a job ain't nothing but work

[elpollodiablo]

It ain't my job 

[YojimboMonkey]

anyway let it be known BULLSHIT, I have a pretty damn good career and I like it well enough but it in no way defines my life, it is what I do to provide myself and my family with the resources we need to pursue our lives

[Greg Nog]

smorten up

[diesel_powered]

Damn, I was so expecting some more blood up in here.

[davy]

Also, it ain't like I'm not TRYING to choose wisely. I'm in graduate school for the second time because I'm trying to make the wisest choice.

But does that mean that the job I get when I graduate is going to be exactly what I want? What I've gone through grad school for? Absolutely not. I've pretty much reconciled myself to the fact that after 25 months of year-round library science, I'm probably not going to be able to find a good, solid library job where I live (and relocating is out of the question, since I've got a kid). Not because I don't want it bad enough, but because the economy here is near death and a) libraries can't afford to hire more staff, and b) old librarians can't afford to retire, so even the spots that might have opened up aren't going to be there.

[jm]

I just found out that I have to be at work at 6AM (which means getting out of bed at 4AM) on Monday.  So hey, that's cool.

[Greg Nog]

Man someone was just gonna throw out like a pound of perfectly good cheese into the garbage
and then they did


but then i rescued it

[milesofsparks]

you are like a cheese superhero

[Greg Nog]

i heard its cries from the garbage can, adjacent to the slightly-brown guacamole

never fear

i said

and then gave it a gentle kiss as I plucked it from the jaws of death

[diesel_powered]

Most people, I'd just say that's hyperbole. But in this case, I'm pretty sure that's exactly how it went down.

[cold before sunrise]

It really is a shame for a job to be nothing but work, since those are your days. I've been reassessing my position, hoping to find ways to bridge it into more interesting things... it's tough to decide between security in a job that chips away at the soul or having to buy a van to live out of in case my next venture is less profitable.

[Greg Nog]

half of it is cheddar
and the other half pepperjack

[Nick Ink]

Well, I'm of the same mind of Jim, and although I sometimes enjoy my work, I certainly wouldn't be spending time there if I could afford not to.

Having said that, at the moment my whole sector is under threat, thanks to new laws just passed by the government. It looks like a rather desperate attempt by the massively unpopular Labour government to pander to Middle England immigration fears. In reality, it means that schools like mine all over Britain could be driven out of business. Our top 3 nationaliteies are Saudi Arabia, Korea and Turkey, all of whom come in on long-term VISAs. Bad news.

[Ignatius]

There's a school over here that teaches English to students placed with hosts in home stays of three or four months, and even has programs that last a week or two... A group of children from somewhere in east Asia that I no longer remember won a week-long class trip to New York that included classes at the school. In my understanding, it operates as a sort of freelance study abroad program for people who aren't really enrolled in schools at home, with the added bonus of close proximity to NYC. I don't know that is a sustainable business model, and I hope that your legislation is somehow overturned, but it's an interesting concept.

I hope that neither you nor prospective immigrants will suffer stiff material consequences as the result of backwards politicians.

[edison]

Having said that, at the moment my whole sector is under threat, thanks to new laws just passed by the government. It looks like a rather desperate attempt by the massively unpopular Labour government to pander to Middle England immigration fears. In reality, it means that schools like mine all over Britain could be driven out of business. Our top 3 nationaliteies are Saudi Arabia, Korea and Turkey, all of whom come in on long-term VISAs. Bad news.

Meh. This is anything but surprising, but still pretty depressing (as are the huge budget cuts announced in UK universities as well, from what I read). I hope you'll be fine.

Re: the general ongoing discussion - being likely unemployed soon and having never really been able to settle on something I actually want to do, I'm having massive uncertainties about whether my job should be/is my life, but I can't articulate them very well at this point.

[diesel_powered]

Eh, I have that whole hack-it-and-make-money vs. follow-bliss-and-be-broke dichotomy going on right now. Basically, I made the decision that I'm going to hit the bliss-following for the moment (thanks Dad!) and if that doesn't put me on track to financial security by 30 (20 months to go, tick fucking tock), then it's back to hacking it. At this point, I'm just grateful for the privilege of having a family that is willing to support (read: feed) my broke ass for a bit while I drain the remainder of my savings working on this shit. But I guess that's a perk of being an only child.

[elpollodiablo]

So I got offered a commission-based job "programming a green retail space" in my neighborhood. Apparently this involves booking tenants (it's a revolving retail space), updating a blog, doing other social media fuckery. Wonder if it's worth it. The commission thing makes me think probably it's not.

[jm]

Couldn't sleep at 10PM last night, so I stayed up and watched The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (like you do).  Now I'm sitting here staring blankly at the computer with my mouth hanging open, hoping that the clock will strike half-two.

[DCDave]

So I got offered a commission-based job "programming a green retail space" in my neighborhood. Apparently this involves booking tenants (it's a revolving retail space), updating a blog, doing other social media fuckery. Wonder if it's worth it. The commission thing makes me think probably it's not.

Straight commission or salary + commission?  Straight commission is a way for people to fuck you over for labor.

[elpollodiablo]

Well if it was salary + commission there woulda been a commission target, presumably, and there wasn't. But I'm supposed to go meet the guy at the space later this week.

[davy]

So I got offered a commission-based job "programming a green retail space" in my neighborhood. Apparently this involves booking tenants (it's a revolving retail space), updating a blog, doing other social media fuckery. Wonder if it's worth it. The commission thing makes me think probably it's not.

Straight commission or salary + commission?  Straight commission is a way for people to fuck you over for labor.

Yup. And when the economy is this bad, it's a way for companies to basically turn you into indentured servants. I eventually quit my commission sales job because when everything went to shit, people quit buying and I got so far under draw that I wouldn't have made it above water again, ever. And even then, they threatened me with having to pay back the draw if I quit. (I looked it up, though, and it would've been illegal for them to do that.)

Still, it was a shitty, shitty, shitty way to work.

[DCDave]

It's really common for liberal non-profits to contract out fundraising to commission-based firms, which is so incredibly unpleasant to me.  I dunno if conservative NGOs do that in conservative parts of the country, but around here you can get a summer job "working to defend the environment" and it just turns into canvassing for cash and not making ANYTHING.

[elpollodiablo]

Yeah but it ain't like I'm out on the sales floor, pushing TVs or furniture. Different businesses rent this space for a month or two or however long, both to take advantage of the fact that it's a well-positioned green building and to test-run having a brick and mortar store without making the full-on commitment of a lease. So I'd imagine any commissions would be larger and more infrequent.

[elpollodiablo]

It's really common for liberal non-profits to contract out fundraising to commission-based firms, which is so incredibly unpleasant to me.  I dunno if conservative NGOs do that in conservative parts of the country, but around here you can get a summer job "working to defend the environment" and it just turns into canvassing for cash and not making ANYTHING.

Haha, yeah. My boss routinely capitalizes on the willingness of starry-eyed youngsters who volunteer their time canvassing to save the environment... for a private, for-profit company paying them minimum wage. It's pretty gross.

[elpollodiablo]

So goddamn bored at work already