Do you love your job?

[Cyril Haearn]

If there is one thing I hate and love it is work

I was unemployed for a while, it was awful, did not know what to do with myself

One reads about people who love their work and believe in it. I was lucky, had several jobs I could identify with, in a cycle shop, selling books, on a steam railway..

Anyone here really identify with their work, believe in it, have a passion (unword!)?

[Spinners]

No. I hate it. Or more correctly, I hate my 'new' employer.

Everything was fine and dandy for 16 years until I was TUPE'd over to my new employer following a merger. My previous role simply doesn't exist in the company I've been transferred over to so I've been re-roled into the nearest equivalent (fair enough, it has about 50% commonality) but I feel decidedly persona non grata. At the end of the TUPE year (also the end of 2018) I'll gladly take redundancy if it's offered but I may not make it until then as I'm cheesed off and I'm now actively looking around.


I was always going to retire at 60 but might now bring it forward by two-and-a-half years or go part-time and semi-retire. There's a lot of options out there!

[Thornyone]

I am now retired but I couldn’t wait to retire, and in fact I decided to finish a little ahead of time, so that money (shortage thereof) is now definitely an ongoing issue. But it was certainly a case of leaving or suffering mentally. I worked in the NHS. At one time I loved the job and actually looked forward to going to work, and I always got on really well with patients and the vast majority of my work colleagues. However, constant changes (for the worst) to working practices of the “tick box culture” kind (i.e. filling in a hundred tick boxes to say one has treated correctly rather than having time to concentrate on doing so), ever increasing workload to the point of feeling you were pushing patients along a production line, and latterly, ever-increasing technological change at a time of life when such things are harder to deal with, made it pretty-much intolerable. I know so many people who have felt the same as they approach retirement. The thought of having to carry on ‘til 68 or older in anything other than a “tea-boy” role seems absurd.

Years ago I spent a period of time unemployed, and it was awful. It wasn’t that I couldn’t find a thousand things to occupy my time, rather the financial worries and the stigma, but above all, the not knowing whether one would be in this state for a month, ten years or permanently. And one of the best times I’ve known was the month or so of free time I had once I found work but before it started, when I could then enjoy the free time.

[pwa]

For me work is a necessity, not a pleasure. Same for my Missus, who teaches. She loves the kids and the actual teaching but hates the job and dreams of retirement. I have done jobs that I actually like and they have not paid the bills.

[Audax67]

I spent my professional life developing system and technical software, and loved it. The money going into the bank at the end of the month just sorta happened - it didn't seem that the idea of working was to earn it.

I'm retired now but I still program. I have a vast cycling-related program* that has grown over the last 15 years and I add bits all the time**. Wife says "good - it'll keep your brain active". My reply is usually something like "sod that, it's fun".

* "App"? WT flaming F? The word is "program", in American.

** no you can't have it. It won't run on your machine unless you're running XP and ICBA maintaining it for others.

[Cunobelin]

On occasion I really feel I do not want to go in because of the occasional hassles. however this is perhaps half a dozen times a year

The rest of the time I genuinely enjoy the job, the challenges and the people

All I really need to make it perfect is a decent computer and software that works

I can retire in August, but have no intentions of doing so unless something drastically changes

[pete75]

No. I hate it. Or more correctly, I hate my 'new' employer.

Everything was fine and dandy for 16 years until I was TUPE'd over to my new employer following a merger. My previous role simply doesn't exist in the company I've been transferred over to so I've been re-roled into the nearest equivalent (fair enough, it has about 50% commonality) but I feel decidedly persona non grata. At the end of the TUPE year (also the end of 2018) I'll gladly take redundancy if it's offered but I may not make it until then as I'm cheesed off and I'm now actively looking around.


I was always going to retire at 60 but might now bring it forward by two-and-a-half years or go part-time and semi-retire. There's a lot of options out there!

What do you mean by TUPE year? Hopefully they haven't told you TUPE only lasts a year as legally it lasts indefinitely.

[Cugel]

If there is one thing I hate and love it is work

I was unemployed for a while, it was awful, did not know what to do with myself

One reads about people who love their work and believe in it. I was lucky, had several jobs I could identify with, in a cycle shop, selling books, on a steam railway..

Anyone here really identify with their work, believe in it, have a passion (unword!)?

Of all the jobs I had in early life, I only ever identified with being a labourer on a building site (when a student). It produced physical effects of some value in the real world. Now I'm 13 years retired, I still envy those in the various trades who can point to hundreds of physical things they have made or improved. I can point only to the furniture I made as a hobby.

Most of my working life produced "services" some of which were of value at the time but many of which went down a bureaucratic black hole. This was unsatisfying - alienating - and the main reason I took up many hobbies, as antidotes to meaninglessness at work.

The most frustrating aspect of wage slavery is that the detailed work is often fascinating and of potential value but the matrix of bureaucratic and worthless "management" of large organisations tends to supress or even obliterate the work of the non-managers.

On the other hand, many of those I know who have been self-employed destroyed themselves and their families with the struggle to do 16 hour days, 7 days a week, frustrated that what they wanted to make or do was overwhelmed with the management of it - VAT, tax, employee management, marketing and all the rest.

Work is, as far as I can make out, a filthy invention of the Victorians.

Cugel

[pliptrot]

We all have bills, and we all have bosses. Both spoil life. When you consider how much money there is in the world, and just how pointless and stupid most jobs are, there are any number of ways in which we could better organize society. But that wouldn't suit the rich and powerful (redundant words) so things will never change. People have always been starved deliberately by those with power over them (and then we put statues up for them in London in some cases) so perhaps being stuck in a dead-end job until we are no longer capable of performing whatever nonsense that entails is an improvement.

[iandriver]

I love riding my bike, but if I did it 50 hours a week 47 weeks of the year, people might think me a nut job. I'd love work a lot more if it was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Jetson hours.

[Cunobelin]

I love riding my bike, but if I did it 50 hours a week 47 weeks of the year, people might think me a nut job. I'd love work a lot more if it was only 12ish hours a week.

A few years ago there was a PFI project with meetings , on top of the normal work

Best day was spending 4 hours of work and 5 hours paid cycling on a brilliant summers day

Worst was being given a lift and discovering that the detachable pedal for the Brompton was in my colleagues car.. 6 miles home on one pedal

[Spinners]

What do you mean by TUPE year? Hopefully they haven't told you TUPE only lasts a year as legally it lasts indefinitely.

No, they haven't told me that TUPE only lasts for a year. But I can see them scaling down the workforce at the end of the TUPE year (this wasn't just me, it involved 11 branches and a head office) and I can see the lie of the land.

[Si]

As a bikeability instructor (among other things), i hate kids almost as much as i hate bikes.

[Cyril Haearn]

Can feel a poll coming on.. How many jobs have you had?

I have had too many, more than 20, but I have learned such a lot and done some interesting things
Some people stay with one employer for decades but do many different jobs, learn and grow

Dreaming at work today about an ideal job.. maybe as a delivery person in Bergen Norway with an e-bike that charges the battery going down the hills. Then I would have more free time for non-cycling activities

[drossall]

I've been lucky, in that, in my last weeks as a student, I discovered (from a fellow student on a quite different course) a field of work that combined two of my interests. That has led to other and related things that have kept me going, with the odd hiccup, for over 35 years.