General

Where in education are you? Teaching? Principal? Sports?

What don't you like about it?

I wonder what the percentages are of people who love their jobs. I know two people who told me they love their job. One of them said something like he couldn't imagine doing anything else, and would want to do what he does for super long.

I own a UPS Store and it makes me almost nothing (I pay employees fairly, reinvest into the business) but I genuinely love it, even when it's stressful as fudge.

I am considering going back to school at some point when the kids are older and dabbling in the medical field. Maybe scrub nurse or radiology. At that point I'll have sold my store so probably 5-10yrs out.

Education/teaching is rough because they are paid so little. Our school distrct lost a bunch of quality teachers over pay. What is stupid is we have a surplus of money that they don't want to touch for some reason, so instead they just let people resign and stuff fall apart. I guess they're planning to build another school maybe.

I’ve worked in the payment space since 1998. I don’t hate it; it’s rewarding enough. About 1.5 years ago I took a new opportunity with a processor (kinda a bucket list thing) and it’s been a good ride so far. I feel like I’m making an impact to the business overall, due to my experience. If I didn’t feel my efforts were appreciated or made an impact I’d likely move on. I’ll probably roll with this company for another 3.5 years and then move on.

I work in mortgages, really like it. Basically it is completing lists. I get to work from home, and it is a small company so everyone knows everyone. I don't really like dealing with customers, but that is sales I suppose.

Porksta wrote:
Completing lists?

I love what I do. Started off in web dev, moved into program management, and am now a bit of a "fixer" at a tech company. I herd cats and makes sure crap gets done. I thrive on the chaos and how random each day can be. It's challenging but rewarding, and I like helping people so it's been fun.

At previous gigs when I was just doing the same thing over and over each day I wasn't nearly as happy or satisfied. But it took me branching out in a new direction to figure that out.

nonamesleft wrote:

Yup,

You send the borrower a list of everything they need, then the underwriter sends a list of things still needed. Once the item comes in you get to check the box. It is fun submitting items to UW and seeing them come back with a shortened list.

I do QA for a vending technology company. I wouldn't say that I LOVE it, but I definitely like it. Compared to my last company, which wrote legal software, vending is much more interesting and I feel less scummy doing the work.

I like working with hardware. My previous QA jobs have been 100% software, which can be really mind numbing. Throwing hardware into the mix makes it a bit more fun, and it's nice to use my hands and actually build things.

Really though, the thing I like is that the company is ran by good people and the culture is positive, so you feel valued when you come to work and can see how the work you do directly helps the company succeed.

I just started this job, so may be premature, but really liking it so far.
I get to be outside for about an hour each day. One day a week I'm outside all day.
I have 2 direct reports, who each have 3 direct reports. So kind of 8 in my chain but I only need to worry about their guys if it is something big.
The office work is a lot of specification reading and trying to interpret it to real life results.

My boss seems like a good guy, but he's an engineer first, manager second. My peers all seem competent. A few might have over inflated egos, but overall good guys.

So far I have a pretty good work life balance. It could be a seasonally stressful job as I fully take over the work myself.

bumsplikity wrote:

Who provides your payment hardware? Just curious.

I've been there @bignasty. I worked in litigation support for 17 years. I enjoyed what I did so long as I was progressing because there were new challenges and more money. The last position I held I was in for 4 years and the pressure to control internal costs while trying to provide the customer with great service meant I ended up doing quite a bit of work outside of my office hours. It really started to wear on me, especially since it impacted time with my family and friends.

I ended up taking a job with a startup and have had several position changes over the nearly 6 years I've been there. I like what I'm doing now, but I know I don't want to do it forever. Hopefully I'll continue to have opportunities to make moves within the company that will give me new challenges and increasing my pay.

All that being said, I'm looking into ways into generating passive income with the hopes of eventually replacing the majority of my salary so that I have the space to safely make a career change if I want to and not have to worry about taking a pay cut.

@loztdogs Haha when I saw you were in the payment industry, that caught my attention as well.

Some of our stuff uses Ingenico, some of our stuff uses devices by Castles Technology. Then we work with a number of payment processing folks to handle our backend processing.

@SwiftJAB yeah my last company was an eDiscovery company. Litigation support is an industry that never sleeps, so the hours could be brutal. Plus lawyers can be some of the absolute worst people to deal with.

bumsplikity wrote:

Funny you should mention… I worked at ingenico for 8 years before taking this new gig. Although it was on the banking and acquiring side rather than retail. I have some really close friends at castles. Good team, over there lot of smart folk’s recently moving over to castles. Trying to take market share from ingenico and pax.

I run an ebay shop, but it's gone from bad to worse and while I love doing what I do it's not sustainable anymore and I'll see if I can get a better job whenever I move to Tennessee.

I own, operate and take care of other's oil and gas production. It is what I have always wanted to do. I actually have drawings from kindergarten I did of pumping units. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cj6uZw9uoOC/?utm_sourc...

I've been a project manager for ~8 years, previously in insurance and now in a very specialized benefits and Investments company. I've carved out a niche to specifically focus on new technology so I've been leading innovation efforts at my new company for a short period of time. Deploying laptops (from a heavy VM environment), deeper M365 integration, conference room modernization, etc. We're starting to implement SAFe as well which I'm super excited about.

It may sound silly, but I also have an excellent leadership team which is key to my happiness. People who know the right questions to ask, care about my career development, and truly want to make the company better - for customer and employee.

I work in IT and I love it. I'm a System Administrator right now, but I'm probably going to move into a Security Analyst position soon.

I like what I do. I work in Marketing. Can't really see myself doing anything else at this point.

I was a chemist for a small chemical manufacturing plant that made one inorganic chemical in several variations. There were some aspects of the job that weren't my favorites, but overall I liked it. I started in Quality Control and with only a BA and some grad level education I worked my way up to Manager of Research and Development for the other plants and products of the privately held corporation. The job was mostly analytical chemistry - what is there and how much? I got to work with gas chromatographs, liquid chromatographs, atomic absorption spectrophotometers, and other relatively high tech. I was constantly learning new information and new skills. A few times a year I got to travel (a few times internationally) to customers, seminars, professional society events, and trade shows. I gave presentations to rooms full of PhDs, had several papers published in a peer-reviewed journal, and wrote a chapter for a technical book. If you can find a copy of the 8th Edition of the Food Chemicals Codex, you will see my name as a contributor. The best aspect of being the manager was that I had significant input on most of the projects and setting the priorities. The difficult aspects of the job were being directed by upper management to work on projects that I knew were worthless and dealing with subordinates. Preparing Performance Reviews was the worst. Everything was pretty good until after 30 years I ended up on the wrong side of company politics (see Job Tales thread).

I sell copiers and managed print services for businesses. I loved it when I was at my old company because everyone was on board for excellence and taking care of the customer. We made really good money and it allowed my wife to stay at home with our kids. It was very stressful but my family was taken care of.

The company I work for now is in so many ways a GREAT company. Their service is even better to customers and they are open to new ideas to get us to the next level. But they drop the ball so hard in many other levels. In my industry (and probably many others) you have to practically give it away the first time, and then after that; if you took care of them: you can make some profit. If you don't do that, then a competitor will and THEY'LL get to do what I said and you will be OUT.

This company does not care about that and so when I lose business and will be permanantly locked out unless my competitor completes screws up (they don't)...they just throw out a 'oh bummer!' kind of sentiment.

They also make my commission so hard to understand and are practically playing a shell game with it. I work with all former sales people including one that was a manager. NO ONE can look at their commission sheet and say "Yeah, that is what I should get paid". At the end of the year, there were people who thought they had sold 200k MORE than what the company did...and the company doesn't say anything until the LAST WEEK OF THE YEAR when you could win the company trip. Can you imagine thinking you made it and then being told on 12/26 that you are $200k off from what you thought you sold and having to prove it!!?!?

This has created a whole new level of stress for me because I know what needs to happen for success and this company doesn't want to provide that. I normally would shrug it off but they do SO MANY other things RIGHT that is sucks that they blow it this hard in the other also important areas.

Hard to explain what I do, I work in Life Sciences and specifically help write test protocols, reports, and patient safety assessment calculations and draft report (the toxicologist team has their name on the reports). I get to work hybrid, the company is great - great culture, great people, great benefits - and I get to learn new things and interact with people. It's intellectually stimulating without being high stress.

I own and operate a IT/Tech Support company. It’s fun but can be stressful.

Eventually I’d like to run a nonprofit organization or assist with one part time in addition to running ny business. A few people have mentioned I should run for mayor of the town I recently moved to. I think that’s a little too high, too fast. Maybe in another decade.

Thanks - it is so heartening to read of so many people doing great things that they enjoy! There is hope!

I’m a veterinarian. It’s overall very rewarding but also quite stressful and emotionally fatiguing. It’s very similar to other service industry jobs I’ve had- people- but with sick animals. They’re usually pretty stressed too.

Feeb wrote:

Please make sure you have friends that will check in on you. Your field has a high suicide rate.

My last vet turned to drugs over the stress he had, started sleeping with office staff. A year later started selling drugs sourced through the vet practice. Year 3 he had five lawsuits, DEA investigation, and his friend found him hanging in his childhood home turned second office. Being a vet doesn’t cause this but it’s a slippery slope and it seems so east to get in too deep.

Yes it’s a big issue. I feel like I’m mostly beyond that part of my career but it does get taxing.

Feeb wrote:
Do you get emotional or distressed due to injured animals that come in?

I got all excited to answer, because I do love my job, but then I saw that you’re in education and miserable, and I’m in education too lol.

BigNasty wrote:

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:

That is awesome and I’m happy for you! Thank you

Working in the utility field, mostly handling contractor requests. It's been almost 2 years since I switched departments. Some days are better than others, but I feel pretty good about it overall. I like working in small groups better than being part of a large department where I feel like I get lost in the shuffle. Of course, with the pandemic I don't get to see my colleagues as much as I would like, but we do get to meet up every so often.

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:
Where in education is your job?

I know 2 teachers who told me they love what they do. One teaches junior high, the other teaches high school.

Elementary teacher. It’s hard. I wanted to do this my entire life, but it’s so hard being disrespected by admin, higher admin, parents, the community, and my peers. I get annoyed with teachers not banding together in unity in order to work ONLY contracted hours. So many want to spend all evening there, all summer there, and weekends there to make their classroom perfect.

I imagine they must be happy in their classroom. Which I can understand at points. But I also see the way admin looks down on those of us unwilling and unable to volunteer hours for after school activities.

I'm a sociology professor.

nonamesleft wrote:

I work in human services I guess you could say, My clients have disabilities ranging from intellectual to physical or a combination. Absolutely love my job but the pay is crap. I am looking for something else, but I really don't want to as it's hard to find male support workers in this field. We just got a $2 an hour raise but we need more. It was the first since 2014, but where I work has little control over that, it's mainly Provincial funding.

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:
College professor? Awesome. Wish I could sneak into your classroom, then come back here and tell everyone "I went to his class. He's a cool professor."

Yep! Haha! You're welcome anytime.

nonamesleft wrote:

I've worked in a factory for about 23 years now. The hours and working condtions are often grueling. Needless to say, I don't like my job. The good news is that about a year and a half ago, due to my seniority, I was able to secure a better job within the plant. While this is a big improvement over my past situation, it still kinda blows. I don't really complain about it because it pays great and has allowed me to support my family on a single income for all these years. Besides, who says you have to enjoy your work? For me, work is just another thing I have to do in order to survive and to thrive. The only reward I get from it is a good paycheck. It would be nice to have a job that I was happy with, but that just isn't the case (and has never been) for the vast majority of people throughout the world.

All that being said, I'm looking forward to the day where I can leave my job and do something else a bit more rewarding, or at least closer to home and easier on me. In ten years, I can retire from this place at 55 years old and receive a nice pension. I also got my bachelor's degree two years ago (which was paid for by my employer), so I'll have some options.