"What do you do for a living?" Thread
- Thread starter SymphonyXV
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fillipeano
These days..
Well I've worked at a grocery store, but never a fast food joint.
I'm a student right now, studying for my undergrad in physics and hoping to go to grad school for astrophysics.
I'm a student right now, studying for my undergrad in physics and hoping to go to grad school for astrophysics.
I'm assuming most of you have had these jobs for years? This recession is making it near impossible to get a job even if you have a Harvard graduate status. I feel like I am living in a horror movie sometimes.
It sucks working hourly and all but hey, you have to start somewhere, and I'm sure it won't last forever even though it feels as if it will. Working in service/retail in general is like a crash course on how to treat others.
I've only had my position for about a year. Any lower on the corporate ladder and I'd be on the ground. I lucked out big time. Ivy league degrees mean jackshit if you're a total douche with a sense of entitlement. There ARE jobs out there, just not for buttheads.
I've only had my position for about a year. Any lower on the corporate ladder and I'd be on the ground. I lucked out big time. Ivy league degrees mean jackshit if you're a total douche with a sense of entitlement. There ARE jobs out there, just not for buttheads.
Fast food? I worked at pizza hut for 2 years in High School. Jobs like that certainly aren't the best, but there's no shame in working for a living no matter what you do. That said, I'm much happier as a musician making a living than I was making pizza!
This. Granted, there are jobs that come down to what your credentials are on paper, but the people who get jobs based only on that aren't generally the type to keep them.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
I got this job when the recession hit in 2008. Like Yas, I'm at the bottom of the food chain and I ambitiously seek to climb.
Meedley is right about the job description stuff. When they say you need this and that on paper, apply anyway if you think you can do it. Attitude is far more important than grades, than learnable skills. Intrinsic personality traits can't be picked up on the job. If you're a douche, you'll always be a douche and no fun to work with. Being the "make it happen no matter what" type goes a long way.
DoomsdayZach
The Professor was right
I work Pizza. Love it, loved it ever since I started. It's a smaller local Seattle chain, better stuff than you'd get at domino's or pizza hut by far. Never have had a job that I've had more fun with than this and it's a service industry job. Never have worked "fast food" before though.
I agree with you all one hundred percent. Even at my work there are always those who obviously have it better than most who act like they are the king and everyone else is just their slave. And as far as the college thing goes, guess how those people got to go to Yale or Harvard? Most of the time, their momies and dadies took care of all of it so they could brag about how smart their failure-to wear a condom-results are. I noticed the ones who have less money starting off seem to be the best workers and have much higher tolerances, probably because they had to work for everything in their life.
Lucius Octavion
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- Jun 9, 2007
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I'm just a kid who listens to black metal and goes to a music school. Basically I do homework and play cello all day.
HackerX
Member
I used to work in a gormet pizza place doing deliveries and stuff. Pay sucked (Though I collected in tips) but hell I wish I could go back to that life. So much easier. Awesome pizza's too.
These days I'm a Programmer/System's Analyst. I make systems talk to each other. The work is reasonable but the management of it all suck balls.
These days I'm a Programmer/System's Analyst. I make systems talk to each other. The work is reasonable but the management of it all suck balls.
I have the easiest job in the world, it's just the people that make it so hard. Some of my fellow co-workers deserve a good beating! They like to just leave without saying anything to go smoke outside or to just go home early and I gotta pull their weight during rush hour sometimes alone! I guess because of budget cuts they let a lot of people go and when people can't work with their friends, they quit so we are the most popular McDonald's in the area and we don't have enough workers. Then there are those co-workers who have been working for two months who think they know everything in the whole world and like to boss everyone around and constantly start fights, even in front of customers. One time a customer called 911!
I can't really complain about how much I get paid because I was expecting the worst. 7.25 an hour sounds like a lot but I'm really only making like 5 an hour after NY's ridiculous taxes. My boss likes to pay me less for working more hours and thinks I don't notice.
My funniest story is that one time when I was handing out food in the drive thru, some crazy old lady threw a fit and demanded I wear gloves while handing her a bag. A less funny story was when one time, someone ordered a slice of cheese in a box. They actually charged him 35 cents.
I have tons of advice for any of you who are regular Mickey Dee's patrons on how to get free stuff. Everytime you get your food, look into the bag and tell the clerk you ordered all kinds of stuff that you didn't actually order. Like if you ordered a McDouble, tell the clerk that you also ordered a double quarter pounder and large fry. The clerk is not ever supposed to argue with you so most of the time, you will get it with no questions asked. I can't begin to describe how many people rip us off and our manager is too buying texting or calling his girlfriend so he just tells us to give them what they want.
I can't really complain about how much I get paid because I was expecting the worst. 7.25 an hour sounds like a lot but I'm really only making like 5 an hour after NY's ridiculous taxes. My boss likes to pay me less for working more hours and thinks I don't notice.
My funniest story is that one time when I was handing out food in the drive thru, some crazy old lady threw a fit and demanded I wear gloves while handing her a bag. A less funny story was when one time, someone ordered a slice of cheese in a box. They actually charged him 35 cents.
I have tons of advice for any of you who are regular Mickey Dee's patrons on how to get free stuff. Everytime you get your food, look into the bag and tell the clerk you ordered all kinds of stuff that you didn't actually order. Like if you ordered a McDouble, tell the clerk that you also ordered a double quarter pounder and large fry. The clerk is not ever supposed to argue with you so most of the time, you will get it with no questions asked. I can't begin to describe how many people rip us off and our manager is too buying texting or calling his girlfriend so he just tells us to give them what they want.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
Imagine your "hey that's not what I ordered scenario", and then replace fries with a $250,000 projector. It happens. Must be why the company I work for isn't profitable. "Would you like a free BluRay player with that?" should be on our polo shirts. As a field tech I represent the image and integrity of the company, so even when my superiors fuck up the contract resulting in a misunderstanding of this flavor, I must see that my customer is satisfied, and I can neither accuse the customer nor my employer. My job is to make the magic happen. I really will do whatever is necessary to complete a project on-time despite an avalanche of extenuating circumstances. There really is no excuse for failure and that's how I approach things.
I don't have any reservations of being scathingly honest on here because I haven't disclosed what company I represent.
Since we are sharing funny and not so funny stories, I will provide the story of one of our Pennsylvania customers. We received a phone call indicating that there was a problem with a server. Our IT guy gave the customer instructions for how to REPAIR a Windows drive. Our customer must have misread somewhere and instead Factory Defaulted the server. His next frantic call was "I see this field, with green grass and sky, and all of my icons are gone!" Yes, true story. We had him ghost the drive of another machine and had him back up and running before his Mayor showed up for a visit.
There was an Argentina customer who, not understanding that the placement and calibration of projectors was sensitive to sub-millimeter movement, had their cleaning crew take them down and dust them with a froofy. They proceeded unaware to replace them and activate the system, only to find it horribly askew. Frantic phone call. Fortunately we had someone in the country who could solve this but the customer learned their lesson.
And a not so funny story. A Pittsburgh customer had a massive VIP event scheduled, before which I and a Sony rep were in servicing their system. We found inches of dust (no exaggeration) on the equipment. After providing the servicing, our Sony rep inadvertently broke off a very important piece of plastic, no bigger than half of your pinky finger nail. This piece of plastic acts as the stop-point for a motorized shutter deep inside the projector. With no one knowing the plastic tab was gone, the customer sent the shutter close command and caused the motor to jam, not finding the tab, beyond the maximum travel of the shutter. I completely disassembled the projector (imagine taking the engine out of a car and you're pretty close) and we were able to find and reattach the plastic tab with superglue and heat fixative. We got the whole thing back together and in place just minutes before the VIPs showed up.
I don't have any reservations of being scathingly honest on here because I haven't disclosed what company I represent.
Since we are sharing funny and not so funny stories, I will provide the story of one of our Pennsylvania customers. We received a phone call indicating that there was a problem with a server. Our IT guy gave the customer instructions for how to REPAIR a Windows drive. Our customer must have misread somewhere and instead Factory Defaulted the server. His next frantic call was "I see this field, with green grass and sky, and all of my icons are gone!" Yes, true story. We had him ghost the drive of another machine and had him back up and running before his Mayor showed up for a visit.
There was an Argentina customer who, not understanding that the placement and calibration of projectors was sensitive to sub-millimeter movement, had their cleaning crew take them down and dust them with a froofy. They proceeded unaware to replace them and activate the system, only to find it horribly askew. Frantic phone call. Fortunately we had someone in the country who could solve this but the customer learned their lesson.
And a not so funny story. A Pittsburgh customer had a massive VIP event scheduled, before which I and a Sony rep were in servicing their system. We found inches of dust (no exaggeration) on the equipment. After providing the servicing, our Sony rep inadvertently broke off a very important piece of plastic, no bigger than half of your pinky finger nail. This piece of plastic acts as the stop-point for a motorized shutter deep inside the projector. With no one knowing the plastic tab was gone, the customer sent the shutter close command and caused the motor to jam, not finding the tab, beyond the maximum travel of the shutter. I completely disassembled the projector (imagine taking the engine out of a car and you're pretty close) and we were able to find and reattach the plastic tab with superglue and heat fixative. We got the whole thing back together and in place just minutes before the VIPs showed up.
I've been wanting to teach myself a programming language recently.
I started learning VB.NET as I'm already a bit familiar with Excel's VBA and I personally like the VB syntax (I prefer it to something like C++ or JAVA). Would you say VB would be suitable for developing some statistical analysis software? (that is if you are familiar with the language) or should I just save my time and learn something like Matlab or R from scratch?
DoomsdayZach
The Professor was right
Looks like starting within the next few days I'll be starting back up at my old college as an administrative assistant (glorified receptionist)...so I guess I can add that to my list as well. The extra cash will wont hurt, but the main reason I'm taking it is that as a f/t employee I get a few credit hours for free every semester and a discount on anything beyond that number, so I'll be going back for my Master's in the Fall and doing so dirt cheap. Also, It only affects my existing schedule so far as that I wont have to give up more than 3 or 4 of my students. In essence, I'll be working 80-90 hour weeks now but it keeps me out of trouble, I suppose
Also, might be a published author soon...more on that to follow, I hope!
Ken, apart from inept superiors, your job sounds like a blast. I can imagine it's high stress at times, but it sounds awesome.
Also, might be a published author soon...more on that to follow, I hope!Ken, apart from inept superiors, your job sounds like a blast. I can imagine it's high stress at times, but it sounds awesome.
HackerX
Member
I would argue that you're better off using right tool for the job and go with R or Matlab. They're not terribly difficult languages to learn.
VB isn't really known for it's math manipulation ability or it's throughput. But if your focus is on visualisation of statistical information it's probably ok.
*shrugs* Sometimes it's easier to struggle through with a lesser solution if you're better experienced with it though.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
it can be fun but then there's times like now, 2AM, airport, no sleep until tonight. Yay...
You're putting out a music instruction book, I take it, Meedley?
You're putting out a music instruction book, I take it, Meedley?
