Careers, Jobs and stuff
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luka
Well-known member
i was a painter for a few years. thats not a real trade. best thing to do if you get a trade is work for yourself and work as little as possible. thats what i did. it was quite good cos i hav always had unskilled jobs which i love but suddenly getting 90 a day instead of 40 or whatever is quite exciting. i would be a sparky if i had thee necssary skills. its cos you dont get as dirty as thee other ones and you're inside a lot which is important in england as england is a bit cold and damp. if you hav a logical mind (i dont) and some manual dexterity you can be a sparky. i think there is much worse ways to earn a living plus with that trade theres all sorts of fancy stuff you can do, its not all rewiring houses.....
i make coffee now, im very good at it. its the only job ive done that im good at.i was ok at the other ones, passable, but not exactly good tho....
i make coffee now, im very good at it. its the only job ive done that im good at.i was ok at the other ones, passable, but not exactly good tho....
I'm in shipping, have been since 16 when I left school. I like the idea of further education, rather than actual further education. I like my job, it pays well, it's interesting, stressful (in a good way) and has given me loads of contact's for the future without actually having to meet them face to face.
It's the PEOPLE in my office (1 or 2 in particular), that I can’t stand. I’m sure I have mentioned them on here once or twice
edit**I need a routine tbh, I couldn’t imagine not working, unless I was DJ’ing/producing for a living. I had 2 weeks off at the beginning of the year, and while being able to work till 8am on music was good & all, I was itching to get back to work by the second Tuesday. Also, not being a dick or anything, but I like to earn money to buy records and shit I don’t ACTUALLY need.
edit*** in fact bernard is the biggest hindrance in this job, his moaning for 90% of the day, plus his general DRIP attitude really fucks me off. It's like, if you really don't like the job this much, then fucking leave it. I have recently been moved even closer to him, so it's so much worse now. I'm a few days away from saying something to him.
Plus (i know this isn't the things that piss you off thread, and this is a bit out of order) he fucking stinks.
It's the PEOPLE in my office (1 or 2 in particular), that I can’t stand. I’m sure I have mentioned them on here once or twice
edit**I need a routine tbh, I couldn’t imagine not working, unless I was DJ’ing/producing for a living. I had 2 weeks off at the beginning of the year, and while being able to work till 8am on music was good & all, I was itching to get back to work by the second Tuesday. Also, not being a dick or anything, but I like to earn money to buy records and shit I don’t ACTUALLY need.
edit*** in fact bernard is the biggest hindrance in this job, his moaning for 90% of the day, plus his general DRIP attitude really fucks me off. It's like, if you really don't like the job this much, then fucking leave it. I have recently been moved even closer to him, so it's so much worse now. I'm a few days away from saying something to him.
Plus (i know this isn't the things that piss you off thread, and this is a bit out of order) he fucking stinks.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
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john eden
male pale and stale
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Yes, once the robots become fully functional and capable of complex tasks, everything will be OK. Nothing could possibly go wrong - humans and cold, emotionless machines (not talking about Cheryl) living alongside each other in perfect harmony.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I'd happily live alongside a cyber-Cheryl for the rest of my unnatural life.
slowtrain
Well-known member
I love not having a job (well I'm studying) but I can see how it would get difficult.
I think the main issue for me with regards to a career is... what happens when you get too old? I think that's why you need some sort of 'career' (wrong word, but still) - coz living on $200 a week is fine when you're 19/20 - but I can't imagine enjoying it very much when I'm 65+
I think the main issue for me with regards to a career is... what happens when you get too old? I think that's why you need some sort of 'career' (wrong word, but still) - coz living on $200 a week is fine when you're 19/20 - but I can't imagine enjoying it very much when I'm 65+
john eden
male pale and stale
I think it can get quite wearing after a while, but not having a job after being a student was great for a bit. I managed it for a while and still have cheap tastes because of it I guess.
But then I ended up with a girlfriend who worked, which complicated things. And the bureaucracy of being a benefits claimant wore me down. Things like travel become very hard as well.
Also before you get to retirement age you might to have kids. I know people who have families and are on benefits and it can be done but there is still the issue of classroom snobbery, not being able to give them the same standard of living as some of their mates etc. Being the "gippo" kid in the school isn't much fun.
I think all the pointers show that life will get much harder for people on benefits and low incomes over the next decade.
The following will probably sound well un-cool and spur some sort of 'capitalist sell-out' accusation, but...(incidentally, Bob Black's a pudgy police grass who basically ripped his essay from an insert in an old Bow Wow Wow 7" - I'd like robots to serve his food, the fat old bastard...)
'Networking' isn't actually that bad or hard, it's just certain bullshit merchant consultants justify their salaries by pretending it's some complex social minefield. You can join LinkedIn - it's like Facebook, only without stupid comments and photos of people pulling duck faces at parties - and add anyone you might remember from art school (most people will accept). One of the best freelance gigs I landed (and still do now, from time to time) basically arose from asking someone if they wanted to go for a pint. Then, it was 'Oh, there's an evening bash, do you want to go?' and suddenly I was hanging out with all these people and getting work (and free booze and food). A week later, I was calling up the jobcentre saying I couldn't sign on cos I had to go to for a 'press breakfast' at a private members' club in Soho (which was just me and some girl from a PR company having G&Ts at 10am and introducing me to a German bloke who wanted press coverage). I'm not saying this to show off, just to demonstrate it wasn't much more complicated than attending the first 'Dissensus meet up' or meeting a blogger in town. Treat it like a game - and your job might be dull now, but seriously, it's way easier looking for something else while you're working than when you're not.
Similarly, with corporate newspeak - why let it do your head in? Sure, it might be the zombified mantra of capitalism putting us into a trance...or it could be a load of ludicrous nonsense that you can play around with. We used to make up stupid phrases at our last place and wait for some other idiot to use them - a sure sign that we could take liberties 'under their watch'.
Yeah, the hunt for a job you genuinely enjoy is a path strewn with horseshit, and I don't think any job's 'perfect' unless you've got complete autonomy while you're doing it. But I wouldn't get down about it. Some people know what they wanna do, some don't... you might never find out what 'you want to do', or something might fall into your lap, by random chance, that you find yourself enjoying. And I do know of one guy who trained for years to become a doctor, did his job really well, then hit 40, had a breakdown, and bitterly regretted not following his dreams of going into landscape gardening.
An interesting thing to me is that for a good while it seemed that not having a job, or opting out, was a permanent situation. In the wake of the 60s, there were plenty of experiments in alternative living and self-sutainability (which takes us back to Adam Curtis, I guess). In the cities, there were long-term squats, squatters unions and of course there were the travellers etc. I am just about old enough to remember this seeming like a choice - one could "drop out".
I'm wondering if my memories are coloured by naivety? Or the lack of responsibilities I had then?
Actually, no, I think that this was a subset (a naive and idealistic one maybe but something "real") of politics before the the Berlin Wall collapsing, and the "Death of the Left" and the triumph of neo-liberalism* etc. There was a clearer sense of a politics that was leading towards building a much different and much fairer society, where distribution of wealth and arrangements of work and lesire could be radically different.I suppose our politics has lost that kind of utopian edge. Jon? Thoughts on this?
(*there was a thread on here where someone was upbraiding everybody for their shoddy defintions of neo-liberalism. Can anyone remember where it was? Some American dude I think).
I'm wondering if my memories are coloured by naivety? Or the lack of responsibilities I had then?
Actually, no, I think that this was a subset (a naive and idealistic one maybe but something "real") of politics before the the Berlin Wall collapsing, and the "Death of the Left" and the triumph of neo-liberalism* etc. There was a clearer sense of a politics that was leading towards building a much different and much fairer society, where distribution of wealth and arrangements of work and lesire could be radically different.I suppose our politics has lost that kind of utopian edge. Jon? Thoughts on this?
(*there was a thread on here where someone was upbraiding everybody for their shoddy defintions of neo-liberalism. Can anyone remember where it was? Some American dude I think).
john eden
male pale and stale
Martin's right about turning it into a game but of course it's not always as easy that...
Danny - yes I think "opting out" was definitely on the agenda and whilst you can never actually opt out, it is possible to construct an alternative culture. If you have a network of people, squats, fanzines, free gigs, meetings etc then not working, or more importantly not basing your identity around work, becomes a hell of a lot easier and enjoyable.
I think Danny and I saw the tail end of that in the mid 90s. It was definitely a product of all the things Danny mentions and had its roots in the sixties. But it relied on access to a welfare state and to empty buildings and good will, as well as an overarching philosophy.
Gradually those things were eroded. (Job Seekers Allowance, Criminal Justice Act etc). I'm not sure if they can now return in the same form - there are far less empty council properties to squat these days for example.
The entrepreneurial business model and individualism seem much more prevalent these days, even in "alternative" culture.
Danny - yes I think "opting out" was definitely on the agenda and whilst you can never actually opt out, it is possible to construct an alternative culture. If you have a network of people, squats, fanzines, free gigs, meetings etc then not working, or more importantly not basing your identity around work, becomes a hell of a lot easier and enjoyable.
I think Danny and I saw the tail end of that in the mid 90s. It was definitely a product of all the things Danny mentions and had its roots in the sixties. But it relied on access to a welfare state and to empty buildings and good will, as well as an overarching philosophy.
Gradually those things were eroded. (Job Seekers Allowance, Criminal Justice Act etc). I'm not sure if they can now return in the same form - there are far less empty council properties to squat these days for example.
The entrepreneurial business model and individualism seem much more prevalent these days, even in "alternative" culture.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
^ I can believe that (edit: ie DannyL - John's just gone and mostly answered the question...), and it's quite interesting to ask how this has happened? Okay, there was the CJB, but I'm not aware of any particular measures by 'authority' to make that sort of utopian alternative lifestyle impossible - it's more that it's been culturally denormalized in favour of capitalist realism. But how, and by who?
Re networking, yeah, I guess a lot of tech jobs (the sector that I work in) are got by knowing someone whose startup is looking to recruit a new web developer or something, but as far as networking goes it's basically just being sociable with a load of geeks. And if you don't like being sociable with geeks you're probably going to get on badly in most small tech firms...
Corporate newspeak is basically a manifestation of cultural capital that's particularly close to Stephanie Thornton's idea of subcultural capital but outside the context of youth culture, isn't it? It's showing off that you're a Serious Business Person and spend enough time talking to other Serious Business People that you can convincingly speak their language. Demonstrating linguistically that you're at home in this culture and have (presumably) internalized its other values and practices as well.
Oh, and re gardening / horticulture, I know someone who works for a thing called Cultivate London, who do horticulture training for unemployed yout while growing herbs for the restaurant trade on derelict / unused land in London. So they might be worth looking up if you're in SW.
And yeah, I'd agree with whoever said that there's a difference between doing a job you can tolerate to enable you to do the stuff that you really want to do and doing a job that you love, and it's important to be clear which you're doing at any given point.
Re networking, yeah, I guess a lot of tech jobs (the sector that I work in) are got by knowing someone whose startup is looking to recruit a new web developer or something, but as far as networking goes it's basically just being sociable with a load of geeks. And if you don't like being sociable with geeks you're probably going to get on badly in most small tech firms...
Corporate newspeak is basically a manifestation of cultural capital that's particularly close to Stephanie Thornton's idea of subcultural capital but outside the context of youth culture, isn't it? It's showing off that you're a Serious Business Person and spend enough time talking to other Serious Business People that you can convincingly speak their language. Demonstrating linguistically that you're at home in this culture and have (presumably) internalized its other values and practices as well.
Oh, and re gardening / horticulture, I know someone who works for a thing called Cultivate London, who do horticulture training for unemployed yout while growing herbs for the restaurant trade on derelict / unused land in London. So they might be worth looking up if you're in SW.
And yeah, I'd agree with whoever said that there's a difference between doing a job you can tolerate to enable you to do the stuff that you really want to do and doing a job that you love, and it's important to be clear which you're doing at any given point.
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baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
haha. To give her her due, the tedious Ashley-cole shagging racist is a lot prettier than most people the tabloids claim are attractive.
john eden
male pale and stale
I think the tensions between alternative culture and capital were always there - Branson making millions off Tubular Bells and Never Mind The Bollocks. This is expressed very clear in acid house / rave, especially in its historification.
As part of trying to get people off the dole in the late eighties, the government gave out business grants to people and advice on running their own business. Some people took the piss (I knew someone who was a govt funded "herbal salesman") and others didn't. Regardless of whether they were taking the piss or not, some of these people's businesses took off.
A lot of people releasing dance records set up their labels this way. And now documentaries about acid house combine footage of raves like Castle Morton with people like Pete Tong or whoever talking about who they were mad and crazy but also got serious and made lot of money and became the successful brands they are today.
It should go without saying that millionaire individual celebrities will become the subjects of documentaries much more than the more anonymous collectives like Spiral Tribe, DIY etc. So counter culture stuff is largely forgotten across generations...
It might also be worth seeing if there is a parallel process with hip hop and other music here? I.e. it becomes self-consciously about bling and being a successful corporate businessman at about this time as well?
John has nailed most of it, but I remember a few things that I found quite telling. There was John Major's "not in this age, not in any age" in reference to "New Age" travellers (another miaow miaow turn of phrase that one - who ever called themself a "New Age" traveller?). There was also a massive allocation of policing resources to tracked traveller vehicles, with all the information shared between county police forces.
According to a few people I've met/read, there was a little alternative economy based around travellers and free festival circuit in the '70s. Aliaster over on Green Galloway has written some great stuff about how in the mid-80s, the travellers were seen as part of the same anti-state forces as the striking miners and Greenham Common protestors, thus the "Battle of the Beanfield". I see the CJB and Major's attitude as carrying on this work.