What's Your Profession?

[jttnk]

I forgot to say a few things earlier. MSO, I hope I didn’t sound to disparaging of the gen ed route. I do believe one can get a good well rounded education so long as you are taught to think. I believe I had some good instruction there.
Wow thank you all for the info, Pipe Monk, great thread started. We all have rich stories, some parallels, and many tangents. Fun to learn more about all of you. Thank you for sharing.

 

[crawdad]

When I realized I wasn’t going to go pro with baseball, I joined the Army. Despite some of the bullshit, I liked it enough to serve 11 years. Remember ‘Blackhawk Down’? I was there and permanently lost all the hearing in my right ear, half in my left. Went to college and yeah, it was hard being legally deaf and adjusting to a hearing aid. Got a degree in biology and I’ve been working as a medical lab tech ever since.

 

[davidy97]

I sell new pressure relief valves and repair services to refineries and chemical plants on the Houston ship channel for the last 20 yrs. I basically take guys out to lunch for a living.

 

[dino]

I'm a retired Teacher-Librarian. I worked 34 years for the Chicago Board of Education; more than 30 years at the same school, in the same room, at the same desk, in Chicago's West Side. In my formative years (age 14-22), I worked in a grocery store as a bagger, stock-clerk, in the produce department, and as cashier. I put myself through college. While trying to make ends meet as a teacher, husband and father, I moonlighted as a Yellow Cab driver, and again in the grocery trade. I've been retired for 15 years.

I now smoke my pipe, read my books, listen to music, and pontificate on all subjects monumental and trivial.

And, as I always say, every day is Saturday, but Sunday.

 

[downsouth]

Retired horse breeder here. German warm bloods and thoroughbred crosses, and draft horses. Mostly for carriage horses and competition jumping, dressage, and hunting. My job today is trying to decide whether my wife and I want to be on the farm back near Sparta NC or at our beach properties...life's tough these days.

 

[mso489]

Just a little salute to work of all kinds, not just the doctor-lawyer-teacher kind. Being someone who has done the range of labor from cleaning toilets on a warship to being in a position where people mistakenly called me "doctor" as a courtesy title (no, I wasn't the great pretender, just in that milieu). When I watched the late-night talk shows, it always made me angry when the multi-million dollar salaried "comics" scorned the folks with minimum wage jobs. Clearly no gratitude for their outrageous luck which had just become taken for granted. I try to treat people right, especially if they are doing any job for me. With my own household tasks, I realize how finely I have honed the details of the rudimentary, which when you apply some thought, become quite intricate. When people tell me what they "do," I receive that with respect, and usually considerable interest. When the check-out person at the grocery asks me how I am, I tell them and ask how they are, and establish eye contact. We're all in this together.

 

[woodensmile]

Getting deep into it here, i am a self employed General Contractor. Been working construction since i was 18 and took over running a small company last year. Im my best//worst employee! Living in Seattle with my fiancee//very soon to be wife and two little daughters.

 

[appalachianpiper]

Army, working with missiles. I have had some unique opportunities with the Military, seen a bunch of places, definitely out of place with my pipes but who cares. Before that I was a manager at Home Depot for 8 years, then before that I was working two jobs as a temp at Home Depot and a waiter at the same time, before that lawn care.

 

[alaskanpiper]

Thank you for your service to our country! We all appreciate it!

 

[smittyd]

Commercial Plumbing and HVAC Project Manager.

 

[madox07]

Boy I am late to this party. I have a Ph.D in accounting, and in as far as my expertise I do teach as an Associate Professor at the university in town. My actual expertise is financial analysis and compared reporting standards, but I teach Public Institutions' Accounting. For a living, now, as one cannot put food on the table just by teaching in this country, I run a distribution company in the FMCG industry, and have been at it since 2009 when I returned to Europe, after living 6 years in the US. More of a hobby than a job, I am also an occasional writer having published a number of articles in a local hunting magazine. I also wrote some short stories, and published a few translations.

 

[anantaandroscoggin]

Freelance Curmudgeon.
In other words, I'm quite opinionated, and I'm aware of that.

 

[aldecaker]

Aircraft mechanic. When you're sitting on a hot, stuffy, overcrowded plane next to some screaming brat, getting your shoe pissed on by someone's "service" animal, waiting for some guy to fix the piece of crap so you can get on with your life? I'm that guy.

 

[bigtex]

Engineering tech/ machinist/ equipment support tech for an oilfield service company. Started as an engineering tech in a product center supporting a high revenue tool line and traveled the world doing the same. After 10 years of that, I transitioned to a position in the same company running a small (just me) machine/ fab shop repairing, maintaining and building very specialized manufacturing equipment for their nuclear product manufacturing group.
Before this gig, I was a generator technician, API certified petroleum inspector, pipeline maintenance technician, natural gas processing refinery maintenance tech/ relief operator, machinist, welder and union millwright. I went to trade school to be a machinist right after high school and learned a lot at my various jobs mostly out of curiosity. Growing up, we raised some cattle and had a shrimp boat. Both of my parents worked at refineries so the cattle was just a hobby since I was interested in showing them. The shrimp boat was an evening and weekend job for us all. When I was 12, I got a job with a local rancher/ rice farmer and worked summers for him. Walking rice fields every day made football practice more like a cake walk. When I got my drivers license, I went to work for a primarily row drop farmer. That was mostly Running a tractor. He did farm some rice, but he had an airplane that we would fly over the rice to check it.
Growing up with lots of hard work makes things easy today.

 

[elessar]

I'm an engineer by degree and a machinist by trade. Technically speaking I am a composite materials engineer who spent years running cnc machines and a job shop. Now I make and design lifting equipment. I also do consulting work for other manufacturing companies.

 

[missionpipe]

Retired now. Prior to that I was an electrical engineer for 32 years.

 

[yohanan]

Electric Distribution Lineman for the Electric Utility in my area.

 

[anotherbob]

Janitor and occasionally make money selling art and writing. That's after flitting about in several fields and realizing for me to be happy I gotta do what I love but make steady money doing something I don't mind and can drop the moment I get out of the shower. Seriously it's a great combo you get a lot mental editing done while wiping things down. Strangest part is the diversity of people I've met and how they're just as dumb as everyone I've worked with that's got an impressive degree. Seriously though I will never ever go back to a regular office those places are mentally toxic as flying duck.

 

[anotherbob]

Just a little salute to work of all kinds, not just the doctor-lawyer-teacher kind.
I've always thought society would fall apart pretty darn fast without all the little guys doing the jobs they do. Like when I worked slinging fast food (horrible job, best proof that hard work isn't the only ingredient to making money) I couldn't help but think about how many people could not hack what they do without someone feeding them. I guess what I am saying is I am thankful for all the things other people do that keeps things running relatively smoothly.

 

[voorhees]

I run a auto refinishing supply store. Alone.