Be Excellent To Each Other

Awesome tale...

Mine is another of the really short list ones

'gap' year at uni as a programmer for a very small software company
IT support (hardware/software) at a college
IT support job which turned into more of a helpdesk support role at a call centre for Sky
Telephone support role at a software company
Team leader within the support role at the same place
Support manager at the same place

The gap year role was a year , I spent around 2 years at the college which was great fun because i worked with a small group of other techies and we looked out for each other but as soon as the first one left the team fell apart and everyone else left shortly afterwards , the IT role at sky was not suppose to be phone stuff but they hired me and almost immediatly contracted out the face to face support stuff so i ended up doing mainly phone support - very draining and when something big went down you'd spend all day taking hundreds of very short calls "yes its down and its being worked on" - it lasted about 18 months and I got out of that because i met my girlfriend who happend to be living and working around 450 miles away and in a job she couldnt change - so i moved in with her and i've been with my current employer for the last 11 years.

Oh, I was a wine steward for a while at uni. Suit and bow tie, and working in relatively posh joints. Served Gary Neville at an awards event once.

christ, that took long enough!

This is why I love interweb forums, it is the best mix of people from diverse background and views all in one place. Here is 3 of mine...

The strangest job I've ever done was working night shifts (11pm till 7am) on one of them high numbered Sky channels where people send in text messages, I'd filter them for the screen, and then write some bullshit afterwards. The service was supposed to be geared towards single people looking for love, so I'd spend my shift talking about cakes and how much I couldn't stand Heart radio being pumped in the office, while at the same time consoling a lot of very distressed people who turned to the channel for a bit of company. What was even more crazy was the fact the same company ran chat sex lines and so you would hear loud moaning every few minutes from somewhere in the building. Just crazy.

Second strangest? Working for Danish tv but based in West Drayton. Never watched so much US tv tat than in them days... Days of Outr Lives? Check, Ricki Lake? Check, Simpsons? Check.

Possibly the dullest job I ever did was data entry of albums for the likes of Amazon. Imagine, typing up 6-cd box sets of Duke Ellington. Soul destroying

I did an afternoon's trial of something similar. It was vetting comments that came in to some news channel's live text-in service for people to comment on the news or some such rubbish. Initially, I thought 'Great.. getting paid for sitting around online for a few hours at a time', but in reality, you're tied to that view of the screen for the duration and it was incredibly dull. Hence the trial only being an afternoon - didn't take long to decide it wasn't for me.

I did too.

Served Gary Neville, that is. Him and his brother Phil and his Dad Neville had a table at some function.

No thanks, I'll stick to the chicken.

Express & Star?

Very much so. I was only on a temporary contract, but I'm glad I left in the end. I shortened my lunch hour from one hour to half an hour voluntarily, so that I could leave half an hour early and thus get home at a reasonable time (train and bus scheduling meant that if I left at 5.30 I wouldn't get home until 8pm some nights) and the bosses kept having a go at me because I was leaving early.

And I'm out!

Well, I'm assuming

Convenient Friday afternoon Windows reinstall?

Did you tell them you bullshitted your way in as you left?

I told them that years ago.

PC wipe.

Have you quit? Been let go?

A bit of both. New job on Monday, though!

Are you going to be a Commando, Field Medic or SWAT?

Amaze.

Porn star.

Coooool. Good luck on Monday dude.

Good luck big fella

Leader of UKIP.

Good luck Grim...!

Good luck Grim... x

Not wanting to steal Grim...’s thunder, as of this afternoon, I no longer work with Mr Russell and will be starting a new job much closer to home on Monday.

Double yay for you, then .

Porn Star?

That’s plan B.

I love you all, but I don't need luck. I'm fucking great at this.

I don't know what time to show up on Monday, though.

Whenever the fuck you want. You need to show them who's boss asap. Going in all early and working late for a good impression means you'll be doing it forever.

Better yet, just ring in at 10:00 and tell them you're working from home. For the week.

On your first day, find the biggest dog in there and smash his nose into the photocopier.

Gawd, it's like an epidemic-was my last day yesterday, too. I have no plans to go back to work anywhere, though.

Excellent news Grim..., you kept that under your hat. Is it much the same as before?

I'm starting my driving job on the 11th Oct but also looking to get into freelance technical proofreading too. Might as well put my grammar pedantry to good use.

Yeah, same stuff.


Lucky bugger.

Hit MrsA up on this, if you want.

Yes please! I've already got one friend in the industry but it'll all help.

How did it go then?

He got fired for turning up late

I turned up an hour early. So far, so good!

Looks like I never posted here, so this should be a complete job history I think:

• Paperboy delivering local free newspaper
• Shop Assistant
• Mystery Shopper
• Sexy texts Operator
• Shop Assistant (same job as before, and promoted to:)
• Shop Assistant Manager (promoted to:)
• Shop Manager (promoted to:)
• Area Shop Manager (promoted to:)
• IT Trainer (redundancied to:)
• IT Office Support (TUPE'd to:)
• Business Analyst (role change to:)
• Analyst Programmer

Apart from the three in italics which were part time things at university and the paperboy job, all the above are roles that have effectively followed on from each other by being either internally promoted, moved roles or TUPE'd between companies.

I've now been a programmer for 5 years.

Oh yeah, didn't notice there was more to this thread... so here's my very brief job history:

IT tech for my college
IT tech for a local school
IT tech/developer for a local marketing company
Developer - self employed
Senior developer for the same local marketing company
Developer - self employed

I've enjoyed my career, but looking back it's not that varied

Jobs as a youngster (I didn't take these particularly seriously, it has to be said)
- Collecting empty glasses in a British Legion as a youngster
- Shop floor & checkout at Homebase
- Selling & installing TVs and stuff


Jobs in the science-y field (I care about these and took them seriously [ish])
- Working in a research lab
- Working in a different research team, for the same company but at a different site
- Working at a facility in Aus that supports research
- Still working at the same facility in Aus, but in a higher position[/list]

I'm fortunate really, I've never had a properly bad job and I've never had a terrible supervisor. OK, a few of the guys in the shops were dicks but that doesn't really matter as I didn't really care - as a youngster I was really just passing through