The Work Thread

[Zetti]

Used to work but now I dont

[carmelle]

I'm a student but I work part time. I used to tutor children (mainly primary school kids) on a regualar basis but the pay was too low and most of what I earned was spent on my travel fare to and back from the place. Now I work as a gallery assistant. Pay is still not that good but until I can find another job this will have to do.

[ayeshax]

I'm a student way way ago I used to have a part time job [august 07] then I quit it was wonderful. I'm hoping to get a job for a month in the summer before I go on holiday.

[Furzie]

i work as a RGM in Ireland - Restaurant General Manager! lol Sounds better than what it is, but the money is good, very good actually and bonuses are not that bad either. Started there as just as staff when i was 16, part-time after school, now ended up managing the place! Still only my first job, and havent worked in anything else....

[renatexx]

Currently I study Special Needs Education at the uni, and I have a part time job at a after school care at a primary school.

[Cal]

Being a student is a job for me. You go in, take the criticisms, and leave. And at the end you get a crappy piece of paper stating that you have completed secondary school... like it wasn't obvious already.

[-Louise-]

^^ Exactly how I felt about School. It's not worth all the hassle, at the end. Might get you into DCU or something, like I said, not really worth the hassle.

[Eli]

I'm still in High school, but I have a part time job as a journalist at a local newspaper. I'm also planning on getting a new part time job at a local clothing store in addition to the journalist job. I tend to only end up working a few hours every Friday at the paper because it's a lot writing and more "hard" work like in school, and that's justa bit too much when I have school as well. It's fun working there during summer etc., but not so much during the school year, so I'm gonna try to get another job as well.

[EmyKate68]

I work for a young people's charity that gives disadvantaged kids the chance to take part in the arts and drama - its really worthwhile and I love it. I guess I'm lucky as not a lot of people can say that about their jobs!

[I love music]

$14.37 an hr for a 24 year old.. Thats just wrong.. I want my old job back where I was on $22 an hr

But do you like your job?

Retail's not the best paying industry. Go into Government. You get paid heaps for doing nothing. When I started my first job, I was on $7.50 then went up to $8 something when my probationary period ended. I was only 15 then.

I don't know about Australia but here in the UK that MYTH persists too and I can't even begin to tell you how furious it makes me. Actually tho I thought the same way - until I started working for the Government...

Forget the wages of the TOP civil servants (civil servants are what people working for the Govt are called in this country, I think they're called the same overseas...? ). The TOP civil servants ie MPs etc are the ones with the huge wages and massive pensions. Well, I'm a civil servant and among the lowest paid. Our last wage rise was 2% despite the fact prices here are increasing an average 25%. (To add insult to injury the Govt has introduced a new tax system, I won't go into detail but suffice to say, the lowest paid in this country, civil service or not, will lose an average of £10-15 a month, maybe more.) About 18 months ago the minumum wage was increased and guess what? I knew several people in the civil service who got a slight wage increase - because they were already on the minimum wage. I also know people who are still working in the civil service tho they're 66 not because they WANT to but because they CAN'T AFFORD to retire. There is no massive pension at the end of it all, just a basic amount, little more than the state pension which people who've never worked receive.

As for the workload...It is non-stop from the moment you get in till the moment you go home. The only break we get is lunchtime (no morning or afternoon breaks) and often you find yourself dealing with queries while eating your lunch. We are under constant pressure to meet targets and when people leave they're never replaced so your workload constantly increases. Believe it or not, we are even sometimes pulled up for simply chatting to a colleague for five minutes or so! There is no job satisfaction, just a frantic pace of monotonous work, the reward being that you're very, very slightly better off than those who are not working at all.

Anyway, sorry for the rant but the media would have us all believe civil servants are highly paid and do sod all and nothing could be further from the truth. (Oh, yes, and the media manipulates the figures so that it looks like civil servants have a much higher sick rate than anywhere else when in actual fact if you're off Fri and Mon it's counted as 4 days - no, don't ask me why they count weekends either - and they even count the days that part-time staff

don't actually work if part-time staff happen to be off sick too). Well, as I say, sorry about that rant, and I doubt anyone's read it all but the best advice I can give to anyone thinking of joining the civil service is DON'T!

Oh, I've had a couple of temporary jobs in outside industry. They were a hundred times more easygoing than the civil service and generally better paid. They were both in retail