The good, the bad, & the ugly: tell us about your job

In My Humble Opinion
41

I’m a production editor, mostly for college-level textbooks.

The good: I have (nearly all) awesome coworkers and an ass-kicking boss. Every project has its own quirks, so it’s difficult to get bored with it all. Even though I spend all day in a cube shuffling paper around, I get to see my work reflected in a tangible object–and sometimes, I’m thanked by name within it. Many authors are appreciative of the work that I do; I even got a basket of cookies once.

The bad: Many of the things I need to do are monotonous. A large number of the books are mind-numbingly boring, repetative (all of the education books blur together after a while), or just badly written. (Having a Ph.D. does not mean that your prose flows like liquid gold. Mostly, it festers on the page.) Some authors are a pain to deal with, in innumerable ways. The publisher is sometimes less than helpful, to say the least.

The ugly: The only thing keeping me from stabbing the new guy in the ear with my trusty red pen is the knowledge that he will not be with us long.

42

Um, I’d make a report to your local labor board. Most labor boards will let you do it anonymously, but seriously - after you leave this job, someone else who doesn’t have access to the Dope is gonna take it and they’re gonna get screwed, too. Best to attempt to nip it in the bud.

~Tasha

43

I work in technical support for a small software company.

The good: Pretty much everything. The job is interesting but not too time consuming, leaving me plenty of time to read the Dope or whatever. The atmosphere is very free but people are competent and seem to get their work done. My boss is friendly, helpful, and often amusingly wacky, my co-workers are bright and sociable, the company’s management shows genuine concern and care for the employees, and the environment is fun and flexible. I feel like I fit in. Plus, the company’s doing great which is an awesome thing.

The bad: I took a pay cut and a step down in position to come here, not that I regret it.

The ugly: Dealing with the public can be interesting. Most customers are fairly easy to work with, but we get our fair share of bizarre cases and irrationally angry people. Fortunately, the expectation to please unreasonable people isn’t there, so it’s not too ugly.

44

I’m operations manager for a radio station (I also teach English comp at the local junior college part-time, but this is just for the radio station.)

The Good: I work with my younger brother on the Morning Circus; we have a blast mocking self-indulgent cultural icons (“This is FNN – the Federline News Network”) giving away free food, T-shirts, and tickets to concerts, talking to the wingnuts and hangers-on who call in … and yesterday morning we “interviewed” three strippers who are appearing at a local upscale bar (one of the girls joked that the interview would cost us each $50 in one-dollar-bills.)

The Bad: Our transmitter is out in the middle of a pasture 12 miles from town. When there’s a power outage, an alarm goes off in my bedroom and I have to drive out and make sure we don’t have meltdown when the transmitter turns itself back on.

The Ugly: My wife heard the stripper interview.

45

I’m a video game special effects artist.

The Good- I get to make games for a living. I get to blow stuff up for a living. I can wear whatever clothes I want to the office, and (normally speaking) I don’t have to be in the office 'til 10am. I make very decent money doing it.

The Bad- I stare at a computer all day long. Working on a game for two years or so can really suck the fun out of all games.

The Ugly- Overtime sucks. I’ve pulled a thirty-six-hour day, once. I’ve had days where I’ve never even seen the sun, except out my window. The game industry isn’t the most stable of industries- quite of a few of my employers have abruptly folded, which makes long-term personal planning pretty dicey.

46

The “good” about following this advice: an employer does need to pay you for all the hours you work (assuming you are an FLSA hourly employee), even if those hours of work were not authorized. If your complaint is successful, you can get back pay and even sometimes double-time. There is basically no scenario when you can volunteer hours doing your own job for your employer.*

The bad: They can in fact fire you for not getting the job done in whatever time they think is reasonable. True, if that is impossible for any mortal, they are also hurting themselves, but firing someone for performance is not particularly controversial.

The ugly: Gray areas like this all over employment policy and practice that seem to make no sense at all.

47

Talk to yourself! I do! :smiley:
I’m a custom picture framer.

The Good: Working with customers in designing their framing and talking to them, many of whom I’ve known for years. Having people see their framing project and love it! Working alone… I love it.

The Bad: Lackluster income… things have changed in the industry over the last 5-6 years with the big boxes advertising 50-70% off framing (off what price? We’re actually about the same price, I just don’t lie to my customers to end up at the same price) and the influx of cheap home decor framing from China. I probably also tend to give some services away which doesn’t help either.

The Ugly: ehhh… the same as bad. :wink:

48

I am the assistant operations director of four NPR affiliate stations.

The Good: So much is automated, it doesn’t take much effort to do my job. I have plenty of time to read the Dope and generally goof off. It’s my payback for all the slog I’ve done elsewhere in the past. I work with people who are on the way up. At this particular time, we have achieved a near-perfect balance of ops staff and newspeople. They just won a raft of national awards for the quality of their reportage. For instance, #1: CBS News. #2: ABC News. #3: Us. That’s never happened before. Just before Xmas, I got promoted to job-for-life, with full benefits and pension. My wife is also a State employee, which means that now we get free health benefits. I hear there’s not much of that in other fields. I have no stress in my job. It used to be a really uptight place, but now there’s laughter in the hallways. We have stellar ratings and no competition.

The Bad: Some of our up-and-comers come here from Jurnalizm Skool, where they weren’t taught anything about how to operate the equipment they need to use daily to record and edit themselves. So for months, their work sounds like ass because they have no concept of recording practices, and teaching them how to do it is neither fun, nor rewarding. They seem to see it as a huge pain in the ass. Some people catch on. Others don’t. The main bad thing is that all of our mistakes are public.

The Ugly: They have made some spectacularly idiotic hiring decisions in my time there, like the news director that was a serial bully who split the staff up and pit each against the other, and destroyed the goodwill and cooperation in the statewide network of which we’ve been the flagship for 30 years. And then the totally green kid who replaced him, who was promoted from cub reporter to news director by default. His reign was another kind of miserable. (He left for a job in radio consulting. Go figure.) Or the guy they flew in from the boonies to do feature reports. His flaming gayness was a PR disaster with the audience, and he sucked everybody in the department into his grandiose personal dramas. It didn’t help that he was not then, and would never, ever be Ira Glass. He lasted a couple of months and cost the station thousands of dollars. (Radio attracts some fucked up people.) Those hires seemed like a good idea to somebody higher up the food chain than we, who clean up the messes they make.

But it’s all right now. The fact that we have increased our ratings and are winning all these awards and have a great team makes up for what came before. We sort of don’t want our current staff to move on, but we know they will at some point, and we’ll have to rebuild the machine yet again. But I suppose that’s why we’re here.

49

I’m a shipping clerk.

The good:
I get paid pretty decently, with good benefits, and a lot of the time sit around on my butt doing almost nothing. Most of my job consists of little duties that take 5 minutes, so the rest of the time I surf the dope, read, knit and answer the phone. My boss is great, as are most of the guys, and it’s a generally good dynamic. I also get to wear jeans everyday.

The bad:
I am the only girl in shipping, this isn’t always bad since I’ve always been a ‘one of the guys’ type (if I want to see other women I can just wander to the front office to chat while I drop off their paperwork), but it results in some awkward moments at times and I don’t appreciate them farting in my office (though this hasn’t happened in awhile, since one guy got fired… nice guy, except for stinking up the joint).

Being the only girl, this results in some drivers hitting on me. I’ve had a few much, much older men (about my Dad’s age or older) invite me on trips and at least a couple try to get my IM names out of me so they can ‘tell me when they drop the load off’. Yeah… right. Like I want to talk about that when I’m at home.

Customers sometimes call me to ask question about their loads. They aren’t supposed to do that, but some insist on it so I just pass them on to their customer service rep who they should be asking these things. Especially since I often can’t help them with it, and if it’s something I can help with customer service asks me.

The ugly:
Dealing with angry drivers. Thankfully this doesn’t come up often, but we get the odd guys who get angry about waiting to be loaded and take it out on me (or try to). I try to co-ordinate as best I can, but unless it’s bags (usually about 18ft long) that I can move around on my own I can’t make things move faster than they are.

Corollorary to this, usually when they’re cranky, I’m cranky too because it’s after the end of my shift and I’m sitting here on OT trying to get their paperwork done and faxed to the border or wherever it needs to be (the most work I do is on the customs docs, which have to be just so or we get fined and/or I get calls from cranky customs people in the next few days) so I can get out there and catch my bus. The closer to 6 it gets, the crankier I get, because my bus ride is not a short one and I don’t drive just yet. Fridays are the worst for this. I CAN leave right at the end of my shift, I don’t have to stay but the OT is nice for my savings and I don’t want to have even crankier drivers up my ass the next morning.

I also have nicknames for some of them if they really bug me. Like shirtless guy. Apparently it is impossible for him to button up his shirt (he HAS a shirt on, and a jacket, but it’s always undone to his bellybutton and his beer gut hangs out. Dude, I do NOT want to see that. You are so not my type. I try to tell him that, but now I just try to look him in the eye or not look at him at all. He shows up at our company fairly regular.)

50

Grade 6 Band Teacher:

The good: Perhaps amongst the more goofy jobs, I get paid to teach kids how to play songs like “This old man” and “Mexican Hat Dance” It can be a good time when were all having fun.

The bad: As most teachers will say, report cards are a bitch. More so with me because I have 230 students. I also teach at four schools. I feel very isolated in my profession.

The ugly:With 230 students comes 460 parents. As they say, can’t please all the people all the time. Oh yeah, and first year oboe can be harsh.

51

[ul]
[li]**The Good: **The pace of the job keeps my mind active. I’m rarely bored (and when there is downtime and low call volume I can always come here). Benefits are decent, too.[/li][li]The Bad: The pay could be better for all we’re expected to know and for our responsibilities.[/li][li]The Ugly: The clueless idiots who don’t understand how their programs work. Some people think they can get a free plane ticket, no strings attached, no catches, no restrictions. In most cases there are fees and there are limitations to what we can book.[/li][/ul]

52

I work as a proctor/supervisor at the campus computer labs.

The Good: The job requires at least moderate computer skill, and the university would shut down without the cooperation of the IT department, so we start at state minimum wage while all the other campus jobs are exempt and still pay $5.15/hr, and we get regular raises. I spend 25 hours a week that I’d normally spend sitting at surfing the web at home… sitting and surfing the web at work. University computers, so no filters – nobody cares if we chat/IM, spend all our time playing Bejeweled, or even surf for porn as long as it doesn’t bother anyone in the lab, and doesn’t prevent us from getting up and helping people when they request it. Some labs are open 24/7; the people on the 9-hour overnight shifts have been known to bring in multimedia laptops and game consoles to kill time. It is entirely possible to play World of Warcraft on our lab computers, if you are clever enough to boot them off an external firewire drive. Scheduling is very loose and mostly done by students themselves. Everyone who already works here hashes out their class schedules, then their work schedules, then if needed we hire more people to fill in. The budget is for X number of hours per week, not X people, so getting more workers is never really an issue.

The Bad: Student job, obviously, so limited hours and no benefits. The pay is excellent for a student job that is required to refrain from scheduling you during classes, but in comparison to the rest of Earth it’s not that great. Hourly wage, so if you’re off sick from work, no pay. If the network goes out and takes a while to repair, you also get to pass some very very boring shifts. I got 5 hours of uninterrupted time with a Leslie Charteris novel and a scarf I’m knitting last time that happened.

The Ugly: There is not actually a lot of this. The only thing I can think of is that there’s one guy whom we’re basically just waiting to fire for hitting on all the freshman girls. (Badly, too. I have no idea what makes him think any of these lines are going to work.) It’s a university job, so there must be a certain amount of documentation collected before someone gets canned, and we haven’t had to fire someone for something they’ve done (as opposed to something they haven’t done – usually people who manage to lose this job manage to do so quietly, by simply deciding never to show up again) in so long I’m not positive the boss really recalls how to do it.

53

Internist at a large primary care clinic.

Good: I have a good schedule, as busy primary care docs go–about 35 hours a week in the clinic, another 10 or so in the hospital, on call two nights a week and every fourth weekend. I rarely have to go in when I’m on call at night, but I have to put in a pretty full day of rounding each day when I’m on for the weekend. The pay is excellent. Because I’m employed, I don’t have to worry about the business end–I just have to practice medicine and supervise some mid-level providers.

Bad: The clinic is hectic and disorganized. Since I’m employed, I don’t have as much say as I’d like in the way things are run. Our boss, whose talent for the business end of medicine never ceases to amaze me, tends to micromanage the clinical side despite having no real experience in that area.

Ugly: The local “medical culture”, for lack of a better word. Patients are used to just going to the doctor and getting whatever they ask for. They take personal offense when you don’t give them $200 worth of antibiotics for a cold, or four Lorcets and three Xanaxes a day for no apparent reason. When I started out, I was being manipulated constantly, to the point that I was immediately considering anything a patient told me to be a lie until I could confirm it. (This has gotten better, both in my population and in my attitude.)

54

House framer.

Good: I get to work outside, and the best part of the year is just coming up.
Bad: I’m not too keen on ladders.
Ugly: I’m tired of being considered an idiot or ignored because I’m the new guy. I seem to be constantly telling my boss he’s screwing something up. I then get ignored, he screws up half the job, realizes something’s wrong, and goes back to redo it.

55

I’m a personal/executive assistant to a CEO in the finance industry.

Good: The salary/bonus/benefits/perks are great, free lunches/snacks, in-house gym, good computer equipment, very comfortable/professional environment. It’s a small place, and very bureaucracy-less, so problems tend to be solved quickly/competently (of course, I credit myself for some of this, too). It’s an amazing job for someone as young as I am- graduated 2005. My boss is practically a genius, hired me for my smarts, really nice guy and we have a great personal relationship- invites me to his house, his parties, constantly gives me new projects/challenges as well as teaching me about finance, so I feel more intellectually stimulated than I ever thought I would in this type of role. Basic day-to-day tasks, scheduling, etc. are very manageable.

**Bad:**I need to dress nicely everyday, sometimes suits if we’re meeting a client. I’ve spent a LOT of money on clothes- which I wouldn’t ordinarily mind, but I’m still paying off college loans. It’s an admin position so it has its share of menial-type computer work. Long hours- 8am to 6pm, with some overtime. Sometimes tasks run over normal hours, like scheduling his personal appointments for weekends and then calling/reminding him to attend them.

Ugly: Probably the ugliest part is that I took a full-time admin-type job expecting to be able to write in the evenings, writing being what I eventually want to do with my life, but so far I haven’t had the time/energy combination to do it. Although I enjoy this job very much, I imagine waking up in middle-age having been doing it for 20-some-odd years straight and I don’t want this to be the sum, the end-all be-all of my life! But that’s the upcoming quarter-life crisis talking, and probably not so realistic.

56

Peace Corps Volunteer

Good- Get to experience a different culture. Learn a new language. Lots of challenges. Great friends, cheap beer, good scenery.

Bad- Lonely as all get out.

Ugly- It’s currently 116 degrees out.

57

High School chemistry teacher:

Good: I get summers off, a decent wage, very little interference from a boss. I can interact with kids and make them feel good and teach them something too. I get to feel a little superior because I can solve the problems they can’t, and I get to improve my skills in explaining things, which I like to do. I get to leave at 2:40 and beat much of the horrible L.A. traffic. I get to dress pretty much like I want, which is “Dickies blue collar”. The staff necessarily tends hard toward the intellectual and well-informed.

Bad: The school has all the charm of a small prison. There’s a bureaucracy that makes me wince, and lets bad teachers go on until they retire. If you want to do something other than worksheets, you pretty much have to pay for it yourself.

Ugly: You just can’t undo the raising the kids have had for 16 years. Some are wonderful, and some of the girls I have to pointedly not stare at because of their smart/cute/interested/eye contact combo, but some have been clearly defeated and aren’t even planning on graduating. One of mine has been absent all week, and I know he didn’t pass the CAHSEE (California High School Exit Exam) the last time. I fear he’s given up. I have another very bright girl in my higher class who has declared that she’s moving to Europe on her 18th birthday, which is in the middle of her senior year. She has a 0 in my class, having turned in nothing. I just hope her music prodigy-ness gives her a living wage.

58

Psychologist in private practice

The good: I love working with clients. Good sessions are wonderful, and leave me feeling on top of the world. I am making more money than I thought I could, which does not suck. :slight_smile:

The bad: I work too many hours. I have a hard time saying no.

The ugly: I am weeks behind on my paperwork. Who knew there were this many bits of paper involved in doing this?

59

I’m a phlebotomist at a local hospital.

The good: I’m interested in becoming a doctor, so getting exposed to the nuts-and-bolts of medical care is really good for me. Also, many of the patients are just great - I met one of the original WACs, and I once got a kiss on the cheek from a guy who survived/escaped the Bataan Death March. Most of the nurses are great, and I’ve been here long enough that I’ve got a lot of recognition on the floor as being smart and friendly - to the point where the doctors are even quite nice to me.

The bad: Some of my co-workers are less-dedicated to patient service than I am, and that’s hard. Also we can be understaffed at times, and that makes it rough. I also spend a good deal of time answering the phone and hearing about how we haven’t gotten there fast enough. I don’t have much authority (ie, there’s little consequence for not doing what I ask) but I’m the person who has to answer anyway. Also, some of the patients can be quite difficult - mostly angry drug addicts (not all addicts are angry) or people with dementia who are also angry. I’ve learned to take most bodily functions in stride, however.

The homicidal: Our computer system is not the same as the hospital’s, and that leads to nurses calling and wondering why something wasn’t drawn when they ordered it…and I look in our system and notice that someone on their floor ordered it three times and our system kicked it out as a duplicate - so now there’s nothing. And also - just because the doctor is suddenly looking for results of a test you were supposed to order four hours ago does not make it my problem. I will make every effort to get someone up there as quickly as I can, but I cannot work miracles. As soon as I am able to clone myself and/or rectally produce other phlebs, I will. Until then, please be patient, and if it’s a life-or-death situation I will come do it myself.

60

Medical Transcriptionist

The good: Flexible hours, better pay then I’ve made at any other job, semi-challenging work. No corporate BS. I’m off my feet and I am able to work from home.

The bad: Work load is sometimes spotty. I’m an independent contractor so there’s no guarantee of work and there are no benefits unless I pay for them 100% out of pocket.

The ugly: Very little personal interaction with the outside world. I have to make a real effort to get out and leave the house so I can socialize and not go crazy. Doctors who eat, cough, hack phlegm, stutter, take drugs prior to dictating, shout at others, and otherwise are a pain in the ass to listen to. Doctors of the world, I implore you; there is someone listening to your recordings. PLEASE don’t shout into the mic or do those sudden coughs! Lord, sometimes it’s like Doc Holiday is dictating to me and I go half deaf from the sudden shot of noise. Ditto on the eating, drinking, and other crap. Please. I’m begging you.