What's to like, and not?

[Lindorm]

I am sure that we all like to moan and groan about our jobs and places
of work from time to time. And to be sure, most of us also have every
right to moan about crappy jobs, insane managers, stupid schedules and
whatnot. But fortunately, most of us also have something at work that
does give you a nice feeling, that makes things seem almost worth it, or
even quite enjoyable. Here's a few of mine:

As I work as a train driver for a major freight company here in Sweden,
my scheduling and working hours are often tough, and sometimes outright
crazy. Come home after two days away, be at home for 11 hours, and then
away for two more days. Or finish at 04:40 one day, and then start work
at 03:59 the next. The work itself can be both stressful and monotonus,
sometimes physically heavy, and at times even dangerous.

Trying to stay alert driving a train after waaay to little sleep,
plodding along in the darkness of night, trying to stay awake. Waking with a jerk in the middle of nowhere, realizing that you had an instant of microsleep, no idea of where you are or how you got there.

Doing shunting duties, riding on a small footstep of a wagon in a heavy
october rainstorm. Or, for that matter, shunting in the summer, when the
goods yard is baking in the sun with no shadow anywhere, covered in a
haze of diesel fumes, brake dust and smoke from small smouldering fires
along the trackbed, started by sparks from the heavy braking, with the
air so hot that it almost hurts breathing.

Sitting on a diesel loco ten years older than I am, shoveing a heavy
load up the steep incline from the harbour to the transfer yard, with
the engine at full power, and the noise and vibrations so loud that you
can't hear a thing, feeling the noise more than hearing it through your ear defenders, and the world has disappeared, except the beep-beep-beep vigilance tone in the comms
radio, telling you that the guy riding on the wagons up front is still
there, somewhere, 700 metres in front of you.

And on top of that, a management that can sometimes only be described as
scatterbrained and incapable of planning. Duty rosters that are wildly
unrealistic. Wagons without customers and customers without wagons.
Always having to bodge together last-minute solutions to save the
immediate crisis, never having time to do a bit of planning and
forethought.

Oh, and the always popular faxes about wagons so-and-so gone missing,
not arrived at their destination, please search and report back. Load:
Anything perishable or hazardous is prefferred, but generally valuable is
also OK.

So, why do I stay? Why don't I change over to the nice commuter trains,
with their whisper-silent AC in the cabs, and their humane working
hours, not to mention distinct lack of having to work outdoors?

Because I do like it here. I like the feeling of going across the
Igelsta bridge on an early summer morning, watching the sun rise over the
countryside where the Södertälje channel meets the Baltic sea, with a
long and heavy train behind me, running smoothly and almost effortlessly, despite weighing several thousand tonnes.

I like the sound of an early morning in late november, when the frosts
have come, and you are riding on the wagons over some sidings, running
the loco by remote control, and all is silent, and you can hear a very
special, crisply cracking sound of the frozen, frost-covered, wooden sleepers
flexing as your wagons roll along the track, accompanied by a melodius
whispering sound of the wheels rolling on the track.

I like sitting on the footstep of my loco cab, in a passing loop
somewhere out in the woods, waiting for a meeting train, and having a
fox cub come up to me and start sniffing my hand, wondering what sort of
strange creature I might be?

The goods yard I am based at is old, rather run-down and neglected for years. In a way, we are a sort of living musuem, still doing things by hand and in the old ways you don't see often nowadays. It does make the job tougher at times, but it also makes it more of a challenge, and we do get to use and keep skills that are more or less becoming extinct on the modern railway. And working in an environment like this, where you have to absolutely trust your fellow workers does create a special spirit, a cameraderie, that is hard to describe. I have colleagues that I think are utter bastards on a personal level, and would never ever associate with socially -but I am literally trusting them with my life at times when we work together.

In a way, I suppose the railway is one of those extreme environements where you either fit in, or run away screaming. I started working part-time whilst studying at the university -that is now approaching twenty years ago, and I sometimes have doubts as whether I would be able to stand a "ordinary job" now.


So, what about your place of work?

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

So, what about your place of work?

Remotely as interesting as yours?

[ivor]

Wow Lindorm!  Your jobs sounds almost like software development but without the cool side benefits of hanging out with wild animals!

<rant>
Software development can be dangerous too.  I'm under a huge, stressful workload.  I'm constantly smoking because of it.  I drink coffee and don't eat.  I sometimes wake up at 4:30 AM and don't finish until 3:00 AM the next morning.  I'm sleepy when working but when I lay down my brain starts thinking and won't let me sleep.  I need to figure out how to lay down and work.  I guess I could hang my laptop from the ceiling? 

I work at home so my family doesn't think I actually do anything because I don't go somewhere and build widgets.

Hope somebody found this amusing.  I know I complain about it but I wouldn't do anything else, unless I get to meet wild animals.
</rant>

[Pachyderm]

Well, I do get to meet wild animals. Or, at least, look for them.

I absolutely love my job. The fact that I am working with (actually, for, but he doesn't like me saying that) a good friend just makes it better. We have a hoot in the office, constantly joking and taking the piss, but the work stuff is kept to a very professional level. I also knew, on joining the company, that anyone James employed would be intelligent, capable and not a divisive influence. Don't get me wrong, it's not a total love-in,with hugs and cuddles all round, you do have to get your work done. But we have fun doing it.

We have some idiot clients, same as everybody, and have to deal with civil servants, always a high point of my day. As my position is effectively 2IC, I end up troubleshooting a fair bit. And to my surprise, I find I enjoy it. Talking to clients, telling them what they have to do in legal terms, and trying to get them to follow best practice and go above and beyond their legal requirements "If you do XY and Z you will look like the most environmentally concious company in Ireland. That will be £££££, please."

[beagle]

Same as MB, except I do go out to work. For some of the brightest people in the country.  Half my age. Stressed? Moi? One day it's going to be like the exploding dude's head scene in Scanners.

[Darlica]

I can't really rant about my current boss as I'm self employed at the moment.

I have had my fair share of odd workplaces and bosses but that seem rather uninteresting as it was quite a while a go and I already have ranted about some of the more recent ones around here...
No

As an illustrator I come across many different types of customers/assigners some are good, some are OK and some are horrible. Unfortunately the two later categories are in majority, people who doesn't understand that coming up with solutions to their needs may take time and time costs (funnily enough it's seldom those who want easy pictures that have a problem with the time=>money equation).
There are those that doesn't understand that I in most  cases need some form of background information and that they need to provide me with this information or at least some credible sources or I'm going to have to charge them for the time I spent doing research instead of drawing...

There are those who really doesn't know what they want, and as the time goes and I leave semi ready pictures for approval they change their minds because they get new ideas based on what they now realise they can get, and then they don't want to pay for all the work, just the finished result, don't mind I've made 4 or five finished pictures to the letter following their latest whim, that they refused because they changed their minds.

So why do I still think it's interesting and fun and wish I could do it full time for the rest of my life?
I love scientific illustration, the fields may vary, biology (my absolute favourite), history, medicine, it gives my brain something to really chew on (and a chewing brain is a happy brain)
I get to learn new things, and then apply them.
I love the problem solving, to find the right picture solution that explains things that is hard to explain with only words and of cause the Graal -to hear a customer say "this is exactly what I wanted, actually it's better than I could even fantasise about!"

Also, some people may suck at being the assigner in charge but they're so nice, fun and interesting you forgive them that.

[beagle]

There are those who really doesn't know what they want, and as the time goes and I leave semi ready pictures for approval they change their minds because they get new ideas based on what they now realise they can get, and then they don't want to pay for all the work, just the finished result, don't mind I've made 4 or five finished pictures to the letter following their latest whim, that they refused because they changed their minds.

If you ever get bored with drawing you'll be able to move into GUI development with hardly a hiccup...

[Darlica]

Except my brain would explode...

I've done some dabbing in designing user interfaces (as a part of my education) and I happily leave all the mucky coding stuff to those better suited for it.
I like to think of my self as pretty intelligent that shatters the illusion quick and harshly.

[beagle]

My drawing is so bad it couldn't even win a Turner Prize. It goes way beyond "liberated from the constraints of conventional structure" and approaches "bloody mess".

[Darlica]

 
Umm. OK you win.


Let's bring this tread back to topic!

Beagle, why do you keep on doing it? What's the bright sides with your job?

[beagle]

Well I was trained as a physicist (in a town where you can't throw a brick without hitting 10 of them).  The employment options for such anoraks in my day were either accounting or computing.  Computing was new and exciting (1980s) whereas there's only so much fun you can have adding columns of numbers horizontally and vertically (even if you do get a big house in Berkshire and Volvo estate as compensation).

The algorithm and coding side is interesting (it's surprising how much variation you can get arranging different sequences of the numbers 0..255, sort of like DNA),  it's marginally useful (hunting through the World's leading medical papers databases), and they do a good bacon roll in the canteen. Oh, and the money's not bad (not that it weighs with me in any way at all, of course. Honest.)

[Griffin NoName]

This thread is jobist and discriminates against those of us without jobs.

Having got that off my chest, when I did have a job, the main thrill for me was always to get the better of the machine.



My customers might wail and moan and scream and throw things at their computers, but I would waltz on smiling sweetly and confidently and subdue the beast, thus demonstrating my total superiority. (( It was probably akin to those folk who tortured cats as chidlren but none the less kept me sane, whereas now I am reduced to a being of little importance and my machines seem to have won.))