What do you do for work?

Dark Horseman wrote:

Fight, fight.

Anyone want a hertz donut?

I'm an assistant manager at a Dollar General. Most of my customers know when I'm on duty because I have my mp3 player hooked up to the speaker system jamming classic rock and hair metal all day/night. One guy actually said to me "Every Dollar General I've been at plays nothing but rap. Yours is the only store that will play stuff like this." I'm not sure, but I think it was either Metal Church or Flotsam and Jetsam playing when he said that.

People actually thank me for playing stuff like Rush, Scorpions, and Def Leppard.

Right now I'm not working because I wanted to devote myself to finishing my undergrad degree. I'm graduating in about three weeks, and after that I'm moving back home to live with my dad for a few years (so I can live rent free for a while and save up some money ). When I'm back in town, I'll just be delivering pizzas until I can find a "grown-up" job.

Lawyer. I do research all day long.

Troublezone wrote:

Dark Horseman wrote:

Fight, fight.

Anyone want a hertz donut?  

That's funny! I always think of that too.

Witchfinder wrote:

Lawyer. I do research all day long.

What kind?

Wurthless wrote:

Right now I'm not working because I wanted to devote myself to finishing my undergrad degree. I'm graduating in about three weeks, and after that I'm moving back home to live with my dad for a few years (so I can live rent free for a while and save up some money ). When I'm back in town, I'll just be delivering pizzas until I can find a "grown-up" job.

What is your degree in? (please don't say pizza delivery! )

Industrial engineer, working in logistics. Pushing excel sheets, solving problems, putting out fires, unloading stuff with forklifts, quality assurance and general TCB.

scottmitchell74 wrote:

Witchfinder wrote:

Lawyer. I do research all day long.

What kind?

I mostly do oil & gas law and international arbitration.

In 1989 I started in radio. Straight out of high school and worked part time until I got my BS then a month after graduation got my first full time job working at a country station. I had to start somewhere. It was my first time moving away from home but only 100 miles away. I was also newly married and my wife was still a student and was only home Thurs-Sun as the school was also over 100 miles away. She would stay with my parents or hers in our hometown. After a couple of years I could sense a sale of the radio station so I decided it was time to look for something else. In 1998 I took a job at KGMO in Cape Girardeau, MO and it was fun to do classic rock. Radio is a lot like the military. You move around a lot and the only way you are going to get more money is to move somewhere else. In 2000 we moved to Panama City, FL and I was back in country again. But this group of stations had 4 stations and one was classic rock. When the Program Director left I expressed an interest in moving over to the classic rock station and taking over programming. They were on board with it so I did that until 2005. We had new owners in 2004 and it started to go downhill. I gave them a year and then decided it was time to move on. Contrary to what people think, radio people do NOT make good money. These days the average DJ might top out around 35K. I now had a family and could no longer support them on radio pay and I did not want to move again. I have fond memories of the business but it has changed and is no longer the business I started in. Everything is automated these days and most stations are not live, most stations are pre-recorded or satellite fed.

So in Jan of 2005 I left and started working at the paper mill. It's a good Union job with excellent benefits and great pay. I can see myself retiring here. I am a Lab Chemist. It sounds like a smart job but it really isn't, as there isn't a lot of chemistry involved but I run tests on the paper we make and take care of calibrations of testing equipment. On occasion I will run environmental testing to make sure we meet our requirements with the EPA.

As for the radio stations I worked for, they are gone. Hurricane Michael wiped out their studios and the company went out of business so they are now "dead" stations. So I am in a good place. I could never see myself working at a paper mill when I graduated from college but I am glad I ended up here. My first job here was working with the paper machines. Since everything is seniority based, once I got some seniority I put a transfer into shipping and loaded rail cars and trucks with rolls of paper. I was there maybe 7 years and then transferred to the Lab and haven't looked back. I am blessed to say the least.

^^^my stepson works at a radio station in Texas and he says the same thing. He does some of the programming, and told us about how everything is pretty much preset with no actual did there. He likes it though, he gets to do whatever he wants, cause he's usually the only one there.

Wrecked Neck wrote:

^^^my stepson works at a radio station in Texas and he says the same thing. He does some of the programming, and told us about how everything is pretty much preset with no actual did there. He likes it though, he gets to do whatever he wants, cause he's usually the only one there.

Near the end of my tenure, I was the only staff member left on the classic rock station. They fired the morning person who did news and baby-sat John boy & Billy. So it became my job, doing news, babysitting JB&B then recording my shift for the day. We had a full staff there at one point and one by one the new owners let people go. I was also over the smooth jazz station but it pretty much ran by itself on automation. Near the end I HATED it there. I had to get out.

In the early 90's when in college it was tons of fun. Top 40 radio with lots of college girls listening and calling in all the time. We played the music, picked the music and played the music on CD. Nowadays everything is on a hard drive or satellite feed. Met my wife while working there, she was a college student as well and we met on campus after talking on the phone when I was working a midnight shift. At that time I made around 9 bucks an hour which was good pay for 1992 so it was all spending money. I kind of wish I would've studied something other than Communications as there just aren't a lot of good paying jobs in that field.

Trivia: While working at the classic rock station (in Panama City) I had to use a different name. I was on 3 of the stations.... Top 40, Country and Classic Rock. So they made me use an alias on the rock station.... Jeff Stone was my name.... It was then I discovered the No Life Til Metal website and I used to send Scott tons of freebie CD's when I had extras.. So for a while Scott knew me as Jeff. I didn't like using a different name because when I was in public I might see someone at a store and they would say "Hey Jeff" and I wouldn't respond because my name is Mike LOL. Most of the time I would ignore people not realizing they were talking to me.

Motion graphics (video and LED signage) at a major sports and concert facility.

Fun fact: I don't like sports. But I do get to see plenty of concerts.

@mikeinfla - Cool stories!

Boris2008 wrote:

Wurthless wrote:

Right now I'm not working because I wanted to devote myself to finishing my undergrad degree. I'm graduating in about three weeks, and after that I'm moving back home to live with my dad for a few years (so I can live rent free for a while and save up some money ). When I'm back in town, I'll just be delivering pizzas until I can find a "grown-up" job.

What is your degree in? (please don't say pizza delivery! )

lmao, My degree is a BA with a major in English Literature. I dunno exactly what kind of job prospects are on the horizon for me, but I'm hopeful that I can land some generic white collar office job at least.

mikeinfla wrote:

Wrecked Neck wrote:

^^^my stepson works at a radio station in Texas and he says the same thing. He does some of the programming, and told us about how everything is pretty much preset with no actual did there. He likes it though, he gets to do whatever he wants, cause he's usually the only one there.

In the early 90's when in college it was tons of fun. Top 40 radio with lots of college girls listening and calling in all the time. We played the music, picked the music and played the music on CD. Nowadays everything is on a hard drive or satellite feed.

Yeah I used to call in all the time to request music on our local stations. You could sometime hear them shuffling through the records looking to see if they had the song you were requesting. It was always cool when your song came on a few minutes later.

On a side note, I was almost a dj for a night back in the 90's. There was a station that played a weekly metal show every Friday night for about four hours. They played the good stuff too, not just the popular cookie cutter Metallica stuff. Well one night the normal dj was off and they had some fill in guy that was obviously out if his element. I called in to request a song, then started telling him he should play some other bands instead of the crappy ones he was playing. He actually invited me down to the station to help him out lol I had to decline but gave him about ten bands to work with that he actually played. Was pretty cool knowing I had a hand in what thousands of metalheads were listening too. Hope they thanked me, cause he was clueless.

Wurthless wrote:

Boris2008 wrote:

Wurthless wrote:

Right now I'm not working because I wanted to devote myself to finishing my undergrad degree. I'm graduating in about three weeks, and after that I'm moving back home to live with my dad for a few years (so I can live rent free for a while and save up some money ). When I'm back in town, I'll just be delivering pizzas until I can find a "grown-up" job.

What is your degree in? (please don't say pizza delivery! )

lmao, My degree is a BA with a major in English Literature. I dunno exactly what kind of job prospects are on the horizon for me, but I'm hopeful that I can land some generic white collar office job at least.

School teacher perhaps? The pay isn't great but you will get all the holidays and the summers off!

Self-employed for ten years next month. I repair burial equipment for the cemeteries of the West Coast. It's a fringe service but it's always paid the bills.

There are a lot of sweet pros (vacation whenever yay!) and some terrifying cons (TAXES), but the one thing that makes me miss about being employed is the ability to forget about my job whenever I got off work. These days I'm CONSTANTLY thinking about my business, and it's getting rather exhausting.

mikeinfla wrote:

Wurthless wrote:

Boris2008 wrote:

Wurthless wrote:

Right now I'm not working because I wanted to devote myself to finishing my undergrad degree. I'm graduating in about three weeks, and after that I'm moving back home to live with my dad for a few years (so I can live rent free for a while and save up some money ). When I'm back in town, I'll just be delivering pizzas until I can find a "grown-up" job.

What is your degree in? (please don't say pizza delivery! )

lmao, My degree is a BA with a major in English Literature. I dunno exactly what kind of job prospects are on the horizon for me, but I'm hopeful that I can land some generic white collar office job at least.

School teacher perhaps? The pay isn't great but you will get all the holidays and the summers off!

Hey, fellow English major here! Although I'm a couple semester short of my BA. It's a fun degree to work for and I miss college like crazy, but the current job market is rather hostile toward liberal arts (or rather, it always has been). Getting credentials and teaching seems to be the best way to go. My goal was to pursue my Master's and teach Community College, but that's a highly desired, and thus competitive, arena.

Although I do have college credits, I never followed through for a “degree”. That’s why I’m always on the lookout for something better. I’ve heard that many people that get a university degree go in debt for many years (or forever) and some don’t even get the “dream job” they set out for. I think I’m more inclined to get a certificate in a specific trade skill.

BA in English here too. So given how many of us ended up in something completely different I guess you can see how useful that major was. Although I will say that the ability to communicate effectively is an absolute BOON regardless of what you do for a living. That comes up every year in my annual review because 99% of IT people are absolutely horrendous at communicating, especially to non-technical users. But that's where I shine.

tohostudios wrote:

BA in English here too.  So given how many of us ended up in something completely different I guess you can see how useful that major was.  Although I will say that the ability to communicate effectively is an absolute BOON regardless of what you do for a living.  That comes up every year in my annual review because 99% of IT people are absolutely horrendous at communicating, especially to non-technical users.  But that's where I shine.  

I’m not referring to you toho, but I imagine a lot of IT people are former high school geeks that were locked in their rooms playing some sort of roll playing computer game for years. That could definitely stifle or impede a person’s social skills.

I don't know what it is but IT people are notorious for not being able to communicate ideas well. Their communication tends to include a lot of jargon/vernacular that's used in their little corner of the IT world and not everyone knows what that stuff means. I mean, I get emails from other IT teams outside of my department and they read like I'm supposed to know what the hell they're talking about. And most of the people in my department are just as bad. I don't know how many times I've told my manager that with all the stupid, useless courses the company makes us take why the hell a basic "Business Communication" course is not offered just boggles my mind.

tohostudios wrote:

BA in English here too.  So given how many of us ended up in something completely different I guess you can see how useful that major was.

Reading this makes me feel better that I dropped out of high school. I've done pretty good for myself without a degree throughout the years. Only thing I wish I did a better job of is setting up retirement. As of now, I'll most likely need to work till I die, but that's on me and some of the bad choices I've made. The good news is, chances are I'll die of a heart attack soon since every single brother my grandfather had all died around the age of fifty due to heart issues.

I keep saying that if I had a kid in high school these days I'd be encouraging him to go to a trade school as opposed to college (provided he/she showed any interest or aptitude in that kind of thing).  I mean you can make good money doing HVAC or electrical repairs or plumbing or anything like that.  And you can probably apprentice somewhere and start getting a paycheck right away without being in debt thousands and thousands of dollars for going to college.  

AND...eventually if you're good at whatever trade you ply, you can probably go into business for yourself if you want to.

Case in point:

I've lived in my house now 14 years.  About two years after I moved in, the teenage "hoodlum" across the street was playing around with a BB gun and shot out my window.  Fortunately I was home at the time and ran over there to confront him about it.  The kid was very apologetic and begged me not to tell his Mom.  Since our houses were all built by the same contractor (who his father worked for) he offered to swap a window from behind his mother's couch with my damaged window.  I agreed and never told her about the incident.

He's long since moved out of his Mom's house and now has his own family but over the years I've seen him pull up in a beat-up pickup, unload a bunch of stuff and proceed to do work on his Mom's house.  

Well for the past 2 weeks he's been pulling up to his Mom's house in a newer truck with a logo on the side and towing a trailer sporting the same logo.  So either he's found a company to work for or has gone into business for himself; either way GOOD FOR HIM!  

I think more people should go that route.

I actually need some stuff done on my own house and I'm thinking about giving that company a call. I googled them and they have good reviews.

I have three college degrees - BA, MA, JD - and if I had to do it all over again I'd go into a trade.