How much effort and skill does your job actually require?

Sounds like you hang out in a crowd with a similar skill set to yours and can't see that, for all its simplicity in your eyes, your job couldn't be done as well by more than one person in 50. That's not exactly overwhelming numbers, but still...

Effort: sometimes a lot, sometimes a little
Skill: generally little

Flow: the optimal experience

Effort: sometimes a lot, sometimes a little

Same for me.

Skill: I'm one of about 10 people in the western US who has the necessary skill set for what I do, and generally speaking, those other 9 all started out by taking classes from me.

Physical effort: very little.

Endurance: Plenty. About 8 times a year I have to figuratively chain myself to my desk and work 14-16 hour days for a couple of weeks straight. Except for mid-July to early August, when it's four weeks straight.

Skill: Level 6 Photoshop User (+1 Masking, +2 on saving throws vs. "can you get the pictures from my website?"); Level 9 InDesign User; Level 20 Prepress Wizard.

Effort: very little
Skill: Ability to write to a very specific house style over, and over, and over again. It's a skill that many people in my own circle have, but not many people in the wider world seem to have it.

I'm not sure, really. I would like to be smug and say that very few people could do what I do but in all honesty I don't think my job is that hard. It's a combination of various skills: ability to be friendly, know about jewellery (and lace), be able to do accountancy,... As I've grown up in a shop and have done it professionally (hah!) for over 13/14 years, it doesn't seem that hard to me. That said, I think very few people are cut out to be (good) sales managers or shop keepers.

My skillset isn't rare in the tech world -- I do a combination of database, Solaris, and Windows administration, as well as web design and ASP and Perl programming -- but the systems I coddle are so incredibly jury-rigged, quirky, mysterious, and faulty, that while there are perhaps 10-15 people who know enough to step in and do 1/4 of my job, there's nobody but me who could do it all. This isn't to say that I'm super-duper skilled or anything; I just happen to know where all the bodies are buried, so to speak. If I were hit by a bus tomorrow, it would likely take someone with my skillset at least a year to figure out enough to fix stuff when it breaks, in a timely fashion at least. The thing that breaks most often is a monthly billing system that generates a few $100Ks each run. If this jalopy breaks down on the road and isn't repaired by month-start, it means a significant loss of revenue.

I suspect that many folks who've been at their jobs long enough are in a similar position. While this means a goodly amount of job security for me (as well as some nice work toys), it also means that I can't contemplate career moves without assuming a lot of guilt. Thankfully, I enjoy my job, my boss likes me, I get along with my co-workers, and I'm given a fair amount of latitude in choosing my projects. So I'm staying put for the time being.

OMG my job is pouring water into jars,that link will save me hours.

many xposts

I think I'm one of a few people in the US with my qualifications for Dutch - English translation. I have been translating for 15 years - doing lots of legal, environmental and HRM stuff. The longer I do the job, the less effort it takes. The challenge is to not get completely bored. Working for myself helps. Also doing more of the interesting work (for museums) helps. I often work like a madwoman. In my case, that doesn't mean putting in 70 hours a week (I can't with little kids), but rather translating like an athlete, like a race horse, and jamming 2 or 3 days worth of work into one day's number of hours.

I took a brief hiatus from translating, when I switched from working for an agency to becoming a freelancer for myself. I thought I wanted to do something else less creatively taxing so I could devote more mental space to my "art" (whatever that was at the time). I discovered I'd sort of lost some skills for jobs I used to think anyone could do and which I used to do (waitressing, mowing lawns, housecleaning). Translating doesn't really require any multi-tasking, besides the simple scheduling of jobs. I start at A and translate to Z. Waiting tables is way more demanding than that in many ways.

I work an office admin job, so effort basically = zero. Skillset is pretty bogstandard to anyone at all familiar with IT/internet/satellite technology. Right now I dont feel like I'm doing a single thing that inspires or challenges me in any way. My brain is atrophying at an alarming speed and it is very very frustrating.

xpost haha i was just coming here to post about how my waitressing job is all about the ability to multi-task! ;)

seriously, arriving at work and being told you have around 20mins to figure out how to cram 200 ppl into a restaurant that seats 80 (because the boss has just said yes to everyone who's rung to book between 6 and 9pm) - well, it requires some skills; not just the ability to see the big picture of ultimate maximization of space, but also being able to judge how long ppl will remain at a table.

where i work, there are no sections. so multi-tasking is pretty important. i have to know exactly where each table is at, at any given stage of the evening. i also need to keep an eye on what the kitchen is doing and make sure they're not forgetting stuff (no, i can't just put an order in and expect them to get it out - anyone who's worked in hospo will understand that CHEFS ARE PERFECT AND NEVER MAKE MISTAKES HAHA).

i also have to be a quick judge of personality: when i seat a table i need to figure out right off if they're ppl who just want to be left alone, or who want to talk; then i have to figure out what kind of 'talking' they want. ppl are generally pretty hopeless and rely heavily on me to tell them what to drink/eat, so i also need to be really good at quickly figuring out what ppl like. this is where a lot of repeat business comes from (if ppl have a bad eating experience - not necessarily because the food was bad, but because they didn't like it - they mostly won't return).

i also have to be an exceptional liar: no one really wants to hear the truth about the stupid fuckups that have resulted in their order getting screwed or their table double-booked.

i also need to have a thick skin for abuse - both from customers and chefs. it can get pretty bad sometimes.

mostly what it boils down to is being able to work under high stress: a hell of a lot of stuff needs to be accomplished in a very short space of time, and a lot of ppl don't cope well in this situation, so i have to doubly able to cope myself.

so i guess i have a pretty good grasp of all of the above, but i've been doing it since i was 20, and it certainly took a long time to learn the skills - i didn't have any natural talent for it.

(i can't fucking open a wine bottle or pop a cork with any degree of elegance, though)

as for my retail job - i just need to know how to wield a shoe horn and talk scientifc/technological bullshit about footwear.

ummm so what i guess i could have just said:
waitressing -
skills: reasonable high level, but a lot of ppl have them from working in other areas; can be learned by a majority of ppl.
effort: high. physically and mentally demanding. must be present at all times.
retail -
skills: can be learned easily (just need to be good with ppl)
effort: minimal to low-medium

the last time i waited tables i quit mid-shift. our stupid corporate restaurant gave servers gift certificates (which were referred to as GC's by all the lame ass staff) and I gave another waiter a $20 GC to cover the tables I has open and I split. I could not handle it.

it does depend on the kind of place you work at - i work at a small, well-established, family-owned bistro, so i get away with a lot of stuff; if ppl get all uppity with me i'm kinda allowed to say 'umm.... go FUCK YOURSELF' (well, not really in those particular words, but you know what i mean). i also have a ton of regulars, ppl i've known for 7yrs, so that helps. and a great team is utterly crucial.

what is the best tipping European?

the english always tip - especially young backpackers. we're situated right in the city centre and close to 3 backpacking hostels.

americans hardly ever tip - apparently they get told that 'no one tips in NZ', so they don't. fuckers.

xxpost
most people suck at waiting tables. most of the time, i sucked at it. i was so often in the weeds. but then there were the mornings (i usually did breakfasts - at a famous restaurant here on martha's vineyard) when everything just flowed, when you had people eating out of your hands, when you timed everything perfectly. i was too easily thrown off by people, by their ideas of class; made too easily mad to be treated like a servant, etc., etc. I have infinite respect for waitresses who are good at it. I am a chronic overtipper as a result of my experiences.

ha ha, we always have to tip here... people tip 20% standard here.

admittedly, the average rate of pay for a nz waiter is probably higher than in the US. we certainly don't survive on tips.

I'm a high school teacher.

Effort: Being a good teacher requires a lot of effort. Some people try to coast a bit, but any decent teacher works hard. It's a challenging job, both on an intellectual and practical level.

Skill: Being a good teacher also requires a good deal of skill. Lesson planning and assessment are somewhat difficult to do consistently well. Many people become good teachers, but it takes time, and often training, to be successful. Even a natural will have a pretty steep learning curve.

Good people skills are important too.

I still have a waitmare every three or four months and I haven't even picked up a friendly bar shift in four years.

HAHA i know all about the waitmare! my recurring one is that i'm working and gets close to closing time, but ppl just keep coming in and my boss won't let me finish up. my ex told me he'd me saying stuff in my sleep like "no you idiot, the fish goes to table 10!!"

My job requires basically no effort at all most of time but it does require some skill. Not much. And most of that is just because Microsoft insist on ridiculous methods of doing things.

We mostly sit round complaining about how shit SQL Server is but if it wasn't so shit, maybe anyone could work with it and we'd be out of a job.

There is no way going I could ever, EVER, wait tables. NO WAY. I cant be on my feet, I cant think fast, I'm too short tempered, the stress would make me crack in 10 seconds.

I'd rather be a librarian or fuck I dunno, a monk illuminating manuscripts.

I used to clean up tables, that was bad enough.

the reason i quit after 5.5 yrs and went into retail was partly because i couldn't handle the stress anymore. but i had a lot of responsibility, shit management and a crap team. now that i've returned to it 18mths later, i've got a bit of a different attitude: my boss was having a fit the other night, completely freaked cuz he'd screwed up all these bookings, and i grabbed him by the shoulders and said "dude, it's JUST A RESTAURANT" - cuz ya know, it's not iife and death. yeah, ppl get shitty and abusive but at the end of the day, it's really just some meals and booze, not fucking disabling a bomb in crowded shopping mall.

i'm supposed to 'just be a waitress' this time round, without any major responsibilities, but more and more i'm getting asked to sort shit out. i'm not getting paid enough for this :/

Yeah fuck that noise. Srsly. Although I'm probably not best to take advice from cos my advise would be to put a brick through their head.

I am in the unenviable position of having done too much coke, and now I cn't sleep, but that's my own fault for fucking around with such an evil drug.

I don't know if getting back into it I'd be better or worse now. I'd probably panic less, but there's also a good chance I'd stab somebody with a lobster fork the first time they stiffed me.

you really have to have the right kind of temperament to make it a career - and i don't. i mean, i'm really good at my job, but i can't see myself doing this for much longer; i don't have the patience, tolerance for ppl or sufficient longterm stress management skills. i've only gone back as a way to make some cash so i can travel soon-ish. and it's a good skill to have no matter what country you're in - there's always a restaurant looking for staff.

i once worked in a childcare centre semi-fulltime for about 6 mths - now THAT is a fucking hard job. i don't think i could ever do it again.

Oh god, keeping an eye on dozens of hyper kids. Frightening thought!

there were about 30 kids and 3 or 4 adults. age range was 6mths to 4.5yrs. some of the kids were awesome little buggers, and some were fucking little shits. it's really hard work keeping a bunch of kids entertained for 8 hours. i have all the respect in the world for parents - but working there made me realise i probably don't have the patience or tolerance to maybe ever have my own kids. and being round that level of conversation all day REALLY does your head in.

Heh yeah, I'm exhausted enough after playing with my neice and nephew for a few hours and thats just 2 well behaved kids!

Assuming for the sake of argument I'm a fully fledged film/TV agent (which I will be in 3 months), my job requires a fair bit of skill and, if you're as committed as you should be, a lot of effort (working hard and long, and doing work stuff - mainly reading scripts and watching DVDs - outside work hours).

The specific skills required are:

Talking to people and gaining their confidence
Diplomacy
Negotiation
Mediation
A certain amount of contract law
Critical faculties
Industry knowledge

The rest is just common sense, diligence and discipline.

None of either. I just pick up the phone when it rings and type whatever stupid shit my boss wants me to type. The only effort it requires is listening to old people whining because they dont want to be in this place and want to go back home or because they need cigarettes or they will die from want (and that is just for the hour or so i've been at work today).

Confidence building, common sense, diplomacy, people skills, the ability to constantly maintain a positive image in the eyes of funding and referral sources even when the clients they send you are a heap of shite and your goalposts are being shifted on a daily basis, the patience of a saint, a fair bit of specialist knowledge (job market, UK benefits system, availability of training courses, things like bus routes etc) and the ability to not mind being let down on a regular basis.

Though apparently all of this no longer matters, and the ability to confidently bullshit is enough.

Lots of effort, lots of skill, though not rare skill.
I'm a gardener, or "Landscaper" when needing to impress. I also have worked in garden centers for years, so I have a big catalog of plants in my head. I'm a taxonomy nerd so I remember botanical Latin (though I can't compete with my nursery co-worker David, who is probably in the top fifty of American Plant Nerds. Totally amazing). My work is physically demanding and requires lots of research. Sometimes solutions to problems can't be found. Mysteries abound. Plants die. Underwatering? Overwatering? Overfeeding? Underfeeding? Too much shade? They're like crying babies. Sometimes you can't figure out what the matter is. You can ask for advice, but one thing about plant experts, THEY LOVE TO GIVE YOU AN ANSWER. That doesn't mean they're right.

Jobs that people on here have mentioned that I couldn't do in a million years: Rubyredd's (what NZ city are you in? I'm assuming Auckland, but asking anyway) waitressing job, Beth's gardening job, anything to do with computers.

Stuff I could maybe do: I could be an agent, I think. Obviously I don't mean walk into it right now and do it from a standing start, but I think I have the ability. I was a good PA when I was a PA many years ago. I know I can work in retail, I've done it for years.

I could do magazine layout, I think, if I learned.

And I could teach, but not in high school. More like corporate training and stuff. I have no problem standing up in front of groups of people and telling them stuff.

I like my job, though. No phone, no email, no distractions. Just writing. Some would consider it extremely boring, I suppose.

a lot of my work is stultifying, but no one else seems to be able to do it properly. That said, maybe it does not actually need to be done properly.

(xpost to accentmonkey - i'm not a J.A.F.A; i'm in wellington! ;))

i work in a nursery. you need to be able to remember things about plants and deal with miami weather. i've found that factual memory and heat-tolerance are rare, even in miami.

even my coworkers can't deal with the heat. i'm like, "what up? you've worked here for 10 years."

(xpost to accentmonkey - i'm not a J.A.F.A; i'm in wellington! ;))

Phew, Wellington's GRATE (or appeared so to me as an outsider, anyway). God, I miss New Zealand.

almost no physical effort.

a lot of it is a piece of piss but that's down to having been doing it for many years. i'm stuck on something this morning though.

Most of my job involves initially having to decide whether the task given is actually *part* of my job. This process can take almost half a day!

An increasing chunk of my job is soul-destroyingly tedious admin and file management that a trained monkey could do but, seeing as our work-placement capuchin quit to "go travelling" ("eat bananas", more like), it falls to me to crank miserably through it.

It's a low-status, high-pressure sub-managerial post that has no prospects of promotion and in a division of the media industry that, these days, places almost no stock in the skills which presumably got me hired in the first place. It's all about doing it slightly less well, but much, much faster. And cheaper.

I'm sure it could be a lot worse. I've probably moaned about every job I've ever had, even those back in my late-20s when I was paid 50% more and worked half as hard.

Quite a bit of skill (and not all technical) although everyone with Internet access assumes they can do my job.

Effort - as much as I care to put into it, which varies daily.

Skill: On the high end of average, but there are so many different skills required that it's definitely not for everyone. It's a specialized field with a lot of knowledge required about how cities work. Diplomacy, how to listen and how to redirect the conversation back to the right topic. The ability to give presentations. Patience for tedious things, for people who don't understand what you're doing, and for staying in rural places for a week or so at a time. Researching in the field, on the phone, and online. Analysis of spatial and numerical data. The ability to make snap judgments based on established criteria. The ability to create a narrative. At the end of all this, you've got to document it all.

Effort: It varies. Giving a presentation to a potentially hostile group requires a hell of a lot more effort that filling in the fields on a table and pasting that in the document, but both are part of the process.

effort: average
skill: average to medium.

Effort? Almost no physical effort, though occasional huge bursts of mental effort. (i.e. monthend takes a huge amount of concentration and hard work.)

Skill? I don't think that my job requires much skill, because I never had any training to do it. Maths just comes easy to me, it's all logic and figuring stuff out. But when I try to explain my job to other people, they don't entirely understand *what* I do, let alone *how* I do it. I mean, the actual job skills are pretty standard - a bit of database programming (Access, SQL, Oracle, that sort of thing) a lot of reporting skills (Crystal, Excel) but 9/10 of my job isn't actually technical knowledge, but having an instinctual feel for the *data* - knowing how to handle it, knowing what goes wrong with it.

I often feel that a monkey could do my job because it's really easy to me. But for some reason it's not easy to other people. So go figure. As long as they keep paying me like it's a skilled job.

I have a huge amount of respect for people who can do people-facing jobs, and do them well. A good waiter/waitress, a helpful sales assistant. These are things I could never do in a million years, so I really appreciate them when I run into people who are good at it.

Yeah, continous people-facing is a tough one unless it comes naturally. Your 'yes dad' to head honcho and putting the headphone on still cracks me up.

I dunno. I'm also curious as to the idea of "skills" vs. "talent" with regard to jobs.

I dislike the idea that everything is just refered to as "skills" because skills imply something that can be learned or taught. And not all aspects of jobs are like that. Sure, lots of it is training, but lots of it isn't.

In some cases, it is simply a natural proclivity or talent. Some people are talented at people skills, at putting other people at ease. I have a talent for maths. Sure, I'm skilled because I've spent many years *doing* it, and learning from experience. But part of it is just a natural ability.

Effort: required only 5% of the time i spend here
Skill: knowledge and experience of software used (adobe, macromedia etc), systems we create and maintain and the industry in general plus artistic capability, 'design eye' or whatever. but this job is a waste of their money and my time because there's not enough for me to do and what there is just isn't challenging or requires me to develop much at all.

I'm a bit of a bottom-rung IT jack-of-all-trades. Skills? Reading up on whatever subject half an hour before anyone else has time to; guessing which acronyms you can safely pretend to have heard of and which you'll have to say "oh, sorry, I've no idea" before someone asks you about it.

I lucked into a database job because I had a little (very little - the job ad didn't really reflect the role, if they'd made it more obviously IT-ish they could've found someone much better) SQL knowledge, but the database doesn't use SQL and my job so far has mostly been entering data and then repeating a few db admin tasks, so pretty much anyone who could type and follow my list of instructions could do it... yet I'm being paid better than data entry rates. I worry that the supposed skilled IT aspect of my role means I may get paid more than the non-IT people in my dept who could do this monkey-work easily.

But my job also involves Perl scripting, and I really don't have the mindset. I'm slow to get those tasks done and I live in fear of anyone looking at the code because it's all so thrown together. I am not worth my salary. (We're not talking the big $ salaries those "work in IT!" ads try to kid you exist - you know, the ones in job ad sections with maybe one IT job which pays not much and asks for years of impossibly specific experience - but still.)

Effort: I'm a terrible slacker. Everyone else seems permanently busy. I worry about being found out. Then again, it's better here than my last job as new mini-tasks are always arriving, so I keep myself somewhat busy and usually have some excuse for bad time management, at least.

I only wanted a data entry job, but I couldn't find one. I looked for office admin temp jobs and got either "we're looking for people with experience" or "why would you do this when you have several years' IT experience?" and never got called back. I don't like having to think for a living because I know I'm not too good at it, but I'd be just terrible at anything physical or customer-facing.

effort: huge. almost all of it in terms of resisting the urge to throttle people.

skill: well, i never used to think that being able to use the english language in a half-reasonable way was desperately impressive. but apparently the ability to construct something vaguely approaching a sentence is a dying art (let alone to construct something vaguely approaching a publishable piece of newspaper copy).

i guess the part of my job i find most challenging is the management side of it, both in terms of heading up a small team of staff and of having to deal with whatever unexpected fuck-ups and crises the day might bring (qv what i said about effort at the top). that and dealing with the unpleasant feeling that senior management aren't actually that bothered about the contribution (which, ultimately, can be summed up as quality control) i make. i hope i'm wrong about that. we'll see.

i dunno. i've been a subeditor in one form or another for more than 10 years. a change feels more and more like a good thing. again; we'll see.

(by senior management i mean non-editorial management; ie the dudes holding very tightly on to the purse-strings.)

Quite a bit. I'm a chef, it is pretty stressful, it does require a modicum of effort and skill. It's not so much the cooking (though obviously it helps if you're good at that) as the ability to know where you're up to on each of the sixty odd meals which might be on the board at any one time. And staying calm. Simply because you cannot afford anything which leaves your stove to be anything less than the best you can do. As a gnarled old restaurant lifer pointed out to me years ago when I was starting out, any one of those tables of two could be a man proposing marriage, do you want to send him a shit dinner on this night of nights?

And the hours suck, also.

i've always thought chefing (of which i have no experience) and production journalism (of which i have far too fucking much) have many similarities: the hours, the repeated daily deadlines, the perfectionism, the whole notion of trying to fashion something wonderful from ingredients that often leave a lot to be desired ... and the fact that people never actually appreciate just how much effort and skill has gone into your handiwork as they scoff it down/skim over it and chuck it in the recycling bin.

i might be wrong.

There's a definite degree of similarity, specifically the disposability of the whole thing. The faint hope that the consumer might remember what they've read/eaten as a marvellous thing and the leaden realisation that they were probably too pissed/in a rush to care.

timely, this: we've just advertised for a senior sub to work as my bitch in my department. the list of skills etc required is extensive. i'm not actually sure i have them all. christ.

I love a passing spacecadet's description of his/her (I have no idea who you really are, sorry) job; it reminds me of every job I ever had before this one. Particularly that stress-inducing feeling of trying to keep your head above water on the bits you don't know.

As a gnarled old restaurant lifer pointed out to me years ago when I was starting out, any one of those tables of two could be a man proposing marriage, do you want to send him a shit dinner on this night of nights?

This is a great attitude.

well, i never used to think that being able to use the english language in a half-reasonable way was desperately impressive.

For a while I worked as a writer in the IT business, writing marketing bumpf, articles for in-house magazines, website content, etc. I gave it up in part because, as Ms. Misery pointed out about her job, every eejit who can physically use the software thinks they can do the job and your work is not valued. I got tired of trying to rewrite what other people had written (badly) and then seeing them rewrite it again before putting it up on the web (badly). Tiring.

By which I suppose I mean that this sentence-stringing lark is a skill.

I think when it comes to what we both describe, Trish, the people-handling skills are key. You have to be able to convince why letting you are the professional and the fact that they own the software/can look up the code/whatever is not enough to qualify them for the task. Of course you have to do so in a way which doesn't offend them but makes them think they thought of it and is the best solution ever. And then when you deliver a product ten times better than they could have ever done they realize you were right all along.

I don't actually have a job right now, and unemployment takes no skill or effort at all! Guess that's why it's so easy...

I was just on an archaeological dig though, and I will count that, because it involved 8-12 hour workdays, and so was kind of like a job. Effort was moderate to high and skill low to moderate for the digging and pulling things out of the ground stuff that I was doing, but effort was lower and skill far higher for the people with PhDs who were actually dating and analyzing the finds.

I think when it comes to what we both describe, Trish, the people-handling skills are key.

Yep, you're bang on. And I don't have those skills. I like to work for people who think I'm fantastic. You know how people will come to you in your job and say "look, I finished that thing I was working on!" and you think "do you want a medal or something?" Well, I do. I want a medal. I will work for very little money and in poor conditions if I'm getting a little Muttley-style tin medal periodically. Sssh, don't tell anyone.

trish! want a job? we'll pay you 0 and you'll work in an approximation of hell but stet and i will tell you you're grate repeatedly. well, once or twice.

(nb: the novelty will wear off after 45 minutes.)

Sadly, I am so shallow that the novelty never wears off. It might wear off you when you have to keep coming up with new ways to tell me how great I am.

Still, I suppose that's what a thesaurus is for.

every eejit who can physically use the software thinks they can do the job and your work is not valued. I got tired of trying to rewrite what other people had written (badly) and then seeing them rewrite it again before putting it up on the web (badly).

On the money. I write a lot of copy about technical/scientific/medical stuff and that's exactly my experience. The technical folks always think that you can't possibly write about it unless you actually developed the thing itself, when in fact that's the absolute worst perspective to write from. Their attempts are just lists of technical features and bullshit boondoggles that they happen to all enthusiastic about, when the right approach is to concentrate on the top two or three benefits that the target customer really cares about. I've beaten all of the R&D folks into submission here by repeated using the 'so what' test. Typically :

Me : "What's the most important benefit of this new product?"
Boffin : "it's got a 16-element linear array detector!"
Me : So what?
Boffin : "that's much better than a single element detector"
Me : Why?
Boffin : "It's got an extended wavelength range"
Me : "So what?"
Boffin : "You can get more data"
Me : "So what? Why do I want MORE data?"
Boffin : "You can do more experiments with it".
Me : "I'm a busy forensic scientist, overloaded with case work. Why do I want to do MORE experiments? I haven't time!"
Boffin : "Oh. I suppose the array detector is faster".
Me: Now we're getting somewhere. Can it do the same measurements faster than older models?
Boffin : "Yes, 16 times faster"
Me : Jackpot! Now I can pitch it to the customer - it saves you time!

I'm a freelance music critic so this is a hard one to answer. As much effort goes into pitching things as it does into doing the actual writing a lot of the time, and the amount of work that goes into a piece varies greatly, even on similar pieces--depends on how easily I come up with an angle (or have one suggested by my editor, which doesn't happen that often). Listening to a lot of music can be a surprising amount of effort because sometimes you just want to listen to what you want to listen to, not what you're assigned to. Having a sieve for a brain in terms of prioritizing my listening (and reading, I review books a fair amount as well) doesn't help much.

I do try hard not to write obviously or in cliches, so I'd say there's a fair amount of skill involved just playing cop with myself and making sure something is as good as I can make it before deadline.

Sometimes it's really a pleasure doing this kind of work--well, it's always a pleasure, really, I get to do something enjoyable and stimulating, and while I don't make a great living at it I'm not starving. I'm very lucky that way. And sometimes you just want to beat your own head in for taking on a particular assignment or three, until (in my case) I realize that in most cases I asked for those assignments to begin with.

sadly, I'm with accentmonkey. I'm leaving my job basically because of problems with shiny medals - I said, "Hey, can I do this? I'd be good at it - look, I've got lots of shiny medals that you gave me!", and they said "Don't be silly, they're just tin."