What's your Day time / main job

[Raslee]

51 minutes ago, paddy109 said:

Become a AMHP?

Been there

[mike257]

9 minutes ago, miles'tone said:

I'm a teaching assistant at an autism resource base within a mainstream primary school. The money is crap but I do actually enjoy going to work in the morning. 

It's the first job I've ever had where I don't have to pretend to be a something or other, I just show up as me and it's valid. 

Amazing thing to do. My little boy is autistic, I know how challenging it can be at times, so to deal with that multiple times over must take some doing. Hats off to you!

[miles'tone]

7 minutes ago, mike257 said:

Amazing thing to do. My little boy is autistic, I know how challenging it can be at times, so to deal with that multiple times over must take some doing. Hats off to you!

Thanks man. My son is also autistic which is how I ended up taking this path. I found myself needing a career change (self employed plumber, long hours, weekends..) as I hated my job and wanted to be more present at home. Now I actually feel useful and fulfilled at work, finish at 3.30pm and get the school holidays off with my family. 

Although I will never have that retirement nest egg to look forward to, it's worth it. 

[Oopsdabassist]

3 hours ago, King Tut said:

I'm a Train Driver/Instructor working for London Northwestern. I've been on the railway since I was 17. In 1992 I went into management for 11 years but returned to driving in 2003 to reduce stress. We work a four day week but training often occurs over a five day week, so instead of taking the extra day as pay, I take it as time off in lieu which allows me to take time off to gig. I'm retiring August after next at age 60. Although I enjoy my job, I've had enough now and can't wait to retire! 

And we did some signal sighting together Col, back in the nineties/naughties.....was it still Network Southeast then?

[binky_bass]

@miles'tone Such a shame that work such as yours pay so very little. 

I used to work in care (young adults with learning disabilities and extreme challenging behaviour) and the pay was awful. The companies RAKED it in but didn't pay anywhere near enough to retain decent staff. 

Before I left that job I was a manager of a day centre for said services users and was paid £17k per year for my troubles. I now work within the Motor Industry and earn a damn sight more but feel I'm not contributing to society in any measurable volume and have next to no job satisfaction.

Keep going man, I salute you! 

Edited March 8, 2020 by binky_bass

[King Tut]

13 minutes ago, Oopsdabassist said:

And we did some signal sighting together Col, back in the nineties/naughties.....was it still Network Southeast then?

That's right yeah - no those were Silverlink days I think - or early London Midland - happy daze!

[mikebass456]

1 hour ago, BlueMoon said:

Occupational Health Physician (workplace doctor). Now retired.

Resident band expert on tinnitus, RSI, back-ache etc.........you name it. In my current band we have a wide selection of ailments that still keep me busy.

 

I've got all of those, plus drummer-related tourettes..........

[walshy]

I have my own company making bespoke Shepherd Huts, kitchens and furniture. Big woodworking workshop hence why I’m making some basses and stuff now. Anyone needing some workshop space is welcome to come and use it too! 

[Raslee]

8 minutes ago, binky_bass said:

@miles'tone Such a shame that work such as yours pay so very little. 

 The companies RAKED it in but didn't pay anywhere near enough to retain decent staff.

I'm sure this sadly is the case with some of the bigger organsiations, however in my County i have witnessed countless day centers, residential and specialist provision closing due to it not being economically viable to continue to operate as a functional business anymore. One of the big issues I witness is that many staff are now moving to agency providers that severely injures the NHS & Social Care budgets thus making it impossible to fund such provisions adequately.

In my experience a lot of the business owners in this area of work tend come from more of a altruistic perspective, but I'm sure not all, although I'm mildly confident they're not purposely screwing over their staff.

Sadly I think the big player has been austerity/politics that has hugely crippled these businesses, particularly being unable to pay staff what they deserve. Paradoxically my county is in a position where there is a little bit more money in the pot but no actual staff to recruit......accept the occasional expensive agency.

[bassfan]

I’m a project manager for a telecoms company, specialise in network cabling. Boring!!! 😂 

[musicbassman]

It's so interesting reading through all these comments - seems to me there is an emphasis on technical and/or highly specialised roles overall, which would make sense for bass players and their specialised role in bands which is often woefully misunderstood by other musicians - well, bass is just a guitar with only four strings, innit ?

By the way, I started as a pro bass player in the 70's, then became a specialist cut flower grower. Retired now, and I work as a dep player for covers/functions bands as and when.  I also teach English to groups of foreign students every summer to help keep my brain working !

[lurksalot]

I am a co-owner of a double glazing company in Chester , I started in windows and glazing when I left school and somehow never got out .

i still enjoy being on the tools , but get just enough time to keep on top of a lot of the admin and complications that are business related. 

It helps sharing ownership as I get time off when I require and know that there is someone trustworthy to keep it all together. 

It  started off as mates doing weekend work  30 years ago .... we’re still mates and still at it ! 

 

[FinnDave]

I spent half my working life at the BBC and the other half as a lecturer for Helsinki University and latterly as a teacher for Kymenlaakso University of Applied Sciences (or polytechnic as it used to be called).

I stopped work when I moved back to the UK and the only 'job' I have now is playing bass.

[Chiliwailer]

47 minutes ago, Raslee said:

I'm sure this sadly is the case with some of the bigger organsiations, however in my County i have witnessed countless day centers, residential and specialist provision closing due to it not being economically viable to continue to operate as a functional business anymore. One of the big issues I witness is that many staff are now moving to agency providers that severely injures the NHS & Social Care budgets thus making it impossible to fund such provisions adequately.

In my experience a lot of the business owners in this area of work tend come from more of a altruistic perspective, but I'm sure not all, although I'm mildly confident they're not purposely screwing over their staff.

Sadly I think the big player has been austerity/politics that has hugely crippled these businesses, particularly being unable to pay staff what they deserve. Paradoxically my county is in a position where there is a little bit more money in the pot but no actual staff to recruit......accept the occasional expensive agency.

We work in similar worlds. My work roles are hard to explain, but revolve around quality of life, quality of support/service and staff training in autism and learning disability in accommodation services and/or activity supports. 

That means most of my workload is based around behaviours of concern (sadly also known as challenging behaviour, and not interpreted in the way originally intended) whereby too often supported people are mostly being challenged themselves by others or environments - so they are not the initial problem, and shouldn’t be stigmatised as challenging. 

This has been shown to massively affect staff turnover when practice is poor, generally due to poor leadership and training. Cutting budgets doesn’t help, nor does the low wage staff get for a complex role they are rarely fully backed to work in. 

And with the UK guidance on behaviours of concern focused on debatably ‘evidence based’ behaviourism theories (I.e. not well evidence based as such when utilised in real life situations, and not backed by a plethora of autistic advocates, or even by NAS) it’s dominantly one-sided by supposing that we need to find out why the person acts as they do, as opposed to equally looking at the quality of leadership, training and knowledge in the service - which can cause a huge amount of behaviours of concern...

Boils my blood daily - many staff don’t know what they don’t know, so many staff and supported people genuinely suffer stress etc. from it. 

Edited March 8, 2020 by Chiliwailer

[Roger2611]

I have the joys of authorising repairs to ex hire cars so they can be disposed of in the correct manner, I also have the "joys" of charging that damage to the parties responsible, so as you can imagine, it is conflict all the way!

Yes, you are all completely correct, the glamour is unimaginable 

[dmccombe7]

2 hours ago, ribbetingfrog said:

I could tell you, but then you’d have to kill me.

My job is my dirty little secret 😈

So you work for Local Council then 

[PatrickJ]

I work for a company that now specialises in Cloud Computing.  

I was in a reasonably senior role up until Dec 31st when I was made redundant,  I'm still pretty forked about it but it presented me with an opportunity.

Things have been a bit rough with my Autistic kid lately and his anxiety can result in some very challenging behaviour, especially towards his mother.

I took a more junior position that meant I could work from home 3 days a week and be around a lot more to help at home.

So now I manager a team of Cloud Computing Engineers supporting Amazon, Microsoft and Google cloud platforms.

Edited March 8, 2020 by PJ-Bassist

[ribbetingfrog]

21 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

So you work for Local Council then 

How did you guess?????

[odysseus]

I'm a qualified primary school teacher, but that was a pain in the bum, so for the last 18 years I've been making air filters for commercial aircraft.

[Rich]

I design railway signalling. I've been in the rail industry since 1983, originally with British Rail in Reading where I started off in the S&T design office and then spent four wonderful years as a mechanical design draughtsman (engineering drawing was my first love), back in pre-CAD days when it was still all 0.5mm click-pencils and Rotring pens. Absolutely and utterly loved it. Unfortunately, BR decided to listen to some management consultants who told them that they could lose a load of staff, and I was one of them... I spent a year out of the industry as a draughtsman with a quarry equipment design company, and then moved to Swindon. Re-joined the rail industry by starting work with the Westinghouse Brake & Signal Co. in Chippenham, this time as a signalling designer. Mainly writing data for the newer computerised systems, but also involved with older relay-driven stuff and even some mechanical. I spent 14 years with them, working on a wide variety of projects for the UK and overseas, and was lucky enough to see some of the world... Portugal, Hong Kong, Slovenia, Japan, and quite a few months in Indonesia. Had some great times on those overseas trips... we worked bloody hard (my longest ever working week was 109 hours) and we played hard too. What happened in Jakarta stayed in Jakarta  
Left Wes in 2003 rather than be permanently transferred to an LUL contract (metro signalling does not appeal to me at all, in the slightest) and joined Mott MacDonald in Bristol for 4 years. Enjoyed the work, but unfortunately MM were a very small fish compared to Wes and the work dried up. Luckily I was headhunted by Wes (or Invensys as they had become by this time) and rejoined in 2007, and have been there ever since. Invensys were bought by Siemens a few years back, so now I work for Ze Chermans. They are good people to work for, I have to say, good Ts & Cs and as much training as I could wish for.
But I have grown to dislike the UK rail industry -- years ago I was proud to be a railwayman and would defend it to the death in an argument, but not these days. More often than not, it embarrasses and angers me. Far too much political bullpoo. 

Edited March 9, 2020 by Rich

[andyonbass]

8 minutes ago, Rich said:

. Invensys were bought by Siemens a few years back, so now I work for Ze Chermans. 

Are you based in Chippenham Rich? My son is an apprentice at Siemens there.....

[Daz39]

I’m a Finance Analyst for a large Construction Services group.

Before that I was an accountant of sorts for an airline, and some less exciting jobs before that.

presently I get to design dashboards, do process flows and after 7 yrs have still not got rid of all the work I improved and am overpaid to still be doing.

It could be worse: I earn a lot for sitting down, the benefits are great (paternity pay was 2 wks full pay the last 2 times I used it) and we have enough feeders to ensure there is always cake and biscuits aplenty.

[Oopsdabassist]

14 hours ago, Rich said:

 I have grown to dislike the UK rail industry -- years ago I was proud to be a railwayman and would defend it to the death in an argument, but not these days. More often than not, it embarrasses and angers me. Far too much political bullpoo. 

I hear you bud, I started in 79, and I was a Railwayman, and proud of it!  Post privatisation, I became just a contractor, and the many...many years of that whole ethos ground me down so much. In the end, when Carillion went under I was so glad to escape the grind.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Rich

[DaytonaRik]

I work as a software support analyst for a software house specialising in transport management systems - strangely enough interfacing directly with any UK system designed by @Rich!  I've been there 14 years and worked on systems from route diagramming, rolling stock maintenance and pantograph checking through to traffic management on the Western route, plus our signal control solutions and traffic movement monitoring across large parts of the UK rail network.

[dmccombe7]

2 minutes ago, DaytonaRik said:

I work as a software support analyst for a software house specialising in transport management systems - strangely enough interfacing directly with any UK system designed by @Rich!  I've been there 14 years and worked on systems from route diagramming, rolling stock maintenance and pantograph checking through to traffic management on the Western route, plus our signal control solutions and traffic movement monitoring across large parts of the UK rail network.

Its funny how some of us are connected outwith Bass playing.

Dave