Good: Considering how easy the job is, and how little work there actually is to do, the pay is pretty good. It is very laid back, and I have internet access when I’m not busy…like right now. Its also nice that I get along really well with my two co-workers. To be honest, I wouldn’t be able to stand working on any other shift, some of those people would just drive me insane…its bad enough having to interact with them for 5 minutes when I get there and 5 minutes before I leave. I can’t complain about always having 3 1/2 days off in a row, and always having Friday and Saturday off.
Bad: As I said, there’s just not a lot of work to do. It is extremely slow compared to what it was like when I started this job 4 years ago. Sometimes there’s just literally nothing to do. It makes me feel lazy, and makes me want to find a different job so I can at least feel like I did something when I go home at the end of the day. I’ve also gotten tired of working nights. I really liked it when I started, but I can’t stand working 7pm-7am anymore.
Ugly: I live 25 miles from where I work, and usually have to take up at least another hour of my day just getting there and back. My supervisor also has an annoying tendancy to disappear for extended periods of time, only to be found later on bullshitting with the security guard or something. Until very recently he would also “accidentally” come across some pretty inappropriate stuff online quite frequently, but I think he’s realized now that he’s putting his job in jeopardy by doing that.
I work at a college and help students register for non-credit classes.
The Good: People have acknowledged my good customer service skills. This helps me ignore…
The Bad: I’m still at part-time status. I’m not permitted more than 19.5 hours per week. It is unlikely to change. They could bribe me with a raise, but…
The Ugly: I have not had an increase in pay, ever. I started in January 2005. If the work doesn’t get done in that previously mentioned timeframe, too bad. I volunteer*. It’s a sad, sad position that gets me less than [**] a month. But, hey! This job will look good on a resume… or so goes my mantra, in place to keep myself from flying off the handle.
*A little bird once told me that it was said, if she (I) can’t handle the job within those hours, “they” would “find someone who can.” Where’s the loyalty, people?
**Amount deleted so as to not look so pathetic. Let’s just say I hopehopehope the federal increase in minimum wage is approved.
Software design for airborne and space-borne radars.
The good: Interesting, challenging work. Interesting, challenging cow-orkers. The pay is very good for what I do. And it’s all classified, so fewer outsourcing worries …
The bad: Security up the wazoo. No iPods, no PDA, no cell phone. Have to check with security personnel when I leave an area and when I enter the next area. Sanitizing FLASH on processors with several dozen CPUs is mind-deadeningly boring. Lab shifts are all over the clock and calendar because our prototype radars are so blinkety blankety expensive, so I occasionally pull 6PM-Midnight shift on Friday nights. (And then we come in to work Saturday as well).
The ugly: Well, everything is classified these days, so we don’t get as much new blood in our staffing, and because of compartmentalization, we don’t get to leverage synergy across multiple centers of excellence. (Oh, and our management says things like, “leverage synergy across multiple centers of excellence.”)
The Good: At least once a day I get to help brighten a Make-a-Wish Foundation child’s day. It’s wonderful to see these kids be so happy when life hasn’t given them a whole lot to be happy about. Just today I got to assist in a child meeting his favorite character, the one that he and his family wrote a letter to explaining his wish to meet him, with his mother and then I choking back tears the entire time. And the company I work for really cares about stuff like this. Everyday I am reminded to stop and appreciate life.
The Bad: Florida summers, frequently long hours.
The Ugly: The people who think I should make special allowances just for them. Here’s how it usually goes: Guest upon being told the line is closed because the character must leave- “Can’t you just take one more picture for my child?” Me- “No I’m sorry that I can’t let you in the line right now, I’ve already turned other people away, and it simply wouldn’t be fair to make an allowance for you and not them.” Guest- “Well I don’t care about that.” After hearing this about 15 times each time I have to close a line and knowing that these people are raising their kids to be so inconsiderate and with such a sense of entitlement can definitely start to take a toll on your view of humanity’s future.
The bad: Drunk customers, my salary and stupid employees.
The ugly: Customers with a sense of entitlement that is way too high. That is, they don’t want to show ID, pay the sticker price, or even pay the sales tax.
Good: I’m working on a variety of different projects, and doing something that not many other people in this market can do. I get called on to answer questions and provide information on a wide range of subjects. I’m also making twice what I made at my next-best paying job.
Bad: The hours. 12-hour days are common, and coming home after midnight is not unusual. Also, 80% of my co-workers smoke like chimneys, and even with the designated smoking area, my clothes still stink when I come home (if all the managers are chain smokers, where do you think they insist on having their meetings?)
Ugly: One client in particular. I encountered one of their managers who was the most miserable people I’ve ever had to work with. No life, no family, no friends, no regard for anyone else’s time, no ability to come to a decision, and a pathological need to keep changing everything. She has no idea what she wants, but she knows what she doesn’t want, except that she can’t tell you what that is and she may change her mind again later. When we produced a new product brochure that consisted of eight paragraphs, she showed up at 9pm to discuss corrections, and then proceeded to spend more than an hour on each paragraph, hemming and hawing and making wrinkly faces at everything we suggested and trying to rewrite everything herself. She knows enough English to mis-interpret everything, and freaks at the thought of using any word that has more than one meaning unless we painstakingly walk her through each possible interpretation until everything has been turned into bland nonsense.
And then, when I started working on other projects with the same company, I found that everyone there is exactly the same as she is! Whatever corporate culture they have has selected out all but those with the right combination of spinelessness, entitlement and insecurity over their own incompetence. One project had five of us at a series of orientation meetings with developers, all of which turned into us sitting there watching the developers argue for three hours over what the product did, then promise at the end to email the materials we needed since they hadn’t actually covered anything they were supposed to in the meeting.
Their only positive point is that they pay what we tell them to pay. And we make them pay. Personally, I’ve completely boycotted their products and feel gloriously warm fuzzies every time they get Pitted or another product launch fizzles.
The good: I get paid to yell at teenagers. Also, my boss has the attitude “We aren’t paid enough to be nice to people”. So if someone is being an asshole, I’m allowed to tell them as such.
The bad: It pays $8.25 an hour no benefits.
The ugly: The boredom. I can feel my brain turn to sludge on a daily basis. I find myself counting my steps, then how many floor tiles I make per step, then how many steps across the hall is, and then trying to estimate each area as closely as possible to the total number of tiles… yeah, I need a challenge.
No, that’s not what the card says, but it’s what I do. People call us in when they want to change their computer systems to this big-huge-ass-database-program we work in; we prepare it for them and them for it.
The Good: seeing how different companies, sectors, countries do things. Turning a change that can be hell into a positive experience for my customers. Solving problems. Speaking with someone years after I was done working for them and getting kudos. Some of the best bosses and coworkers I’ve had were while in this line of work.
The Bad: people who think you can get married and stay single (i.e., turn the computer systems upside-down, yet have screens that look exactly like the old ones and use the same keystrokes to access the same functions they used to). People who want the system to be automagic (read their mind, when they themselves are unable to explain “when” they choose option A over option B and when vice versa) - the term “automagic” is ™ one of my old customers, speaking about his own boss.
The Ugly: this is absolutely not limited to this line of work, but it’s my main reason for job changes, other than “end of contract”: bosses who make the job and the team ambience worse instead of better. I’m sure I don’t need to give examples.
I work in a call center for a tiny, but huge in the business, gift packaging reseller.
The Good: Is multi-faceted. I get paid well (for this business), only work part-time, but still have benefits.
The Bad: While I do get vacation days, I will have to work there something like 6 years to actually get 2 weeks of vacation. They are very stingy when it comes to paid time off.
The Ugly: My boss. She’s a nice enough woman, but she gets on my last nerve. She is not the best example of attendance, but let me miss a day (for surgery, no less!) and she is all in my ass. It’s not just that, she gets in moods where she will nitpick one to death. It is honestly no wonder that she has the hardest time keeping her team members at the company. I have worked here for just over a year and in this time, we have had no less than 8 employees on her team quit. The other team hasn’t lost a single employee.
The good: This is the best job I’ve ever had. It’s air-conditioned, I get to sit in a chair and surf the net, I wear my own clothes, no uniform or nametag.
The bad: As Dinsdale said, it’s boring and there is no personal satisfaction here.
The ugly: Within the last couple of years, they have changed a lot of what we do here, as well as the computer system, and no training has trickled down to us peons whatsoever. We’ve just had to roll with the punches, and boy do they just keep on coming. Someone is always in tears. I used to feel very competent and helpful, now I frequently just sit and watch things swirl around the drain.
The Good: I’m paid very well, and since the company is owned by my aunt and uncle, at some point it will probably be mine if I want it. Yay for nepotism!
The Bad: Some of my clients aren’t the brightest bulbs, and I wish they’d just let me set up their insurance without actually wanting to be involved.
The Ugly: Insurance underwriters who are more concerned with “protecting the treasury” than providing any kind of service to people who have purchased a policy from them. And then they wonder why everyone hates insurance companies.
The good: I like to find the best way to make stuff on a large scale. Good pay, good benefits, regular hours, can’t take my work home with me.
The bad: Working on a regular basis with likely carcinogens and poisonous gasses might bother some people. I actually get a kick out of it.
The ugly: In my previous group I would regularly spend many months perfecting a process only to see it be squashed before commercialiaztion. I do not have a PhD and therefore will never get the same respect or corporate ladder position that my coworkers do, although I do the exact same work.
I am co-owner of a Web site and Web software design company.
The Good: I work at home, man. Right now I’m sitting in my jammies, smoking a cigarette, surfing the Dope. Ain’t no one here to stop me.
The Bad: I own this business. I do accounts receivable and accounts payable and payroll. I see the money come in and watch it go out. I know that if it isn’t coming in, it’s not going out - to me. I cannot get a raise or make more money unless I work harder. Even if I work hard it does not always translate to more money. I am 50% responsible for all of the money that comes in here and the Master Of My Own Destiny. That’s a heavy load.
The Ugly: People are quite ignorant about the Web. Mainly, how much it costs to get a good end result. You want your site to look great and work great it’s going to cost you money. Yes you can have your nephew or your neighbor’s kid “put something up,” or pay some hack job company “$100 per page” to write something ugly for you but trust me, this is not what is considered a “good investment.”
The good: I feel like I help someone every day. Doctors (unlike on television) don’t immediately know everything about a disease or surgery; they send down to us to find information on what they’re working on, and we get it for them.
The bad: It’s a volunteer gig. I don’t get paid.
The ugly: Haven’t found it yet. Knock on wood, I won’t.
The Good - The best since I graduated from college (the two others were bad and awful, respectively). Regular hours, not allowed to work more. Lots of PTO and great boss who lets us go home sick if we so much as feel tired. Tuition assistance in case I get accepted to grad school (I will find out soon, fingers crossed!). Good benefits. Almost total job security.
The Bad - boring work pushing paper. Sometimes swamped, sometimes bored to tears (but can surf the net). Pay is not great.
The Ugly - some of the people I work with just try to create problems for the rest of us just so they can look like they are contributing.