How many of us in here have a job that absolutely does not match our job description ?

[Swampbaby985]

Like the title says, how many of us in here have a job title that does not match our job description? I'll go first. Our job description is as follows: To provide the stocking and clerical skills necessary to maintain proper inventory levels and stock records for a stores unit.

It's pretty vague and honestly it's not even close to what we do.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

The "other miscellaneous duties when necessary" clause in my job description means I'm always doing my job.

 

[Gutwrench]

My job title is Commander Western Hemisphere so I pretty much call the shots.

 

[chown33]

My job title is Commander Western Hemisphere so I pretty much call the shots.

Do you use 'sudo' to get the really difficult problems solved?

 

[Gutwrench]

Do you use 'sudo' to get the really difficult problems solved?

If it’s difficult, I delegate.

 

[AngerDanger]

Do you use 'sudo' to get the really difficult problems solved?

Unix is secretly just a four decade long game of Simon Says.

 

[Mousse]

Unix is secretly just a four decade long game of Simon Says.

I've been using the crippled version called Eunuchs.

 

[AngerDanger]

I've been using the crippled version called Eunuchs.

An OS free of kernel desires…

 

[decafjava]

*Slow clap*

Anyway, my job description is pretty much accurate now.

 

[Swampbaby985]

My description makes it seem like I do clerical type of work when that's not the case. I guess for security they don't want to say what the actual job is. We've had potential candidates come in for an interview, it's customary before an interview that they're given a tour of the facility, several of them have stopped you made tour and said no thanks this isn't the type of job I thought I was interviewing for and walked out.

 

[Apple fanboy]

I get to rewrite my job description each year at my annual appraisal.
But you get all manor of things to do. One of the reasons I like the job.
Or you see that something needs doing and there is no one capable to delegate to, you end up doing it yourself.

 

[LizKat]

As I advanced my skill sets, the job and the title had a far better match-up than when I was hired on as someone's "administrative assistant", even if the unpaid hours and a few wrangles over compensated time off did escalate later on.

I remember once finally noting in exasperation to the IT group senior VP that if I supported remote constructions of beta sites for LA working late and NY starting early, then I was likely to have a whole three hours in which to sleep and attend to a life of my own. I chose 10am on a Thursday for that complaint -- after he'd waked me at 2am to ask me to build something by 6 for a guy in NY. I had only downed tools at midnight NY time, working for LA.

Even in tech work though and when I was not telecommuting, there were often some assumptions made about actual jobs v job titles in common areas like the remote printer room, photocopy room and the employee's pantry... in the latter space on a lot of job sites there was fairly often a sign that ran to "Clean up after yourself, I am not your mother."

It never said "...your father"... so I figured some other female employee eventually tired of sweeping up crumbs and spilt sugar or making the fresh pot of coffee instead of picking up the one with two-hour-old dregs, sighing, and walking back out.

Once in a great while after I'd trained myself to ignore the state of the pantry, I too would pivot and depart the room without coffee on spotting the dread overheated dregs situation. But usually my caffeine jones would win out and I'd do the honors.

Still I would not clean the countertops. After all I came from a proud family of mostly boys I'd had to learn to boss around regarding cleaning up after themselves, so I wasn't having it at work either. At work I figured it wasn't even my job to chide the pantry abusers: a paycheck and a job description made me arrogant in a hurry.

The executive assistant to the guy in the corner office periodically made a fresh copy of the "Clean up!" sign with new and interesting decorations on it, eye-grabbing colors, something that reminded us anew there was no maid service in that pantry. She was sorta "our mother" but only in the sense of handing out chores once again when it became clear we had all reverted to shrugging and figuring someone else started the mess...

 

[bunnspecial]

I wouln't say "absolutely" doesn't reflect, but my current JDF(job description form) puts way too much weight on things that I spend little time on, and underplays what I actually spend most of my time on(due to demands of the job/what's actually needed). Our JDFs list tasks along with a percentage of time and and a ranking from 1-5 on how "critical" that duty is.

Unfortunately, what I'm given at 20% time and a "4" in importance is really more like 50% and realistically is a 5 because I'm the only one that can do it. Unfortunately, this is detrimental to both my job title and my pay because that(rather large) task requires a much, much, much higher level of theoretical and practical knowledge to actually do-i.e. I've trained to cross-train someone else in the department to do some of what I do, but I really CAN'T because he doesn't have the ~10 years of education(between undergrad and graduate school) in chemistry to actually UNDERSTAND what's happening inside-I can train him to fix specific things and he can do it at least as well as I can(probably better in some cases) but recognizing that there's even a problem in the first place is beyond him(i.e. he can recognize an "it doesn't turn on" but not look at a tune report from a mass spectrometer and say "why did my electron multiplier voltage jump 200 volts in the past week and why is the 502 peak really noisy?". That's not to mention the knowledge in how to set up and operate the things in the first place).

By contrast, the stuff that my JDF DOES more heavily weight can be done by a few other people, and often very easily with my notes and other things like spreadsheets I've put together that do a lot of calculations for me.

There's also the fact that I'm currently a (relatively highly paid, but not high enough) hourly employee, and often times 37.5 hours or even 40 hours a week isn't enough to get everything I need to done(especially adding in times where I'm currently required to basically be tethered to my desk as a "babysitter"-something in my JDF-which is fundamentally incompatible with the fact that I need to be other places in the building working on other things). What that means that I end up doing working overtime and either catching flack because I report it, or more often working unreported("off the clock) overtime. Frankly, that just makes my life easier since I don't want to deal with the management flack from working overtime(and the even more time it requires to justify it) or flack from others for not getting my work done.

At my supervisors encouragement, I re-wrote my JDF last fall both to more accurately reflect what I do, add in tasks I'm doing that aren't currently covered by it, and also hopefully get a raise and a switch to being salaried. It's currently caught up in about the 7th level of the 9 levels of hell known as university beauracracy, and I'm afraid that when it reaches the final one(compensation) it won't get approved...but at least I tried.