What do you do for a living and do you enjoy it?

Maintenance Engineer (acting unit manager) for local authority. I look after all the woodwork and metalwork machinery in the local secondary, special schools and adult education centres.
I love problem solving and fixing stuff but the red tape and newly added additional paperwork is mind numbing. Loads of great people who do thankless jobs for local government who at times can be the only good thing until the weekend.

Pathologist

Bike Shop Owner,
Get to work on some nice bikes, meet like minded people, been a steep learning curve on the biz side, and long days.
Prob doing more hours a week than when I was a money grabbing Aircraft Engineer!
On the whole I really enjoy the job, be even better if there wasn’t so much paper/office work!

Marine Engineer …. Jack of all trades, master of none .
Hate boats and engines ; other than that it’s ok.

Curto80.

Yes I work at swanwick.

Interesting thread as most of the jobs I’ve never heard of or considered! Been a squaddie, ski instructor, sparkie and shop stock room boy but I’ve landed on my feet now.

Not surprised you like it – I’ve seen how you guys work! If you know Monkey tell him his bro says hi.

landed on my feet now.

Did you ever consider stand up 😉

Subsea Engineer for a big oil company.

I install the bits which sit on top of the well at the seabed and control the flow of oil/gas.

I love the job, but the time offshore away from family is tough, and the current trajectory of the oil industry means job security is becoming a big worry.

Part time teaching assistant in a nurture unit, so work with children with social, emotional and educational needs. It is full on, demanding and tiring. But the children, nursery reception and year 1 are brilliant. On certain days theirs tears before bedtime both children and staff. Good stuff in the main.

Self employed gardener, was an engineer for 25+ years got bored with it so started to do something else and really enjoy it. It’s hard work but I choose the jobs and the hours and it beats lining someone else’s pocket.

Solicitor in Brecon. It’s ok most of the time, I like my client’s, mostly knarly Welsh hill farmers. I used to be an agricultural mechanic/engineer however 16 years and not much more than min wage put paid to that.

industrial roofer.
love it

I don’t know anyone at work who’s on here tbh!

Jambalaya, I can’t think of a witty response, sorry!

Firefighter. Works 5hite but lads are great. I should have stayed in the army though

I run a small design agency in Carlisle and on the side I take photos of mountain bikes. Most of the time neither one feels much like work which is ace

Clinical Pharmacologist. I get to mix Maths, Medicine and Biology in equal measure. It’s not a job, it’s a vocation and I feel privileged to be able to develop future medicines – when they work (which is seldom). Resilience, optimism and geekiness are the necessary three skills for career success.

In another life, I’d be a full-time cycle coach, but that doesn’t keep me in the bikes to which I’d like to be accustomed, so experimenting on people keeps the wolf from the door instead 😉

Marine Engineer…
…Hate boats and engines

Ummmmm…..

Marine Engineer …. Jack of all trades, master of none .
Hate boats and engines ; other than that it’s ok.

I loved boats and engines but hated the being at sea (eventually). Would do it again tomorrow if someone figured out teleportation.

Currently an operator technician in a nuclear power station. As an engineer in a previous life it can be frustrating being treated like a child day in day out. Doing a degree to get my stripes back and hopefully regain some job satisfaction.

Hydrographic surveyor, work offshore on large ROV survey vessels.

Love it, especially the time off (5 weeks on / 5 weeks off) and the reasonably good pay. Our lass less keen at my being away 5 weeks at a time though.

Oil price is causing concerns though…

For the moment – pretty content.

For a long time I moved pianos. Sold the business last year and walked away at the age of 68. I had no residual injuries, nothing hurt on my last day, and I never missed a day from injury.

The reason I sold the business is that not that I couldn’t do it any more. I wrote a book about my mountain biking adventures[/url], and the publicity efforts would not permit me to run the business effectively, so I sold it to my employees.

I tinker with MR scanners. Sometimes it is a good job, sometimes a proper pain.
Get to buy lots of Titanium tools for use on my bikes. If nothing else I have the most niche spanner collection.

Northernerindevon are you freelance? Pending some R&D trials I am running over winter I may have some interesting hydro survey work coming up in the 2016 season that would be based from shore.

Peterfile – do you work for a law firm?

Teacher. Love the teaching bit, hate all the constant changes and trying to manage other teachers.

I’m a bike fitter for a well respected small chain of fitting studios. I also do a bit of physiological testing for cyclists as well.

I enjoy it on the whole, although it’s not as much fun when the seasons change and the demand drops, because it means that I have to work in a bike shop- far more stress and disorganisation than I would ideally like. I also get to use all the best bits of my degree (sport and exercise science) so it doesn’t seem like a complete waste of time.

Would love to do more of the physiology stuff, but even finding a way to gain experience is hard enough, never mind getting someone to pay me a wage to do it! May well end up just doing something completely different to avoid my current 45min car commute.

oceanographer – passes the time and pays the bills.

Consultant IT architect here.

Used to not enjoy it but now I’m with a small company it’s tolerable as there are no internal company politics.

Pays too much and isn’t that bad to justify jumping to do something more worthwhile and interesting. Ideally I’d get made redundant and forced to try something else for a year.

Clinical Pharmacologist. I get to mix Maths, Medicine and Biology in equal measure. It’s not a job, it’s a vocation and I feel privileged to be able to develop future medicines – when they work (which is seldom). Resilience, optimism and geekiness are the necessary three skills for career success.

In another life, I’d be a full-time cycle coach, but that doesn’t keep me in the bikes to which I’d like to be accustomed, so experimenting on people keeps the wolf from the door instead

If only there were a way you could combine the two…

RAF Logistics type. I spend my days working with interesting kit and interesting people in interesting places. I love what i do, for the most part. However, lots of time away can really put a lot of stress on the family (i went to the middle east in January, and only got back a couple of weeks ago) as can moving around every couple of years (I’ve gone from Wiltshire, to North Lincolnshire, to Lincolnshire and to Cambridgeshire in the last 5 years).

I left school 12 years ago with no qualifications, no aspirstions and no prospects. The RAF took me in, and now i have a great work-life balance (when I’m in the UK), i earn much more than most of my contemporaries, I’ve got loads of transferrable skills and experience, and i get to go biking on work time (as a Joint Service Mountain Bike Leader).

I’m also soon to start a degree, which is very heavily subsidised by the Service; It’ll cost me a couple of hundred quid at most.

I owe a lot to my job.

Supermarket trucker
Work/ life balance is not good & like a lot of people on this thread I could do with a career change..
Until my late 20’s I was a spark,maybe I should retrain in something involving those skills.

fallsoffalot – Member
industrial roofer.

😯

Glorified forklift driver/yard manager. Don’t hate it, but don’t love it either. Pays the bills etc. Could be doing a lot worse for a lot less and not too stressful so mustn’t grumble.

Building Control Surveyor – Local Authority.

Enjoy the job – yes, I work from home or a remote office 10 mins from home 4 days a week, manage my own workload and time, essentially do my own thing most of the time. 40 hrs a week. Lots of leave, flexi days, flexible hours.

BUT if I had to change areas within the county and work from a central office again I’d be looking to leave ASAP, the above mentioned positives would more or less be cancelled out by having to sit in an office with my managers and colleagues, very few of whom I like or respect. A lot of what goes on in the council environment, and the people it employs really are EXACTLY how people envisage them, infuriatingly tedious, bureaucratic, inefficient, time wasting, spineless management etc etc etc………..

Chakaping – genuine LOL there!

Let’s just say that Ferrari was a smart cookie when he decided on optimal micro dosing of EPO. My specialist field is antibodies and proteins.

These threads come along once in a while, but this is the first time I’ve seen so many posts and open and honest posts too.

We all do very different things don’t we?

Niiiice.

cladding manufacturer /fabricator. Hate it.

Mostly a photographer these days. Commercial landscapes/cityscapes/lifestyle/editorial stuff as well as a few weddings and events/festivals etc. Still do a bit of music education work. Love it – creative and varied, get to meet lots of interesting people.

Back in construction after a 15 yr career change as a DT teacher. Now Site engineering/setting out again.Apart from not working until next tuesday !!
Enjoyed teaching mostly all the sh1te around it did for me. Enjoy being back on site and dont miss the holoidays too much. Any builder types need site eng west yorks?

Ex-Brickie now Lecturing in construction at a college, teaching classroom thoery, workshop practical and assessing NVQs.
Our clientele are somewhat demanding and generally not very motivated, but that’s modern teenagers for you.
Paperwork and pressures for results are ridiculous.
Holidays are great.
Pay is ok.
Don’t miss the early morning-late home of site work.
Don’t miss the wet and cold and sunburn and backache.
Do miss the ability to tell someone to **** off and that they’re a c**t when they need it 😉

Another RAF man here, aircraft techie mechanical.
Can’t decide whether I like it anymore, stuck in a rut, not bothered by the promotion aspect. Can’t see the benefit of a couple of k a year more for all the extra grief. At the minute I’m a top level producer pulling in just under 30k and I have a fairly easy work life.
Enjoy the actual work and the lads I work with, but constant cuts and time away is wearing a little thin.
On the flip side I went sailing on the Solent last week for free, and have 74 days leave to enjoy this year