How well do you like your job (all aspects)?

My boss is awesome. My coworkers are great. Work is distributed fairly (random, but fair). Working from home means there’s a great amount of independence, but we can always lean on each other with a problem and everyone’s there to help everyone.

The commute is amazing – I’m five steps away from my bed. There’s not a lot of downtime – a call can come through any time. We have scheduled breaks that we have to take when scheduled. I wish my two “meal breaks” were one long lunch so I actually had time to leave my house. Outside of scheduled breaks we have 20 minutes per week of “personal time” which could be running to the bathroom or answering the door for a delivery or stopping the dog from barking.

There’s no holdover work from one day to the next, no long projects. For that reason I’m often left feeling that my job is ultimately meaningless. Anyone can answer the phone and be yelled at. Anyone can process a refund or a replacement order. I wish there was more stuff to sink my teeth into, but it’s just not the nature of the work.

I do think the pay should be higher considering the amount of infrastructure I contribute to the job itself – I have to pay for higher-quality internet access that I could do without if I didn’t have this job; I have to maintain my computer at certain standards, etc. Any outage of service outside my control (if the ISP decides to cut a cord to do work down the road or something) I have to take that time as unpaid time off.

Ultimately this is not something I’m hoping to do for the long-term, but with any luck it’ll get me and my family to a point where we can do what we actually want to do.

@Seek: If you need to take the day off, for a personal reason, doctor’s appointment, etc., do they give you a hard time?

it sucks….

@jca – We get 20 hours of “unpaid time off” every six months. Anything more than 3 hours has to be approved ahead of time. We can also “shift swap” one of our days off to another day, but that has to be approved by management and can only be done twice a month.

The attendance policy is the most draconian part of the job, I think.

The chairs are quite uncomfortable.

I’m leaving it in two more days!

My old job was ideal with one exception. I was responsible for waay too much. It was 60 hour weeks at full speed and tons of stress.
My new job is still somewhat stressfull but it’s manageable. My boss and coworkers are great. The work itself is tedious, I don’t get to solve huge critical problems anymore or design things from the bottom up. I’m a cog in a well oiled and maintained machine. It’s 100% necessary to do my job like this though. It just is not as challenging and bordering on a little boring. It’s interesting when I come to the end of a project and get to put my parts in and working though. When there are problems and I get called in it’s satisfying to bring things online again.

I work as a pet and house sitter and babysit a 10 yr. old girl a couple afternoons a week. I was one that was tanked in the recession and this re-invention just sort of fell in my lap. I like what I am doing very much. I have plenty of flex time, free tome, maybe have several crazy weeks of overlapping gigs then weeks of lighter work.

The only drawback is the cash flow, no set in stone regular pay so it’s rather a feast or famine thing and scheduling can be tricky when juggling multiple gigs. The last month or so and the coming summer will be a time of feast, so I will save as much as I can during the busy time. The end of this month will be very busy and profitable, I have a double, 10 day gig. I’ll be running my tail off back and forth between 2 properties caring for 3 dogs, a cat, chickens and 5 horses. Spending nights at one property and half days between them.

Being an entrepreneurial type at heart I like shifting around from uber busy blocks to blocks of easy. Works for me, it has to at this time.

On a scale of 1–10, I like my job about a 4.

I’m a software engineer at a start up that aggregates patient data for pharmaceutical research and does patient advocacy work. As you might imagine, this is right up my alley and I feel good about working there.

I spend the majority of my time solving technical problems such as, how can I wrangle this raw data into a form that scientists can consume and derive insights from? If there are more than a million data points, will my algorithm complete in a reasonable amount of time? If the internet cuts out for a minute during hour five of the build, will my code handle that gracefully or will the build have to start all over again? Is all the personally identifiable patient data obscured?

These problems are often harder than I can solve on my own as a relatively new engineer, so I work pretty closely with older and more experienced engineers on my team. I like my coworkers. There are some I consider buddies, there are some I feel mostly neutral about, there really isn’t anyone I actively dislike. The only times I get bored are when I get stuck and have to wait around for someone to be available to help me.

My commute is about 40 minutes: 10 minutes of walking from my house to the subway station, 20 minutes on the subway, then another 10 minutes of walking from the station to the office. My subway pass is covered 50% by my employer so it’s only about $40 a month out of my pocket. I don’t love the subway because it gets very crowded, and I also don’t love the walking portion during the winter, but otherwise it’s fine. The subway is a pretty convenient option.

I get paid too much for what I do, in my opinion. The supply/demand status of my field works in my favor.

My direct boss (dispatcher) is a fucking idiot, and most of the drivers think so as well.
The big boss is most times fare to deal with.
My co -workers(other drivers) are good guys.
I do like the job, winter can be quite hard and trying at times.
As for getting time off as long as you submit for it well ahead of time usually no problem.
and for the most part they do seem to understand family emergencies .

I changed jobs about a year ago now and still love it. I’m a medical librarian at a university working with clinical staff mostly. I really enjoy working with these people and this subject area. I feel like I am making a difference to people’s work and education. There’s also a bit of creative stuff as I’ve taken on the website redesign and writing guides and help documents. My boss is good and so much better than my micromanaging previous one. I have a nice team of people that I work with as we have four libraries in the group, but mostly it’s me and my library assistant in our own library. So I get to make a lot of decisions but have back up if I need it. I have a short commute of 20–25 minutes and park a few minutes walk from work. There’s a nice cafe in our building and a supermarket close by as well as the town centre about 10 minutes walk away. I am very happy at work.

I hate my job.

I work in a lot of loud,crowded places, have to restrain, or fight people all the time. I’m not a violent person by nature, and I suffer from an anxiety disorder. I’ve had to fight people with guns, mainly knives, and everything in between.

Sometimes I have to take on multiple people, and although I have not been killed yet, I get injured, or hurt often, and worst of all, I have to hurt people. I hate hurting people, but I’m very good at what I do.
A month ago, I had to deal with 13 men fighting in a bathroom. There was blood all over the walls, floor, I was alone at the time (my other guys didn’t know what was happening,until it was over,) and it was in tight quarters. I broke everything up, but sustained multiple injuries. I’m healed up now, but I never know when the next issue will occur, only that it is inevitable. My body type lends itself well to physical altercations. I’m rarely over matched, but I’m human, still get scared, still can get hurt.

I was looking into starting my own security business, so I could just manage venues, but I am thinking about learning to be a bartender. One of the places I work offered to train me, and I will make way more money, without any violence.

Hopefully, I will get good at that, and I won’t have to fight anymore.

It’s interesting to me, I have been in countless physical altercations, and I still get the shakes after a big fight… I wish I never had to again….

I’m self-employed.

My job rocks. It’s varied and flexible and I’m really thankful I’ve been able to do it so long. I get to do interesting work that matters (or, sometimes really boring work that pays)...

But I think there’s downsides to anything. Every single day has to be self-motivated and there’s no coasting. It’s like doing job interviews every few weeks for new work, and every communication feels like a promise that I’ll deliver something. People overall are pretty great but you trade one boss for a dozen, there are bound to be some without the best intentions. There is no PTO or vacations except for what you give yourself. My wife jokes that my boss is an ass. :P

Overall, I enjoy it though. I’m always interested in how people choose to spend their time and I get to work with a lot of people trying to make their ideas happen.

I think we’re happiest when we match our personality to our job, and this feels like the best fit I’ve found.

@MrGrimm888 – I waited tables, bartended, and barbacked at clubs for quite a while. It’s good, but you can’t do it forever, right? Chase down that business idea man, just start making plans, talk about it with people, and it will happen. All those club/venue owners don’t want to mess with security hiring, firing, scheduling, and insurance. They want to worry about liquor and entertainment. You know the people, the skills, and can relate to both sides. It’s a great idea.

@funkdaddy: One of the things I tell people at work is “there’s no perfect boss, there’s no perfect employee and there’s no perfect job.”

Thanks for the encouragement @funkdaddy . I haven’t abandoned the idea of starting my own company. I’m just burnt-out a bit right now. Who knows what the future holds…

I’m literally going to run away and join the circus.

Well, the fair and festival circuit, but basically the same thing.

@Seek: I would love to do something fun instead of the daily grind but I need benefits.

I hate my job. My boss is an inconsiderate prick, and a perv. Work is not distributed fairly at all, and there is rampant favoritism.

Most of the people i work with (excluding my boss) are nice, although somewhat immature. There are a few backstabbers in the mix however, who run to the boss over the least little thing. Nobody at my workplace knows how to figure out anything for themselves…they are the most needy group of people I have ever seen. I honestly don’t know how they don’t burn the building down when I have a day off.

My work is not the most exciting, but I take satisfaction is getting it done efficiently and accurately, so that’s something, I suppose. I wish I had the chance to use my problem-solving skills more often, however. I have quite a bit of downtime (mainly due to my getting so efficient with all I have to do). I don’t necessarily make that widely known, however, as people around here happen to want to dump all of their responsibilities in my lap, and I refuse to do other people’s work. My position is fairly independent, and I like it being that way. Unfortunately, my boss is a real micro-manager, and thinks he has to stand over my shoulder all the time.

My commute is short…15 minutes usually, unless traffic is unusually bad. We have free parking.

My pay is decent, mainly because I’ve worked at the same job for 12 years now. Hopefully that is going to change soon.

Really confused by mine! I love it most of the time yet feel tired and sense of dread at times. I might even leave it to others for a while only to miss it big time. Me and my job? Really complicated.