The Working Man Thread

I run a small computer store with a staff that fluctuates between 5 to 7 people. The hours are long and the pay isn't all that much but there's a lot of downtime for screwing around on the internet and the owner is pretty hands-off most of the time.

Oil/Gas Pipeline engineering company. I work on the procurement end of things. I desperately want a change, but the company is really good to us, I have a "career plan" set out for me here, and management is hands off so I get to spend lots of time with the fine folks of the CHUD boards.

I have two jobs.

I fly 767s for a major international airline, and I fly C-130s for the Navy Reserve.

Thanks for ruining the thread with your impossibly manly job, Frank.

Yeah. Leave us poor desk jockeys alone.

I'm a chiropractor. I step in and out between patients which oftentimes means I show up late to some of the better threads.

It could be worse, he could be in the Navy full time and an astronaut. However, there's still a chance he could quit one of them and become a bullfighter or bounty hunter.

I'm an art director for a consulting company. We create training programs and aids such as books, games, etc. and I'm also involved in a sister company we're trying to get off the ground that's more or less straight game board design.

I also do freelance artwork, cartooning, etc. OK, not as awesome as Cobretti, but baby steps, folks. Baby steps.

I work in London for a financial magazine covering the international capital markets. (yeah, we've had a lot to write about recently)

I work in research and writing. Delivering content - ideas / topics - for surveys and debates, and writing the subsequent articles. Low base salary with potential for reasonable commission.

But judging by the amount of people being laid off in the city I should probably hang out at CHUD less often.

I do underwater/diving ship cleaning, usually in the Port of Houston. It pisses off most of my friends, 'cause it's putting me through college, and paying far better than most of the salaries of people I know who already have their degrees. Kinda damp, though.

Software development/Quality assurance tester. I'm one of the few people that I know that likes their job, which is sad.

I'm a fleet manager for a specialized freight carrier.

Basically I set up accounts, find trucks for customers, forge relationships with the drivers in our 500+ trucks, make sure that the drivers pay is correct, coordinate them accross the U.S. to optimize our coverage and work with our sales department whenever we have too much equipment in a given area.

Boring.

I want to fly fighter jets too

I work in the Controllership office of a mega entertainment behemoth, whose name rhymes with Whizz-Knee.

I'm a Production Assistant at another Evil Empire, Viacom/MTV Networks. It's a "freelance" gig (long story), and usually work in about six month spreads depending on the show. When not employed there, am doing real freelance work either on movies, shows or other random, pseudo-entertainment type things. Also do some writing on the side.

But if I got paid to surf CHUD, I'd be a god damn millionaire.

Oh, and as much as I love my job, if I could go back, I'd hit up a trade school. Can't outsource electricians and plumbers, can ya you capitalist bastards?!?!

I'm an insurance defense attorney. You know how your auto insurance says if you get sued after an accident they'll provide you with an attorney to defend you? That's me. I like what I do, and some of the company's benefits are stellar (almost a dollar-for-dollar 401k match and more vacation time han I could ever use), and the money's pretty good, too. But lately siome of the upper management decisions have made me and many of my cohorts really start to dislike them.

A story: I tried a case three years ago. The Plaintiff (my adversary) was a very attractive young Hispanic woman. As we were selecting jurors, I noted one potential juror, a young Hispanic guy, positively DROOLING over the plaintiff from the jury box. So i exercised a peremptory challenge & had him bounced post haste from the pool. He was replaced by a young Hispanic female, so I figured she was safe on those grounds. We finished jury selection, and she was still on the panel. The Plaintiff's attorney starts his opening statement, and I'm watching the jury to gague their reactions. And I notice a few things about this female juror. Like the really short, almost manly haircut. The work boots. And the flannel shirt. And I now realize with dawning horror that SHE'S drooling over the Plaintiff at least as much as the young guy I bounced was.

Ultimately a happy ending, as I got a unanimous verdict in my favor, but that had me a little worried for a while.

I'm a nanny. Ta-da.

I've recently gone from Desktop support in a hospital to a technical consultant in a hr software package company.

which means a lot of time i feel like i'm in way over my head.

There have been a few of these threads in the past (seems about one a year) but always fun to read. I seem to recall plenty of accountants and lawyers in the Chewer pool.

Me? Plant Controller. I prepare monthly financials for a natural products food ingredient company. The financials portion only occupies about 25% of my time. Primarily I spend my time with cost analysis.

I have a new wallpaper!

Administrative assistant for the global investment department of one of the big banks on Wall Street. It is as mind-numbingly dull as it sounds. However my two bosses are the nicest guys on the planet, which is pretty rare, considering they're working among the usual Type A personalities that make the financial district the Unhappiest Place on Earth. So - my two guys are an awesome rarity, they're all mine, and I'm not leaving unless they do first.

Ha! I was just looking for a thread to point out an article in the NY Times about how rising fuel costs have been slowing globalization for Frank. It's not in the political forum, but damn if that picture didn't create an "in."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/bu...em&oref=slogin

Minsky gets a gold star for that photo.

I'm pretty sure I'm ok. My airline's ridership is up over last year. I think it's because I give out plastic "junior pilot" wings to the little ones as they're deplaning.

And a third job in which he handles the jobs no one is willing to take on. If you need help and if you can find him. Maybe you can hire *Gunshots* FRANK COBRETTI!

Anyway, to answer the question. I'm an office jockey. For the real answer, I run conflict checks and handle some accounting functions at an Alternative Dispute Resolution Company.

I'm the entire IT department for a live shopping network.

This is not what I pictured doing for the rest of my life.

You're gonna have to say that in layman's terms. Alternative Dispute Resolution Company sounds like an awfully officey, deliberately long and high-falutin sounding title for like...lawyering or something.

I am a partner in a multi-media post production house. Essentially we are four separate companies under one banner that handle a variety of work in film and TV post-production. I specialize in post production sound including FX, BGs (ambis for our cross Atlantic Chewers), ADR (best part of the gig) and foley. We also handle editing, music supervision/composition, and mixing.

We are also developing an animated series together. It may cause me to have to splinter my company from the bigger one but we're working on the legalities and ethics of that right now.

I also sit on the Board that is trying to get a new soundstage built in Alberta.

Business manager at a GM dealership is the day job, writing my ass off in order to NOT manage the dealership is what I do during other waking hours. The other fun things that don't pay much but keep me sane are announcing middle/high school basketball games and coaching varsity golf.

It's what I call legal services. What it is essentially is there are other ways of taking care of disputes without having to go through trial. There are things such as mediation, arbitration (which may be your only legal route in case you want to sue depending on your own employment) and private trials.

I'm not involved in the case work at all. That's handled by attorneys and retired judges.

Technical Project Manager at a Consulting Firm. Not very thrilling but I like my job as I get to fix a lot of problems/projects that bedevil others. I enjoy solving business problems as I treat them like puzzles. I don't care for the fact that my firm is very understaffed (blah blah blah cost savings blah blah blah) and our hiring policies these days seem to favor morons or inbreds. Can't tell one from the other.

So you're not a judge down in Florida who has setenced kids younger than you to the gas chamber? I'm shocked.

I'm unemployed at the moment. Thanks for rubbing salt in the wound, ass-hole.

Aah, neat. Hope I didn't come off sounding like a dick.

I work at Staples, unloading the truck. Because I'm a smart and talented individual with limitless potential.

Great way to get in shape (not so much to lose weight as to tone and build a little mass). I remember unloading trucks for Montgomery Wards back in the summer of '91. Best shape I was ever in (without having to work out at a gym).

You're telling me. The constant lifting of furniture has done wonders for my scrawny arms. I actually have some kind of muscle definition now.

Man, when I first started working there I hated the trucks that were 75% filled with appliances and lawn mowers. By the end of the summer, I hated the light trucks (filled with clothes) - they took so much longer to unload. Also the summer I went from a 28 waist to a 31 waist. Scrawny went forever out the door.

As a side note, when you move into a better job definitely start some kind of exercise routine so that you don't lose the mass/definitition you gain. Easy to lose/hard to re-gain.

Nah, don't worry about it. I'm trying to get the hell out of here into some kind of accounting/finance gig. The fact is trying to explain what I do would bore the hell out of anyone.

You all aware that Devin's surely gonna write down every post so he can insult all of you in a job-related fashion in the future, do you?
Also, currently unemployed, working on my thesis, but doing the ocassional odd job or temp job for the money.
Last one was building a video archive of old tv commercials at an Advertising Agency (I was paid to press a buttons on a vhs and a Mac, then goof of for an hour, repeat process, burn on a dvd at the end of the day, go home, same next day).
Yes, my work space was in a basement.

Considering he recently wrote about how much he enjoyed being in a mixing studio I'm not too worried about it.

I think I win the least manly job award. Stay at home dad. Three years this September.

And yet I remain totally envious...

I'm a freelance journalist. It's mostly film stuff, but I write occasionally for a guidebook about Dublin. I write film reviews and features part-time for a magazine, sell the odd feature to a big national broadsheet and do regular on-air contributions to radio shows.

I only started freelancing this year, and it's going okay- just scraping by a living from it, which was my first ambition. I don't make much money, nor do I enjoy making pitches and trying to track down editors, but I adore the writing part.

Overall I really like what I do for a living.

You've got my admiration. That is a tough job.

Full-time PhD student, part-time adjunct professor and research assistant at a NYC public college, & sometime consultant to not-for-profit community groups.

*Insert screencap of the 40-Year Old Virgin gang fucking around the loading dock*