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What part of your job do you enjoy least?

StoneRoad said:
I've got to have another bite at this ...

I absolutely detest the "chasing up payments" ie invoice follow-up.
I do my very best to pay suppliers as soon as I can [our present record is less than five minutes from receiving a pro-forma !].
So, I find it highly annoying & frustrating in the extreme that some customers delay paying for spurious reasons, or tell porkies as to why they can't part with the "bakeesh".
Recently, because of a missing payment, I was within 24 hours of telling my team to "down tools" for one job !
To the point I sometimes wish the grant-awarding body would pay me directly, in bulk [as per the 50%,40%,10% formula] ...
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Had a customer recently tell me that they would like to receive one invoice every 6 months. Fine, just buy one thing every six months and job's good. But no, he wants to buy shit every week but only pay for it every six months. Never mind that I have to pay my suppliers every 14 days, one minute late and we lose our IATA licence. I wonder if he has the same arrangement with Tesco, the six monthly billing bullshit?
 
The part I hate most is having to tell people how to do their jobs.

I'm not a micro-manager, nor am I demanding. Generally if I ask for something, you'll get a gentle reminder in 3 to 5 days. The problem, this being Academia, is that there are a lot of people in the organisation who simply can't do what I've asked. Even though it's their job. So once the second reminder is truly well and gone, I need to explain step-by-step how they can do what I've asked for. And then it gets done. Sometimes.

I'm a techie, goddamnit. I don't want to spend my time harassing people, I just want to get my work done! Sadly, sometimes it depends on other people getting their work done too, and so here we are. A lot of times I think "Just give me the access and I'll do it", but then it would become my job. And they'd be paid for bugger all.
 
Admin, from writing contracts and quotes to writing invoices. I struggle most with the latter and pay an accountant to do our tax returns, because otherwise I make stupid mistakes. I’ve automated things as much as I can, I have a quoting template and a terms and conditions template and a stack of stock letters in dropbox paper. The other thing I really hate which I’m not doing at the moment is travelling to trade shows abroad. I enjoy being in a different city and the actual shows and I like being alone, but I hate packing and airports and find the whole thing exhausting, I don’t do red-eye flights anymore or travel out to the show the same day I plan to attend, I also get assistance and use the quiet lounge if there is one, but I also don’t know if I can be arsed to go back to it. Or ever fly again, but the time I tried the train it was worse, the journey wrecked me. All my gripes are because I’ve got ADHD and it makes these things more difficult.
 
1. The bullshit-ification of it
2. The refusal of everyone in the industry to act with any sort of professionalism, meaning we can't salvage the bullshit bits into something useful and in fact see them balloon well beyond what they ought to
3. The entitlement to my attention after hours
4. Inability to do the required deep work due to the above
 
Monday morning classes with the students who were the last to sign up for their course.
Always the students from the same few department, and the least academically motivated.
 
Anything that requires me to interact with DfE funding manuals or regulations. Tedious, complex, opaque and will fuck you up if you get it wrong :rolleyes:
 
I have a new job, so am very much still acclamating to the new work environment. The only thing I am not thrilled about is being allocated a desk on the other side of a meeting room partition wall when the man with the loud voice uses the meeting room.
 
The extra, not-really-part-of-my-job stuff that you're expected to do to show how you want to contribute to the general betterment of the business while progressing within your own career. Just let me do the stuff in my job description.
 
I like the early starts because it means I get to go home earlier. But there is a flip side which is that I can't really speak to people till after 9 so before that I have to do other admin type work and that can be dull dull dull such that I sometimes nod off in the middle of it.

I could use that time for the creative side of my role but I am not awake enough at those times in the morning.

Of course it is not lost on me that a proper breakfast could solve many issues, but I am not good at rising that early to get breakfast AND make it to work on time for 7.30.
 
weltweit said:
I like the early starts because it means I get to go home earlier. But there is a flip side which is that I can't really speak to people till after 9 so before that I have to do other admin type work and that can be dull dull dull such that I sometimes nod off in the middle of it.

I could use that time for the creative side of my role but I am not awake enough at those times in the morning.

Of course it is not lost on me that a proper breakfast could solve many issues, but I am not good at rising that early to get breakfast AND make it to work on time for 7.30.
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It's just calibrating body clock. I start early so I go to bed early. I'm always tempted to stay up late as I'm that way inclined but going to bed early makes me feel great at bastard o clock.
 
I've ended up in a management position and I hate running meetings. I don't mind some aspects of 121 "management" where it's more mentoring and just trying to pass on some knowledge of aspects of the job I'm good at but tend to hate being the one who has to run things and make stuff happen. Probably just a shit manager. I'd rather do the fun parts of the job the junior people do and with no stress. Standard career progression bollocks.
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
Had a customer recently tell me that they would like to receive one invoice every 6 months. Fine, just buy one thing every six months and job's good. But no, he wants to buy shit every week but only pay for it every six months. Never mind that I have to pay my suppliers every 14 days, one minute late and we lose our IATA licence. I wonder if he has the same arrangement with Tesco, the six monthly billing bullshit?
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I once had a customer ask if they paid us on 5 or 10 day terms, could they get a 5% discount. Turns out we had enough working capital so we declined.
 
Magnus McGinty said:
It's definitely mostly the educated class here. Not that it always leads to management roles.
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Well, I have an ok degree from a Russell Uni. My job didn’t demand a degree when I got it, but it does now. Which I think is a mistake, because we have had great people on my team who didn’t have degrees.

That can be read as conflating “educated” with having a degree, which I also think is wrong-headed.

I’d kind of assumed you have a degree or higher qualification, what with the engineering skills.
 
8ball said:
Well, I have an ok degree from a Russell Uni. My job didn’t demand a degree when I got it, but it does now. Which I think is a mistake, because we have had great people on my team who didn’t have degrees.

That can be read as conflating “educated” with having a degree, which I also think is wrong-headed.
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I have no degree. But never tried for one either tbh.
 
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