Yes Even Accountants

Resources to teach you how your characters could pay bills in between demon-slaying and time-travel.

[yesevenaccountants]

One of my teachers had said that we need to start social networking in order to expand our chances to get a job. As an Accountant major, do you agree with her and that I should start social networking more in order to help with my chances in getting a job?

We’re not accountants here. The name refers to how accountants are the go to ‘boring job’, but nobody really talks about what the job entails. I am in fact an animation major.

I’d say social networking goes a long way because humans are social creatures and you’re more likely to pick someone you know for a job than someone you don’t, even with the same credentials. You know if that person will fit into your team. You know their quirks. You know the actual depth of their skillset vs. what they claim to have. So going out and making friends and finding opportunities to speak with folks from within and outside your company is paramount to expanding your opportunities.

[yesevenaccountants]

Job(s): I work at a pet store chain. Location (optional): New England Describe your career: It's mostly easy, but not as easy as you'd think. I don't just sit around and snuggle animals all day. I work in the pet department so this is a lot different from, say, a cashier. I already knew about animals and everything so my views may be different than others. I basically try to keep the animals as healthy and loved as possible while working a retail job in an area where you need to know a lot about your products. People don't always expect the employees at a grocery store to tell them what's healthiest for dinner or give a nutritional break down of a yam, but if I don't know exactly what type of filter cartridge fits the vague description you gave me of your filter or the exact temperature your lizard's habitat should be then I must just be bad at my job. Your career history, how did you get your job?: I had no previous job, but I have always owned a TON of pets. This helped, but honestly it depends on if the hiring manager thinks you're good enough. I had a single interview and they hired me on the spot, but friends I think are just as qualified as me haven't gotten a call back after three applications. What’s a typical day at your job(s) like?: It depends on the shift and day of the week. Openers clean the habitats for that day (reptiles one day, birds another, small animals, and the sick/overstock animals), they give the animals food and water, they change the filters on our fish wall, treat any sick animals and fill out their charts, do a bit of cleaning, fill net soak buckets, and receive any shipments of animals or animal foods (bugs, frozen feeders, etc). Mid shifts get do mostly customer service and tank maintenance. They get crickets and fish for people, sell them animals and walk them through what they'll need, help them find products, scrub tanks, and basically just care for animals in between if we need to. Misting reptiles, keeping chinchillas cool, stuff that gets done multiple times throughout the day. Closers do trash, face products, make sure the animals have food and water, and treat the main system to make sure no fish are sick. There's certain days things get done, but the basics get done every day. Working with live animals though there's no real "typical day", anything could go wrong. Sometimes animals won't eat, sometimes the fish system breaks, people don't get to do stuff, shit happens. We take our animals to the vet when they're sick, same as any owner should, but sometimes they die and there's nothing you could have done and you have to be prepared for it. Most of the people who stick around have their niche and we each tend to socialize the animals we like best more. My thing happens to be reptiles, which means hearing customers regularly make jokes about killing some of my favorites and having to laugh rather than yell at them. We give animals silly names, everyone in my department is a bunch of nerds.

Job(s) Pros/Cons, Likes/Dislikes: I like the animals and I like informing people about their new pet because regardless of any notion of pet store employees not being knowledgeable, most do know how to care for every animal in the store past what we're told. (Some even know to avoid doing what we're told...)

What kinds of people do you typically see in your career path?: There's always going to be that idiot who knows more than you and has been keeping fish for 30 years and wants to keep 6 koi in a 50 gallon tank and there's always the mother who wants to keep a goldfish in a bowl for her kid. Both of these are a no-go. At my store we can refuse the sale, but some stores can't or some people don't ask enough information to know animals will be mistreated. Occasionally you get someone who knows a lot and you basically just chat with them while you get them crickets. You get regulars and generally I'll have their crickets or feeder fish being bagged before they even come back to ask me and then we'll chat about their animals. There are basically three kinds of customers shopping for "specialty pets" (code for Not Dog Or Cat). Two of these customers are bad. There are those who think you're basically a free vet (we are literally NOT allowed to tell you why your animal is sick in case we're wrong) and those who think you know nothing and have never even owned a pet. You get people who get it and they know you're just an owner the same as them, but might have more experience and can help them if they have a problem. I know a lot of snake owners who have never had to assist feed a snake or a guinea pig owner who doesn't know what a boar cleaning is. My favorite kind of customer is pretty rare. I love when people get a pet and have me walk them through everything they'll need to do and are happy I can teach them. Some of my coworkers are annoyed by it, but I appreciate them trusting me and for wanting to take good care of their pet. What’s typically right/wrong about how your career is portrayed?: People seem to think the "idiot kid at the pet store" knows nothing about the animals they sell and I find that 97% of the time, that's not true. We're people (18+ btw) who know about animals and genuinely care about them, even the ones in the store. Those who know nothing and don't care to learn generally don't last long. Most of the time we own at least a couple of the types of animals we sell. I have owned one of every kind (bird, fish, reptile, small animal). The cashiers don't always know much, but they know who to show you to to get the information you need. Also most people put way too much faith in pet owners. Just because your friend had two snakes housed together does not at all mean that's okay. And no we don't work on commission you genuinely need that $20 light bulb for your lizard, or that 30 gallons for two goldfish. Most of the time when you think you can get by without it, your animals will die slowly and painfully. Also the "back room" is filled with dog food, cat food, kitty litter, trash, and a couple big tubs of dog treats. Literally nothing else at all what so ever. So no I can't check the back for a heat lamp, yes you get that particular fish tank ensemble, and yes I'm 100% sure we don't have any more dog brushes. Contact information (optional): You can message me on tumblr at striderfatigue.

[yesevenaccountants]

Medical Technologist

I am a 28 year old woman working in Kentucky.

I am a Medical Technologist!

I work in a clinical lab that happens to be inside a large hospital. What I do is preform blood testing for inpatients, outpatients and the ER. I also test body fluids including spinal fluid, urine and stool. I work in a lab with a lot of machines that do the analytical work that we then review on a computer, but there’s a lot of hands on work where we sit at the microscope.

I had a bachelors in a science related field and went to a NAACLs accredited program for a year. This made me eligible to be certified to sit on a certification exam run my ASCP. I have to renew my certification every three years. I could have been a Medical Lab Technologist which is the two year version of what I do… there really isn’t any difference in my lab between the two except a nominal difference in starting pay.

A typical day I go to work in my scrubs, and I see what department I’m assigned to, I will work Chemistry, where I’ll oversee our automated testing line that quantifies particular chemicals or chemical compounds in a human fluid, mostly blood. I do a lot of BMP (basic metabolic panel) CMP (comprehensive metabolic panels), renal, hepatic, and cardiac enzymes.

If I work in Hematology I focus on the cellular properties of the blood and body fluids. I have Automated Cell Counters called Coulters that count how many red cells, white cells and platelets are in your blood, and also measures how much hemoglobin is in your red cells on average, and what the ratio of red cells to plasma is in your blood. The test I usually run is a CBC and if my coulter thinks anything is abnormal, I put your blood on a slide and stain it a particular way before examining it under the microscope. Odds are, I’ll do a manual differential. I count 100 of your white cells by dumping them into categories of what kind of white cell they are, then add my observations about what all your cells look like. I also examine your pee for chemical properties and look at the sediment under the scope for anything out of place. I can do a differential on body fluids, also. I’m also responsible for doing coagulation, where we literally test all the ways your blood is, or is not clotting. This is really important because so many of our inpatients are on Heparin and so many of our outpatients are on Warfarin, both are anti-coagulants which have to be STRICTLY monitored to avoid either stroke from not enough or hemorrhaging from too much.

If I work blood bank, I have a lot of fun. I’m responsible for testing patient samples to determine their ABORh group, screen for any significant antibodies and find them crossmatches to the units of blood in my fridge. Antibodies are a pain in my ass, it means I have to antigen type my units to prove they won’t react to the antibody my patient has. This is the only department where I could directly kill a patient with my mistake. Giving a person an incompatible ABO match is fatal. The other departments I could be responsible for mistreatment to a patient, but the results I generate are weighed with other information by the person giving the treatment. Great care must be given to insure the blood I’m testing is identified correctly, and my testing methods are working accurately for EVERY patient sample I verify. This goes for any department.

This job is great for science types who don’t want to work in a research lab, who like helping others, but generally prefer to see the unwashed masses in the form of 3 ml vials. Some Med Techs do collect blood, so they might see patients. I get to hide in the basement and interact primarily with nurses and clerical staff over the phone. Shit gets real when a Doctor calls, or worse, shows up to the lab in person because they’re angry about a result that is not done as fast as they think it should be, or is not the value they think it should be. They also get ruffly because we don’t do every test. Some tests we don’t do and we send them out to great big reference labs. Some labs are literally impossible and we can’t test for what they want, the way they want it. We defer them to the Pathologist, who is the Doctor who supervises the lab. Being a peon is great like that. We are generally the least liked people in the hospital. We are the scapegoats, because the patient never sees us. We are simply Lab. Our field is also slowly dying as bedside testing improves and Medicare/Medicade reimburses less. It will be a long time before we go away completely. Molecular testing is the big thing now, and is seeing a lot of growth recently and into the near future.

The only thing that media gets wrong is A) they act like the lab doesn’t exist and Doctors and Nurses are pulling this information out of their ass or B) we can snap our fingers and have all the answers in a matter of minutes out of no/little/the wrong sample. Our work is involved, Turn Around Times on testing critical to patient care is ~30 minutes. And has to be the right kind of specimen.

And if anyone wants to know anything else, drop me an ask! I never change my URL.

[yesevenaccountants]

Freelance Translator

Job(s)

Freelance Translator at ehow.com Describe your career

I translated English short texts into Portuguese for $3 each. It was boring, and the pay was very low compared to translating elsewhere, but it was above minimum wage and not that hard to do. 

Your career history, how did you get your job?

I had to take an online test to make sure I was actually fluent in both languages. I actually scored perfectly in English, but got a few questions wrong in Portuguese, my native language. I was there for a few months, but then I stopped to focus on college. What’s a typical day at your job(s) like?

I went through a list of available texts on their site, and got to pick the ones I was interested in translated. They organized them by category (Health/Science, Arts and Crafts, things like that). Once I had picked a text, I opened it in the browser and wrote down a translation, and after I was done, they'd be sent to someone who'd check for grammar and spelling mistakes, and if nothing was wrong, it'd be approved, otherwise I'd have to fix whatever it was. 

Job(s) Pros/Cons, Likes/Dislikes

It was mostly a rather easy job. But some of the texts were rather ridiculous, and knowing that someone was going to google "Urinotherapy for weight loss" and run into the text I translated, and actually do what it said, was quite sad. Some of the reviewers were actually extremely dickish and sent texts back for the silliest reasons, and that was very frustrating. I wish I had stayed longer, though - I got to make some easy money, which I didn't really need at the time, but that would have been very helpful now. What kinds of people do you typically see in your career path?

I worked from home, and I didn't really have to interact with anyone else, even online. What’s typically right/wrong about how your career is portrayed?

I don't think I ever saw it portrayed in any way at all, actually. Not a very common job, and it's not particularly shitty or glamorous. 

[yesevenaccountants]

Website Designer/Frontend Developer

Job(s): Website Designer/Frontend Developer, depending on day/necessity Location (optional): Bay Area, CA Describe your career: My team (in a startup) makes simple free websites for company clients (businesses) as a free service, but I also do make/manage some pages for the company website based on what the designer comes up with. Sales account managers send us requests to make websites or update the clients websites and we do website building/management stuff like swapping out info for specific businesses from templates I made or build our service API to look like the businesses website for better integration, or just adding a link to our services, etc. Your career history, how did you get your job? I got hired for data-entry and then heard they needed someone who knows basic html/css. They actually talked to my BF (who worked the same job as I) about it first, thinking he knew HTML, but psych, it's the biology-major girlfriend who could do it. So I wasn't on their radar at all until bf brought me up. What’s a typical day at your job(s) like?  it's an 8-hr office job, but hours are pretty flexible. Usually I come in and see if there's anything in my personal inbox. I keep an eye out on the team inbox to make sure there're no issues and things are getting processed at a decent rate. We've got a person that checks all the incoming emails, checks all the login requirements needed from the clients, and sort the jobs so we can prioritize the easier ones. The whole team has access to the pool of jobs and just picks up jobs. When they're done one of us proof-checks it for completeness and not have goofups or weird bugs, then we send it back to the person that sent us the job. 

I haven't been in this flow for a while unless they're really behind, in which case I help with proof-checking finished requests, but usually I deal with special cases like internal technical issues with the client websites we've made, fix bugs on our service's scripts, minor server issues, and code interface pages/forms for parts of the company main site. It's almost all through a computer with two monitors and sometimes people from other departments come in to ask questions.  Job(s) Pros/Cons, Likes/Dislikes: It's a start-up so code of conduct isn't super strict. My job isn't busy all the time so I get time to just take my time to learn new things, and for the most part there's no one that hangs over our shoulder about our jobs, but I'm completely overlooked as someone who can move into more frontend development (I'm not saying sexism in a STEM field, but it's sexism) and badly underpaid for what we do. Paid holidays are not explicitly stated, so it's all about 'go on vacation if you dare' kind of mentality. It can get boring because even if we're making different-looking sites, they're essentially the same. And we start harboring hate for certain clients, but since we don't directly talk to clients we mostly just mock badly made websites for fun. For me personally, the freedom given also means I have to be really self-motivated, otherwise I get nothing done.  What kinds of people do you typically see in your career path? In my field, Lots of software developer types, from the twenty-something men who're tech savvy, reasonably well-dressed, and outgoing (but don't know what it means to communicate), to the older developers who're working too many hours and pretty quiet. But we also interact a lot with the people who communicate with our clients and that's a variety from body-building, muscle-car driving a-holes who don't care that they're in people's way to smoker moms that still acts if they're in the mid-twenties to regularly easy-going guys whom is afraid their work is putting them out of the job, to some people who really should know by now that it's me, not my male co-workers, who's in charge of the team. There are also the people who do chat-support and data-entry, but I know them less well. Bosses are pretty cliquey party-people so what's acceptable behavior varies widely. What’s typically right/wrong about how your career is portrayed? It's not Google-type tech companies with good-food, modern offices, play-time/fun-time whenever you feel like and good benefits (Like I know there's a ping-pong table, but who knows if we're allowed to play on it). Bosses are neither buddy-buddy nor result-demanding and fair, just depends on who you are. People you work with/for may not be brilliant team players and may not know what they're talking about. Also there's like no structure and no company notice or company memos. It might just be because my team's work means no-one thinks we belong anywhere, though.  Contact information (optional) just message me via tumblr. 

[yesevenaccountants]

for the random thing, you just need to add a link to /random :)

ah! Super!

[yesevenaccountants]

Thanks for making this, it's really useful. One suggestion - it would be cool to have a Random button on the sidebar so you can just flip through random jobs when you need inspiration.

That would be great! But I'm not sure if this theme supports it. I'm a bit of a tumblr noob that way

[yesevenaccountants]

CSA (Customer Service Agent/ Call Center)

Job(s) CSA (Customer Service Agent/ Call Center) Location (optional) The South Describe your career

I’ve worked in a call center for credit/debit/prepay/gift cards. Right now I’m working for a local cable company. People are not as self sufficient as they think, some don’t know how to change batteries. Old people yell and scream when they put they put the tv on the wrong HDMI setting. ONLINE BILL PAY.  Your career history, how did you get your job?

Filled out an application online.  What’s a typical day at your job(s) like?

Call after call after call, or half an hour goes by and I’m knitting or playing sudoku. People yell at me a lot about stupid little shit. It’s just cable. It’s not that big of a deal. They blame me when they get shut off because they didn’t pay their bill. They want a refund when a storm comes through and knocks out cable and electric. Or when the tech is 5min late. OR when the online bill pay isn’t working. Meeting sales goals. Trying to get people to buy things you’re behind on. It can be free, no strings attach, and they don’t want it. Sometimes, they have problems, that no matter what option you give them, they wont take it. You can ask them “What would you like me to do?” and they’re just like “Fix it”

If you’re a girl. men call you everything from “Babe” to “Ignorant bitch”

"I’m just joking, I see you don’t have a sense of humor."

"Can I have your number?" and "How’d you like to go to dinner with me?"

call outs. you try to call a list of people and get them to buy shit. But sometimes, they aren’t happy with cable and you end up on the receiving end of a 30min rant. You have not worked customer service until you have been on the receiving end of a 30-an hour long rant.

and you have to be nice 100% of the time. 

Job(s) Pros/Cons, Likes/Dislikes

cons:

outdated software. small cubical. Broken/uncomfortable chair. creepy co-worker who stares at you all day and makes sexist comments but you’re too scared to go to HR, or HR is hard to get to. My company is a branch off another, and the HR is at the main company branch in another city. 

Pros

I get pilot trailers of TV shows about to premier on Starz, HBO. I get free stuff  a lot.  Got a Rachel Ray skillet. A mickey mouse jelly bean machine. Starz! gives us cool pens.

What kinds of people do you typically see in your career path?

Most everybody has cable. Old, young, smarter, stupid.  What’s typically right/wrong about how your career is portrayed?

Not all of us are girls. We don’t sit around chewing gum and doing our nails. Hell, I can’t even have water at my desk. Most of us don’t even weir make up or do our hair. When we can, we weir sweats and t shirts, but thats usually on fridays/casual days. We have to dress professional during the week. 

And we have to use correct English. 

We cannot make personal calls unless its approved by the supervisor, and that’s only in emergencies.  Contact information (optional)

[yesevenaccountants]

Veterinary technician

Who are You? You can call me Grim! Job(s): Veterinary technician. Location (optional): West Virginia. Describe your career:  I am unregistered but I do most everything a registered tech does—restrain animals, phlebotomy, monitor and regulate anesthesia, grooming, pre-surgical prep, invoices, administering fluids and medications, labwork, record keeping, restocking, inventory, manage the controlled substance log, clean, sterilize and prepare surgical packs, suture removals, vaccinations, client education, and nagging the vet to stay on task. Your career history, how did you get your job?:  I graduated with a degree in biology and spent some time working in a research laboratory.  I enjoyed it but the environment was toxic, so I bailed and worked at a specialty running store for a while.  It was definitely not my thing so I just shopped around and applied for a bunch of different jobs and this one stuck!  I’ve been there for about a year and a half now. What’s a typical day at your job(s) like?  Busy!  Busy busy.  I start the day by admitting animals for surgery and getting the owners to fill out paperwork.  Then I calculate the pre-anesthetic drug dosages for those animals and make sure the surgery is ready to go and the equipment necessary for that surgery is out.  When the vet arrives, he does a presurgical check and the animal gets its pre-anesthesia.  I either hold for intubation or intubate the animal myself, then get anesthesia rolling and all the monitoring in place and working smoothly before shaving and scrubbing whatever we’re operating on.  During the surgery, I hand the vet what he needs, monitor anesthesia, and record procedures.  Afterwards, the animal is recovered and the surgery cleaned up and prepped for the next one.  Once the surgeris are done, I do up the invoices for each one and make sure medications and discharge sheets are ready to go.  Sometimes I actually get an hour lunch.  Afternoons are for appointments.  I get the animal’s weight, temperature and history from the owner before prepping the vet for the appointment.  During the appointment I generally take notes, do up invoices, prepare medications and pull up vaccines and treatments.

On slow days I enter charts into the computer, update our website, and clean everything. Job(s) Pros/Cons, Likes/Dislikes:  Pros—I get to handle lots of animals!  I love seeing different cases and the problem solving involved in making a diagnosis.  I like a lot of our clients and watching an animal get better is gratifying.  Also pus.  This would probably be a con for most people but there is nothing more satisfying than a giant purulent abscess.  Beautiful.  Abscesses and cysts, man, they’re great.  Cons—I handle lots of animals.  I have so many scars from unhappy cats.  The patients are usually not real happy to be there.  Clients are frequently belligerent, rude, or downright aggressive.  There’s a lot of animals with problems that could have been easily avoided with better education (vets who don’t even mention heartworm protection?? what????).  Money is always an issue and we can’t fix everyone for free.  There’s not always a happy ending.  Sometimes it’s because there’s nothing more anyone can do; sometimes it’s because there’s nothing more the owner will do.  I hold a lot of animals and tell them they are very good and that it will be okay now as we put them to sleep.  If I had a nickel for every time something peed in my shoe I could retire. What kinds of people do you typically see in your career path?  EVERYONE.  Our clients range from people who literally cannot tell us what they do for a job because it’s for the government to people who make over $2000 a day photographing stuff in the M. E. to people who cannot afford new shoes for their kids much less their dog’s abscessed tooth to people who have bankrupted themselves paying for their dog.  Trailer park moms with four screaming children and a tired brown dog.  Elderly bachelors whose only company is their twelve old cats.  Tiny little old ladies with tiny little old dogs.  High schoolers breaking their piggy banks to pay for their sick rats.  Men who act as though you want to cut off their junk with kitchen scissors when you recommend neutering their dog who has already tried to remove your arm at the elbow three times within five minutes.  We also see x-ray inspectors, referring veterinarians, the guy who picks up the corpses from the freezer, delivery guys, gorgeous salespeople who seem to have their own soap opera world, landlords, lawn care guys, local business owners who bring us gift baskets full of their brochures. What’s typically right/wrong about how your career is portrayed?  Honestly I never see my career portrayed ever. Contact information (optional):  ballroomnotoriety.tumblr.com, or [email protected]

[yesevenaccountants]

Quality Engineer for Manufacturing Company

Who are You? Celyn Brum Job(s) Quality Engineer Location (optional) England Describe your career I work for a manufacturing company that makes components for applications like automotive, aerospace and power generation. I work in a specific area and it’s my job to ensure that the products we produce come out right first time, every time- and to find and fix the root cause when that doesn’t happen. Your career history, how did you get your job? I graduated Uni with a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering, then spent a year looking for work before getting a temporary job as a Technical Clerical Assistant checking the paperwork and markings on products at an aerospace factory. After a year that company hired me full-time as a Quality Engineer and gave me additional training, but my role was still limited. When the company I worked for announced they were closing that factory, I put my CV online. I was contacted by several recruitment agencies and had several interviews, but when I finally got my new job it all happened very fast! I heard about the interview on the Tuesday, went in on the Friday afternoon, and had the offer on the Monday. I had to give one month’s notice at my last job; my new job needs three. What’s a typical day at your job(s) like? I get into work for eight am, hang up my bag and coat, and turn on my computer to check my emails and work out what I’m doing for the day. Usually I have plenty left over from the day before, but I’m often waiting on other people, so I chase information that I need. At half past eight I go down to the shop floor to see what was scrapped off in my area yesterday, which I then go back to my computer to record. After that I spend the rest of the day dealing with ongoing projects and new emergencies. Major problems need to be identified and investigated to find the root cause and correct it, but even if nothing has gone wrong I’m busy making sure everything is working as well as it possibly can. If you look up Quality Management on Wikipedia you’ll get an idea of the sorts of things we want to be doing, but most days you spend calling people, emailing people, having meetings with people, filling in paperwork, waving defective components at people and asking what they think, explaining to management why we stopped production/scrapped the valuable component/haven’t fixed that problem yet, explaining to shop floor operators why they can’t do that/we don’t know why it isn’t working, and trying to get production to understand that if they help you make it right they only have to make it once.

There’s a lot of legwork and you spend your time roughly 50/50 between the shop floor and the office. Quality Engineers are a bit of a hodge-podge in dress, varying from smart shirts and dress trousers to company branded t-shirts and trousers covered in pockets. You’ve got to look smart, but comfort is usually more important day-to-day. Quality Engineers report to the Quality Manager and in addition to the daily quality issues and quality escapes (to customers and from suppliers), deal with compliance to national and international standards, audits, and improvement projects such as updating and creating standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Lunch is a half-hour break in the middle of the day, and I go home at quarter to five every day except Friday, when I go home at a quarter past two. Half-day Fridays are very common in the industry, as are days that run from eight am to four pm. Weekends would be overtime for me, although I’m paid a monthly salary and I don’t get any pay for overtime. Job(s) Pros/Cons, Likes/Dislikes

Likes - It’s never a dull job. There are so many different things to do that it’s rarely monotonous or repetitive, and you’re busy physically, mentally and socially. Then there’s the sense of satisfaction when you actually do make an improvement- it can take days or weeks or even months of work, but knowing that you’ve solved a problem permanantly and made a real difference is very rewarding.

Dislikes - It’s a very busy job. You can end up working through breaks just to fit everything in, and you’re often at odds with other departments. Quality improvement means better profits long-term, but Quality containment usually means stopping people from selling things now, and businesses don’t like that! A good business understands that it can’t sell bad product and supports you, but it can still sometimes feel like clawing your way uphill. Knowing that you could make the wrong decision and cost the business a lot of money (or worse, a lawsuit) is a little nerve-wracking. What kinds of people do you typically see in your career path?

Most of the Quality Engineers I know have been in their mid-twenties onwards. They’ve mostly been male, but not entirely. This doesn’t seem the result of any deliberate prejudice or entry barrier, so I assume it has more to do with the general discouragement of girls and women from technological and industrial careers.

I came to it through academics, but a lot of people in my job came up through a different path from the shop floor or through apprenticeships. It’s the sort of job that attracts the people who are willing to do it, and as long as you have the experience or education to know what you’re talking about you can find a road into it- which means that you get people with working-class and middle-class backgrounds in the role. What’s typically right/wrong about how your career is portrayed?

I’ve not seen any portrayals of Quality Engineers in fiction, but the key things to remember that you might not expect are:

1) You spend equal amounts of time dealing with salary-paid professionals and managers, and hourly-paid operators (often quite skilled people). You need both to be working with you if you are going to succeed.

2) Quality Engineers are usually problem-solvers by nature, and we like things to be right- we wouldn’t stay in the job otherwise! That said, we know that in business we can’t wait for everything to be perfect. We just have to be firm on what is good enough, because if we don’t, no-one will. Honesty and integrity are critically important!

3) Slightly tangential, but… it’s not just big, burly men out there. Plenty of women work in industry and manufacturing, and not just in the HR and finance departments. About a third to a half of the shop floor operators are female, mostly middle-aged and working-class like the men.

4) Likewise tangential, but the factory floor is very clean. A dirty factory is a bad sign- if a company can’t keep the working environment clean and tidy, then they generally can’t keep their production quality on track either.

You can look up all sorts of Quality Management Tools and Systems online, but remember that implementing helpful long-term changes is hard work! People resist change, even when it’s beneficial. A good corporate culture is one that supports its employees in doing the right thing, rather than the easy one.

[yesevenaccountants]

Self Storage Property Manager

Who are You? WJSwan Job(s) Self Storage Property Manager Location (optional) Minnesota Describe your career I manage a self storage facility in Minnesota. (Like Public Storage, but it's a private company.) I am responsible for selling, maintaining, and keeping records for rentals on self storage spaces. I also make reservations, handle finances, and make collection calls to tenants who have not paid their bill. Your career history, how did you get your job? I got this job as a "temporary" placeholder job while I searched for another. I am a medical transcriptionist by schooling, but I am going back to school to become a 5-12 English Teacher in urban schools. What’s a typical day at your job(s) like? I come in the office and hang the Welcome sign on the door. I make sure the lights are on and all the signs are on so people can see us from the road. I wake up the computer (we normally don't turn them off) and check and respond to e-mails, usually from the Boss or inquiries about storage spaces from customers. I open up our management software and react to any bulletins that show up (payment made, questions from our Contact Page on the website, new reservation notices) and update the gate software so anyone that was delinquent and had paid can have access through the gate. I call any reservation leads and most of the time get voicemail, but I answer questions, try to determine what size space they need dependent on amount of furniture, boxes, how many bedrooms, etc. (For example a 10x10 100sqft space will hold about a 1 bedroom apartment/home if there is not a ton of furniture, a 10x30 300sqft space would hold a vehicle and about a 4+ bedroom house with lots of furniture, etc) I call "collection calls" which is a list of people who haven't paid yet. It's mostly just leaving messages on voicemail. I do a daily lock check/property walk to check for anything that looks unusual, normally people not locking their units correctly/people moving out/checking for missing locks. Normally no lock on a space is a red flag unless it's noted on our unit list that it was rented recently and the tenant hasn't moved in yet. I would open the unit door, check for property inside, if there is none it usually means that tenant has moved out and needs to be checked out of the system; if there IS property inside, either the person forgot to lock the space when they were here last or that unit was broken into. (In which we'd call the tenant, explain we found their unit with no lock, sometimes they'll admit to forgetting to put a lock on, or they would need to come out to check their property, note anything missing, and THEY file a police report for their missing items and make an insurance claim. We have very little to do with this except to offer apologies. Sometimes we'll have camera footage on the space in question and can identify vehicles/persons, but usually not.) I also make a bank deposit pretty much every day in which I have to drive my personal car to the bank and back. Otherwise I take a lot of phone calls, sometimes from my coworkers to BS, take payments in the office, and show spaces to customers and answer questions. I also am responsible for cleaning and maintenance of the property: sweeping out empty units, greasing the rails of the garage doors, replacing light bulbs/pull strings/door ropes/unit numbers that have fallen off, etc. I also keep the property clean and swept, do yard work, kill weeds, rake leaves, shovel snow from in front of vacant spaces, ect. I do not mow the grass or remove snow from the aisles or parking lot. There is also a lot of record keeping involved. We do still keep physical files with leases, move in receipts, copies of IDs of tenants, and other various documents. We also do storage auctions. We used to do onsite auctions (similar to Storage Wars) but now we do online auctions like eBay at www.storagebattles.com. Job(s) Pros/Cons, Likes/Dislikes

Likes - I like that it's mostly a solitary job. 90% of the time I am by myself, but sometimes an associate work with me in the office. I like that I have some free time on slow days where I am free to do as I please on the computer (mostly going on Tumblr like right now, or writing, e-mailing, or Facebooking). I do appreciate busy days because it makes the time go by really quickly. There is also an apartment attached to our offices, but most managers don't live on site. (Most of the apts are not kept up and are dirty/smelly/have bad appliances.) We can live on site for pretty much free but we get a small amount of hourly wage cut to make up for the expenses of the utilities. You are able to replace carpet/paint/etc on your own dime and can set up your own Internet/cable/etc. on your own dime as well. Though it can be beneficial to live there, you will still most likely be spending SOME money to make it habitable for yourself and your family, you have to live onsite which means tenants mistakenly think you are available 24/7 (you're definitely not), you can't install things like dishwashers without company approval, and you will have to pay rent according to similar places in the area if you quit your job. (Which means you could potentially be homeless or spend WAY too much money on a crappy place to live.) 

Dislikes - I don't like the job in general because it feels monotonous, repetitive and unrewarding (as most "retail-ish" jobs are). My boss is very rigid and likes to play devil's advocate when you suggest something so he "knows you've though it through". I don't like dealing with delinquent tenants because most of them are in financial hardship and I want to help them out but can't. Finding break-ins SUCKS. It is one of the worst feeling, especially when you've upgraded your security system umpteen times. You  have to deal with people who are legit weirdos, you can potentially be verbally and sometimes physically abused by angry tenants. I've personally been threatened with violence several times by angry tenants. You have to deal with people who are experiencing hard times and you have to be able to empathize and conflict manage which can be hard sometimes. People will literally tell you their life stories if you listen to them long enough (which has been beneficial for me as a writer). You have to deal with the families of deceased tenants. Overall I don't like the job personally but it has been helpful to me to have an OK income. (People in my position get paid anywhere from $13-25/hour depending on experience and size of property.) What kinds of people do you typically see in your career path? There are a few fairly typical types of people that rent storage spaces:

1. People who are moving/staging their houses for sale. These people are usually either happy because they are moving up or frustrated because things are not going their way and they HAVE to get a storage space because they haven't found somewhere to go yet/they can't agree with their spouses/significant others on what to sell or trash/etc. These are normally short term tenants (1-4 months).

2. People who are being evicted/having their home foreclosed/losing their homes due to financial stress/job loss/etc. These people tend to be really irritable (with good reason)/sad/annoyed/will sometimes tell you how crappy their lives are. These tenants sometimes are short term tenants, but can become long term tenants, and are frequently delinquent and/or go to auction. 

3. Business owners who are using us as a warehouse. This is pretty self explanatory. These are normally long term tenants who are never late with payment (but sometimes are). 

4. People who have lost loved ones (mostly parents) and need to sell that person's house but do not want to go through the belongings until later. These vary in stay. Payments sometimes come from that person's estate.

5. College students storing for summer/in between academic years. Most of the time the stay is paid in full (so 3 months or so) up front by their parents. These are usually short term during the summer.

6. Hoarders or people with hoarder-like behavior. These are usually long-term tenants and sometimes people will pay upwards of $500/mo to store literal garbage. I opened a space once  What’s typically right/wrong about how your career is portrayed? I haven't seen a lot of representations of this job, but I have seen storage facilities being utilized in media. At least in my company, though there are lazy people, we don't sleep on the job. We don't work 24/7. We're not all fat balding guys, though there are a few in our district that are. Actually the majority of our managers are women and our top property is managed by a woman. We don't keep keys to your unit unless you ask us to or are getting things delivered to a unit. Our offices are normally very well organized, or if they are not, the mess is hidden from your view. We don't allow people to access spaces that they have not rented unless they are with or have been given permission/key/codes by the tenant. We do not have access to spaces after they are rented unless tenants give us keys for deliveries or the space is going into foreclosure and is going to be sold at auction. We are not legally allowed to enter the space without tenant permission. We do not touch or root through the items in the unit when they are going to be sold at auction. We do not know what is being stored in spaces, but we do not allow firearms (so Sam & Dean's dad's space would most likely have been caught if the manager saw what he was putting in there.), food items, gas cans, explosives, etc. It is unlikely but not unseen that units are full of artillery. Most units have junk in them. Old furniture, baby items, old toys, clothes, etc. There is VERY RARELY things of value in storage spaces. Storage Wars is inaccurately portraying the value of items in storage. Think of what you would put in storage if you were in between homes. That is what you'd find here. Units typically go to auction after 90 days of unpaid rent.  Contact information (optional) You can send fanmail or asks to http://wjswan.tumblr.com :)

[yesevenaccountants]

Enrolled Agent/Accountant

Job(s)

Business Manager for the majority of the year, which includes bookkeeping/accounting and payroll. For a wonderful 1/4 of the year, I get to be a tax preparer. However, I am registered as an Enrolled Agent with the IRS all year long. Location (optional)

Virginia

Describe your career

Business & Payroll Manager/Accountant - I keep track of multiple bank accounts, pay bills, pay employees (and payroll taxes), manage 401(k) accounts, beat QuickBooks into cooperating with me, and make sure we have enough money to navigate the year. I don't actually have any control over the decisions of the business, but I do try to compensate for them, to make sure the ship stays afloat. There are also rotating clients that I consult for bookkeeping and payroll.

Enrolled Agent/Tax Preparer - I prepare taxes for individuals, partnerships, s-corporations, trusts, and estates. I get to look up tax code and regulation, tax case and court history, as well as pending Congress changes. Every year is a slightly new shift and learning curve, and there is something new to learn. I get to balance everyone out at the end of the year, and hopefully set them up to be more successful next year. Your career history, how did you get your job?

My parents were always the sort looking for a way to be their own boss. My father has worked tax season since forever ago, and when I was 14 they purchased a well-known tax franchise. During high school I was an unwilling participant from January through April, for a couple years afterwards I tried desperately to escape, and by the time I was 20 I had crawled back to the next. Now at nearly 30, I love taxes.

By love, I mean that I have a fascination and joy in preparing and reaching them that some would possibly think of as an unhealthy obsession. I like to think that instead I am one of the few, the proud, the tax fanatics. Two years ago I tested and became an Enrolled Agent, and last year I started in a Masters program for Taxation.

As far as the bookkeeping/payroll side of my job goes, that is mostly due to family obligation. My folks still have the business, as well as a bit more they've picked up over the years. I keep of the business/money side for them, as well as some of their clients. What’s a typical day at your job(s) like?

Majority of the year: I have the flexibility of being self-employed, so  I don't have a set daily schedule. Usually I work later in the day, since most people I need to contact are on the west coast. I take a day to pay and send out bills, and a couple days to update the bookkeeping and scan things in to file. To be fair and honest, I have a very easy job for which I am over paid. I guess that's what happens when you get tied into the family business.

January - April: Tax season! I work at a local tax office several days a week, in varying shifts. So I get up, drive 20ish minutes, and then get to play around in taxes for 7-10 hours. I deal with clients, both answering tax questions and scenarios and preparing their tax returns, helping my co-workers with tax issues, and researching various problems that wander in. I have been called the walking tax encyclopedia, but mostly I think that is due to my willingness to delve into research. I also tend to keep tax information in my head the way that most people keep movie trivia and the names of their neighbors. Job(s) Pros/Cons, Likes/Dislikes

I love the puzzles, the searching, the digging up ways to approach and deal with all sorts of tax issues. If I see something and don't like how it looks, or can't figure out why I think it should be one way or another, I will look until I can find the Code section or Court ruling to back it up. I like being able to find and explain these complicated little messes to people, to help them feel safe and lead better financial lives.

I dislike that the majority of the year my time is spent with bookkeeping and payroll and other drivel that slowly kills my soul (not to be completely melodramatic). Working out of my house the majority of the year is actually not terribly good, as I am the sort that needs to be made to get out of the house and socialize. I do honestly look forward to being able to someday work year-round with taxes. The accounting I do simply out of family loyalty.

What kinds of people do you typically see in your career path?

Usually I see people older than me, forties to sixties, with a higher percentage of men. Most of my co-workers are old enough to be my parents, and will frequently act as such. It can take a while for them to realize that I have the same if not more experience than they do, especially the men.

Fortunately, there are still enough women and enough people within a decade of me that help me moor onto the edges of the pool. What’s typically right/wrong about how your career is portrayed?

Honestly, you rarely see tax preparers.. or hardly even accountants. If you do see an accountant, they are socially inept, male, and anal retentive. The closest you see to a tax prepare are angry IRS agents, stomping into businesses full of threats.

The one portrayal I like best, has been in Stranger Than Fiction. This may also be because I see far to much of myself in Harold Crick. The sound of the files scraping together can too often form an endless ocean, and it is so easy to become lost in it. Either by how we see ourselves, or by how everyone else sees us.

Contact information (optional)

Oyo... how-to-f0x/tumblr.com

[fablepaint]

Yes Even Accountants

"Resources to teach you how your characters could pay bills in between demon-slaying and time-travel."

Are you a writer? Sequential Artist? Addicted to roleplay? Are all your characters also a writer, sequential artist, or roleplay addicts?

Are you a nurse who cringes during House? Or a CSI and want to kick Sherlock’s writers in the teeth? A programmer who thinks THIS SCENE from Swordfish is the height of comedy?

Are you tired of every character you make being a doctor, lawyer, or famous actor with you knowing nothing about any of those jobs? 

What the fuck do accountants do anyway?

Then share your experiences here! Help storytellers looking to broaden their career knowledge by providing information on your unique career history and current job. 

Remember, no matter how boring you think your job is, there’s definitely someone out there thinking wrong-thoughts about the bullshit you have to do everyday. So here’s your chance to correct that little boo-boo.

Go go SUBMIT your career. And yes, even accountants are welcome. No matter how boring you think your job is or how typical, you’re free to offer up yourself as a helpful source of information for inquiring folks.

[leonaesperanza]

I keep seeing the blog url, yesevenaccountants, as Ye Seven Accountants. Maybe because it’s sort of like Seven Samarai or the Seven Dwarfs. Or maybe because I’m an accounting clerk and I tend to notice numbers, even when they’re spelled out.

[yesevenaccountants]

Aha! Then you should contribute! I don't think we've had an actual accountant submit yet.

[yesevenaccountants]

Researcher/archivist (Documentaliste)

Who are You? I’m Tagath, 25, French Job(s): Researcher/archivist (the exact french word would be documentaliste). I have a specialisation in audiovisual documents, which mean I was trained to work on video, pictures, and audio documents. Basically, the job is about indexing things into a database, and doing researches for other people. Location (optional) Currently in Paris Describe your career: currently it’s just starting, since I got my degree last year (that degree is the equivalent of 3 years of study after high school). I did a one year apprenticeship in a French radio (Europe 1), and at the end of it they kept me for another seven months. Now my contract is finished and I’m looking for a new job. What’s a typical day at your job(s) like? Gonna talk about my former job. We had four main tasks to accomplish, and we had a rotation between these by half days, so we wouldn’t get bored. Task one was to look at the news of the previous day, and select the reports that would be kept in the database (with hope of re-use at a later date). We couldn’t keep everything, and everything wasn’t good to keep anyway. Once the selection was done, the reports had to be entered in the database and described so they could be easily found again.

Task two was to research information for the radio’s programs, for example a biography and interview of a famous person that would be interviewed… but I’ve also been asked to give a file on very random things like “ants”, “space”, “the value of IQ tests”…

Task three was pretty similar, but we were at a desk in the redaction room, directly with the journalists, and the researches asked from us were more directly linked with current events, and the answer had to be a lot quicker (the journalist often needed information for the next news flash)

Task four was to answer demands for archives that were going to be used in the programs. This could be easy when we had the digital documents on our database and the demand was clear, or it could be very difficult when we were confronted with a very vague request for something that was still on a tape or a reel that we kept in several basements.

Typically, I’d arrive at 9:30 and leave at 6. Job(s) Pro: I got to learn a lot of things. Part of it was that I’m still just starting, but I also got to learn about recent French history, politics, and pretty much any subject I was asked to research. I also ended up following current events a lot more. And something that might just be me, but I enjoy sometimes the repetitive aspect of indexing. It’s not really my thing, but working in a radio, I got to meet famous journalists and to work for them, and I met a few celebrities in the corridors.

Job Cons: the repetitive side of indexing becomes old after a while. Having to deal with people who don’t know what they want and are annoyed when you don’t find it. Having to research subjects that put you ill at ease. In my case, having to accept that your workplace has an audience with political and social views entirely opposed to your own. Also, the work never ends. There is always new things being made, and every day you start from scratch again. Some days I liked it. Some days I found it horribly frustrating. What kinds of people do you typically see in your career path? A bit of everything really. A curious mind really is a plus. I’m personally not very good around people, and a few of my classmates weren’t much better, but there were also people who always seemed perfectly at ease all the time. Most if not all of us had a hobby of some sort on the side that requires patience and hard work (we had one or two musicians, a few knitters, people who sew…) What’s typically right/wrong about how your career is portrayed? It’s not really portrayed at all, as far as I can tell. I think it’s often confused with being a librarian or an historian. But we exist a lot more than people imagine. There are archivists and researchers in museum, in the media, in the industry… we are everywhere. Keeping track of the images and other documents. Finding them again when they’re needed. Giving people the information they need.

[yesevenaccountants]

Babysitter

Who are You? Jackie Job(s) Babysitter Location (optional) Small fishing town. Describe your career It's pretty simple. I watch kids. Usually the kids are younger, but not young, so around the 4-9 age range. It's pretty informal; if someone hires me who I have not worked for before, I'll ask about things like the schedule, especially if the time I'm working overlaps with bedtime or a meal, or rules about things like movies, what the kid(s) can have for a snack, where we're allowed to go outside the house, if anywhere, and I will often try to confirm when someone is supposed to be back. This does not always mean the parent will be back at the time they say! At times, I'll add an hour to what I'm told. I'm usually paid below minimum wage where I am, but hey, it's not like anyone taxes the money. I set my own rate after some time of "pay me what you think is about right" and, after doing some math of time / earnings, came out around an average of my current rate.

I started a few years ago, and still mostly help family friends and neighbors. Sometimes I am caught by surprise with between less than a day and less than ten minutes to get where I need to go. Often, I am not directly contacted to work, but my parents are told that I'm needed. Few of my jobs are long-term, long-term being set for a specific time for multiple days. Your career history, how did you get your job?

As I said, I started a few years ago (I'm in my late teens now) with family friends and neighbors. Since I live in a small town, I encounter my clients on a regular basis. I have had no other career, or even freelance work, but when lots of other teens are doing other jobs or fishing, I can stay and keep an eye on the young'uns. What’s a typical day at your job(s) like?

I am often asked to babysit at night or in the afternoons. When depends on the client; some set it up a few days in advance, and other times I only know I'm babysitting when the kids come to my house and say they need me to come over and watch them. Evening and afternoon stuff usually means staying at home, and activities vary with the child(ren) I'm watching. The toddlers, who are the youngest I've babysat, usually find entertainment in things like toys, books, or even random things like pots and egg cartons. The older ones (and their siblings) are more likely to be interested by electronics like movies or video games, although they can be just as willing to go outside or to a park or playground and play. If my hours overlap with bedtime, I'll tell the kid(s) to go get in pajamas, brush their teeth, that kind of thing. Toddlers may need more winding down time and are not guaranteed to stay asleep if you get them in bed, although I have had jobs where I pretty much stuck around after the toddler was sleeping to make sure the house didn't burn down.

For earlier stuff, which usually means I'm working sometime between 9 am and 2 pm, it's less "keep the house intact" and more "keep the kid(s) busy." Often, I'm working at these hours because the parents are both working and don't or can't put their child(ren) in daycare. If I'm there in the 11-12 area, then the parent may tell me what they have planned for lunch, which could be something from home or part of the summer lunch program the school does. This is when I am told where outside the house we can go, or sometimes even where to meet at the end of my shift.

How the time passes varies. I've noticed that with toddlers, it goes very fast, but older kids? Not so much. If I expect to be there an hour or so longer than told, it feels even slower. If I'm there long past bedtime, I'll bring a book, schoolwork, sketchbook and pencils, or some other quiet way to keep busy. I will also put some things away, like toys, books, or food if it was there for the kids and I know where it goes. Job(s) Pros/Cons, Likes/Dislikes

Hmm. Well, I've been lucky enough to work with good kids, so constant bad behavior isn't something I deal with. The kids themselves can be good fun, and since I know the parents, it's nice to get to talk to them. However, I am sometimes at a loss as to what activities to do, and when the kids have electronics they want to play with and refuse to get off of them for other things like puzzles or trips to the playground, I feel that I'm not doing well as a babysitter. Being caught by surprise and/or having to stay late also frays my nerves, but I am more of a morning than night person and not particularly fond of surprises. Getting paid alleviates that, though. *cough* I'm a yarnaholic and gotta support my habit somehow. *cough* What kinds of people do you typically see in your career path?

You gotta like kids. You seriously gotta like kids. And it would be better if you don't mind germs, have an authoritative-ness about you, or really got the "mom voice" down. Your schedule better be flexible to accommodate the odd times you'll be asked to babysit, and you can't be going to the same event as the parents! What’s typically right/wrong about how your career is portrayed?

I have yet to see or hear about the babysitter who is chatting to their significant others on the phone, especially the client's phone. The kid who runs around and refuses to calm down, like Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes? Only toddlers, as far as I've seen. Actually, I have yet to see anything about the kids who spend a lot of time in front of a screen and won't do anything else.

Contact information:

You should be able to contact me at jaxx-c.tumblr.com. I go on tumblr daily, but I have yet to get any messages as far as I'm aware.

[yesevenaccountants]

Undertaker

Hey there, I’m James and I do part time undertaking work in Australia. I’ve been doing this for a few years, mostly tag-along work with my dad who does it more as a full time thing. I can provide information regarding what happens during body pickups, what sort of state the bodies are in, and I don’t work the funerals but my dad does sometimes so I can provide limited information on the process of storage and funerals as well! Just send a message over and I’ll be happy to share my experiences and knowledge.

It’s really not stable work, deaths aren’t constant after all, especially in a small town like this. We get a phone call every other week that someone’s died in their home, hospital or wherever and we go pick them up. A lot of time is involved in waiting for doctors and police as well, as every body needs to be certified as Definitely Dead before it can be removed from the scene.

Your career history, how did you get your job? I got into it through my father asking me if I wanted to tag along one day. Which I did because I was curious. And my dad got into it through doing volunteer work with the SES, which is Australia’s volunteer emergency services (cutting people out of cares, getting fallen trees off roads, that kind of thing). And he’d seen a lot of death and was contacted by the local funeral director who needed some more help in picking up the bodies.

I haven’t done a lot of pickups, personally, but I’ve done enough to know how it works and have a few interesting stories to tell.

What’s a typical day at your job(s) like? Well, it all starts with a phonecall. The director tells us where the person has died, how they died, basic information like that and we then go pick up the hearse from the morgue and go find whoever it is. If they’ve died in their homes or out and about, then we need to get a doctor to come out and certify them. If they’ve died in hospital, this is usually done before we arrive so we can just take them straight away. The police are usually involved as well if they’ve died at home or wherever, and we can’t actually take the body until they give the okay.

The deaths themselves vary pretty widely. We actually get a lot of suicides, I think there was something like 13 or so in one month, once? We service the local area, which is a couple of towns, but we don’t go too far out. There have been all kinds of deaths though, and of all ages. I’ve picked up newborn babies before, and I’ve heard stories from my dad of people who have gassed themselves in shipping containers and have been there for up to two weeks. So really, there’s no telling what kind of situation you’ll get.

Job(s) Pros/Cons, Likes/Dislikes You might not think there’s a lot of pros to a job like this, but it all depends on how you look at it. I’ve done the funeral side of things before once or twice, and that usually means free food. So that’s cool. And if you’re not really a people person then the job is great if you’re specifically only picking up the bodies. You only really deal with the police and the doctors. Though that can be a hassle depending on who you get.

I have absolutely no issues with being around death so that’s not a problem for me. But the big dislikes probably come from the smells you encounter. My dad’s boss is the kind of guy who very rarely cleans out the back of his van and you can imagine what that ends up smelling like. Well. Probably not unless you’ve smelled it. It’s kind of like roadkill, honestly. But worse. And you do occasionally have to deal with relatives, but that’s fairly easy, it’s all about being polite and respectful. But it can kinda suck sometimes when you see how upset they are over losing a loved one.

What kinds of people do you typically see in your career path? Police, mostly. A lot of doctors, hospital staff, nurses. The coroner if we’re taking a body that far, but that’s pretty rare considering the state only has one coroner’s office and that’s pretty far away, and generally we refuse to go that far. 

What’s typically right/wrong about how your career is portrayed? Well the thing about it is, it’s not actually portrayed a lot. Which is wrong in itself, I mean, we exist, we transport these bodies around, regardless of how the death happened we’re the ones that transport it. Or an ambulance, but even then that’s only to a hospital where they can be certified as dead.

[yesevenaccountants]

Police Officer

I personally am a stay-at-home mom, but my husband (hereafter referred to as C) is a cop, and I know how much that job gets inaccurately portrayed by the media. However, he sadly does not have (and likely will never have) a tumblr, so I’m here to transmit what he says about his career.

We live in Utah, so our knowledge of laws may be slightly skewed to Utah-specific laws, but most of the broad stuff should cross state lines.

C has been an officer for 2 years now, so he’s still technically a rookie, but even before he finished the Academy he had to stop watching cop shows because they made him so frustrated with their inaccuracies. The common process in many states to become a police officer is generally taking the Police Officer’s Selection Test and then (assuming you scored high enough) applying to different departments. If you make it through their tests and interviews, they’ll send you through the Academy. If you make it through that, you go onto a probationary period where you are personally trained by a Field Training Officer. As I said, most states do it that way, as well as Salt Lake and some bigger cities in Utah, but most of Utah changes the order slightly. You take POST and use that to apply to the Academy on your own dime before you apply for jobs. Occasionally some candidates will get a department to “sponsor” them, meaning they pay for it and the candidate will have a job when he finishes the Academy. Generally though, as was the case with C, you go through the Academy and apply for jobs, and continue through the above process.

The Academy itself was split into two blocks: SFO and LEO, which stand for Special Function Officer and Law Enforcement Officer, respectively. The first block is largely law, and it qualifies you to work in the prisons. The second block is where they teach you firearms and a lot for defensive tactics, and it qualifies you to work in a police department as a full time officer.

A typical day really varies. I’ve had times where C comes home and tells me his day was utterly boring, and other days where they had death, an emergency home birth, drunk drivers, etc. With just about everything though, there’s lots of paperwork.

C says his personal favorites are tracking down DUIs, as that’s one of the major issues with his area, dealing with warrants, and generally arresting people. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, paperwork is one of the less exciting realities of the job, but he doesn’t mind it so much when it’s connected with an exciting call or arrest. Accidents are one of his less favored calls, as more often then not, they are relatively harmless fender benders but require an absurd amount of paperwork. The other thing that frustrates him is if he’s given someone a break on a traffic stop and they still yell at him. This happens frequently. Then again, there are quite pleasant people he deals with as well - changing people’s tires, people just caught in a bad situation who are happy for help, etc. - but people don’t generally call the cops when they’re having a good day. One of the risks of the job is becoming cynical because most of what you see is the darker parts of the world. It can become hard to maintain an accurate perspective and not fall into the idea that because you’re a cop, you automatically know better. C has done well on this front, but it is something we try to be conscious of so it doesn’t overwhelm us.

What is wrong with how the career is portrayed? Often quite a lot. I once watched a L&O: SVU episode where the bad guy had a gun on someone and another cop shot and killed him and our main cop is like, “Why did you shoot to kill? Why didn’t you just shoot him in the leg?” For most people, that makes sense, but really, a cop would get in HUGE trouble for intentionally doing a wounding shot. Guns are for killing. If you can remove the danger by something less than a killing blow, there are other options - notably a taser. If you want more information about police weapons etc., you can message me. C has a lot of opinions on them, including why he himself does not carry pepper spray (he seriously hates that stuff).

Other than that, his absolute biggest pet peeve that we have seen in nearly every single cop shows (even the good ones) is the freaking Miranda Rights. I know, I know, it’s essentially become symbolic for “we’re arresting this person now” when it comes to tv and movies. But it’s often done at the wrong time. They’ll have shows where they have the suspect detained and are questioning them, and then don’t read the rights until they spill the beans, which is FAR too late. Or conversely (and more commonly) when they go find the suspect on the street or whatever to arrest them, they immediately start reading them their rights, which is actually far too early. C says he’s only occasionally read someone their rights, as he’s only occasionally done the questioning. The rules are: you must be detained AND be being asked pertinent questions (“how’s the weather” doesn’t count). So generally, if he arrests someone for DUI or possession or what-have-you, he tells them they’re being arrested, cuffs them, and puts them in the car. He’s not questioning them, so he doesn’t read the rights yet. Also please bear in mind that ANYTHING you say at this point is TOTALLY fair game to be used against you if you just spout crap off without being asked.

Hoo boy, sorry that was so long! If you want to ask more specific questions, feel free to message me at tangentmusings.tumblr.com.