What would be the most BORING industry you could imagine working in?

[MrsMerryHenry]

In my efforts to get my freelance career off the ground I am doing a writing project and am searching for ideas.

Your suggestions much appreciated!

mintyy, I have to admit I have always chosen my employers and roles carefully, but I suppose those jobs must exist.

The higher skilled and experienced you are, the better placed you are to angle for the interesting and challenging jobs with a high degree of strategic and intellectual input. Any industry, if you approach it from that level, would hold my attention, if only to figure out how it fits together and what makes it work well.

When I was working in my teens in a supermarket as a sales promoter (pretty boring, I would say), I listened in the aisles to the suppliers negotiating shelf space with the store manager. Now that was interesting to me - I never knew how cut throat it was to get shelf space. This would just be one tiny piece in the puzzle as to how a supermarket functions.

Don't know why you seem determined to disagree with me . I've said which industries I would not choose to work in because I would find them boring and I've said that I think it is possible to be bored by one's work even if one is at a so-called high level.

But you appear to want to talk me out of my thoughts. Sorry but you can't dissuade me from my opinions .

Mintyy I have to agree with you. Financial services are the pits - making money from money, not producing anything of any value, seems utterly pointless to me. Being in charge of some business where you had to focus on that, and motivate other people to focus on it would be awful. I know, I used to work in FS, although thankfully not insurance or pensions which got my vote earlier on. I worked in leasing which was bad enough but I was financing some interesting things which relieved the tedium a touch.

I can also see the attraction of a job where you get to think your own thoughts and you actually produce something, be it clean floors or a box of toothpaste.

I'd also like to be my own boss - that would be the ultimate really.

Mikestand

YES!!! A carpet store would be deathly!! Why do they have to be sooo quiet??? And they look at you when you walk through the door with such an air of hopeful expectancy.

Proofreading/editing is not boring for pedants. I have learnt many interesting things through proof-reading and even got a free massage when I proof-read a thesis about aruyvedic medicine.

I was on a train the other day with a man whose job was to drive round different residential areas to check that the junk mail had been correctly delivered one in each letterbox and not just dumped in a bin or left in a pile of the entrance of an apartment building.

I hate the copious amounts of junk mail we get here in France (something from 5 supermarkets every week!) I can't imagine having to take its correct delivery seriously.

DH always feels sorry for the toll booth people too.

Well I work in IT for the NHS, have worked in IT for private companies and don't agree it's the same wherever you go. I actually find it more satisfying and a hell of a lot more interesting when I'm working on stuff to benefit patients rather than make money or churn out aluminium.

and I'd love to do proofreading / editing. Haven't got the concentration span though and would only want to proofread interesting stuff - which I think would be a bit limiting

Anything to do with money-banking-pensions-mortgages-stock market.

Financial Services - definitely agree.
I once worked for an extremely well-known Japanese car manufacturer in the Financial Services sector as an Investor Relations Assistant.
I have no idea to this day what it meant or what I was supposed to do each day.

Come to think of it car manufacturing as an industry strikes me as pretty dull too.

Anyone seen the film Office Space??

shop work - worked in M&S as a student and for a short while post uni - HATED it.....(there is no where to hide )

For me it would be anything that does not require thinking about - I need to think so some of the things suggested here as 'boring' I actually like the sound of... I think for some people boring = dull and dry sounding where as for me boring = absolutely no mental input required...

Love the story about the junk mail delivery though - is that for real?

I was in Scotland last week, and we went over the Loch Laggan Swing bridge. There was a bloke sat in the little control booth.

Okay, so the scenery is pretty spectacular, but when you are sat there day in day out, you've got to become immune to it. And it is fairly remote. So what does he get to do to pass the time? The Caledonian Canal isn't THAT busy!

"Ooh a boat, bridge move out"
"Boat gone through, bridge move back".

And that's his job.

I have a theory he has a laptop and is writing a series of best selling novels about a swing bridge operator who murders passing motorists in a series of very inventive ways...

Yes I have SPB, is that the one with the guy who was Phoebe's boyfriend in Friends? It was hilarious.

Mintyy, aren't we agreeing, just talking about different facets of the same coin? Of course it is possible to be bored by jobs at a high level, but surely there is so much more control, strategy and intellectual input at high level jobs (not just high responsibility), whatever the industry, that you can make an otherwise boring job interesting. In other words, for a high level job, to a greater extent than a grunt job, you reap what you sow.

I am not trying to convince you out of your views. Just stating my view.

My sisters and I always felt dry cleaning would be a particular nadir.

"Curious you say that. Have you held an executive or management-level position that destroyed your soul?"

My DP has just "lost" his HR Director, who is having mid-life crisis and has decided the business world is not for her. She has been in her quite senior job for about 10 years and obviously feels that despite the responsibilities and intellectual control she has, her soul has been destroyed (she is moving to the not-for-profit sector).

ironing for a living - I can't bring myself to iron my own clothes but I do get some satisfaction seeing the ironed clothes and empty basket - I can't imagine doing it without those rewards!
Welcome back BT - was wondering where you were!

I wonder what people understand of industries such as financial services or pensions? I suppose if you associate it with the retail customer end of things, particularly if you don't particularly enjoy managing investments or your pension portfolio to begin with, it can seem dull.

Financial services or pension industry is so wide, so many facets to it and skills required, I don't know where to start. I don't know much about pensions.

At first blush, snooze, but thinking deeper, I imagine there are people who work on the sales and marketing side, who structure the pension fund, who work on the tax and regulatory side, who advise companies on suitable pension schemes (and closing down final salary schemes), who value companies' pension liabilities, who advise individuals on which pensions to invest in and how to cash out pensions on retirement.

Each area will have its complexity and peculiarities, lots to sink one's intellectual teeth in. But that is just me.

I have worked on a the shop floor in a factory twice - in a knicker factory (I was overlocking the seams for M&S knickers mostly but sometimes - oh deepest joy! - I got to go on the machine which sewed those little bows onto the front of knickers!

Imagine doing that for 8 hours a day.

The working environment was vile as well - imagine a cross between Mike Baldwin's factory in Corrie (when Ivy Tilsley worked there) and the laundry room in Prisoner Cell Block H!

I was pregnant and skint, though, so I was glad to have the job at the time. But now I think myself very lucky to have the kind of job where I can wear nice suits, have a nice desk and people don't have to shout to one another to be heard over the clattering noise of the sewing machines.

Here in France it is common for students to do what is called a stage ouvrier - a work placement on the shop floor, that last for a couple of months.

It makes them realise how lucky they are!

Cleaning/ironing I can't do my own, hate doing it and couldn't clean up after others.

I had some dire summer jobs as a student, packing slimfast was OK as they rotated you round the line, so you got to put the scoop in, then the top on then turn the cans round then put them in boxes. I was still awful and very slow, I used to keep having to say "Stop the line!" when the cans were whizzing past me.
I got told off for bleeding on the tiles when packing floor tiles. They were bloody sharp though.

Anna, the shopfloor work placement sounds like a good strategy.

When I was a student, I did a holiday attachment in training department of a bank - the joy of punching holes and slotting seminar notes into hundreds of folders. I was far more interested in observing the manager's role then. Same industry/department, but the job is so different depending on which level you go in at.

As for your dh's ex-HR director, a lot of not-for-profit organisations are in fact very professionally run by committed individuals such as her with highly transferable skills. I am sure she will find her feet and motivation again. My dh deals with the commercial arm of various charitable-type organisations (oxymoron eh?) and they would give you a run for your money!

bus driver

doing the same route day in day out

Yes BlackDuck, the junk mail story is for real. His car broke down towards the end of the day and he had to get the train home so I got to listen to him on his mobile filing his reports to head office.

Imagine 15 minutes of:
"rue Victor Hugo, 2 anomalies, house number 6, stuffed between lamppost and letterbox, house number 29, apartments 1, 2, 3 and 4 all stuffed into letterbox for apartment number 1.
rue de la mer, 6 anomalies ......"

He then told me how relieved he was had finished his rounds before his car broke down so that he could do his job properly. He really seemed to care that the junk mail got delivered correctly!

I am learning a lot about factory work here. Won't take M&S knickers for granted any more.