24 thoughts on “Weekend Question Thread”

  1. it was dirty, messy, slimy, painful(glass sharded/cuts/ground fingertips), tiring, tedious-not another cherry blossom!,low paying, but schlitz studios was fun, i learned a lot, creative and color filled. and i have boxes full of glass, 2 lamps, and photos. and i miss it.

  3. 40 years in Forensic Toxicology Lab. My, how the times have changed and I was witness to it. Another tip: Contrary to the CSI TV franchise, women do not show cleavage in labs, and we actually kept the lights ON!

  4. Being a lazy, dreamy sort, my favorite job was working as a ticket seller at a movie theater. I sat reading all day in a glass booth, watching the city life pass before me. I could talk on the phone and listen to the radio, even sketch the passing scenes. And I got PAID for this!

  5. Four years in the Navy, stationed in Asia the whole time. I could get my face slapped in six different languages. Got shitfaced with Soviet sailors in Singapore during the height of the Cold War and met King Neptune.

  6. Wow, dancinfool, that’s cool! My best friend works in a crime lab–she does both narco testing and DNA. She even helped close a 20-year old cold case with a hit off CODIS last year. I’m very proud to know her.
    As for my best job, I’m in two of them right now. I teach part-time in history, which is perfect. I love to teach, but I hate the idea of doing all the other stuff that goes with a full-time college faculty post (committees, curriculum, advising, etc. Especially committees.)
    But my best job ever is one I’ve had now for 20 years. I work 6 hours a week for a science fiction writer. She writes longhand in notebooks, and I transcribe for her. I do a bunch of other stuff, too (like helping with her taxes), but the typing is the best. I’ve been involved with 7 novels, three short story collections, and I can’t count how many short stories. We’re in the final stages of editing on her most recent. I’m incredibly proud of her work, and my small part in it.
    What really makes the job so great is that she is also one of my dearest friends. We spend at least half an hour every week talking politics. We helped each other get through the horror of the last eight years.

  7. I still day-dream about my favorite gig as a late-night, free-format FM radio DJ in a college town.
    When WKRP came out a few years later, I could have sworn their writers had had our studios and offices wired!
    Oh, Bailey > Jennifer!

  8. My 27 years as a weekly newspaper editor and local history columnist, although retirement is (so far) coming in a close second.

  9. What I do right now. Self employed geek. The hours suck, the future is uncertain – but I work with the man I love and we declare Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest company holidays. Only company policy – we have NO MEETINGS.
    (Dancingfool – use any HP GC’s or MSD’s. That was my world once…)

  10. Oh yes, HP GC/MS was my intimate friend for many years. The first GC/MS I worked with was a Finnigan 4000, back in 1978. After that, we went with HP.
    If you declare Mardi Gras and Jazz fest holidays you must be a New Orleanian, yeah? I’ll be traveling back there from where I live now in Oregon next week. Gonna see me some family and old friends and stuff my face, yeah.

  11. This one! Even more so when I qualify in 18 months and can call myself a Social Worker and get paid and recognised for being what I already am…oh, I work with adults with learning disabilities, before anyone starts on the ‘CPS do no good and take people’s children away for no reason/don’t take enough children away’ line (sorry, bit touchy, you should read the British press since Baby P).

  14. Another musician here.
    My best job was one that, amazingly, paid me just barely enough money to live on. It was conducting a small early music ensemble, and the hours were Tuesdays from 7-9.
    That was a pretty sweet total employment scenario 🙂

  19. dancingfool
    My first MS was a Dupont MS back in 1978 – Kepone study in the James river.
    Yup- NOLA is home. Come on back! Check out Lil Dizzy’s for lunch. If you want a fancy dinner – all the buzz is MiLa in the old Pierre Marquette building

  20. For close to ten years I made a small living ghosting books, published one of my own, and then froze up for two years, losing my momentum.
    But it was great while it lasted.

  21. My best job has to be the one I’ve got now. I work for a small (14-person) software company doing testing and technical writing and whatever else. Thursdays are wine tasting days, at 3:00 in the boardroom; once a month we all go out to lunch at the company’s expense for the “Birthday of the Month Club,” with cake in the boardroom after; every so often, everyone goes to the local pub for a drink after work at the company’s expense; and the people are great — slightly nuts, but great. They’ve been very understanding about letting me have time off to deal with thefour funerals I’ve had to go to since last March, and even sent a living flower arrangement when my one grandfather died. I usually work three days per week, and I make a reasonable amount of money. I will have been working there two years on January 31.

  22. lbo312:
    Will definitely check out the suggested food troughs in NO – I leave tomorrow! I know the Pere Marquette bldg well – my obstetrician had his office there (1967.) Never used a Dupont MS – how did you like it?

  24. Both my magazine gigs qualify as best and worst. Fantastic hard work, really annoying management-related crap (some of my own making). But steady work and the serene knowledge that people who actually cared would read the stuff I was writing — that was big.

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