What do you do for a living then?

[boomer]

Mainly factory work (pottery,frozen foods,general picking).Moved into landscape gardening,brought a window cleaning round really loved it,then one sunday morning whilst helping a mate out on a job i had a argument with a live electric cable,i lost,the injurys i had forced me into selling the window round,now i just potter about doing nowt really,enjoy making garden planters-arbours etc (we've got them everywhere lol),would love to make a living out of them one day.

 

[mahking51]

What a great and interesting thread!

Left Uni with B.Tech in Metallurgy and went into the family car business.

Bought and sold high end sports cars for a few years.

Sold business when my Dad died.

Worked for a movie camera rental comany to learn the business and went self employed as a video assist operator on features and commercials.

Learnt to scuba dive and sail so managed to get a ride across Atlantic on a sail boat and ended up in Montserrat looking after the bands recreation at Air Studios.

Managed to work it so I did 6 months filming and 6 months as a delivery/ charter skipper based in Tortola, British Virgin Islands.

Got married in the BVI and found that my darling would not look favourably on me legging it for 6 months at a time to drive rich and scantily clad people around the Caribbean on boats in the sunshine whlie she went to work here! I, mean, how unreasonable can you be?

So back to UK and filming.

SWMBO lets me do a long delivery every 2 years or so to keep my hand in.

All this time living in a nice flat in Fulham but no space for anything let alone WWork which I had always liked since school.

Sold up and moved to lovely Dorset with nice house and lots of room and WS!

Filming went a bit quiet so started buying and selling cars again and also started up a business buying live scallops from local boats and moving them on. Also somehow found this place and a new interest in tools. Have an ad in the Parish Mag which gives me a few small WW jobs now and then.

Having a pretty good life at the moment as filming work has again kicked off.

I really enjoy this board and have met some great people who are always helpful and fun.

Regards to all,
Martin

 

[tim]

looking after the bands recreation

Which band?

Cheers

Tim

 

[Anonymous]

Interesting post, filled in some time this morning.
Started as an apprentice joiner with a local building company lasted a couple of months until when I was accepted as an apprentice electrician in the steelworks, after a year or so into the apprenticeship I was offered a chance to change over to Instruments and controls in which trade Ive been ever since.
At present I work for a major foriegn oil company in the sunny Sahara where I am in charge of an Oil field Instrument, electrical and turbine department.
I am now looking foreward to retiring in the near future.
(The company moto by the way , when translated seems to be 'Success will not be tollerated')

 

[beech1948]

I tried to be a Teacher but failed. I absolutely hated teaching, and Teacher Training College to the point where I just walked away.

I found a job with Cheshire County Council in their Management Advisory Unit and put in the first IBM office system ever in the EU. IBM hired me to work in Brussels to train their sales teams on what and how to sell Office Automation....early 70's.

I moved to the US into IBM sales and worked on selling large government accounts eg. DoD £965m system for air defence on US navy ships..the wet weather trials were horrendous and literally sickening. I became a regional sales manager for the IBM East Coast government business. IBM sponsored me to get a degree (BSc) in Maths at Princeton.

Mid late 70's I moved to a research lab in Hong Kong, got married to a French Chinese cutie and moved into research on the psychologyof team work in design. I led a team of 60 in various projects looking at the behaviour of teams in all sorts of environments -research, sales, marketing, planning, strategy.

Made redundant in 1993 I started my own company and now we are a consultancy of 22 people specialising in pure strategy...for anything, in teaching people to think and in creative problem solving. I became an NLP master practitioner and now teach NLP, provide executive coaching and teach the up and coming how to cope...its good fun with few constraints.

Looking forward to retirement....now 58 and will retire when I'm too infirm to hold a chisel.

 

[mahking51]

Tim,

Which band?

Whoever was there at the time recording Sting, Dire Straits, Phil Collins, Elton John, Macca et al.
Was a serious party time in my life never equalled before or since :roll:
Martin

 

[mrs. sliver]

to go back a few pages, I am in the same job as Gill's OH. care worker for the elderly, also night shift .. have done other jobs, shops and photography .. but non of them touch the satisfaction of this one ... minimum wage or not. .. also I now have so many Grannies!! :lol:

 

[Hitch]

After leaving school, i went to a vocational college, initially to do motor vehicle. Couldnt get on the first course so did a tyre and exhaust fitting course to fill in. Just something to do rather than sitting at home.

Still no places, so decided to do a welding course. As part of the course i had to do a work placement at the end, went to a local fabrication company for 2 weeks, then they offered me a job at the end of it. Decided to take up the offer. Later decided to do a day release course while i was there, fast tracked through a years work in about 4 weeks :lol:

Ended up staying there for 5 years.

Decided to get away from the area, and moved to Plymouth, still doing welding/fabrication.

After about a year, i decided to look around, and got me a job building and designing specialist vehicles (for the cash in transit industry)
Loved the job, but got made redundant after a year

Then got a job on recomendation, primarily as a cnc press brake setter, with the occasional need to do some other fabrication work. After about 9 months they started laying off staff, after about 30% went, i decided to leave.

On a social visit back to the place i worked at in Somerset, i was offered my old job back. Took the offer, and here i am still.

Who knows what the next err, 40+ years of my working life will hold :roll:

 

[Matt_S]

Had a week off work and don't have internet at home, just read a lot of pages!

Have a Bsc in Industrial Design, which sometimes gives people the wrong impression, it is basically product design.

Part of the course was a placement and I ended up at a design management consultancy who to cut a long story short asked me back after I left uni.

Its a tricky job to explain, help large corporations manage anything to do with their brand and design, a little vague but it is basically project management. Enjoy the job though and am very lucky as the company is really nice.

 

[kell]

I'm a packaging technologist for pedigree and I work on the treats for dogs!

ambition to own a little furniture shop in Camden or Kingston!

 

[Vormulac]

We are a varied bunch aren't we?

I studied Electronic engineering at my local CFE in Plymouth and then went to Brunel University in West London to do a degree in the same. Didn't get on with the university at all, they were busily trying to get shot of their world famous reputation for engineering excellence so they could bolster the far more lucrative humanities side of things. I was sponsored by Ford and they wouldn't let me change universities, so I came away from 4 years there with no degree, but with a lot of very good friends.
One of the departments I had done a work placement with at Ford hired me the moment I got home to Plymouth, so I turned around and schlepped straight back to Essex and spent the next few years as a component engineer.

Unfortunately I was singled out as the one that knew computers, and as everything was going computerised I rapidly became the mug everyone dumped their computing requirements on, so the actual engineering took a back seat, and Ford being the forward thinking company it is saw that as an excuse to let me go in the next round of cuts.

With my head full of IT, I moved with the girlfriend to West London to be where the head offices roamed in huge, lucrative herds, only to that discover no-one wanted an engineer who could work on their computers, they wanted 21 year old computer studies graduates instead (I wouldn't be bitter about it if I hadn't actually encountered some). Two years of unemployment interspersed with some freelance IT jobs followed before a friend got me a job working on UCL's database. An office full of totty in central London, it beat the automotive industry! It was rather spoiled by a power crazed management wannabe, but after about a year there I had my foot in the door and moved on to work in the Information section of an obscure part of the Department of Health called the MHRA (we regulate and licence medicines and medical equipment).

So here I am, a civil servant earning less than I was on day one at Ford all those years ago and more than 10K less than the average IT worker in London.
Never really been blissfully happy in a job, but the people are great here and it's flexible working, but with a young baby now, the girlfriend is haranguing me to get a higher paid job. (she earns three times what I do when she's not on Mat leave!).

I love being a practical sort, I do lots of diy around the house (SWMBO is even loaning me out to her young mother friends to do all *their* diy too!) and I can't wait to get the garage to workshop transformation finished so I can get on with some proper wood-worrying. When I'm not being practical I'm horribly geeky and play computer games a lot (I used to do role-playing too, and would do so again - that's how sad I am! :lol: )

Vormulac.

 

[gavin e]

In theory I'm a french polisher, but to be honest there isn't much that i work on these days that actually needs french polish. Most of my work now comes from insurance claims where people spill things on aunties old table, or from removals companies who smash aunties old table and need it put back together again.

I'm doing more and more work on the less movable pieces of wood these days, restoring old floors and panneled walls etc.

gavin e

 

[DaveL]

Well I wanted to be a sound man back in 71 when I left school, but ended up doing a telecommunication technician apprenticeship. Progressed to working in the development labs, designed uncommitted logic arrays and built a thick film hybrid proto typing system to produce peripheral support chips for micro processor systems.
Left to go into FE, teaching digital electronics and transmission systems.
When micros entered the curriculum I picked up teaching them as I had used them in industry. Moved on to computers, I needed then to support the HNC micro work so had to make them work. Got picked on by the HMI to sort out the rest of the colleges computers and ended up as the system manager, just doing guest teaching for the tricky bits no one else could do at the time.
New principal joined the college and after a year made most of the higher paid computing staff redundant.
As I always claimed to be an engineer who happened to be working in education, I went back into industry.
I now have a small team that are the 3 rd line support for a 2 nd line helpdesk on a system with ~ 34,000 machines connected to it, keeps us busy most of the time.
I have always been into making/repairing things, earned my pocket money making fence panels, nails all driven with a large claw hammer. You very quickly learn not to hit your hand.
My Dad is into making things and his influence rubbed off on me, only now he borrows my tools and I sharpen his chisels.
Oh and I am the sound man for a Ceilidh band.

 

[Wanlock Dod]

Think I have a new one for the list.

Environmental Chemist, with a popular regulator.

Cheers

Dod

 

[Mike-W]

Another new one for the list: I’m the Chief Photographer for Soldier Magazine.
I have been in photography with the MoD since I left college back in 1974 - firstly doing scientific and technical photography for over 13 years then working for Soldier Magazine as a magazine (features & news photographer) for 20 years, the last 7 years I have run the Photographic department. I’ve got two great guys that work with me and we work with 4 journalists travelling to wherever you might imaging the British Army to be to produce a 96 page magazine each month.

How did I get into woodwork? Just a hobby for me although I find it relaxing after work- got more interested after I put an extension on our bungalo., In order to keep the cost down I did a lot of DIY myself, this led to a natural progression into furniture making! The last few years have seen me working hard at kitting out my workshop for my retirement (still a few years away,) while I can still afford to buy quality tools and machinery!

All the best

Mike .

 

[aldel]

Well it appears like some others, I spent my entire working for BT in all it's flavours. Joined aged 16 as an apprentice and apart from all the work communication training I also gained my ONC followed by HND in electrical engineering. After another 4 years qualified BSc in electronics and communications. Spent many years working on rural and main exchange maintenance covering all types of systems. To those that know about these things it was all types of strowger, crossbar, TXE and system X and Y and UAX's. A very large amount of my time was spent at the BT college at Stone in Stafford. From there I transferred to private branch exchange systems of many differing types in mostly highly secret government and service networks. You would be amazed at the technology in use and the variety-- Ah hem from there I moved into development of the first truly digital PABX (Monarch). With an early interest in computers I developed systems for call logging and remote testing. Middle and later regional management followed with a part time job as a qualified NVQ assessor. With increasing ill health I decided to take early retirement when offered a package that I could not refuse.
With over 50 years of woodwork as a hobby I thought that retirement would bring plenty of time to indulge. Well, I can't really explain why but I just do not seem to have any more time than before and of course I now have to be careful of the expenditure. On creaky days I seem to spend too much time on this and other forums doing woodwork by proxy.
On better days I have to catch up on all those other little chores.
I love my motorbike and gardening and to the amazement of those living oop north do not own a boat or spend time the beach!

I can't claim the amazing CV of many on here but am content that I did my bit to keep house and family together. It is a pleasure to read the posts from people from all the varied backgrounds on this forum and it is humbling to see how woodwork is such a great leveler.

Regards, Aldel

 

[M Overdijk]

Hello,

I am a relatively new member of this forum, from the Netherlands.
Found this forum while i was looking for advise about planers.
Bought myself a Scheppach HMS2600ci via a webshop in Germany (for only € 1049!) and very happy with it ! (Thanks for the advice, by-the-way)

I am an electronics engineer, developing printed circuit boards for a living.

Since a few years i do some woodworking, because i like to do something with my hands, starting with building a tables, and boxes. Now i am building new furniture set for my little boy (who is now 8 months old).
And I plan to build a lot more in the future !

Greetings to all from Lieshout, the Netherlands.

 

[Pecker]

Gawd, all these posh jobs and clever bods .

What do I do? Carpenter. Did my apprenticship on site, never really touched machines at the time.

Left chippying for a while, became top saleman in country for ICI Dulux, worked for British Gas (good job there - giving away money to charity and getting my pics in local papers) then eventually went back onto my tools and into building maintenance management.

Moved away and now run small two man company with own workshop, here in fantastic rural Pembrokeshire.

Humbling really...
Woody

 

[toplink]

Started out in the sixties as a chef in Bath, then became a Letterpress Machine Minder in Bradford on Avon. That job got boring after 7 years.
I then moved to Dorset to work as a sprayer/combine driver on a farm just outside Weymouth, that job laster 15 years.
Found out that I needed a change so I became the Local Handyman which I still do, but now ... I am installing wireless broadband to remote sites on Exmoor, Somerset and Dorset that can't be reached by BT.
And by the way, also trying to do a full makeover to my house for SWIMBO and set up my workshop.

 

[martlewis]

My turn then...

Started life as a quality assurance engineer in a computer repair center. Promoted to UK logistics coordinator. Left to run a pub for 3 years on Isle of Man. Was a dairy logistics engineer (milkman) for 6 months before getting a job selling computers in a large well known computer retailers whom I can't name (Where in the world...) Oops! I'm now a business account manager for said company, though I'm training as a driving instructor so I can pick and choose my working hours and free up more time for my woodworking