What do you do for Living?

[1mach1]

Commercial doors and entrances. Installed Friday.

 

[Bamaboots]

I wouldn't be a cop nowadays if they paid me millions.

There was a time in my life I would have done it for free. That passed a long time ago. #dont miss it.

 

[jamespowers]

There was a time in my life I would have done it for free. That passed a long time ago. #dont miss it.

It stinks on ice now. Everyone attacks them and they can't fight back. :doh:
Being a flatfoot stinks.

 

[pawineguy]

Currently working on opening a 24 hour Animal emergency clinic. Hope to be up and running by 4th of July weekend.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's a very worthy job. We could use one of those around here.

 

[Bamaboots]

It stinks on ice now. Everyone attacks them and they can't fight back. :doh:
Being a flatfoot stinks.

There you go with "flatfoot" again. I'll have you know I have high arches, perfectly suitable for cowboy boots.

I will say I got out at the right time.

 

[pawineguy]

That's a very worthy job. We could use one of those around here.

Very tough to find Vets that want to take the shifts required to operate 24/7. Luckily I have two partners who are ER docs and are also bringing some other docs who are used to ER shifts. It should fill a big need in our area,

We also share the philosophy that it's good business to make our services reasonably priced.

 

[sheeplady]

Very tough to find Vets that want to take the shifts required to operate 24/7. Luckily I have two partners who are ER docs and are also bringing some other docs who are used to ER shifts. It should fill a big need in our area,

We also share the philosophy that it's good business to make our services reasonably priced.

We only had to use the emergency vet once in ten years, but it was a life saver for our then geriatric cat. He lived another 3 or 4 years after that, dying at a ripe old age of 18. Now we are fortunate enough to live close enough to our state's vet school that we can use their 24-hour services.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've lost two cats because there's no vet around here on call after regular office hours, one to a heart attack and the other to kidney failure. When I win the lottery, a round-the-clock animal ER is the first thing I'm going to fund.

 

[gtdean48]

Currently working on opening a 24 hour Animal emergency clinic. Hope to be up and running by 4th of July weekend.

We have one near here that opens when other vets close & close when they open back up, plus open all weekends & holidays.
Have taken our dogs to them quite a few times...my regular vet actually funded & staffed it to get it up & running.
All the best!

 

[Fading Fast]

It stinks on ice now. Everyone attacks them and they can't fight back. :doh:
Being a flatfoot stinks.

So many jobs that used to be liked by the people in them aren't anymore. Teachers / doctors / policemen / bankers / traders all complain today, while growing up, these jobs had a lot of appeal for people.

Alert - if others want to go down the political route, that's their choice, I'm going to avoid the hot button issues around these - I am reasonably familiar with both the left's and right's arguments - and comment on one item that is less political and, IMHO, accounts for part of why all of these people now seem much less satisfied: documentation.

I have friends and / or relatives in all these roles and, yes, they all have their political arguments of who, why, what "ruined" their job, but one thing they all complain about is the amount of time they spend having to document what they do. My teacher friends tell me they are consumed with documentation, as do my doctor and banker friends. I have relative who is a sheriff (was a detective) and says his life is documentation (some call it "record keeping" or "reporting," but in the end, they are all talking about documentation).

I completely restructured my career so that I could focus on what I like doing and not have to spend half my day documenting what I do with the other half of my day. To do so, I had to become self employed, limit my business scope and take on much more personal financial and career risk - but it's been worth it. I was worn out from the daily reporting, the sign-offs, the attestations, the continuing education (which really was a company CYA to say they "educated" you to some risk), the weekly risk metric, etc., etc., etc.

Now the caveat - of course we need some documentation, but IMHO, we lost our sense of balance in the last two decades on this need.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A lot of that's simply a counterreaction to the fast-and-loose attitude toward documentation in the past. The doctor who killed my older brother in 1962 got away with gross negligence and likely avoided criminal charges simply by falsifying the paperwork, and there was no system of double and triple checking to catch up with him. Nobody cared, it was just some faceless twenty-three-year old woman and her lunkhead GI husband who could easily be conned into accepting a song-and-dance explanation for what happened. It wasn't until my mother actually worked in the hospital herself and got hold of some "hidden" files that she found out the truth, and by then the doctor himself was dead.

The inconveniences of today are penance for the gross sins of the past.

 

[Bamaboots]

Fading Fast, well said. I just think society lost is sense of proportion or balance? At the beginning of my career I was surprised at the simplicity of the reports and the narrative within, (saw drunk, arrested same) which was rediculous. Then towards the last ten years the time spent documenting increased to such an amount that the time to do the job that should actually generate documentation decreased by more than half. And simply put, it was to narrow the focus of liability in the event of lawsuits.

 

[Fading Fast]

A lot of that's simply a counterreaction to the fast-and-loose attitude toward documentation in the past. The doctor who killed my older brother in 1962 got away with gross negligence and likely avoided criminal charges simply by falsifying the paperwork, and there was no system of double and triple checking to catch up with him. Nobody cared, it was just some faceless twenty-three-year old woman and her lunkhead GI husband who could easily be conned into accepting a song-and-dance explanation for what happened. It wasn't until my mother actually worked in the hospital herself and got hold of some "hidden" files that she found out the truth, and by then the doctor himself was dead.

The inconveniences of today are penance for the gross sins of the past.

I am sorry for your brother.

Hopefully, we will tilt the balance a back toward less documentation, but I would not advocate for going back to where we were. I saw many bad things buried away in the '70s and '80s owing to fast-and-loose reporting, which, as you said, led to the overreaction we are living with today.

Each situation has its own facts and circumstances, but at a big picture level, if someone is spending 50% of their time documenting what they do the other 50% of the time, that at least needs to be looked at hard. When we talk about "the rot" of our society, culture, country, I know we are referring to a lot of things - many political, many that people will fight over - but requiring so much documentation that people are spending large amounts of their work day recording what they do in the time they have left, I see it as a sign of rot, as a sign that a society can't move forward in a healthy, robust fashion.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

To a lawyer two plus two equals a five-page document.

I have friends and / or relatives in all these roles and, yes, they all have their political arguments of who, why, what "ruined" their job, but one thing they all complain about is the amount of time they spend having to document what they do. My teacher friends tell me they are consumed with documentation, as do my doctor and banker friends. I have relative who is a sheriff (was a detective) and says his life is documentation (some call it "record keeping" or "reporting," but in the end, they are all talking about documentation).

And worse, much of that documentation will be read by very few, including its intended recipient(s).

 

[Fading Fast]

...And worse, much of that documentation will be read by very few, including its intended recipient(s).

Sad but true - I've seen people put huge effort into documents that are never, ever looked at, but they "must" be done. It is a balance, and there is a real need for records and documentation, but man have the scales tilted too far one way overall (but I'm sure there is still some under-documented role, business, issue, event out there).

 

[Bamaboots]

An example of paperwork:The beginning of my career an arrest involved writing a Uniform (state wide) Arrest Report with fill in the blank spaces and the incident surrounding the arrest contained in the narrative, back to work. At the end it involved the arrest report, Uniform Incident/Offense Report, if any force was necessary, a Force Continuum Report with five copies was written with one copy going to the Mayors office.

The officer also had to write up an arrest affidavit, swear to it before the Magistrate for an arrest warrant to be issued on an arrest that had already occurred. Maybe a bit redundant.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The case of our local "community chest" type charity organization is an example of underdocumentation in its rawest state. The president of the organization, a highly-respected local businessman and politcal figure, accepted donation checks and handled them himself. The only documentation was thru a bookkeeping firm run by his wife.

Last fall it was revealed that this paragon of business virtue had embezzeled nearly four million dollars in donor funds over the seventeen years he served as organization president. An audit of what books existed, coupled with a federal audit of all of the businessman's bank accounts has since documented that he stole nearly five million dollars out of the pockets, not just of donors, but of the needy members of the community who would have benefited from the charity's work.

Five. Million. Dollars.

He lived quite well on this money, buying himself a lavish home in the best part of one of the swankiest towns on the coast, along with a lakeside camp for the summer and a mountain ski retreat for the winter. He also contributed many thousands of dollars of this stolen money to political campaigns of his choice, ensuring that all the best people would look the other way, because after all, he was a dignfied holder of the Townsperson of the Year award handed out by the Chamber of Commerce. Yes indeed.

The charity has learned its lesson the hard way, and rigorous multi-layered documentation of all donations is now in place. The Townsperson of the Year, meanwhile, has pleaded guilty to federal charges of bank and tax fraud, and will hopefully be spending the rest of his life -- he's in his 80s -- in the custody of Uncle Sam, who will ensure that every worthless breath he takes is well and thoroughly documented, I'm sure.

 

[Fading Fast]

The case of our local "community chest" type charity organization is an example of underdocumentation in its rawest state. The president of the organization, a highly-respected local businessman and politcal figure, accepted donation checks and handled them himself. The only documentation was thru a bookkeeping firm run by his wife.

Last fall it was revealed that this paragon of business virtue had embezzeled nearly four million dollars in donor funds over the seventeen years he served as organization president. An audit of what books existed, coupled with a federal audit of all of the businessman's bank accounts has since documented that he stole nearly five million dollars out of the pockets, not just of donors, but of the needy members of the community who would have benefited from the charity's work.

Five. Million. Dollars.

He lived quite well on this money, buying himself a lavish home in the best part of one of the swankiest towns on the coast, along with a lakeside camp for the summer and a mountain ski retreat for the winter. He also contributed many thousands of dollars of this stolen money to political campaigns of his choice, ensuring that all the best people would look the other way, because after all, he was a dignfied holder of the Townsperson of the Year award handed out by the Chamber of Commerce. Yes indeed.

The charity has learned its lesson the hard way, and rigorous multi-layered documentation of all donations is now in place. The Townsperson of the Year, meanwhile, has pleaded guilty to federal charges of bank and tax fraud, and will hopefully be spending the rest of his life -- he's in his 80s -- in the custody of Uncle Sam, who will ensure that every worthless breath he takes is well and thoroughly documented, I'm sure.

There has got to be a deeper part of hell for people who steal from charities for any reason, but especially to fund a high-end lifestyle. They will reside, hopefully, next to the people who sell watered-downed cancer drugs to make money.

Another amazing example is Bernie Madoff. His documentation was both light and fraudulent in an industry which has heavy documentation requirements and multiple regulators looking at it all the time. And he stole (estimated) - to mimic you: Nine. Billion. Dollars.

How Madoff got away with it was reputation (he had been a big name at, I think the NASDAQ) and the regulators just couldn't accept that he was corrupt (even though Barron's, a well-respected industry periodical, published a piece averring that he was running a Ponzi scheme years before he was caught) and he used a small, no-name accounting firm (that he basically controlled).

That said, several firms had protected their clients from Madoff because Madoff's firm failed those firms' due diligence process - an example of documentation working. It's a balance and, clearly, your town's Community Chest President and Madoff found the low / no document interstices (those people always will).

Edit add: I kid you not, after posting the above, I just saw this headline:

Federal regulators accused four cancer charities Tuesday of spending more than $187 million in donations not to help patients, but on cars, luxury cruises and trips, jet ski outings, sport and concert tickets, dating site memberships and college tuition for family and friends.

 

[Bamaboots]

Helluva story Lizzie and a great example of underdoucumentation and lack of oversight. In our city governments treasury office we had a clerk who was responsible for monies collected daily at the city/county landfill. A fair amount of cash was processed because a lot of the small businesses and individuals using the landfill paid in cash and received a receipt for payment. This clerk was responsible for this over about a ten year period. NO audits were done on this account during this period of time. When one was finally done a shortfall of about $250,000 was discovered.

Long story short, the clerk pled guilty and received probation and allowed to make restitution over a 20 year period. Her boss, the city treasurer, still working there last I checked.