Poll OT Sucky Jobs and how you cope

I told a friend that I think that all jobs are sucky in some way or
another and that I do what I can to make my life at work more
entertaining.

I people watch, work on come backs, think how I'd do something
differently than the teacher, and doodle strange pictures (I can't
draw) that I'll have to throw away anyway.

On road trips or other commutes, we play license plat phrases. For
instance, WVH could translate into "Wild Vixens Here."

So is your job sucky and what do you do to work around it?

Pam S. who also imagines what it would be like to have one of the cats
teaching the class

"tanadashoes" wrote in message
...
I told a friend that I think that all jobs are sucky in some way or
another and that I do what I can to make my life at work more
entertaining.

I people watch, work on come backs, think how I'd do something
differently than the teacher, and doodle strange pictures (I can't
draw) that I'll have to throw away anyway.

On road trips or other commutes, we play license plat phrases. For
instance, WVH could translate into "Wild Vixens Here."

So is your job sucky and what do you do to work around it?

Pam S. who also imagines what it would be like to have one of the cats
teaching the class

Back in the day when you had to physically redial the phone when you got a
busy signal, I had to call the IRS quite often. Spent a great deal of that
time playing video games and daydreaming.

Jo

tanadashoes wrote:

So is your job sucky and what do you do to work around it?

Happily, my job is not sucky. However, it certainly includes some
boring tasks, so not every day is filled with excitement and challenge.
One of the things I do to make the boring jobs bearable is to listen
to streaming audio on the web. My favorite is www.pandora.com.

Joyce

"tanadashoes" wrote in message
...
I told a friend that I think that all jobs are sucky in some way or
another and that I do what I can to make my life at work more
entertaining.

I people watch, work on come backs, think how I'd do something
differently than the teacher, and doodle strange pictures (I can't
draw) that I'll have to throw away anyway.

On road trips or other commutes, we play license plat phrases. For
instance, WVH could translate into "Wild Vixens Here."

So is your job sucky and what do you do to work around it?

Pam S. who also imagines what it would be like to have one of the cats
teaching the class

Fortunately, and THANK BAST I don't have a sucky job at the moment, but I
don't cope well with them. When I have a sucky job it seriously depresses
and sucks the life out of me, so I can't enjoy my non-working life either.
The decisive factor is the people. I do much better with sucky duties when
there are good people around me.

On Nov 29, 11:18 am, tanadashoes wrote:

So is your job sucky and what do you do to work around it?


When I had a boring jobs, I used to:

a. be glad I wasn't in an iron lung or something similar.
b. tell myself it still beat the unemployment line
c. hung a sign over my desk which read "Just shaddap and do it"
rather than complain.
d. realized that by the time I retired, I'd be pretty old and to just
enjoy my younger years while I had 'em..
e. tip: save all you can WHILE you are still working. Retirement
sneaks up on you fast.

tanadashoes wrote:
I told a friend that I think that all jobs are sucky in some way or
another and that I do what I can to make my life at work more
entertaining.

So is your job sucky and what do you do to work around it?

Pam S. who also imagines what it would be like to have one of the cats
teaching the class

I've only ever had one truly sucky job (this was back in 1992). I was the
Route Accounting Supervisor for a (now defunct, thank Bast!) vending machine
company. I was also responsible for maintaining the computer systems (heh,
such as they were) in the place. As Theresa said, it sucked the life out of
me and made me very depressed. The duties were okay, but *boring*. That's
okay, every job has a bit of tedium. But...

My boss was the comptroller of the company and a former Army DS. (That's
Drill Sargeant for those who don't know.) He acted like he was still in the
Army. He thought *nothing* of screaming at employees (including me) in
front of everyone and his brother for transgressions, real or imagined.
Highly unprofessional. And I was on my lunch break one day so I made a
personal phone call from my desk. He knew I was on my lunch break because
we had a scheduled lunch break. Anyway, I'm on the phone taking care of
some personal business when he walked up to my desk and disconnected the
call. How very rude! What he had to say to me could have waited 15
minutes.

The other (long-term) employees were all gossips. This place was a regular
Peyton Place - he did/she did, he said/she said. Rumours flew all over the
place about who was sleeping with whom. I cannot stand this sort of
behaviour, especially since these same people would be all friendly to the
one(s) they were gossiping about.

Sexual harrassment apparently was a foreign concept. One of the (very
married) route supervisors passed me a note that said, "When can I get in
your pants?" EXCUSE ME?! Of course he grabbed it and practically swallowed
it when I started to put it in my pocket. *I* certainly understood sexual
harrassment but apparently he thought I was just another dumb blonde who
would be flattered by his attentions.

Now, no offense to anyone (every time I say that someone gets offended,
sorry!) but my boss started hiring my staff of from a church organization
that sponsored recent immigrants from countries like Poland and various
countries from the former Soviet block. He did this because due to some
obscure law concerning providing jobs and on the job training for (legal)
immigrants they didn't have to pay them minimum wage. These poor women
could barely speak English, let alone understand the company's *very*
outdated computer system.

A brief description of the system would be, remember back around 1980 when
you inserted a floppy disk containing the program in Slot A and a blank
floppy in Slot B on which to write your saved data? It was like that,
except the floppy disks were on a screen rather than physical disks. And
you had to switch between one and the other. It was running on an equally
antiquated version of Unix.

So I'm trying to train these poor people who have been in the U.S. for 6
months, who barely spoke English. And we were running the company's
accounting system for vending machine sales! Does this make any sense??
Just so he can save a dollar an hour in wages.

Long story short, there really *was* no way to cope. I was angry, I was
depressed. I became physically ill and I chalk it up to this place. But
I'd gotten the job through a "headhunter" and the agreement was the company
would pay the recruiting agency's fee ($1300, IIRC) as long as I worked
there for 1 year, otherwise I had to pay it. I couldn't afford to just quit
so yes, I worked there for a year. Little did my charming (heh) boss know I
was actively looking for another job during the last 3 months of that year.
And I landed a position! So when that 1 year mark arrived I happily told
him to shove it up his arse.

Jill

On Nov 29, 10:18 am, tanadashoes wrote:
I told a friend that I think that all jobs are sucky in some way or
another and that I do what I can to make my life at work more
entertaining.

I people watch, work on come backs, think how I'd do something
differently than the teacher, and doodle strange pictures (I can't
draw) that I'll have to throw away anyway.

On road trips or other commutes, we play license plat phrases. For
instance, WVH could translate into "Wild Vixens Here."

So is your job sucky and what do you do to work around it?

Pam S. who also imagines what it would be like to have one of the cats
teaching the class

I never had a sucky job. I did, however, have jobs where I had to work
with sucky people. This was back in the days of the Walkman. I used to
put those headphones on sometimes when I didn't even have the music
on.
I found that people wouldn't talk to me that way.
The most irritating thing were people who hung over my cubicle and
yakked.

Sherry

Sherry wrote:

I never had a sucky job. I did, however, have jobs where I had to work
with sucky people. This was back in the days of the Walkman. I used to
put those headphones on sometimes when I didn't even have the music
on.
I found that people wouldn't talk to me that way.
The most irritating thing were people who hung over my cubicle and
yakked.

LOL - this is so far off-topic from the original question that I'm
starting a new thread. I once had a roommate (back in college - when
we shared a single room) who never, ever shut up. In her, this was
actually pathological - she was completely unable to relate to
people normally. For one thing, she was obsessed with stuff that
nobody else cared about, such as the plots of romance novels and soap
operas. Most of the other lucky people could just walk away when she
started nattering at them about that stuff. But being her roommate,
I was stuck hearing every last detail!

This was the first semester of my freshman year, my first time living
away from home. She was two years older and totally took advantage of
my inexperience and lack of confidence/assertiveness. After a month
of having to endure her endless chatter, I happened to go home for a
visit - and that's when I nabbed a set of stereo headphones.

After I got back to school, the first time she started the long,
highly detailed description of the romance novel she was reading, I
quickly grabbed the headphones and turned on my stereo. HEAVEN!!
However, after several minutes, I happened to glance toward her, and
to my horror, I saw that she was *still talking*! And gesticulating!
Just as though I could hear her. Actually, I don't think she really
cared, or maybe she was just too clueless to notice that I was
blatantly not listening.

Before the end of that semester, I begged Those Who Were In Charge
Of Such Things to *please, please* change my room assignment, which
they did. Second semester, I discovered that I had a whole room to
myself. This was one of those sought-after accidents that most people
didn't get in this dorm, where every room was designed for two people.

However, I chanced to meet the new person who had been assigned to my
old room and roommate. She was an unsuspecting transfer student, and
I immediately took pity on her. When I and several other dorm residents
told her about how awful my former roommate was to be stuck with, she
looked very alarmed. So I offered her the extra space in my room, which
she took. Very altruistic of me, I have to say - not so sure I'd do
that now! She turned out to be not overly pleasant, either, but mostly
tolerable. Certainly not the horror the first roommate was.

(I didn't even go into the huge mess roommate #1 kept all over the
floor - including dirty dishes with caked, rotting food, for weeks!)

Joyce - glad I can afford to live with nobody but the furballs!

On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:18:04 -0800 (PST),Pam S. wrote:

So is your job sucky and what do you do to work around it?

Having held several sucky jobs I can honestly say my best coping
method is to remind myself that a large portion of people in my area
can't find any job at all so I better count my lucky stars so long as
I have a job. It sucks to have a crummy job, but it sucks even more
to have no heat and no food in the house.

BTW It's called work for a reason. If it were fun it would be called
a game.
Debra in VA
See my quilts at
http://community.webshots.com/user/debplayshere

Debra wrote:

BTW It's called work for a reason. If it were fun it would be called
a game.

LOL. Well, there are certainly jobs that need to get done, that nobody
wants to do, like climbing into sewers, collecting the garbage, and so
on. That certainly fits your definition.

In order to make sure people actually complete their responsibilities,
you have to pay them. Otherwise, even if they love it, they're probably
going to do it according to their own schedule. And maybe they won't
get all the boring parts done. Every job has boring parts, and if you
didn't get paid, why would you do those parts? Maybe you would, if it
was necessary in order to keep the fun part going. But you'd probably
procrastinate, and do as minimal a job of it as possible. When someone's
paying you, they get to tell you exactly what's expected and when you
have to have it done.

I know some people who are paid to do what they love, and they feel
very lucky. I have a slightly different take on this, though. To me,
being paid to do something, no matter how much I love it, would take
a lot of the joy out of it. I like to do things my own way and in my
own time. I enjoy my hobbies and avocations, at least partly because
nobody's telling me what to do or how/when to do it. If I started
doing any of those things for pay, it would become a chore, I think.
So I don't necessarily envy people who get paid to do what they love.
I prefer to do the things I love just for me, not to fulfill an
obligation.

Joyce