What is the Hardest Part of Your Job?

There are a lot of assumptions about different jobs out there. Some might be true but just as many assumptions are wrong. One assumption that I have heard a lot about the types of jobs I have held is that they are easy in one way or another. I used to work in retail part-time as I was getting my BA. You can't imagine how many people thought that that job was easy (they conveniently forgot what retail customers are like apparently). But, no matter the job, there are bound to be easy and hard parts. What I'm interested in are the hard parts. What are the parts of your job that are really demanding of you for one reason or another?

I am working as a mental health therapist. I'm pretty new at this job so I'm still learning about all of the peaks and valleys of this work. But one of the hardest things that I've come across is trying to help people that I don't like. My job demands that I do all that I can to help my clients reach their goals. This means that I need to try to treat them with respect, honor their world-view, and work from their perspective. This is easy when the person you are working with is someone you get along with. Someone that you either want to see get better (like the victim of a trauma) or someone you could have seen yourself being friends with prior to being their therapist. It's a lot harder to work with people you don't like. Perpetrators of violence (physical and sexual), angry clients who dislike people who don't think as they do, aggressive clients who wish others, including the therapist, harm. These are the people that I find it difficult to work with. They have been the hardest part of my job so far.

Mainly the bureaucratic stuff. I don't have many problems with all the other aspects of ruling an entire celestial body.

smiling

Getting out of bed in the morning.

Other than that, expectations and unrealistic objectives. I am slightly annoyed with work at the moment as they just delayed our pay rise by 4 months to achieve their profit objectives. Sure, they need the money more than me.

I work at Spencer's. The hardest part of my job is finding a spot on the sales floor all those penis extensions.

I'm animating stuff right now. The hardest part, apart from just grinding through it, is when I'm given the very simple task of "Just make it funny".
 
One of the reasons I've been hired is that everything I've done up to now has been comedy stuff, so now every assignment I get is something like "make a trailer that shows this game. It can be anything, just make it funny". Coming up with something that's funny out of the blue, when you're like me and HATE things that don't hit the mark, can be a real pain in the arse, and a really blind shot in the dark. 
I'm not gonna settle for something that's webcomic-funny or internet-funny, I want something that's real-life good, but sometimes that's just not happening.

Hardest part of my job is having steady work. I work freelance on a per project basis usually, so I usually only work for a good 3 months at a time and look for a new gig after which can take a month or two. The vacations are nice however having to save money for a bit to ensure I can live for a month without work is annoying. I work in TV/Film as an Assistant Editor.

Graphic Designer, Hardest part of my job is people know what they want but cant do it themselves so they come in and tell me how to do my job for an hour. That or my boss just stands over my sholder and tells me exactly how to design. "double click" "select it all at once" "illustrator sucks, sign wizard is so much better"

Not having any money due to unemployment.

It wasn't hard, but that time I had to wire pumps in a sewage ejection pit kind of sucked.  At least there was a grace period between hearing the flush and... receiving the output(?).

@Dagbiker said:

Graphic Designer, Hardest part of my job is people know what they want but cant do it themselves so they come in and tell me how to do my job for an hour. That or my boss just stands over my sholder and tells me exactly how to design. "double click" "select it all at once" "illustrator sucks, sign wizard is so much better"

Its always rad finding other designers on here. You have a portfolio I could check out?

I don't have a full time gig doing design yet, so I've been freelancing as much as I can. The hardest part about that is finding clients/having clients find me.

@Spoonman671 said:

It wasn't hard, but that time I had to wire pumps in a sewage ejection pit kind of sucked. At least there was a grace period between hearing the flush and... receiving the output(?).

Sounds like a really 'shitty' part of your job.

I'm a researcher (computer science). The hardest part is trying to solve a problem with a deadline approaching, while you're not even sure how and if it is solvable at all. And also the part where you discover that you put 3 month of work into something that in the end solves a problem slower and more complicated then the existing solution you were trying to improve. This can be quite frustrating. Basically not knowing if the work done during a week was worth anything at all until sometime in the far future.

As a city worker, I have to scrape up dead skunks from the road. Ya gotta be careful, cuz even the dead ones can spray, and you can't even step where the animal was.

Hardest part of my job is having to write bad programs because it's what the clients wants. Once I tried taking someones horrible idea for a program they thought they wanted, and fixed it to make it a nice and functioning program and I didn't get paid. It is annoying when people that don't know anything about technology or programming try acting like designers.

Computer programmer. Love my job, can't complain about it, every day is different. Love the people I work with!!!

Technical Support Agent for a Business based ISP.

The hardest part is actually the terrible hours the company makes us keep. Every week is different from the next, and nothing makes sense as far as what hours you will be getting. One week it's Monday 5-1, Wednesday 12-8, Thursday 4-12. Next week completely different. As for the job itself, the hardest part is dealing with the idiots on the phone that refuse to work with you when you are trying to help them. They think we are just there to screw them over every chance we get but in all honesty we couldn't care less if they had internet or not.

The perfect example of this was the last call I took when I was at work a few days ago. The guy called in and said his internet was down. I looked over the circuit and saw that it was up and passing traffic fine but there were a ton of errors on the line indicating a problem with a modem going bad. He refused to accept that as an answer. From there I ran some other tests on the phone line itself and, as I knew before hand, they came back clean as well. The only problem was with his modem being a decade old and it dying, but the guy refused to believe that because he "knew" I was just telling him that so that we could sell him a new modem and then charge him more weeks later to send out a tech to fix the real problem and charge him even more. I can't begin to tell you how many people call in refusing to work with us to fix their own dam internet and then flip out when we tell them that there's nothing we can do to help them if they won't work with us because we need someone on site. They expect us to just flick a few switches, turn a few knobs and make their internet come back on. They think we can wave this magic wand over the phone and make their internet magically work again, and god forbid they don't understand how the internet works and you try to explain to them why things break. Amazes me how many people can't understand the concept that things break and need to be repaired some times.

The funny part about that job I learned is that the asshole paying $30 a month for his internet screams, bitches, moans and cries bloody murder louder and more often then the big companies paying thousands for super good internet. And my favourite part is when that same pretentious, moaning, cry baby paying the $30 a month gets told that we can't send out a tech to take a look at his site to fix a problem for a day or two and he some how manages to lose it even more. If you are really losing those thousands of dollars you claim then you why don't you have a back up internet installed so you can use it in case that one goes down? If you are losing thousands of dollars every second you are down then you can afford to pay an extra $200-$300 a month to get the better internet with the four hour dispatch time on techs instead of the $30 a month one that has a 2-3 day dispatch wait.

i work in school, so the hardest part is teens.

I am an Engineering Assistant which basically means that I am a Draftsman with a fancy title, that occasionally they let do a wee bit of design work.

If you take my job from the perspective just as Engineering, the hardest part of it is actually that I don't really get to do it. You spend about 1 hour engineering stuff for every day or so of paperwork you do on that one thing to make it a real thing. I kind of wanted to make one of those "what people think I do, What I actually do" meme's for it but the one for nursing is close enough...and that trend needs to die anyways.

Taken as the low man on the pole Draftsman, the hardest part of my job is being that guy that has to pick up the slack between manufacturing and engineering. All those little paperwork, database, doting of I's and crossing of T's that neither side believes is their responsibility is what I do. But then, entry level anywhere is crap, so I guess that part is status quo.

The toughest part of my job is to keep accurate billed/budget numbers for the thirteen engineering project managers I work for. Each project presents their own separate problems and each project manager has their own way of dealing with billings, budgets, getting approvals for each new job and additional work on top of our initial proposed work, and getting paid from our clients.

The mood always turns sour whenever an "accounting" issue arises. I was given the nickname "The Grim Reaper" from a former project manager because he always know the news isn't good whenever I showed up.

Seeing some of the terrible things that people can do to themselves and others and having to be reminded of it on a continuous basis. A couple of months ago I had a rape case end up on my desk where a girl got drugged and date raped at a party. Then about three weeks ago I had a case about a woman that was addicted to meth and heroin, she had to go to lock up. She has a 4 year old son.

Just shit like that. There's good and bad, but the bad is the stuff that sticks out when it happens and makes me stay awake at night.

Cleaning up people´s messes when they deliver apartments/ unclugging sewers late at night ... on a Sunday :/

@AiurFlux: I guess I shouldnt complain then :(

Firstly, motivating people who are blind to the fact that thinking and idealising does not create tangible progress.
 
Secondly, people who want their book to absolute perfection, just as they have envisioned in their head. Tweaking and retweaking, at the client's request literally accounts for 90% of my job.

I'm a student worker at my college's IT help desk and... my job isn't incredibly hard. I'm essentially an errand-boy. I have access to a profile (when it's activated, but that's as simple as asking) that can do whatever I need it to fix a professor's or other staff member's computer. The catch here is that the little formal training I received on this stuff was in high school - and that didn't teach me jack shit. Not to mention the fact that I've had to figure out myself where some things are, especially things like printer drivers. Ever had to figure out on your own which IP address matches which printer so I can deduce which fucking driver I'm supposed to use, out of a list of the ones in the whole school? Not fun!

But then I remember that I'm sitting in a chair, in air conditioning, and am granted as much time as I need (within reason) to solve the issues presented. Most of the time they aren't that hard, and like I said, most of my time is spent as nothing more than an errand boy. Couple that with the fact that last summer and probably this summer I'll get to work a full 40 hour job with $9-$10/hr paycheck doing the same sorts of things, and I consider myself much luckier than most poor-ass college students. This is compared to the Subway job I had in high school. Bleh, that was horrible. I wasn't the fastest sandwich maker and I wasn't the best in social situations then, so I was trying to communicate well with strangers all of the time. Not the job for me.

I work at my college, the hardest part of my job is avoiding bordom. I just sign students into the computer lab and show them how to use the printer.

The boss is the hardest part.

Leaving the house to clock in

Getting motivated for any kind of work... I'm really not interested in anything work related, so It's real hard to take anything seriously.

Service desk for a big CMS company

• Dealing with difficult customers who can't explain what the problem is.
• Telling people they majorly fucked up, without pissing them off: "You deleted a table in your database with over 10,000 records in it? Sure, we can restore it. 200 bucks please."
• Having to relearn Javascript. Seriously, if I had full source code access, I could implement a function in a matter of minutes. Instead I have to use a weird syntax and non standard keywords to do it. It annoys me greatly. Also, the API's we use don't really have any documentation, which makes it even more difficult.
• Having 25 open cases I have to follow up on, while still answering the phone and incoming emails. Some days are stressful.
  
• Learning stuff on the fly. This is an old and huge CMS, and even people who've worked in the company for 5+ years don't know all the ins and outs of it. So if a customer calls with an obscure problem, I pretty much have to use my intuition to figure it out.
• Finding something to do on quiet days. 3 phone calls and 5 emails in a day makes ZimboDK a dull boy.
  

Sleeping during the day. I work third shift as a security guard.

Paperwork, I love looking after the children but the whole not doing that sucks.

@Dagbiker said:

Graphic Designer, Hardest part of my job is people know what they want but cant do it themselves so they come in and tell me how to do my job for an hour. That or my boss just stands over my sholder and tells me exactly how to design. "double click" "select it all at once" "illustrator sucks, sign wizard is so much better"

May I see your portfolio? They say GD is the most overpopulated career path at the moment.

Actually start working...?

@AhmadMetallic said:

smiling

This. Also add "Being nice to people."

Fucking asstards...

I'm a teacher in the former USSR. The hardest part of my job is giving kids bad grades. That would go against the government propaganda that claims my school is one of the best in the world.

Son of a government official? Passes with high marks! Spends most of the class shoving a pencil up his nose? Passes with high marks! Doesn't come to school? Never had the opportunity to get a low grade... passes with high marks!

I'm a paralegal. The hardest part is showing up

The hardest part of my job is waking up in the morning. I know it sounds stupid, but I have awful sleep habits, and re-training my body to fall asleep at a reasonable time has proven to be far more difficult than I want it to be. Other than that, I like everything about my current job.

It's a rare thing, so I've gotten pretty lucky.

@McAwesome said:

i work in school, so the hardest part is teens.

This.

Im a web designer and usually I have to take mandatory design advice from people who know fuck all about web design, resulting in a shitload of failed projects. Getting paid 25% less than I should be paid because the economy is fucked doesn't help either.

I'm a multiplatform developer that focuses on open world FPS games. Getting shit that fits easily on PC and Xbox to fit in PS3's pathetic memory is the hardest part of my, and any other multiplat developers' jobs

When I'm in the zone, I can do an entire day's worth of work in 3-4 hours. The problem is that I'm paid hourly, so I've got to fill 8 hours with 4 hours worth of work and stay awake the whole time.

driving through some of portland, oregon's inner-cities with a tractor-trailer whilst making my way to a grocery store in the area. the driving part is pretty easy. it's the insanely tight quarters turning that can be fucking crazy sometimes. add a ton of stupid bicycle riding dip shits, pedestrians, stupid drivers, and the general portland lack of concern for anything other than themselves, and you will sometimes have a nightmare of a time just making it to your destination.

Old people. I work at a grocery store doing a monkey's job that literally anyone can do: stocking shelves. It's a family-run local chain of supermarkets that nobody would really know outside of my home state, and thus old people are a blight of epidemic proportions on the people that work there. They're just the worst. They walk incredibly slowly, something that is incredibly frustrating when you're pulling a heavy-ass dolly of yogurt or whateverthefuck behind you. Not only are they slow, however, their lives are so pathetic and lonely that they find the most trivial things to bug me about. "This melk exp-eye-uhz in THUHREEE weeks, duh'ya have anymOEWAH in tha back?" And when you say no, they never believe it. The only saving grace that these ancient fucks have is their complete and total inability to detect sarcasm. You can openly insult them in front of them, say things that make other customers cringe, and these fucking mummies will have no idea what you are doing because they're so wrapped up in telling the young clerk why he's wrong and why his mistake matters that much to anything in the world. I used to get mad at these people, but now I just use sarcasm and the fact that they're going to die alone as comfort when they piss me off.

I work as a meteorologist & the job is great and all but since weather never stops we have to have people at the office 24/7/365. So the hardest part of my job is working shift work and coming in for a week of graveyard shifts then turning around and working evening shifts, then working a normal day shift.... Pretty hard on my natural sleep cycle.

2 words: Middle. Management.

Then again, "supporting" outsourced labor can be pretty shit too. Tie?

Laughing at peoples' dumb jokes/smiling and dealing with nonstop complainers. Not that I struggle doing it, it's just the most frustrating and annoying part of my job.

I'm 18, still in high school and have a part time job at a movie theater where everything is overpriced. Rather than asking, "Who makes the prices?" or simply not buying popcorn for $8, they yell at me. No one who works at the place directly makes a cent off of those prices. It could be $200 for popcorn and the managers, other employees and myself are still going to get the same paycheck.

"Wow I gotta take out a loan for those prices!" Yeah, well I heard that "joke" 15 times my first day.

"Man, is this on Obama's bailout package?!" That one wasn't that bad, actually.

However, the people making jokes don't really bother me, better than the people yelling, "It's fucking bullshit you charge $5 for a water!" I agree, but... I can't imagine why it would be so high, considering you people end up buying it anyway. lol

I work in a prison. I have to sometimes strip search men who worked on road crews all day.

At this point in time the hardest part of my job is maintaining a good attitude. I work in publishing and everything is getting outsourced to India. I keep getting new opportunities to take on new roles while others are getting laid off. I'm very fortunate in that way but watching my job duties shift to India is depressing. I'm open to a new career but feeling stuck in a dead end career and industry can break your spirit some days. I just know my gf has my back and I get to come home and play guitar everyday. Until I lose both of those I'm good.