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What do you do???

9K views 64 replies 57 participants last post by  webmaestro 
#1 ·
As a spin-off of stealthtastic's thread about how many hours a week we work, I'm starting this thread as a place to describe your job. I've found that, as much as I know many of you, I have no idea what you do for a living.....

I.E........ I've been a commercial and residential remodeling contractor for 16 years. Before that, I built new construction homes strictly as a framing carpenter.

My entire life has been spent in the building trades with the exception of a few years (1994-2000) as a casino dealer and table games supervisor.
 
#3 ·
i worked as a satellite communications specialist while i was in the Army. I got out a few months ago and now work as a cell tower climber/tech. I am hoping to go back to sat comm though. Climbing isn't that bad but the job i have now is a dead end. I want to get my CCNA and comptia certs so i have switching and routing as well as transmissions.
 
#7 ·
I have been a machinist/tool and die/mold maker for 24 years. Started right out of high school and learned everything on the job. Now running $40,000 software and running $300,000 dollar machines. A lot of hard work to get where I'm at and spent 23 years on 2nd shift. Still love going to work everyday. To me it's fun and I make a good living. Now I'm on day shift and can finally play in a band. Actually 2. Pink Floyd cover band and metal cover band.
 
#19 ·
I work F/T in Human Resources, which pays the bills, but HR jobs often involve dealing with people problems, which are often headache inducing. the company I work for is great but I don't always love the job itself.
I also have 2 part-time jobs - one is teaching Paddle Canada sea kayaking courses during the 3 paddling seasons here and the other P/T job is leading outdoor trips (hiking, snowshoeing and backpacking) for our local city's outdoor program. The outdoor stuff is fun but the pay isn't that great so it's hard to pay a mortgage with that kind of work...but I love outdoor activities. Once the mortgage gets paid off I hope to quit the HR gig and just work P/T doing outdoor programs. Right now I am very busy between the 3...I also play in a couple of bands but we don't make any money at it (just for fun). As a result, I am rarely home and my wife doesn't see me very often...it's hard to balance everything... =/

Still love going to work everyday.
That is the key man...if you love going to work then you are in a great position because not many people can say that...cool that you are in a Floyd band too (love Floyd)

Cool thread - it's an eye opener to see what all my fellow Jemsiters do!
Agreed =)
 
#8 ·
Got out of college in 07 with business degrees, the only work I could find was apartment "make ready" for a buddy of mine, basically fixing what renters destroyed. Did that for a year (while playing in a great band and having an awesome time of it...) then moved back to Tulsa. Started working for a friend of my music festival family and did general contracting for Tulsa's well off residents for few years. Learned that most of the well off were in oil and gas related fields, were spoiled trust funders of oil money, or lawyers. No law degree sooo.

Got a job in Oil and Gas. Currently I am an Oil Revenue Analyst for a large company that handles other companies business processes. IE onshore outsourcing. None of the perks but all of the problems. Great experience, and I love making oil "happen." I deal with stupid amounts of money. Fascinating industry that should keep me employed until I can say F it and make furniture/guitars everyday.
 
#9 ·
I've been a Biomedical Technician for 25 odd years now... Basically just repairing and maintaining medical equipment of all types for a hospital. Not a bad gig, but kind of stuck now, as it's a narrow job field. Trying to move back home to AZ, but tough to find a job I can cross over in to and still make decent money.
 
#10 ·
Currently working as a receptionist/data entry clerk at an 'Ear, Nose and Throat' doctors office while finishing school. (Computer science and engineering)
As boring as I thought the office work would be, it's not. I take my time with the data entry, even though I could do it pretty quickly, making sure everything is accurate (I am dealing with peoples health information, after all) and in my 'down time' I can study. I've met a lot of people there (patients and other doctors) and the demeanor of a person visiting a doctors office is so very different than when they are in Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart customers are, mostly, rude, impatient, demanding and treat you like you're less than human.
At the office, people are, mostly, polite, kind, understanding and treat you with respect. And that makes me feel proud that I'm there to help them, even in my small way, with what they are going through.
I recently had a little boy in the office who somehow got a pearl stuck in his ear. His grandmother gave him a string of fake pearls to play with (he's 6 years old), it broke and he was playing with the little beads and managed to get one in his ear and they couldn't get it out. The doctor had to use a hook and the poor little guy was crying and there was blood. They called me into the office to help, what I ended up doing was holding his other hand while his mom cried and told him a story about how I did the same thing (it was made up, of course) and how I was scared and how it hurt, but it went away after a while and I had a cool story to tell my friends at school after getting a few days off to stay home and play while my ear healed. He calmed down and they were able to pack and bandage it with little trouble.
It felt so good to see the smile on his face, and a week later when they came in for his follow up he had drawn me a picture of me, him, his Mommy and the doctor smiling in the office with the pearl in the doctors hand. :D :D :D :D :D
It made me long to be a mommy. LOL
Okay, too long, all you asked is what I do. ;)
 
#11 ·
The short answer is that I am in sales. The longer answer is that I work for a company called Thermo Fisher Scientific and we manufacture and sell a wide variety of instruments, equipment and consumables that are used primarily in the medical research industry, although we are involved with other industries as well.

http://www.thermoscientific.com/en/home.html

We are the largest company in our industry. Any time you see a lab on some TV show, the stuff that's in there is what we make.

I personally am part of a sales team that services the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. You can read their blurbs about what they do if you aren't familiar with them.

http://www.nih.gov/
 
#13 ·
What I don't do for a living is what I love. 15 years ago I didn't know what i wanted to do really, and was going through all sorts of emotional rubbish, which in hindsight was stupid. So I decided to do what would enable me to buy some of the crap I desired. Instead of doing what I loved.

I'm a SOE Designer, also a freelance photographer and retoucher. The photography and retouching I love, but it won't pay the mortgage.

Oh well... kinda wish I decided 15 years ago to do what I loved instead. To wake up looking forward to every single day and what it might bring, looking forward to "work" would be a dream. Feels like it's too late now. I mean, s#!t, I spend the greater majority of my days working, all those hours that I'm not doing what I love... such a waste. I'll figure it out though. :)
 
#14 ·
I'm in the public service. I design online forms for Government. It's pretty boring work, but my workplace is flexible, and the people I work with are cool. The family really needs more money, but finding a job doing what I do is hard, and prospects lately are very thin on the ground. And I value having the flexibility I have to look after my boys when needed.

What I'd love to do I do in my spare time, and paid work in it is much harder to find. I run my own blog, and also write for Seymour Duncan's blog. I'd love to write music stuff, reviews and stuff for a living, but I doubt that'll ever happen.
 
#15 ·
I'm a sound engineer. I live on tour. I don't get home much, about two or three weeks a year. It's the best job in the world. I'm extremely lucky because I get the chance to live in several different cities per year and see what the people are like/what the places are like. I miss my family though.

Cool thread - it's an eye opener to see what all my fellow Jemsiters do!
 
#16 · (Edited)
Interesting guys, cool to see that we are not all GAS crazy and hold down normal jobs. :)

I am an inside technical salesman in the electric motor industry for the last 17 years. I was an outside salesman with the same company for 5 years but came inside 2 years ago when we lost our sales manager to cancer. You don't replace 40 years easily and it takes 2 of us. I went from being on the road and gone 3+ days a week to an 8-5 job and I like it plus I can leave Jemsite up most of the day. :)
 
#17 ·
It's gone back an forth, but centered around three things - music, military, and ministry.

I was heavily involved in music in high school, and put it aside for a few years to enlist in the military. During my final year of enlisted service, I took up jazz guitar lessons and jammed out with my teachers jazz quintet a number of times, got encouragement from him and his bass player to take up music as a career, and so went to college. I applied, and was accepted, to the Berkeley College of Music, but stupidly decided to attend a less well known conservatory program near my family. It was still an alright program, but I ended up studying classical guitar and early music, as they didn't have an electric program until several years after I began my studies there. I gigged around a lot solo, with a guitar trio, and chamber groups, and was a staff guitarist/composer at a local avant garde theater, as well as wrote and performed music for the city's Shakespearean theater.

A few years after graduation, gigging and teaching, I felt called to the ministry and entered seminary, setting aside music. Spent five years in theological, biblical and pastoral studies, and ministered at a church for a number of years before re-entering the military during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to serve in combat as a chaplain. I've spent about five years doing that, and am pretty tired of it. The Chaplaincy has some benefits, but not enough actual ministry gets accomplished, and it is a highly political job. I live near a large musical hub, and over the past few years have begun working my chops and musical knowledge back into shape, as well as taking advantage of my pay to outfit my rig. I'm currently looking at leaving the officer corps, and returning to music. I've already begun to gig on the side, and have been making some good networking connections. Time will tell.
 
#25 ·
Self employed landscape design and construction specializing in big high tech Koi Carp ponds.
I used to take on enormous projects but moved away from that because of unreliable labor workforce problems losing me vast amounts of money.
that sounds like a fun job! you're probably outside lots, which sounds a lot better that sitting in an office with no windows like I do every day…. =o/

I work for Seymour Duncan in social media (editing the blog, contributing to the social media channels etc), helping out with press releases and stuff. I also write for Gibson.com (news and features) and a bunch of music magazines: Australian Guitar, Mixdown, Beat, The Brag, Blunt and Tone Report. And I run my own guitar blog, I Heart Guitar.
wow, you get to work on guitar related stuff at work...that sounds like a very cool job!!! :)
 
#24 ·
I work for Seymour Duncan in social media (editing the blog, contributing to the social media channels etc), helping out with press releases and stuff. I also write for Gibson.com (news and features) and a bunch of music magazines: Australian Guitar, Mixdown, Beat, The Brag, Blunt and Tone Report. And I run my own guitar blog, I Heart Guitar.
 
#27 ·
Previously I was a research biologist focusing on shark reproduction and growth. Now a days I am a college Professor of Biology.

As an aside, definitely check out Peter's Iheartguitar blog. Good stuff. I read it daily and follow him on twitter. Peter posts some good stuff, and he seems a swell guy for an Aussie. :)
 
#31 ·
I have been in the IT industry since 1993 and that is my main job. To supplement I run my photography and video studio and shoot anything from weddings to bar / bat mitzvah's to bands, etc. I don't promote it much anymore. I also have a recording studio out of my home and record anything from bands to commercial work to radio spots and voice overs for film.
 
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