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It aint all it's cracked up to be.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Juice, Jan 11, 2012.

  1. Juice

    Juice
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    Moderately Gender Fluid

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    I was an investment banking analyst for about a year before I became an financial auditor. Everyone likes to think that being in IB means you get to call the shots like Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (Which, I might add, made zero sense.) Here's what it's like in a nutshell:

    1. You work about 80-100 hours a week, maybe 60 on a slower week. Some nights you don't leave the office until after 2 AM.

    2. All the analysts and associates really do is play around with Excel spreadsheets and edit PowerPoint presentations. Endlessly. Some times the monotony is broken up when you're asked to go do other paper pushing, menial tasks like host a conference call with a client or something if a VP is unavailable.

    3. People immediately think you're a zillionaire when you tell them what you do. It would be nice, but it's far from the truth. The money isn't bad though; your base salary starts at around 60-80k and you can make around 125-140k with bonuses and if the market is booming. But when you have zero social life because of work, who gives a shit?

    4. It's pretty hard to "get rich." Just like any other company in any other industry, only the guys at the top make millions. Even then, only about 1% of analysts ever make partner. The washout rate and turnover is extremely high. You really have to like financial services to stay in it, or at least get incredibly lucky.

    5. There's a good amount of ivy leaguers in the industry, but not as many as people think. But it means jack shit if you went to Harvard or a state school when you're doing the same work.

    I left in less than a year just because the environment sucked so bad. There's constant, never ending stress that keeps you up when you actually have an opportunity to sleep. I took a considerable cut in pay to do something much less consuming.

    Focus: What jobs positions are not all they're cracked up to be?
     
  2. JWags

    JWags
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    Advertising. Its funny saying this cause it is my current profession and I love my job, but people really have it twisted largely due to shows like Mad Men and that one with the dudes from Ed and Will & Grace. Specifically I work in media. You are at the mercy of finicky and demanding clients who often have no idea what they are looking for and are largely data whores. Additionally, you get to deal with an account team who constantly feels they are in a power struggle with the media team to take credit for any success and pawn off more work. Have fun working 60 hours a week starting out and most likely 50-55 moving forward all for pay that would be laughable in another industry for comparable work and hours. Oh, wait, you're exposed to it everyday as most of the people on the client side are ex-industry and now making most likely twice as much.

    I love my job largely because I work on a kickass account in an entertaining workplace on a great team. But once I graduate from grad school in 9 months im out and most likely will be making more than 80% of the managers at my agency despite being considerably lower on the totem pole.
     
  3. scootah

    scootah
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    You are not so smart is awesome -

    Spoilered for length, but tells you a LOT about human motivation and the work place.


    I work in high end IT, making very good money and wearing a t-shirt and jeans to work. I know lots of people who totally love video games and would totally love to work in IT and make CRAZY money.

    Every benefit is double edged. You get to dress like a slob and have toys on your desk and be immature in a lot of jobs, but only as long as you deliver like a fucking machine, and everyone else in the business sees you as a sucker who isn't fit for grown up conversations. Get used to everyone talking down to you and having to fight to be taken seriously for everything.

    You see The IT Crowd and play WOW and talk to geeks and hear about crazy money from dot com entrepreneurs and early starters with facebook or the crazy perks at google. What you don't realize is that most dot com entrepreneurs go broke. They either just don't make any money - or they find out that they have no business skills and end up bankrupt inside of 5 years. I've lost count of friends who've gone from 7 figure bank accounts to broke again. Those geeks? half of them are playing WOW from work, while working on their other computer, and they're in the middle of a 60-100 hour week. The IT Crowd? Fucking annoying in real life, not actually funny. The early starters at face book? They have ulcers from the hours they worked. Google? The 20% time thing for your own projects sounds cool - but when you're working a minimum 60 hour week? They have some crazy perks and they pay well - but wow there are a lot of trades for those perks. Gaming development is a clusterfuck like you would not believe. For every person who's living their dream making video games - there are a hundred testers working 100 hour weeks and getting paid minimum wage for 40 of those hours tops, doing incredibly boring testing bullshit, and a hundred more technical writers, testers, infrastructure engineers, analysts and disillusioned developers wishing that they had any other job.

    When you're a doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant, and you tell your client or employer how medicine, the law, or accounting works - they usually listen. Very few of them will say 'My 14 year old can haxxor internet cafe's and he says you're wrong, so I'm not paying this invoice, or taking your advice.' Everyone thinks they, or someone they know who is in fact grossly unqualified knows better than you, no matter what you know. No matter how hard you try to do it right, you will always be blamed for taking too long or costing too much. When you are forced by that pressure to do it wrong, and it goes wrong exactly the way you said it will, it is always your fault and you will always be blamed for it.

    Periodically, any perk that you enjoy will be taken away by some jackass mid level manager who has pushed a policy through somewhere because wearing a tie creates a business professional environment and wearing a t-shirt is unprofessional, or drinking coffee at your desk is a health and safety risk, or whatever. And enjoy the constant negotiation to engage more of your time, and more inconvenient times, for less money. Overtime is costing the company too much, so now you'll get Time off in lieu. Except you can't take it because you're always busy and needed. And getting called at 5 times between 2 am and 5 am to spend 5 minutes fixing a problem each time? Well that's 25 minutes TOIL - no minimums per call. No multiplier like with overtime pay. No penalty rate because you got woken up five times between 2 am and 5 am. Fuck you for not being grateful. Oh you need to do your job? That'll inconvenience the business - and it's much too hard to ask those people to take an unpaid hour out of their day and work late that night to make it up, so you'll have to do it instead. Every week. Forever. Also - your job for the most part is to protect idiots from themselves and then be an anal retentive paranoid and risk averse pedant. Chances are you'll end up being the rules nazi. And god help you if you're responsible for the payroll system and something goes wrong, regardless of who's fault it was.

    The upside is awesome. I don't have a degree, I have fuck all education beyond high school scores that weren't good enough to get into uni and a couple of part time semesters of an undergrad economics degree. I still out earn most white collar professionals. I can walk into work in any first world country and most third world countries. I usually enjoy the first 2 months of a job and I can change job every 6 months to try new things and hope the next one will be interesting.
     
  4. Crown Royal

    Crown Royal
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    Just call me Topher

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    Private Investigator

    If you want an industry utterly glamourized by pop culture, here's the one for you. If your dreams of gumshoe investigations, shadowy celing fans, two-fisted brawls and horny hot widows are what private investigating is all about, dream the fuck on.

    Actually, it's you sitting in a darkened minivan at 3 am with a video camera in a farm driveway waiting for redneck thieves to show up and steal gas from the farmer's pumps.
     
  5. mazian

    mazian
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    Medicine

    Keep in mind that I'm not finished yet, but I had enough rotations to get an idea what it's like.

    If you don't need sleep, hate spending time home/having much free time become a doctor!
    In exchange for all that you get a lot of patients that simply ignore your advice, because they know better, or discuss their diagnosis with you, which they made themselves with a little bit of help from wikipedia.
    In addition you get such charming characters as the one guy that wore his socks for so long they had to be surgically removed because his skin had begun to grow into them.
    And don't you forget to fill out all the forms and do your paperwork, which will easily make about half of your daily work.
     
  6. Durbanite

    Durbanite
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    Eeyore

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    Jeweller.

    My dad's a manufacturing jeweller (i.e. he makes stuff by hand as opposed to massively marked-up cast items most chain stores keep). Most people have this idea that jewellers are rich. FUCK.NO.. The materials are horribly expensive and leave very, very little room for profit without pricing yourself out of the market (and thus lose customers to some other shop) - my dad makes about 5% on gold, and customers complain he STILL charges too much - fuck the fact that he LOSES 14% straight to the fucking government on all metals purchases because he doesn't make enough money in the business to qualify for a fucking VAT number (which would mean he could claim back VAT from the government)! If your business turnover is less than R1.5m (about $200000 per year U.S.), you get fucked by the government with no lube. How fucking nuts is that??!! You try and pass that cost on to the customers - "Oh, no thanks, we got a better quote from someone else!". You also have to go through the MONTHS of waiting for an operating license to get issued - at least they're good for 5 years now, though my dad's one comes up this year.

    Then you get the asswipes who avoid your calls after giving you the job because, holy shit, THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT, despite discussing the job for an hour beforehand (goodbye again to the hourly charge, the ONLY way you can make money). The most awesome are those assholes who then ask for a remake because they are not happy with how it turned out, despite following their instructions to the letter. Guess what? You can't charge for the job they don't want! Bye bye to 6 hours of billing!

    You can't even try to charge for a fucking quote, despite the fact that's then an hour out of your time - you have to calculate how many stones and what size and clarity and cut they need to be, how much metal, solder, etc. you need, and then some stupid fuckstick who gets sponsored by his parents quotes less (or doesn't charge for quoting) and you don't get that job anyway. Bye-bye to another wasted hour.

    Then you get those customers who come in with old items to be refined - guess what? The refinery has a minimum charge, which fucks whatever profit you can make from it, since they take their cut from the metal that gets brought in, or you get snaked for money upfront - better still is when the metal comes back and HOLY SHIT it was crap quality metal full of alloys so the customer gets pissed because they get fuck-all metal back and the value of the metal doesn't cover the refining costs. The best though is when customers come in with their own stones and want something made - there goes the 5-10% you can make on any stones you get from the dealer. When there's a recession on, you can forget about making a salary to take home - you simply work on whatever shitty 2 hour job you can get just to keep the fucking lights on and maybe have some milk for your coffee in the morning, because NO-ONE is buying anything.

    I don't think my dad has made a profit in 18 months now - I don't think he paid himself for like 4 months this last year, meaning he brought home NOTHING. Fuck this recession right in its dirty asshole. Whatever money a jeweller makes between recessions is squirrelled into the business, to allow for the next recession. Anyone who says the end of the recession is in sight is fucking deluded.

    People are still stupid enough to ask me why I didn't become a jeweller like him - I suck at art and designing stuff, and I am already broke.

    Angry doesn't describe how I feel, writing this out...
     
  7. Marburg

    Marburg
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    I agree with most of this. I went into Anesthesia to avoid mindless paperwork all day and to maximize my free time. I have yet to encounter a patient who can question me with my knowledge on performing anesthetics, however I'm just waiting for the day that WebMD ruins that somehow. I honestly don't know how the Gen Surg scalpel jockeys do it though. 80 Hours a week is a fucking vacation for those guys and they keep coming back for more trach and pegs like it's a joy to perform. Not only do they have repetitive surgeries, but then they get to round endlessly on these patients until their discharge.

    Medical pay goes down every year due to Medicare dropping payments and Private insurance following their examples. Medical school tuition keeps increasing every year with 6% interest attached to your 200,000 student loans if you got off cheap. Then you have to learn your true profession in residency which is 3-6 additional years on the cheap. While losing sleep and learning to CYA all fucking day.
     
  8. mad5427

    mad5427
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    Disturbed

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    Architect

    When people find out what I do, they always have the same reaction. Most people who don't know anything about the profession have romantic impressions about architecture. Don't get me wrong, there is beautiful work out there and I've been fortunate to work on a couple projects like that. The end products sometimes are amazing, culturally affecting structures. That is so not often the case.

    It's a brutal profession. Especially since 2007. The highest unemployment rate for new graduates in any professional degree program. You are better off getting a degree in sculpture, anything. Some estimates claim that 40% of the profession if not more is gone. Most of those jobs will never return or will take a decade or more.

    This profession was a rich mans game back in the day and to a degree still is. Many of the famous firms and architects started as theoretical shops where their old money allowed them to not have to work on fee based "real" architecture. Eventually, their ideas got published and paying customers follow. Professors of architecture also have a little easier route as they can collect a full time paycheck and be very selective about the work they take on. Tough path regardless. Most people are slaves to an industry that places no value on the service. The industry itself, the AIA (American Institute of Architects, NCARB (National Council of Architectural Registration Boards) and all the state boards have done nothing to promote the value of what architects provide so fees just get lower and lower. It's just the way it is.

    You also have to spend years and years as an intern or apprentice before taking exams. If in a small firm, most likely you will get to do all aspects of jobs which is both good and bad. Many times the projects aren't as exciting. In huge commercial firms, you can see some great large scale projects but could spend years doing drawing stair sections and other boring stuff.

    Deadlines are always very tight. Very few clients realize how much work needs to go into not only designing a building, but then documenting it, coordinating all the other professionals and making sure it meets all codes and gets through permitting and then built. During tough times like this when work is scarce, you have less people working in the firms. This leads to stupid amounts of hours. When times are flush, you have more employees but you have more work, so you have stupid amounts of hours. With stress deadlines at all times.

    I could go on for hours about the negatives of the profession, but at the same time there are a few things about it that are nice. Part of my job is getting paid to draw pictures and creating cool spaces. There have been a few times that all the piles of crap that we have to deal with is worth it. Standing on a busy corner in a major city looking at something you helped create become part of the visual landscape is rewarding. Standing on the top of a 17 story building and admiring the view realizing that it all started with sketches on paper feels pretty great. Walking through a home that's not just finished but lived in for a bit with very happy homeowners is also nice.

    All in all it's a very fun profession to be in at times but man is it brutal and nothing at all what most people imagine.
     
  9. dubyu tee eff

    dubyu tee eff
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    Thinks he has a chance with Christina Hendricks...

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    Academia

    I used to have some very romantic notions of academia and this lasted to an embarrassingly short time ago. I thought the usual the usual stuff like the romantic pursuit of knowledge and helping to make the world a better place. Then I got to graduate school and got to know professors. Here is how it really works.

    You start as a graduate student where you work about 80 hours a week for just enough money to survive...and that's if you got lucky and got an assistantship. If not, get ready for more student loan debt. Assistantships have their own drawbacks of course. Either you work as a TA where you have to handle every student concern, grade stacks of horribly written papers or incredibly pathetic attempts at mathematics. Then you have to deal with students complaining about their grades and you have to find a way to not tell them just how shitty their work is. Also, you better not bother the professor about it. You also probably have a teach a lab which eats hours of precious time talking at kids who couldn't care less. So you think, maybe a research assistantship will be better since you don't have to deal with students. Now you have to be ready for your professor to storm into your office at any time and demand you do hours of monkey work they can't be bothered with. Test tomorrow that you need to study for? Too bad, this grant proposal is due tomorrow. You think life will improve once you make it to the dissertation stage and don't have to worry about your grades anymore. Unfortunately, you now have to work day and night on a project that, chances are, about 4 people will give a shit about. You look around at everyone you know starting families or at least enjoying having monkey and whoring it up every weekend. All while you drink with the same people you've been hanging out with all week because you don't know anyone on campus aside from the other fellow graduate students who have offices in your hallway. You sit around and talk about your work because you have no time to have any interesting experiences.

    You complete your PhD. Time to start looking for a tenure track position at a 4 year university. Oh you didn't attend one of the top 15 schools in your field? Good luck marketing your expertise in a subject that no one has ever heard of. Your dissertation is unintelligible to 99.99% of the population and thus, impossible to sell to the guy who is interviewing you. Maybe you did go to a top 15 university, and you get a position as an Assistant Professor at a 4 year university. Well, then I hope you are ready to get into the tenure race. You will once again be working about 80 to 100 hours a week trying to get enough publications in respectable journals. Oh, no one told you? If you're not working at a top 15 school, you will not be able to publish in a top journal. If you don't publish enough, you don't get tenure. If you don't get tenure, it's back to industry for you. Good luck proving you have any marketable skills since your only real skill is getting published in journals that no one reads. And you definitely do not have time to have a significant other, much less a family.

    So you actually managed to get tenure! Now you're definitely set. Oh yeah, before you can do the research you've always wanted to do, you have to get a grant. To get a grant you have to get approval. To get approval, you have to be working on something that the university thinks will get you published in a top journal. This means you have to do whatever research and use whatever techniques are in vogue at the moment. You still aren't allowed to pursue any of your own interests. Your life is spent sucking the dicks of grant committees. Hope you don't mind swallowing. At least you now have the choice of either focusing on your research or a family. One or the other though, choose wisely.

    Holy shit, you've been made an Emeritus Professor. You've finally made it and you are now allowed to do whatever you want! Too bad your mental and physical capacities have diminished to the point where you aren't capable of coming up with any new ideas or attaining erection. Enjoy the remaining five years of your life with your third wife. Hope it was worth it.
     
  10. shimmered

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    Working in a climbing gym. Not anywhere near as glamorous as some of you guys, but...
    These climbers come in and see a giant playground and figure, "Hey, I'll work here and I'll get to climb for FREE! It'll be awesome because I'll be getting PAID and I'll CLIMB all I want to and that shit is sick and I'm gonna be so STRONG!"

    To describe their disillusionment after a couple of months, I can only say - they're crushed. Soul-crushed even. Once they start realizing that this is a business, and customer service takes priority over climbing, setting, and hanging out, the shiny starts wearing off. Once they realize that they've got to be aware, and provide safety training and eyes-on supervision for the groups who come in, they start deflating. Once they realize that the whole point of being here is to make sure OTHER PEOPLE have a good time climbing...they lose interest quickly.
     
  11. Frank

    Frank
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    I know know there's no glamour behind it, but working in a call center is even worse than you'd think.
     
  12. PIMPTRESS

    PIMPTRESS
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    I manage a retail store that caters to professionals and non, some smart people and lots of idiots. I doubt anyone thinks this job is glamorous, it can be fun though. I enjoy helping people and most days go well.

    Except for people that refuse to watch their kids. I have had to stop so many kids from doing cute things like throwing nail polish on my granite floor, drinking developer, nail-gluing their fingers to their hair, and so many other adorable activities. Usually the parent acts like I am the asshole, which makes it so much better.

    There are the thieves. I had a 60 year old woman come in and steal a flat iron. She shoved it down the front of her polyester pants and was completely shocked I noticed. The young man who ran in, grabbed clippers and ran back out to his car, where his girlfriend and 6 month old were waiting. People disgust me.

    Then there are the terminally stupid. People who can't read directions, or read anything. I had a lady come up to me and start shrieking about "why did her hair turn this reddish blonde color??" I asked her what she put in her hair and she points to a color called Reddish Blonde. I suggest that perhaps it is because the color she used and she is overwhelmed with confusion.

    Every day is a reminder that we should thin the herd.
     
  13. Angel_1756

    Angel_1756
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    The Big Four-Oh

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    Consulting

    Kind of like law with a little less ego, but just as much self-loathing. You spend your days cleaning up other peoples' messes and doing the work that no one else wants to do. Any jackass can fill in a form if they read it properly - so why are you paying my company $400/hr for me to do it? And if I have to get on a plane to keep the government from shutting you down because you "kinda didn't know that I wasn't allowed to import a banned substance"? I'm charging you triple. Not because I'm brilliant, just because you're an ignorant asshat.

    When you're a consultant, life comes in 15-minute increments and EVERYTHING is based on your billable percentage. And when the economy hits the shitter and industry isn't importing anything because consumers aren't buying anything, rest assured that the bosses will find some way to make it our fault for not "hitting the pavement to drum up business". What pavement, dickwad? In a world where people don't want innovation, they want the comfort of Marvel comic-remakes and Kraft Dinner with hot dogs because they're terrified they're going to lose their job next week, it's pretty damned difficult to convince industry that they really should be pushing the "latest and greatest" onto the market.

    Anti-Focus: Teaching. It is honestly so rewarding when one of my students nails a piece of music that they've been working on. The look on their face, their sense of accomplishment, it's absolutely unbeatable. If I could teach piano full time and not be a damned pauper, I would flip careers in a New York minute.
     
  14. NickAragua

    NickAragua
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    Average Idiot

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    Software Development

    When I grow up, I want to make video games! BAM ZAP PAZOW! Yeah, not quite. So, you arrive at your higher learning institution and go straight for the computer science major. We'll start you off with a little bit of this: http://abstrusegoose.com/206, and then continue on in a similar vein. But, ok, you get past all the math and boring professors and find that you actually enjoy the intellectual challenge of figuring out how to solve extremely complicated problems. You learn the nuts and bolts of how a computer works. Get a robot to efficiently cover a given area with obstacles. Write an agent that can play checkers. Figure out a string-matching algorithm that's used by biologists to help their gene sequencing efforts. Develop a tool to help undergraduates learn basic AI without having to also learn a programming language at the same time. Then, you graduate and get a job.

    Now, you're building little blinkies that go on someone's mac phone or web-based data entry forms. Yeehaw. Oh, and if you work in a "high-powered" environment, that means you're building blinkies and web forms with unreasonable deadlines imposed by idiots who barely have an idea of what a computer is, let alone how it works, all while wearing a suit. Or, maybe you're maintaining code written by a "guru" or a "genius" (in other words, a fucking quack who shouldn't be let anywhere near a computer).

    As for video games, well, as Scootah mentioned, video game development is hell. I haven't done it professionally, but I have a friend who has (as a tester) - let's just say it cost him his girlfriend and nearly his sanity. He was regularly "crunching" 80 hour weeks. Nice.
     
  15. Omegaham

    Omegaham
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    Emotionally Jaded

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    Military

    Yeah, yeah. Everyone with a brain knows that this job sucks. And yet, you have millions of kids who play Call of Duty, watch the Hitler's Downfall Marathon on the History Channel, see a Marine / Army commercial, and say "I wanna do that."

    A few facts:

    • If you don't examine the paperwork when you go in, you ARE going to get fucked. The default recruiter isn't a scumbag, but the fact is that he works 80-hour weeks and is treated like absolute dogshit if he doesn't get X amount of Y job this month. He'll hook you up if he can... but if he needs four refrigerator technicians and you want to be a mechanic, you'd better watch out. The recruiter will forget about you as soon as you ship off to boot camp; you're stuck with the job for the next 4-5 years.

    • Most contracts, unless you are a reservist, are "options." That's options for the government, not you. I enlisted as a BA - Aviation Electronics Technician and Logistics. I was lucky and got (close to) what I wanted. I also could have ended up as Avi Supply, Life Support, (also known as the Stitch Bitches because they do the sewing) and a dozen other retarded jobs. Oh, and you don't get a say in any of this. It's literally luck of the draw... and you always get to see the poor fuck who didn't read the papers he signed. "I thought I was going Admin!" "Well, your contract is Artillery. Have fun!"

      More than half the people in Ordnance actually signed up to be firefighters.

    • The default condition for deployment is far closer to this than this.

    • You know how there's that one dude in your workplace who fucks up everything? In the civilian world, you get to fire that dickhead and replace him with someone else. In the military, he can't be fired; they take him away from anything important and make you do it instead.

    • When that dickhead fucks up out in town or whatever, YOU are the one who gets to pay for it. "Liberty is canc'd for the squadron because PFC Shmuckatelli (default name for The Fuckup) decided to get a DUI." You know that scene from Full Metal Jacket where the DI smokes everyone in the platoon for Private Pyle stealing the jelly donut? That's the default, not a last resort. When a dude in your shop fucks up, everyone around him pays. Every single time.

    • Your benefits, while extensive, aren't actually that great. Free shelter... you live in a barracks that was condemned twenty years ago. Free food... which is inedible. Free medical... from people who aren't real doctors.

    • "Everyone wants to fuck you if you're in the military!" Except... your duty station will be out in the middle of nowhere, in a military town. Good luck getting pussy in Jacksonville, Yuma, Fort Leonard Wood, or any of the other illustrious, scenic destinations where you'll be living for the next 4-5 years. Of course, you can try fucking a wook, but you're more likely to destroy your career and get your dick cut off instead.
     
  16. Flat_Rate

    Flat_Rate
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    Jesus, I almost enlisted to be a mechanic in the Army, fuck fixing refers all day.

    Focus: Any fucking job that pays you as an independent contractor. I did this for a little over two years and it fucking sucks. They tell you "oh look at what you'll be making a month", yeah that's before taxes, which you are entirely responsible for, no benefits at all, any expenses you have come out of your end, gas, maintenance on your car, all on you.

    End of the year comes around and then Uncle Sam really fucks you dry, on top of that your three times more likely to get audited than someone on a w2.

    Never again will I work on a 1099.
     
  17. TX.

    TX.
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    The Mad Pooper

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    With Waylon, Willie and the boys
    Pretty Much Anything In Healthcare

    I don't think anyone has ideas about it being glamorous or anything like TV shows, but I think a lot of people get into it just because they want to "help people". They don't realize that there's a lot of paperwork and politics involved. Also, some of the people you're "helping" are really irritating or just plain stupid. I'm still in school, but I go to clinicals and I worked in healthcare full-time for 3 years prior to school. Things I've witnessed:

    Non-compliance followed by complaining about how their condition isn't improving. "Are you doing x, y, z at home? Do you still have the hand-outs I gave you? Have you stopped doing (blank)?" Guess what, kids? PT doesn't work as well if you aren't making any changes at home or expect someone to wave a magic wand and make the pain go away. It's like wondering why you aren't losing weight when you haven't changed your shitty diet or sedentary lifestyle. It sounds really logical, but many people couldn't (or didn't want to) understand it.

    Patients telling physical therapists (or myself) how to do the job. Why are you taking up space in the schedule if you already know how to rehab yourself? People bring exercises that they printed out from the internet. "This says I should be doing blah blah exercises." "Well, sir, you're 68, overweight, and have arthritic knees. You get out of breath walking across the gym. These exercises are a little better suited for young athletes."

    Once, a patient demanded that I ultrasound her kneecap. I explained to her that US only works on soft tissue and is really painful/has no benefits over bony areas. The therapist overheard the exchange and said, "Oh, TX, just do her kneecap." So I began, and about 2 minutes into it she starts yelling at me to stop because it hurt so much. I asked the PT why he told me to do it, and he said he wanted to prove a point. It worked. She stopped barking orders at everyone.

    Unfortunately, you can't fire patients very often. It'd be awesome if you could cherry-pick.

    Otho surgeons aren't exactly warm and fuzzy.Clinics also depend on them for referrals so you have to maintain a solid relationship. If they botch a surgery you have to tip-toe around your wording to the patient. It sucks seeing someone for weeks with no improvement. It sucks when they realize that something is not right, and that you can't really do anything for them other than refer them to other docs for a 2nd opinion. It's really sad to see someone with permanent damage just because an ortho who specializes in knees decided to try his skills at ankle surgery. Contrary to popular belief, it's not All The Same.

    Paperwork sucks. You have to word everything correctly to CYA and ensure reimbursement. Medicare/private insurance is waiting for the wrong word to be used so that they can deny.

    The highlights are getting people back to where they want to be. Also, the PTs I worked for had pretty great differential diagnosis skills. When orthos or GPs write prescriptions their diagnosis is "low back pain", "shoulder pain", "neck pain". It's kinda fun to figure out what's actually going on and make a clinical diagnosis. Also, there were several cases where the pain wasn't musculoskeletal at all; it was cancer. Breast, liver, and testicular cancers were caught earlier because of a PT noticing that something wasn't right and palpating the area.
     
  18. Frank

    Frank
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    Emotionally Jaded

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    Connecticut
    You were clearly never a corporate health insurance broker:

    1.) Low stress, actually kind of fun.
    2.) Perpetual income for a week's worth of work, and not each year mind you, you set it up that one time and just collect checks thereafter with maybe a day a year of work thereafter.
    3.) Pay increases relative to medical care costs: basically you would get about an eight percent raise every year just because premiums went up.

    Unfortunately the broker fees are flat now instead of commission based, but it's still a beautiful thing.
     
  19. Pink Candy

    Pink Candy
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    Disturbed

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    404
    Probation/Parole.

    I honestly and truly love my job. I wanted to be in this profession since I was about 17. I figured if I wasn't going to go into six figure debt and be the female Jack McCoy, I could at least be a part of the system.

    The upside of my job:

    I do feel like I make a difference in a few lives.
    I get to actually watch the system work.
    I get to carry a gun and practice for free.
    I have my own large office.
    I get to have a one on one look at what makes gangbangers tick.
    I get to watch Southern Boy in action. Nothing gets me hotter than seeing my man in court, doing his thing.

    The downside of my job:

    For every life I help, there's four people I can't help. And that makes me crazy.
    For every time the system works, I watch the victims of crime get fucked up the ass three times over.
    The range time is free. The ammo is not.
    My large office looks like a bomb hit it because managing my caseload is like bailing out the Titanic with a teaspoon.
    After watching what makes gangbangers tick, I inevitably get so angry and depressed at how shitty we are as a society, in that we coddle these fuckers for popping out 5 kids and leading a life of crime, perpetuating the cycle all over again.
    For all the times I watch my boy go all Jack McCoy on someone, I realize he and I have no say in how people are punished. It's up to a judge, not us. But it's still fun to watch him put someone behind bars.

    I have 256 active cases on my caseload. 256 people that, for the most part, are looking to buck the system, not pay their court ordered monies, do what's asked of them, and almost dare me to put them in prison. 256 people that have the capacity to kill without a second though while I'd be left to defend my supervision of said murderer to a bloodthirsty public. 256 people that are hopelessly locked into a cycle of crime, the vicious cycle of drug abuse and when I place a pair of shiny bracelets on them, yell about how I, their probation officer, is fucking them over.

    And yet...I go back and do it again and again, work myself to the bone, stress about the hours I work, have almost no personal life aside from the moments I get here and there and perpetually worry that I haven't done enough. Why do I do this to myself? I truly love what I do. I don't think I would be any good at doing anything else.
     
  20. BrianH

    BrianH
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    Disturbed

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    Special Operations:

    It's awesome and you get to blow up a bunch of shit. The end.