Friday Five

1. What is your current occupation? Is this what you chose to be doing at this point in your life? Why or why not?
I am the supervisor of a call center (basically, that's switchboard, reception, and answering general questions) for a trade association. It's about the 5th major job I've held at this organization over the past 23 years. I didn't so much choose any of this as drift into it. When I started here, in college, it was supposed to be until the Chicago Board of Education offered the NTE in my category (English), so I could get a full-time teaching job. Unfortunately, by the time they did that, it was like 5 years later and I no longer felt like going that route, despite having planned, for the first 22 years of my life, to be a teacher.

I do enjoy my problem-solving role here, and I like the people I work with. I am not, however, crazy about our membership, nor am I happy with the inertia that keeps me here. But with no particular skills beyond spelling and typing, any move would mean a cut in pay, and I already work two jobs to support my "habits."

2. If time/talent/money were no object, what would your dream occupation be?
A professional photographer, and occasional writer.

3. What did/do your parents do for a living? Has this had any influence on your career choices?
My father was trained as a plumber and pipefitter, and while that was blue collar, we didn't want for the necessities when I was growing up. My mother took occasional factory work when I was small, then began working full-time in human resources when she was divorced. She recently retired from her job as crowd control at Wrigley Field.

My parents always told me to go for whatever I wanted. Despite that, I chose a traditional "woman's career" and ended up an a different traditional "woman's job."

4. Have you ever had to choose between having a career and having a family?
No, and at my age, neither of them (family or career) is likely to happen.

5. In your opinion, what is the easiest job in the world? What is the hardest? Why?
Lots of jobs are easy--no way to tell from the outside what's easy, and often that depends on the individual's temperament. I think being a policeman is the hardest job--not only is it demanding both mentally and physically, but the public is very ambivalent about it. At least if you're a firefighter, you're almost always the good guy.