Do you miss anything from your work days?

[G8tr]

I never hated the job or my co-workers, but I miss none of it. Never had to travel much and hated the trips I had to make because it always with a couple other co-workers and I just didn't want to spend 7AM to 10 PM with the same people day after day. I don't even mind having to buy my own pens now.

Don't forget about the Post It Note pads.

 

[rk911]

I never hated the job or my co-workers, but I miss none of it. Never had to travel much and hated the trips I had to make because it always with a couple other co-workers and I just didn't want to spend 7AM to 10 PM with the same people day after day. I don't even mind having to buy my own pens now.

never had to travel much either and that was good as i trulyn hated it. most of the state conferences i had to attend were more social than anything, and by social i mean lots and lots of drinking which, for a non-drinker, was not fun. and the breakout sessions were mostly worthless. the information presented could've been packaged and mailed. i definitely do not miss that part of the job.

 

[G8tr]

never had to travel much either and that was good as i trulyn hated it. most of the state conferences i had to attend were more social than anything, and by social i mean lots and lots of drinking which, for a non-drinker, was not fun. and the breakout sessions were mostly worthless. the information presented could've been packaged and mailed. i definitely do not miss that part of the job.

I agree with you about packaging up conference materials. In many cases, conference speakers are trying to burnish their resumes or hock their consulting services. I often found myself muttering "get to the point already" under my breath.

 

[samm]

I don't know. For me, it is a tough choice between the windowless basement cubicle and the annual performance review charade.

LoL

Complete List of Things I miss working last 20 years at Bank
1. __
2. __
3. __
4. __
5. __

 

[cat4ever]

A couple of the programmer posts above made me wistful, but those days started going away at my mega-corp about 10 years ago, slowly eroding into the excruciating workplace I had to deal with the last two years. And the travel and points were nice I'll admit, but not nearly enough to offset the bad.

 

[ls99]

The many helicopter rides to places that humans rarely ventured.
Landing at a hot spring after field work in the Aleutians, and soaking for a few hours, butt naked, then running about 50 feet to the Bering sea and skinny dipping in the 35F surf. Then dash back to the hot spring for more soaking. Repeat until satisfied then fly back to base camp for King Crab legs sauteed in beer and butter. Washed down with beer.
I tell ya, that was rough, and got paid to do it.


At w*rk in my field office in 1986 Summer:
And I still have the Gortex jacket and hat!
Rucksack too!

Edit: corrected year.

 

[Ronstar]

I miss the copy machine.

Now that you mention it, I miss the copying machine(s) also. We had one that did color up to 11x17 - either copy or print from computer.

And a big engineering copier/scanner/printer - up to 36x48 or rolls 36"wide.

I could really use that big one now on occasion. I have gone back to the office just for big copies (pre Covid). That thing is amazing.

 

[finnski1]

The many helicopter rides to places that humans rarely ventured.
Landing at a hot spring after field work in the Aleutians, and soaking for a few hours, butt naked, then running about 50 feet to the Bering sea and skinny dipping in the 35F surf. Then dash back to the hot spring for more soaking. Repeat until satisfied then fly back to base camp for King Crab legs sauteed in beer and butter. Washed down with beer.
I tell ya, that was rough, and got paid to do it.


At w*rk in my field office in 1996 Summer:
And I still have the Gortex jacket and hat!

Great stuff!

 

[street]

The many helicopter rides to places that humans rarely ventured.
Landing at a hot spring after field work in the Aleutians, and soaking for a few hours, butt naked, then running about 50 feet to the Bering sea and skinny dipping in the 35F surf. Then dash back to the hot spring for more soaking. Repeat until satisfied then fly back to base camp for King Crab legs sauteed in beer and butter. Washed down with beer.
I tell ya, that was rough, and got paid to do it.


At w*rk in my field office in 1986 Summer:
And I still have the Gortex jacket and hat!
Rucksack too!

Edit: corrected year.

I would miss those days too!

 

[Aerides]

I miss being able to wear 4" heels. (As a short woman, a little extra height helped, especially since 90% of my colleagues were men). I have a closet full of awesome shoes that I can't walk very far in anymore.

I do miss solving big problems, which brought an immense feeling of satisfaction. But they were only moments - usually preceded by days where the stuff had hit the fan.

I miss giving really great people really good reviews/raises. But for every one of those I had to disappoint someone (even if they deserved to be disappointed it was never a fun message).

For everything I might "miss" there are a dozen things I don't.

 

[street]

^ yes if try to please everyone you will fail.

 

[Cassius King]

What about the team building, Kolbe/Jhana training and sessions.

No, I don't need a numbered evaluation on that ars-h*le to know how to better communicate and deal with him, he's just an ars-h*le, lol.

Between that and year end reviews, I felt like quitting on the spot every time.

 

[RetireAge50]

I liked work travel but I like retirement travel better. Work travel was work then dinner versus now it is snorkel then dinner.

 

[Andre1969]

There's one or two people that I'll probably miss. But, one of them moved to another project several years ago, and instead of seeing each other every day, we had reduced to email every once in awhile, with a once in a blue moon phone call. I just checked my work email, and I haven't heard from her since March 12!

One thing I've learned, over the decades, is that most of these work friends are just that, friends at work. Once you take the work place out of the equation, they just sort of fade off to the history files.

I guess another thing I might miss, is that moment of euphoria when I'm about to clock out early one day. Or know there's a holiday coming up. It was more substantial when I still had to go into the office, but even working from home, it's still a liberating feeling.
For example, I just clocked out of work at 1 pm today, and got that momentary rush. Even though "leaving work" means just swiveling my chair 90 degrees from the work computer to the home computer, and not paying attention to the work computer until Monday morning!

Still, I'll be more than happy to swap that moment of euphoria for the complete freedom from work!

 

[MrsHaloFIRE]

Based on what I did, I miss knowing all the things on a military base. The nuts bolts things. I had access to big briefings, calendars, an amazing Rolodex. I knew the people everywhere, where the goid event and conference spaces hid, how to trick people into telling me who REALLY was attending that meeting with competing interests. I miss being able to truly pull the levers. Ex: One phone call to hvac and another to another high level secretary and I could make cool air show up like nobody's business. Or get that phone fixed right this second. And no that wasn't even my job but like I mentioned, I was the little old lady who knew. Now i dont know sh#t. And thats alright as well bc that means its not my problem. But for a few years, I was the wise wizard of all the things.

 

[DD4L]

Problem solving on aircraft builds felt like a hobby sometimes and definitely gave satisfaction. Not so much that I'd ever go back to it though.

This winter has reminded me how much I definitely don't miss the days waking up in pitch dark at FTS o'clock to snow/ice/freezing rain and the stress of wondering if I'd survive the morning commute..

The car windshield had a thin layer of frost this morning. Went back to bed until it cleared naturally..not even sure I own a scraper anymore..

 

[CoolRich59]

What I don’t miss are the nit picky corporate accountants who would go through travel expense claims with a magnifying glass.

I don't miss anything at all.

But, I was lucky because I usually had good rapport with the folks in Accounting.

I remember working one deal. We were under the gun to get it closed that day. So, we skipped lunch and worked into the evening. After getting the deal wrapped up, a colleague and I stopped at the first decent-looking restaurant we came across (pre-internet/smartphone era). It turned out to be very decent - and expensive.

When I submitted my expense report, the head of the Accounting group calls me and says she approved my report, but wanted to let me know my bill exceeded the corporate allowance for dinner. 'Sorry', I said, 'but we skipped lunch, so it was kind of lunch and dinner'. She laughed and said 'your bill exceeded the corporate allowance for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! I hope you enjoyed it!'

 

[stepford]

Many of these posts show what I call "the summer camp effect". You know how years later you remember the nice parts of summer camp through a rosy haze of nostalgia, but if you really think about it: day by day it pretty much sucked. That was work for me.

Yes the travel was sometimes nice - Europe was nice, the more frequent trips to garden spots like Utica and Albuquerque... less so.

I missed some of the equipment to which I had access - so much so I eventually had to buy myself an oscilloscope, spectrophotometer and a few other odds and ends (idle hands/devil's workshop). Now there's not much left to miss.

 

[Souschef]

Talks of garden spots brought back memories of two trips
One was LA to Detroit in the middle of winter to deliver a proposal. The idiots booked me LA-SFO-DET instead of through Denver. Well SFO was socked in and I missed my connection. I am standing in the cold at 1 AM waiting for the rental car pickup.
The other was a trip to Montreal for a meeting with a customer. I had a redeye, but the General Manager was upset because he thought he would have to pay for a hotel room.
I called my boss to tell him how upset I was because I was doing this on my own time. However, on the return trip, I ordered an expensive lobster lunch in the airport, and since the receipt was in French, they did not bat an eye.

 

[jollystomper]

I liked work travel but I like retirement travel better. Work travel was work then dinner versus now it is snorkel then dinner.

Sometimes for me and my teams it was more like work, then we'll-just-bring-in-pizza-or-subs-for-you-since-we-don't-want-you-to-stop-working-on-this-problem, then more work, then stagger to the hotel for sleep... ON the other hand, some clients were so happy and apologetic for having us come onsite on short notice that they got very nice meals in their corporate dining rooms.

What I don’t miss are the nit picky corporate accountants who would go through travel expense claims with a magnifying glass.

One of the things I learned early in my Megacorp career was to become friends with the folks processing your expense reports. Megacorp tended to have a "hierarchy" of sales people first, techies second, and administrators last. Some folks tended to treat the admins folks with disdain, but I got friendly with them in my first office (besides, their were a lot of females in accounting that I liked to be friends with, and they appreciated me treating them nicely as as peers ).

 

[friar1610]

Beer with my coworkers after work on Fridays.

 

[RobbieB]

I only got questioned on 1 expense I submitted in my entire career.

Dinner at Joe's Stone Crabs, Miami Beach. I think it was ~$90 back almost 30 years ago.

The boss asks "ninety bucks for dinner"? Yup.

"What did you have?"

"An order of the large stone crabs, creamed garlic spinach, hash browns and a couple beers."

"OK"

I stayed in cheap hotels and blew the dough on food & drink. All works out in the end -

 

[travelover]

Free pencils, pens and staples.

 

[Koolau]

Free pencils, pens and staples.

My Megacorp required a certain type pen be used (BLACK, indelible ink) so they provided the pens. I can't say I intentionally stole the things, but I ended up with half a cigar box full of the things (mixed in with a few magnetic stirring bars) when I ER'd. I still have half a dozen Megacorp pens that work after 15 years. The ones I get from the bank are junk when I pocket them and they last 3 months. Megacorp pens ONLY quit when ALL the ink is gone. Quality IS measurable.

Yeah, I'd forgotten about the great pens. Thanks for the memories.

 

[RobbieB]

Pens.

That was a shortage during the "lean times", the crunch of 2007-2009. There were no pens in the cabinet. I bought my own at the grocery store.

Good company. We didn't lay anyone off but you had to buy your own pens.