The majority of my work experience is retail (gas station, fast food), and it is not for me. I'm too stressed and drained by having a wide variety of responsibilities I need to split my focus between, especially when several of them involve conversations with customers, or coordinating with coworkers who are (due to the bad responsibility/compensation ratio) not pulling their own weight. Especially since you're not supposed to complain about each other, it makes you Not A Positive Team Player. Nevermind that anybody who watched for 15 minutes could see where the breakdowns in efficiency begin. And especially not somewhere without formal employee performance reviews, or any kind of accountability or feedback on how to improve, and ESPECIALLY not somewhere that supposedly has those things, but the people who do it are all Talk Things Up management inetead of social engineers who know how to make things WORK. Ugh. So I'd like to get into something that's less about smiling and making words at people, and more about making things work. The vocational specialist at the place I go for therapy advised me to find my Holland code, to get a starting sense of occupations suited to my temperament/aptitudes. I did, and got a result of RAC. Which is supposed to mean: "Realistic", aka active physical jobs, like outdoor stuff or machinery stuff. Working with tools. "Artistic", aka imaginative, creative sorts of jobs about expressing things. "Conventional", aka consistent, detail- and data-oriented jobs with clear rules and epectations. Looking at different sites with those results, I see a lot of things like laying tile and operating machines. Not sure how I would do longterm, but it's at least worth trying out. I'm scared to start looking into these things. I've been a fluffy artsy sort for a long time. I don't know the names of most tools, and I am very female looking. I guess the advice I'm looking for is, where might you suggest I start? Is there another good way of figuring out what sorts of jobs I would do well in? Any thoughts on how to pick up the lingo of the sorts of jobs I'm looking at?
We probably have similar skills and ideas about what we want (and fucking yes watching my coworkers being useless nearly puts me out of commission I totally get why you're frustrated!!) And I think what would work well for me is working in an office. I can't sit the whole time or my legs get weird but if I'm able to do certain tasks (pass information along, print papers, etc) while standing that personally would work for me. Also, working in a print shop sounds fun. There's the operating of machinery, there's some physical labor, and there's room for creativity. Does that sound like the sort of thing that would interest you?
Like screen printing? Yeah it does! I know my grandad did that sort of thing when I was tiny, but unfortunately I wasn't interested at the time.
I doubt it's too late! I'm not sure what the requisite skills are (like if you need any certification or anything) but it's worth Googling, I'm sure!
