I don't want to have an offive job for the rest of my life!

It's either a) office b)lift things c)talk to people.

I still haven't found a good solution to this.

kind of lame (also funny) everyone was joking with you because i agree

I hate my office job and every other office job I've had since I graduated from college in 1999. So, I'm applying to go back to school for an MA and ultimately want to work in women's healthcare - specifically family planning. That said, I seriously considered becoming a midwife until I thought about the hours. As fascinating as I think it would be, I don't want to have to get up at 3:00 am because some little one decides that he/she wants to make their entrance! What can I say? I like my sleep.

― ENBB, Friday, February 23, 2007 2:47 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

This seems to have worked out well!

social work is not really a good occupation unless instead of straining your eyes you want to strain your SOUL
― Latham Green, Thursday, 22 February 2007 16:57 (1 year ago) Bookmark

I'm feeling this...

i always expected my office job to get better, for me to get used to all the minor annoyances and so on, and it just got worse and worse and worse - not even anything to do with the work itself, just the whole never-ending wake up too early/hellish commute/colleagues who i liked but not all day every day/constant encroachment into real life which stopped me from feeling on top of things ever ughhhhh

so glad i don't do that any more! am currently having awful deadline crisis but seriously typing that out has put me into a hugely more positive state of mind because i'll totally take the occasional deadline crisis over quotidian office life

also the difference that decent sleep and the time and energy for regular exercise makes is nothing short of miraculous, holy shit.

like, someone told me i looked RADIANT last week.

it's working out very well indeed! she's put in so much hard work this past year+ and i am super proud of her (xposts to hoos)

I am so hating the office life, or maybe just my career. I've been doing Web work for going on 13 years now and am just over it. It started out as something I loved and now I just don't care anymore. I took a brief break to try teaching and that was absolutely horrid. I feel I desperately need a career change before I get older and more bitter. But the last time I tried that has made me gun shy.

More office-breakout success stories.

Working in a hospital is a completely awesome compromise here (as I remember it, unemployed right now).

I'm a pharmacy tech, so a lot of my job is really simple, tangible, satisfying, completed in minute little tasks, but it's medicine, so you have to know shit and people might get hurt or sick if you fuck up. Which is good! Makes you pay really close attention and feel your job is important.

i used to have a data-entry office job for the NHS, and could only survive by telling myself that i was curing cancer with every key pressed. the underlying purpose of the office job (ie data entry for charity = good, data entry for bill collection firm = bad) means a lot.

would echo sentiments about not wanting to be in an office forever though. sometimes the most depressing thing is being the only one who's depressed about it.

x-post

I have thought of something along those lines as I like understanding medications and the like.

I want to go back to grad school but feel I must have a solid idea of what I want to do with myself before making the jump. I have no clue where to start.

nursing school is a good idea!

i LOATHED my office job to the max. every job i've had that allows me to be outside all day, however, i've loved almost without reservation. med school has been gratifying intellectually, so far, but i'm trying to ensure early on that my future career will somehow incorporate lots of outdoor activity. this will be tricky, but not impossible

i run my parents' shop. all in all the bestest thing EVAH. could not imagine an office job AT ALL.

being a nurse seems horrid. well, the ones that are now handling my gran. hah

nursing is awesome, one of the most useful, portable, and recession-proof jobs around.

public sector office job, lots of travel, training, interviews and generally out of the office a lot. hardly any commute, great hours, holidays and perks.

having worked my way up from kitchen porter/fast food joint/call centre/fisherman/tesco over the past 15 years i'm not complaining.

Hey en, that is sweet! I sometimes wish I never went to college and just got a job as a pharm tech. I am probably going to get one after I graduate, if I can't go to grad school at the same time as my husband & can't get a job in a lab or tech writing. I got mad spec for the pharm tech.

I just hope you do not work for a Walgreen's.

Nursing is awesome, Susan, and you could always be a nurse practitioner in a psych clinic and figure out what crazy-people drugs to give the crazy people.

I'm working in a museum shop right now, it's very basic but I'm trying to get on the "walking around and talking to people" side of museums and hopefully move up into more interesting positions eventually. Would like to be an archaeologist and move dirt all day, but they don't seem to be hiring in November.

i wonder if i would maybe even prefer an office job over my retail job. honestly, the boredom is killing me. i pretty much spend the whole week alone in this little store. the only colleague company i get is someone who stops by to let me take lunch, and this girl who comes in for 2 hours twice a week and basically doesn't talk. the crappy economy has slowed business so i don't even get that many customers.

i'm getting a lot of reading done, but i have to either stand all day or sit on this hard stool that is the wrong height for me (i.e. it's too tall and nowhere to put my feet).

my two biggest problems:
will NEVER go back to school for any reason
want to desperately spend all my time building up my 'company' (roffles), except a recession is about the worst time ever to start a small press (not that it's a money-maker at the best of times)

oh wait i forgot my 3rd biggest problem:
i'm not actually good at anything

i am sympathetic toward and fearful of that, i just started my job last week and am in "training" so i have company but soon i'll be alone and probably bored in the shop as well. (haha also i'm not actually good at anything!) your company sounds neat, although it's too bad about the economy...what sorts of things do you want to print?

What about Pharmacist?

I've thought of nursing but don't think I'd do well in it.

Things that are important to me: feeling like I'm doing something meaningful; variety in terms of different situations/people; not getting bored and ideally being able to separate work and life (at least not work 10-12 hour days on stuff I only tolerate.)

Money is kind of an issue too. It's not the most important thing but I don't want to take a step back either. I feel like it's too late in life for that.

we're in the middle of a poetry anthology. it's just a simple, handbound chapbook with a letterpressed plate on the cover, nice cardstock. then we have a couple of short stories and another poetry collection lined up, as well as a broadside. i really want to experiment with unusual book formats and layouts and materials. we also want to do artist books as well, maybe a lino-cut or polymer plate collection of comic strips.

xpost

ADD vs ASDs and the future of the species

thinking about jacking in my job to become a chef.

Having been wrestling with this problem for five+ years, I have decided to go back to school, study programming and become a high school computer teacher. That’s going to take me 5 years+.. in the meantime I will have to continue to work here AND on a computer during my off hours. Boo. I just hate office worker personalities!

sometimes the most depressing thing is being the only one who's depressed about it.

so OTM i just did swivel chair 360

I have decided to go back to school, study programming and become a high school computer teacher.

carbon copy of my plan for next college year

Ken, I'm being totally serious here - I think you would make a great chef, plus you love cuisine so much it seems like you'd be really happy being a chef because you'd get to be around food and making food all day. (you're one of the few people I know who I don't see ever getting tired of it.)

yay darraghmac are you in Toronto by any chance, because we could be school buddies! I'm 25 & all my friends are done school except poor lil me

I don't have an office job anymore but sometimes I yearn for the office routine of arriving in the morning and doing nothing but drinking coffee and reading the paper online.

thanks kate! i think the only thing is i don't think i'd be any good as a proper restaurant chef working my way up that kind of thing.. i'd rather somehow about able to stump up an amount of money and start my own little thing, maybe even just a van that cooks noodles for people. cos i enjoy creating new recipes way more than having the ability to chop a piece of celery into exact 1cm cubes.

Rubyredd, that sounds like such a wonderful project! I wish you the best of luck.

Oh yes, teaching...I wish I liked the idea of it more, but I don't think I have the personality for the discipline & crowd control aspects. Other than that, I could make a pretty good language or history teacher, though! I've thought that if the museum thing ends up seeming like a bad idea, maybe I'll go back to school to get ESL certification and work with adults.

(xpost)

Ken, that sounds neat, if you do that and need to expand I will come work for you.

sorry FFM, i've now decided on becoming a chef instead.

my attention span isn't great, tbh.

maybe this thread needs to be moved to i love cooking

xxxpost

The problem with teaching in American public schools is that there is so little actual teaching involved. I definitely like the idea of being in education, just not in the classroom.

oh god culinary school how i want to attend you. but yeah, the life of a working chef doesn't appeal. i'd rather be like a caterer or something. or run a little lodge in the mountains

I came to terms with work, by, er, going part-time. Obviously, this isn't a viable solution for most, but if you've been thinking about reducing your hours or have some other money making scheme, then go for it.

In the current economy I'm beginning to feel even my full-time, well-paid job isn't a viable solution.

xpost to jel, this is something i'll probably consider in a few years time, when my boyfriend is earning a better salary (unless the recession completely fucks his job). in an ideal world i would only work a 'real job' a couple days a week and spend the rest of my time on my 'fake' job.

God, I'd love to go part time. I don't have any problems working in an office per se (it's a lot better than so many options out there) - but I would just like more time to myself.

I don't have a huge amount of expenses. If I could just cover the mortage and the council tax - which I could probably do 3 days a week, TBH - I'd much rather have the time than the extra money.

The problem is, it's so hard to find in this field. Which is why I always end up contracting.

Considering the range of jobs I've had in my life, including pizza delivery boy, dishwasher, and even math teacher, dude who works in a cube is like 100x better than any of these.

I'm with Susan, I've been working on internet-related bullshit since 1999 and I'm sick to death of it. I've hit a wall w/r/t what I care to learn about any of this, and if I didn't have a family to support, I would quit and go sell coffee or work in a bookstore or any old shit, immediately.

I used to be afraid of being swallowed up by the corporate dehumanizing machine, but you know, that's all Heidegerrian propaganda and cooking shit for a living totally blows.

I think everyone's experience will vary here. What it comes down to is if your job bores you and leaves you filling unfulfilled you will be unhappy doing it no matter if you're working in a kitchen or a cube.

-I'm indoors in a nice heated environment
-I'm sitting down all day, which at my age, is a massive plus
-I work on a computer, so I can listen to music, look at the internet when I want to
-I don't have to smell, touch or deal with any disgusting items
-I don't have to deal with the public
-My work is not physically demanding or painful, or have the risk of injury associated with it

In all these ways, working in an office is absolutely great! It's a pretty non-awful way to put roof over my head and food on my table. It's a job, that's all.

The problem, I think, is when people want their dayjob to be more than just a dayjob, but some kind of calling or vocation which provides meaning or validation to their existence. Sorry, this is just not what a dayjoy is for. And if you expect yr job to provide that, you're setting yourself up for a heap of disappointment and unhappiness.

I'd say look for meaning elsewhere and stop looking for your job to validate you. Your mileage may vary.

Dare I say, Mason Boom otm. Let's all make some money and buy expensive music gear!

It *can* be more than a job. I used to get a great deal of pleasure out of my day job, there were hundreds of little daily rewards that money couldn't buy me. Then it changed, I changed, and I tootle around in an office making enough money to get by. You spend a considerable percentage of your waking hours in work, finding something tolerable that doesn't crack you the fuck up isn't a bad method of job-selection. However, whether that is "something I can bear which pays me money which I can then spend on stuff/entertainment/holidays/drink/drugs to escape the hellishness of my work" or "something which doesn't pay big bucks but that's OK because going to work is my favouritest thing of all, and I'm happy to forego a fortnight in the Caribbean/expensive shoes/a bigger house in order to not hate the majority of my life", or a personal balance between the two, that's up to you. I've done both extremes of those, and am now right smack bang in the middle.

xpost

The problem, I think, is when people wa
nt their dayjob to be more than just a dayjob, but some kind of calling or vocation which provides meaning or validation to their existence. And if you expect yr job to provide that, you're setting yourself up for a heap of disappointment and unhappiness.

Would you say that to doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, therapists, firefighters, community organizers, professional writers, anyone else who has a job they consider a calling or vocation?

If someone doesn't want their "dayjob" to be anything more than that, fine. But it's completely ridiculous to think that a "dayjob" can't be more than a job for some people. And, for me personally, if that's all it is, that's a pretty miserable existence.

-I'm indoors in a nice heated environment (OVERRATED)
-I'm sitting down all day, which at my age, is a massive plus (LAZY...ALSO "AT YOUR AGE"???, WTF LADY YR NOT AN INVALID)
-I work on a computer, so I can listen to music, look at the internet when I want to (YEAH OK)
-I don't have to smell, touch or deal with any disgusting items (LIVE A LITTLE)
-I don't have to deal with the public (MISANTHROPE)
-My work is not physically demanding or painful, or have the risk of injury associated with it (PUSSY)

i mean, j/k, and i get what yr saying about it not being an awful way to pay the bills, but really everything you laid out as a plus up there sounds like middle-of-the-road boringness. calling your job a "dayjob" automatically supposes that you've got something that ISN'T your dayjob that is what you *actually* like to do. i don't think there's anything wrong with aspiring to get paid to actually do shit that is interesting

even if a 'dayjob' is just a 'dayjob', you can quickly grow to resent it for keeping you away from doing the things you love, though. I mean I'd love to be a musician for a living (maybe), or hang out with my kid more, but I have to be here ten hours a day and I'm tired the rest of the time, you know? Also, not everyone is an artist, and if they're spending the majority of their time in an environment to make money, of course they're going to want some kind of validation from it. What you do for a living shouldn't define who you are, but there are only so many hours in a day.

GBX, I've actually done that. I went and quit my dayjob to go live life as a full time musician/writer/artist and the problem with that was, it turned the thing I *loved* into a dayjob, and made me start to hate music/writing/art. Which made *me* a kind of unhappy I'd never known existed and never want to experience again.

Like I said, your mileage may vary.

I'm also not prescribing/proscribing (no idea if either of those is the right word?) *what* it is that will validate a person. That is totally individual, and most people spend a lifetime working it out.

(Another caveat which was so freaking obvious I typed it out before and deleted it as sounding obvious to the point of patronising, but maybe it needs to be said - it's one of those tricks of mental health that if you're not happy with *yourself* then no job (and you can substitute that with relationship, partner, house, religion - whatever) in the world is going to make you happy. Though, unfairly enough, bad ones can make you *uh*happy)

Anyway, enough out of me. I don't have anything to add, since I'm clearly happy enough working in an office most of the time.

You have a knack for throwing in a caveat to excuse what is otherwise a "I know what's better for you" post and expect people to excuse it. Just say what you mean and stand behind it.

I didn't pick up that tone from K's posts on the subject at hand.

i like the idea of sustainable/subsidized hobbies. like, being in a band and getting paid for gigs but not having that be a primary source of income. pays *enough* to not be a money-pit and to validate the amount of time you spend doing it. may not actually pay for itself, but it doesn't seem like a total loss.

when we went on tour this summer we basically were able to cover gas, mostly. the rest (food, etc) came out of pocket, but it was still a cheap "vacation" with bros.

really, my only beef with office work, as should be unbearably obvious by now, is that i hate sitting in one spot and would prefer to be outside at pretty much any time, regardless of the weather.

xp yeah, i didn't get that either

Well reading people putting "you" where "I" could more easily go puts me on the defense.

my only beef with office work, as should be unbearably obvious by now, is that i hate sitting in one spot and would prefer to be outside at pretty much any time,

Mine is similar except substitute "moving around, interacting with people" for going outside. I know people who do find Web development as a calling and do/would love to have the type of job I have. I very much want to find a career that's better for me and let them take my place. I get very tired of interacting with nothing but pixels and lines of coe.

i like the idea of sustainable/subsidized hobbies. like, being in a band and getting paid for gigs but not having that be a primary source of income. pays *enough* to not be a money-pit and to validate the amount of time you spend doing it. may not actually pay for itself, but it doesn't seem like a total loss.

That *would* be really great. I'd love to get to that kind of point WRT my artwork. (which is already pretty low-cost as far as hobbies go, especially compared to music!)

But the problem is time! hence why I'd love to cut the hours and go part time - that'd be the best compromise for me.

xpost

or code even.

Or just computer screens period. I really feel like I'm going blind and the constant sitting makes me feel achy and exhausted.

pixels and lines of coKe heh

I'm sure everyone would like a job they love instead of "just a dayjob," but I think it's good to have realistic expectations and recognize the benefits of what you're doing even if it's not a dream, which is what Kate's post implied to me. And having a life outside of work does allow you to not define your life by your work alone, which seems healthy whether it's a job you love or not.

Right now I'm also having the problem that jobs I want do exist, in the city I live in, but I'm either not qualified for them (so current plan is to work more and get some more degrees to qualify), or they're for volunteers because the organizations can't afford to pay people. It would be nice to be able to do that sort of work as a subsidized hobby, but I also have the time issue because I don't have useful enough skills to support myself working only part-time.

I don't have an office job anymore but sometimes I yearn for the office routine of arriving in the morning and doing nothing but drinking coffee and reading the paper online.

― Virginia Plain, Monday, November 3, 2008 11:14 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Been doing this for a year and a half now, and it hasn't gotten old yet.

i like the idea of sustainable/subsidized hobbies. like, being in a band and getting paid for gigs but not having that be a primary source of income. pays *enough* to not be a money-pit and to validate the amount of time you spend doing it. may not actually pay for itself, but it doesn't seem like a total loss.

when we went on tour this summer we basically were able to cover gas, mostly. the rest (food, etc) came out of pocket, but it was still a cheap "vacation" with bros.

hell yeah this is otm

the internet is stupid and boring and every time I do anything to contribute to it's growth I feel more worthless as a human being.

like, just now, as I post this message, a bit of my self-worth has evaporated

if i was in a band and doing well i'd still probably end up sitting at a computer 10+ hours most days with minimal human contact

if you're in an electronic band you can even do that while performing, recording, and mixing

something we can all aspire to.

Although this type of job seems to have become the standard of modern life, the fact that there are people who make good livings not sitting in a chair in front of a computer gives me hope that I can find a way to feel more fulfilled and satisfied during the majority of my waking hours.

Wasting time on-line (like this) is equally exhausting and depressing to me. Right now I'm just trying to avoid the hell of CSS-sleuthing and trying to wrangle students into building sites the way I need them too.

In general, spending your life doing something you don't care about is just hell. And yes, having a life outside of work is important but is hard to pull off when, as mentioned above, you have a job that takes so much out of you you get home with only 4 or 5 hours to enjoy that life.

Work has some odd effects beyond the hours you're in it.

Having worked such long hours to get money, I'd have thought it easy to have indulgent weekends spending it and living it up. But something about work can make me hold back at weekends, unable to enjoy myself fully. Doesn't happen every weekend - but maybe one in three.

My job invades my life way too much. I dream about it and constantly find it popping into my mind outside of the office. I do my best to partition it out and leave it at the office but the stress and demands are sneaky that way. . . Also I'm usually so exhausted at the weekend all I can manage is housecleaning and collapsing.

Haha, and my boyfriend just wrote to tell me that the head of their very large and known-worldwide computer company blogged that people would be offered packaged severance deals this week and those that weren't needed to make arrangements to take unpaid time off.

This is greatly contributing to my current job stress/unhappiness. I can't think of moving on for awhile until the economy is more stable. We've been waiting for him to lose his job for quite awhile now and if/when he does it will be important that I have mine.

Feeling stuck starts to make you feel like a caged animal.

Dude libs, how was being a math teacher?

I worked in an office setting once and I almost got fired for staring out the window too much. I didn't even realize I was doing it. Watching traffic is just hypnotizing. It was at a busy intersection, too.

staring out of windows eats into enough of my free time. traffic can be involving. you had a sweet deal if you used to get paid for it. i remember spending meetings at work trying to start mexican-wave-style chains of empathetic yawn responses. or how someone would drop their pen and like ten people would look around to see what was going on. that these things are even memorable is testament to the cold, factory-like awfulness of the office environment.

there's a bit in middlesex by jeffrey eugenides that talks about the salad days of car manufacturing in detroit, and how no-one was prepared for it; humans simply weren't equipped to mindlessly perform repetitive menial labour for hours on end. offices still like they haven't been fully integrated. they inspire a really dull kind of manic behaviour.

I was paid $6.50 an hour for it, and the occasional Papa John's pizza coupon. Please evaluate the quality of this arrangement.

you have windows? *sniff*

I also stole a lot, lot, lot of office supplies.

i call that "compenstationary"

you have office supplies?

I would use acquired rather than stole.

I am only diplomatic in describing the behavior of others.

you have office supplies?

Haha. Teaching was horrible in this aspect. I had to have friends bring me packages of copy paper stolen from their offices so I could run things off for class.

actually after my little pity party upthread I feel much better. My job is secure (funding-wise) for two years and hopefully G's will be by then. And I will have figured out what I want to do next. I can cowboy up until then. Two years, sadly, goes by quickly.

Y'all would be positively SHOCKED to learn the kind of acquiring that takes place in silicon valley.

I bet I have beat them all. I "acquired" my G4 tower and a 21" monitor when I worked at FedEx Kinko's. (They got rid of all the Macs and they were just chilling in the backroom and I reckoned no one would notice. NB: I was in a manic phase. NB 2: I am not very proud of this. NB 3: But since I didn't get fired I don't especially regret it.)

I also "acquired" a completely useless external Jaz drive.

Wow.

I've never acquired anything of any value from a job other than bootlegged software.

A friend of mine walked off with one of SGI's bigger computers when he worked at SGI in the mid 90s. I can't remember exactly which one it is now, but I recall it listing for $200,000.

Ok yr friend wins. And I feel less guilty.

The Jaz drive isn't entirely useless, FYI. They make excellent "upgrade" components to an MPC2000XL.

It is useless for my day-to-day computing purposes, as well as my lack of Jaz discs, and the additional lack of any other computers that I use (ie at work) with Jaz drives.

You do have a point, though.

Just FYI, my pal managed to get it out w/o noticing by removing it in as small parts as he could manage.

Now he's a lawyer.

was it long and black?

uh that looks suggestive. reference to the johnny cash tune.

this is my friend's job: http://www.livingfisheries.blogspot.com/

awesome!

what is the difference between Jaz drives and normal external hard drives?

a wag I know once worked somewhere where people were always sending around e-mails asking if anyone had a Jaz drive they could borrow for a few minutes, so my friend once mailed asking if anyone had a jazz-mag he could borrow? Predictable hilarity ensured.

Jaz is magnetic-optical. A good technology that wasn't crappy enough to survive long.

Common Jaz carts were 1G, 2G, and I believe, 4G. I have 5 or so and a Jaz drive in my MPC2000XL.

I thought Jaz was MO. I'm not so sure now.

your friend's job looks awesome! i would love a job with The Sea. (the best job i can imagine would be doing educational programs on a sail training/history/environmental education type ship.)

yah, someone gave him a BAG OF MONEY to travel the world and work as a fisherman in small communities. if you scroll to the bottom of the page you can see his itinerary and it is O_O

Jaz is just magnetic platters, not magneto-optical. (Jaz was kind of a shitty medium; magneto-optical is slower, but inherently way more reliable. I was pissed off when my college dumped MO for Zip and Jaz.)

sounds amazing, does he need a wife? (xpost)