What do you do (or did) for a living?

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I was in the graphics & marketing biz for 30+ years, including 12 years as the graphics manager for ERTL/Racing Champions Toys/AMT/MPC model kits. I also worked for one of the major hobby distributors for a few years before that.
 
Software developer/technical product analyst/technical business analyst/technical project manager.
 
It's more like "What *HAVEN'T* I done for a living".

I've sold kites (Catch The Wind, Florence, Oregon)
Made Kettle Corn
Worked as a stock boy in a shoe department (Macy's)
Gone door-to-door getting phone numbers for the telephone book (RL Polk & Co).
Put bombs (including nukes) on planes (Aircraft Armament Systems Specialist, USAF)
Made hamburgers for McDonalds
Gone door-to-door for an exterminator (hanging paper, booking inspections/service)
Made pizza for Angelo's
Made burritos for Taco Bell
Made golf trophies and funeral urns
Made "food" for Arby's (that S**TS *NASTY*)
Fried fish for Long John Silvers
Worked in the campus' kitchen (OIT)
Archivist Assistant (OIT)
Landscaper (OIT)
Janitor (OIT)
Telephone Tech Support for Apple's Macintosh line
Caterer
Wholesale travel agent
Busker (balloon twisting and contact juggling)
Telephone Tech Support for Apple
Janitor (at PDX airport)
EFL Teacher
 
After reading a couple of pages here, I'm almost embarrassed to talk about my jobs. I suppose my first job was handing tools to my dad.... I grew up on a small private airport, where we worked on everything from tractors to twin engine aircraft. Went into the Marines in 1969, (my way of avoiding the draft) and worked on avionics systems, mostly the side looking radar in Phantom jets that tracked troop movement in Viet Nam.
When I got out, I went back to work for my dad, because I was pretty messed up and no one else would hire me. I painted airplanes and worked as a mechanic for a couple of years, got a job at the local drop zone packing parachutes and throwing people out of airplanes to pay for my skydives. Met my wife Sharon at the drop zone, took seven years to get her to marry me, and now my wife is a full time job.
 
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prfesser said:
Spent 42 years that I'll never get back, teaching chemistry to students who (mostly) didn't want to learn it.....;) Had I told the students that a B cost $600 and an A, $1200....I'd be a rich man.:)

Had a student once ask me if I could be bribed. "Of course. But if your savings/CDs don't have at least eight figures before the decimal point, don't try; I'd be insulted. I'm easy. I'm just not cheap.":D

In my career I saved countless lives. Kept the idiots out of med school, dental school, etc. You're welcome.
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On behalf of the few s
prfesser said:
Spent 42 years that I'll never get back, teaching chemistry to students who (mostly) didn't want to learn it.....;) Had I told the students that a B cost $600 and an A, $1200....I'd be a rich man.:)

Had a student once ask me if I could be bribed. "Of course. But if your savings/CDs don't have at least eight figures before the decimal point, don't try; I'd be insulted. I'm easy. I'm just not cheap.":D

In my career I saved countless lives. Kept the idiots out of med school, dental school, etc. You're welcome.
Click to expand...
My high school chemistry teacher had the biggest impact on my life. So thanks on behalf of your students who should have been more grateful to you.

I’m retired 8 years after a full career as a scientist, engineer, and firmware developer who got a start with a chemical engineering degree.

You probably had a major impact on more people than you’ll ever know.
 
First job was an internship working in automotive electronics on the software Validation/Verification team, worked on some early telematics stuff and in vehicle OEM DVD players.
Then my cluster headaches became chronic, got a real bad case of depression and flunked out of collage. Once out of collage the cluster headaches went back to the 1-2 a month instead of everyday, and therapy saved my life.
Then I worked at Radio Shack for a year and a half in the bad old days of the early-mid 2000's, left there for CompUSA for all of four months until my store closed.
Went back to school at the local community collage did real good and lived on loans, got back into my original collage and no longer qualified for loans so dropped out of collage for funding reasons. met a guy who would take a chance on me while I was hanging out at a local gaming cafe.
Picked up a job doing contract coding and data mining for a meat processor manufacturer said guy was a big wig for. Ran out of work to do on that.
Turns out guy owned said gaming cafe and hired me to run it for a while, with the exception of pay and benefits was easily the best job I ever had. Still play DND with him every other week.
The old internship place was hiring and needed people they knew could do the work and hired me despite lacking a degree, which in this area (West Michigan) and that industry (Automotive Electronics) was kind of unheard of. First real career, back in software validation. Got to work on instrument clusters, infotainment, and garage door openers. Was a pretty cool job but man is that industry crap, run by total idiots who think yelling louder and interrupting engineers every 2 hours will get more things done. That part of the business was sold off to another company and instead of moving to the shitty side of the state I jumped ship to a marine electronics place doing the same thing but wetter. Which lasted 4 months as they had a recall and the project I was hired to work on was delayed 6mo. then later canceled.
in 2015 I was hired to work on robot forklifts, doing software quality stuff initially, moving into being responsible for all software on the vehicle not our control software, and dealing with wireless comms issues. You will not believe how many IT people do not understand you will not get the same coverage from an AP that is mounted on a 12 foot ceiling in an office and a 45 foot ceiling in a warehouse. Also How the custmer's IT will ask for a list of ports we use for their firewall, ignore said list, forget to route a connection from the wifi network VLAN to the Traffic Control server and do it all over again on the next site. And the next site.

Still doin' that Robot forklift stuff. Jobs good but boring and I think I'm under payed so we'll see how long I stick around.

Also I occasionally do product testing/engineering(lol) for Gaming Paper, and work their booth at GenCon every year. Say high, I look like the opposite of my profile pic, I haven't been that thin in -60 years.
 
My microbiology teacher had our autoclave blow its top. However, she was processing our equipment after school was over for day and the appliance was in the back of the room. There was some damage to the ceiling, but no injuries.

I did have an 8th grade science teacher who burned his eyebrows off igniting soap bubbles blown with hydrogen. He wasn't wearing safety glasses. Same teacher accidentally dropped his wedding ring in bowl of mercury during a demonstration. Also the same teacher had a midpower rocket take a core sample from the school's roof. He was entertaining, taught a lot about what could go wrong.
 
Shoveling snowy sidewalks -- once, b/c $.50 for 2h work
Helping my dad deliver papers
Working odd jobs at the middle school
Burger King counter on my HS lunch break
McDonald's nights & weekends
Ground cleanup, then tear off, then roofing

Taco Bell
Retail customer service/ returns
Amazon warehouse
University dishroom
Computer lab monitor
Teacher's assistant
Medical device documentation
Hotel maintenance

Helpdesk tech nonprofit w/ side consulting
Sys admin eng firm w/ side consulting
Datacenter ops tech I, II, III, IV
Datacenter ops mgr

A bunch of the earlier ones overlapped, and there were lots of temp gigs too. Overall I would have had an easier time if I decided what I wanted to do and learned some study skills.
 
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Designer / drafter pretty much all my life.. started at 16 doing electrical schematics for my dad's company. (pencil, paper & templates, all on a proper drafting board..)
  • I did a week as a busboy at a local food court. Fired after a week..
  • I spent 2 years at a local car wash.. got to drive some sweet cars (and a few cop cars) albeit, each one only 10ft..
  • I spent 2 years as a bike courier, loved that!
  • Also did 2 years at a few bike shops: mechanic.. "Always work somewhere where you can benefit [discounts].."
  • Assembled a number of industrial control panels (for the precast concrete industry mainly) I know a lot about concrete & sewer pipes! I did the design / lay-out, the schematics and the wiring. All 2km of wire to the 30 or 40 buttons, lights, switches & scale indicators.. (early PLC stuff, but pre-touchscreen stuff)
  • Assembled more circuit boards that I are to count!
  • spent a summer cleaning big houses after they were built.. paint out of the bathtub, cleaning windows, vacuuming carpets & floors after installation, etc.. all the stuff to make the house presentable to the new owners..
  • I helped develop a few 'pizza box' switchmode power supplies (Xantrex anyone?! late 90's before they bought up a bunch of smaller companies)
  • was an initial designer with the PAWDs waste disposal system aboard various ships (the machine bits, not the plasma torch)
  • I helped develop the Self check-out systems we see everywhere today (Optimal Robotics, now Fujitsu)
  • Designed numerous labels & overlays, conforming to various ISO & ANSI standards.
  • wrote a number of manuals & other procedural type documents.
  • helped implement part numbering conventions & manage the MRP / ERP systems..
  • been part of 2 rounds of ISO900 implementation
  • And conform to UL, CSA / Intertek, NSF, as well as some Mil specs & other industry standards..
  • And currently doing the ovens & display cases you see at Costco
And I helped sell merch & alcohol at an after-hours punk show one night! :D


And 15 or 20 years to go before I retire! (I do like what I do!)
 
Prfesser, your opening comment - "Spent 42 years that I'll never get back, teaching chemistry to students who (mostly) didn't want to learn it....." - made me smile because it reminded me of my brother's experience. He's older than me, and when he was in high school I remember him talking a lot about how much he wanted to be a high school science teacher. He went on to study science education in college, and underwent his first student teaching experience late in his sophomore year. He absolutely hated it. The high school students he was trying to teach were rude, disrespectful, and clearly wanted nothing to do with what he was trying to teach them. In less than a month he said "Screw this!" and changed majors to something that had nothing to do with teenagers. Probably the best life decision he ever made.
 
Geographic Information Systems or GIS. Cartography, scripting, database management, data visualization. Touch a lot of different things, master of none. Been in oil patch for 20+ years. Moving on to federal government position soon.
 
I stuck with the rocket theme.
SM-2 BLK-II Terrier
This early test round had temperature sensitive paint (the multi colored stripes) to look at aerodynamic heating.
It wasn't until after the test flight that we noticed a required 30 minute soak at temperature for the paint to react.
Actual flight time was around 100 seconds.....OOpsie.
 

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My working career began with a summer as a busboy in a steak restaurant.
Worked my way through college assembling bicycles for Sears and Roebuck.
Took my Mechanical engineering degree and went to work for Hewlett Packard.
19 years designing Pen Plotters and Thermal InkJet cartridges. Also supported the automated assembly lines to make them.
Worked for a series of small Engineering Services companies. Fast paced, wear many hats, Lots of variety in you work diet.
Then a couple of medical device companies, and lastly a Defense company making Quantum Cascade Lasers.
I have been retired since July of 2022. Build a few rockets, done a lot of travel, Portugal, Peru and the Galapagos, lots of RV trips.
 
Started college in 1966 to get an aerospace engineering degree. Did not study and decided getting married would be a good idea. Found out that I could not have the things, like rockets, that I wanted unless I had a better job. Better job = more education. Went back to school and got a chemical engineering degree in 1975. Went to work optimizing and building gas processing plants. Then went into negotiating natural gas processing contracts which led to negotiating gas and oil purchasing agreements. Got divorced and was laid off during the "downturn" in the early 80s. Got hired back as a consultant a month later. Formed my own corporate entity in 1981. In 1986 I started looking for oil and gas properties to purchase. I acquired the first property from the FDIC in 1988 and have been in that business ever since. Remarried in 1994 and when I proposed, told my wife to be that, depending on oil and gas prices, we would be "good" or "good and broke." We have been both. We have now been acquiring non-operated working interests for 35 years and, even trough the downturns, have never regretted it. And since many of the properties are long life with low declines, I will never "retire."
 
Robert: US Navy 21 years, retired as Chief Fire Controlman - missile and gun system radars and electronics. My last ship was a brand-new at the time Arleigh Burke (USS Higgins DDG-76). Don't they kick butt?
Dept. of Defense for 11 years afterwards as Field Service Engineer/Electronics tech/Project Manager. Great job when I had a great manager, but when that went away, so did I. I was actually underpaid for that job, but didn't know it until my present position.
Moved to Indiana to be with Wendy (pictured) and didn't know anyone. Indiana in 2016 was all bubbafied networking so I ended up a Electronics/Electromechanical Journeyman in a Glass plant for 4.5 years. Very tough and good for me, got to see a Union from the inside.
At present, Electrical Engineer (projects) for a Glass company. Very difficult and why I have been absent for so long - time only for rest after work. That is hopefully changing.
IMG_1132.JPG
 
I mowed lawns, worked in a local (not a chain) fast food restaurant and the front desk of an RV campground in HS and college. After getting my undergraduate degree in economics and my MBA in finance, I worked as a business analyst and project manager at the First National Bank of Chicago for about seven years. Then the head of our bond department asked me to come work for him in a job he described as “everything we don’t have time for because we’re too busy trading or selling bonds.” Turned out to be a very accurate job description. I dId that job for 15 years for five different managers before being put in charge of establishing the strategy for all capital markets internet efforts.

Then we got bought by J. P. Morgan who took us from 1,500 to fewer than 200 people. Three years of JPM then saw my job get sent to New York, so I took a (generous) severance package and became a contract project manager for four years before finding a permanent project manager position at a small local bank. After that bank got bought out, I stayed for a year before our financial advisor said we could retire and my corporate BS meter got pegged. I retired in November 2017.

Since then, I’ve remained active in my local church, ridden the bike ride across Iowa (RAGBRAI) several times, traveled to Iceland, France, Spain, Netherlands and Belgium, attended NARCON, the TARC Finals, NSL, and NARAM.

Somewhere along the way, I also served as NAR President for 14 years but that’s a job of an entirely different kind! :)
 
I did a degree in mechanical engineering.
On completion, had an offer of a 2-year contract doing vibration analysis on marine diesel engines and also a 3-month temporary position with the BBC Visual Effects department which meant moving to London. (because electronics was my hobby.....)
Took the 3-month position with BBC and stayed for 4 years. Worked on a lot of Tomorrows World programs which were live broadcast at the time. Doctor Who, been inside a Dalek, seen a cyberman, worked on the TARDIS console, operated the blue light on the TARDIS (wire on a battery KISS) Little and Large and all other things BBC. Top Of The Pops doing dry ice. Met Paul McCartney. Made him look good.....
Worked on a few pyro jobs and built every firing box at the BBC for those 4 years. And tested and maintained the existing ones.
Got an offer of a position with the electronics team at Jim Henson Creature Workshop. Made stuff for TMNTII Secret of the Ooze. Dinosaurs the TV Sitcom ( Not the Mamma and the Wesayso corporation (art imitating life)) Worked in North Carolina during summer where I saw the largest cockroaches just walking down the pavement.
Got married to Sue.
We traveled around the world for a year.
I was offered a job in Australia as an animatronics expert...... They paid me a good chunk of money.
Worked in the film and TV industry in Australia for many years.
Blew up Alf's caravan in Home and Away and it's still my favorite photograph from those years. Love the umbrella going up in the shot. Everything was on stainless leashes to get a bit of movement but not too much.
Alfs Caravan.jpg



GFC put the Oz$ at parity with the US$ That made Oz 50% more expensive for a US budget and the US film companies stopped coming and the film industry pretty much collapsed. I hung on for as long as possible but cut my losses after 3 months of no work and too much in the bank to be able to claim any sort of benefits to see me through.
Got a job in the security industry at minimum wage at the age of 45... drilling ATM safes to the customers bolt down pattern and fitting electronic security. Upped my Security Tech skills and became a security installation tech. Specialised in DSX ( used at a lot of military complexes in the US) which was used by RailCorp in New South Wales. Couple of years of that and I became recognised for that niche.
Transport for NSW took over the access system management. Got the job of Security Specialist for Transport for NSW and managed contracts worth millions and contractors on a daily basis.
Department got restructured and I decided to exit. Took a year of wrangling to get out with a handshake.
Contacted my film chums who I'm still on good terms with and said I wanted to bookend my career with a film.

Peter Wyborn gave me a call and I worked on the latest unreleased as yet Planet of the Apes. It was fantastic working with a bunch of really talented people again
Crew Photo I'm in the blue shirt.

Planet of apes crew photo.jpg

Did a couple of weeks working on the finale of Heartbreak High. And that's it.

I'm retired...... Unless someone wants to make me an offer?
 
Some of the more normal stuff: busboy for Perkins, sales dept for an outdoors store, Radio Shack, Home Depot, overnight stock for Target,

Have built EKG equipment, did a stint in the USN as a nuclear electrician, currently work as a special education teacher at the high school level and seriously considering a career change. I generally enjoy the job but the lack of negative consequences for students combined with how easy it could be for a student to wreck a teachers career has me really rethinking this while I am still young enough to make the change.
 
Hobie1dog said:
You've worked 36 years, retire asap as life can change instantl
Bob Yanecek said:
I stuck with the rocket theme.
SM-2 BLK-II Terrier
This early test round had temperature sensitive paint (the multi colored stripes) to look at aerodynamic heating.
It wasn't until after the test flight that we noticed a required 30 minute soak at temperature for the paint to react.
Actual flight time was around 100 seconds.....OOpsie.
Click to expand...
I was a SPG-55B mod 9 tech on USS Worden first tour. We shot a couple of those. That was a system for hardcore techs!
Click to expand...
 
bschultz32 said:
Prfesser, your opening comment - "Spent 42 years that I'll never get back, teaching chemistry to students who (mostly) didn't want to learn it....." - made me smile because it reminded me of my brother's experience. He's older than me, and when he was in high school I remember him talking a lot about how much he wanted to be a high school science teacher. He went on to study science education in college, and underwent his first student teaching experience late in his sophomore year. He absolutely hated it. The high school students he was trying to teach were rude, disrespectful, and clearly wanted nothing to do with what he was trying to teach them. In less than a month he said "Screw this!" and changed majors to something that had nothing to do with teenagers. Probably the best life decision he ever made.
Click to expand...
Too bad. I went to a rich suburban school called Wheaton Central high school. There were like 444 in the class. The vast majority were going to college and beyond. Were very respectful of the teachers. Sure there were a few jerks but the vast majority dropped out as soon as they could but weren't missed.

Funny story. A bully was picking on me when I was a freshman. I was very farsighted and wore thick glasses. Bully pushed me down during a class change.
A big ugly guy came over and picked me up to my feet. I thought, "Oh now this big ugly guy is out to kill me too." Big ugly guy says to me, "Hey four eyes are you scared?" He then broke into this big grin and followed it up with, "CAUSE if you're scared, I'll help you RUN!" Bully's cronies all were laughing and walking away. I found out much later on the big ugly guy was none other than Jim Belushi the comedian/actor! He saved my butt. He is two years older than me. I never had any contact with Jim after that and I dealt with the bully (who sat behind me in chemistry glass and kicked my chair all the time) by turning around, lifting him up and challenged him to fight after school. I was going to kill him. Fortunately for him he didn't show up. He and his cronies never bothered me again.

Jim Belushi retired from acting and bought a ranch in Oregon where he raises legal marijuana/pot in greenhouses! Sounds like something John would do! Kurt
 
I've done a number of not so interesting jobs over the years.

- Worked at a dollar store and auto detailer in HS.
- Ran the deli in a small mom and pop store in my town. Cut off the end of my finger there.
- Worked concrete construction for a while. Got hurt on a structure collapse and ended up driving heavy machinery for them.
- Worked for and eventually managed a small real estate sign company.
- Worked as a mechanic fixing Ford junk at a dealership.
- Side Jobs plowing snow and working at a hobby shop as their Radio Controlled person. Eventually ended up being a dealer for Traxxas and Red Cat RC.
- Worked at a rubber and gasket company. Started as a WH manager then worked my way up to GM before it was sold off and corporate closed our facility.
- Currently working in IT implementing and supporting various ERP solutions.
- Own a couple of small businesses.



I'm sure I'm forgetting a few.
 
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