest impact on how I like my job. Hey, we’re not slaves. If the place is unbearable, leave!
Manhattan? If I can get you to come down another million dollars, I’ll start a nice thread about you! 
-Melin
I love my job but would like it even more if I’d been allowed to smack the obnoxious little toad who came in to see me at the busiest time of the day and bitched because other people were ahead of him and he had to wait his turn (maybe 4 minutes?).
Just one smack – probably would have helped both of us.
Here’s another one who loves her job. It’s where I work that I love most. It’s the second place I’ve worked at as a hairdresser and I hated the first one. I have a great boss (she lets family come before work, too. If you get a call about your child being sick she’ll let you go, stuff like that). I get along with all of my coworkers, too. The pay is great…what more could you want in a job?
MaryAnn
More woman than you’ll ever inflate!
I actually had a couple of jobs I was very happy at for quite some time, until the management or company itself changed. I was a Medical tech for years at my local hospital, had taken some nursing courses, had achieved local respect and authority, was training people, being requested by doctors to perform certain pre-surgical preps and called on to handle difficult situations. After some years, the management changed, cut the working staff, began to deliberately separate the nurses from the Medical Tech. and nursing assistants (they did not even want us eating meals with them), started forcing the staff to work harder and not replace those who left so they could make a bigger profit and stopped treating us as people and considered us expendable. I discovered the reason for and the solution to two major and previously uncontrolled infections running through the hospital for months. Told my superior and the problems were corrected and the rampant infections stopped. Later I discovered that she had taken all of the credit for the discoveries and reaped the rewards and I was never mentioned. I left shortly after.
I worked as a Psychiatric Tech. in an experimental mental health clinic, which discouraged the OLD WAYS of uniforms, lengthy hospitalization and cold, sterile environment. We looked like a small motel, no uniforms, limited stays and much out patient therapy and public relations. Plus – if one could not pay, they did not. People paid according to what they made. (The therapies and techniques we used then are currently popular and in practice in major private institutions and most psychiatric centers today.) Curiously, I ran afoul of reverse discrimination. I’m White and the majority of my staff was Black. This way years ago and I had never run into racial problems before, but got a whole education there! After the leadership changed, the Black staff became openly racist, abused white patients, became argumentative if a White therapist or authority figure tried to get them to knock it off, defended each other even if they caught one of their own acting up or screwing off. I lasted years there and observed White staff members run off one after another, saw Black patients get special treatment and some White patients abused, was almost fired several times trying to stop it all and came to the conclusion that the staff was crazier than the patients and left. (Several years later, the place went under, was taken over by the state and is currently a shadow of its former self.)
I ashamedly admit that I developed a racist trait from there that I have not been able to shake and try not to act on. I learned the difference between the terms Black Person and ‘nigger.’
I worked as a Courier for Airborne Express under several subcontractors and loved the work. I became an area manager and remained as manager or assistant manager or part of the management team when the other two subcontractors took over. Unfortunately, it became obvious after the first one that both ABX and their subcontractors had no problem with working us 12 hour days, paying us for 8, running us into the ground, harassing, chastising, threatening, abusing, lying to us, cheating us and terminating us at whim to make a profit. One subcontractor made us speed, which was against company policy, but he had too few drivers for the area. We sped and got into wrecks. Luckily, no one was hurt. Then, if the wrecks could be blamed on us, we paid for the damage. When we wore out the cheap tires too fast on those shit Ford Vans we drove, he made us drive on bald ones, until the cops forced him to get new ones. He made us lie on our delivery manifests to make it look like we could handle the area, which we could not, and when it eventually caught up with us, blamed the drivers. Plus he wanted us to cause problems for Federal express and UPS if we could – but we did not because we all kind of helped each other out. I left after 10 years – only because I burned out and became disabled. I found out that I had outlasted 2000 employees in the entire district for Airborne – a real record. Plus I had outlasted 6 subcontractors. The last subcontractor, Piper Express out of Georgia (that oughta tell you something right there) told us that if a Union sniffed around us and any of us talked union, we would be fired and if a Union got in, he would dump his contract, put us all out of work and reopen under another name, take the same area, with new drivers and no union. I gave up counting the labor violations.
So, I have had many jobs I thoroughly enjoyed, but all seemed to eventually change for the worst. Usually when they ‘reorganized’ to start making a greater profit, the first action of which seems to be to start treating loyal and dedicated employees like crap.
I wonder when American Business decided that the old method of happy employees = more productivity was no good and started creating unhappy employees and firing them to try to achieve the same productivity previously achieved more easily.
I worked construction for a time and hated that. I did private duty medical services in peoples homes and was not real happy with that. I worked as a receiving manager for K-mart, which was OK but disliked the ‘office politics’ and their expectation of MUCH additional work for free to PROVE one’s dedication before being moved up the ladder a little bit. I was a men’s clothing salesman for JC Penny and decided that I did not like it because the pay was too low, the customers too nasty, the rules far to strict and the commissions crappie. I did some part time cooking for an institution and kind of liked that – except that I was not happy with the crap food the government gave them that I had to figure out how to make into palatable meals. That was fun though, but I was phased out when the institution merged with a bigger one and moved.
Now I did discover that the government has some magnificent instant, powdered mashed potatoes! They come in a silver can – a big one and resemble fine powder. You bring some water to a boil, dump in a measured amount and WHAM!! Delicious mashed spuds! Nothing like the cardboard crap they pass off on the general public in the grocery stores. No need for milk or anything else, except a little salt. No lumps to hammer out, no sticky globs to track down and squash, no seasonings to add, and no problems if you needed to add more water. GREAT STUFF! The government must be keeping them to themselves because if they hit the market you can kiss all those other brands good bye!
Now, the government beef was something else. A 5 pound, frozen, wrapped lump of meat, cut into gristly chunks. I had to boil the stuff, fish it out after I got a broth and while I condensed the liquid, would have to cut sticky clumps of gristle out of the mass and dump the meat back in to make it palatable. It made a good beef stew though.
I was going to work as a cook in a resteraunt until I discovered what really goes on behind the scenes in the average eatery and figured that I would just get fired anyhow for bitching about it. So I never hired on. Ever wonder just how many of those food handlers actually wash their hands after taking a leak or a dump? How about sneezing and wiping their noses off, or coughing into their hands or spilling things on the floor and handling the dirty mop handle? Guys like to scratch their asses and balls and girls their crotches and under their knockers.
You don’t want to know.
CanadianSue – THANK GOD! I’m glad there are folks like you in the school system who really, really like being there! Thank you! That made me so very happy!
bunny – I have to give the same big HUG to you! I hear of so many people who work with kids who really just DESPISE them that I’m so over joyed to find at least two who really love it! And seem to really care about the kids. I don’t have kids but I love kids and this makes me feel just warm all over!
TennHippie – attitude is all. But I’d love you anyway! (Hey, we gotta thing here, folks, what can I say? I LIKE this guy!)
I LOVE my job. Oh boy, I feel like I’ve posted this a million times but here we go again. I write romance novels, short stories, some non-fiction for newspapers. I also work in stained glass, photography and other creative arts. Obviously, I work for myself. No, I’m not gonna break the bank anytime soon but I also practice voluntary simplicity. I live on about 400.00 a month. Oh, yes, my home is paid for. I don’t buy anything I don’t need. I love my work, I love my life!
Best!
Byz
I enjoy my job. For the most part it is challenging still. I do Characterization of new chips that are manufactured by the company I work for. It can be stressfull at times (Deadlines are.) but the challenges make up for that.
>>Being Chaotic Evil means never having to say your sorry…unless the other guy is bigger than you.<<
—The dragon observes
Love my job. Had lots of other jobs, long ago, liked some, hated some, and never stayed long.
I don’t love every minute of every day, and I certainly don’t admire and respect each and every one of my co-workers. But I like my work. I happen to be very good at it, and have been doing it a very long time. Now days, I hardly ever need help from anyone, and pretty much everyone knows that I have some reason or other for what I do, and how I do it. I am a well known “character” in the history of the place, and get away with a level of irreverence which astonishes a lot of arrogant new kids. (I call the head honcho, and his Administrative Director, by first name when I happen to run into them.)
Part of it is that I am utterly without ambition. I just accepted a promotion recently, after having ignored the offer for the last five or ten years. My reasons were based on the performance of the last four people to fill the position, not my interest in the new (additional) work. I have accepted the fact that I can do the job better than it has been being done, and still do the things I like and want to do without having to put up with the repetitive run up time of the continuing parade of replacements. The extra money is of no importance to me. Money in general has only limited importance to me, although life might be more comfortable if they decided to pay me a whole lot more.
My evaluation just came in. I “exceed expectations” in all areas am “exceptional” in “Job knowledge. The folks with the expectations are unable to perceive much of what I do, and I don’t much care. I rather like it when people are mystified at the absence of some common troubles in areas of my responsibility. My usual reply is, “Just lucky, I suppose!” If you pay very close attention to things for twenty years, you figure out where problems come from. If you spend a little time every day doing all the right tedious silly things, you don’t have to do nearly as much running around screaming later. Of course, learning which things are the right things is pretty important.
I suppose just being able to spend time doing things I like is the best part of my job. I like people, I like being able to help them, and I like being able to step back and let them go on without my help. It makes them feel good and it makes me feel good to. The fact that it usually involves having them do stuff everyone else was absolutely sure they never could do makes it fun, too.
<p align=“center”>Tris</p>
Prior to Mommyhood, I loved being a travel agent.Corporate stuff. It was on and off my desk in minutes. Vacation stuff lingered like a bad odor and took MONTHS to clear up. ( Though I was the office ski expert, so I did all the ski trips.)
I loved the variety and chaotic pace that calling a good client up and say, " Hey, there’s a sale to Florida and I thought of you…" would cause. (The success rate of that was staggering. Rarely any refusals.) I had excellent clients and physcotic co-workers ( See Physchotic Coworkers you have known thread.)
I once actually had nearly my husbands ( then boyfriend) entire office (small at the time, about 30 people. Lots of reformed ski bums) out in Colorado on a ski trip when I had booked their boss out of the country on a nonrefundable ticket and then saw that there was a great deal to Denver.So I made a call to the top ski bum in the office to get the snowball rolling. The boss never realized and I don’t think was ever told that over a course of two weeks, the entire company took an excursion on the slopes while on company time. So, everyone got like a 4 week paid vacation time that year. No wonder they didn’t mind me puking up a lung from altitude sickness in the bathroom all night my first night
I’m probably the only woman in the world who can and did send her husband out of town for two weeks at a time on an international trips and he is able to get in skiing, do business, see three countrie, visit his family in Germany ( That I like, but don’t have to see EVERY vacation, thank you very much.) get frequent flyer miles that he gets to keep AND all on the company budget ( Which, I must say, because I was a great travel agent, was still under budget with the extended stay, longer car rental, the meals and the hotels ( hubby travels really cheap and because he can sprechen zie Deutsch and bullshit in any language he can find/do the smaller inn’s and save $100-200 a night on lodging. I married him for my future European travel needs
It’s a dying industry and more’s the pity.There are going to be alot of moronic people out there who saved $10 via the internet to book their trip to Newark and they wanted New York. Or Dallas /Dulles.
The pay blew big chucks. No bennies ( except insurance),and the free travel stuff was an UL. But I looted the supply room, abused the stamp machine privvies and made long distance phone calls all day long.
Now, I’m at the best job I’ve ever had.
I love my job. I’m webmaster at a college. Pay’s a bit low, but the benefits are great and I love the work. I also write science fiction in my spare time, which would be my dream job if I could do it full time.
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction.
www.sff.net/people/rothman
count me as a job-lover.
I work in a small group of lawyers, in a much larger group of lawyers. My immediate group is lots of fun, and the expanded group great. I do cutting edge law, in the area I always wanted, and appear in the courts at just the rate I like. When I do go to court, it’s (almost) always an interesting case, and I have effectively unlimited research time, compared to the guys on the other side.
And, just as a treat, every so often I get to plead a case in the Supreme Court of Canada.
but enough about me - I want to second Byzantine’s comments - hooray for dedicated teachers!
i like my job, accounting. not much more to say about that.
so you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts. what’s so amazing about really deep thoughts? Tori Amos