What's Your Job IRL?

Can you give me that on a powerpoint slide please?

lol... Had a sales visit once, the guy said to me, "How do I connect my laptop to your network." I said, "You don't. We would not allow that."

"Then how can I make my presentation?"

"You're just going to have to tell me about your product. Can't you do that?"

It was week. But I don't think I would have wanted it anyway.

This was 1990-something, so no, he could not have just connected to a mobile network. Now I'd have to think of other ways to avoid powerpoint presentations.

On the other side of the coin, I was once invited to use the facilities for my presentation at an interview. I told them that I did not use powerpoint, and had no intention of even learning it, and I had come to talk to them. Stuff cuts both ways: I didn't get that job.

 

Bereaved family member to funeral director, "Here is a the obituary for my loved one."

Funeral director, "Can you give that to me on a PowerPoint slide, please?"

I worked in sales ~20 years, on planes 3-5X/wk. Ended up dumping that career in mid-'90s. Ppt. was just coming in and infecting sales orgs like avian flu wiping out a big chicken plant. It quickly became insane--you never actually talk to your customer; you "present" to him/her.

I got out just in time. I liked dealing with people just fine...but not through an electronic intermediary.

And here's the irony: 20+ years ago I switched to medical writing, and I can't tell you often I end up writing in ppt....it's a lot.

"It is what it is--except when it isn't"

 

I finally got so grumpy and pissed off at my last job, I just said f**k it and retired. It's been pure bliss.

 

Pure bliss? I wouldn't know that if I tripped over it.

I'm wondering what's an appropriate misanthropic retirement gift for someone who got grumpy & pissed off enough to quit. Maybe a gold watch engraved with the following: "Everybody can kiss my retired ass"

 

Well, damn. That's pretty serious. Not "f**k this job." but "f**k ALL jobs." Must be nice! I'm sure you feel pretty much untouchable. So many times at miserable jobs, I think this was always sort of a part of the fantasies I'd retreat to on the shittier days. It's hard to say... there's a whole lot of murder to sift through to even get at that. But I think after that, the plan was just to magically have my shit so square I could just go on to not work and simultaneously have everything to do with that job essentially be un-existed. Not just de-existed. Made to have never existed. Just transcend the bullshit on some divine level. Like *whoosh* and it's gone in one graceful swoop.
Not really that far off, right?

I think I experienced something sort of like it once, when I walked out of Wal-Mart forever. I was just through with a dude above me who was using me as a pawn for his bullshit politics - something he started putting on me because I wouldn't sign his nonsense 'coaching' forms that he would bring people in for to cover his own ass. It was early in the day and I'd been done for months, and that ended up being the moment. The realization that I legitimately did not need to be there at that moment hit me like a message from above, to the point where it was all I could think about. Or really, it just felt so good to think about that I didn't care about anything else. It really felt like I was on some sort of high. I think something actually just broke, so much of me wanted to snap on that guy but I knew it wouldn't be as triumphant as I might've wanted. I think if you take enough anger and flip it over, you get a certain type of bliss. They're basically just opposites. The problem is that one man's bliss is often another man's trauma when that happens.

It was funny, too... I just left, kinda in another world. I told a few people goodbye and it was all very casual. Nothing left to be mad about. I know I'm not coming back. It's a happy time, like realizing nothing in high school f'ing mattered and you can kinda just live your life. Like "Oh, thank god. That's not in my reality anymore!" Everything wearing me down fell like dominoes. It was like an airlock opened in my head. Ever had a really fast day, finally relaxed and felt all of your facial muscles shift slightly into a relaxed position? That point when you drop the momentum of the day and your mind/body start to slow down?

That shit was euphoric. First thing I did when I got home was change and take my bike on a dozen mile trek to the beach. I went and just stared at the ocean. Smelled the air. Just so happy to be there with nothing to do and really no reason to be there. No reason to be anywhere. I was SO free... nothing was getting to me. I had no idea what came next, just knew it wasn't that shit, and that in itself was amazing. It's a very simple and pure thing, a very childlike sort of joy. I was already young, but I felt even younger. I felt like I could *just* run and I'd go so fast I'd achieve lift. I felt like I could do anything, but better than that, I felt like I didn't need to do anything. Come to think of it, that sits with a pretty small handful of other experiences where I can say I was truly... like literally, one with the present. I remember it as this golden, shimmery moment of divine inner peace.

God, I was happy to be out of there lol. In some ways I'm glad that was one of my first jobs, though. I learned a lot of things about how jobs work... none of them really being the sorts of things that benefit or appeal to employers, but definitely still things you need to know about. It's not that shitty jobs build character. Nono...

 

I went to a friend's house, and said, "I've just been made redundant. I ought to be worried, but somehow, I'm just not."

I was back in work within a couple of weeks. But the next time it happened, eleven years later, work was through with me and I was through with work.

And I think I've told the story twice already

 

IRL I work at a small Massachusetts based company (Infrasense, Inc.) that specializes in NDE testing, primarily using ground penetrating radar and Infrared. The bulk of our work is analyzing the condition of roads and bridges across the US, but also use the technologies to located subsurface items like utilities, graves, tanks, landfill liners, etc. Prior I worked for a geophysical company using more destructive methods to map the subsurface to much greater depths.

The job has provided me many opportunities to travel and find myself in remote locations, but also affords me a lot of time to listen to music while traveling, and also while working up the data we collect.

 

Did you get to blow things up?

 

This resonates for me.

I have an identical twin brother, so in a very real way, I was made redundant at birth.

 

We used a lot of 500 gram 8-guage shot in addition to some large weight drop machines for seismic work, but only ever got to see explosives used on one project...short version of the story...they used too much and did actually blow up the rock!!

Trying to find the pictures, but I cannot...from 500 feet down, lifted the solid granite surface and transformed a smooth rock surface to a jagged wasteland.

 

Dynamite seismic in granite terrain? Shot holes drilled with a big rig, I guess?

At least one manual shot-hole drilling job should be a required apprenticeship before being allowed the fun of blowing any charges. Did it myself twice, in very bouldery alluvial terrace country (in one case as cheap undergrad labour, in the other as supervisor of by-necessity cheap grad student research). Both times with a small post-hole borer. I think I still have the nerve damage.

 

This was a research project with another company testing the seismic response of underground explosions. So we cored an 8-inch diameter well down 500 feet, mapped the fractures within the well and tested the fluid dynamics. Then isolated a charge at the bottom of the well and let it blast. The idea was to remap the fractures and see where and how the energy was dispersed. The explosives guys or the engineers planning the blast did not anticipate such a monolithic structure or just plain got it wrong because they destroyed the surface. We had to get an excavator to remove boulders to find the well, getting back into it was nearly impossible...no longer was it 8 inches in diameter.

I spent many days augering holes, using pikes, betsy seis guns, vibration generators, P.E.G. tools and large weight drops. The seis gun was a favorite, but misfires def. make you nervous. We used to take all the misfires and put them into a hole near the end of the day and blow them all at once with a good shot!

 

Thank you for "jagged wasteland" (really). That makes my day.

 

I am now living in California, working for a small company which makes scientific instruments for chemical analyses (mass spectrometry). My job is to support two different instruments, both highly specialized and based around super powerful lasers. I will be flying around the world to install and maintain these instruments, and train their end users (there are some HUGE names on the client list). I've only been on the job for a week now, but have hit the ground running and am already slated for travel to France and Canada in the next few months. I feel incredibly lucky to have landed this weirdly unique and specialized position... there are a lot of people here who have worked for every competitor and have settled on working for this company, which is a really good sign. I think I am really gonna like it here.

 

Still at the bank......

Know who have to respond to the BBB, CFPB, All 50 states Attorney General Offices about stuff...?

It's me.....

 

Is this for thermochronology? If so I might know who you mean and might have used the products (or perhaps those of the competitors...).

Congrats on the move. Hope the turntable etc. survived and is now set up and making noise.

 

In real life I’m a therapist. I work at a treatment center in South Florida. We’re a dual diagnosis center which means we’re licensed to treat mental health as well as substance abuse. We treat incredibly acute, complex cases. Clients that other places just can’t deal with. Apparently somewhere along the line I decided I needed more excitement in my life, went back to school, and dove headfirst into the crazy. So I spend my days speaking with some incredibly interesting individuals, and I kinda like it. I’ve met Jesus... Numerous times. He looks different every time. Actually, once I met Jesus twice in the same room. Oh the stories I can’t tell you... aliens, celebrities, the FBI... get creative with it and I guarantee you we’ve seen it before. But I digress. So that’s my daily life at work. The life of a rehab therapist! “Thanks for sharing!”

 

Yes, actually!

And as for my turntable, my living room is still a disaster of boxes. I made a downgrade in terms of apartment size, so unpacking is like a puzzle of where to put things while I unpack and assemble other things. It's making things go way more slowly, but hopefully it'll be set up by the weekend.

 

"Real life" ... according to whom (or what)?

Seriously, thanks for an excellent post. Your work intends to help others; not every occupation is like that.