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In this Discussion
- 1234 April 2011
- Cherry_Pie April 2011
- Clever_girl April 2011
- Death April 2011
- ed_chigliak April 2011
- flossy_log_lady April 2011
- freddy May 2011
- joey April 2011
- Judar_Spitzer April 2011
- lml__0_0__lml May 2011
- lolo April 2011
- Loose_Thread April 2011
- Matthew April 2011
- MirandaJuly April 2011
- Nick April 2011
- swamp_knobbler_mahan May 2011
- the_owls April 2011
- YoursTruly May 2011
Those At Work
I am at my job.
After 6 years of grad school I immediately went back to the kind of job I had before grad school.
Windowless gray cubicle
phone
PC
shavin' my pits
Here is a thread for those of us who are AT WORK. It's like facebook but with fewer republicans.
Probably no one else even is at work.
Or if you are, you are probably going to be that asshole who's like "I work from home! Doing something artsy fartsy and great! And/or for myself only!" In which case, great for you and also nuts to you!!!!!
WORK PARTY
After 6 years of grad school I immediately went back to the kind of job I had before grad school.
Windowless gray cubicle
phone
PC
shavin' my pits
Here is a thread for those of us who are AT WORK. It's like facebook but with fewer republicans.
Probably no one else even is at work.
Or if you are, you are probably going to be that asshole who's like "I work from home! Doing something artsy fartsy and great! And/or for myself only!" In which case, great for you and also nuts to you!!!!!
WORK PARTY
Comments
We should "chat." AIM: jessicafreddy
Do not drink the coffee @ this place -- it's bitter and watery. I warned you. Bring your own.
Good morning!
coffee break is at 930
i have a view of portland downtown from my office located in n portland
i could really go for a sandwich right now, my bowl of cereal was burned off on the commute.
Normally I would not have even a moment to write that here as I would be busy explaining puns to 8 year olds in my classroom but for the past month my student teacher has been in charge and I've been banished to the office. The first 3 weeks were great- I organized my teaching materials, wrote up new lesson plans and enjoyed being privy to all the action in the office (sooo many kids need ice and bandaids all day long.) But now I'm antsy to get back into my classroom and teach sumthin.
OTOH it's cool to be able to actually LEAVE THE SCHOOL during the day to get a coffee or pick up a Subway sandwich. Also I can go to the bathroom whenever I want! 20 year old me would not have considered these perks, and yet here I am...
seems like homework atmo
Still, I've got coffee and I'm doing a'ight.
I work Tues/Wed/Thurs for a software company downtown and then the rest of the time I do freelance projects and work on "stuff" with my "friends." Not bad.
Waiting for people to buy things and also for the mail to come, which heralds the most exciting part of my day.
I work M/T/W then have a four day weekend every week. My kind of work week!
today I am in better spirits because my supervisor brought me flowers; I was finally given a task to do; and there was cake in the breakroom. Although I did not eat or want the cake, I was glad it was there as I felt it showed some festive spirits and gentility. Drinking some badass green tea.
I meant "shavin my pits" more generally, in that I shave them at home but do so primarily due to having a job, when under normal circumstances I would let that shit go for weeks and/or months, given my druthers.
I don't know how to do AIM here! But there is g-chat if ever a person is on there.
Things that are good about having a job:
- money
Things that are bad abut having a job:
- having to shower in the morning instead of after exercising in the afternoon like a normal human
- my three years of totally un-structured Free Time coming to an end! I hate it! I was not meant to live on someone else's schedule
- the actual work
im not jelly but i totally could deal with 3x13.3s
but when I was a half-assed bike messenger I worked 3x13 and it FUCKING RULED. Entire 40 hour work week in 3 days! I just checked out of life for 3 days, working dawn 'til late, then had a rad 4 days off in a row, week after week. It was fucking awesome.
This is even better, because it's only 3 eights in a row!
Love doing all my shit in a row. Love getting it all done as quickly as possible, get on with my real life.
No M/W/F for me, thanks
PEACE
I made this handy chart so you can understand where the week goes.
because a job in my field would just feel like "my life" was EVERYTHING!
instead of "work" and "my life" being separate.
This is my main goal before I die.
Can be accomplished! I'm so close I can taste it, yet so far
so sweet yet so sour
oh please
it's an experimental academy! like suzuki except for words
makes all the difference!!!
I WANT TO BE THE BOSS
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=61024
i think the real question is who would buy this shirt
that typeface is lousy
not in spite of but BECAUSE OF the typeface!
and the eerie lack of final punctuation
I work from home, mostly.
Or, sometimes, I have meetings at other people's work.
Also, there are meetings that happen on the phone. I cannot understand them.
Sometimes there are no meetings and I'm shooting something, and that's real fun.
I like working from home.
Sometimes I wish I had an office elsewhere.
But I like having coffee and my cat.
And sometimes the tamale lady comes, and that is cool.
Work!
Working from home means a lot of people (including myself) sometimes expect me to have a lot of free time. And sticking to a schedule when it's not official can be hard.
I have considered getting an office of some kind. But I also see so many advantages in working from home. Sometimes as I brush my teeth and get ready for bed I'll have an idea and it is very luxurious to sit down and execute that idea right on the spot.
Plus, someone needs to stir the pot where dinner is cooking and get the laundry going otherwise we won't have anything to eat or wear.
Today, I took a ferry and went to the island next door to work at a very nice lady's studio. We chat and and work on separate projects, it always feels amazingly focused. No one can find me there. No one can even call me. I should get an office on the island next door.
I am missing my jobs with flexible schedules right about now... and my poor, sad desk at home isn't getting much from me.
Work is hard.
I have one plant on my desk.
I have a very fancy water bottle canteen on my desk.
I get spatially confused because my work laptop is on the right of the monitor, and my home laptop sits on the left.
The worst part about WORK is WORK CLOTHES, am i right?
Sorta a job
Someday it will be over, but I also hate living on someone else's schedule. Even though school has pretty much become the entire schedule. Like all school...all the time.....it neVER STOPS....AAAAAAGGGHHH!!
But I kinda like how challenging school is (sometimes) and how it's more my responsibility and getting fired comes in the passive aggressive form of bad grades.
Also I have a sweet library job. I just got all 6 1/2 Harry Potter movies from Inter Library Loan! Fuck the haters.
Gtalk is where I get to know people anymore. Kinda sad to me, but I'm always there. The problem with being my gtalk pal is all I will do is make you look at my school work, make horrible jokes, share work inappropriate pictures, and complain.
I guess that's what I do in real life too...
plus drinking.
Agree that work clothes are the worst. THE WORST. I have like maybe 2 appropriate outfits and I try to recycle them. then randomly I'll try to go whole hog and like today I'm wearing these ludicrously high heels, and I'm not used to them, and my feet are killing me and I've only been at work for 10 minutes.
It's really hard to dress like a lady, for me. Heels are baffling, I get all confused about if you can wear brown with black, etc. I end up looking frumpy.
I like academic dressing where you can be a bit eccentric, also wear jeans. Unless you're teaching at, I don't know, Harvard or something. Actually who knows what those people do?!
I like working from home and am good at scheduling my own time (grad school is basically impossible if you're not) but I LONG for my own office. I've never had one. I want a room with a door I can close that is MINE, and that is not at some temp job where I work but that is my office where I WRITE MY BOOK and stuff. \
ONE DAY! MAXIMUM LIFE GOAL!
This is something I've been thinking about a lot. There are always those people in your office who have worked there for 20 years and seem perfectly content. HOW CAN THIS BE. Why are some people so content to go to the same cubicle in the same office and do the same job, for the vast majority of their week, week after week? And some people HATE IT SO MUCH. Not out of laziness at all! I am not lazy! When I love/care about the job I'm doing I will do it absolutely to the max. Crying on the bus home when a class I teach goes poorly, etc. etc. It's more of a deep ennui. But why do some have that ennui and others don't?
DISCUSS
I much prefer contracting part-time (3 days a week) and then utilizing those other days to be super productive on personal projects and working on ideas with my friends. Working the traditional 9-5 really takes a lot of energy, so you don't have much time to take on other (more interesting) projects, or go skateboarding, or go to the gym, or do laundry, or party, etc. I don't really understand how people do the same thing for 10 years. I guess they must really love it, or they are scared of losing their job, so perhaps it's a security/comfort thing? If you have a family, that's probably a consideration too - you gotta buy diapers and clothes and put food on the table, etc.
Right now I'm probably working 40-50 hours a week on different things but it doesn't FEEL that way because my projects are quite diverse right now. I also go out and do A LOT of social things, which usually makes life fun for me. But I picked a thing (making websites) which allows for a decent amount of work flexibility with a relatively high return rate in terms of income.
So my "work" now consists of the CRAZIEST things! Listening to people talk about their stupid boyfriend, their mean dad, the arguments they get in with their spouses. Trying to figure out how to help the girl who can't stop hurting herself in weird ways over and over again, every day. Scrutinizing "non verbal behavior" and analyzing everything that comes out of my mouth during a session to determine whether or not it was helpful and in line with "treatment goals." Watching myself on camera (because my sessions are being FILMED -- and watched by supervisors through one-way glass, ah!).
A major factor in my decision to enter this line of work/study was the potential to work my own schedule, be my own boss, etc. I do not enjoy the slave-like feeling of the 9-5 job. But then, I've never had an awesome job. Maybe that would be different.
Every time I head out for "work" Matt laughs and says, "Here you are looking all professional again!" Sometimes I even wear earrings to the clinic. Weird.
cool arty job: awesome job
counselor: awesome job
teacher: awesome job
when I was still in coursework AND teaching I would work insane hours. Like 9 a.m. to midnight, non-stop. Grading, reading, writing papers and diss prospectus, lesson planning, etc. etc. And it never, never felt like "work." I never had that Sunday Evening Sinking Feeling. There is no way I could put in a thirteen hour day in some random office.
I think people who work for 10 years in some random office either love it for reasons I can't understand (because they love stability and sameness? Or maybe grew up super underprivileged/starving and now are stoked to wear heels and have their own cubicle? I mean, fair enough), OR they just haven't even thought about anything else being "work." You know? Like that's just what a job is, and you have to have a job, so here's your job, and great! Or like, I also think there are lots of people in the world who don't have "personal projects." Everyone here has personal projects, but I think there are people who don't. Who just have their job, and then like drinks with friends, dinner, going to the movies, I don't know. Raising children--which is a project that probably they feel more strongly about than their job, to be fair. But other than that, I think these must be people who don't have PROJECTS. Tasks independent of their job that they want to accomplish, that are intrinsic to their self-identity or their idea of contributing to the world or something. Or if they do, they don't think of them this way--as legitimate tasks/goals that need to be worked toward in order to ensure quality of life. That's the only way I can make sense of how you would not claw your eyeballs out going to some random fucking office for 40 hours a week for your entire life. Coding reports, filling out excel spreadsheets, jesus. Making fucking copies.
I grew up with two accountants who worked 9 to 5 jobs and would smoke and drink wine and talk about accounting to each other in the living room after dinner. I think it had a big effect on me and what I didn't want to do with my life.
I think 9 to 5 jobs are safety (like what Alex said) to a lot of people, especially those with children and mortgages. I think it's a fairly new development to question this traditional type of work week. It makes sense in so many ways, get your kids ready for school, go to work, the school day is over, come home. Your days off are the exact same ones as the rest of the world. It must be reassuring and very convenient to some people.
I think the greatest perk of working at home/having your own schedule is that freedom to break away from the crowds and enjoy the space left behind by the 9 to 5 workforce. Some places turn really really quiet.
Some day I will probably have to get a "real job" and a car and a cellphone. Hopefully when those things come around I will be able to view them as entertaining challenges and not be stuck in an office for ten or twenty years.
I don't think I can wear heels. I might fall down.
You don't have to wear heels if you don't want to!
Who do you work for, Playboy magazine?
Don't fuck up your back and feet because of a dumb job.
Wear sensible shoes!
i have an overshirt so my clothes dont get dusty/dirty. like a dark lab coat. i wear it every day. that and 501s. if anyone says something negative about 501s then i want to inspect your birth certificate because that is an unamerican statement. that said, my work clothes are rad. i wear cycling/fred gear on my commute but then it's the levis x tshirt collabo. if im feeling confident i'll wear a collar. if im feeling like i want to get made fun of, i'll wear a bow tie. im like 'haters gonna gate' and they be like 'u mad'
I've just been traumatized by several "dress code" talking-tos at previous jobs, i.e. people informing me that my footwear is not appropriate, or informing me pointedly that "we like to dress 'business casual' here......" leaving it dangling, like making sure I now know I am not dressed business-casual, etc. So now I am scarred and constantly uptight about not being dressed right.
This probably happens more to women than to men. Ha ha "probably"!!!
I know a girl whose boss reprimanded her so many times for her clothing at work that finally she (the boss) came in one day WITH CLOTHES SHE HAD BOUGHT MY FRIEND, and told her to put them on in the bathroom, and my friend cried.