Cycling UK Forum

I think very few people love their job, many love their family, crafts, cycling, books, music, cooking (all hobbies?) that is for sure

I worked for a large company that allegedly had a passion for safety, I believed what I was told

Reported a couple of idiots telephoning when driving a forklift and reversing a truck

Only succeeded in making myself unpopular, I was threatened, insulted, ostracised although others observed the crimes concerned too

NATURAL ANKLING wrote:

[XAP]Bob wrote:

NATURAL ANKLING wrote:I was not directing comments at all radiographers, just how things, how bad it seems today in the nhs.
Don't even start me on cleaners in the nhs!

Sign of the times, though I am not sure if its poor management, poor attitudes / wrong person wrong job or how we are today.

It's do to with the fact that they aren't treated like people any more. They are treated as resources to be allocated.

Talking to one of the cleaning staff when I was in hospital for a while earlier this year she wasn't "allowed" any more time off sick this year...
They are dehumanised by management, which has generally been outsourced...

That's one argument, but I cant agree, just because you are treated badly in your job is no excuse for passing on the misery.
I can see the logic in it but not all workers will succumb to bad standards.
NHS, oh it needs sorting, but part of the problem is that like councils there is much room for improvement in efficiency, material and time.
Computer interface between GP and Hospitals.
Sourcing better prices for material, food as well as medical, (several decades ago the NHS was criticised for paying more for cornflakes than local Tesco sells to its customers....................not sure that still goes on today but it would not surprise me.
The list goes on and as we know politics just muddies the water.

Try PFI which precludes a lot of this when a Comapny has a monopoly on infrastructure, catering, and virtually everything else it cannot happen

I have done a variety of things. I enjoyed being an agricultural student tho’ the physical side was pretty hard work. Ended up with a BSc. While at uni and for a while after I really enjoyed being a cycling postman. I then went into Whisky and rose quickly to management level. Not a very conventional distillery as the managing director was known in the trade as “ that mad chemist”. No two weeks were the same and I had a pretty free hand to experiment.Great job. Unfortunately he died and we were taken over by an offshoot of the mafia. Most of the early scotch distillers were bootleggers so no surprise there. I moved on to another distillery but they ran into financial problems and ended up being taken over by somebody from Yorkshire. We did not see eye to eye and I retired early and became self employed in the craft and knitwear business. Being self employed was hard work but being my own boss was great. Sometimes long and antisocial hours but my choice. My wife became ill ( Parkinson’s) and so we both gradually retired. The last bit of paid employment was pretty hellish with everything pared down to the bone. Trying to make silk purses out of sows ears or whisky out of the cheapest rubbish you could buy was not good as I had been used to making a quality product. Now full time retired and on my own.

The job I've had that I enjoyed the most was teaching Bikeability. It had it's ups and downs, like any job, but at least I was outside and on my bike.

It didn't pay well enough for a living, though.

My fave, and coincidently worst paid, was as a museum assistant. Alas council cutbacks meant that the job no longer exists.

Bikeability instructor is ok, but depends on where you do it, who you do it with, etc.

Love my job
I design and make stuff for trains. It's brill !

landsurfer wrote:Love my job
I design and make stuff for trains. It's brill !

Do you have any influence on carriage design? There is a live thread about bikes on trains, could you help?

Cyril Haearn wrote:

landsurfer wrote:Love my job
I design and make stuff for trains. It's brill !

Do you have any influence on carriage design? There is a live thread about bikes on trains, could you help?

I second that emotion, as Smokey Robinson once said. I'm sure your contributions would be extremely valuable- I was the originator of that thread.

The aspect of work that I've always liked has been meeting people. I'd hate to be stuck in an office with little face to face with the public. When you encounter new faces every day you find that most people, most of the time, are decent, friendly and good to know. The other sort are still a minority, despite all the bad stuff you hear in the news.

Cyril Haearn wrote: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!)?

You'd have to be incredibly lucky to get you job you actually like. Such fortune is reserved mostly for world class sportsmen, athletes and race drivers. Never mind astronauts or pilots, even getting any job around my way is considered a luxury. Mostly minimum wage crap. I'm not on minimum wage, but my job is still crap because I operate a {rude word gone missing!} fork lift, not an F22 Raptor or one of those pendulum crane things for trashing buildings.

I'm in the only job I've had as a "grown up" (since university), and have been doing this over twenty years. The workforce varies, high of six a few years ago, down to now - just my boss, who owns the business and comes in maybe one day a week, and me. My pay is OK, I think, but I spend all day every day not seeing another human being; and if I take a day off then I have to catch up when I come back in, my boss will cover phone calls but nothing actually gets done without me. I'm too old to start looking for another job (I'm 47, but working in a small field, with a clause in my contract about not contacting clients of my existing work), and am a bit Saga Noren about socialising, and I'm paying back credit card debt so can't afford to make decent pension contributions so won't have a pension - just the fun new compulsory one plus the state pension. So: "Do you love your job?" No, not really, but I can do it and do it well, so what else can I do...?

pwa wrote:The aspect of work that I've always liked has been meeting people. I'd hate to be stuck in an office with little face to face with the public. When you encounter new faces every day you find that most people, most of the time, are decent, friendly and good to know. The other sort are still a minority, despite all the bad stuff you hear in the news.

+1, people are so interesting and one spends more time with them than with family
I fear many (most) are not decent, mind

I loved my job as a design engineer. I loved seeing what I put on paper turned into reality and doing the job it was intended to do. I loved the fact that my designs were out there in the public domain and seeing thousands of people using them and enjoying the benefits that they provided. I got a great feeling seeing my stuff in use all over the world contributing to the UK economy as valuable exports. Engineers are generally not well paid and seldom appreciated but the job satisfaction can be tops. In retirement I still design things and then make them. It still gives me immense satisfaction.

Al

Si wrote:My fave, and coincidently worst paid, was as a museum assistant. Alas council cutbacks meant that the job no longer exists.

Bikeability instructor is ok, but depends on where you do it, who you do it with, etc.

That's true. I couldn't have worked for very long with the partner I was randomly assigned by the council. After my first season, I worked occasionally with a trainer from Cycle Experience, and I liked working with him, and I worked occasionally on my own with one or two trainees (level 3), but mostly with a friend who took the NSI training course a few months after me. I enjoyed working with him, and we lived in the same area, so sometimes we rode to & from sessions together, as well. I would say that we complimented each other, in work methods and teaching approach.

I have some interesting books to read in the evening but I spend most of my time at work reading (plus writing, talking) so I don't have much energy to read back home
Any suggestions for jobs where one does not have to read so much?