What you like and dislike about your current/past jobs

[Super Cyborg]

No matter the job, there is usually at least one thing you love about it, and hate about it. One has to find something they like from what they do if they are to survive working, and even the job of your dreams will have it's downsides. The question is always if there is more that you like about your job than hate it, which is a big part of why people keep their jobs or move on to different ones.

I currently work as a Marine Mammal Observer/ PAM operator offshore in the Gulf of Mexico on seismic vessels. Basically, I either look for Marine Mammals during the day, or listen for them during the night using specialized equipment to listen underwater and get an approximate distance the animals are from the vessels. I do this so I can instruct the crew what to do to mitigate the damage done to the Marine Mammals.

Here are the things I love about my job.
-I get to see lots of cool stuff. I've seen Bottlenose dolphins, spotted dolphins, Short-finned Pilot whales, a Sperm Whale, Various turtles including Leather Backs, Hammerheads, a variety of birds, and different kinds of fish.
-When I'm offshore, I'm not paying for gas, food, or other daily expenses
-Food is cooked for all the crew, as well as cleaning of everything
-Unless I ask to work more, I only actually work half the year (I get paid by the day for when I'm not home)
-When I'm home during time off, I can do whatever I want
-The crew's I've been with are pretty relaxed and friendly

Things I dislike, or in this case, things that are a bit of a bummer.
-When offshore, I have to work everyday, even if I'm not feeling well (Hasn't really happened much, and the worst was I had a bad cold.)
-I'm stuck on the boat for five weeks, so I'm limited to what I bring and what they have for entertainment (hasn't been a problem yet)
-Food choices are hit or miss, especially when working during the night.
-Stuff I can do on internet is limited (hasn't been a problem)
-Worse case scenario that can happen, I get stranded at sea for a period of time
-I'm a contract worker so my taxes are higher.

Overall, I love my job, and the down-sides are mostly irrelevant for the period I'm offshore. I've been doing this for a little over a year now, and have worked about 300 days offshore now. I see myself doing this for a while still, until I either go for my Master's or try for a different job.

What about the rest of you? What do you like/dislike about your job, whether it's your current one, or one you had in the past?

 

[Qwurty2.0]

I'm a 19 year old college student working his way through college. I've worked at the same company for almost 3.5 years now. It's a warehouse, and I've gone from a temp who unloads truck trailers to one of the most reliable and important workers in the warehouse (depends on who you ask; my manager says I'm one of his best employees, but I'm also the youngest guy there by a long shot and I don't see myself as above my coworkers).

Pros:
- Well paying for a kid my age for the work I do ($12.00/hr).
- Easy / laid-back. The job is easy to do and virtually stress free.
- The coworkers are nice and my manager is gives me tons of leeway.

Cons:
- Boring. It's very difficult for me to work up my motivation to work 10 hrs a day like I was in high school. It's the same thing, every day, over and over again.
- No future raises, unless I intent to drop out of college or go back full time after graduating (not happening). I've gone as far up as I can in the warehouse, but I can't be moved up to the front offices unless I am going to be there full-time/long-term.
- Hard to connect with coworkers. Most of my immediate coworkers are 30+ men who only ever achieved a high school education. Some have worked there for years and don't make any more than they did 20 years ago. They're nice but boring. There are about 2 other people who are either attending college (26-but-looks-21 married lay major, I get along well with him), or completed college that I get along with well who have great senses of humor.
- Boring. I am stating this again because of how huge it is for me. Sometimes I just want to smash my head into a metal rack to ease the pain of boredom. Argh!

But it's not that bad, from what I'm told.

 

[Colour Scientist]

I worked in retail for five years to help pay my way through college, that was a mixed bag.

I could probably complain about retail work for hours but it definitely had its moments. I think the best and worst thing about retail is people, they can really make or break your experience, I'm including both customers and coworkers in that.


For the past two months I've been working as an archivist and I've yet to see a downside. After an undergrad and two Masters degrees, getting a job in a field I actually want to pursue as a career and doing something I actually studied for is still a novelty.

I'm sure eventually I'll start finding problems but, at the moment, I'm just glad to have the job.
It's interesting, well paid, I have almost complete autonomy, people trust me to know what I'm doing, it's peaceful, I just love everything about it right now.

 

[Elfgore]

I've worked one job my entire life, it has its ups and downs.

Pros:
-My co-workers are awesome. I get along with all of them and enjoy working with 99% of them.
-Steady Hours
-Flexible schedule.

Cons:
-Incompetent managers. Including my Team Lead, my department lead, and my store director.
-Corruption, lies, cover-ups to keep managers around.
-I only like two managers out of ten.
-Pay kinda sucks, but that's kinda expected.

I may not be there much longer. My Department lead has been an even bigger ***** than usual. Driving me crazy.

 

[e033x]

I have been in heaven and hell when i comes to jobs. Well, not full time jobs, probably never going to have any of those with my career-path, but project and part time work. I am currently studying orchestral conducting, and have gotten a couple of paid projects. On the other hand, I work at a truck stop/fast food joint in the summers to make ends meet.

Lets see, pros and cons with the conducting:

Pros:
-Doing what I love/practicing my education
-I'm the boss
-Short days (3-4 hour rehearsals max)
-Good hourly rates (last one i got the equivalent of $100 per hour, bear in mind that this is Norway, and $100 only gets you a meal at a decent restaurant. It also doesn't count preparation work done on my own time.)
-Very nice people all around (nobody messes with the conductor)

Cons (It would be hard to imagine having any):
-Few hours to get ("average" is 3-4 hours per week, plus one weekend every other month [project work...])
-Every mistake you ever make is going to haunt you forever.

Then, on the other hand, flipping burgers!

Cons first this time...:
-Long days with few breaks (12 hour shifts are awesome.....)
-Lousy pay (by norwegian standards)
-Poor job security/breaking labour laws (no overtime pay, too long days and weeks, no contract)
-Manager is an old hag with a poor temper
-I have to drive to work, since it is by a highway, costing me money for fuel
-Flipping burgers is really boring compared to my studies (I yearn for the summer holiday to end, and school to resume)

...because there really are not any pros other than:
-I have a job.

Needless to say, I am going to quit the second one, and pursue the first one more.

 

[Chemical Alia]

I'm currently a Steam Workshop cosmetics engineer, I make hats and hat accessories. Mostly for Dota, occasionally CS:GO and even less occasionally TF2. My pros and cons are based on my other game industry job experience, like working in a big studio.

Pros:

- I can work from anywhere. This means that after six years in Texas, I can finally move!

- I set my own hours (though my last job had wonderful flexibility as well)

- Everything I make, I'm excited about because I have complete control and am responsible for the design from concept to finish. Unless there's animations needed.

- I love being able to interact with the community and make stuff that they enjoy. So many cool people.

- I'm learning all kinds of stuff that normally someone else would be taking care of for me. Like doing business with people/organizations, marketing art/marketing in general, concept art, etc.

- I can take as much vacation as I want. I can even work on vacation...wait, no, that's bad.

- My job feels like a really long summer vacation during college without having a job. I feel like I'm doing what I would be doing for fun, but being paid for it.


Cons:

- Hella taxes, and my pay isn't pre-taxed so I have to figure that out myself

- I set my own hours. I have a bad habit of working more than is healthy without realizing it, and get very involved. Especially when I'm stressed out, I turn to work.

- It's really hard to answer the question "so what do you do for a living?"

- Even among game devs, it's a new thing and sometimes I feel like by leaving my stable studio job, I took a "step down" that won't be seen in as high regard on my resume. Despite the fact that my job description has expanded significantly.

- My success isn't guaranteed directly through the quality or quantity of my work. There's a lot of random factors that I have no control of on Valve's side that determine whether something I make gets added, and it can get pretty scary/stressful at times.

- I miss the studio environment sometimes. I've been doing more livestreaming lately to feel like less of a hermit in a cave all day.

Overall I love this job. I don't know how long I'll do it, but I'm going to take advantage of it while I can. I will probably go back to working in a studio at some point, but I right now I'm interested to see where this whole new workshop thing goes.

 

[Mr Fixit]

I make rubber stamps & dies in a small shop & do a little graphic design work when needed. I've been here for about 10 years now & mostly I love my job.

The Good: I generally set my own hours, if I need to come in late or leave early, no problem. I really get along with all my co-workers except for one. My boss is a very "hands off" type of person, he lets us do our jobs & just signs our paychecks. As long as my work gets done I can play around on the net in my down time, which is awesome. No strict dress code, just wear whats comfortable. Oh yeah one last awesome thing, the laptop I'm typing this on was paid for by the company & I was told to treat as my own & don't worry about paying them back for it.

The Bad: The one co-worker I can't stand also happens to be the shop manager, my direct "superior", he's a fat lazy slob that does not do his job. I do his job. All he does is just sit around & annoy me all damn day with one stupid question after another. I still don't know why he hasn't been fired. It's hot as hell during the summer & cold during the winter. I've got a 35 mile one way trip to work every day.

Over all the good does outweigh the bad though.

 

[L. Declis]

I've done work as a foreign English tutor in China, so I figure I may as well throw in:

Pros:
+Go outside an agency and it's decent pay.
+High demand.
+Students who actually want to work are happy to work.
+Many invitations to dinner, both male and female students.
+A fun job, different work all the time.
+New class means you can re-use material.
+Nothing is as good as when they finally 'get it'
+Meeting other expats who understand your feelings towards China sometimes

Cons:
-Chinese companies tend to try and take the piss and argue over wages or paying you, even after you've signed
-A significant lack of respect by fellow teachers and Chinese people in general; there's the phrase "back home loser"
-Chinese students who have been forced to come here by their parents and clearly don't want to be here.
-Unreliable hours (I worked as a tutor, people would book me)
-You're less a teacher than a walking advertisement; expect to be used for marketing materials.
-Due to shit English teachers (like students or people who can't teach wanting to do it), our profession gets even less respect by the bad many.
-Highly racist; I know a French person who was employed because they are white, but a South African who was paid a fourth of the wage because she was black, despite being a native English speaker.
-You're a curiousity to many of the Chinese, nothing more.
-You have to live in China; it seems obvious, but there are many negatives to this, including being spat at, insulted, being asked to pay several times the price, having service refused because you're not Chinese, etc.
-People will try to be friends with you for the sake of free English lessons, or ask you to proofread their work, or try to constantly hang out with you and then expect an impromptu English lesson for free.

It was a fun experience, and when I go to China to study, I'll be doing some part-time to make some spare cash, but as soon as I finish my Accounting degree, I'm never touching the job again.

 

[dumbseizure]

Well, I recently left a baking job and finally have my qualifications to go into real estate, but seeing as I don't have a real estate job yet, I guess the baker role will do.

Pros
-was generally told what to make of a morning, then left to my own devices until it was done
-got a long with all the girls at the store (was the only male working there which had advantages and disadvantages, but overall it was a fun 2 years), still go out to dinners and the like with the girls from there.
-sometimes had quite short days if there was not much to make that day
-boss was nice, towards the end of my time there he opened another 2 stores so he was never in, but the days he came to check how we were doing he'd buy us all a bacon and egg breakfast

cons
-early mornings, 5 am starts at the latest were a pain in the ass
-events, if we catered to events it was an even bigger pain in the ass, I once had to spend nearly 12 hours in the store over night baking 1000 muffins for the next day.
-other bakers were a pain in the ass, was the most experienced baker there, so I went in sometimes on my days off and all the products the other bakers made were absolute shit, seriously how do you make a muffin with the consistency of a bouncy ball

Overall I quite enjoyed my time there though, the coworkers were nice, job was generally a breeze, had to remember a bit for recipes but after a month or so of consulting the book I could make most cakes and slices with no hassles.

 

[smithy_2045]

I like all the free time, but I don't like not receiving payment as a result of having no job.

 

[lacktheknack]

The good and bad thing about my last job as a cashier is that it was very stable and didn't require a ton of adaptation, but was boring as hell.

The good and bad thing about my new job as a fleet management intern is that the work is varied and interesting, but it's so unstable and new stuff happens so often that I occasionally dread coming into work.

 

[Verlander]

I'm a Consultant who specialises in restructuring multinational corporations, and corporate taxes. I also deal heavily with something called transfer pricing.

Pros:

-I work in Central London, near some great landmarks, and a short walk from my flat.
-I'm on silly money.
-I work in a lush office, and get high life treatment.
-I get treated insanely well most of the time.
-I travel across the world, business.
-It feels great being in a better position than many who were "better" than me at school, or who lorded it over me because they studied Physics or Math at University, but have had to take overseas positions to earn even a portion of what I do.
-I get to meet my business and political heroes at events, although I also meet some people I have very little respect for.

Cons:

-The job is hard. Really hard. It would take several lifetimes to know everything there is to know.
-I used to enjoy debating online with people, but it's difficult to even connect now when people want to talk about tax. I sound very arrogant here, but when your understanding is on another level, how can you communicate your insight?
-Trying to explain "what I do" to people at social events.
-Trying to pack in everything into the day. I've sworn never to be the guy who comes home at midnight every night and is back out at 5am, but it's hard.
-Expectations are incredibly high, which makes the job stressful.
-Although my colleagues are honourable and intelligent people, many of my further afield contemporaries are not. I often have to deal with some very despicable people.
-I have lost friends over my job, people who think I'm earning money by robbing the nation of tax revenue. This is annoying, as I tend to bring more revenue into this country.

 

[scorptatious]

Well, I work as a porter at a bowling alley. It's alright. The hours are decent, I get paid, and I get to talk to people my age regularly.

What I don't really like about it is that most of the time, there isn't much for me to do. Sure, I pick up dead balls, clean up tables, restrooms, ect. But after that, I usually find myself going around in large circles keeping an eye on all the lanes looking for stuff to do. It gets boring after a while.

My manager has given task lists to all the porters on days when we're not too busy, and that kinda helps, but I still find myself finishing everything long before the day is done.

One thing I really hate about my job is people constantly asking me where the kid sized balls are. I keep directing them to the front desk where they were just at. I kept thinking that the people working at the front desk should really offer the kid sized balls themselves before sending them to their lane. It would save everyone, most importantly the customers, time. But in the ten months I worked there, the thought never seemed to cross their minds, so I had to suggest it at one of our staff meetings to my manager.

And of course, there's the occasional asshole customers, but hey, that's a part of most any retail job.

Overall, I guess I should be thankful I have a job at all, but it just feels like kind of a drag.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I.m currently working in a retail discount brand or cheap brand shop-

Pro
The customers are super friendly (which I am grateful for) since most of them are local (most of the time elderly) or tourist. Sure I may face some awkward customers but I never once had any of them shouted at my face.
I get 10% discount on the stuff except for the food.
The job itself is pretty much easy to do that is if you're not the manager or supervisor/ keyholder.
Currently the staff and manager are all nice people to work for (I had one dickhead supervisor and a bad maanger in the past).
A few shops down is a ice cream palour so it's a nice treat to have after finishing work or to go on my break.
Right now booking a day off or holiday are more reasonable or rather the manager is more willing to allow more than one person off in a day or week (previous manager wou;dn't allow it).

Con-
Most of the time (90%) I worked on the Sunday, Sure I don't mind it per say but I would like to have that day off every now and then. The reason why I get to work on that day is cos I'm one of the few staff who are flexible.
the usual cons in retail like being at work before and after closing time.
Sometime customers can be annoying by still coming in when it's closing time or right after closing time. Even then sometime there could be something wrong when adding up the total cash meaning I'm still in the store when I should had left by then.
Winter is a total ***** to work at cos you're in extra early and closing time and worse of all I get stuck at working boxing day (see above reason) despite I do earn more on that day!
It take me 20-25 to get to work on foot but in saying so it could be worse (I know that it does take longer for some people to get into work).
Sometime I may get a called to come into work. Sure I can say I can't come in but I'm not a jerk.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

snip

That sounds like a very interesting job and setting.

May I ask, how you go about getting into that kind of setting? I ask because I'm considering offshore work as well. I might take up school for commercial diving in a year or so but I'd still like to put my foot in the offshore door in the meantime. I'm interested in pretty much anything from boats to oil rigs. Any advice would be a huge help.

OT: I currently work for a contractor company that constructs chemical plants. I do a mix of office work and field work. A lot of DOT/fuel related stuff, onsite equipment inventory and usage, and occasional safety stuff.

Pros:

-Chemical Plants are a really cool setting. So much work going on in every direction! It's a lot more exciting to be there than in an office, and also sometimes intimidating. But that just makes it more engaging to me.

-Rules. This one is kindof hard to explain since I've never been the kind of person to follow rules. But rules take on a completely different meaning in a setting with volatile chemicals, heavy machinery, and high pressures.

No bullshit HR "rules" about dress codes or proper workplace language or respecting other people's cultural heritage or anything.

Watch out for yourself, and watch out for others. Safety above all else. The rules are there to protect each other. And if someone messes up, the entire plant will feel the consequences immediately. I like it, the rules really feel like they have a place and a purpose. Naturally, everyone wants to go home in one piece. So you'd have to be a real fool to ignore safety procedures, and these fools tend to be punished swiftly and severely.

-Per diem! This is also the kind of job where a handsome amount of per diem is granted every work day. In general, the company foots many of our expenses. Which it then passes onto the chemical companies. Naturally, those companies don't give a shit how much anything costs.

Cons:

-Lengthy drive every day. It's a 120 mile roundtrip to the jobsite and back home in a single day. So it's about 2400 miles of driving in a month minus the drives to actual plant sites. Over an hour to get to work, over an hour to get home. Meaning I have to be up pretty stupid early, 10 hour days at work itself, followed by the drive home. I'm generally exhausted through the week and have very little free time.

-Coworkers not following the fucking rules.

-Sometimes I don't get to go to the plants, meaning I'm stuck in the office all day dealing with paperwork. And I fucking hate paperwork.

 

[Bagged Milk]

I work at a somewhat small grocery store chain that prides itself on being efficient and offering the lowest prices. This store is much more popular in a certain european country.

Pro
super fast paced. Days go by in an instant!
pretty swell pay! Much more than most people my age would be making
decent customers and coworkers. Nobody is really much of a dick. There's the occasional bad customer, but overall, pretty nice
Flexible hours. If I ask for it off, I'll probably get it. So long as I ask before the schedule was made
Health, dental and vision insurance and a 401k! again, someone my age would be lucky to be making a few cents over minimum wage let alone benefits!

con
super fast paced. Holy shit. They expect us to move faster than humanly possible and if you somehow manage to meet an expectation, they tell you how you're still not nearly as good enough
I'm a huge pushover. I will do anything and everything anyone asks me to do. I get yelled at for bagging people's groceries because I'm not going fast enough. I'm told I should "care less"
they expect you to be entirely dedicated to the store and the customers.
I have to be super flexible as well. I've had weeks without days off because someone else calls in sick every day and no one wants to come in. Although when I call in sick, I'm told to come in anyways because no one wants to come in
also, many, many 12 hour days
we are constantly understaffed

I dunno if the pros outweigh the cons, but I don't feel I have much of a choice considering I have an insane amount of student loan bills and car problems to pay and I can't get a better or equally paying job with my age and skill level so I'm kind of stuck here until I can pay off some things and afford to maybe go back to college or take some sort of class

edit!

Well, I recently left a baking job *snippety snip*

hey! How exactly would you get into that? I've been baking cakes and pies and cupcakes and breads practically nonstop for the past few months. I would absolutely love to work in an actual bakery. I'm just afraid of not having experience or any sort of culinary arts degree. I've never worked in a restaurant or with any food at all. What would you recommend for someone who might want to get into that sorta thing

 

[Catfood220]

I work as an Undertaker.

Pros:

Very rewarding, knowing that you have helped someone in a difficult time is a nice felling.

Interesting and varied work. You never actually know what you will be doing from one day or the next and going out on removals to collect a deceased person is almost never the same thing twice. Having said that, I've had 3 hangings in the last week.

Dedicated co-workers, almost everyone I work with cares about what they do, everything has to be perfect or as near as possible for the clients. They are putting an insane amount of trust in you to look after their loved ones so you must repay that trust in kind.

Uniform provided.

Driving funeral vehicles is fun. There is nothing better than doing a 20 mile journey at 20 MPH because the Funeral Director has over estimated the time it would take to travel from the branch to the crematorium by 15 minute and looking in the mirror and finding you are holding up a whole queue of traffic is a guilty pleasure. I know for a fact that if I was in that queue I'd be swearing up a storm.

The pay is good.

The 11 hour rule. If I am on standby and I get called out at 10 o'clock at night and finish at 1 o'clock in the morning, then because of the company I work for, I am not allowed to start work before 12 o'clock in the afternoon. If I get called out again at say 4 o'clock in the morning, then its pretty safe to say I will not be working that day. The dream standby is 10PM and 7AM, then you get the day off and a full night sleep.

Cons:

Frequently upsetting, disturbing or disgusting. Ok, you can probably guess what I mean by all 3 of those words. I have never smelt anything more revolting than someone who has been dead for a while. Its stays with you for a while too. Similarly I will never forget having to do the removal of the man who had shot himself after he found out he had a terminal illness. Or how I felt collecting a small baby from a 16 year old girls house and having the whole house full of people burst into tears. I NEVER want to feel like that again.

It desensitizes you. I mentioned above that I have had to go to 3 hangings in the last week, the first time I went to a hanging last year I was shocked. Now it has become so routine that it doesn't bother me...I don't know if that is a good thing.

Having said that, I have had dreams of headless deceased.

Lack of staff. There is a major staff shortage where I am at the moment, the manager is trying to get more staff but the ones she has interviewed are unsuitable, unwanting to work or just plain weird. This leads to problems such as covering standby. I am coming to the end of a 3 and half weeks of standby. One day and counting before I can have a beer...Then I'm back on at the end of next week.

The one guy that I work with who doesn't want the job and makes it obvious he would rather be anywhere else. But doesn't have the decency to quit. Fuck that guy.

People coming up and hitting me with a steal chair when I walk down the road.

Unnecessary paperwork.

Only of those cons is a lie put in for comic effect.

 

[Muchashca]

Some pretty interesting jobs guys, good work. I'm currently working as a programmer for a fairly large company, writing the programs that most of the employees use during the day.

Pros-

Cool co-workers with similar interests
Great pay for a college job
Excellent on a games-industry resume
You feel like the smartest person alive when you solve a hard problem

Cons-

Debugging in general
Repetitive coding, test modules, etc
Employees complaining about bugs they're unable to reproduce
You feel like the stupidest person alive when you spend all day working on a problem and make no progress

 

[ForumSafari]

IT administrator/sysadmin/whatever you want to call it for a small business.

The pros of my job are pretty numerous but let's start with the security and the pay. The fact is I get paid low for my job and it's still a fairly good pay grade. I also have a well secured job since realistically my field is in demand. I also have a great team, plenty of room for experimentation, paid study, lots of responsibility and plenty of scope to make my mark.

Oh and screw me but I have had some delicious projects. Physical expansion of premises, relocation of assets to a new supplier, local infrastructure changes, it's been beautiful.

The cons are that I tend to be the guy that gets blamed for technical issues I can't help. It sucks but my boss knows the score; that I'm working to change a legacy trainwreck slowly and I'm getting blamed for stuff I can't help.

Yeah, generally speaking I love my job. The only thing I hate about it, flat out hate, is that I'm sick of my ringer on my phone. I've got that twitch where I associate the sound with bad news. I'll change it tomorrow I think.