Day Jobs

[Calenture]

When I glanced at this thread last night, I thought it looked like an easy way to ease myself back into the flow. Having now read every post, I'm not so sure. Fascinating. This site works a strange alchemy with the most mundane of topics! However...

Me, I assembled TV components in a factory, then used the money from selling my first story to hitch-hike to Germany where I washed dishes on a Koln-Dusseldorfer tour ship on the Rhine (I was up a spire of Cologne cathedral one day, which gave me a good view of the ship sailing away without me...)

At an art gallery there, I was able to (very reverently) touch a canvas by Max Ernst (this was the 'Seventies, so no alarms went off then). One of the more curious sculptures was of an incredibly realistic severed arm clad in silver armour, holding a sword, every bleeding vein lovingly delineated... I preferred the Miro, immediately identifiable from an imitator's canvas beside it. Ernst and Miro. Wonderful. Then I took a train to catch the ship and washed dishes some more while castles rose outside a porthole.

Later, five years passed while I worked as a voluntary tutor, teaching adults to read and write. This was the only job I ever thought worthwhile.

Now I work as a cleaner at Cornwall College. Probably the Pool campus will close soon. Maybe it'll last till I retire. Oddly, I've come to enjoy it. The job has its perks, like furtively correcting the spelling on some of the college notices. Though seriously, most of the teachers are lovely!

Note: Hope someone will bump the Recent Reading thread, as this post might knock it off the page, and I want to read more on Aickman's Bastards!

[Karnos]

I used to work in architecture, but I quit that some time ago.

I occasionally do some freelance translation work. I have done style correction for a couple of PhD. theses, but I didn't like that. I've given English and Spanish language conversation classes and I tried once to join a proper language school, but I was rejected because, at the time, my foreigner paperwork was issued as a student and not as a resident (It still is). I've published a few articles in a very good internet cultural magazine here in Spain, but the pay is just enough to waste it away in books and booze. I've done some other menial jobs, all of them freelance and non contracted, but for the last few months (to be honest, for the last year) I've been unemployed, working on a book on short stories that's already done and sent to a couple of publishing houses, so we'll see how it goes from there. This year's been tough, my girlfriend also lost her job and we have survived on savings.

However I've been fortunate enough to have the help of my family, who have been very patient in supporting me during this crazy literary adventure. I honestly can't complain, I'm the first one to admit the influence of my lucky stars over my life in the last couple of years. However I hope to fix my situation soon, come next year, and be free of the student black hole. I would love to get involved with furniture repair and refurbishing. It's the kind of mechanical, yet creative, work I need; someplace quiet and lonely where I can do my things and then talk with the right people to complete the work.

No more offices for me. I really hate offices.

[Mr. Veech]

I'm preparing to teach English at a private Christian academy, which is odd given my troubled relationship with Christianity in its more orthodox form. For the last year I've been migrating from menial job to job. I was thinking of going to graduate school, but I eventually grew tired of the sterility of academia.

[MOSTLYMETA]

I write code for a living, sometimes. Sometimes I write emails, but mostly I write code. Code that is used to run the services of a company. This company seems to be very successful, but I must confess to not quite understanding what that means. The goals are shifting and the graphs and charts come and go and I'm not quite sure what it is I'm supposed to do first but I do know that I'm not doing it quite fast enough.
I have been with this company doing this for a long time in internet years. Before that I did this for other companies. Some them have wandered away and faded into the sediment of the internet while others have been devoured by other more powerful, nimble, or better advantaged companies. The company where I mostly write code is in a growth stage where all things are getting swollen: numbers, stress, ego. I know longer go into the office but stay at home in my quiet little office where my view of the world is a screen and a cat. It is easy to forget that for most of the people on other end of all these wires are people drowning in the palpable weight of all that growth pressure provided by people hired seeming for their ability to belittle.

[Auditor]

Quote Originally Posted by MOSTLYMETA

I write code for a living, sometimes. Sometimes I write emails, but mostly I write code. Code that is used to run the services of a company. This company seems to be very successful, but I must confess to not quite understanding what that means. The goals are shifting and the graphs and charts come and go and I'm not quite sure what it is I'm supposed to do first but I do know that I'm not doing it quite fast enough. I have been with this company doing this for a long time in internet years. Before that I did this for other companies. Some them have wandered away and faded into the sediment of the internet while others have been devoured by other more powerful, nimble, or better advantaged companies. The company where I mostly write code is in a growth stage where all things are getting swollen: numbers, stress, ego. I know longer go into the office but stay at home in my quiet little office where my view of the world is a screen and a cat. It is easy to forget that for most of the people on other end of all these wires are people drowning in the palpable weight of all that growth pressure provided by people hired seeming for their ability to belittle.

I bet you will get along with Ligotti's corporate horror stories

[Kevin]

Quote Originally Posted by Auditor

Quote Originally Posted by MOSTLYMETA I write code for a living, sometimes. Sometimes I write emails, but mostly I write code. Code that is used to run the services of a company. This company seems to be very successful, but I must confess to not quite understanding what that means. The goals are shifting and the graphs and charts come and go and I'm not quite sure what it is I'm supposed to do first but I do know that I'm not doing it quite fast enough. I have been with this company doing this for a long time in internet years. Before that I did this for other companies. Some them have wandered away and faded into the sediment of the internet while others have been devoured by other more powerful, nimble, or better advantaged companies. The company where I mostly write code is in a growth stage where all things are getting swollen: numbers, stress, ego. I know longer go into the office but stay at home in my quiet little office where my view of the world is a screen and a cat. It is easy to forget that for most of the people on other end of all these wires are people drowning in the palpable weight of all that growth pressure provided by people hired seeming for their ability to belittle. I bet you will get along with Ligotti's corporate horror stories

I bet we all do!

[Severini]

I work at the administration of a Nursing Home since 2007. I have seen so many people come and go (specially at winter) that I thought I was indifferent to death in any level. I realizaed I was wrong onAugust 1st this year when my father suddenly died...