What do you do?

[KAT4DISNEY]

After graduating from college with a degree in Business Admin and minors in Computer Science and Spanish I moved to Lake Tahoe from MN and became a tour guide at a western theme park. My dad was so proud! I did this for 7 summers and filled in the winters working at casino restaurants, hotels and finally a ski area. I did lots of different jobs at the theme park and ski area but ended up migrating to the cash control side.

The theme park provided my closest stint to anything in professional photography with the old time photo studio. I also was the back up wedding coordinator (there was a small church at the park) and have been witness to more strangers weddings than I can even recall. Sometimes photographer too!

Finally I needed to get a full time job instead of seasonal and did the bookkeeping work for a small software company. That lasted a year when I went to work for the local gov't in the accounting dept. My position eventually ended up being Sr. Operations Accountant/Analyst (right there with you ucatfan) and was responsible for coordinating the operating budget. On top of that I helped out with some of the software implementations and overseeing payroll.

Then the family business dragged me back in when my father became ill and that is still what I am doing today. It is a small telecommunications company and has some interesting aspects, but not my dream job and it's a bit of a commute. On top of that, just for fun (b/c it certainly doesn't make any money!) we own a small restaurant that I'm allowed to handle the accounting for. At least I like the food - wild alaskan salmon is our specialty.

I liked the analytical job, but the tourism industry is really what I enjoyed the most - probably part of why I like Disney. Of course I find that I have to stop from offering to help everyone take a picture when I'm there - just habit from the old days! LOL

On a side note - I'm happy to hear about Taco Doritos coming back...those and the Guacamole were my favorites!

 

[Chikabowa]

My first full-time job is as a stay-at-home mommy.

My other full-time job is running my own professional photography business/studio. I focus mainly on weddings, but also do families, children, maternity, newborns and high school seniors.

 

[photobob]

Susan, I checked out your website, very nice work.

 

[faerieprincess]

Wow, Susan your wedding and engagement shots are amazing!

 

[pxlbarrel]

I'm an engineer with the provincial Fire Marshal and have been for the past 16 years. I went to university and got a science degree that pretty much qualified me for absolutely nothing so I went back and did a degree in biochemical engineering.

I started taking photos with an old Diana camera...remember those plastic little cameras with the huge rolls of film? That was my first...and I still have it. Graduated to the little Kodak Hawkeye camera. Then my dad bought a Minolta SLR for himself that I promptly took from him. I was in the high school photography club and took photos for the yearbook. Spent many a lonely afternoon in our school darkroom. Teachers learned to be wary of me. LOL

After high school, I decided that schlepping photo gear was tiring so I went to a point and shoot Minolta and eventually bought my first digital camera...the Canon S100 Digital Elph. I loved that size of camera....but then, it wouldn't do what I wanted so I went to the G5 and then the Rebel and now the 40D so everything has come full circle.

 

[Experiment_626]

I am a "Senior Artist/Publications Production Specialist" in the Physics Department at Florida State University. While I'm not a full-time photographer per se, I do some photography as part of my job.

I've always had an affinity for writing. In college, the English instructor who taught my freshman English class pursued me to write for the school newspaper for several years (yeah, I took five years to get my AA!), and I finally did so the last year I was there. That was my introduction to the Macintosh.

At the same time I was in college, my girlfriend decided to take a photography course at a technical school. Photography had always fascinated me, but even though my dad had an old SLR, I hadn't known anyone who could explain the technical side of things to me. That changed with my girlfriend's classes and coursework, because I assisted her and learned what she was learning second-hand. I became more interested and, after using my dad's Vietnam War-era Minolta SRT-101 (the aperture was sticky) for a while, I got a Nikon N6006.

My girlfriend got annoyed with my interest in photography -- she felt I had somehow usurped something that was "hers."

Out of college (I have an AA), I had tentative-but-solidifying plans to attend the University of South Florida when I got an offer to be managing editor for a twice-weekly local paper. I figured the experience would be invaluable. I was right, but after year and a half on the job, I realized I was in over my head and that the job wasn't for me. But I did learn that it was design that fascinated me more than writing on a deadline. The paper was so small that I did a little of everything except sweep and run the press (we were a rarity for a small paper in that we had our own press). I particularly enjoyed sports -- both the writing and the photography. In fact, shooting high school football and basketball are the parts of that job I still miss, more than a dozen years hence.

I was a single guy in his mid-twenties living in one very small town and working in another small town. I didn't like my prospects for finding a wife or even a serious girlfriend in that situation, and I was unhappy with many aspects of the job, such as covering interminable city council and county commission meetings. I packed myself up and moved to Tallahassee, after getting a job with a locally-based publisher of nationally-distributed real-estate magazines. My job was "Soft-Proof QC" -- in other words, I was expected to proofread and fix errors in the real estate listings on the screen. I expected that my editing experience would make it an easy job; I was wrong. It turned out that in proofreading real estate listings, the things that are most important are those for which command of the written word is of little value. Prices, phone-numbers, addresses, locations, and the listings of features for a given property are rarely obviously correct or incorrect -- they have to be meticulously checked against the original copy. After a page or two of this, all of it starts to run together. The entire time I was there, I sought training in Adobe illustrator -- i wanted to sit with the Illustrator guys and draw (and re-draw) logos all day. I never got anywhere with that. After I'd been there three months, I discovered the possible reason why -- I was dropped at the end of my probationary period. I believe they simply hired extra workers to get them over a busy period and then let us go when they reached a point where they'd have to grant us something a bit more secure.

So I spent a couple of months in a new city with no job. I could have gone to my family for help, but I wanted to get through it on my own. I did eventually have to break down and ask for help, but at that point I finally got another job. I had met the manager of a local Insty-Prints while doing a little freelance graphics work (for which I was never paid). His father owned both locations in town, and one day his delivery driver didn't show up. He knew I was looking for a job and called me up and offered that job to me. I'd have to learn -- on the job -- to really drive a standard transmission, but I really needed a job, so I took it. I eventually moved into a designer's job with them -- for a while I was doing some of both jobs! That went well until they decided to close the store I was in and use a subcontractor for their design -- they let both of the in-house designers go.

By that time, I had gotten married. It was rough few months. I finally learned of the opening at FSU. I interviewed for it -- the other designer in the department was a guy who was approaching 30 years with the university. After a couple of days he said the job was mine. Then he called and said he spoke too soon -- he had another guy with PR experience and had to hire him. Then a few days later he called back and said it was mine after all; the other applicant's current boss had offered him a raise.

This past August marked my tenth year in this position.

I do some photography in my job, and I'm "the Photoshop guy" to many people in several of the science departments. The photography I do within my day job is seldom the kind I really most enjoy. We do a lot of portrait work, and I've never thought I really have the "eye" for portraiture. My co-worker thinks he does, but he doesn't. I've studied techniques for posing and portraits, but it never comes naturally. I do enjoy some of the more journalistic photography we get to do, and sometimes I get to do what I really like -- landscapes. The skills I learned in my newspaper job have indeed been valuable every day. I do lots of writing and editing as part of my job, and what I learned there and at Insty-Prints about preparing a job for printing on a press has been just as useful.

I've recently begun doing some web design work in Dreamweaver. Page layout has always been my least-favorite part of the job -- I know how to do it, but it also doesn't come naturally. It's like pulling teeth to get a layout job going, and things don't really start falling into place until I'm about 75 percent through most jobs. Web design is even worse, because it's more restrictive and I don't really know the software. I need to know how to do it for the future, but I don't really want to do it. I've created graphics for the web for years and don't mind that at all, but designing a page for the web is a whole 'nother animal!

I do landscapes that interest me in my spare time. If someone wants to buy them, I'd happily sell prints. I don't think that would ever feel like work. Being a wedding or portrait photographer, on the other hand, really doesn't interest me. Not only do I think my work in that area is not very good, it is way too time-intensive. Each wedding is a new, massive project and takes hours of the photographer's time. A landscape print, by contrast, can be sold over and over again. You don't have to shoot 3,000 new ones every weekend.

So, if you've read this all the way to the end -- aren't you sorry you asked?

SSB

 

[MarkBarbieri]

So, if you've read this all the way to the end -- aren't you sorry you asked?

Not at all.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I'll add to my original post. While I am definitely and IT guy, I do it for an oil and gas company. Our business is "upstream", which means that we find the stuff, drill for it, produce it, and then sell it to middlemen or refiners. We have some "midstream" business (pipelines), but our focus is definitely upstream.

As an IT guy, I could change industries, but I have so much experience with oil and gas data that a significant part of my value is the knowledge that I have in that business. It's a good business to be in these days. Demand has increased faster than supply for many years now, so prices are good (for people selling the stuff, not for people buying it). Of course, that will change. We've seen lots of booms and busts in the industry. It's great when times are good and not so much fun when times are bad.

Our industry is also one of consolidation. Larger independents (companies with no refineries or gas stations) constantly buy smaller independents (and occasionally smaller ones buy larger ones) and the majors (Exxon, Shell, BP, etc) also buy up independents. In 2006, we bought two large independents and integrated them into our company. In 2003, the company I used to work for was acquired by (technically merged into) a larger independent that was on it's fifth acquisition in five years. I have managed to always escape the layoffs, but those can be pretty profitable in our business. People I've layed off have gotten anywhere from 6 months to more than 1 years pay and health care. They've almost all found jobs within a month or two. There are benefits to being in an industry where personnel costs are a tiny fraction of revenue.

 

[wen-tom]

What a great idea for a thread Mark.
I have nowhere near as interesting job as the majority of you guys. I do customer service for Ideal Standard/Armitage Shanks (until recently owned by American Standard) so I talk about toilets and baths for most of my days! Not usually very exciting

Interesting to see that IT seems to be the thing for the majority. DH has just qualified as an MCSE and and would love to do some of the IT jobs that some of you guys have... He would love to work in the US but getting there wouldn't be easy for us from the UK

would anyone like to employ him???

 

[MarkBarbieri]

He would love to work in the US but getting there wouldn't be easy for us from the UK

We've got a few Brits in our IT group. One came over from our Uxbridge office and runs our PMO (Project Management Office). Another was transferred from London when he worked for Kerr McGee (who we acquired back in 2006). He worked for me for a while and then got moved to a manager position over our HR systems.

Most American IT shops have an international flavor to them. In the last year, I've had citizens of Great Britain, India (now a US citizen), Algeria (now a US citizen), and Brazil working for me as employees or contractors.

 

[crasher11]

Well I spent 4 years in the U.S. Air Force right out of high school working avionics and electronics on a fighter jet and now I am a wastewater operator/industrial pretreatment assistant for a municipality.

As for photography, it is just a wonderful hobby that I wanted to get into for a long time and now i have found the time to do it. Having 2 young DS's, they always provide me an opportunity to " Practice " shooting better pictures.

 

[Lancer]

Like others,I dont post much but am here to learn and will post if I have anything new to contribute to a thread. So thanks for the help everyone!

I am an assistant golf course superintendent (Head Peon!) for a two course club in north east Indiana. The hours can be long and hot or long and cold, but I love working in the outdoors. Since the summer help left, I havent had a day off in over a month so I am looking foward our Oct 29th trip to WDW. Actually, my favorite time is on a midsummer saturday around 6:00am, suns coming up,peaceful, before the golfers arrive,with the sight and sounds of sprinklers in the backround. My interest in photograhy started in the early 80's with a cousin's Canon AE-1. A year latter, I had my own AE-1 program. Today, sticking with the Canon family, I shoot with a 20D. Would love to have the added bells and whistles of the latest bodies, but this one does just fine for me....for now.

 

[Amy]

Hi all! I finally had time to check the DIS boards this weekend and found this thread!

I'm a legal secretary for a large law firm in Pittsburgh - I've been there 30 years (How many people stay with a company for that long any more?!) If I had it to do all over again, I'd LOVE to do something with computers, maybe IT support; I just love learning new things on computers. Of course, back when I was in high school, it was a really big deal when we got an electric typewriter! And to show my age even more, when I first started working at the law firm, we used carbon paper and did cut-and-paste documents - literally cutting with scissors and pasting with glue and tape.

Mother of 2 boys - DS18 is a freshman in college and DS16 is a junior in high school. Both boys were in the high school marching band, and DS18 is in his college marching band, so I'm definitely a band mom.

Six-year breast cancer survivor this year!

As for my photography history, I remember using a Polaroid instant camera as a kid, then moved to the Kodak instamatic with the little "cube" flash bulbs on top. My first "real" camera was a Pentax MeSuper (which I still have shoved in the closet somewhere). Once the boys were born, it was just too much to lug an slr and lenses around, so I started using those pocket 35mm cameras. Found digital cameras a few years back, and now I'm up to a Canon S3 IS. I know once of these days I'll take the plunge and get a dSLR, but right now finding money for college is more important, so I'll wait.

 

[annnewjerz]

Hi all! I finally had time to check the DIS boards this weekend and found this thread!

I'm a legal secretary for a large law firm in Pittsburgh - I've been there 30 years (How many people stay with a company for that long any more?!) If I had it to do all over again, I'd LOVE to do something with computers, maybe IT support; I just love learning new things on computers. Of course, back when I was in high school, it was a really big deal when we got an electric typewriter! And to show my age even more, when I first started working at the law firm, we used carbon paper and did cut-and-paste documents - literally cutting with scissors and pasting with glue and tape.

Mother of 2 boys - DS18 is a freshman in college and DS16 is a junior in high school. Both boys were in the high school marching band, and DS18 is in his college marching band, so I'm definitely a band mom.

Six-year breast cancer survivor this year!

As for my photography history, I remember using a Polaroid instant camera as a kid, then moved to the Kodak instamatic with the little "cube" flash bulbs on top. My first "real" camera was a Pentax MeSuper (which I still have shoved in the closet somewhere). Once the boys were born, it was just too much to lug an slr and lenses around, so I started using those pocket 35mm cameras. Found digital cameras a few years back, and now I'm up to a Canon S3 IS. I know once of these days I'll take the plunge and get a dSLR, but right now finding money for college is more important, so I'll wait.

Hmmmm, I wonder what large lawfirm it is. The firm I work at in Princeton, NJ has their main office located in Pittsburgh. Any chance the initials are RS?

 

[Amy]

Hmmmm, I wonder what large lawfirm it is. The firm I work at in Princeton, NJ has their main office located in Pittsburgh. Any chance the initials are RS?

Same one!! PM coming your way......

 

[Gdad]

I am a senior project manager for one of the largest electrical contractors in the country. I have been there for about 11 years supervising (bean-counting mainly) all sorts of commercial construction projects. The company has actually done a lot of high profile projects at Disney over the years- unfortunately I have never had the opportunity to be involved with one- mainly because I work out of the Tampa office- not the Orlando one.

 

[mabas9395]

For the past 10 years I have worked in one of the interest rate risk management departments at the nations largest savings and loan, at least we were until just over a week ago. All that stuff we learned while earning my finance degree (options, bonds, duration, convexity, etc) I got to use most every day. But this "financial crisis" that banks are in got me laid off before the company finally went belly up. There are a lot of mortgage bankers out of work right now, so I consider myself pretty luck to have found a new job so quickly. Unfortunately, I have to move 2,000 miles away from where I have lived most of my life and will be taking the wife away from most of her family who still live in the area. Despite the move, we are very excited about the new adventure we are taking as a family. My biggest regret is all of the amazing things to photograph here in the Pacific North West that I always kept putting off until some other time that I now won't have a chance to visit. I've asked some people about the things to photograph in our new area and they all say the same thing, "it has wonderful architecture". I'm sure it does, but a skyscrapper is just not the same thing when compared to Mt. Rainier.

 

[fortheluvofpooh]

I have many jobs accountant, chauffer, housekeeper, mediator, gardener but my favorite title is MOM. I am a SAHM but I babysit for a supplemental income to pay for my hobbies.

 

[10dedfish]

Well, after seeing everyone else's interesting jobs, I figured I would go ahead and jump off the cliff as well.

I am currently a Systems Engineer for a Government Contractor, but all that really means is I do Fleet Support and Training. I go out when the submarines call and say it doesnt work. When not doing that I travel around different US possessions and states to give training to the subs.

Prior to that I worked at the Atlantic HQ for Fleet Support (MARMC). I worked there for 5 years, but the job sucked and the people enjoyed causing hate and discontent.

Before my time in Purgatory (as I like to call it), I served 9yrs and 10 months on Subs as a Sonar Technician. I went places and did things. Nuff said.

I have been married for 16 yrs this December to my lovely wife Shylena, and I have 2 Disney Daughters, Ashlea 9 and Abigail 2.

CrazyDadGuy is my twin brother Mark who I have known all my life.

10ded

 

[Steve's Girl]

For the past 10 years I have worked in one of the interest rate risk management departments at the nations largest savings and loan, at least we were until just over a week ago. All that stuff we learned while earning my finance degree (options, bonds, duration, convexity, etc) I got to use most every day. But this "financial crisis" that banks are in got me laid off before the company finally went belly up. There are a lot of mortgage bankers out of work right now, so I consider myself pretty luck to have found a new job so quickly. Unfortunately, I have to move 2,000 miles away from where I have lived most of my life and will be taking the wife away from most of her family who still live in the area. Despite the move, we are very excited about the new adventure we are taking as a family. My biggest regret is all of the amazing things to photograph here in the Pacific North West that I always kept putting off until some other time that I now won't have a chance to visit. I've asked some people about the things to photograph in our new area and they all say the same thing, "it has wonderful architecture". I'm sure it does, but a skyscrapper is just not the same thing when compared to Mt. Rainier.

Hey Mabas -

I'm just a short train ride from your new "digs". Lake Michigan and the Dunes are quite nice to photograph. Outside of the city there are many rural areas that are photo worthy. No, it doesn't compare with the Pacific Northwest, but there will still be plenty of things to photograph. Some of the grape vineyards in the countryside are beautiful right now. Catch them on a cool misty fall morning and it makes for some beautiful landscape photos.

Best of luck with your move and new job.