...or at least everyone thinks they know how to do. Anyone that's ever been to school reckons they're qualified to know what kids need to learn and how to teach it to them. HR gets treated harshly as a profession, but presumably there's more to it than meets the eye.
My job (some kind of tedious postindustrial desk job) has a bit of a knack to it but it's not difficult.
Could any idiot do your job? Are you, in fact, an idiot that manages to do your job successfully?
Anyone who went to School of Hard Knocks and University of Life can do my job.
Parenting, moments to achieve. Lifetime of work.
This idiot struggles to do my job.
Was told when I started it would take 4-5 years to feel competent and confident. Coming up to 3 years, they weren't kidding!
We recently lost a ‘business development chap’ in our small company. He did quotes, ordered stuff for jobs, a bit of IT stuff and very rare site visits.
Turns out his work can be covered by one field guy on a Thursday and the boss going from a 4 day week to a 5 day week.
There’s fewer ****ups as field guys know what to order and have a better idea how long a job takes.
He thought he was irreplaceable and repeatedly handed his notice in to improve his wages, until it was accepted.
I work in sales. Anyone can do it, but most people hate it
I have done a variety of roles but basically all customer service. They all used roughly the same skill set yet amusingly the ones in the fund management sector paid a lot more than the ones in the outdoor equipment sector, the barriers to entry being the difference, not the role.
and yes anyone can do it but not everyone can do it well.
Presumably surgeons can't just pick it up in a couple of months and members of the public don't tell them how to do their job...?
Pro footballer - very easy to do badly, very difficult to do well, everyone tells you how to do your job.
Estate agents - too easy to pick on them.
Many think so, less actually do. Many also "almost joined but {insert suitably laughable reason why not here}..."
The mistake that most folk make is that HR are there to help them when in fact their primary function is to protect the interests of the employer. Spent last 12 years of my ‘career’ doing HR jobs - not employee-facing (thankfully!)
I started my hols today go back mid August. Just 6 weeks of "teaching's easy and look at your holidays", yep 4 new staff to get up to date, three new courses, re-introduction of assignments etc etc etc.
Alps on Saturday though cannot bloody wait. I'll reach peak risk taking around the 12th of August.
<p>Any idiot could do my job, just need a high tolerance of muscle pain and crap weather. <br />
</p>
Care worker , everyone can do my job until they see what the pay is
@mattbee is that the Spinnaker in Pompy?
Any idiot could do my job (judging by recent recruitment) but my boss seems to be an idiot who can't do his and therefore makes mine extremely difficult.
Actually in answer to the original to the original question. Due to the shortage of trained folk in what we do out in the field, we’ve taken on a mixture of people to train up.
The last 3 from different backgrounds struggled to even get up on time. Or drive a company vehicle in a vaguely responsible way/non crashy/police involving way.
So I’d say at the moment on that basis it’s clearly not easy to do my job.
relapsed_mandalorianFull Member
@mattbee is that the Spinnaker in Pompy?
Posted 14 minutes ago
Yep. Spend half my life hanging off it! 😝
I started my hols today go back mid August. Just 6 weeks of “teaching’s easy and look at your holidays”, yep 4 new staff to get up to date, three new courses, re-introduction of assignments etc etc etc.
Wish I did, I got shouted at by a parent today because her child can't behave.....she asked who to complain about me to...head teacher would seem your best bet I said. I was tempted to say head of house who this parent has already shouted at before but that would have been a bit mean 😄
I work in HR and not sure I can do my job.
Any idiot can fell trees apparently.
I think this is true. What you get paid for is getting them to fall in the right place? (See YouTube fails for video evidence.)
Like Mattbee anyone can do my job, as long as you don't mind discomfort.
And like timba, anyone can climb trees, but I did give it up for a career on another style of rope work . I even appeared on Pinterest
Minor civil servant, I think we’re all lazy and couldn’t hack it in the private sector iirc.
I like to act the idiot but the reality is to do my role well requires not being an idiot. Possible consequences of not doing it well could result in death (mine or others) , serious injuries, usual fun stuff as a worst case.
The mistake that most folk make is that HR are there to help them when in fact their primary function is to protect the interests of the employer.
You know why it's called Human Resources? After the Belgian techno track Dominator by Human Resource. The lyrics captured everything the department stands for: "I'm the one and only dominator..... Dominator....There is no other!..... I wanna kiss myself!".
Any idiot can fell trees apparently.
Maybe that’s why it’s so dangerous? 😆
I was talking to my physio this morning, her tree surgeon's brother lost his arm last year!
Well I [b]was[/b] a chemist - as in the chemical engineer type of chemist (actually synthetic organic chemistry). This had the major advantage that no-one knew WTF it actually was so no-one told me how to do it and conversations about "what do you do?" were easy to bat aside.
Even trying to explain it at the job centre the first time I was made redundant was a challenge.
- What do you do?
- Chemist.
- Oh, there's a job here stacking shelves in a Boots store...?
No.
Now I work in Transport Planning and OMFG, everyone knows (thinks they know...) about transport because everyone travels around. The fact that Aunty Mabel gets a bus to town once a week apparently makes her an expert on all things related to buses, roads, roadworks, traffic lights and congestion. 🙄
This makes it very difficult for actual expertise to come to the top because everyone is hassling their councillor about potholes and traffic lights and congestion and speeding and parking and they all have their own unique "solutions" and the councillors (also not experts) like to promise all sorts of undeliverable shit. And then they wonder why they haven't got what they asked for...
England cricket coach and captain seems to fit that bill according to the TMS thread.
With an 11-3 record (79%) and two of the losses being by a gnat's cock (1 run vs NZ / 2 wickets vs Aus) I'd submit they're getting it badly right........ but Michael Vaughan (51%) knows better.
Well, for six of the last seven years my job was vehicle logistics, basically moving cars and vans, anything under 3.5 tonnes. Anyone with those license categories can do it. Whether they can do it competently or not is something else, and I can confirm that there are some who really shouldn’t be allowed in charge of anything more complicated than a motor mower. I could show you photos of two of the three vehicles one of my former colleagues wrote off, nearly causing very serious injuries, possibly even death, to himself and the drivers of the other vehicles, one another colleague, the other a van driver parked by the side of the road.
Me, I consider myself a competent driver after 46 years, and not having had any accidents of my own causing yet.
The last year I spent applying vinyl graphics to motoring school cars, and that I can say is not an easy thing to do well, it was a steep learning curve for me, and I’d worked in print/graphics for over thirty years.
Could any idiot do your job? Are you, in fact, an idiot that manages to do your job successfully?
Yes to the former and not sure on the latter. I spend most of my waking hours worrying about losing my job because I assume I’m bad at it. No formal qualifications and work under the assumption that I’m the daftest person in the room.
Work as Head of Sustainability for my company (among other roles) with a focus on reducing our GHG inventory. I basically talk lots, find professionals/grown ups to help and attempt to guilt trip my bosses in to doing the right thing.
Could any idiot do your job?
no
Are you, in fact, an idiot that manages to do your job successfully?
yes, but I am the special type of idiot who gets away with it, your average idiot is not so talented!
Got to be Met Police, the easiest job without a doubt just need to be racist and you're in.
Got to be Met Police, the easiest job without a doubt just need to be racist and you’re in.
I would find that very difficult!
I’ve been a school teacher, which a lot of people assume is easy but it isn’t
I’ve been a SCUBA diving instructor, which a lot of people assume is difficult, but it isn’t.
I now work with adults with learning disabilities, which is ok as long as you have patience, but is by far the most rewarding, which kind of makes it easy as I want to put in the effort.
Got to be Met Police, the easiest job without a doubt just need to be racist and you’re in.
I would find that very difficult!
Ahh, but that's the thing about institutional racism. It doesn't mean that they only hire racists, it means that they get mostly normal people to behave in racially discriminatory ways. So if you as an average normal person joined the Met and soaked up the institutional culture and SOPs...you'd end up behaving in racist ways even if you yourself are not racist.
Now I work in Transport Planning
Absolute nightmare! An incredibly difficult multifaceted topic where people think "it's all common sense" that if they banned lorries or removed speed limits or made trains free, everything would be fixed, because it stands to reason.
My commiserations.
I have a very particular set of skills*, so no, probably not.
Makes me very valued to my current employer, not so much by other folk.
*not the Ex-CIA kind, the legacy IT systems & international payments kind
My job mostly requires common sense and a basic knowledge of spreadsheets.
So does mine. Common sense can be easily dismissed but to me it is the ability to look at things objectively and come up with simple solutions (using data and knowledge of the very large org I work in).
Not many people seem to be able to do it so to although to me it seems simple to others it may not be?
My job mostly requires common sense and a basic knowledge of spreadsheets
A decent knowledge of Excel is invaluable. So few people know how to use it to anything like it's full potential (and so many use it wrongly as a database!) but being able to do some basic pivot tables and auto calculations makes you look like an absolute genius.
I posted on here a while ago asking for some advice on a spreadsheet if inherited and the replies confirmed my suspicions that I'd have to rebuild it.
Everyone at work was blown away by how good it is now, they've got usable data. It's not even that clever (yet...,), just some reformatting and a pivot table. 🤷🏻♂️
Truck driving. They're all automatics these days, nothing like the old 13 and 16 speed gearboxes I used to drive.
I even get to have a kip in the middle of my shift waiting for a return load.
