How many people here really enjoy what you do to earn a living?

[dutch508]

Star Member leftyladyfrommo (14,644 posts)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215468087

I am just curious. How many people here really enjoy what you do to earn a living?

How many people really are living lives of quiet desperation?

How many people are always stressed out because of work?

I look back and I worked for 40 years in banking and mortgage banking. It was stressful and I was bored to tears. But I was afraid to quit. Now I wish I had tried to find work doing something interesting and fun.

 

Star Member Siwsan (18,880 posts)

8. A job I once loved turned into a real nightmare

They brought someone into the department who had previously been fired, but filed a grievance with the union and was brought back. It was something to do with how she was fired. Her boss 'left' soon after. But her firing was deserved. I could go on and on about her outrageous behaviors.

She took a particular 'dislike' towards me. It had to do with her constantly showing up in my cubicle, wanting to talk politics. She is an extreme right wing 'born again' evangelical who didn't know the difference between a Liberal and a Libertarian. When I pointed this out to her I laughed. BIG mistake. She spent the next 4 or 5 years making my life a living hell. Because she had an ongoing company related litigation, they couldn't fire her. (I wasn't her only target.) Knowing I was going through the hell of losing my mom and sister, while also trying to look after my elderly aunt, she actually double down on her harassment. My stress was so bad, I was sleeping only about 2 hours a night and barely eating. 3 different managers quit, because of her.

So, I retired 3+ years ahead of what I'd planned. The company tried to convince me to stay, and asked what it would take. I told them firing the problem employee, knowing full well they couldn't. They threw me a really nice retirement party, by invitation only. She wasn't on the list.

They did convince me to come back and temp, for a few months, to help them dig out of a backlog. My conditions were this individual was to be instructed to not speak to me, or even LOOK in my direction. They did and that totally pissed her off. They gave me a cubicle in a totally different department.

The company got gobbled up with another health care plan, and the last I heard she was still there, but in a different department. Retiring, when I did, probably saved my life.

 

Star Member NightWatcher (38,535 posts)

17. I was a private eye for 10+ years. Fun, excitement, challenging... and low pay for the effort.

Now I run a boat and it's not always fun but it pays.

 

Star Member DFW (42,669 posts)

29. Maybe I am in the minority

But, I enjoy what I do for a living, although after 46 years at it, I'd love to be training a replacement. I started when I was 23, and I'm 69 now. It has its stress moments, no two ways about it. The hours are sometimes long, and I am dependent on idiot bureaucrats and undependable public transportation (i.e. planes and trains). I happened to meet the requirements in the beginning and refined them to amplify job security. I met qualifications that my competition for the post couldn't match, including expertise in spotting counterfeit money of the USA and other countries, some going back 2500 years, spoken and written English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, and at least one Scandinavian language. I even brought Catalan to the table (Dutch and Schwyzerdüütsch I learned while on the job). I'm heading back to Barcelona again on Friday, as a matter of fact.

Covid-19 forced me to reduce my schedule, but I adapted. After 46 years, and some respectable success, I am pretty much my own boss (though I have to answer to Dallas for everything eventually), make a decent amount of money, get to take as much vacation as I want to, have a great team under me here in Europe (all Europeans, working in their own countries), and my office is a continent. Every month I'm in France, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Switzerland, and every now and then places beyond (Scandinavia, Portugal, UK, Austria, whatever). I've been offered other jobs, some even promising more pay, but to hell with them. At 69, I'm gonna switch now? I was given a fair deal by the outfit I work for now. I'm not about to say, "thanks for the good times, but I'm leaving for greener pastures." No one can guarantee me those pastures really WILL be greener, and my needs are not such that I need to make a million dollars a year to satisfy them. I'm with Trevanian's fictional Beñat Le Cagot--to achieve balance, you either have to bring up your earning power to satisfy your yearnings, or you have to scale down your yearnings to equal that which you earn. I chose the latter solution, and feel I've achieved the balance I sought.

My sister knows a guy from her class who was super bright, but obsessed with money. He now has some monstrous villa in Beverly Hills, fancy houses elsewhere (I forget where), and so many expensive possessions, he doesn't remember them all. He is still obsessed with accumulating more money. To what end, I have no idea. He has a wife but no children. He does not enjoy himself. His net worth is probably in nine figures, and he's constantly worried that he might not have enough. He just buys and sells stuff. Houses, real estate, stock, I don't know what. No one works for him, he did it all on his own. Materially rich, every last tax dollar paid, and yet a poor slob for all that. I think he enjoys the brief thrill of making a profit on house he sells, but has no joy if all he can think of is "could I have gotten more for it?" He never achieved the balance. He has money. He has no fun. My job is interesting AND fun. It is said of my ilk that for us, retirement comes when the last nail is put in our coffin. I don't know if I want to go THAT far, but I have no interest at all in retiring so far. And do what?

*on edit: my wife and I encouraged our daughters to do what they really wanted to do, and worry about contentment, not money. Both of them found contentment, and one even got scads of money as a bonus--not because she invented the wheel, but works for an outfit that values her skills and work ethic extremely highly, and is willing to pay plenty to get her to stay. She makes several multiples of what I do. She is also generous with her new-found wealth. She stood her sister to a bachelorette party--with 15 girlfriends at a rented house in the Turks and Caicos Islands!! She invited my wife and me to a Rolling Stones concert in Stuttgart with seats three rows back from the stage, something like €500 a seat. Nothing we would ever dream of doing, but she enjoys it, and is extremely loose with her generosity to family and friends. She even offered to reimburse me for the money I spent on her US college career, without which she would be nowhere (she says--don't believe it!). I said no, I was glad to do it, and would have been so if she had decided to become an underpaid social worker like my wife. I blew the whole cash distribution from my inheritance on my daughters' American educations, and I don't regret a cent of it. Some investments may not bring in a dime, but can turn out to be well-placed, all the same. Sometimes the greatest wealth is of a nature that cannot be taxed.

 

Star Member SYFROYH (31,543 posts)

34. I work in higher education, 20 yrs now, and it's not what it used to be.


The worst part is right winger legislators meddling in

That’s and it’s become a viscous numbers game.

Still, when I see the accomplishments of faculty and students I am very proud of my role.

 

[franksolich]

The primitive from Missouri forgets something.

Work isn't supposed to be fun.

Work is supposed to provide money so one can go do fun things.

[ABC-2]

Siwsan ...

"Knowing I was going through the hell of losing my mom and sister, while also trying to look after my elderly aunt ... etc."

Mercy!   Guess you forgot to mention the half dozen or so  siblings & their children & pets you took in and were also looking after at the time. 

You poor thing!   

~ ABC (evil-grin)




 

[ABC-2]

Yikes!  Am really not as heartless as the above sounded.  If true, losing her mom & sister at the time is a dreadful thing to live through.

However; the way it was written, started to sound too much like a 'sob story' to me.

[DUmpsterDiver]

> Star Member DFW (42,669 posts)...Maybe I am in the minority

No, you are every bit as pompous and full of yourself as any democrat dirtbag.  So your international master baiting
keeps the wooly eyed damp and dumb...whatever you are douching could very well be done remotely.   Your ego and
high dollar idiocy is not a usable skill in the game of survival.   DullAss Fing' Worthless...or a very good mole

[franksolich]

No, you are every bit as pompous and full of yourself as any democrat dirtbag.

Marc is a child of privilege.  His old man was a prominent journalist in Virginia, and when Marc was a little lad in short pants, he used to be babysat by Helen Thomas.

Or something like that.

Exclusive private school in New England.

Besides being an internationally famous expert on coins-and-stamps, he writes occasionally for the radical left-wing Nation magazine.  Has dined at the White House with Barry and Moochie.

An expatriate snob who clings to his American passport despite that he wouldn't live in this country even if paid to.

A habitual name-dropper.

I'm not sure why Marc hangs around the primitives on Skins's island. True, his politics are really stupid and his values perverted, but he is after all not lacking in accomplishments.

It's like someone from the Country Club set hanging around with the trailer court trash.

[ADsOutburst]

She is an extreme right wing 'born again' evangelical who didn't know the difference between a Liberal and a Libertarian.

I could understand if someone misunderstood what liberal meant. The people who call themselves that today are often actually statists and wannabe tyrants who have distorted and muddled the term beyond recognition.

[SVPete]

Well, I'm sure the DUmmies leeching off gooberment bennies love what they "do", so much so they want even more gooberment bennies.