In America, every job. People make it their identity. It’s the first thing they ask or tell people they meet most of the time. They make themselves what they do.
I get both PoVs. For some, it’s just a clock in clock out type thing they do just to survive and maybe pay for their other passions. For others, they spent a majority of their lives training, learning, licensing, and practicing a skillset to perform their work. It’s fairly often a large part of one’s identity and it’s not a negative thing. Though it may be a negative thing to assume someone is only their job.
But I can hardly blame someone for seeing themselves first as a scientist, artist, lawyer, or whatever.
Idk…I like my job and I’m proud I worked my way to get there. I get to see some really awesome things and I love my coworkers. Whenever I see my family, I like to tell them about interesting cases I’ve recently had.
If you work a boring shithole job then I get not wanting to talk about it. But sometimes people do interesting things that they want to talk about! :)
hell, I don’t even like what I do all that much but I like talking about it, lol. It’s interesting even though it’s not my “dream” job.
the older I get, the more I realize there’s depth to anything. whether you’re a hair dresser, an engineer, or a physical therapist. you can read and learn and get deeper and deeper into the study of that thing. anything is interesting if you’re curious about it.
I think there’s something to that statement. Hell, my old job was essentially just a form of data entry, but I managed to find things interesting with it and actually rather enjoyed it. Pay was shit tho so I went back to school to get to where I was now. But I for the most part agree with you. You can find interest in many things if you try hard enough. Not the case with some, for sure, but it’s definitely more than some people realize.
And being interested about a topic makes for a good jumping off point when getting to know someone.
Not the case with some, for sure, but it’s definitely more than some people realize
I’d even say it’s virtually everything. I can’t think of anything personally. let me give some examples
Fast food worker? You start as a burger flipper or cashier and become interested in the management of the fast food place. You take on more responsibility just because you find it interesting - the logistics of making sure the basic ingredients are prepared and how many fries to have ready at specific times of the day, measuring how fast the average person makes a burger and seeing if you can optimize it, how to greet and talk to customers, how to resolve conflicts, how often do you need to clean, what is the best way of cleaning, etc.
This can even be a career. There are regional managers and consultants for these fast food chains that go around to audit and optimize different chains. See how we start with something basic that 99% of people treat as a dead end job but you can go deeper?
The same skills that help you manage a fast food place will inevitably transfer over to other management. You could be useful at a warehouse, factory, hospital, etc.
Let’s say you dig holes for an underground construction company. You stick around long enough and they’ll have you pull some coaxial or fiber through the pipe you’re digging a hole for. After a while, you become good at it and that’s your main job because it requires more skill than just digging holes. You start to understand how neighborhoods are wired, with the vaults spread every 150ft and how the hubs feed all of the houses in a neighborhood or businesses in a commercial area. you get assigned to a big project that requires splicing.
all of a sudden you’re a fiber optic specialist and you have the skills to maintain large networks. you could be a repairman or an auditor or even a project coordinator for large projects
I’ll give you an example that happened to me. When I was 19 and just got out of high school, I got a job at a warehouse. It was a cosmetic company that produced all sorts of different shampoos and conditioners and make ups and female hygiene cleansers, eyelash growth serums… all sorts of stuff.
I started off as general labor for the shipping department. I would sit around and wait for a big order to come in from a distributor and then go around the warehouse getting boxes and putting them on pallets. I would then wrap up the pallets and load them into a truck with a pallet jack.
Well, each pallet needed to have some paperwork done and then each overall order needed to have some paperwork done. this included the total weight of the pallet, the total units of product (different boxes have different qty of items. one box may have 24 shampoos but a box of eyelash serum may have 60), and then all of this needed to be put on an invoice and packing slip that gets taped to the pallet.
when I got there, I was trained that we would write this down onto a piece of paper with pen and then tape it onto the pallet. there were frequent errors (if the weight was wrong, we would get charged extra by the shipping companies or if we’re shipping internationally it could get stuck in customs if you didn’t have the correct paperwork). I was good with computers and knew how to use Excel. I was interested in how I could make the process more efficient (less work for me). I suggested a spreadsheet to my boss that had a table saved into a hidden sheet that had all the weights for each different box, as well as the total # of items per box. he said sure, why not. I weighed every single box and then also weighed an average of the pallets we had.
I created a spreadsheet template that would essentially fill everything in automatically, while also looking clean and professional - i put the company’s logo in there. This would also pump out a packing slip and invoice automatically filled in from the data inputted.
my boss was elated. his department was more accurate and looked more professional, meanwhile we were doing less work. basically every day i walked around that warehouse i paid attention and looked to see what we could be doing better. how could we optimize?
very quickly they pulled me off of labor and I started working in the office. when I left that job, 4 years later, I was the manager of the inventory department - responsible for over $100 million worth of raw materials. i had 8 people under me. i was 23, didn’t know wtf i was doing, but really i was just curious and interested in making things move more smoothly
Do you see what I mean? Anything is interesting if you’re a curious enough person. There’s stuff to learn everywhere. There are processes to optimize, there are intricacies and subtleties to everything.
LoL no. It’s definitely an Anglo thing. I had a Spanish friend that I’ve played music with for years and I didn’t know what he did until last night. I wish we weren’t so focused on thinking that our way of life must be so perfect. Work sucks, sitting in traffic sucks, yet we spend almost all of our waking life doing just that.
Yes our interests are outside of work. I also don’t ask where he vacations, what kind of bed he sleeps on, or where he fills up his car with gas, though I’m sure he spends some of his life doing those as well. His job is not his personality and neither is mine.
Yeah,… With people who aren’t coworkers we still fall into, “looking forward to the long weekend”, “crazy dude was at work today”, and work-related stuff like that.
Yeah but thats a southern europe thing you people lack any sort pride loyalty or work ethics thats why the civilised parts of europe has too bail you out all the time
I think every country has people with a personality-vacuum that they’ve filled with a job. But in my anecdotal, personal experience, Americans tend to do it far more often (they also work WAY more).
You really think Americans start conversations in bars by saying, "hi, I’m a mechanic. What do you do?’
This Internet idea of what Americans do is ridiculous. Anyone who spends time (paid or unpaid) doing something they’re passionate about will talk about it.
We’re either friendly coworkers who invite other coworkers, or it’s like a meetup group of people who like something and want to do it together.
If we meet at a bar with coworkers, we can network with each other and thus later on not need to trifle with management when we need help with something. “Oh yeah, Jane built this device, lemme ask her what the polarity is supposed to be”.
Meetups with randos, we just vibe. Sometimes it’s at a bar, other times at a restaurant. We just vibe, figure out what other people’s passions and and get to know them.
In America, every job. People make it their identity. It’s the first thing they ask or tell people they meet most of the time. They make themselves what they do.
I get both PoVs. For some, it’s just a clock in clock out type thing they do just to survive and maybe pay for their other passions. For others, they spent a majority of their lives training, learning, licensing, and practicing a skillset to perform their work. It’s fairly often a large part of one’s identity and it’s not a negative thing. Though it may be a negative thing to assume someone is only their job.
But I can hardly blame someone for seeing themselves first as a scientist, artist, lawyer, or whatever.
A healthy and balanced understanding of different people?? Isn’t this the internet!!!
Idk…I like my job and I’m proud I worked my way to get there. I get to see some really awesome things and I love my coworkers. Whenever I see my family, I like to tell them about interesting cases I’ve recently had.
If you work a boring shithole job then I get not wanting to talk about it. But sometimes people do interesting things that they want to talk about! :)
hell, I don’t even like what I do all that much but I like talking about it, lol. It’s interesting even though it’s not my “dream” job.
the older I get, the more I realize there’s depth to anything. whether you’re a hair dresser, an engineer, or a physical therapist. you can read and learn and get deeper and deeper into the study of that thing. anything is interesting if you’re curious about it.
I think there’s something to that statement. Hell, my old job was essentially just a form of data entry, but I managed to find things interesting with it and actually rather enjoyed it. Pay was shit tho so I went back to school to get to where I was now. But I for the most part agree with you. You can find interest in many things if you try hard enough. Not the case with some, for sure, but it’s definitely more than some people realize.
And being interested about a topic makes for a good jumping off point when getting to know someone.
I’d even say it’s virtually everything. I can’t think of anything personally. let me give some examples
Fast food worker? You start as a burger flipper or cashier and become interested in the management of the fast food place. You take on more responsibility just because you find it interesting - the logistics of making sure the basic ingredients are prepared and how many fries to have ready at specific times of the day, measuring how fast the average person makes a burger and seeing if you can optimize it, how to greet and talk to customers, how to resolve conflicts, how often do you need to clean, what is the best way of cleaning, etc.
This can even be a career. There are regional managers and consultants for these fast food chains that go around to audit and optimize different chains. See how we start with something basic that 99% of people treat as a dead end job but you can go deeper?
The same skills that help you manage a fast food place will inevitably transfer over to other management. You could be useful at a warehouse, factory, hospital, etc.
Let’s say you dig holes for an underground construction company. You stick around long enough and they’ll have you pull some coaxial or fiber through the pipe you’re digging a hole for. After a while, you become good at it and that’s your main job because it requires more skill than just digging holes. You start to understand how neighborhoods are wired, with the vaults spread every 150ft and how the hubs feed all of the houses in a neighborhood or businesses in a commercial area. you get assigned to a big project that requires splicing.
all of a sudden you’re a fiber optic specialist and you have the skills to maintain large networks. you could be a repairman or an auditor or even a project coordinator for large projects
I’ll give you an example that happened to me. When I was 19 and just got out of high school, I got a job at a warehouse. It was a cosmetic company that produced all sorts of different shampoos and conditioners and make ups and female hygiene cleansers, eyelash growth serums… all sorts of stuff.
I started off as general labor for the shipping department. I would sit around and wait for a big order to come in from a distributor and then go around the warehouse getting boxes and putting them on pallets. I would then wrap up the pallets and load them into a truck with a pallet jack.
Well, each pallet needed to have some paperwork done and then each overall order needed to have some paperwork done. this included the total weight of the pallet, the total units of product (different boxes have different qty of items. one box may have 24 shampoos but a box of eyelash serum may have 60), and then all of this needed to be put on an invoice and packing slip that gets taped to the pallet.
when I got there, I was trained that we would write this down onto a piece of paper with pen and then tape it onto the pallet. there were frequent errors (if the weight was wrong, we would get charged extra by the shipping companies or if we’re shipping internationally it could get stuck in customs if you didn’t have the correct paperwork). I was good with computers and knew how to use Excel. I was interested in how I could make the process more efficient (less work for me). I suggested a spreadsheet to my boss that had a table saved into a hidden sheet that had all the weights for each different box, as well as the total # of items per box. he said sure, why not. I weighed every single box and then also weighed an average of the pallets we had.
I created a spreadsheet template that would essentially fill everything in automatically, while also looking clean and professional - i put the company’s logo in there. This would also pump out a packing slip and invoice automatically filled in from the data inputted.
my boss was elated. his department was more accurate and looked more professional, meanwhile we were doing less work. basically every day i walked around that warehouse i paid attention and looked to see what we could be doing better. how could we optimize?
very quickly they pulled me off of labor and I started working in the office. when I left that job, 4 years later, I was the manager of the inventory department - responsible for over $100 million worth of raw materials. i had 8 people under me. i was 23, didn’t know wtf i was doing, but really i was just curious and interested in making things move more smoothly
Do you see what I mean? Anything is interesting if you’re a curious enough person. There’s stuff to learn everywhere. There are processes to optimize, there are intricacies and subtleties to everything.
Is it really not like this elsewhere?
LoL no. It’s definitely an Anglo thing. I had a Spanish friend that I’ve played music with for years and I didn’t know what he did until last night. I wish we weren’t so focused on thinking that our way of life must be so perfect. Work sucks, sitting in traffic sucks, yet we spend almost all of our waking life doing just that.
You’ve known a guy for years and never bothered to ask what his day job is?
Yes our interests are outside of work. I also don’t ask where he vacations, what kind of bed he sleeps on, or where he fills up his car with gas, though I’m sure he spends some of his life doing those as well. His job is not his personality and neither is mine.
Yeah,… With people who aren’t coworkers we still fall into, “looking forward to the long weekend”, “crazy dude was at work today”, and work-related stuff like that.
Yeah but thats a southern europe thing you people lack any sort pride loyalty or work ethics thats why the civilised parts of europe has too bail you out all the time
I think every country has people with a personality-vacuum that they’ve filled with a job. But in my anecdotal, personal experience, Americans tend to do it far more often (they also work WAY more).
“Americans live to work, Europeans work to live.”
It’s less the core identity of people in the rest of the world.
You really think Americans start conversations in bars by saying, "hi, I’m a mechanic. What do you do?’ This Internet idea of what Americans do is ridiculous. Anyone who spends time (paid or unpaid) doing something they’re passionate about will talk about it.
Yup that’s totally what I think, I’m definitely European. No way an American thinks that of America.
Going strait to meeting someone in a bar says something troubling about your life.
We’re either friendly coworkers who invite other coworkers, or it’s like a meetup group of people who like something and want to do it together.
If we meet at a bar with coworkers, we can network with each other and thus later on not need to trifle with management when we need help with something. “Oh yeah, Jane built this device, lemme ask her what the polarity is supposed to be”.
Meetups with randos, we just vibe. Sometimes it’s at a bar, other times at a restaurant. We just vibe, figure out what other people’s passions and and get to know them.