Working Hard?

[Chuckanut]

Gosh YES, it was hard.

Now I find retirement much nicer. Working Hard? No, Hardly Working.

 

[neihn]

As non-native, I must say I worked really hard through school and work. All paid off

 

[Lsbcal]

Earning money is hard. I had to sucker them into thinking those degrees meant something.

 

[Cobra9777]

...Certain kinds of mental work can be hard in different ways. Some of the "office" work you can leave behind and not have to worry about it in the evenings or on vacation. Some of it you can't and it's almost always with you. That's a different kind of hard work.

+1 Part of my job at Megacorp was fairly routine "management stuff" that I rarely worried about. But the crux of my job was to put objective facts and figures around some very difficult long-term decisions that the company was considering. These decisions were complex and often had to be made with limited information. It's not the kind of work you just "leave at the office." It was stressful and my mind was running through scenarios 24/7. You can't just turn that off... or at least I couldn't. Layer on: lots of international travel, jet lag, tight deadlines, a hellish commute, conference calls at all hours from home or a hotel, toxic political nonsense... it certainly was not a walk in the park. But the pay was good and it enabled ER at 52. So I'm trying to repair the damage and get on to better things.

 

[Amethyst]

The three hard things were:

1) Rotating shiftwork (working days, swings, mids in succession - totally screws up your body clock until you feel like you are moving through jello)

2) Crazy-making office politics - people spreading gossip and rumors, withholding information, etc. just to get a small edge over somebody else (there was never any big money involved).

3) First-line supervision - often a pain, although there were exceptions when we really pulled together a good team. Still, I preferred management or working on my own.

The work itself - when one was allowed to just DO the darn work - was usually just challenging enough to be interesting. Quite often, it was fun. I had a knack for translating technical things into lay language, and senior management appreciated this ;^>

 

[friar1610]

I always think of "working hard" as digging ditches, not going into an office. But I suppose everyone has their own perspective.

An aside triggered by the mention of digging ditches...My father was a non-college educated dental tecnician. He was a HS drop-out who later earned a GED. Whenever I brought home a bad report card my father's standard line was, "If you don't do better in school you're going to end up digging ditches for the rest of your life." I never really understood how he could make it to a reasonably good technical job without a good education but I was going to be a ditch digger if I got a C in French!

 

[Walt34]

1) Rotating shiftwork (working days, swings, mids in succession - totally screws up your body clock until you feel like you are moving through jello)

Oh, yes, I know about that! Did that for 18 years. It wasn't until I moved into a straight day work position with weekends and holidays off that I realized how tired that makes you. Six months later guys I knew would say "You look a lot better".

The job wasn't physically demanding except on rare occasions when we had a "customer" who was being difficult and had to fight them to the ground. More often than not on a midnight shift the hardest part was staying awake, similar to the saying in aviation of "hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror". In my case it wasn't terror, but it could be exciting and the situation did have my full attention.

 

[foxfirev5]

Being described as a hard worker is the most insulting description I can imagine. Being creative and productive with a minimum effort is golden.

 

[Rustward]

My last job was for a software vendor and I was a developer --- backup and recovery s/w.

The boss seemed to like it more when we rushed something through and had to do seemingly endless maintenance updates than if things were adequately designed and tested so as to minimize buggy software getting into the field where it caused customer outages, service interruption, and a major amount of diagnosis and in house debugging and code rework. Most fixes were distributed as zaps, if anybody knows what those are -- literal ones and zeros (represented using hexadecimal) overlaid on the errant code.

A very simple-minded individual he was. When we constantly had to fix things I think his perception was that it must have been really hard.

He liked to see hard work. Strong back, weak mind.
His location: left side of the bell curve.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

I don't feel like I have ever had to w*rk "hard", but there have definitely been challenges. Once of the first jobs I had before going in the Air Force was working in a warehouse for Winn-Dixie (grocer). Basically I ran around on a pallet jack building pallets 7 feet high to ship to the stores...and I was lucky enough to work in the refrigerator section. There was a quota system that was tough to meet even at 18 years old, but there were people much older than me that had worked there for YEARS and got it done. I often wondered what happened to the "long timers" when the warehouse closed a few years ago. After a co-worker was killed by a 12 high pile of frozen chicken, I quit that job.

Once in the Air Force, w*rking aircraft maintenance was fairly "fun" but the working in the weather and the constant shift changes was miserable. There was nothing quite like standing on the top of an airplane sweeping off ice and snow!

Once I "went to the other side" and started flying planes, the overall "hard work" was much reduced, but the downsides were long periods of time away from home, very long w*rkdays (some in excess of 30 hours), persistent jet lag and all the other fun activities that revolved traveling for a living. There was the emotional side of it; the still vivid memories of repatriating the remains of fallen troops back stateside. That was and is still hard to deal with.

My last flying gig was probably the easiest, but even then there were days when I would be involved in several 12+ hour days doing acceptance inspections of a very hot (or cold) airplane before being able to do the "fun part" of flight testing the plane. On occasion I will see one fly over the house and I will thing for a split second of how great it would be to be doing THAT again, but then I remember the days and hours of pain and meetings and other CRAP to actually get the plane airborne. No thanks!

Now, there is little pain. Sure, occasional traffic I have to deal with but all in all, no hard w*rk unless I am doing yard w*rk.

 

[Toocold]

I see my job similar to the way I approach all things like personal finance, a problem that needs to be addressed with appropriate time and resource constraints. So I don't see my job as difficult. They certainly pay me enough to do what I do.

 

[JOHNNIE36]

Most of the time I enjoy my work: an air-conditioned operating room (okay, it's really cold), working with other medical professionals, meeting all kinds and ages of people from different walks of life makes my job interesting. Then there's . . . 2 days ago, the rupturing aortic aneurysm patient taken emergently to the operating room, the kind that John Ritter and Alan Thicke had. Torrential blood loss and massive blood transfusions, for 5 hours. A heroic effort by all, but couldn't change the course of events. It was mentally draining and I would say very hard work.

Been gone a few days from the site and just read this post. Really hit home as I went through this about seven years ago. Flyer came in the mail from a company called Life Line Screening. It advertised some screenings for carotid arteries, bone density, abdominal aortic aneurysm, etc. DW was interested in the bone density test and talked me into joining her for the testing. Promised to buy me breakfast if I would go with her. Well, she passed all the tests with flying colors but they found a problem with one of my tests. They discovered a problem in my abdominal aorta, called it suspicious and wanted me to see my doctor ASAP. Two days later I got in to see my doctor, he reviewed the notes from Life Line Screening and sent me for a CT scan. They found an enlarged aneurysm and my doctor referred me to a vascular surgeon. That surgeon found that I a candidate for a stent and four days later I was in the hospital for the stent implant. In and out the same day. It was more complicated than that but I will spare the details. I was lucky.

I know that test saved my life and my wife won't let me forget it. I go every year for follow up CT scans to show that the stent is still in the proper place and that there is no leakage of blood. My scans show that the aneurysm has collapsed tightly onto the stent and everything has been OK. Ten years ago I had open heart surgery but this scared me more than the heart attack. Knowing that I could have died if the aneurysm ruptured scares the hell out of me. There are no symptoms. You just bleed to death before you can get to the hospital.

The post prompted me to suggest everyone get this test. It's something you can have and never know until it's too late. For more info just Google AAA (Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm).

 

[swakyaby]

@Johnnie36,
Glad to hear you were able to electively repair your AAA with an endoscopic stent. May you enjoy many more retirement years in good health!

 

[kgtest]

working sunburnt while in the military...'hardest' office work I've had. I fell asleep on that central california coast and was too scared to call in sick.

putting all the floor joices on the wrong way when i was super hungover in my early 20s was a "hard day". Foreman yelled at me and told me he was paying me for my brains not my bronze.

Crawling around in the snow/ice -20degree days installing residential windows...that was "hard work".

working 60+ hrs a week for my own business, for mere pennies...that was hard work.

Made a conscious choice to move back into IT, working smarter, not harder when I was 25 and have really not worked very hard at all in the past decade.

Sure did get used to these checks just showing up every two weeks though...

I do get stressed from time to time, but I remind myself the work will be here tomorrow.

 

[NW-Bound]

Even in my youth when I had to do some menial work, it was not really "hard" physically. Reason: I was a scrawny guy.

In my career, the work was all mental, and it took a lot of time. It's because of my nature. I made it hard on myself. When I was at a stumbling block, I could not stop thinking about it. Before the days of the Internet, I would spend some weekend time at the nearby university engineering library researching a problem. When the PC arrived, I would fire it up when I thought of something at home, and wanted to run a simulation.

My employers paid me better than the average engineer, but per hours they got a good deal from me. Yes, I worked hard for them.

 

[aksteelhead]

I am FIREing in October 2018 on my 50th birthday. Nine years in the military and twenty years as an Air Traffic Controller. The military required very hard work and long days, but they were few and far between, most of the time we just goofed off. There were a few months after leaving the military when I tried over the road truck driving. That was a miserable mind numbing job so I quit. Controlling air traffic has been easy considering my location, so I've only worked hard for maybe a year. It seems to me that the harder I worked the less salary I received.

 

[H2ODude]

Left "physically hard" work behind at 21 after working unloading boxcars at a grocery warehouse in New Orleans. Wouldn't call it "hard" work but later career included such joy as permitting a landfill, a 10 year construction lawsuit, and managing dwindling water supplies during a drought, knowing failure was greater than a 10% probability. Hard? No. Terribly unpleasant? Absolutely.

 

[redduck]

... Wouldn't call it "hard" work but later career included such joy as permitting a landfill, a 10 year construction lawsuit, and managing dwindling water supplies during a drought, knowing failure was greater than a 10% probability. Hard? No. Terribly unpleasant? Absolutely.

Yes. When I hear (or read) about jobs being hard or phrases like "my hard-earned money" I wonder, "what's so hard about that?" it sounds more like the job can be at times unpleasant or terribly unpleasant--unless we are talking about strenuous physical labor often under terribly unpleasant conditions. There was nothing hard about my job (and, I was well-paid), but it certainly had its unpleasant aspects. But, even when I was dealing with the unpleasant aspects, I was always sitting in a comfortable chair.

 

[Luck_Club]

Reading this list reminds me I've been working hard since a very young age.

Getting up at 5:00 AM to deliver morning papers in the middle of a frigid Cleveland winter was extremely tough given I was in the 7th grade. Unloading fishing boats with the prison work release candidates was also extremely harsh in cold New England weather. Only 1 time did someone back me against a wall and put a knife to my throat. Working as a door to door salesman and various telemarketing jobs on straight commission in South Florida while fully supporting myself and funding an education, was the beginning of stress induced hard work, and a live below your means attitude.

For the last 20+ years and until the fall of 2019, being a self employed straight commission manufacturers rep, has left me oblivious to office politics, so that is easy. However, living with the knowledge that for any reason, and it has happened a few times, 30 days from now my earnings can go to zero, is like eating railroad spikes hard.

 

[ikubak]

I used to have a hard job, along with chest pains, headaches, and a short temper. Almost 4 years ago I downsized my job and have felt much better with the easy job.

I was just thinking on the way back from lunch, when I retire, the start of my day will be very similar to what it is now....get a cup of coffee, read the news for a couple of hours and then think about getting something done for the day.

 

[Scuba]

I always found office politics to be the most draining aspect of my C-level corporate job. Long hours, commute, travel also hard but it was certainly much easier than a physically demanding job or a job where lives are at stake such as an ER doctor, police officer or air traffic controller.

 

[tn3sport]

Worked my way through college as kitchen crew for a restaurant chain was hard. Usually finished at 1am to 2am and headed for the bars and bottle clubs. Getting up the next days for class was hard, but somehow I managed to get a degree.
Benefits in that job were the people I got to know. Restaurants are a transient business in big cities. I must of seen a 1,000 peers come and go in that period of my life. People I'll likely never see again. Benefits were banging the occasional waitress or hostess. Or, where they using me for the same reason Who knows, who cares. It was 30 years ago. One observation I made is that I never met a single, not a single couple that stayed married in that business. You put that many young people into a close-knit environment and things happen... I'll say it again, I've never met a restaurant manager that stayed married. I know everyone can site the exception of the corner bistro where the little old couple has been married for decades, but not what I observed. This was big business institutional restaurants (Pillsbury owned restaurants).

It was long hours on your feet and often working hung over next to a person you had a 24 hour relationship with. There was no internship at daddy's lawfirm option for me.

The hard work was a motivator to finish school. Engineering degree and job offer before graduation. Took it, and never looked back.

In hindsight, I wouldn't change anything about it.

 

[Steve40th]

Military, submarine lifestyle was very demanding work. Didnt realize till I got out after 20 plus years. I am now contracting for work on submarines, ships etc... This job is more physically demanding due being a little older and more labor.
So, what is becoming Hard in working is looking for work, that isnt so physically demanding at almost 50.. Still need to pay a little portion of my bills retirement doesnt pay...

 

[GravitySucks]

It was cushy as hell at the end.
The start not so much. Four days a week during summers from 7 th grade to high school grade hanging and sanding Sheetrock. Then one year hanging Sheetrock got me an idea that college might be a good idea as the rust belt factories were all closing down here.
Got a evening and night job as a building maintenance guy in a nursing home. Emotionally draining as you watch so many suffer and die, but it let me go to Community College in the days and some down hours for homework.
Then I picked up a job with a telecom interconnect, that was interesting most of the time, but often involved pulling cables in crawl spaces with snakes and dead rodents. Could be a bit disgusting.
Then at 30 I got the megacorp Union gig. Easy Peasey but lots of hours as I was an overtime whore. They payed for the rest of my bachelors and masters degrees and that lead to some nice promotions. Stressful and lots of night and weekend on calls but really a sweet gig at the end.
Would have stayed longer if life didn't decide to show me what mortality was all about.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

2 years in the army, i considered it hard work and long days, 26 years as a cop walking a beat , the bad guys got faster, punched harder, and seemed to get meaner as i got older, yeah it was hard for me, , my son works on wall street makes mid 6 figures(only in my dreams can people make that), tells me at 35 maybe 36 he will retire 2 years from now,he says he works hard, we have different definitions of hard work