Some questions about jobs

[skygazer]

1. How do you feel about your job?

2. How important is it to you to like your job?

3. If you are currently jobless or have been in the past, has that affected your opinions about question number 2?

4. Do you consider your job "just a job" or a career?

5. Do you feel you're compensated fairly for your job?

6. If you choose any job, what would it be?


My answers -

1. I like my job but I don't love it. I have had jobs in the past that I loved.

2. For me, it's not terribly important as long as I don't despise it. I can find something to enjoy about nearly anything and my job is not at the center of my universe.

3. I think having had to struggle for jobs and go through long periods of unemployment has made me a little less picky about a job.

4. My job is "just a job." I'm now going to school and hope to use my education to enter a career.

5. I do feel I'm compensated fairly. I make good money and have very good benefits, especially considering the current political climate.

6. My dream job would be to critique roller coasters. Ride them all and write reviews. :P

[Lavender Brown]

1. I feel like I've been having this discussion a lot lately... :)

1. How do you feel about your job?
I don't particularly like it, because it's entry-level and that's not where I wanted to be at this point (since I switched gears), but I hope that it will give me experience that will be useful in the future.

2. How important is it to you to like your job?
Very important. I need to like what I'm doing as well like the people I'm working with and the environment. I have had several jobs since college, and one was such a bad experience I think it set me back in time in terms of confidence. Most of my work experiences had been great until then.

3. If you are currently jobless or have been in the past, has that affected your opinions about question number 2?
I'd rather be working at a mediocre job that is even tangentially related to my interests than be struggling to find one at all. I did have a long job hunt after moving and it was a really rough time for me.

4. Do you consider your job "just a job" or a career?
I'm hoping that, together with grad school, it will be a springboard to another career. I'm applying for grad school in a related field but have a lot of questions about whether it'll be right for me.

5. Do you feel you're compensated fairly for your job?
I guess it is decent for this area and for modest requirements of the position, but it is not great for someone with my education and skill level. The benefits are very good and I know I'm lucky in comparison to a lot of people in that respect.

6. If you choose any job, what would it be?
Good question... I'm unfortunately sort of ambivalent about what I want to do and have changed my mind more times than I can remember. :crazy:

[skygazer]

2. Thanks for answering

I'll just give this a kick. Just questions I ponder from time to time. :hi:

[Wapsie B]

3. Here's my thoughts...................

1. How do you feel about your job?

I feel at the end of the line with my job right now. There is little intellectual challenge. Education is not respected nor rewarded. I was always told that education means something. Not here. In fact, there seems to be a feeling of entitlement to advancement simply by passing your board exams with minimal education. It's a tolerable existence because it pays the bills. But my growth as a person has been stifled for years in this job.

2. How important is it to you to like your job?

As important as breathing.

3. If you are currently jobless or have been in the past, has that affected your opinions about question number 2?

In that case I'll take almost any job. But employers here know that and take advantage of that mindset.

4. Do you consider your job "just a job" or a career?

At one time I thought of it as a career. Especially since the field was truly in its infancy at the time. But almost 25 years later I've come to see little but the profiteering, refusing to enact standards and requirements.....
It pays the bills. But little more.

5. Do you feel you're compensated fairly for your job?

No. At the time I was hired, HR drew out the fact that I didn't have a college degree. The hiring mgr. browbeat me and downplayed my experience. Then they drug me through 3 interviews before finally giving me a lowball offer, which he knew I'd accept. I never had the balls to ask as to whether anyone else in my future dept. had a degree. Turns out not only did no one else not have one, the hiring mgr. did not have one either. On top of that I was the only applicant with any kind of experience in my field, in fact the only serious applicant for this position.

Fast-forward 16 years. I now have my BA. Does it mean anything to them? Not a lick. The person I supposedly share supervisory duties with was hired with people bending over backwards to get her, even though she had no education or experience at the time.
I tell ya, I'd give anything to have an interview where I'm treated like a human being and hired for what I know and compensated for my skills and experience. Just once I'd love to find my right place in the world. It sure as hell ain't here.

And people wonder why they detect a sense of bitterness in me at times.



6. If you choose any job, what would it be?

Right now, I have no idea. I'm in the process of trying to find what that should be for me.


Great post!!

:)

[skygazer]

4. Thanks for replying

It sucks to feel underappreciated and taken advantage of. I don't blame you for the bitterness. The whole corporate climate is so anti-worker. I like my job in that I like the particular store I work in but the corporation itself is a bloodsucking leech that doesn't give a squat about its employees. Makes it hard to care about what you're doing for them. ~sigh~

[Wapsie B]

6. You're welcome.

Careers and work are topics I think about all the time. I do give myself props for getting this far. I mean the world would be perfectly content to have a previously uneducated soft-spoken introverted loner wallow his life away stocking shelves at Walmart or scrubbing toilets somewhere. But I've had this feeling of being needed somewhere else in the world. That feeling has not gone away from my first job working at Hardee's until this day. I just don't know where that place is. And it's not like I have some outstanding gift that's been stroked or encouraged by others, at school or elsewhere or recognized by me for that matter.
This is why I am seeing a career counselor.

[hfojvt]

5. a job is just a meal ticket to me

1. It has its good points and bad points. In some ways it sucks doing physical grunt labor, but in other ways the work time does usually go by pretty quickly. It would also help if my co-workers were not psychotic and shamelessly lazy and self-promoting.

2. Not important at all. It has always been hard for me to find any job, and usually there is something to like about it. I remember being happy coming home from my first day of factory work. I was 31, and the fact that I had a job at all made me feel like I was gonna survive. After about 3 months, then it seemed like it was 'nose to the grindstone'. I would think 'griiiiind' every time I got up to goto work.

3. Obviously yes. If I could pick and choose, then I might be pickier, but beggars cannot be choosers.

4. It has always been 'just a job'. For seven years I had my own bookstore, but for five of those years I worked a 2nd job to support it. Now I am 45 and consider myself retired. Still working part time, like most retired people. Unlike them, I do not get much of an income for not working.

5. I am probably paid too much. Even the internet thing said I was on the high end for my field. I wouldn't pay $12.50 plus benefits for a janitor (of course, I would do it myself).

6. Ideally I would like to be paid to beat the crap out of people at employment agencies who ask a job seeker 'what kind of job to you want?' as if it is a relevant question. Otherwise, if not for my desire to improve the world with social work, it would be nice to be paid to sit by a private pool, and read, swim, eat, play video games, and have sex with a super-model as the mood strikes me.

[Chan790]

7. Answers from a guy who worked friday, Saturday and Sunday...damn you coffee-drinkers.

1. How do you feel about your job?

I hate it. I love aspects of it...but it's not enough to make me want to stay. It's what I do for fun...except when I do it for fun, I have all the power and I don't have to live on a pittance. I make coffee art...I'm a professional barista and an exceptional one at that. Not a good one...an exceptional one. Competition-grade. Doesn't matter to my employer. I'm just a cog in the corporate machine. Indie coffeehouses aren't any better. Why pay top talent when you can hire and train mediocre talent to make mediocre product? The public won't pay more for top grade. That's the industry logic. I know it's not true, but how do you tell that to Starbucks? Everybody follows the industry-leader until somebody proves there is another way. Nobody is even trying.

2. How important is it to you to like your job?

Currently: Extremely...That's why I'm leaving.

In the past: Not as much...it's only important to like your job if you're not also training or improving to move to a better one.

3. If you are currently jobless or have been in the past, has that affected your opinions about question number 2?

Yes, I was. Yes, it has. There was a time when I never would have taken a "just a job" (at all)...or employment, career or otherwise, which I didn't think was interesting and fun.

4. Do you consider your job "just a job" or a career?

It's a job...I'm pursuing training to return to my past-and-hopefully-future career. Actually, I finished pursuing training (I hope) and am about to return to my field...if somebody will hire me. Anybody looking for a Development Assistant with previous experience raising over $1M in a year?

5. Do you feel you're compensated fairly for your job?

You're kidding...right? No...I'm vastly underpaid.

6. If you choose any job, what would it be?

Development.

[femmocrat]

8. Some answers....

1. How do you feel about your job? I am very proud to be a teacher, but I don't really LOVE teaching. It is about 95% perspiration and 5% inspiration.

2. How important is it to you to like your job? Well, liking it wasn't an option. I didn't have many choices... women became teachers, nurses or secretaries back in the day. I like it better than nursing or office work!

3. If you are currently jobless or have been in the past, has that affected your opinions about question number 2? Definitely! When I wasn't teaching, I wanted to teach more than breathe.

4. Do you consider your job "just a job" or a career? It was a life-long career for me.

5. Do you feel you're compensated fairly for your job? Yes, and we have great benefits.

6. If you choose any job, what would it be? I wish I would have become a veterinarian.... but that was a really difficult path for women back then. And as much as I loved biology, I totally hated chemistry. Don't think I could have made it through all the college-level science classes.

[Nikia]

9. My answers

1. My job stresses me out for several resasons:the conflict between my boss and the owning family to the extent that it makes me hard to respect my boss and trust his judgement, the fact that my boss doesn't think that I should have been hired in the first place because I have trouble lifting 55 pounds above my head (see my post in the women's rights forum), the fact that I am expected to play offense and defense at the same time (do research and development and make sure everything going out the door is good), and the fact that I am expected to be able to compete with large companies which have large research and development departments lead by people with lots of education and experience and who do that job full time, instead of having quality duties too. Despite all this stress, it is an improvement over my previous job where I was sexually harassed and did not feel intellectually challenged.
2. I wish that I enjoyed my job more since I spend almost 10 hours per day there. When I went away to college, I always thought that I'd be able to get a job that I like just for having a degree, but it turned out to be more difficult than I thought.
3. I was briefly under employed after my seasonal first position in quality in the food industry (I worked fast food). Now I have more experience so getting any job is easier. What wasn't easy for me was getting a job that pays well, over $30,000 or even $25,000 per year.
4. I consider it a career, which is why I am not looking for another job. I figure that I should give this a good try. If I have this job for another 2 or 3 years, I should be in a good position to get a better job.
5. In a way, I am well compensated because they pay me more than the other jobs that were offered to me. It makes me feel afraid that one day they'll decide that I am not worth what they pay, because they underpay the production workers. In a way, I feel like other people get payed more, putting up with much less crap than I do.
6. (Almost forgot) I have wanted to be many different things since childhood. Realistically, I want to do research and development exclusively under a competent mentor. What I really want to do is be a writer.