What’s your job? Are you happy? What’s next?

[RobertAugustdeMeijer]

Great to read who you guys are behind the avatars : D

As for me: happy with my job as a college teacher (Business English). With long summers (and no children), I get to explore all kinds of stuff.
Sometimes I give kinky workshops: yesterday we had a blast with impact play. I also host my own parties. Wish I could say more, but probably too wild for this board. My vacations usually involve hippie festivals a la Burning Man / Nowhere, and other underground stuff.
I live in a commune with 15 others, which is just lovely! My polyamorous love life has many ups and downs: two breakups in the last year, and my longest lasting relationship I haven't seen much : ( However, my two closest are going really great <3
Used to be a journalist, nowadays I write letters to Edge, which usually get posted, despite the long rants, lol!

[marurun]

My college education was in international studies (more anthropology and cultural studies than economics and politics) and I studied in Japan for a year. After college I worked in IT because I hadn’t given my language studies the time and rigor they needed. I went back to grad school after getting married for a career shift and now I’m an academic librarian at a nearby college. I’m the systems librarian so my primary responsibilities involve administration of the library catalog and management software and major vendor interfaces. But I also get to do other librarian stuff, too.

I am happy in my job. Yes, university administration and state mandates can be frustrating to deal with, but I like my co-workers and yes, my boss as well. I also love working around students. Sure, a fair share of them are entitled or immature or whatever one might say about young adults, but many are also hard workers and conscientious people. And I get to work with, around, and in service to the entire range. I’m also in a union and feel strongly about what we fight for in our workplace environment.

[SamuraiMegas]

I realize I didn't actually say what industry I work in- I work in business to business marketing and sales in the Smoke shop/marijuana industry. I managed a smoke shop for several years and was team lead for a major vape company's brand ambassador team in my area until a few weeks ago. I'm about to get a job somewhere else doing something pretty similar.

[Limewater]

In my union hall, each classification of worker has a board that keeps track of their position; Welders, Rigger-Fitters, Apprentices, Probationary-journeyman, and Tool-Crib Attendants(retired workers). When the hall has work for us, we are called in the order of board position - starting at #1 and continuing down until all orders are filled. If the job we took is over 40 hours, upon completion when we report back to the hall as available for another dispatch, we drop to the bottom of the board and usually have to wait to receive another job. Because of this, turning down certain jobs to be available to accept more desirable jobs can (but doesn't always) pay off. I know lots of co-workers that just accept the first call they get every time, and they tell me that it pays off better. I still prefer to know who is running the job and what it will entail before I agree to do it. At least twice a year during the spring and fall shut-down seasons all of the boards are empty, and our hall has to call union halls in other provinces asking for travel-card Boilermakers, and sometimes even other similar trades to fill the job orders with skilled workers. There is a lack of qualified workers in many of these types of work.

Thank you for explaining! This is very interesting, and I still don't completely understand.
I am still trying to figure out how this works. You get your jobs from the union hall. So, do you actually have an employer? Or are you an independent contractor who just gets his jobs through membership in his trade union?

[REPO Man]

Morning I wash dishes at a nearby bakery, which thankfully is one of the few places (aside from my afternoon job) that's opened year-round. Afternoon I work as a quality assurance associate at my local chain grocery store, which is their version of custodian or janitor.

I don't have the luxury of caring whether or not I'm happy at my jobs, but I like not getting (too) behind on my expenses and still have cash leftover.

Sadly, "what's next" seems further and further and then I slip into a deep depression. I know that I could get there if I just stop spending so much money on things that bring me momentary happiness, but I shouldn't have to wait until I've found my fortune to have things to spend my downtime on. Of course, my neurodivergence tends to make even things most folks consider simple seem like the twelve trials of Hercules. And before you say anything, neurodivergence is YMMV AF.

If I tried to find my fortune in my town, it'd either be as a business that sadly might not work as well in this town (movie theater or comic book store) or as something I can do anywhere (like writing).

[RobertAugustdeMeijer]

... I’m also in a union and feel strongly about what we fight for in our workplace environment.

Glad to hear your union has got your back! So does mine

[Anapan]

Thank you for explaining! This is very interesting, and I still don't completely understand.
I am still trying to figure out how this works. You get your jobs from the union hall. So, do you actually have an employer? Or are you an independent contractor who just gets his jobs through membership in his trade union?

The client (administrators of the site that is shutting down for repairs) lets companies (my employers) bid on the job to be done. When the company that won (underbid) the other companies finalizes the details of the job, it calls my union hall with the details of the manpower needed. Usually the company will also be hiring other trades from other halls as well. The company oversees the day-to-day details of how things proceed through a series of daily meetings with the client, superintendents and general foremen for all the trades.
In BC, I primarily work for two employers who have been around for a long time, under various names or leaderships. The biggest one was bought out by a large Chinese conglomerate a few years ago after buying out another major employer I enjoyed working for. These two companies own all the tools we use to do all of our work, and big books full of the procedures to every part of our job. They can oversee any type of major building project from laying the foundation to installing the last bits of hardware and wiring - sensors and whatnot. Occasionally I get a job with various smaller companies that specialize in a specific type of industrial work - Batch Digesters or Precipitators for instance..

All of the things I do are under a contract - a collective agreement that in very thick legalese outlines every rule that both I and the company/employer must follow. Any infraction on either side can result in serious consequences. This is what ensures that things go fairly smoothly for us workers. If I have a problem with anything that goes on while I'm employed, I'll bring it up to our Shop Stewart. This is a worker appointed by the Union hall (or if none is appointed, voted on during first-shift by the workers) as a liaison between the hall, workers, and the employing company to ensure everyone is following the rules. I've been appointed to be the Shop Steward many times. It can be a difficult job, but I take it very seriously when I'm tasked with the responsibility.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I'm an assistant language teacher (ALT) in Japan!

The actual specifics of what this job *can* be can vary a TON, though for me, it's generally just showing up at work and assisting with what needs assisting with. Sometimes it can be a bit more stressful with particular lessons I need to prepare or plan for more strictly myself, but I'm generally very comfortable and happy with both my workload and my coworkers (and feel very fortunate for it, as this is far from universal in my line of work). The kids can be a real pain sometimes, but they're really what makes this job worth it. Helping them succeed and grow is just such an awesome feeling, and even though I never intended for this to be a long-term thing, I could never really imagine doing anything else.

I went to school originally for engineering, but realized I hated engineering, and ended up making my minor my major. I ended up majoring in Japanese studies and minoring in translation. The original plan with this job was just to get good enough at Japanese to be comfortable doing a translation job, but the translation industry is so awful and I love this job so much that I could never imagine doing that now. I get to leave my job at work every day and basically never bring it home. My free time is SUPER important to me, so I really value having my weekends guaranteed and several multi-week breaks every year. The pay is far from stellar, but it's plenty to live on, and that's all that I really want.

I'd overall say I'm quite happy~. I have lots of free time to chill at home and play video games (and write about them). I have lots of friends on Discord, and my free time gives me lots of time to hang out with them and my partners. I gotta say, it's been really cool reading y'all's posts, and even cooler to know that I'm not the only polyamorous one on the forum~ ^w^. There's certainly some stress, sure, but it's more so in longer term issues that are hard to plan much for, like knowing how hard it will ultimately be to get permanent residency, and will I be able to get my wife a dependent visa with my salary. But that's stuff that's so far in the future that it's just not really worth worrying about most of the time. For the time being at least, things are very nice, and given that I'm eligible for a change to an indefinite contract (switching off of my current annually renewed contract), things are lookin' pretty good in the short term too~

[Reprise]

I work in data, specifically within the scope of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

I hate my job and it sucks, because the organisation is largely incompetent and run by a series of individuals who are paid large sums of money, have no idea what they are doing and usually leave after 6-24 months so someone else can take over.

I used to work within one team and had a sub team I was a part of, but then they had some large restructure co-ordinated by a consultant who was paid a large amount of money to oversee it, even though he had absolutely no stake in the organisation. They didn't include my sub-team in the restructure through incompetence and so I ended moving over to a different team, but I am solely responsible for my area of work now and lost the admin and senior support I had previously.

I'd find a new job, but I don't really know what I am looking for at the moment.

[alienjesus]

I fairly recently moved from a long term series of jobs in e-Learning where I worked up from an intern to managing a team of learning techs to build online courses for professional qualifications. I quite liked the job and I loved my team, but the company got taken over by senior management from an investment firm and basically pulled apart. My whole department (the department that built online courses, for a company that sells online courses) was laid off. I suspect the company will go under soon - they've been making constant cuts of products and staff over the year since I left, so there can't be much left at this point.

After I was laid off I decided to pivot my career a little bit and got a job as a product manager for a company that deals with university placements. I am responsible for an app and a website and working with the development team to build out and improve product features. It's a pretty good job, if sometimes quite busy, and it has a lot better prospects for pay and progression as a position that any job in e-learning did, where the salaries are relatively low. I still struggle a bit with imposter syndrome sometimes coming from a non-product background, but I think I'm just about making it work.