Tell me you haven’t done something just like this: A few days ago, we were poking around sound effects websites looking for a specific sound. We weren’t finding exactly what we wanted, got bored and somebody (I deny all culpability) typed “fart” in the search space. We spent the next hour laughing – snorting, belly-jiggling laughter – at fart sounds brought to us by the most advanced technology humankind has ever put in the hands of common folk. Then we went to lunch.
I’m a technical writer/proposal writer/editor at a small software company. I’ve been with this company for almost 5 years, and have been in this field for 8 years. I recently became the manager of the writing team here.
I have a B.A. in Communications, and am about halfway through an M.A. in English.
Other jobs I’ve held include (in no particular order):[ul][li]sno-cone stand employee[/li][li]Hallmark card store employee[/li][li]Lechter’s store employee[/li][li]MaryPIRG canvasser[/li][li]Miracle-Ear hearing aid center receptionist/telemarketer[/li][li]Personnel assistant[/li][li]radio board operator[/li][li]public information specialist[/li][li]state highway administration operations center dispatcher[/li][li]HR assistant[/li][li]Facilities assistant[/li][li]Marketing/PR manager[/ul][/li]
Bank teller?
I’m an animator.
I pay the bills by running the audio board during conferences at a large San Jose tech company. I haven’t done that in two weeks because there haven’t been any conferences.
I should have my demo reel up on the web soon.
and
Pochacco - Does your company need an animator?
I’m a full-time graduate student, pursuing an MD/PhD in biophysics and computational biology. Originally, I was a wee codemonkey, working towards a BS in computer science and taking biology because it seemed like an easy way to fulfill my science requirements. I got to like it, then got into quantitative biological research and got to like that, then medicine and got to like that…and, well, here I am five years later, with degrees in computer science and biochemistry and a decade of schooling ahead of me.
It’s fun. 
I am an administrative assistant full time and go to college part time in an effort to obtain a bachelor’s in liberal arts. I figure I should be done right about the time I turn 60 or so.
I work in marine biology, studying seaslugs to be precise.
Chances are good that I control at least some part of your ability to do that.
I’m an information security administrator specializing in user identity management for one of the larger banks in the US.*
Aside from keeping track of tellers, I’m also involved with the online bill-pay system and a few bank wire and ACH systems.
If you have a mortgage or pay bills online, it’s probably running through my servers.
- Socially, I usually just say I work with computers, which occasionally means I wind up getting quizzed on how to make someone’s home PC work. Unfortunately, user management on Unix servers or mainframes has nothing to do with making it so somebody can use AOL to get pictures off their cell phone and onto their PC’s screen-saver, so I’m generally not too useful at cocktail parties.
I sell semen.
Answers to the immediate questions that always come up:
- No, not my own.
- Porcine.
- Mostly in midwestern US, although we have good customers in Japan and Vietnam.
Career Path:
Radio broadcasting & copywriting (18 - 20 yrs old)
Hog procurement (20 - 24 years old)
Sales manager for a genetics company (24 - 30 years old)
Partner in said genetics company (30 - 32 years old)
Well from September to May I am the Technical Director at a medium sized theatre company. We have two stages, one a proscenium style stage and the other a reconfigurable black box space, and for the summer I am the Production Manager at a summer theatre on the other side of the country at a beautiful beach town in Southern Ontario.
My job in theatre has taken me from one coast to the other. I have worked in small tourist towns to big cities and met some of the best people around. I love it, I quite literally was paid to make dollhouses for a week, or figure out how to make a bookcase door open and close magically. I have carved fish out of styrofoam and made hundreds of crows fall from the air.
In the past I have been:
Freelance Theatre Technician
Scenic Carpenter
Stage Carpenter
Scenic Carpenter (again)
Stage Manager
Stage Manager/Production Manager
Student (2 year diploma in Theatre Production)
Worked at a liquor store
Worked at a clothing store
Student (1/2 way to a BA)
Office Flunkie (accountant’s office)
Office Flunkie (industrial supplies store)
Delivery girl (delivered auto parts)
So, do you like it? I mean, are you on the verge of discovering some genetic breakthrough in seaslugs that pulls you out of bed in the morning? Is there something about seaslugs the rest of us should know – are they increasing dramatically or decreasing dramatically because of global warming?
Or do you trudge to work every morning, muttering under your breath dark things about f#$!%* seaslugs, and how you really, really hope something opens up in the Honolulu whale research center before you die a slow, agonzing death in the hellhole you’re in?
If you spend any time at sea, you have either the best or worst job I’ve seen so far – depends on whether you get seasick or not.
Film Archivist
I’m the creative department of a three-person marketing department. I work for a small insurance company that, in three weeks will be bought out by a much larger company. My job will last 4-12 months after that.
But not to worry! I’m currently enrolled in an advertising school, with a goal of getting a job at an ad agency. I wanna be an art director.
Now would be as good a time as any to stop lurking, I suppose.
I work for a publishing company as the office manager. I do a little bit of everything admin. I supervise our receptionist, shipping dept., data entry dept., as well as do all HR related tasks. Also play secretary to the owner of the company and our Publicity Director.
I do research on a project studying psychosis (schizophrenic & bipolar). I recruit participants, give them clinical interviews, make them fill out a buttload of surveys, perform various neuropsychological assessments, run MRIs and EEGs, do drug tests, and crunch data.
I have a B.A. and an M.A., both in psychology.
Previously, I was a lab technician for an entomologist. I did various laboratory odd-jobs, set up experiments, collected and analyzed data, and maintained the lab’s insect and plant collections.
In grad school I was a teaching assistant, and in undergrad I took care of the psych department’s white rats (plus a few hamsters and fish).
(Wow…I feel so readily identifiable right now!)
I’m sorry I didn’t elaborate. I have been doing this ever since I was a kid: Once upon a time there was a little kid playing in the shore, gathering shorecrabs, hermitcrabs, seahsells, setting lines and netts and cathing all sorts of marine creatures. A curiosity grew, and every day when boating in from the fishing sites, he would look over the edge of the boat and look down at the seabottom. What is really down there? Zoom forward to an age when he finally was old enough to get a scuba diving certificate. Now the kid stood in the shoreline with his newly bought old diving tank and wetsuit, a homemade spear and a collecting net. He waved the shorecrabs and hermitcrabs goodbye, and broke the surface, entering a new and awesome realm. The kelp forrest! Here the kelp would wave its fronds with the surge, and the rays of the sun would illuminate and bring warmth and joy to a shivering kid diving with a wetsuit in 12 degrees celsius of water withour a hood, gloves and boots. Cold fingers would clutch on to the holdfasts of the kelp when the surge was too strong, and eager eyes would examine hydroidbushes, spongeformations, seastars, lobsters, and there, suddenly something small but fluorescent shines like a beacon in the kelp forrest. A seaslug! Zoom forward to an age when it is time to enter university. A scruffy kid sits in the study advisor office proudly pronouncing that he will study marine biology. The study advisor tilts his head and laughs out loud. ‘Listen here kiddo, before you even consider an area of study, you have to get through the math, the chemistry, the statistics…’ Books of biochemistry fly by, exampapers flutter, and the sound of lecturers drone in the background. Zoom forward a few semesters and the kid is now studying arctic biology at an Island group far north from Norway. Here he has been listening to the a lecture by a professor. After the lecture the kid approaches the professor and says that he wishes to study seaslugs. A flash appears in the eyes of the professor, and he exclaims ‘you know, these critters need some serious looking into, I know just the right person you should talk to!’ The nest semester a master thesis is layed out, four years later a PhD thesis is begun, and a trail of fieldwork leading from Spitsbergen to Iceland to the Faroe Islands to the Mediterranean to the Red sea to the west coast of Australia to the east coast of Australia and the Great Barrier Reef. And now, the scruffy kid is preparing to finish the PhD, sitting at the shore with a laptop, looking out over the sea, connecting all this knowledge that has been collected from the seaslugs.
So there you have it, I have made my interest in to a field of work, and I will do this as long as there is salt water running through these veins 
Misnomer, you got it.
That sounds very interesting. I’d like to get into that aspect of banking (security), but it doesn’t seem to be happening.
Jeez, what a fascinating bunch of people! I love youse all!
I work in a refuge for people who are HIV-positive and have what we like to euphemistically call “complex needs” - basically, drug & alcohol or mental health issues. Our main clientele are injecting drug users, sex workers and the long-term homeless with mental illnesses. We’re one of the few “wet houses” in Australia - clients are allowed to be intoxicated on premises (although actual use of illegal drugs on the premises is forbidden) and are encouraged to be as open as possible about their drug use. Hence, we’re dealing with people who are off their faces half the time (it used to be heroin, but these days its usually chrystal meth - it’s a lot noisier, but the place gets cleaned a lot more!). Residents stay for 3 -6 months, and we focus on life skills, education, safer sex and injecting practices, intox management, situational counselling, housing needs, health needs, and making sure they don’t murder each other. It’s like the Big Brother House from Hell, but it’s always interesting 'round here.
Currently a compliance analyst for an insurance company.
In the past; soldier, electrician, soap salesman, telemarketer, insurance broker, SPCA inspector, venue security, police reservist.
Yessss! Now, THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!
Let’s see, I spent ten years in the Air Force in the best job the military has to offer, Broadcast Journalist. I did morning. afternoon drive and overnights on three continents, anchored live newscasts in Tokyo and Seoul, and generally had a ball for a decade.
My third assignment to Seoul in 9 years kind of told me I was on the wrong career track, and I jumped ship at the halfway point.
Currently I’m a civil servant (GS) at the Air Force Academy, doing multimedia work, which generally means digital video for web and dvd delivery, dvd creation and narration.
Oh, and I do the occasional voice job around the Denver area.