Jobs 'n Work 'n Stuff

This document basically covers a load of the stuff that's in my CV but in more depth and in a much more readable format. It's got pictures and everything. If you want the formal stuff so you can offer me the ownership of your multinational when you retire (or any other jobs) then please send that one to your personnel department. Otherwise, read on...

The kind of jobs I have been doing are many and wondrous. I worked in a packing factory for several months, and have the scar to prove it! My message to you is - don't try to hack your way through the bottom of a Fairy Liquid container with a Stanley knife :) For some reason the agency I worked through lost the contract to the factory shortly afterwards... The picture shows the result of diving forward four rows at a Pantera gig to get a guitar pick! I even took the stitches out myself. And to prove it...

Dr. Mosher at work

A close-up of my handiwork

A slightly fuzzy, but even closer-up

I have also been employed to do the brain-straining task of envelope-stuffing, in a warehouse 45 minutes (and 30 minutes' wage) bus ride away. Working under a dictator who insisted we all stand for the duration of our 8 hour and upwards shift, unless we were white and worked hard. I can't remember the last time I wanted to hurt someone as much as that. Never mind, the job only lasted just over a week. Next up was my first office job. Filing clerk for the biggest out-of-London solicitors in the UK. And what a doss it was, too! Turning up for work at 8:30, I didn't start till after 9:00. Then I moved a few files around for an hour or so, then sat and read my book for another 90 minutes or thereabouts before delivering the files and going for lunch. Which generally lasted 30 minutes longer than it should have... Repeat in the afternoon what I did in the morning and off home! Not the most interesting or satisfying job in the world, but at least I never slit my wrist at this one!

Then there was my first programming job. A word of warning - don't be tempted to blag your way onto a job if you don't know how to use the package they give you... Hair will fly out by the handful and you'll lose more sleep than is healthy. And if you don't believe me, ask JJ. He's just as guilty as I am! Thing is, I did such a good job that I was called back a year later to do another job for another department in the same company.

I've had the student-friendly bar jobs in the past, too. The first was at Rios in Bradford, one of the better small concert venues up here. Then I moved onto The Exchange in Bradford city centre and had a great time. Due to starting to work full time (I'll get to that shortly), I ended up taking more weekend off than Scottish and Newcastle seemed to like and I lost that, too, but at least I was given all my accrued holiday hours as a bonus pay packet. Around that time I was supposed to be getting a weekend day job, but when they asked the temping agency for my name, they said "Not him. We had him before and he stopped coming in." Of course I did. I went back to uni. It was a holiday job. And they bloody knew I was going back to university, too. So, due to some clerical screwup I missed out on another 30-something pounds a week.

I get to occassional call through to Firecheck where I used to work as a data entry person. I fixed their computers once and now they get me in for an afternoon every time their "proper" maintenance people can't fix anything. And I'm cheaper!

The world of full-time employment beckoned when I dropped out of uni and it only took me a couple of weeks to get a job in technical support for a company called EMIS in Horsforth, Leeds. They produce a big medical database program for doctors to use, and it includes all sorts of goodies, like a proggy to help diagnoses, a medically-based word processor, appointment keeper and all that. It's also based on MUMPS (or simply "M") which is somewhat out of date as well as still being DOS-based. Surprisingly for a market leader with a fair bit of competition, their setup is atrocious. Many of the staff there were fine people (Andy and Goose for all their foibles, Elliot who put up with all my griping for ages, the gorgeous lasses on frontline and Brendan Ormsby, ex-first division superstar (seriously!)), but the place itself was a disorganised shambles. I've never turned up for work in a morning before to find that I had a keyboard that didn't work, no mouse on my computer and that someone had nicked my chair and that there were no spares in the building. Jeez... Anyway, this job lasted up until the end of my probationary period when they "decided to let me go" - annoying as given two more days I was going to walk out. Due to the fact that I'd found a much better job for a much better company...

...named Sphinx CST. Based near Elland Road (home of Leeds United) in Leeds, they (we?) are network solution provider for business. Providing everything from desktops and laptops up to bloody huge IBM and NCR servers that go for around £1/4million a pop as well as all the cabling and comms stuff that goes between everything. My job is the rather poshly named one of Technical Account Manager (paper shuffler... *grin*) and it's basically my job to make sure that when someone places an order, it gets checked, ordered, built, shipped and installed with as few hiccups as possible. It's actually pretty good fun, and as a bonus the office has a full set of MCSE (that's a Microsoft qualification, folks) textbooks so I'm borrowing them to try and get myself up to exam-sitting standard. Nice people, nice place, nice job. I'm happy and as of the time of writing I've been there four months and have already begun my climb to taking over the company. I just haven't told them yet!


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