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!

[BonsoirAnna]

Oh bus driver is OK! DD and I know all the bus drivers on our favourite route - I hailed one down in the road the other day (we were too far from the bus stop to get there in time) and got personal service! The bus drivers on our route know all the regulars and are very chatty when there aren't any other passengers around.

[Othersideofthechannel]

Agree with whoever who said that boring jobs that serve a purpose so much more bearable than boring jobs with no purpose.

My current job is pretty dull (it has been mentioned on this thread) but at least twice a week I get the feeling I have really helped someone so that (and the hours) make it bearable.

[blueshoes]

Pennybubbly: "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."

It sounds confusing but I might hazard a guess.

This Japanese car manufacturer is publicly listed on a stock exchange and therefore has lots of people/companies who hold its shares ie 'investors'. These investors, particularly the substantial ones, will have questions about how the company is run, its vision, forecasts or things they hear about the company in the market. So your job would be to liaise between the investors and the people that run this company to provide answers to their questions, smooth their ruffled feathers and basically keep them sweet so they continue to hold shares in the company or buy more.

Last thing the car manufacturer wants is for investors to sell their shares in the company, resulting in a collapse in the share price.

[GetOrfMoiLand]

I would love to be a bus driver. It is one of my fantasy jobs for when I get sick of climbing up the slippery pole and want just a normal job.

I still work in manufacturing (albeit not on the shop floor anymore) and I love going into the machine shop. I am very happy to work in manufacturing in the UK (a dying industry here it seems) and I like that fact that what I do contributes to something actuallu getting 'made'. That is why I would hate to work in financial services, it seems so nebulous and abstract an industry.

But I am glad that the company I work for at the moment makes aeroplanes as opposed to crappy knickers!

[BikeRunSki]

I am a Civil Engineer. I organise boreholes. My job is both boring and interesting at the same time.

[pointydog]

lol @ organising boreholes. I reckon a lot of people do that at work

[blueshoes]

BikeRun, smiling at boreholes too. What do borehole engineers feel about the movie Armaggedon?

Agree that every job has its interesting and boring bits. A lot of times, you have to work through the boring bits to get to the interesting ones.

[Portofino]

I visited a waste management site once and didn't envy the poor sods who had to sort the recycled rubbish. The other crappiest job I've seen people do is making pallets with a electric nail gun. They all had to wear headphones as it was so noisy, so no opportunity to chat, and RSI was a common outcome apparently.

[UnquietDad]

The old version of the Yellow Pages used to say "BORING: SEE CIVIL ENGINEERS." (True - not a joke!)

[PuppyMonkey]

Working in the indoor play area industry.

[UnquietDad]

I don't know, I imagine designing indoor play centres must actually be quite interesting..... But being staff who work there must be awful. They always look as if they hate children.

[PuppyMonkey]

They do, don't they? At the ones near me, they are alwasy run by really sour looking men who look likle they should be in the building trade.

[BonsoirAnna]

We know people who make and manage playground equipment, and it's a fabulous industry! Super creative.

[UnquietDad]

One of DW's friends informed a member of staff at a playcentre that a boy had just hit her daughter in the face, and that the mother, when informed of this, said "Shut your fucking trap or you'll get the same."

The staff member just shrugged and said "We get all sorts in here."

[TigerFeet]

I work in packaging. It has it's moments I work for a manufacturer and have spent time on the shop floor putting product into boxes. After an hour I wanted to claw my eyes out due to boredom.

Best job I ever had was as a bus conductor, but it was very poorly paid.

[OnceWasSquiffy]

In terms of professions, I can imagine being a dentist or an optician could break your soul after a dozen years or so

In terms of industry, I reckon waste disposal and retail and hotels probably have only a tiny % of really great jobs, and a huge wash of crap jobs.

From personal experience I reckon that washing dishes in hot hotel basement for hours on end, 'dressing' Sindy dolls and inserting them into boxes, and washing cockles and mussles for hours before then wandering round a windswept caravan park trying to sell the buggers whilst looking like orphan annie and stinking of dirty seawater all probably qualify as boring...

[UnquietDad]

After years as a dentist you'd be looking a bit down in the mouth.

[BonsoirAnna]

I know both a children's ophthalmologist and an orthodontist who have completely industrialised their processes - the orthodontist has three chairs so that he can work on three patients simultaneously, and the ophthalmologist takes eight patients appointments per hour, on the hour, and rotates them in and out of the waiting room as she does different tests!

I suppose that after a while, improving productivity and profitability become the main goals of many even highly-skilled professionals.

[Swedes]

When I was a young thing, I used to work during the summers for a toy importer and distributor. It got to know a lot about imports and exports and retail. I knew every buyer of all the big stores in London and I absolutely loved it.

The owner (now retired but one of his sons runs the business) said I was the best member of staff he'd ever had. Oh and the Reject Shop (does anyone remember them?) who were one of our main clients offered me a job as a buyer. So after that experience I always think retail must be quite interesting and varied but it probably isn't.

[Swedes]

I don't understand anyone who wants to become a dentist. DS1 wants to do medicine and the dentistry applicants have to have pretty much the same educational profile as a medicine applicant. He thinks they are entirely motivated by money. Dentists earn more than doctors, especially lately as dentistry has become so cosmetic.

[BonsoirAnna]

Dentistry can be a pretty low-stress job for reasonable income - I think that is it's attraction.

DP's first cousin and her DH are both dentists. Both work part-time! And have a -crashingly dull very easy life, while being able to finance their DD's university studies in the US etc.

[BonsoirAnna]

its

[NorbertDentressangle]

re: dentistry being "low stress" -I thought dentists had a much higher than level of suicides than other professions ? (I may well be wrong on that though)

As for boring industries, for me it would have to be finance...

[lovechoc]

any job that doesn't directly involve working with people - computers for me would be a no-go! I like the interaction of others when working, especially if I'm being paid for it!

[Pinner35]

I used to have a boyfriend whose job was putting the jam into doughnuts. We didn't last long.....